Posted Tue, Aug 30, 9:16 a.m.

Way too little way too late. So much hasn't been done, and we keep allowing the same mistakes to be repeated. It's past time for a class action suit against the FWHA, the state DOTs, and Big Cement. They are more culpable than Big Tobacco.

Posted Tue, Aug 23, 8:28 a.m.

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 ...

Posted Mon, Aug 22, 10:10 a.m.

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 ...

Posted Fri, Aug 5, 10:07 a.m.

That's a (Bebb &) Carl F. Gould (with John Graham, Sr., 1930-31)! The next year Bebb & Gould's (Gould's, really) Seattle Asian Art Museum was built. What a sad "repurposing." See T. William Booth and William H. Wilson, Carl F. Gould: A Life in Architecture and the Arts.

Posted Tue, Jun 14, 9:15 a.m.

Thank you so much for talking about this issue. As we communities have negotiated with WSDOT over adverse effects on neighborhoods next to the proposed expansion of SR 520, increased air pollution has been the elephant in the room that WSDOT does not like to mention. WSDOT's only solution besides ...

Posted Fri, Jun 3, 10:19 a.m.

With one exception the transportation part of this article praises what decisive cities are doing for transit, not strongman tactics to build more out-of-date, out-of-scale urban highway. San Francisco and some other cities are getting rid of their urban highways. Not Seattle. We have strong leadership in the mayor's office ...

Posted Thu, May 26, 9:41 a.m.

Except for the last sentence this article studiously avoids the racial slurs and the violent attacks that often accompany the inoffensive (!) I'm going to break your blanking (blank) neck. What a fine distinction you make when it's the whole attitude we're talking about. Since when is profanity, contempt for ...

Posted Mon, May 23, 3:13 p.m.

I'm so sorry to lose the CR Douglas show. I loved his way with a question and a follow-up. Who will do that now?

Posted Wed, May 18, 10:03 a.m.

Coincidentally while reading a travel article last night, I marked a passage to deploy in some forum! Thank you for the spendid illustrations of the problem and the opportunity: "By any account, Vancouver is growing fast. In terms of city planning, it appears to be uniquely graceful growth. The beauty ...

Posted Sun, May 8, 5:56 p.m.

. . . with landscapinig that included trees should not be discretionary, that the lids should not be removed from the project for cost's sake. The HIA also said, "Traffic on the SR 520 facilities will contribute to emissions and increase concentrations in areas approximately 300 meters (not 300 feet!) ...

Posted Sun, May 8, 4:44 p.m.

Thank you for asking, Cameron. Here's what I suggested above: Safety and Economy. "What should we have done long ago? Safety fixes. The governor has gambled with lives for an over-ambitious project we can't afford. We should have fixed the bridge and given it wider shoulders for disabled vehicles. We ...

Posted Sat, May 7, 11:18 a.m.

Good work, Kent. Thank you for digging into this topic.

Posted Sat, May 7, 10:58 a.m.

We've had a pretty good airing of the issues going. The last two posts don't further a thing. Some of the people who wrote comments on this thread have been thinking about the SR 520 project, the tunnel project, I-5, the state of I-90 past Bellevue, mass transit and commercial ...

Posted Thu, May 5, 3:02 p.m.

I have to agree with terra_firma about the public hearings. I was there, too, and they have been just a show. I've never seen a sign that they've changed either WSDOT's or Richard Conlin's mind. A plan 14 years in the making might need to be rethought in light of ...

Posted Thu, May 5, 11:02 a.m.

The few! Cameron, you're the isolationist. WSDOT is about to embark on two mammoth projects, central northeast and central southwest, that will gridlock Seattle downtown and in most of its urban neighborhoods. The waterfront project and the SR 520 project aren't going on in a vacuum. Both will affect traffic ...

Posted Wed, May 4, 11:48 a.m.

I didn't quite follow the sentence about "the Council, busy filling the vacuum created by this mayor, is also trying to find ways to get more time . . ." What is the vacuum? Are you referrig to the shifting to the departments of responsibility to come up with proposals ...

Posted Thu, Apr 28, 3:32 p.m.

