I haven't lived in Seattle all that long, but it doesn't take a genius to realize this city has a real traffic problem. Just try to get from Belltown, Queen Anne or Magnolia to I-5. This problem has a name worthy of a low budget Hollywood thriller, or at least a pay-per-view boxing match  "The Mercer Street Mess."

Various mayors and city council members have made proposals to fix this problem, including a recent idea from Mayor Greg Nickels. He proposes a major revision of the Mercer corridor by spending $55-$70 million to make it a two-way street. The idea is to make Mercer into a broad boulevard instead of its current mess. Sadly, the mayor's own survey of the plan has shown it will not help relieve traffic congestion. But he feels we must do something especially, if it makes the area friendlier to bicycles and pedestrians. And of course for the big land owners and biotech firms that the mayor keeps making up, I mean, that really are moving into South Lake Union.

We don't need these fancy expensive solutions. The answer to our traffic woes has been with us all along. We just needed to know where to look. Where you ask? Hollywood of course!

One film that captures the essence of the current mess is The Matrix Reloaded (2003). In that awful film, there is a fantastic car chase on a busy freeway. This is what it's like for anyone trying to weave through Mercer Street traffic trying to get onto I-5. It's similar to the vain attempt to figure out what the hell is going on in The Matrix Reloaded.

The biggest problem with the Mercer Corridor is that it curves all over the place, what we need to do is to make it a straight shot from I-5 to the Seattle Center and onto Elliot. We need to follow the pattern set down by Damnation Alley (1977). After all, this is an apt description of the mess we're in already. To fix the problem, we could just have George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent get in a tank and smash through everything in their way like they did in their "classic film." This is an excellent and inexpensive, if bloody, way make a transit corridor. Plus the murderous, radioactive, mutant bugs from that film would fit in nicely, helping to entice all the biotech firms to the South Lake Union area.

Finally in response to the mayor's plan that spending all this money on something that won't help the traffic, I'd like to propose the Blade Runner (1982) solution as an alternative. That is, of course, flying cars! This proposal already has the endorsement of George Jetson, and is just as sensible as the mayor's solution. Plus it has the unique benefit of actually helping traffic! Okay, this proposal is just a joke, but the mayor's idea is real. After all, would Seattle pour millions and millions of dollars into a project that does no discernible good and doesn't help solve our traffic woes? Yeah, like that could happen.