Sound Transit operates its 1.6-mile Tacoma, Wash., light-rail line fare-free.

It’s Monday morning as a seemingly endless stream of commuters snakes its way across State Route 520, which links Seattle and its eastern suburbs, creating miles of traffic that routinely snarls the region’s highways. It’s a scene that’s easily repeated up and down the West Coast, from Portland to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Urban congestion has become a way of life not only across the West, but nationwide as well. The Texas Transportation Institute, which has tracked urban mobility trends for 20 years, projects that urban travelers now encounter congestion seven hours of the day on the nation’s highways.

The trends aren’t getting any better. From 1980 to 2000, the nation’s population grew 24 percent, while the number of vehicle miles traveled grew 80 percent. In 2000, delays added up to $68 billion in lost productivity and wasted fuel. Yet nearly nine in 10 people still travel by car, a number that hasn’t significantly changed in several years.

The unrelenting demands on the region’s highways are creating a spiraling backlog of road and bridge projects — and revealing ominous trends in funding. Washington State has a backlog of nearly $80 billion in road and bridge repairs and improvements, $40 billion in the Puget Sound region alone.

This November, Seattle voters will face the largest road and transit funding package put before them in 50 years, which, through increased license fees and taxes, will cost households an average of $218 more a year. Yet even if approved — a matter that’s far from certain — funding won’t be nearly enough to cover needed improvements to the region’s roads and bridges, not to mention future expansion of public transit.

Such dire projections are prompting serious thinking about how to not only fund transportation needs, but also coax more people off the roads and onto public transit. Could the private marketplace provide answers?

Pay as you go
Few people think twice about paying to ride buses, trains or ferries, yet cars are largely free to travel the region’s roads and highways without directly paying for that privilege. Taxes and fees have long funded road projects, but such funding strategies diffuse costs, making it difficult for most drivers to link their driving habits to maintaining area roads. Now, planners and elected officials looking to fund transportation projects and cut congestion are asking whether it’s time to turn pricing for travel on its head.