Traffic

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LCF
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Traffic

Post by LCF »

When I got certified in 2005, I used to go in to the Coves (or south) two or three times a WEEK, in the afternoon, to dive with friends and with Bob. If I left my house at 3, I could be at Cove 2 at 3:30. If I left at 3:30, it was going to be more like 4:15.

Today, if I leave at 3 and I'm alone, I MIGHT get there by 4. If I leave at 3:30, I won't be there before 4:30, and it may be closer to 5. I'll spend most of that time in stop and go traffic.

This has definitely had an impact on my local diving. Last year was the first year that I didn't do 100 dives in a year, and almost all of the decrease was local diving. I'm wondering if other folks are experiencing the same thing. It's depressing.
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Jeff Pack
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Re: Traffic

Post by Jeff Pack »

welcome to having unusable rapid transit shoved down our throats, in lieu of actually increasing our infrastructure.
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Jeremy
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Re: Traffic

Post by Jeremy »

Traffic has essentially made me a weekend diver only
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Gdog
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Re: Traffic

Post by Gdog »

It most definitely affects my ability to do Thursday dives. Sometimes it takes well over an hour to go from Olympia to Redondo. The biggest traffic block for me is getting by fort lewis. Usually once past Thorne lane I'm in the clear other than the normal slowdown at the dome.
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kdupreez
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Re: Traffic

Post by kdupreez »

Wait till next week..

They will be working on i90 from 7/18 through 7/25 and will have only ONE lane open… And 520 will probably be closed again that weekend..

meaning 1 lane of traffic into Seattle from the east side..

ouch!
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YellowEye
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Re: Traffic

Post by YellowEye »

I commute from Bellevue. Seems to me traffic to Issaquah and Seattle via 90 from there has actually gotten better over the years! But I have noticed traffic has gotten much worse in other areas, especially near JBLM.

Sorry to hear this is cramping into your style, Lynne!
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Grateful Diver
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Re: Traffic

Post by Grateful Diver »

Lucky for me I live five minutes from Redondo, and mostly on back roads. I have noticed heavier traffic getting up to West Seattle, which is one reason I don't go there as often as I used to. Maybe what you need to do, Lynne, is start diving Edmonds or Mukilteo more often.

I don't know that it has to do with public transit (which chronically sucks in our area for such a large metropolis) as it has to do with the fact that arterials simply weren't planned and built to accommodate the kind of growth we've experienced over the past couple decades. Look at I-5 north, coming into downtown where I-90 comes in ... you've got 7 lanes converging into a cowpath that goes under the city ... you couldn't add more lanes there even if you had the political backing and money to do so. And Bellevue ... for the past 10 years their municipal bird has been the building crane ... how many more people can you pack into an area that's already overcrowded?

Transit solutions are what ... more buses? They get to sit the same traffic jams as everybody else. Then there's the chronic Washington traffic problem ... left-lane camping. All it takes to create a traffic jam at any time of day is that one driver who insists on driving in the left lane without passing anybody ... and that describes about 40% of the drivers on our highways. I see it every day ... four lanes to drive in, four cars driving side-by-side-by-side-by-side at exactly the same speed. It looks like that old Staples commercial ... except all the tailgaters behind them are pissed off and there's four empty lanes in front of them that nobody can get past them to use.

On the other hand, every time I get surly about Seattle area traffic all I have to do is remember what it was like in Jakarta ... if you haven't been there, you really don't understand what bad traffic is. People jump outta their cars and direct traffic there ... and you gotta hand them money if you expect them to let you move at all ...

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LCF
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Re: Traffic

Post by LCF »

Yes, I should just give up and go north . . . it's easier. I'll need a whole new set of dive buddies, though, and I'll have to develop an insane fascination with ling cod. :)
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Nwbrewer
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Re: Traffic

Post by Nwbrewer »

LCF wrote:Yes, I should just give up and go north . . . it's easier. I'll need a whole new set of dive buddies, though, and I'll have to develop an insane fascination with ling cod. :)
You're always welcome to come dive Mukilteo with us. We have more crab than lings though....
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GearHead
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Re: Traffic

Post by GearHead »

LCF wrote:Yes, I should just give up and go north . . . it's easier. I'll need a whole new set of dive buddies, though, and I'll have to develop an insane fascination with ling cod. :)
Don't forget Cabzilla!
The Eel grass at Edmonds is also fun for Hooded Nudis and other little critters.

