Local vs regional road connections

[Torie]

You need to try to fashion precise definitions for your categories. It all seems too subjective to me. I always try to formulate such precision in categories in my mind as I think this through, and what seems right, and what will be the impact on maps. I am less concerned with COI issues per se, except as a by product for rules that can be applied objectively, without having to otherwise make such judgments.

I am aware of a Dunn County, Wisconsin, and a town of Dunn in NC. That's it.

[Torie]

Dunn, NC has its own micropolitan statistical area, because it is the largest town in Harnett, County, and about three times larger than the county seat of Lillington. Lillington is the fourth largest town in the county. This is a reason not to concentrate on the county seat.

I actually use the seat of government as the node of a political unit. Since the counties represent political jurisdictions, the seat of government gives a more precise point than a municipality within the county. This definition then naturally scales to the seats of government for subunits of a county. Only when a chop amalgamates multiple subunits do I look to the most populous of those units to define the node, and then I look to the municipal building for that largest subunit.

Its important to note that the seat of government is not always in the county seat. A number of counties have built county offices out side the municipal county seat when larger space is needed, and that can matter in determining the shortest path. In St John the Baptist Parish LA, Edgard is the county seat and the main courthouse is there, but the county government meets in LaPlace so that is the node. Those towns are on opposite sides of the Mississippi and there is no connection within the county, so the distinction matters in determining connections.

What if the courthouse is built in the middle of nowhere? I would note that for several years, the County courthouse of Columbia County was in the middle of nowhere, as the one in Hudson was refurbished (it just reopened about a year ago, which is where I met at the reopening ceremony, the county DA, and one thing led to another, and I ended up interning for him to do my pro bono hours in order to get my NY state law license). I think it wiser to stick with the county seat myself. It's also easier to look up. And that is typically where the population is, which is really what matters. If a county has no county seat so labeled, then OK, go with the courthouse as the node since there is nothing else (unless one decided to go for the most populated city, or if a county has no cities, then the locality with the highest population). Oh, where in the county seat without a courthouse is the exact node? Well, how about the city hall? If the county has no cities, at least in NY, each town(ship) has a "town hall."


I go with Muon2 on whether to use the county seat or largest city. Some suburban counties have a county seat in the middle of the county, but the largest city is on its edge where the growth from the core UCC county has impinged. Not good. Take a look at Dallas County, Iowa. Adel is the county seat. Waukee is the largest city (the fastest growing city in Iowa actually). In addition, from census to census, as populations change, the county node might bounce around, forcing changes in the map that otherwise might not have to be made. Stability is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Oh by the way, the courthouse is not the seat of county government. The building where the board of supervisors meet, is the seat of county government. In Hudson, that building is on State Street, while the courthouse is on the other side of Warren Street on Union Street about six blocks away. So think about that one. Is the Supreme Court building the seat of the US government? Talk about an imperial judiciary!

[Torie]

Road connections should be all weather roads in my opinion (they're snow plowed). So using the road over Tioga Pass in Yosemite is a no go in my opinion.

You were clear about the seat of government. I had a reading comprehension problem. I still think the county seat however should be used for the reasons I stated.

[Torie]

Road connections should be all weather roads in my opinion (they're snow plowed). So using the road over Tioga Pass in Yosemite is a no go in my opinion.

You were clear about the seat of government. I had a reading comprehension problem. I still think the county seat however should be used for the reasons I stated.

That's the problem with Pitkin. There are no all-year paved roads connecting Aspen to another county seat without passing through an intervening county. It works for jimrtex since he requires only contiguity and a direct connection that can pass through an unconnected county.

I would be inclined to treat Pitkin as a special case, due to the lack of any other alternative. There is an unpaved connection to Garfield that includes low priority plowing, but at least it is something more than just closed in winter.

I see. That's a judgement call. While we disagree on some of this, I do agree that two counties in the same CD should have a direct connection. We just disagree on the details of that. I would tend to ignore dirt roads. It might be better to just make an exception where otherwise the county cannot be appended to anything. That is sort of an obvious exception actually, whether there is a dirt road connection or not.

