It's not like these people are being irrational. If driving is faster, then these folks will do so. Given the property prices in the Seattle area, they are probably as close as possible to work as their budget will allow. They're probably at the edge of their tolerable commute as it is.
Maybe as self interested individuals they aren't being irrational, but collectively as a civilization, it's irrational. The early proponents of the mechanized garden city were naive, and we've carried on perpetuating that naivete for 80 years now, because that's just the way we do it. What a mess. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
It's totally rational. Mass transit provides transport from points A to points B, C, and maybe D. Cars provide transportation to anywhere from anywhere. You regard this as irrational because you don't value individual liberty.
Could cars be more environmentally sound? Yes and we are on our way to making that happen.
If you conveniently ignore all the negative side effects of cars and sprawl that accomodates them, and start not from first principles but with the clusterfuck we currently inhabit, then I guess over-reliance on cars enhances individual liberty for a privileged few. With less cars you can take the bus, the train, a bike, or you can walk. You can do it whether you're rich or poor, or too old or too young to drive. With cars, you get to drive or else fuck you, and fuck your grandchildren too. Nothing about that fits into my model for individual liberty, quite the opposite.
Sprawl is allowing another person the freedom to have a yard. But sure, we can shave a few seconds off your commute by forcing everyone into tiny apartments in this massive country with massive amounts of open space.
I live in a state that appropriately funds it's freeways, so we don't have a cluster fuck. I seldom ever have to drive below 75 on the freeway.
Maybe one policy for an urban area doesn't fit for a rural area, and vice versa. Maybe... life is complicated and there's no intellectually easy solution for everything.
There is always an easy solution. The hard part is finding an easy solution that's not wrong.
For example, having people pay directly for their road and mass transit use is an excellent easy solution, the hard part is addressing air pollution externalities. So toll roads, private mass transit and carbon/pollution caps/market.
Is requiring every adult to spend thousands of dollars a year to fully engage in society and strictly limiting how property owners use their land to maximize ease of driving your definition of 'individual liberty'?
I'm anti-land use planning without compensation, so no.
If you want to inexpensively "fully engage" in society, go head and live in an apartment downtown or on a bus/train line. But don't restrict my ability to raise my kids in a home with a yard.
Does legalizing apartment buildings 'restrict' your ability to raise your kids in a home with a yard? Because it's illegal to build apartment buildings on the vast majority of land in nearly every American city— that's the exclusive reason why so much urban land consists of nothing but single-family homes in this country. Seattle is an example:
http://i1.wp.com/www.myballard.com/wp-content/uploads/seattl...
Do you think 70 years of federal subsidies and social engineering designed to put (initially white) middle class families in single-family homes is a state of nature?
There is always a big political fight in my city when new apartments are proposed. These apartments would be immensely profitable for the developer, but impose externalities on the city and it's residents. Should we have to accept more congestion and traffic jams in a city that has little, when there is thousands of acres of open land that can be built on less than 10 miles away?
Explain how I'm supposed to carry groceries for a family of five on a bus or train. Please. How's a mother with a small child supposed to carry groceries home?
