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If ever a story went rapidly from community obsession to obscurity, it's the Alaskan Way Viaduct problem in Seattle. Right after an advisory election last month about how to replace the elevated waterfront highway, when just about everybody looked bad and lost, the major actors took a vow of silence, smiled gamely at each other, and snapped off the floodlights. Behind the scenes, however, a lot is taking place, and outlines of the ultimate plan are coming into view.
The election, declared meaningless by many, including Washington state House Speaker Frank Chopp, actually was very meaningful in political terms. The tunnel option, which once had enjoyed the broadest Seattle coalition, effectively vanished after a miserable showing in the vote. The election was so sudden that the tunnel advocates decided to keep mum about the tunnel and just focus on attacking the viaduct, and as a result there was no real public case made for the tunnel. King County Executive Ron Sims and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels went from having rival positions to forming a partnership, thus tilting the balance back to the city and away from the state. Whether Gov. Chris Gregoire, the state Department of Transportation, and Speaker Chopp start moving toward a grand compromise is the big question.
To hear folks in the mayor's office, the whole viaduct saga – from a 2001 earthquake wake-up call to multibillion-dollar estimates to replace the 54-year-old double-deck roadway – has become a cautionary tale. Seattle's position was fatally split between the tunnel advocates (Allied Arts, downtown Seattle interests, construction unions, and some environmentalists) and the "surface + transit" advocates (the anti-auto forces, numerous architects, and other environmentalists) and the majority of voters who worried about losing a quick way through downtown Seattle in the name of building a waterfront park for condo dwellers. With the city badly split, the state, which is ultimately responsible for such a highway, got more and more frustrated and eventually united behind an elevated rebuild that city leaders hated. So the first lesson for the city, acccording to Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, was to back away from specific solutions like a tunnel and try to find common ground for solving transportation needs without a tunnel or a new viaduct. "We are spending a lot of time learning from our mistakes in this," says Ceis genuinely, and he's not known for his humility.
The bruised politicians who faced the press the day after the election had worked out a common, face-saving position, with Sims serving as the main mediator. They would start on the north and south ends of the Viaduct, which means they could claim progress and start employing all those workers. The one-mile "riddle in the middle," the double-deck portion along the waterfront, would be referred to a new committee of stakeholders, to be assembled after this legislative session. Chopp declined to show up for the press conference and remains enigmatic, but the others retreated from their prior positions and said all options were on the table for a grand peace conference.
Well, not quite all options. Mayor Nickels said, a bit off script, that the voters had said "no to a waterfront freeway." How the voters had said that – they said no to a new viaduct or a tunnel – was not clear, though Ceis says polling indicates Seattle voters want to have access to a new waterfront park and therefore presumably don't want a roaring freeway alongside it. Nickels is open to a four-lane, slightly slower boulevard on Alaskan Way, maybe with some traffic lights, which is apparently not a freeway.
Other observers note two possible solutions that could emerge. Kate Joncas, president of the Downtown Seattle Association, says she has some concern that the state will simply wait until the 2008 election and then suddenly announce they are building a new viaduct, telling the city in effect that we'll see you in court. Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a master dealmaker, has predicted the shape of the ultimate compromise: a depressed roadway along the waterfront, probably six lanes wide, with pedestrian bridges across it to waterfront parks. Munro compares it to the Interstate 5 ditch through downtown. That's not very pretty, but it avoids the cost of a tunnel lid, puts the traffic a little out of sight through use of berms, and isn't a new viaduct. Ceis dismisses this idea out of hand, saying that if you are going to build a trench you might as well put a lid over it.
From conversations with Sims' and Nickels' staffers comes the outline of a joint county-city-Metro Transit approach that combines the boulevard with a broad attack on various choke points for downtown traffic and freight and a good dash of faster bus service. Another key is more attention to all the dire impacts on traffic during construction of a big new project, like the tunnel or a new viaduct – seven to 10 years of agony. The cloudy crystal ball would show a Highway 99 that is a slowway, not a freeway (think Granville Avenue in Vancouver), with speeds of about 45 mph, a four-lane boulevard along the waterfront and lots of ways of diverting traffic with a busway on Third Avenue, and better use of other major streets. The additional transit would favor "bus rapid transit" (BRT) that Sims has long advocated, some streetcar extensions, and semi-dedicated bus lanes, particularly along Aurora Avenue North and to West Seattle and Ballard (where live the heavy users of the viaduct and the monorail-deprived neighborhoods most angry with the tunnel idea). There will probably have to be considerable concessions to the Port of Seattle for freight movement and to placate the angry maritime unions, who are very sceptical of Nickels' surface solutions.
The city-county near-consensus on this kind of plan is the major new factor in the dynamic of the viaduct war. NIckels and Sims had been somewhat estranged a year ago, particularly when Sims invaded the mayor's turf and proposed, in print, a plan for Seattle Center. The staffs agreed to avoid such public disagreements and work together better, so when Nickels needed help as the viaduct election neared, Sims came to his rescue and forged some of the peace terms with the governor. The basic pact between Sims and Nickels is that Sims gets BRT routes (which means the city giving up some traffic lanes on streets) and Nickels gets his small boulevard along the central waterfront.
