Sore loser.

The new 520 is an abomination and is a victory only for those who will get some jobs and business for a few years, and for the big East Side tech firms who will "speed" their workers on their way. It is powerful intersts shoving this plan down the throats of the public to serve their needs, not ours. The state DOT has to earn their money -- why have all those designers sitting around unless they can create some monster to justify their existence? I don't think Mr. Berger is being a sore loser Mr. Baker, rather he recognizes the reality of a new bridge that may seem nifty to all those state officials, designers and business "leaders," but will destroy neighborhoods and wetlands, and ultimately add nothing to the quality of life of our community. If there is a loser, Mr. Baker, it's all of us.

Too bad Mr. Berger didn't collaborate with Mr. Brewster on this article. What a perfect opportunity for reviewing again the manipulation and back room dealings that resulted in the most expensive, least efficient transportation solutions for both the AWV and the 520 bridge.

Hopefully you guys will write a book some day and let us in on the real story about how these two projects are connected and the extra billions it cost tax payers to benefit a few special interests.

Also, the bid to assemble the bridge came in well under budget recently, at $586m vs. WSDOT estimates of $600-750m.

Meanwhile the pontoons have been under construction since February. The DJC archives say that the December 2009 bid was $367m vs. a WSDOT estimate of $547m. (I have no idea what the delays regarding pontoon manufacture location cost.)

Some of the difference is WSDOT being conservative in its estimates. But some is the industry being hungry. It's a fair bet that rebidding during an econominc recovery might cost a couple hundred million more.

So they'll do the bridge soon, and the Seattle part later. Or so I assume.

It would be great to accommodate rail. But I don't mind the current design from a transportation perspective. Will definitely use the bike lane, and HOV lanes will be revolutionary for a lot of people. I'm not in favor of adding SOV capacity. As for rail, a purpose-built bridge is certainly possible.

I wouldn't worry too much about the loss of ruins, though I agree those ones have a certain charm. We'll have plenty of ruins once fuel gets expensive.

Knute, thank you for talking about the next project to a weary city. The SR 520, I-5 to Medina Project that will run through our communities is not as it seemingly appears in the FEIS. The contract for the first phase will be signed September 1, and most people don't yet reaize that the Floating Bridge as not-quite-presented in the FEIS and the Floatinbg Bridge of the Request for Proposals are not the same. Or are they? Can you tell from reading the FEIS? WSDOT claims in the FEIS that the Floating bridge will be 116 feet across--with a convincing cross section--down from 133 feet in response to the City Councils' request for a narrower bridge. If you read the Request For Proposals at www.wsdot.wa.gov and look at the design from the RFP I'll send to the Crosscut editor, you’ll see that the design calls for a North Bridge and a South Bridge with a gap in between for the insertion later of two lanes for High Capacity Transit, either Bus Rapid Transit or Light Rail. That would be eight lanes, probably all gas-powered vehicles for at least a good while, even before the restriping enabled by generous shoulders and lane widths. The actual width of the new Floating Bridge “out-to-out” is not 116 feet. It’s 150 feet (149’10”) to 160 feet (159’7”). Somebody needs to ask some hard questions before the September 1 contract signing. The Stranger's Dominic Holden posted this story way back in February 2010, and a tunnel-obsessed public and the rest of the press just ignored it.

Congestion was born here the day the R.H. Thomson road died.

It's really sad that 40 years after the anti-freeway movement had its biggest victories that the biggest infrastructure projects in the region are all freeway projects. People complain about Link light rail but its costs ($2.1 billion for the first 14 miles, $1.5 for the U Link expansion) are matched or exceeded by several individual freeway projects: the DBT ($2 billion for the tunnel alone and billions more for the whole project), 520 ($4.6 billion), the Columbia River Crossing (over $3 billion), and the planned improvements to 405 ($4.7 billion).

We'll know we are seriously about transit when we are investing more in transit than on highway corridors that have already been built out a generation ago.

