A Bird's-Eye View: Commuter Stress Makes Freeways A Mess

Last Friday was one of those lovely, clear, warm, forgiving fall days, so it seemed like a good day to go up and watch the carnage.

I joined up with Ted Potter of the KOMO air patrol. Friday, of course, is a traditional time of cursing, fender bending and car-commuting frustration, a time even of mortal danger on our freeways.

Ted Potter flies over all this. In between news snips, commercials and other air-talk, Ted brings traffic reports from I-5, both cross-lake bridges, I-90 and any other jam-ups he encounters.

When I first met up with Ted, I said, "I've not been up with you for two years. I listen to you all the time; it seems like traffic is hellish."

"You'll see a big change," he said. "The traffic's getting worse all the time. After a while, you'll see the Eastside. All shingle roofs, new houses - big houses - and cul-de-sacs."

Ted flies a 1981 Cessna 172, a high-winger with a good view of the ground. It's a 1981 model but it's powered by a 1991 engine. He puts in a new engine every year.

Last year he flew an engine 1,507 hours on traffic watch. The air-frame has about 13,000 hours on it, "and I guess I'm responsible for 12,000 of them."

This is long, tedious work - up early to fly for 3 1/2 hours, then another 3 1/2 hours during the afternoon commutes. He is always on call for emergency traffic situations.

Ted is a big man (the son of famed aviatrix Illovene Potter) and he loves to fly. He'd have to. He has been traffic-watching for KOMO for 12 years.

Between morning and evening traffic watches, Ted is director of flight services for Galvin Flight Service, meaning he is responsible for everything Galvin sends up in the air.

For fun, Ted flies his own Great Lakes biplane with an open cockpit. He gets in a little jet time at Galvin.

If he has learned anything in his years of traffic-watch flying, Ted has concluded that the human being, the ordinary, perhaps even God-fearing, kind-to-children-and-animals commuter, becomes a different person during long-distance travel in high traffic.

"They are normally nice people," he says, "but get them behind the wheel of a car and they become aggressive, hostile and accidents about to happen.

"I've seen them get into fistfights after accidents. I've seen them veer off the freeway onto adjoining on-ramps. They run all sorts of terrible risks to save a few minutes."

Ted is in constant touch with the State Patrol to report accidents, jam-ups and unusual traffic patterns.

He said that early this summer the State Patrol did an "emphasis patrol" on Highway 405 out of Bellevue toward Bothell. This was between the hours of 7-9 a.m.

"They used patrol cars, radar and an airplane. They arrested several people going 70 and 80 miles per hour, one going 90. They got three DWIs - this was in the morning!"

Because hundreds of thousands of commuters have followed his traffic alerts over so many years, Ted has become something of a celebrity.

At one time, because of microphone-muffling, radio technicians were able to create a "studio atmosphere" in Ted's broadcasts.

"We had to stop that and let in a little airplane noise," Ted laughed. "A lot of commuters thought I wasn't up there, that I was broadcasting from the ground."

The behavior of motorists on gridlocked I-5 and 405, and their on- and off-ramps, can be laid to stress, Ted thinks. They either don't or can't allow themselves adequate time to get where they want to go.

Ted is familiar with stress. Flying in the dark, early mornings and evenings, in bad winter weather, plus broadcasting, peering below for trouble spots, is stressful enough.

"But even more stressful is driving a car down there," he says. "I get stress up here, but not like in a car."

Potter and his wife, Barbara, used to commute from Federal Way but the traffic got too thick. They planned together, drawing a circle on a map, calculating distance and stop signs, and now live in West Seattle.

Ted lives seven miles from Galvin. Barbara, who works for Laird-Norton Trust, drives 7.2 miles to her office in the Norton Building. They each have the same number of stoplights. The trips average 15 minutes apiece.

"There are people who call me," Ted says, "people who commute to work in Seattle from Bellingham, Olympia and Shelton. I don't see how they do it. Some people tell me they commute 180 miles a day."

Below us, by now, the downtown freeway was clogged. Traffic moved fairly well on the Evergreen Point Bridge, but the slightest fender bender would back up traffic for miles.

At one point, a man abandoned his stalled car in the middle of the downtown freeway. There were several minor accidents.

North of Northgate, nearing the Redmond-Bothell turnoff on I-5, Ted put his traffic-watch plane into a tight bank, looked down and said, rather sadly, "Well, there's one less motorcyclist."

Below were three patrol cars and an aid car. The cyclist, victim of some kind of collision, was off to the hospital.

You know, there isn't really a solution to all this. A few Band-Aid measures, to be sure: Staggered work hours, better and more on- and off-ramps, although any serious solution must involve the railroad tracks that already exist from Bellingham to Puyallup.

The problem with freeways, as always, is that they become obsolete at precisely the time you finish them. More freeways? More bridges? Whole neighborhoods would be wrecked, the general physical beauty of Seattle and surrounding areas would once again be badly scarred.

"I suppose one answer is to work at home, perhaps near neighborhood work centers," Ted said. "So much is being done with computers now, it doesn't much matter where you work.

"In a few years, with more growth, we are simply not going to get there from here."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.