But if the city-county schism is healing, there's little sign that the city-state one is. Leading up to the March 13 election, Nickels had thought he could muscle the state, and Speaker Chopp thought he could muscle the city. Gregoire, an adept mediator, couldn't get either of these stubborn politicians to budge. Then, once the legislative session began, all kinds of legislators started eyeing the $2.8 billion set aside for the viaduct as money they could use in their districts, where no squabbles prevented ready implementation. Gov. Gregoire apparently grew alarmed at some polling that showed how bad she was looking amid all the dithering and surprised everyone by suddenly coming down with a heavy foot for building a new viaduct and calling the tunnel unsafe (a very unfair, if incendiary, charge). Up until then, Seattle politicians had expected her to give Seattle another year to come up with a consensus solution and the money to pay for it.
The Gregoire maneuver cost her among many Seattle interests, and it indicated how much she remains caught in an Olympia mindset, which sees transportation as a highway issue, while Seattle is increasingly seeing urban transportation as weaning-from-highways. Gregoire compounds this problem by having few people on her top staff, aside from Ron Judd, who really "get" Seattle. Nor could she afford to defy Chopp, who has his own viaduct scheme (with an implausible park on top), when the governor had so many other legislative priorities to get through the speaker's chamber.
So she threw down her glove, daring Seattle to a duel. The election was such a humbling event for Mayor Nickels that he was in no mood to pick up that glove and move toward a duel. Instead, he made common cause with Sims, pulled back from firm positions, and is now putting humpty dumpty together again. If Gregoire reciprocates by widening the group of stakeholders and advisers, the coming offstage year of trying to find a solution may actually work.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 10:38 a.m. Inappropriate
The end result?: Nada. Nothing will happen.
We will repair the Viaduct in a piecemeal, haphazard fashion without even having the benefit of softening its impact.
Repair is fine by me but it should have been the plan from the beginning 6 years ago. Politicians have wasted a huge amount of money and their own political capital with poorly-considered & impractical schemes. The public has lost the possibility of civilizing the Viaduct (yes it could be done) because no politician is able to admit that in fact the plan is simply to Repair it. The WSDOT will redefine "Rebuild" so that it is a Repair but will not admit it.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 10:55 a.m. Inappropriate
good analysis: Nice article. The Nickels/Sims idea is sounding pretty good right now.
For a surface idea to work, two fairly complicated locations need doing:
1. Getting to the Battery Street Tunnel. With a modest boulevard we can build a modest approach to the tunnel. I suggest a two-lane street that meets grade at Elliott and Western. If the boulevard only carries 1/3 of the viaduct traffic, this connection might only need to carry 1/6 since much of the traffic would continue north on Alaskan.
2. Broad. The right turn and train crossing at Alaskan & Broad is a serious issue. Though I live just uphill and my idea gives me nightmares, we really do need a grade separation at that location. Sacrificing the Spaghetti Factory would simplify the geometries of the intersection, keep the bridge away from OSP, and provide room for some new green space. It would also create a smooth traffic flow directly from Alaskan to both Elliott and Broad. If done right, it could also be an improvement for pedestrians -- somehow, some minimal added grade separation seems ok next to OSP.
On a more global level, new public transit and designated lanes are essential.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 10:57 a.m. Inappropriate
correction: Oops, I mean a four-lane approach.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 11:08 a.m. Inappropriate
repair: David, your idea has merit too.
Repair is infinitely better than replacement because it greatly reduces the construction impact, and it keeps the highway narrow.
Ideas to lessen the viaduct's impacts include painting it something other than gray (off-white?), better lighting underneath, replacing some of the parking with something more useful (ok, ok, add a garage or two elsewhere, and adding sound-deadening ceiling covering and pavement.
Replacements for the parking could include basketball courts, a weekend market (if not too redundant), a cafe, low-income housing, a skate park...the possibilities are endless. None of these sound attractive while the viaduct is at risk, but they'd sound much better with it repaired and the other improvements implemented.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 12:13 p.m. Inappropriate
Look Closer: think Granville Avenue in Vancouver
Actually, you don't even have to go that far. Just think about Highway 99/Aurora north of Green Lake. Or south of downtown. Or anywhere else that isn't the stretch between N. Seattle and SoDo.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 1:12 p.m. Inappropriate
De Facto Retro: Good summary, Brewster.
It is clear that a form of the "retrofit" option is already under way.
With the Governor's two year, 900 million commitment for "temporary" repairs to key viaduct segments and surface transportation improvements "studies", etc, it seems we are witnessing a "de factor" retro.
Eventually, after ten or twenty years, the retro'ed viaduct will be removed, likely replaced with planned surface solutions and transit improvements gradually implemented in the interim. At that time we will have a better idea of what gas prices will be, alt fuel availability and other factors that will impact viaduct capacity, and if current levels of capacity need to be maintained.
The bottom line in the viaduct issue has always literally been just that: The bottom line. Only the set amount of money from the gas tax will ever be available to fund a viaduct fix. That amount permanently limits the options.
