Transportation Strategic Plan Analysis

Seattle, Washington has presented an ambitious comprehensive plan that will change the shape of the city in the upcoming years. Seattle has chosen to focus more on “urban village” type development in the city and have every other aspect of planning like, transportation and land use, work in tandem with that. An urban village is a mixed-use area that hosts housing, jobs, shops, and services in close proximity to one another. Among annexations and different land use practices, transportation plays a major role new role in the city’s general plan. This new plan focuses on turning the city towards a more foreword thinking and sustainable way of operating. The transportation portion of the general plan has been deemed the name “Transportation Strategic Plan”. And the TSP, as it is referred, is broken down into several parts.

The city of Seattle has realized that they have a limited amount of street space in and around their city. Because of this, they went about classifying the different road types by use and defining them. These definitions range all the way from interstate freeways that have been defined as “roadways that provide the highest capacity and least impeded traffic flow for longer vehicle trips.”, down to alleyways that are “travelways…that are not intended for through trips,”(Transportation Element). A specific goal of these definitions and classifications as stated by the plan is to “Promote adequate capacity on the street system for transit and other designated uses.” This seems like an ingenious idea to help move the city forward. Instead of expanding roadways by adding lanes, which would eat into businesses, housing, and other developments, the city is seeing what kind of traffic a roadway is attracting and making su...

... middle of paper ...

...enacting it. A lot of the goals and ideas presented in the TSP were similar to those presented during lectures in class. Seattle aims to become a more sustainable city and they aim to increase transportation options to get from one part of the city to the other. It is easy to see the tangible benefits of the items presented in the transportation plan, as well as the intangible ones. Like in the case of expanding the urban trails network. Tangible benefits would include more bicyclists utilizing these bikeways. Some intangible benefits would be improved fitness for the bikers, less traffic congestion, and decreases in air pollution. Though it will be difficult and time consuming to implement, a lot of the aspects of Seattle’s Transportation Strategic Plan have long term benefits and advantages to advance the city one step further towards being a sustainable entity.