I can make to Edmonds in about 25 minutes on a Wednesday night vs about an hour and 15 min to Cove 2.
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Joshua Smith
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Re: Traffic

Post by Joshua Smith »

Not only is our miserable traffic worse than usual- but OMG it's HOT. I am NOT into it- I felt like I was about to pass out twice last summer gearing up for dives- I pledged not to do the same thing this year. One trick I found is that I'm warm enough in my CF200 to do a rec dive without undergarments- that helps. And I try to keep cold water nearby while gearing up, not only for drinking, but to soak my hood in before I gear up. It helps a lot.

But.....yeah, traffic sucks. And it's only gonna get worse. Unless you ride a bicycle. The city is spending millions to develop new bike paths. Which is, you know, great and stuff. I ride a bike. I ride on the bike paths. I think they're great. I didn't realize they needed so much......improvement.

I work for a living. (as opposed to writing stuff or talking about stuff). No offense to my good white collar friends. Or, for that matter, to my blue collar brethren who work at Boeing, or in manufacturing or similar. I'm expected to show up at peoples houses with ten thousand pounds worth of tools and materials and actually build something with my hands. Try doing that on a bicycle. Or a bus. Or light rail that goes from downtown to the airport.

Anyway, I love you all, sorry for the rant, stay as cool as you can, and dive safe! :joshsmith:
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fmerkel
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Re: Traffic

Post by fmerkel »

I'd guess at any time somewhere between 20-40% of the people driving don't really need to be out there. When we get some advanced notice of serious traffic problems like are coming up suddenly the volume drops in half...or less.

This is an interesting experiment done in Sweden: TED talk:
How to solve traffic jams -

Seattle has become (again) one of, if not THE, fastest growing city in the US. Traffic problems (barring crashes and other disasters) become acute when volumes reach a certain level for a given area. Seattle has so many restrictions that either cannot, or will not, be overcome that as the area grows this kind of problem is inevitable. More roads simply are not the answer. Build it and they will come. That's been proven over and over again. It's unfortunate but the only way to get people out of their cars is to let it get too ugly for them to want to be in them. "They" aren't' the problem, "WE ALL" are the problem.

I'm not knocking the folks that really need to use their vehicles. There are a lot of those. I used to be one when I was in home care. If 20-40% of the people carpooled (a pretty reasonable goal) the traffic levels would drop so precipitously that traffic would start flowing again.

My wife and I seldom do evening/night dives as it's just too unpleasant to deal with the traffic in the evening.
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LCF
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Re: Traffic

Post by LCF »

I have a very odd work schedule. I almost never contribute to rush hour traffic for work purposes, and for anything other than diving, I do not venture out of my house between 7 and 10 am, or between 3 and 6 pm. Luckily, my other activities keep me very close to home, on residential streets with little traffic.

No mass transit is going to get me to any dive site at any time of day with over 100 pounds of gear.

I think I will be looking north. Anybody want to do some after work weekday dives at Edmonds or Mukilteo? (Jake, I need to coordinate with you more often.)
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ljjames
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Re: Traffic

Post by ljjames »

early in the day or late dives are name of game in the summer in West Seattle. Not as hot and the sunny day traffic settles a bit. Don't even bother on the weekends if the weather is nice unless you have half a day to burn waiting for parking.

It also has to do with how much you 'want' the dive. Back when I was a new diver I'd drive 100 miles in a blizzard to go dive somewhere, or endure heat stroke just to dive in 5' vis.