[Torie]

It needs to be a direct road to the otherwise ineligible county that bypasses a major population center or county seat in the intervening county. It is not a function of distance. Defining a major population center than becomes tricky. Perhaps it could be defined as any nick that cuts through a series of precincts in the intervening county that is in excess of some number, say 10,000.

[Torie]

Precincts are tricky since they can change at the whim of the county. You could use the definition for an urban area from the Census:

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Maps of all urban areas are maintained by the Census Bureau so it is straightforward to check if a direct road passes through one.

Perfect - I think. I thought about the precinct size and change thing myself, but failed to think of anything better. What is the density requirement? Would it pick up some territory that a reasonable person would consider to be rural? I would not want that metric to constitute a blockade that is too widespread. I ask, because the size requirement is so low, that in many cases just one precinct being involved would exceed it. Isn't there that other definition of an urban cluster or something that has something like a 10,000 threshold (which Hudson just meets, and has that long narrow erose affair on the map)?

[Torie]

You be the judge. Here is a link to all the maps of all the urban areas in the US. The natural thing to do is check the maps of NC munis in the vicinity of all the yellow and gold lines on my map. They are locally connected counties, so one just has to see if a route through other counties avoids any of those areas.

There does not seem to be any way to pull up a list organized by state, much less a way to pull up a state map of such areas.

Ah, here is a set of NC maps. My very tentative view, just eye balling how much real estate is sucked up by these urban areas, is that your proposed metric is OK, with one caveat. The Charlotte area lines do not cut off the state highway link between Staley and Carbarrus, but it came close. So maybe an exception to the general rule, is that it is OK to cut through an urban area, if no more than one or two or three precincts are involved, at least within UCC's, where this policy issue would typically arise, and potentially frustrate the public policy purpose of the metric. The whole area is an urban area, but the cut is otherwise minimal and incidental to the main purpose of the highway, which is to directly connect either county seats or urban area populations between the two counties without either 1) a state highway connection, or 2) a local paved highway connection that is a direct link between urban areas in the two counties. By direct, I mean that the road design is to create such a connection with as direct a route as reasonably possible, as opposed to just wandering around servicing local rural homes.

I am less concerned about this 1-3 precinct exception for non UCC counties, because the cases where an urban area would effect a blockade for a nick cut that is for a state highway built to service connections between the urban areas of the other two counties are presumably going to be fairly rare.

I assume that the cut link needs to be a state highway, not a mere direct paved local highway. That is probably OK, but that needs to be clarified.

And then, at the other extreme from the UCC urban area exception issue,  we have the Clay County "nick cut" link.  State highway 64 as it traverses through Clay County from Cherokee to Macon just misses the county seat of Clay, Hayesville, and there are no other urban areas in Clay County. Yet the "nick" traverses the length of the whole county. That is a no go. That is not a nick. I am not sure what rule to fashion to deal with that. That the length of the nick highway cannot be more than a third of the length of the county measured from the two points thereof that give the longest length? Or something like that? And by measuring the length of the highway for this ratio, the rule would tend to penalize twisty state highway nick cuts that twist and turn over rugged terrain, which is a good thing I would think. An absolute highway distance parameter not based on a ratio might not work too well, given counties vary a lot in size.

[Torie]

So, Torie it sounds like you would favor a combination of the blue, green and gold links on my map below. That would exclude the local connections (yellow) where there is no nearby highway to establish a link. You thought that jimrtex's definition of a direct route was unworkable. Do you have a definition of how much corner one can cut and still count?

Torie never commented on my more technical alternative. I assume he is still exploring it.

This is your "more technical" set of parameters? Oh my. I have a headache. Off the top however, suppose the length of the border between two counties is de minimus, but has a direct local paved highway link, or a qualifying adjacent state highway nick cut? I am not sure that I like that one. Perhaps the best place to start, is what policy issues do you think are not adequately addressed by the system Muon2 and myself are now trying to fashion as described so far above, as a possible set of parameters to make this all reasonably work?

[Torie]

Madison County, Iowa? Never heard of it. Why did you pick that county?

