Search Results for: viaduct

If you think some folks have been too alarmist over the news that the Alaskan Way Viaduct has “settled” a mere 1.2 inches in the vicinity of the Bertha rescue pit, then you’re probably not familiar with the Viaduct’s prior history of settling. Several segments of the aging freeway have long been settling unevenly—specifically, the structure is slowly toppling over onto the waterfront. The more the freeway leans, the more its high center of gravity accelerates the process—and the more vulnerable it becomes to even a modest quake.

Which is why SDOT and WSDOT need to focus now on engineering the Viaduct’s surface street replacement. Really.

The main selling point of a deep bore tunnel was that it would allow the Viaduct to remain open to traffic while its replacement was built, but the long delay, future uncertainty, and recent ground settling leaves that objective in doubt. The Viaduct could be deemed unsafe at any moment. So since we’re going to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with surface streets eventually, it would be prudent to finalize the design, engineering, and logistics as quickly as possible. That way, whatever becomes of Bertha, we would be prepared to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with surface streets with the least disruption we can manage.

Seriously. Whatever the odds, the sudden and permanent closure of the Viaduct is not a far-fetched scenario. And we would be crazy not to prepare for it.

Perhaps they’ll manage to get Bertha moving again, and perhaps the Viaduct will survive the tunnel’s construction. That would be great. But the prudent course of action would be to assume that it won’t, and move forward with its surface replacement with all due speed.

As a critic of the Highway 99 tunnel, but one who thinks we’re probably stuck with it, I’m still hoping that Bertha gets itself* up and running again. I really do hope that whatever solution to the latest problem turns out to be the last fix. I’d also like to be more sure that Seattle won’t be on the hook for any cost overruns.**

Still, with this new revelation that the Viaduct is sinking, and with Bertha stuck for who knows how long, I say don’t wait on the tunnel to take it down. It’s — as ever — disconnecting the city from the waterfront. The main goal of zooming cars at unsafe speeds through a city their occupants hate has already diminished considerably during construction, without many of the traffic problems we were promised.

Yet, on the ground in the waterfront, it’s still not pedestrian or bike friendly. The bike/walking path below the Viaduct south of Yesler gets used by cars as a turning lane, and various parts of the waterfront sidewalk being blocked off at random push pedestrians into the road. These are normal side effects of construction, but they don’t have to be made worse by the delays to the tunnel.

If traffic is bad, then either mitigate it with more transit and better maintenance of surface streets or, I don’t know, get Bertha fixed. In the mean time, the people who use the waterfront on a regular basis don’t need to be in limbo.

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I agree with the Seattle Times editorial board: “It’s time to end the pingpong match over the viaduct tunnel project.”

It’s much too dangerous to play a pingpong match over or under the earthquake damaged Alaska Way Viaduct. And who the hell schedules a sporting event in the middle of a freeway? What were the organizers thinking?

But once I got past that headline, the Times editors lost me:

To outsiders looking in, Seattle leaders have nothing better to do than play political pingpong on the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Oh. Political pingpong.  I get it now. It was a metaphor.

But perhaps I was just distracted by the ed board’s mysterious claim of psychic powers:

State lawmakers approved the project, the governor favors it and the region — save for one activist mayor — considers the matter settled.

Hear that? Except for Mayor Mike McGinn, the entire region favors the Big Bore tunnel, even me! Wow. The Times must know me better than I do. Amazing.

Okay, all snark aside, there is a germ of an idea in the Times editorial that could be promoted to help settle this dispute — assuming the Times is at least as interested in ending this pingpong match as it is in flinging the paddles at the Mayor — and it has to do with the controversial cost overrun provision:

At issue for the mayor is language in state legislation that attempts to lay potential cost overruns on an ill-defined group of Seattle area property owners who benefit from the project. McGinn seeks language in contracts with the state that delay the project until the Legislature changes the legislation.

The Legislature will not reconvene for certain until January and is not inclined to eliminate that verbiage because the governor, city attorney and most of the City Council consider it unenforceable.

