405 toll lanes may have been trigger for firing of WSDOT secretary Lynn Peterson

Seattle Times ^ | 2/6/2016 | Mike Lindblom

[djwright]

In the end, state Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson wasn’t derailed by nearly $400 million in Highway 520 bridge overruns, or even the two-year delay in the Highway 99 tunnel, a pair of projects that she inherited.

Instead, the cardinal sin that Peterson and her department committed was to infuriate suburban motorists.

Senate Republicans on Friday ousted Peterson without warning, by voting not to confirm her, three years after Gov. Jay Inslee appointed her.

Blame a bumpy rollout of Interstate 405 express-toll lanes, which were meant to improve traffic flows in south Snohomish and northeast King counties. Instead, they moved some of the worst congestion from Kirkland to Bothell. And even though state data showed time savings southbound, the general lanes turned slower ­in the Bothell chokepoint — and 29,000 people endorsed an online petition to repeal the toll lanes.

[djwright]

This was kind of a nice win in the conservative column here in Washington. People got upset enough at a botched transportation project that the political process actually worked for a change.

[tbw2]

Even liberals hate sitting in traffic longer than they have to.

[RitchieAprile]

I ride from Bothell to Edmonds and back every day on the 405.

The tolling has made traffic a mess in the north end.

[driftless2]

I have a brother who lives in Olympia. The wife and I visited him and his family several years ago. It's not real mountainous where he is, but much of the NW Washington area is circumscribed by the mountains. It's not like you can put a four lane on top of Mt. Rainer.

Speaking of Mt. Rainer, my bro took me and the wife on a tour of the mountain. But it was so foggy, we barely saw anything. We actually didn't see Mr. Rainer until we left, drove south and the weather cleared.

[proudpapa]

For those who want to understand the situation...

There used to be 3 general lanes and one carpool lane. But the state dot took away another general lane and made it a toll / carpool lane.

So now there are two toll/carpool lanes and two general lanes.

And then to make life significantly worse for 99% of the people they changed the definition of carpooling from 2+ to 3+ people.

Effectively this created two lanes with horrible jams. And two lanes that were practically empty most of the time.

And if you get caught in the wrong lane the fines are tremendous.

[fireman15]

The HOV lanes used to be free if you had more than one person in the car; they still are suppose to be, but even after trying to figure out how we were suppose to use our Good-to-Go pass we still got charged several dollars. When I called and complained I got a bunch of bureaucratic doublespeak, no offer to adjust our charges, and no understandable explanation of how to avoid charges with a car pool in the future other than to stay out of the lanes.

[fireman15]

Good summary! I am glad someone got fired over it. This is so typical of the way our government screws everything up all the time.

[moehoward]

Wow. I need to get over there more often. I didn’t even know about this.

[GOP Poet]

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[AlaskaErik]

There isn’t a single HOV lane in Alaska and that’s just how I like it.