Jim,I think you are right.I have attended a lot of public hearings and always get the impression that they are just pro forma. This morning I attended via video broadcast a meeting of the Executive Board of the Puget Sound Regional Council(PSRC). The chief agenda item was Stage 1, as ...

Posted Mon, Apr 25, 3:50 p.m.

If you can't get the link Benjamin posted to work (I couldn't), it's worthwhile typing it into your browser's address line. I'm reading the history of the R.H. Thomson right now, and it's fascinating in light of today's tunnel and SR 520 project disputes.

Posted Mon, Apr 25, 11:57 a.m.

Bubbie, we NIMBYs did request a signature bridge. In fact, consultants WSDOT brought to town to negotiate with the historic neighborhoods said that the present Portage Bay Bridge was the ugliest bridge they had ever seen and promised they could get the city a signature Portage Bay Bridge. No go. ...

Posted Fri, Apr 8, 9:28 a.m.

"Orwellian word games to avoid true compliance with SEPA" speaks concisely to my experience with WSDOT consultants during section 106 (of the National Historic Preservation Act) review of the mammoth SR 520 project. The six Seattle communities along the bridges--not just Montlake--have trudged through draft after draft after draft of ...

Posted Wed, Mar 2, 10:34 a.m.

Let's not forget the SR 520 expansion coming up. Talk about out of scale. This mammoth project looms over the recently listed (National Register and Washington Heritage Register, 2009) Roanoke Park Historic District, the eligible Montlake Historic District, and many other historic properties along the SR 520 bridges, including the ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 11:57 a.m.

As if an EIS, a DEIS, an SDEIS, or an FEIS were not itself a disgraceful spin document. By the time the writers of such documents have denigrated the local circumstances to make them look bad already and buried the local adverse effects in statewide net loss figures, you wouldn't ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 11:19 a.m.

Huh? What an odd last paragraph. It seems to have been written by someone other than the author of the article and just tacked on.

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 10:54 a.m.

How true, Luiga. The new buildings in South Lake Union stand in a sea of pavement. We'll need jackhammers to make some room for trees and shrubs.

Posted Fri, Aug 13, 9:18 a.m.

Provoking. Do note that the trend toward backyard cottages while charming and useful is one more wooden peg in the coffin of our canopy. Ah, mixed metaphors. What I mean to say is that many a mature backyard shade tree will come down to make room in the backyard. The ...

Posted Thu, Jul 29, 9:52 a.m.

I also thought that having "buildings come right up to the sidewalks" was an idea that had long ago been discredited. It tends to create windy canyons of tall buildings with no sunlight and feelings of constriction. That's why I am puzzled that our Department of Planning and Development continues ...

Posted Thu, Jul 29, 9:38 a.m.

Dramatic films at WSDOT's website showing the breakup of the 520 floating bridge in a high wind and claiming it could happen anytime were also intended to scare the public into approval of whatever design WSDOT advanced for a huge replacement project. Now, instead of addressing the vulnerable floating bridge ...

Posted Wed, Jul 28, 11:13 a.m.

Walking around the new South Lake Union on two recent Seattle Architectural Foundation tours, I was struck be the absence of green around all the new development. Concrete pads under buildings adjoin paved alleys with no green space between. Some buildings feature a little green "art," but most of them ...

Posted Sun, Jun 27, 11:24 a.m.

Speaking of software company history of the 90s, Nathan Myhrvold while at Microsft wrote a famous memo called "Roadkill on the Information Highway" that expressed concern about the ephermeral nature of so much content published on the Internet. The "(Accessed xx/xx/xxxx.)" appearing at the end of footnotes for Internet-acquired material, ...

Posted Mon, Jun 21, 10:58 a.m.

"Fascinating stuff is buried in the paperwork, reports, assessments, and EIS's." Fascintating stuff is not buried in EISes produced by the state highway department. Their EISes tend to contain fantasies that mega-projects will not harm the cultural resources that are acknowledged, and many cultural resources are minimized or not mentioned ...

Posted Fri, Jun 18, 10:10 a.m.

The "we know what you are against, but not what are you for" complaint is bogus when we consider the familiar consequences of the business as usual mega-projects the mayor was presumably elected by a majority to question. The need to find creative solutions that are not so dependent on ...

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 9:27 a.m.

Nope, Jack Horton!