The State has tens of billions in transportation needs other than the viaduct and limited revenue options to fund them. The eventual viaduct "solution" will be determined by that fact.
One minor disagreement: You state that "The tunnel option, which once had enjoyed the broadest Seattle coalition…."
Maybe among your circles, but not mine. As one who does a lot of outreach to community and n'hood groups city wide I found little support for the tunnel among either individuals or organizations. Quite the contrary, it was almost uniform opposistion.
I never witnessed a "broad" coalition for the tunnel. More like a few small but noisy special interest groups.
The city is made up of much more than "Allied Arts" and a few well connected "green" org's with PR flacks, who were louder in voice than they were in numbers, as the tunnels crushing defeat at the polls proved. You might want to broaden your own contacts if you want to accurately gauge what makes a truly "broad" coalition.
Or invite a wider variety to your "dinner parties".
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 1:59 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: De Facto Retro: You touched on something here that actually was the largest influence on my recent vote: Eventually, after ten or twenty years, the retro'ed viaduct will be removed, likely replaced with planned surface solutions and transit improvements gradually implemented in the interim.
The reason I favor a retrofit (or even a rebuild) is because I have yet to hear a discussion of any long-term viaduct solutions that take the greater transportation system into account.
SR99 is but one piece of a larger network and nowhere in the debates have I heard much about the long-term role the viaduct will play. No estimates of what future growth of Seattle will be over the next 25 years; no alternate plans based on contingencies such as expanded light-rail, a monorail, etc.
The way I see it, until there is a serious and comprehensive plan that addresses the viaduct within the context of the rest of the city anything but a retrofit/rebuild strikes me as unnecessarily risky.
In short: all plans and proposals are reactive and not proactive.
If it is going to take 25 years for mass-transit to mature to the point that tearing down the viaduct will have intentional and expected results (as opposed to the "it will sort itself out--people will find a way" position the surface+ people advocate), then it makes sense to have a retrofit as step one in a longer term plan that treats the viaduct as part of a larger system.
Currently everyone seems to talk about it as if it exists in a vaccuum.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 2:35 p.m. Inappropriate
In retrospect, the anti-Viaduct forces needed to agree just on opposing a new or retro-fix viaduct, and leave aside the actual solution for the Waterfront--boulevard, tunnel, trench, full present capacity or less--and first clear away any notion of a rebuilt viaduct. But this is Seattle, where all kinds of idealists, home-brew transit experts, and ideologues just couldn't resist wading in and attacking all other views.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 3:50 p.m. Inappropriate
Well Reasoned Analysis - What Crosscut Should Be: I appreciate Brewster's thoughtful analysis, and the fact that it's respectful, without any snide remarks or the like.
The article has several different ideas for dealing with the viaduct, which I believe is more likely to lead to innovative solutions than having two alternatives (viaduct or tunnel) determined early on. Most of the opinions I read in the weeks preceding the elections were heavy on emotion and light on analysis and specifics. While I hate the idea of rebuilding the viaduct, I do empathize with viaduct supporters concerned about freight mobility, and I would like to know more how a boulevard approach, which I favor, would effectively move freight. Brewster's approach is more likely to look at the details and how things work in practice, which has a greater potential to result in a better solution.
It was also very helpful to knowing how the decision making process worked, and how Gregoire could come off as so indecisive after looking like a powerhouse during her first session. Simply blowing off Seattle (in recognition that Seattle isn't unified in support of one option) seems short-sighted, not just for courting the Seattle voters. Many cities in the region, including Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, Kirkland, Renton and Bremerton are in various stages of reinvigorating their downtowns, and are placing a high value on pedestrian comfort, mass transit, and quality of life. Again, not everyone in those areas supports that approach, but it's a mistake to think that Seattle's government is isolated from the region in its approach to its downtown and waterfront.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 6:57 p.m. Inappropriate
A North-South walkway?: Nice spin, Ceis, but . . .
What's this about using Vancouver's Granville Street as a model? Granville is largely a pedestrian street with bus service, at least between the bridge and Burrard Street.
If this is becomes our model, a rebuilt S.R. 99 would be a north-south walkway. I wonder whether even the Luddites would go for such a solution.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 7:22 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: De Facto Retro: Cwesley: Your approach reflects much effective and perceptive reasoning pointing to a realistic solution that does the greatest good for the greatest number at acceptable, realistic cost.
Which is why, of course, it's been so difficult to implement here. It's simply not idealogically pure enough.
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 7:30 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: brewster reply: Thanks, David: I think your explanation covers the pro tunnel coalition and their motivations more concisely.
The reason said coalition failed to appeal to the voters was simply because their case was so transparently weak. Another lesson for those who believe that money and clout are always unbeatable.
The post SMP voters were in little mood for speculative, unsupported financial promises, rosy scenarios, pretty cgi images and "world class" pr.
As I'm sure your're aware, the wading in by all sorts isn't particularly unique to Seattle, imo, but it does have it's own endearing quality....
Posted Thu, Apr 19, 10:22 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: repair: Replacements for the parking could include basketball courts, a weekend market (if not too redundant), a cafe, low-income housing, a skate park...the possibilities are endless.