Madison County does not present any interesting issues. All the adjacent counties are linked by state highways, except Clarke County, which does not have a qualifying local paved road link between the two county seats. It is not direct. So Clarke cannot be in the same CD merely connected by the Madison-Clarke border. And no, I-35 does not qualify as a nick cut highway, because it does not directly link an urban area or county seat in County A with an urban area or county seat in County B. Rather one needs to go east from Winterset to I-35 in Warren County, and then you make a 90 degree right turn and go south on I-35 until you hit Clarke. That connection is not a direct route between the county seats of Counties A and B. I-35 is not designed to link Winterest to Osceola as part of its route. I guess the I-35 thing makes Madison less than a totally boring example after all.

I understand what you wrote quite well (for once! ), and I still don't find much favor with that constraint. If there is a direct local paved road local link (very unlikely to be one in Iowa for a very narrow border), that is good enough for me. Ditto with a qualifying state highway nick with also a pavement connection (also very unlikely in Iowa, at least for a qualifying nick cut state highway).

Below are four adjacent counties. The only urban areas are the county seats, which are represented by the little squares. The thick black line below is a state highway. The thin lines are paved local highways. There is no direct paved road link between counties A and B, but there are paved highway connections. The state highway is a qualifying county nick cut connection. No matter how short the distance of the adjacency line between counties A and B, I consider counties A and B to be connected assuming a local paved road squeezes through whatever real estate is adjacent between the two counties, no matter how small that adjacent real estate might be. It just need to be wide enough to accommodate a two lane paved road, and such a road actually exists.



And here is a tougher example. Is this a qualifying state highway nick? (Assume that the length of the highway nick is equal to or less than a third of the longest length of the nicked county.) I tend to think not. The state highway still does not directly link the two county seats or two other urban areas. It is not designed to so link the two county seats. It is not direct. But I suppose reasonable minds could differ on that one. But I think the direct connection rubric is a reasonably straight forward metric to apply, and departing from it gets too complicated.



And here is a third example. What about this one?

[Torie]

The one third test is about the length of the road that is in the foreign county relative to the length of the foreign county. Adair and Madison have a state highway link. Even if it were not a state highway, while the road has a couple of jogs, it is direct enough really. The road is designed to link the two county seats, and just had to avoid bisecting a couple of farms, where the land owners back when had pull, or something. No problem. (Actually it is because diagonal roads are unpopular in Iowa because everything is cut up into square sections, so if a road has to move a bit north or south to get to the next county seat, it needs to have these jogs to avoiding slicing the sections.) Polk and Madison have but a point connection, so that obviously does not qualify even if one did not have a pavement link requirement. Muon2 and I want to be able to drive on a paved road between the two counties, without having to go through a third county. Muon2 paraphrased that dude who said that metric was important to him. That I guess is quite popular out there on the Fruited Plain.

The population increase in Madison is almost entirely in Winterset is my impression. Next to no housing tracts have been built in the NE corner of Madison yet. But Winterset has some new subdivisions. Not to the south however, because that is where the Torie farm is, and Torie isn't selling yet.

[Torie]

In the example immediately above the local roads provide an internal path should only those counties be in a district together. I think that Torie agrees that when a district is complete one should be able to drive to any point in the district without leaving the district. The only exception is when an area is is isolated but part of a whole geographic unit. This would apply to cases like the parts of St John the Baptist parish on either side of the Mississippi. They are not locally connected, but can be together in a district if the whole county is in the district.

Correct. That is my opinion.

[Torie]

The one third test is about the length of the road that is in the foreign county relative to the length of the foreign county. Adair and Madison have a state highway link. Even if it were not a state highway, while the road has a couple of jogs, it is direct enough really. The road is designed to link the two county seats, and just had to avoid bisecting a couple of farms, where the land owners back when had pull, or something. No problem. (Actually it is because diagonal roads are unpopular in Iowa because everything is cut up into square sections, so if a road has to move a bit north or south to get to the next county seat, it needs to have these jogs to avoiding slicing the sections.) Polk and Madison have but a point connection, so that obviously does not qualify even if one did not have a pavement link requirement. Muon2 and I want to be able to drive on a paved road between the two counties, without having to go through a third county. Muon2 paraphrased that dude who said that metric was important to him. That I guess is quite popular out there on the Fruited Plain.