For all its flaws and cost, 520 is a rebuild that adds HOV and bike lanes. In the spectrum of greenness, it's an ok compromise.

I don't understand where all those extra cars are going to go coming into Seattle. Won't they just back up going onto I-5?

What, exactly, is your alternative to a new 520 bridge, Knute? You want to just take the current bridge down and not replace it with anything?

As for spending money on highways vs light rail. The $2.6 billion Central Link light rail carries about 10,000 people per day south of Rainier Beach station, which is its approximate mid-point. Along that stretch, I-5, which parallels Link just north of the exit to SeaTac Airport, carries about 400,000 people per day.

So, where they parallel each other, and you can see light rail from I-5, I-5 is carrying 40 times as many people per day as Central Link light rail. Link is carrying a pathetically tiny number of passengers per day.

Link light rail is an insanely expensive boondoggle. It was hyped as "mass transit", but carries a tiny fraction of the trips that a highway carries, at several times the cost of a highway, per lane-mile.

animalal, I'm willing to bet that if the Thomson Expressway had been built, it would be just as congested today as I-5. But Ravenna, Montlake, and the Central District would be a lot less liveable, and we'd be missing a huge chunk of the Arboretum. There would probably be calls to turn Aurora into a freeway to provide some relief. No, thanks.

Just an observation based on Lincoln's response. It's funny when a transit system is running at less than full capacity, it's viewed as a failure. But when a highway is running with few cars, it's viewed as a success.

To answer Andy's question about where the extra cars are going to go coming in to Seattle? They are going to create congestion elsewhere of course.

I don't recall the source of this saying buy I remember it well.

Highway Engineering (def) - The art of relocating congestion.

Any transportation infrastructure is a failure when it is stupidly expensive to build, stupidly expensive to operate, very few people use it, and it has zero affect on traffic congestion.

That is Central Link light rail: insanely expensive to build; stupidly expensive to operate; carrying a fraction of the people it was supposed to carry; and making zero impact on traffic congestion in our area.

Lincoln, I am not Knute but, given the congestion at both I-5
and I-405, I think just replacing the two lanes each direction (I suppose
there would have to be breakdown lanes) would
make sense. Why have six lanes? more places to park?

Keith, so, you are saying that every vehicle crossing the 520 bridge is going to either I-5 or I-405, or both?

Do you feel that making the I-90 floating bridge 8 lanes was a mistake? You think it should have been only 4 lanes? Or only 6 lanes?

Just blow it up, bring back the ferry service to Madison Park!

Sayeth Lincoln, "Link light rail is an expensive boondoggle hyped as mass transit but carries a fraction the trips a highway carries at greater cost per lane-mile."

B^llsh^t.

What Seattlers don't understand about light rail is its land-use application whereby their need to daily commute across the county may be reduced, and without light rail this need only increases. If Sound Transit leaders understood this, they'd prioritize the extension to Federal Way and a spur to Southcenter and through to Renton. Wealthy college snots & city big wigs get served first.

The 520 project looks light rail ready to me. I can see that line land on Pacific Street and terminate at the University Bridge & transfer to the streetcar line. The ornamental overhead on the 2nd bridge doesn't seem to serve a purpose.

Somebody wrote:

"People complain about Link light rail but its costs . . . are matched or exceeded by several individual freeway projects".

The numbers used in that post to try to make that point are projects' capital costs, which in the case of Sound Transit projects essentially are meaningless. That poster - likely a PR agent for Sound Transit - is ignoring the real costs to the people here of how that taxing district operates.

Those "individual freeway projects" will be paid for by statewide gas tax revenues (a user fee) and tolls (another user fee), plus state and federal grants. No new general taxing is involved, so their costs to those who don't use them are negligible.

In contrast, Sound Transit employs a brutal financing plan. It is comprised of new regressive taxing that targets the people here least able to afford it. The tax costs to the people (mostly) and businesses around here over the next four decades or so of Sound Transit's bond sales contracts' security terms could well add up to $85 billion.