With all the talk of waterfront parks, and green space, etc. from the tunnel supporters, don't forget that the existing viaduct is high enough, and narrow enough, that there is enough light to grow plants under it. There's no reason it has to feel like a dingy gray tunnel under the viaduct, existing or rebuilt.
Paint the bottom of the (new or old) viaduct white to reflect more light, replace some of the parking with greenspace and walkways, and you can re-connect the city to the waterfront at ground level without building a tunnel. It won't give great waterfront views from inside the buildings inland, but it would for pedestrians, tourists, etc.
Posted Fri, Apr 20, 10:29 p.m. Inappropriate
the freight thing: The freight issue seems like the third rail of this whole discussion...
"Build a viaduct, build a tunnel, build a great big Evil Knievel jump and fly everybody over the City, but ferthaloveagod, don't mess with the freight..."
So what's the deal? What's the impact if the freight is messed up? What if the freight goes away altogether? What did San Francisco do when their freight went away?
Ok - I know I'm pushing on the far end of this whole discussion, and I bet there's a whole bunch of other folks out there that'll drag it back into reality, but I'd like to hear what you have to say.
Remember that proposal a few years ago to redevelop Pier 46 (the Hanjin pier). Here's the link: http://www.vision-46.com/ If you click on the "latest news" there is an economic study that shows some pretty big numbers in favor of a huge mixed use development. (warning: big PDF download) And I'm sure the numbers were "worked" a bit, but how 'bout it?
And another thing - has anybody been checking out the "southern end improvements" near the stadiums? It seems to be a forgone conclusion that this HUGE interchange is going to occupy Sodo, all in the name of freeing up the east/west movement of, yep, freight. This new interchange area is massive. Thoughts?
Posted Fri, Apr 20, 11:07 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Well Reasoned Analysis - What Crosscut Should Be: Either a tunnel or a viaduct will work for pedestrian comfort, mass transit, and quality of life for the majority of Seattleites. A tunnel would be a bit better for quality of life for some downtown residents, lower for others who could enjoy the view from a viaduct more than that of a tunnel.
I think Gregoire's decision to snub Seattle was a good warning to other cities in the region -- if you want to do something, decide what you want to do before getting the Legislature to set aside huge amounts of funding for a project you can't decide how to implement.
If you offered that money to Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, etc., I bet they could come up with a plan for their major traffic issues. Maybe not the very best plan theoretically possible, but a plan they could get working on and spend the money for. Instead, they see this big pot of money sitting there waiting and waiting for Seattle to decide between paper or plastic.
Posted Sat, Apr 21, 3:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Need for a Transportation Apical Meristem: What's becoming very clear is that piecemeal solutions to transportation problems such as the Viaduct, particularly complicated problems including freight, safety, lengthy rebuild durations, aesthetics, and multi-billion dollar finance must be justified in the context of a larger transportation picture. I don't mean just roads and transit. That's the kind of mediocre tenuous mess we have now. What we need is the THE integrated plan for the whole region including:
- The complete Sound Transit Plan for 50 years out, clear out to ST #4.
- The complete grid of Freeways and their widths (with the ultimate use of all available lanes at max capacity) for the next 50 years.
- The complete grid of trails and bike paths.
- The complete grid of Airports and Seaports and their connections to roads and transit.
- A comprehensive high-level financial plan and budget for construction, operation and maintenance of all transportation elements with special emphasis on user fees associated with each modality and each element. Examples include the gas tax, bridge tolls, automated odometric fees, toll-box revenue for light-rail, and variable-fee tolling of HOV lanes. The plan should guarantee that everything gets built over a fifty year period. This should be one constant, on-going levy for infrastructure that gets rid of interest and finance charges, and not a series of bonded projects, that are like scabs on scars of wounds from previous transportation mistakes.
To avoid overpaying for labor and environmental work, a range of lower-paying union jobs should be created so that this becomes an enormous jobs program, including current prevailing wage jobs and new lower-paying jobs that allow for quickly ramping up the complete construction vision. Prison labor should also be part of the mix. On the environmental side, a special class of streamlined transporation environmental review must be enacted to reduce the dollar cost of review and mitigation for the entire grid. Environmental protection is essential, but doing it massively and efficiently is critical for getting the most out of our transportation dollar. We need to get environmental overhead on roads down from about 35% to a more reasonable and digestible 10%.
Steady, unrelenting progress across the board should be the mandate, with productivity and efficiency mandatory. We can't afford imbecilic big digs, projects that run years late and miles short, and finance options that make paupers out of the taxpayer.
The best analogy for this plan is the apical meristem that encodes the plan for the growing embryo and which acts as a blueprint in laying out development of the various systems in the human body. It can do this efficiently because the map is present initially, and the relationship of the various systems is understood. Without this map you'd mainly get the random sort of growth of your average cancer cell, which I will argue, is what is wrong with piecemeal approach to designing the Viaduct, or the highway system, or light rail. How does it all fit? What's the grander plan for I-5, 99, freight mobility, etc. We need a big plan that includes EVERYTHING.