Actually, I meant to ask about Guthrie and Madison, rather than Adair and Madison.

The dude likely had not fully thought through the issue, or was not thinking about using whole counties.

The population increase in Madison is almost entirely in Winterset is my impression. Next to no housing tracts have been built in the NE corner of Madison yet. But Winterset has some new subdivisions. Not to the south however, because that is where the Torie farm is, and Torie isn't selling yet.

Between 2000 and 2010, the 7 townships on the north and east county lines (near I-80 and I-35) increased by 893. Winterset and the 4 surrounding townships 727, and the remaining 5 townships on the south and west sides lost 70.

If you want to live in the country, you can have a job in Des Moines and commute to a small tract of land that would be too small to support full time farming.

That's interesting. I wonder if it was more on the north, or on the east. Guthrie is like Polk, but a point connection, so you know the answer.

[Torie]

Graham (Robbinsville) to Macon (Franklin)
The direct road is NC 143 and NC 128 which is 45 mi and spends 14 mi in Swain. The route does not pass through any urban areas and doesn't approach the Swain county seat (Bryson City), though it does follow part of the preferred route one would take to get there from Graham. Graham and Macon are contiguous and a US highway crosses the border. One can use the the aforementioned local Wayah Rd (it's one of the NC secondary roads), so it's locally connected. This failed both the jimrtex and muon2 criteria.

Why does the above fail the Jimtex test? On mine, it is right on the cusp as to whether 14 miles is more than a third of the maximum length of the impinged county. If it does not exceed that, it still fails because the nik is not "direct" enough. The road is designed to go to Bryson City, not Franklin, and one needs to make a left turn off it to take the road to Franklin. The only thing going for it, is that it is the best way to get from Swain to Franklin, because the counties are so cut off from one another, that this circuitous route is the only way to do it. Which sort of emphasizes why Swain and Macon should not be deemed connected.

[Torie]

Graham (Robbinsville) to Macon (Franklin)
The direct road is NC 143 and NC 128 which is 45 mi and spends 14 mi in Swain. The route does not pass through any urban areas and doesn't approach the Swain county seat (Bryson City), though it does follow part of the preferred route one would take to get there from Graham. Graham and Macon are contiguous and a US highway crosses the border. One can use the the aforementioned local Wayah Rd (it's one of the NC secondary roads), so it's locally connected. This failed both the jimrtex and muon2 criteria.

You are most of the way from Robbinsville to Bryson City before you turn and go south. This is the route to Swain County, even NC 128 continues south.

That's what I assumed based on your definition of direct route, though you didn't say how much of the initial portion must be in common. Presumably using a main road to get out of the originating town is not enough to be considered the initial portion. I imagined that you would apply something like 1/3 of the route, consistent with the (2)(b)(i).

Direct Route: A route is direct if:
    (1) it it is not circuitous; and
    (2)(a) it is entirely within the two terminating counties; or
        (b)(i) less than 1/3 route is within the intervening county (-ies); and
             (ii) the initial portion of the route would not form part of the quickest route to more than  
                  1/3 of the residents of the intervening county. This calculation should be done in both
                  directions.

We agree that it shouldn't count as a connection for different reasons. Does Torie want a different outcome?

Alas, using the parameters that I came up with, I guess the two counties are connected. The length of the road is less than one third of the maximum length of the intervening county, assuming the portion of highway 28 that is in Swain is 14 miles, which appears about right (I have not found the best utility yet to just put two points on the map, and get the intervening highway distance, but I got close). Highway 28 does not pass through an urban area in Swain. What it comes down to, is that Highway 28 is the same number for the entire distance through Swain County. If it had a different number when it turns south (the highway is both highway 28 and US highway 74 for a stretch before it turns south), I would say that there is no connection. The fact that the highway in play in Swain is the same number for its entire distance therein, suggests to me that it was intended as a direct route between the two counties. If you have to use state highways in the intervening county that have more than one number, then automatically there is no connection.

