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Confused About Traffic?


 

You are not alone. It’s a complicated issue, and not everyone is trying to make things clearer.

A few things you should know:

The City Council says that your traffic is fine now and will be fine in 20 years. “no significant unavoidable adverse impacts are expected”

Yet, during the Environmental Impact Statement process, nearly 400 people took the time to submit written concerns about traffic. No one was in favor of more traffic.

The city only pays attention to the busiest hour between 7 and 9 AM and the busiest hour between 4 and 6 PM. If you are in clogged traffic outside of those hours, it doesn’t count.

The City Council only pays attention to intersection delay. If you are sitting in a long line of traffic creeping along Sahalee, East Lake Sammamish, or Issaquah Pine Lake Road, it doesn’t count.

Intersection delay is calculated, not measured. The estimated delays depend on values of parameters used for the software. Some of them are user choice. Despite concerns raised in early June, we still don’t know what values were used. All will be revealed November 20. Or maybe not.

It may not matter to the City Council. There is a large margin between the calculated delays and what the City Council has decided are acceptable. At major intersections, your delays could get 3 times longer and still meet the City Council standard.

Maybe we should line up some good audiobooks for the wait. Perhaps something on gaslighting.

Comments

  1. JudyOctober 15, 2025 at 7:46 AM

    Commenting here because you turned off comments on the affordable housing post. First of all, that's not a good look. Second, you forgot to mention the target of 2044 for affordable housing at all levels. Meanwhile, trying to block the 4000-unit housing project in town center is clearly not out of any compassion you all have for the poorest residents in our county. We need more housing at all levels of affordability to get out of the crisis we're in.

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