Nobody imposes grossly excessive taxes to that extent in the name of "trains" except Sound Transit. All it's peers build out quality light rail at little or no direct tax cost to people.

That nasty discrepancy between how it's done here vs. elsewhere is a function of an aberrant financing practice: using pledges to collect regressive taxes at current rates while any local bonds remain outstanding.

Sound Transit isn't a boondoggle - it's a punishing, abusive taxing scheme hiding behind a "green" curtain a PR team holds in place while framing any debates referencing that taxing district in terms of "cars vs. trains".

Notice how none of the "transit fans" who pop up in online forums (including this one) are willing to address the merits of the financing plan, or even acknowledge it? That's because it's staggeringly abusive to people here.

Any of the posters in this thread who claim light rail is good here want to try 1) quantifying the tax costs of Sound Transit's financing plan to people and businesses here, and 2) explain why people here should be hit with such heavy regressive taxes by that local government when no peers impose a fraction of the tax costs on the people they serve? Sure, that'd be going off-message, but it'd make for the start of an interesting conversation.

Please keep your eye on the ball. We have time to debate the relative merits of light rail, buses and cars. September 1st WSDOT will sign a contract for a "Future Six Lanes Plus Two HCT Configuration" Floating Bridge and Landings Project. The Plus Two HCT lanes could be for Light Rail but are more likely to be dedicated to Bus Rapid Transit. Instead of the six lanes with later conversion of the HOV lanes to Light Rail as WSDOT advertises, we'll have six lanes plus two more of gas-powered vehicles running through communities that have made their peace with four lanes by planting thousands of trees since the 1960s.

Monday, residents woke to the posting of permit applications for the new, wider West Approach moved father north, a second bascule bidge over the Montlake Cut, and the more than twice as wide Portage Bay Bridge. These parts of the project do not have approved funding from the legislature or even conditional approval from the Puget Sound Regional Council, which has conditionally approved the First Phase Floating Bridge and Landings Project.

WSDOT has also applied for a permit to replace wetlands in Portage Bay with wetlands in Magnuson Park. The Beaver and other wildlife will not follow. And if the other permits are granted, we are liable to sit treeless beside the present freeway for a conservative five and a possible ten years before funding for the rest of the project is found.

Lincoln, I don't know about I-90; it's certainly conceivable to me that fewer lanes would have a negligible impact on the total transportation picture. My point is that more lanes on 520 is just a foothold to widen I-405 and (horror of all horrors) add lanes to I-5. I do not have to believe that all 520 traffic goes to the above two highways in order to rationally oppose more than four lanes on 520.

I also do not have to be a light rail opponent to be awed by Crossrip's comment. A fine polemic.

@crossrip, I agree with you that the financing scheme for sound transit is not good.

Your statement:

Those "individual freeway projects" will be paid for by statewide gas tax revenues (a user fee) and tolls (another user fee), plus state and federal grants. No new general taxing is involved, so their costs to those who don't use them are negligible.

Is not correct. First of all, the highway trust fund is being bailed out every year from the general fund. Also, the freeway system was built with money from the defense budget. More importantly, the impact on city street (which are paid for by property taxes) of the freeways is immense. Most of the wear and tear, demand for larger city arterials, "free" parking, etc. is induced by freeway traffic. Also, if you drive but don't drive on freeways, most of the gas tax you pay is subsidizing freeways.

Mossback deserves his name on this subject. God bless him.

In my own personal world I agree. But that's not what it takes to solve the 520 replacement: it takes a region to find common ground.

It has been found. It took about 20 years. I know. I have been there at every step.

I do think there is room to pressure the highway building maniacs at the state DOT to design a bridge that fits the cities it connects.

Let's insist on a vastly more well designed bridge for the gobs of money we're all spending.

Let's insist on a bridge that looks as good as the views on it.

The freeway builders at the state DOT will need a lot of help with that. It is an extremely urgent and meaningful cause.