[…] It is interesting to note the state legislation attempting to take the unprecedented move of dumping overruns on a city through which one of its roadway passes never mentions the city of Seattle as a corporate entity. That more than suggests it would be difficult to sue the city.

The Times goes on to suggest that if Mayor McGinn won’t sign the contracts, then Seattle City Council president Richard Conlin should sign them instead, despite the fact that it’s not at all clear he has that authority. But as long as the Times is demanding that the Council take the initiative in the ed board’s campaign to embarrass and diminish the Mayor, why not instead use the cost overrun issue to promote unity?

Why not suggest that the Council pass a motion rejecting the cost overrun provision, declaring that it will not authorize city funds to be used for that purpose, and will not authorize any taxes or taxing districts to collect such funds? If the provision is really as illegal and unenforceable as the Times suggests, then why not have the Council back up the Mayor on this issue, and allow our city government to speak with one voice in defense of city taxpayers? I mean, if the provision is as meaningless as the Times suggests, why not move this thing forward by allowing the Mayor to save a little face?

Of course, if Mayor McGinn still refuses to sign the contracts, then he’ll have backed himself into a corner. But he’s not there yet, so the smart political thing to do would be to create a scenario in which everybody can be a winner.

Unfortunately, I’m guessing the Times’ politics are about as smart as its headlines.

I’m wondering if now might not be the perfect time for the state Legislature to attempt to repeal Washington’s Defense Of Marriage Act, since political buggery appears to be all the rage in Olympia these days:

A bill co-sponsored by Senate transportation chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) and North Seattle Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-46) would severely restrict Seattle’s say in major state construction projects like reconstruction of the SR-520 bridge and the deep-bore tunnel along the waterfront.

Essentially, the bill would exempt the state department of transportation from the requirement to get local government permits to build state highway projects—a clear swipe at Seattle, which has two major state highway projects—the waterfront tunnel and replacement of the 520 bridge over Lake Washington—in the pipeline.

Specifically, the state transportation department would no longer be “required to obtain local government master use permits, conditional use permits, special use permits, or other similar local zoning permits for staging areas related to the construction of state highways.”

Additionally, under the bill, any street use permits obtained by the state for major state road projects (i.e., the tunnel) would be “presumed approved as submitted” and could only be appealed in superior court, not to a local hearing examiner “or through any other local appeal process.”

So, let me get this straight. Under this proposed legislation, and last year’s measure funding the deep bore tunnel, the state could build whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants, without any input or say from local governments, and then (here’s the punchline…) stick local taxpayers with any cost overruns.

Or, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we just give Rep. Doug Eriksen the billions of dollars the state has reserved for replacing the 520 bridge and the Viaduct, so that he can spread the money around throughout the rest of Washington like he says he wants to do, while at the same time we eliminate the state gas and MVET taxes altogether, and hand off such authority to cities and counties to levy these taxes locally, if they so choose, to pay for the local transit and transportation projects they want?

That way, the rest of the state won’t have to worry about Seattle stealing its money, while we in the Seattle area can address our own infrastructure needs without worrying about the rest of the state repeatedly fucking us up the ass.

I’m just sayin’.

When I wrote this morning about a House amendment that sticks Seattle taxpayers with potential cost overruns from the risky Big Bore tunnel, I suggested that “now is the time for Mayor Nickels and other local political leaders to send a clear message to Olympia” that if they change the deal, the deal is off.

Well, I didn’t hear what I wanted from Mayor Nickels, but we did get a quick response from challenger Mike McGinn, who in a press release today promised exactly that:

Michael McGinn today announced his opposition to the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement plan emerging in the Legislature.

“This deal keeps getting worse”, said McGinn. “As Mayor, I will not authorize the use of city tax dollars for the tunnel or associated cost overruns.”

In highlighting the riskiness of this project, McGinn points out that a bored tunnel of this size, 54 feet in diameter, has never been built anywhere in the world.  And that’s a financial risk that Seattle’s taxpayers, who voted overwhelmingly against a tunnel, should not be expected to bear on their own.

Consensus reached.

