This past spring Washington Department of Transportation announced that it was going to begin
installing metered on ramp devices on I-90 in the greater Spokane area to improve safety by slowing the flow of traffic. WSDOT stated that it no longer has a policy of adding capacity by adding lanes to freeways and will instead only meter the flow to improve safety but not capacity. Several Washington cities (including Spokane) have begun reducing lanes on major
streets in what is called "traffic diets". Federal transit dollars pay for these programs (tied to federal funding for city bus systems) with the stated purpose of slowing traffic flow to encourage people to either walk, bike or ride city bus or light rail lines. Four or more lane streets are reduced to two lane streets with center turn lanes with islands in the center turn lanes at bus stops to prevent cars from passing stopped city buses. Justification for the traffic diets is safety, but accidents increase where lanes reduce (as people rush to get ahead of the line or beat the bus) and also increase where the streets return to 4-lanes as people hurry to pass any slow pokes or simply make up the lost time.