As it grows, different parts of the plan may get sped up or slowed down depending on financial conditions, changing priorities, demographic shifts, and input from citizens, but the overall investment will be constant and not require voting on several multi-billion dollar piecemeal projects each year, and won't be run by seventeen different boards of twenty politicians each, virtually guaranteeing a bureaucratic quagmire.
I don't see this as a five-year blue-ribbon commission study. Give DOT the charge and six months and they can have a 100-page document that lays out what's described above. Boom. That's it. Show the Vision to voters. Vote. Build the Vision.
Posted Sun, Apr 22, 8:58 p.m. Inappropriate
How about something halfway imaginative..: 1] The freight will not go away since Seattle is a harbor city with a rail system that is as screwed up as the vehicular traffic.
2] However, since it is again faster to canoe across Lake Washington at certain hours than it is to cross it by car, the good people of the region might think about limiting entry of anything but busses, delivery trucks and emergency vehicles into the downtown area.
Instead you might import the idea of jitneys, if only from Soho in New York, and install escalators on the cross streets for pedestrians who do not want or are unable to get their excericise walking steep hillsides.
Parking garages at the outskirts of downtown.
How much better the air would be too!!
Posted Mon, Apr 23, 10:43 p.m. Inappropriate
The ALID Surface Tunnel Will Achieve Consensus: After the March 13 Viaduct vote, in which the result told our leaders to start over, we have been wondering what the only option left-the Surface Option- would look like.
With the Governor being told by WSDOT that all surface options had inadequate capacity-75,000 vehicles per day versus the current 110,000 per day- she rejected all surface option with "I will not turn I-5 into a parking lot". She was acting on incorrect information.
A surface option that provides all the positives of the wet Tunnel, but with none of the negatives, was conceived in 1995 while I was treating visitors to Fish & Chips at Ivars. We were deafened by the traffic noise, so I grabbed a napkin and sketched out a surface tunnel with a nine-acre park atop the lid. It took ten-minutes. I now call it the ALID*, an acronym for Alaska Lid. The design is Copyrighted.
I offered to Mayor Nickels and WSDOT Secretary MacDonald to come out of retirement to lead a Second Opinion Study. The letter was dated Dec 22, 2002. I have been working since that time to perfect the concept.
The PI printed an OP-ED (May 11, 2006) that I submitted, the editors titling it the Perfect Solution to the Viaduct. Everyone in City Hall and the Legislature knows about it, but until it gets into the political process, no one in government talks openly about it.
After all is said and done, they will realize that the ALID opens views from every office window, contains the noise, provides superior civic connection and waterfront ambience, maintains the 110,000 vehicles/day throughput, and at far less cost and disruption than anything yet proposed.
Construction will take 30-months after 18-months for engineering drawings and bidding; with funds left over for the 520 Bridge.
I have heard all the ill-founded complaints about climbing over a 19-foot wall to get to the waterfront, loss of direct vehicular access between downtown and the ferry terminal, and answered them in a way that would satisfy a technical jury in a courtroom proceeding.
Eventually, the pundits are going to ask why did it take them so long to Get There? It is easy to blame it on the NIH syndrome.
But a more accurate answer is that none of the Viaduct Study Team folks I have met are trained in Systems Engineering, a course available in
engineering schools to scientifically and methodically conduct trade studies of relative gains vs losses in every feature of a complex design/analysis
procedure.
A full-page ad or write-up of the ALID in the press, complete with drawings, would end the dilly-dallying, finally achieving the necessary consensus. But I think this is something the politicos will just have to work through.
Posted Tue, Apr 24, 5:41 p.m. Inappropriate
introduction - pro viaduct - part 1: Bonjour,
I've been a frequent poster on viaduct threads on the P-I soundoffs over the past few weeks. My screen name should offer my sentiments on the issue. You might wish to view viaduct-related articles at the P-I site for background regarding my positions.
I'm glad to see the viaduct issue emerge from the depths of backroom negotiations again, so that some public comment MIGHT be allowed to affect the design, before another fixed option is foisted upon us, the public. Sadly, that may not happen.
Your format and tone are a little different from the Globe's, and I'd like to have a chance to go over your article in the next few days. How long do you keep your boards available for comments, anyway?
I will probably be repeating myself some from my earlier posts at the P-I, but I will try to condense my comments as I go. I have some other irons in the fire at the moment, so I can't get into this in a big way now. But I will comment on one part of the article now.
... some concern that the state will simply wait until the 2008 election and then suddenly announce they are building a new viaduct ...
If this issue waits until the 2008 election, I hereby predict that it will be a new governor making the decision. The advisory ballot is still festering. The wound needs to be closed, and soon. The governor's weak support in Seattle is already starting to crumble.
Not only with the SR99 rebuild anymore, either. Now that project is linked to 520, with her intimating the possibility that SR99 funds could be transferred to 520 if a less expensive SR99 surface option is selected over the rebuild. The rebuild supporters just got sold out. Now what happens if she flops back again? The 520 fans lost their golden parachute. She has now managed to paint herself into a corner.