Get those ballots postmarked by the 13th (this Tuesday), people!

Governor Gregoire and WashDOT don’t care how you vote in this election, but I sure as hell do. After all, the Olympia Freeway Pimps are pro-freeway. Don’t listen to them.

Don’t listen to Bruce Carter of the Municipal League of King County. His idea to vote a ‘blank ballot’ is bullshit. The best way to “rethink” this project (as the Muni League wants) is to vote No-No.

Instead, listen to Ron Sims:

“[The Surface plus Transit option], which could potentially open up the waterfront while providing an affordable, environmentally friendly means of moving traffic through the city, has not yet been studied. The surface option that WSDOT briefly examined contained no transit element and bears little resemblance to what surface-transit advocates are proposing.

“If we are going to position Seattle as a vibrant world-class 21st century metropolis, we need to proceed with boldness and vision. We need to think beyond present-day categories, with an eye to the long-term. How we decide on the Viaduct today is a profound test of our commitment to a better, more enlightened future. The right sort of transit-friendly surface proposal could meet that test.”

This Tuesday, tell Olympia that you want better options.

In the comment thread on an earlier post, Steven writes:

Somebody around these parts had a pretty good suggestion a while back. If you want to see what the surface option looks like, let’s close the Viaduct for a month and see how traffic responds. Then let’s vote.

The implication being that with the Viaduct closed, I-5 will slow to a permanent crawl while the city’s side streets are choked with drivers seeking alternative routes.

Of course, that’s a completely bullshit analysis, no matter how many times people repeat it. First of all, the surface-plus-transit option is not the do-nothing option — it is the s u r f a c e – p l u s – t r a n s i t option, which means it includes a number of surface and transit improvements to move additional vehicles and people through our existing surface streets. Improvements which would presumably include, um, a new, multilane boulevard in the shadow of the existing Viaduct.

Replacing the Viaduct with $2.4 billion worth of transit and street improvements is not the same thing as simply closing it. Would the surface-plus-transit option, whatever it entails, match the vehicle capacity of the existing elevated structure? Probably not. But it would provide a helluva lot more capacity than doing nothing.

The second problem with Steven’s thought experiment is that one month isn’t nearly enough time for local commuters to change their driving habits, especially knowing that things will return to normal after 30-days. But faced with years of Viaduct closure and disruption, well, that’s when all that seemingly superfluous grey matter tucked behind our foreheads really starts to kick into gear. It may not seem like it while they’re blindly cutting you off in traffic, but the average driver is smarter than your average bear, and will eventually adjust their driving habits to fit the new reality. Just as new freeway capacity attracts more traffic, reducing capacity will discourage some trips and reroute others.

So, how long would it really take to conduct Steven’s thought experiment under objective, real-world conditions? Well, according to WSDOT, if we end up rebuilding a new elevated structure, SR 99 will be shut down in whole or in part for up to 10 to 12 years.

That’s right, drivers will be forced to live without the existing capacity for over a decade.

During this decade of disruption, a Downtown Seattle Association comparison matrix shows that SR 99 would close nights and weekends for 5 to 7 years, and be reduced to two-lanes in each direction for 7 years. Various southbound segments will be closed for periods of time ranging from 6 to 21 months, while the entire structure would be closed in both directions for as long as 9 months.

And that’s if everything goes according to plan.

So when surface critics talk about how Seattle’s economy is going to completely collapse if we lose the Viaduct’s current vehicle capacity, I wonder how they think we’re going to survive the decade or so it will take to rebuild it?

Last night on my show, former Governor Gary Locke unequivocally stated his opposition to building another elevated freeway to replace the aging Alaska Way Viaduct… and he said former Governors Rosellini, Evans and Lowry were firmly with him. (Gov. Spellman is apparently neutral.) Gov. Locke went on to say that while he enthusiastically supports the current “Tunnel-Lite” proposal, and believes the financing is in place to build it, he would back a surface-plus-transit option over a rebuild should voters reject the tunnel on March 13. The overwhelming priority for voters in the upcoming special election, Gov. Locke repeated several times, is to vote “No” on the rebuild.

