Seattle has a sickness. It is an intense malady that has plagued us for decades and shows no signs of letting up. Seattleites are terrible drivers, and there are swarms of us.

This is the reason for our sickening traffic problems, our mud-slinging dialogues over transit solutions and a general sense of stress that permeates the whole city.

One of the suggested solutions is Proposition 1, the transit tax cocktail that promises alleviation to our woes.

Only, it’s not that simple. You can’t throw money at the roads and then hope traffic goes away, nor can you chuck change into some train tracks and pray for the best. Besides some nifty flattened pennies, all you’ll be left with is untreated traffic hysteria.

We need a well-planned transit system. If we had a light rail that worked correctly and connected most areas of the city, it could genuinely fix some traffic problems. Light rail is the major missing link in our transportation fiasco.

But the effort to input a massive system shouldn’t be led blindly. We have to know that it’ll legitimately kill traffic, get us through the city faster and not be an asinine eyesore like the monorail.

I thought that the monorail was cool once, and then I turned 6. I lost my monorail innocence when I saw how old and lame it looked, even 16 years ago.

Proposition 1 would input a far-reaching Sound Transit light rail system through the greater Seattle area.

Future rail lines would connect the UW with Capitol Hill and downtown, and, in the distant future, Northgate. These are great ideas, but they’re going to require an immense sacrifice on our part.

A shiny new transit system is dangled in front of Seattleites like a piece of candy from the City Council’s proverbial van window. Well, we don’t want to help Seattle find their lost puppy, because there’s a hidden price involved.

Are you ready to pay an increase to 10 cents on the dollar every time you go out to eat? Yup, they’re going to punish us for eating.

In a city that Forbes has rated as the most overpriced place to live in the United States for several years running, it’s the last thing we need. Our real estate is astronomical and our rent is repugnant.

The best solution might not lie in an idealistic future transit system. We need to continue to maximize what we have.

According to an article in Smart Growth News, the U.S. Department of Transportation will offer Seattle an incentive of $139 million for instituting tolls on congested commuter regions like the 520 floating bridge.

The program would give us funds for taking our own creative steps to traffic reduction and ride sharing. This will decrease pollution and stress while commuting.

Unfortunately, we need to take our own steps to commuting enlightenment. We live in a city where people don’t know how to merge. I’ve been stuck behind more feeble-hearted drivers that stop on the merging lane than I care to count.

The four-way stop — a simple enough idea — presents pansy Seattle drivers with a moral quandary of preposterous overpoliteness. Some insolent fools ignore their rearview mirrors entirely, swerving into near misses that they try to wave off with embarrassing nonchalance.

Robert Jamieson, a columnist for the Seattle P-I, calls the situation at our four-way stops a “veneer of decorum and wrenching indecision.”

So what do you do when confronted with these punks? I breathe into a paper bag and count backward from 10 if necessary. I try to imagine that my automotive offender has a plastic one over his or her head. Road rage is not good.

If we could learn to merge, speed up or get out of the forsaken fast lane, avoid our crippling fear of rain, and not slow down like bumbling morons every time the road narrows slightly or a bridge approaches, we could remedy vast amounts of inane traffic and put off the need for expensive trains.

I don’t think that the solution is out of reach for us. It’s probably an unavoidable fact that we’ll eventually need a light rail.

But let’s tax the highways first to gather resources, instead of taxing the food we’re eating. Highway tax keeps the roads in Europe nice; why can’t we have it here? We need less cost of living expenses and more help from Bellevue’s myriad of Benz owners.

So drive smarter and investigate whether

Proposition 1 is really a feasible idea for our pocketbooks and transit future. Let’s pressure our city to earn more federal incentives instead of trying to tax us to death. Traffic will never go away, but one day — heaven-willing — it’ll be less infuriating.

[Reach columnist Jackson Rohrbaugh at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]