As Fizz reported yesterday, freight and manufacturing interests in SODO and Georgetown oppose the city's plans to add bike lanes and pedestrian facilities to Airport Way S. and East Marginal Way, arguing that removing any capacity for trucks would devastate freight mobility in the city. At a Port of Seattle-sponsored forum this past Monday, longshore union representative Harold Ugles said, “What we’re trying to do is prevent gridlock, because gridlock drives away the jobs, it pisses off the public, and it’s a problem for everybody.”

However, two studies by the Seattle Department of Transportation indicate that neither Airport Way nor East Marginal Way are actually major conduits for freight---confirming what neighborhood leaders, who generally support the road diets, have been saying all along.

On East Marginal Way, the city has proposed reducing the number of lanes from six to four, plus a turning lane. On Airport, it would add bus bulbs and reconfigure parking to improve pedestrian safety.

Here's what the city studies found:

On Airport Way, "Traffic volume... has dropped approximately 36% since 1961," when I-5 opened, yet "the configuration of the surface streets has not changed." Moreover, freight traffic makes up just 10 percent of all traffic on the road, contradicting freight interests' claims that the road is a major corridor for freight.

On East Marginal Way, "Traffic volume ... has dropped approximately 44 percent" since 1961, and freight traffic makes up just 11 percent of all traffic on the street.

Those facts---that traffic is shrinking and that freight hardly uses either road in the first place--- strongly contradict freight interests' claims that the road is a major corridor for freight and that reducing their capacity for cars and trucks will result in "job loss" and "gridlock."