All of the details of these parameter tests are a bit arbitrary at the margins, but what I like about mine, is you can look at the highway numbers, where the junctions are, check the distance of the highway in the intervening county, check the maximum length of the county, and if the road in the intervening county impinges on an urban area or county seat, and you are done. It's rather automatic.
If you start getting into dual highway use issues and so forth, I think it gets too complicated. The different test parameters should only make some difference at the margins I would think (unless Muon2 still wants to totally ignore state highway nick cuts).

Swain is a hard case. The fact that it is a bit of a stretch does not bother me too much. It will not happen very often. Hard cases make bad law, as it were. And what we want is the simplest test possible, even if theoretically it might not be the very best test, for whatever public policy is in play. As the senior partner of the first law firm that I worked at said, a penny's worth of additional accuracy at the cost of a pound's worth of confusion, is just not worth it.

[Torie]

Not quite. Here is what is what I am suggesting for discussion (I reference county seats, just in case a county seat is not defined as an urban area):

Two counties that are geographically adjacent to each other by more than a corner points are regionally connected if they are locally connected by all weather two lane paved highway connections, which highway connections are either:

 A)  completely within the two counties, and are either 1) a continuous path of numbered state highways between nodes within each county, or 2) a highway completely within the two counties that is the most direct route between such nodes (and maybe has to have a number, which number is the same for the entire distance between the two nodes, just in case there is some erose multi non state highway connection affair that is still the shortest distance between nodes); or

  B)  both:

      1. A two lane paved highway completely within the two counties: and

      2. a continuous path of numbered state highways between nodes that includes a segment  outside the two counties that:  

     (a) is on the most direct route between the nodes; and
     (b) has a length outside the two counties that is no more than one third of the maximum length of  such outside counties; and
     (c) passes through no Census-defined urban areas or county seats; and
     (d) carries the same state or federal number for its entire length when outside the two counties.

Is a "node" defined as an urban area or county seat? It is not limited to just the county seat is it?

Another issue is whether "direct" means the shortest length, or the fastest driving time. I prefer a length test, because it is easier to ascertain, and is not dependent on such variables as weather, or darkness or traffic conditions, etc.

[Torie]

Are you telling me that Dave's utility has an inaccurate map here, or things have changed? Try going to mapquest, and type a request for directions from Robbinsville to Franklin, and tell me what you see. What I see is a route all along highway 28. Unfortunately, photobucket won't upload the screen shot of that at the moment.

I really don't give a hoot whether my metrics make the two counties adequately adjacent or not of course. It is a very marginal case, that just slipped under the wire because of the elongated shape of Swain, and the fact that it is rural, and the highway happens to have the same number while traversing through Swain, and in this case, for its entire route between nodes (although that second bit is not required by my metrics).


That "secondary road" list has some potential, but for my allowing counties to be connected with non state highways, such secondary roads may still be too erose a path, with one having to make right angle turns from one road to another to get from one node to another (it's just really not designed as attempting to effect the practicable path between nodes - it's designed to service local rural areas). Thus my thought that we need to have a same numbered highway, which suggests some intent to try to create such a reasonably most practicable path.

[Torie]

Benton actually does not link to White (I examined that one closely, and the road link just misses the county line (unless Dave's utility is inaccurate - we need some agree upon utility, but Dave's is obviously easiest), but yeah, I missed the Tippecanoe link. So 66 cuts.

Below is a Google Earth screenshot. Using the word "State" in the name of a county highway does not count does it?  



I would note that if Brookston and Fowler both qualified as urban area nodes, under my proposed metrics, White and Benton would be adequately connected if State Road actually touched the city limits of Fowler, since the same numbered county highway goes directly between nodes, but alas, it doesn't quite touch the Fowler city limit line (it's about 20 feet away from the city limit corner boundary or something where its junction is), so it does not. Kind of silly really, but if you want clear rules that someone other than Jimrtex can understand and comfortably apply, there will be instances where one would wish an exception were made. This is one of those hard cases. I find doing these real examples quite helpful to my thinking on all of this.



