Emerald City may not be as shiny as some think

We made the drive over the mountains to see my son in Seattle last weekend. It was a wonderful trip. We left late in the morning, after the rush, and headed west. The weather was perfect with a wide blue sky over head. But once we hit the city, things changed. Traffic was snarled everywhere we went. People jammed the roads getting from one place to another. Tempers flared. Horns honked. Parking was non-existent. This wasn’t a holiday weekend. It was just a typical summer Saturday in Seattle. I know Seattle touts its “green” mindset and lifestyle, but I noticed how many of the cars were big, expensive, gas-guzzlers. Not the compact thrifty models you would expect of a city that prides itself on being so environmentally conscious. Later, standing on the shore of Puget Sound, looking toward Mt. Ranier in the distance, the summit tinted pink by the sunset, I noticed a thin brown line just over the horizon in every direction. A band of dirty air surrounded the city. It could have been dust, traces of summer forest fires. But I wondered, too, if it wasn’t evidence of daily gridlocked traffic. Being green isn’t easy when you’re big and sprawling. The next day, heading home, just as we crested Snoqualmie Pass, we hit the line of weekend traffic returning to Seattle. For miles and miles cars, trucks, some hauling campers, boats, Sea-Doos and even horse-trailers, crawled bumper-to-bumper. For hours we drove past the long line of vehicles creeping back toward town. It seems a percentage of Seattle’s population had been out looking for what we take for granted here in Spokane: space, quiet, ease of getting around. For as long as I’ve lived in Spokane, a mid-sized city that manages to thrive and grow even as it sits in Seattle’s larger, trendier, shadow, thank you, I’ve heard some complain that Spokane has nothing to offer. That anything worth doing is on the other side of the mountains. That line of Sunday-night traffic is a good rebuttal. Even with this summer’s widespread road construction, we can still get around with relative ease. It’s rare to spend any significant amount of time idling or creeping along freeways clogged with commuters. If I catch all the lights I can leave my front door and arrive at my office in four minutes. On a bad day, it might take me six or seven. I can catch a bus at the corner and still make it to work in under a quarter of an hour. The airport is a 10-minute drive away. There are still too many gas-guzzlers on the roads here, but at least they’re not stuck in traffic for hours each day. Judging by the line of people who were inching toward home, one slow, exhaust-filled mile at a time, I wonder if the Emerald City is a bit oversold. Spokane, as so many like to point out, isn’t Seattle. I say it’s time to celebrate that.