It was surprising to read Andrea Keikkala’s guest commentary (“Transportation package is needed for our economy”, Kent Reporter, Sept. 6) make the claim that transportation dollars were going all over the state with no thought to overall economic benefit.
I would assume recent expenditures for things like emergency repairs to the collapsed bridge on I-5 over the Skagit River, widening I-90 in Snoqualmie Pass or the U.S. 395 construction in Spokane had plenty of economic benefit. And reams of studies to prove it.
Conversely, when I read that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has a study that says constructing five miles of limited access roadway will create 80,000 jobs in the state, it gets my attention. Particularly when one considers the entire Boeing employment number in Washington is approximately 85,000.
The April 2007 WSDOT study in question, An Economic Assessment of the SR 167 Extension Project, has lots of graphs, tables, figures and assumptions. The last item is the problem, as some of the source information is from 2003, 2004 and 2005. And, the jobs estimate is firmly tied to the increase in containers arriving at Puget Sound ports. The Ports of Tacoma (POT) and Seattle (POS) were busy back then, and the POT even told the SR 167 study authors they were going to increase their 2005 container volume 475 percent to 9.8 million TEU (container equivalent) by the year 2025.
Then the recession arrived and container volumes dropped. The POT handled 2.07 million TEU in 2005, 1.7 million in 2012, and hopes to handle 3 million in 2022. The POS has similar numbers: 2.1 million TEU in 2005, 1.9 million in 2012, and predicts handling 3.5 million TEU in 2034 if they can keep up the current 3.5-percent growth rate. But can they? The 2007 WSDOT study does not even mention Puget Sound port competitors, Prince Rupert, B.C., and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico. Or, the widened Panama Canal in 2015. The pending reroute of shipping has created a virtual battle for Army Corps of Engineers dredging funds in U.S. ports on the Gulf of Mexico and East Coast to accommodate deeper draft ships.
Public confidence in WSDOT is not high. I think it would help the agency if they would pull the 2007 SR 167 study, rework the numbers and eliminate the chart that claims extra container traffic and five miles of highway construction adds 80,000 jobs. If it were that easy to add “permanent long-term jobs,” we would be building five miles of freeway every year.
– Don Villeneuve
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