This assumes that the Dave utility boundary line of Fowler (presumably the city or village limits line) is the same as the urban area boundary on the census map, which might well not be the case. If the urban area boundary takes in the structures there at the junction, then it would be qualifying county road link.



And it turns out that Benton has no urban areas at all, which is why the metrics need to mention both urban areas and county seats. White's only urban area is the county seat, Monticello, so it turns out that State Road does not link two nodes in all events. Fowler presumably is the county seat, but since it is not an urban area, its boundary would just be the village limit lines, which the highway junction just misses. So there is no connection even if Brookston were an urban area.

Oh, yes, your map looks much better.

[Torie]

Yes, you're right. Well it was an interesting exercise anyway, assuming State Road were not a state highway. For rapid road cut counts, I was relying on whether or not the roads were in yellow. I guess one cannot do that, which means that where there appear to be no yellow road connections, but road connections, a further inspection needs to be made. Boo!

[Torie]

"56th street is the main through road across the water into Pike but isn't a state highway."

You only count state highway cuts for macro-chopped county quasi counties?

[Torie]

Got it. Thanks.

[Torie]

[Torie]

Washington is at once boring and interesting.  It’s boring because the map below (and while the possibility exists that the ever talented Muon2 might manage to draw a higher scoring map, in this case I don’t think so) causes absolutely no partisan change whatsoever from the existing map. It’s 4D, 2d, 1e, 1r, 2R, just like the existing map.  It has a Dem SKEW of 1.  And because of the interesting part, I am putting this post on the Muon2 policy oriented thread, rather than my partisan impact thread.



The map almost ended up with a higher Dem skew. My penultimate effort, had a chop into Gray’s Harbor County, rather than Thurston County because I have a bias against chopping into urban counties. But it could not be drawn without an extra state highway cut, as the highway in Gray’s Harbor went into and out of the adjacent CD.  So the final map which chopped into Thurston was the superior map avoiding one state highway cut, and the cut there pushed WA-03 over the line from tossup into the lean Pub category. My penultimate map is below.



I tried doing a Muon2 special, to wit, incurring a pack penalty to avoid an extra macrochop (into Pierce County), but alas that map was a fail, with two extra chops incurred as the cost of making the trade.  Perhaps the map would still be on the pareto optimal frontier due to avoiding a bunch of road cuts in Pierce County.  Here is the Muon2 special map:



Also notice that chop in Okanogan County in the map above. The road connection across the Cascades  is through the chopped county of Okanogan (in fact that is why it is chopped – the population numbers don’t otherwise require it, because while the chopped portion may have a lot of bears, it has very few people).  Is that allowed? It needs to be.

Another map that was a fail is below, but I put it up below to show a bridge chop in Yakima County. Again, I don’t see a problem with it, and if the population numbers had been just a tad different, the map might have ended up being best. In fact, Washington is so filled with blockades - mountain blockades, water blockades (San Juan must be appended to Skagit and so forth), county shape blockades (e.g. Callum County is nested in Jefferson County), population blockades (Yakima County plus Clark County have too much population to both be put in one CD), UCC blockades (it’s inconvenient that Douglas and Chelan are in one UCC, and ditto for Franklin and Benton), that absent bridge chops, the map might have ended up something of a disaster. But the population numbers worked – barely – to avoid such unpleasantness – this time.

 

Some folks are not going to like that a winning map causes a CD like the blue one (Reickert’s new district) to be drawn, from the Pacific Ocean, then a ferry crossing, then a bridge crossing, than a Cascades Mountain crossing, and then almost all the way to the Idaho border. What kind of community of interest is that? It sucks!

And the intra county road cut rules with respect to macrochops favor chops going into lightly populated areas, where fewer localities append each other. Thus the erose shape of my WA-09, as it deliberately makes a right angle turn to chop into Snohomish County.  It looks like a gerrymander to me. Blame Muon2 not me for that. I just play the game - I didn’t design it (well my fingerprints appear here and there, but whatever).  And again, the community of interest folks might howl. It tends to cause urban folks in one county to be combined with more rural folks in the adjacent chopped county. That will be something that is rather systematic, given the rules.