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 9:26 a.m.

And what a name, if I understand correctly--Jack Lightfoot!

Posted Thu, Mar 4, 9:35 a.m.

Wow!

Posted Tue, Mar 2, 11:25 a.m.

It's gratifying to see reason begin to prevail in these posts. The discussion has moved from crude impatience to real consideration of 21st-century issues, which any transportation project we undertake needs to accommodate. The arguments ad hominem, charges of NIMBY, get old. The people in the communities adjacent to the ...

Posted Mon, Mar 1, 12:16 p.m.

This is wonderful news. So many of us have thought that the demise of print newspapers and budget for it meant the end of investigative reporting. I wish there were more money for it. I'm so glad to know of the existence of Investigative West and of an investigatie reporting ...

Posted Fri, Feb 26, 11:13 a.m.

I agree with Steve. The most frustrating aspect of the Supplemental Draft Envionmnetal Impact Statement (SDEIS) we're wading through is what it doesn't cover. A+ was the favored option, but the SDEIS covers the old A, K, and L options with short paragraphs devoted to suboptions, one of which is ...

Posted Thu, Feb 25, 12:50 p.m.

"Astonishingly cheeky"? "Deeply weird"? That's a good characterization of Microsoft's big push. The mayor's letter politely and appropriately differed with Microsoft management's endorsement of an out-of-scale, out-of-touch, ugly 1950s design that could ruin much of Seattle's scenic beauty and not just Montlake but six or seven residential communities. I read ...

Posted Fri, Feb 5, 1:49 p.m.

Montlake takes a lot of heat for objecting to more of same. Montlake isn't alone in its objection. The other neighborhoods adjacent to 520 object as well, and so should the Arboretum, the Friends of Olmsted Parks, and the University, but then again their proponents don't live beside the freeway. ...

Posted Thu, Feb 4, 12:44 p.m.

Knute, why don't you continue that column you wrote for WL&P; for Crosscut, which needs substantive coverage of local, county, and state politics. I hope Crosscut will recruit some of the other WL&P; writers, too. Erin O'Connor

Posted Thu, Jan 28, 2:53 p.m.

What does the DPD think of the new state Senate bill to take permitting authority from the City for any state project with a price tag over $1 billion? Thanks. Erin O'Connor

Posted Thu, Jan 28, 1:32 p.m.

Civil Engineer Paananan's WSDOT is about to erect a double-decker SR 520 bridge over Lake Washington that looks mighty like the Viaduct, except that with noise walls atop, it's even uglier. What progress--from our waterfront to our inland bays and lake. Erin O'Connor

Posted Thu, Jan 28, 1:23 p.m.

The lecture was so good, and the slides were even better. The most striking to this reader and her friend, after a photoshopped Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses perched on a bright orange steel beam, was a slide of the Robert Moses freeway leading up to the Verrazano Bridge. Massive, ...

Posted Wed, Dec 2, 1:43 p.m.

RE the governor's shortfall: Amazing! The Legislative Workgroup for the SR 520 Bridge Replacement and HOV project--that's just one part of what WSDOT is now calling the SR 520 Program, the part that runs from I-5 to Medina--just endorsed a seven-lane wide, 30-feet high design that will cost exactly half ...

Posted Wed, Dec 2, 1:36 p.m.

RE the governor's shortfall: Amazing! The Legislative Workgroup for the SR 520 Bridge Replacement and HOV project--that's just one part of what WSDOT is now calling the SR 520 Program, the part that runs from I-5 to Medina--just endorsed a seven-lane wide, 30-feet high design that will cost exactly half ...

Posted Mon, Nov 24, 12:17 p.m.

Wher did the NYT writer stay this time? Last time he stayed at the B&B; on Harvard Avenue East, called the Musical House, and had high praise for accommodation and the wonderful breakfast. (Disclaimer: The Musical House is run by my friend, neighbor, and excellent cook Albert Holdridge and his ...

Posted Tue, Nov 4, 12:59 p.m.

What was the story with respect to that 4500 investors? Isn't that unusual? Who was the architect? Walt Crowley says it was W. E Dwyer (in National Trust Guide, Seattle, 88). With all the name architects in town, how did that come about? What was the story there?