Forget the ballot for a moment, though, and go region-wide. How many 520 users and viaduct users are there? How many of them live in King County? Which county is usually needed to win a state-wide election?
And now, just this week, voters are waking up to the fact that she supported Pat Davis in the last port election. The same Davis who is now subject to a recall petition, and (hopefully) an election, sometime before her term is up in 2010.
In short, in spite of the lovefest following sine die in Oly, the governor's bacon is on fire. It's time for damage control, but I don't see how she gets out of it ...
Except POSSIBLY following the advisory ballot result. (That ballot design was a travesty in itself. There is a very good reason why it should be completely ignored. I've reviewed that topic on an earlier P-I board, and I'll do so again here if I find it necessary.)
Back to the topic here. 57% of voters said no viaduct. 70% said no tunnel. 73% said no to anything else. The smallest number of potentially alienated voters? 57%. Those she hopes MAY forgive her leadership gaffes over the past few weeks, if the republican is distasteful enough. And how often are they reminded of the issue?
Every time they drive on the viaduct. Or on 520, for that issue.
70% and 73% are larger numbers. You can slice it six ways to Sunday, but she will risk more disaffected voters with either of these options. To me, if I were governor, there is only one choice.
I haven't seen raw poll numbers, except since right after the election, which indicated around 50% support for the rebuild. But I don't think I need the numbers anyway. I see a election disaster in progress.
I just bumped my head on your comment length limit, so this is part one. I hope part 2 follows immediately. I have a little more to say here.
Posted Tue, Apr 24, 5:43 p.m. Inappropriate
introduction - pro viaduct - part 2: Part 2 of my introduction:
Just after the election, the governor cited capacity and mobility as two key hurdles that needed to be dealt with in a final acceptable design. To me, that means six lanes of SR99, four lanes of Alaskan Way, and somehow the streetcar is folded into this batter too. All of these lanes are important. That is why they exist now.
Then deal with Colman Dock traffic and the fire station near Ivar's. I'm dying to see the compromise proposal, since I can't picture the solution using any version of surface. So we wait for the mayor to complete his coloring book.
And every day the governor waits, the pressure builds.
This is Gore 2000 and Rossi 2004 all over again. Closure is needed. It's important. Make a decision, and move on.
But even with the election 18 months away, it may already be too late. Elections can be won and lost on little slips, like the SR99/520 linkage I cited above.
You and the pollsters can draw their own conclusions about why her support has dwindled recently. to me, this has been entirely predictable based on her actions, but my interpretation may be different from yours, or others. As a regular viaduct user myself, I can tell you directly what I think the reason is, because the anger has been simmering in me for the past six weeks. And I'm a mild-mannered guy.
This is the end of my introduction. Thanks for your interest. I'll be back.
Ciao.
Posted Tue, Apr 24, 6:13 p.m. Inappropriate
intro coda: Sorry, I can't let this slide by. As you might expect, some other points in your piece need a comment as well.
If ever a story went rapidly from community obsession to obscurity, it's the Alaskan Way Viaduct problem in Seattle.
That may be your perception in downtown Seattle. I can assure you that West Seattle is seething. Probably some other areas are as well, but I haven't taken a poll to measure the depth of anger everywhere.
Just like in the military, NEVER mistake quiet for inactivity.
One more note on capacity: I believe most traffic engineers would include parking in the capacity equation, since cars need to sit somewhere once the driving destination is reached. This also includes loading zones. Then mobility would include access similar to or easier than the current setup.
I really hope someone is able to smuggle a draft out of that war room, though it could prove to be incendiary. For the moment, we're on the verge of a repeat of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, at least in electoral politics. If nothing else, the elections over the next few years might be a little more interesting than usual, thanks in part to this issue.
Finally, who am I?
I voted for the governor in 2004, since I couldn't stand Rossi. Translation: she can't count on my vote in 2008 in any circumstance. The county executive is neutral in this, as far as I'm concerned, but I've never voted for him, and never will. (To dispel an interpretation of a possible race component in my voting, I supported Norm Rice every time he ran, and I wish he were still the mayor.)
I have never voted for the current mayor, and never will. If he has any kind of credible challenger in 2009, I think he's a goner. But that's a ways off.
The city councilmembers who supported the tunnel might be at risk, but I don't think that they are part of the current negotiations, except maybe indirectly. So they might be safe, on this issue anyway.
The person who is really exposed is the governor. It's her responsibility to rebuild SR99, it's her decision alone, and she needs to start acting like a leader, if voters are to be enticed to support her next year.
Will she pull through? I don't know.
Right now, she's in trouble.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 3:42 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: the freight thing: What did San Francisco do when their freight went away?
The freight went somewhere else - in this case, Oakland, a short journey across the Bay. Maybe Seattle's freight could be shunted to Tacoma or Everett, but it should be amusing to see the reaction elsewhere in our region if that magnitude of change (and expense) were to be suggested, just so that Seattle can rid itself of its nasty old waterfront freeway.
