Inside the editorial page

What's on the minds of TNT editorial writers

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Posted by David Seago @ 02:44:44 pm

Matt Rosenberg, who writes a knowledgable transportation blog for the Cascadia Center, offers a cleverly succinct analogy for congestion pricing:

Suppose electricity was free, even at hours of peak usage. Think your power supply would be reliable, then? Exactly. Now apply the same common-sense approach to highway capacity.

The Cascadia Center, a unit of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, promotes alternative solutions to transportation and development problems. The Center is a big fan of congestion pricing, which will get its first real-world test in Washington beginning Saturday.

That's when the state DOT opens its first HOT lane on nine miles of SR 167 from Auburn to Renton. Tolls will range from 50 cents to $9, depending on the time of day. If the four-year experiment goes well, the state may expand it to to other highways in the region, including interstates 90 and 405.

Rosenberg offers other updates on tolling issues in today's post. Did you know there's a scholarly journal calling Tolling? I think there's one on Rosenberg's bedside table.

Categories: Taking notice

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Inside the editorial page

Inside the editorial page

This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher Cheryl Dell and Executive Editor David Zeeck.

Contributing bloggers

Editorial page editor David Seago joined The News Tribune in 1967. He oversees the daily editorial and letters pages and the Sunday Insight section. E-mail him at david.seago@thenewstribune.com.

Chief editorial writer Patrick O’Callahan came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. He writes the editorial board’s annual civic agenda published at the beginning of each year. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com

Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. She is responsible for day-to-day production of the editorial and op-ed pages and editing letters to the editor. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.

Editorial writer Kim Bradford joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. She manages this blog. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.