So, given the fact that there is absolutely no partisan change, the map must be similar to the map in place in Washington, right? Well, not exactly.  The map that was adopted was a Pub map, because a Dem commissioner voted for it – sort of a Mathismander in reverse. It was drawn to save Reichert’s butt, as his CD stays away from all those Democrats near the water in what is numbered as WA-08. WA-01 on the map looks similar, and did push that CD into a more marginal partisan status. Maybe the Dem commissioner was into SKEW minimalization or something.   And county chops seem to be preferred, rather than eschewed. That is what happens when folks start playing with communities of interest concepts I guess, or something.  And in this case, it ended up being a paradigmatic example of a lot of sound and fury signifying next to absolutely no change in partisan effect at all.

[Torie]

So the only crossings are along the Columbia River and from King County? Oh my. I guess we are back to chopping Yakima or Clark Counties, or incurring both a cover and a pack penalty for the Seattle urban cluster. I remember such chat way back when about crossing the Cascades from the north in mapping. That was before all these little road connection rules I guess. My bridge chop comment now has even more salience.

Oh, there is US highway 12, a highway I did not notice before. That's probably the ticket.

[Torie]

Oh, also Skykomish in King County is completely disconnected as far as I can tell from the rest of King County. It may be best to put that into the adjacent Snohomish County district.

If it is within a county, there does not need to be a connection. Otherwise, it would force county chops. I take your point however, where there already is a chop. One can just move the chop around.

[Torie]

Yeah speaking as someone who lives in Whatcom County, crossing the Cascades in the North is a no-no.  The big issue with mapping Washington north of Seattle is that Whatcom+Skagit+San Juan+Island (which together form a reasonable community with lots of commuting between those regions and such) are nowhere near close enough to a full congressional district on their own and require chopping up Snohomish County, which is bad because that region is essentially just an extension of the Seattle suburbs.  Ferry crossings are weak too imo but should be acceptable if it means crossing the Cascades as little as possible and I think are understandable if not screwing up the Puget Sound area.

The biggest problems with the current map that would need solving in any sort of non-partisan redistricting are:

1. Getting rid of my district, the hideous 1st, which has no road connectivity and is essentially just the product of a totally unnecessary Larsenmander. 

Not to worry. The winter road closure makes the WA-01 that I drew illegal under our rules. If it were opened in the winter, the map is the map. Community of interests have been jettisoned, except as a function of erosity, county and locality chops, and keeping multi county urban clusters together.

2. That idiotic three-way split of Tacoma, which itself is a product of

To avoid that "idiotic" split, as per one of my maps, a King County CD would need to jut across the Cascades, which you just told me you don't like.

3. The so-called majority-minority district, which acts as nothing but PR for the WA Dems, as none of the minority groups in the district are realistically large enough to elect a representative of their choice.  It's effectively just a Democrat pack which totally screws up the Puget Sound region on the map.

There is no VRA issue here, so that is irrelevant one way or the other. I assume you mean keeping all of Seattle in one district. To me, that is just good government.

Ideally I'd also like to see a map which limits the Cascade crossings to one district, preferably along the Columbia, though from my own mapmaking attempts I've realized that this results in chopping up Yakima.  Putting Kittitas and Chelan in a King County district is imo both ridiculous and historically unprecedented and worth the Yakima chop but I understand that the metrics you guys work with will disagree.

There is going to be a "crossing" along the Columbia River, which will make you happy, and another crossing from the inland side into King County, which will not make you happy, but has the effect of keeping 5 districts inside the Seattle urban cluster of King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties. Stay tuned. Everything inside the Seattle urban Cluster is Dem anyway, so this is one instance where you need not worry about some "offensive" Pub CD being carved out of the area. So be happy. In fact, the next map coming will really make you happy, because there will be three Pub pack CD's probably, and everything else will be smooth sailing for the Dems. The tossup CD, and the barely Pub CD are going to disappear.