These days i'm pickier. I feel like traffic and parking was always equally bad (and in some cases worse). I just have less motivation to blow a whole afternoon sitting in traffic unless there is more purpose to the dive than just floating around being neutrally buoyant and practicing drills ;) (nothing wrong with that, goodness knows i've done my fair share)

If it's overly hot, overly cold or craptastic vis, it at _least_ has to involve a camera and/or a project or whatnot to increase my motivation/tolerance. There is a reason I have only one or two dives at Cove 2 this year - there were better places to go! Now of course I'll likely be singing a different song come octopus hatching season <grin>
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LCF
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Re: Traffic

Post by LCF »

I'm sure that plays a role, too, Laura -- I don't feel the burning need just to get wet as much as I used to. But I love Cove 2, and even more Redondo, with the camera, and I do have a database of transit times to compare, and they HAVE gotten longer.

Some days I feel like I'm back in Germany. "Elf kilometer stau" (11 km backup)!
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Re: Traffic

Post by deepbludvr »

Agree with all the comments, have the same feelings about getting wet, must be a "higher mileage" thing, but I do have to say it is all relative when you're driving up from Portland.
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Re: Traffic

Post by MightyGazebo »

LCF wrote:I think I will be looking north. Anybody want to do some after work weekday dives at Edmonds or Mukilteo?

Definitely! For the same reason as you, just so difficult to get south during the week in the afternoon. Even worse, I rarely get off work before 5pm and even if I had my gear in my car ready to go it'd be at least 7pm before I was at site. Two hours of traffic after a long day at work and I'm in no mood to dive.
While the weekend is generally easier for me, if it's a 7pm dive up north I'm absolutely game most of the week. Could possibly make sooner but would depend on work.
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ljjames
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Re: Traffic

Post by ljjames »

LCF wrote:Some days I feel like I'm back in Germany. "Elf kilometer stau" (11 km backup)!
And on that day I used a she-p on the drive home into an empty soda bottle, without any shame. (it was more like a 22km backup tho)
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ArcticDiver
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Re: Traffic

Post by ArcticDiver »

As a person who came into scuba older than most and now making reservations to resume and dealing with the emotions involved I wonder if comments in this thread are more an expression of age and number of years diving than anything else.
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LowDrag
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Re: Traffic

Post by LowDrag »

Lynne....look at the bright side. At least you can drive somewhere nearby and go dive. Us folk down here in the Vancouver/Portland area have to get up at O'dark:30 just to drive for three hours to get up in your neck of the woods. Then when we get there we have to get geared up and do a dive or two just to turn around gear down and drive back home. I wish I had more places to dive down here, I would have more dives logged if I had your access.
No doubt the traffic sucks, I have driven through it and I don't envy you guys up north having to put up with it. The last I was up north was at Redondo with the NWDC and the traffic just on the city streets was hectic to say the least.
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Tom Nic
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Re: Traffic

Post by Tom Nic »

We are a tad spoiled with the dive opportunities in Puget Sound and environs... speaking for myself, of course.
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stphnmartin
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Re: Traffic

Post by stphnmartin »

I used to live in NYC and nothing compares to trying to go crosstown during rush hour in Manhattan. Jimi Hendrix was right. By comparison Seattle has no traffic problems!
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LowDrag
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Re: Traffic

Post by LowDrag »

Tom Nic wrote:We are a tad spoiled with the dive opportunities in Puget Sound and environs... speaking for myself, of course.
Yeah...I wish I had the places to dive that you guys up north do. I must admit, I am a bit jealous sometimes. :)
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Paulicarp
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Re: Traffic

Post by Paulicarp »

Nwbrewer wrote:
LCF wrote:Yes, I should just give up and go north . . . it's easier. I'll need a whole new set of dive buddies, though, and I'll have to develop an insane fascination with ling cod. :)
You're always welcome to come dive Mukilteo with us. We have more crab than lings though....

come dive Muk with us! we've got... well, what Jake said.

Also, PM me about fills if you're going to be diving Muk. My "special buddy" rates are reasonable and the compressor is right on the way.
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