The old Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco is often brought up as a comparison to the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Barc was a spur road to downtown SF, when the only sports venue at the time was Candlestick Park, five mile to the south of the junction of the Barc and the Bay Bridge freeway. By comparison, the viaduct serves the Mariners and Seahawks stadiums, and is a thru highway.
The Embarcadero was torn down due to support by then-mayor Agnos, but not without opposition by areas inhabited by users, particularly Chinatown. In the election following the start of demolition, the mayor was defeated, due in part to defection of prior support in ... Chinatown. See this link for reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Freeway
And see this link for a graphic showing advisory ballot Viaduct support:
(This blog format precludes large 'words' - so it was necessary to break the link in half. Copy both halves into the address bar of your browser to see the referenced page:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
transportation/308511_breakdown22.html
Hmmm, could something like that possibly happen here if the Viaduct were to go away? In this case, not necessarily the ID, but West Seattle and a few other places representing high concentrations of SR99 users through Seattle. Why doesn't the mayor wake up and consider this possibility?
This new interchange area is massive. Thoughts?
Interchanges are for freeways. Visualize a massive interchange on Aurora Ave N to get my drift.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 4:02 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: The end result?: Some of the Viaduct support pillars have continued to sink since the Nisqually earthquake, although that sinkage seems to have stopped for the moment. The old pillars are built on 1940's technology. I think soils engineers who understand marine sediments have learned a few things over the past 60 years, and that this is part of the justification for building the new structure from the ground up.
I also believe that the road deck itself can be made quieter with a different design and perhaps different materials, but a highway engineer would need to address that issue. I'm certain that the new structure can also be made to be more attractive than the current one, but I don't have access to the actual design.
Japan has had two severe earthquakes in the past month. The middle mile is scheduled to come down in 2011 or 2012. I only hope we have that much time before our next seismic event.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 4:26 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: repair: ... add a [parking] garage or two elsewhere ...
This seems a little vague. Available land is scarce and expensive downtown. Parking is already a nightmare there most of the time. You are referring to replacing existing, convenient waterfront parking with a fantasy.
To reiterate a previous post of mine, parking should be considered to be part of the 'capacity' equation, which the governor has stated must be maintained. Cars need to sit somewhere when their passengers arrive at the destination. Loading zones and delivery access are also included in this requirement, as well as the 'mobility' that the governor has mentioned as well. You are belittling the importance of these multiple needs, as you fail to offer a specific solution.
This suggestion sounds like the dithering the city has been engaged in since the Nisqually earthquake, which has helped to delay this project for these past years. Get rid of the Viaduct, and the traffic will find its way through downtown somehow. No solid proposals, only pipe dreams.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 4:59 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: De Facto Retro: SR99 is but one piece of a larger network and nowhere in the debates have I heard much about the long-term role the viaduct will play. ...
This may not be the official version, whatever that may be, but I will offer my perspective.
The Viaduct IS the long-term solution. There is a need to maintain existing traffic corridors through downtown Seattle, at least until we are all riding efficient rapid transit or Segways. Even then, not all users are office commuters. There is a wide variety of users who depend on the Viaduct as an efficient and convenient method of getting past the continual downtown traffic mess.
Please also take into account the easy access that the baseball and football stadium users currently enjoy with the current configuration, particularly coming from the north.
I-5 and I-405 are both beyond maxed out now. Sometimes a new I-605 is mentioned as a future solution, diverting traffic further east of the Metro area. The cost of such a project, if environmental hurdles were somehow cleared, would make the cost of the Viaduct and 520 rebuilds look like chump change. Ready for more gas taxes already, or tolls? I don't see much likelihood of this possibility in our lifetimes.
For the city itself, further expansion of I-5 is not practical. There is not another alternative to move that traffic through the downtown area. And this is on a good day.
The week after the advisory ballot, a truck lost it's load on I-5 south of Dearborn near the beginning of the morning commute. Several lanes were blocked for two hours. Suppose the Viaduct hadn't been available as a detour. There would have been about 20,000 additional vehicles fighting their way through the south end that morning, or sitting in the I-5 parking lot with everyone else.
Fortunately, I wasn't in the area at the time, but I suspect the Viaduct did see a little more traffic than usual that morning. These things happen. It could have been worse, if a hazardous cargo had spilled and closed the freeway in both directions. Having a backup route available is proactive, not reactive.
As for myself, I am still waiting to hear a valid long-term transportation alternative to the Viaduct that somehow maintains its present capacity and mobility features. That's where I find the vacuum.
I may be saying that I agree with you more than I disagree, but I needed to emphasize a few points here.
Rebuild is minimally more expensive and disruptive than retrofit (which was also my original preference), and a ground-up rebuild would be a better investment for the future.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 5:24 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: brewster reply: ... the tunnel coalition had more political and financial clout than any other ...
To remind readers who may have forgotten the details, the tunnel had the support of the mayor and a majority of the City Council. The tunnel supporters raised about a half million dollars in a few weeks to fund a major media campaign before the election to support their preference. The rebuild supporters raised about 5% of that amount of money in the same time, and still managed to handily drub the tunnelers.
This is not supposed to happen. Money almost always wins in American politics. To me, this indicates the depth of support for the rebuilt Viaduct, regardless of what the mayor's obviously unbiased opinion may be.
