Seattle’s Disjointed Transportation Needs A Fix, Mayor Murray Says

Seattleites have many travel options, but sometimes those options clash.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray hopes to change that with a $900 million transportation levy being floated to voters this fall. Murray says his plan, called Move Seattle, would not perpetuate what he calls the mode wars.

“We need all modes to work,” he says, “whether it’s bicycles, or cars, or pedestrians or freight. We have to coordinate those together. And we have to fund and plan them together.”

Some of the proposed projects will focus on safety like seismically reinforcing bridges. Others will make improvements for freight and delivery trucks.

The corner of 15th Avenue and East Madison Street, where the mayor unveiled his plan, is on one of the busiest corridors in Seattle.

Transportation Director Scott Kubly says the plan is to improve the area’s transit capacity, to create a bus network.

He says that about 30,000 people within a half-mile of this corridor take the bus every day.

“What we’re proposing is a Bus Rapid Transit corridor on Madison running from downtown to 23rd Avenue or MLK,” Kubly says. “We’re looking at different alternatives.”

Seattle voters last approved a transportation package in 2006. That’s about to expire at the end of this year. The proposed levy would last nine years.

The mayor’s transportation package would cost a homeowner of a $450,000 house about $275 a year.

The city wants your feedback and asks you to take a survey, write an email or attend a public meeting.

The mayor's office created this graphic to describe its plan at a glance: