Spotlight on Transportation

At last count, Washington boasted 175,000 lane-miles of highways, or enough to stretch a ribbon of asphalt around the earth at the equator seven times. If you ignore Texas – which is not a bad idea anyway – that puts us just about in the middle of the pack for the states. All that pavement, which doesn't even include the "marine highways" travelled by Washington State Ferries, gives us great freedom of movement and freight mobility. Wherever you want to go, you can get there from here.

But it also gives us the Herculean tasks of maintenance, repair and improvement to take care of all those miles, along with new construction to keep up with a growing population. This week, House Transportation Chair Judy Clibborn and the top Republican on her committee, Rep. Mike Armstrong, appeared on TVW's "Inside Olympia" to talk about everything from transit to tolling, rural roadways to urban megaprojects, and the challenges we face as a state if we want to keep Washington moving. 

To read this blog post in Spanish, please go here.