... the anti-Viaduct forces needed to agree ...
True. And ridiculous to expect a priori. You might as well expect Capitol Hill to vote en masse for Mike!, or the developers to suddenly embrace Baghdad Jim.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 6:24 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: De Facto Retro: With the Governor's two year, 900 million commitment for "temporary" repairs to key viaduct segments ...
The $915m appropriation covers prep work for whatever rebuild option is ultimately selected, and also includes about $5m for duct tape, to hopefully hold the middle mile together until it is scheduled to come down in 2011 or 2012. The bulk of that $915m will be going towards the permanent solution, not a temporary fix, although there will be transit and detour expenses in the process.
Eventually, after ten or twenty years, the retro'ed viaduct will be removed, likely replaced with planned surface solutions and transit improvements gradually implemented in the interim. ...
I see more vague generalities, but no substance to back your predictions. When the Viaduct is removed, precisely how will traffic flow through as smoothly through Seattle as now? What improvements to our infrastructure will be made to allow this to happen?
Only the set amount of money from the gas tax will ever be available to fund a viaduct fix. ...
We can only hope that that money will actually BE available.
The governor has recently hinted at shifting some of those funds to the 520 rebuild instead, if a less expensive surface option is selected. This has served to raise the expectations of the 520 users that they may not need to panic if the RTID measure fails this autumn, as may well happen; or that perhaps that money might defray some future toll expense.
If she now retracts that 520 shift possibility and goes ahead with the planned Viaduct rebuild, she will have succeeded in annoying everybody using both highways, and will also be guilty of waffling in the eyes of the rest of the voters. Indecisive, weak, bait and switch, intentional or not, the damage will have been done. It didn't need to happen this way, but this is the path she is on now.
The users of the Viaduct and the 520 bridge will think of her every time they drive on one of those structures.
The State has tens of billions in transportation needs other than the viaduct and limited revenue options to fund them. The eventual viaduct "solution" will be determined by that fact.
Many of those projects have been identified and funded by a gas tax approved by voters in November 2005. These are the most critical items. There will always be more projects after those are completed, and I suspect there will always be gas taxes to cover them. Or possibly tolls, in some cases. Nothing new here.
... I never witnessed a "broad" coalition for the tunnel. More like a few small but noisy special interest groups.
It wasn't broad, but they had almost all the money. They spent a half million dollars in a few weeks, and still failed to win the election. There's something wrong with this picture.
Mr Brewster can invite whomever he likes to his parties. I would suggest, though, that sometime he visit a brewpub, coffee house, or other social area in West Seattle sometime, to get a sense of public opinion there. That might have an influence on his next Viaduct article.
Posted Wed, Apr 25, 6:49 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: Well Reasoned Analysis - What Crosscut Should Be: ... how Gregoire could come off as so indecisive after looking like a powerhouse during her first session. Simply blowing off Seattle (in recognition that Seattle isn't unified in support of one option) seems short-sighted ...
She is playing with fire. I don't know what her advisers have been saying, but someone has made a critical miscalculation here. The credibility she had accumulated from her previous session experience has been overshadowed by this blunder.
... Many cities in the region, including Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, Kirkland, Renton and Bremerton are in various stages of reinvigorating their downtowns ...
True. I only want to add that the Viaduct rebuild is a regional issue. Other Viaduct users outside of Seattle didn't have a chance to vote on the advisory ballot. You can add drivers from Kitsap County as well, who currently enjoy easy access to the Viaduct from Colman Dock and from Fauntleroy.
Every driver on I-5 and I-405 also has an interest, since current Viaduct traffic would be shunted onto those freeways in the absence of a waterfront freeway, although they may not be aware of that contingency yet. The regional ramifications of this issue are huge. Whether Seattle wants to see the big picture or not, the governor ought to be more responsive to this fact.
Including all those drivers, any idea what the size of the SR99-affected group is now? The margin of victory in her last election was 133 votes. That should give you an idea of the magnitude of risk she is facing now, while she tries to gear up for her re-election campaign over the next few months.
If someone takes up the challenge. And I predict, in the near future, someone will. Maybe Rossi, but I would guess probably not. Politicians are opportunists by nature, though. This is too big an opportunity to pass up.
Posted Tue, May 1, 11:07 p.m. Inappropriate
Agree--the tunnel is done, long live the viaduct: I think we need to consider the fact that:
The Alaskan Way Viaduct moves 110,000 business and commuter vehicles into, out of and through Seattle each day and is an essential alternative to Interstate 5, carrying one
quarter of the north-south traffic through downtown Seattle. The Alaskan Way Viaduct connects cities and regional manufacturing and industrial centers of statewide importance and the "Surface option" is not feasible because it does not meet requirements for existing vehicle/freight capacity while preserving north-south mobility and access to the west side of Seattle.
I support an Elevated replacement or repair of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, because it will maintain, at a minimum, the existing viaduct vehicle and freight capacity, has the least economic disruption to business and maritime jobs, does not increase taxes, preserves north-south mobility and all of the existing access of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.