Daily Score Blog

Here's a bad idea. The state wants to widen Interstate-90 over Snoqualmie Pass. While they're at it, they're considering building a series of passageways for animals--maybe as many as 14--that would help wildlife move safely across the expanded freeway. It will cost $113 million.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to design our cities and roads to accommodate the natural systems around us. Indeed, I think we have a moral responsibility to do so. But I'm rather unconvinced that a) this project will do much to help the state's wildlife; and b) it's the best use for wildlife of $113 million.

I admit that the basic idea is simple and appealing. By building overpasses with native plantings and widening existing underpasses, we can help animals move safely from north to south across the interstate. It's worked in Florida and Banff National Park in Canada. In fact, it already works in places where I-90 is elevated as it traverses the Cascade Mountains. So far, green groups seem to love the idea. So why do I think the project is so stupid?

I have to admit that I'm a little confused by this guest op-ed in the Seattle P-I criticising Seattle's proposed high-rise development for exacerbating low-income housing problems.  The crux of the argument:

The past 30 years have seen the greatest development boom in our city's history since the turn of the 20th century. During that same period, however, we have seen an explosion in the numbers of homeless people and of working households living on the economic margins that are paying 50 percent and 60 percent of their meager incomes for housing. We have also seen a growing movement of lower-income racial minorities out of the city into south King County in search of affordable housing.

No amount of increased density is going to answer the question of where these people -- many of whom perform essential clerical, service and retail tasks -- are going to live, especially when increased density comes at the expense of the existing supply of affordable -- mostly rental -- housing. With the combined effects of the high cost of new construction, developers' profits, demand for higher-end housing and the evaporation of government subsidies for low-income housing, changing the city's zoning laws to allow greater density is more likely to hurt than help our affordable housing supply.

I hate to quibble with this, since I share some of the author's concerns -- I'm very interested in strategies for providing affordable housing for those at the bottom end of the income scale.  But I am genuinely baffled about a couple of the author's points.

First, London started charging cars a fee to enter the city center -- a move widely credited with easing congestion and making it easier to get around in the crowded downtown. Now, the British government is considering instituting congestion pricing for the entire nation. Says this BBC article:

The London scheme brought in two years ago is reckoned a success in reducing traffic congestion, despite the fears voiced in advance. The daily charge for driving in the central zone is on Monday nearly doubling to \0xAC\0xA38 ($14), and a big westward extension is being considered.

Last month, the British Transport Secretary, Alastair Darling, suggested something altogether more ambitious: a national system covering the whole country.

Drivers would be charged a varying rate per mile, depending on what kind of road they took. Cars would be fitted with a "black box" to record their movements, probably linked to global positioning satellites (GPS).

Mr Darling described it as "a radically different approach", something that no other country in the world had done.

In some ways, this kind of approach may be expensive. Installing GPS "black boxes," managing the tolling system, ensuring privacy, and the like will probably cost billions for a nation the size of Britain.

On the other hand, greater Seattle alone is facing transportation infrastructure costs -- replacing (or scuttling) the Viaduct, repaving I-5, rebuilding state route 520, expanding I-405 and SR-167, financing the monorail & light rail -- far exceeding $10 billion in current dollars, much of which will be paid through higher gas taxes. I'd wager that managing congestion with a pricing scheme would be far, far cheaper than building all of that new capacity.

This summer marks the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's arrival in the Pacific Northwest. The expedition is storied, but almost exclusively by white historians. Enter a new book with a new perspective on the expedition and its consequences for the native peoples they encountered, The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Here's a portion of the book description:

For the first time, a Native American community offers an in-depth examination of the events and historical significance of their encounter with the Lewis and Clark expedition... What makes The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition a startling departure from previous accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition is how it depicts the arrival of non-Indians-not as the beginning of history, but as another chapter in a long tribal history. Much of this book focuses on the ancient cultural landscape and history that had already shaped the region for millennia before the arrival of Lewis and Clark. 

In the same vein, the Bellingham Weekly has an excellent article by one "Alan Durning" on the sesquicentennial of the Washington treaties of 1855. An earlier version of his article appeared in this blog.

For years now, scientists have known that US and Canadian residents have elevated levels of PBDEs -- a flame retardant known to impair development in lab animals -- in their bodies, compared with European and Asian counterparts. (See, for example, our own study of PBDEs in northwesterners.)

The problem is that nobody's been sure of how the compounds get into us. Some speculated that food was the main exposure route -- and pointed to studies that found the compounds in common foods taken from grocery store shelves. Others suspected that house dust was the real culprit -- and that people were inhaling dust containing traces of PBDEs that had been sloughed off from degrading furniture foams or other consumer items.

Now, one research team claims to have an answer to the food v. dust controversy. Their conclusion: most of the PBDEs in people's bodies comes from house dust.

As far as I can tell, this is based on a computer model; but the model is based on actual measurements of PBDEs both in foods and house dust.

Still, it's probably too soon to call this definitive. But to me, it certainly suggests that -- in addition to banning the compounds outright -- there ought to be more efforts directed at getting PBDE-laden products out of people's homes.

Researchers have confirmed three new orca calves, in a promising sign for the southern resident orcas, the killer whales that haunt the seas of Washington and British Columbia. At least one of the calves is a newborn--no more than a few days old. That makes five new orcas in 2005, and seven since last October, one of the biggest population increases since the whales have been closely monitored. The Kitsap Sun reports.

Of special importance, two of the new calves were born to the L-pod, the largest of the three southern resident pods. Population losses in the L-pod account for the entirety of the orca's population drop from recent highs in 1995 to the present, but it looks like L is starting to regain lost ground.

There are currently 90 orcas in the southern residents (not counting Luna, the young whale stranded in BC), though official population counts are not taken until the end of the calendar year. The first months are the toughest for newborn whales, so it remains to be seen if all 5 new orcas will survive. But even a population increase of 1 would bring them to their highest number since 1998.

It's also important to remember that while the new baby boom is a welcome development, the southern resident populations are severely depressed. Perhaps 3 times as many resident orcas prowled Puget Sound and the Georgia Basin before Europeans arrived in the Northwest. Their fate is closely linked to our impacts on the region.    

If you live in Seattle, you no longer have any excuse to not ride the bus. Check out www.busmonster.com, a hybrid of Google Maps and Metro's Trip Planner that lets you see in real-time where the bus you want to take is on any particular route. You can look up the closest stops to your location and see the routes on their way.

Best of all, it will send you an email 5 minutes (or however many minutes you like) before your bus is due to arrive at your stop. Madly chasing bus drivers down the street just officially became part of my past.

Bus Monster is not only a cool and convenient tool, it's the kind of creative thinking that can help convince car commuters to ride the bus. I know San Francisco has "my next bus" pop-up alerts and gps information at some stops-are there any other rider-friendly services we should know about in Cascadia?