Personally, I tend to agree with King County Executive Ron Sims, who last week on my show stated that Mayor Nickels’ tunnel proposal is politically dead. But what do we know? It is very clear that Gov. Chris Gregoire, Speaker of the House Frank Chopp and a handful of vocal legislators adamantly oppose a tunnel, and it is hard to imagine them backing down. But the pro-tunnel forces contain some heavy hitters and experienced politicos, so it may be too early to count them out.

What I find most striking though is the growing number of high profile political, civic and business leaders who are willing to publicly lend their credibility towards the notion that a surface-plus-transit option is not only a reasonable and serious alternative, but preferable to a rebuild. The pro-rebuild/anti-surface camp tends to brush off surface supporters as a bunch of crazy, car-hating hippies or something like that, but that’s a pretty dismissive way to describe Gov. Locke, Executive Sims and a substantial chunk of our political and business establishment. While wealthy developer (and deadbeat) Martin Selig may support a rebuild/retrofit campaign, Gov. Locke insists that many of Selig’s tenants do not. Indeed, Gov. Locke claims that the majority of businesses who would be most impacted by waterfront redevelopment are willing to tax themselves hundreds of millions of dollars via a special improvement district to help pay the cost of a tunnel. (A funding mechanism I first floated way back in November of 2005.)

I fully understand that some of our state Democratic leaders see a political upside to shoving another elevated structure down our throats: that voters elsewhere in the state will view them as finally standing up to us Seattle bullies. But I sincerely hope that such a base (and ultimately self-defeating) political motivation does not overwhelm the decision-making process should Seattle voters reject a rebuild on March 13. The final decision shouldn’t pivot on a political battle between Seattle and Olympia or between Nickels and Gregoire; it should be based on what is best for Seattle and the state. But for such an objective debate to occur, the pro-rebuild forces must actively disown the politically convenient misconception that Seattle is somehow demanding the rest of the state to pay for its “gold-plated tunnel.”

The state has committed $2.8 billion towards replacing the Viaduct. Assuming WSDOT’s cost estimates are correct, that is exactly what it will cost state taxpayers to build a new elevated structure. But if the city chooses the more expensive tunnel alternative, nobody expects the state to cough up additional funds. The tunnel will not cost state taxpayers a dime more than the $2.8 billion already committed… indeed, if the city opts for a cheaper surface-plus-transit alternative, it will save state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars!

I find it ironic that there are state legislators — Democrats no less — who are willing to pass a state law requiring Seattle voters to tax themselves to build a new Sonics arena we’ve already rejected at the polls… while at the same time refusing to let us tax ourselves to build the Viaduct replacement alternative the city wants.

This is our city, this is our waterfront, and the Viaduct overwhelmingly carries our traffic. If we choose to raise the money locally to pay the difference between a rebuild and a tunnel, that should be our choice. And if instead we opt to let go of our 1950’s mentality and re-imagine the way we address transportation and transit issues, we should be given every opportunity to make the case that a less expensive, less auto-centric surface-plus-transit alternative is the right solution for our city.

House Speaker Frank Chopp has some funny ideas. The funniest? Frank wants to cap part of the span of the new Viaduct. What does this mean, exactly?

That great Viaduct view you see while driving north into town? Gone. Instead of a great vista, you get concrete and shadow. If you want a sneak preview, try driving south on the Viaduct now!

Second, putting another level on the Viaduct will make it even taller and more obtrusive than it is now! With a new Viaduct projected to be as much as 50 percent wider, a third deck will make it humongous.

So what goes on that third deck? Plans are for a new park, accessible by skybridge from adjacent buildings. Considering new skybridges on view corridors are against city code, that seems unlikely. Also, would real estate owners warm to the idea of thousands of people a year trudging through their lobbies to access the park? What’s more, it could even exceed the Aurora Bridge in what it’s known for…

Welcome, one and all, to Frank Chopp’s exciting new “Suicide Park”!

The same people who want you to turn the music down! Josh Feit explains.

Check out the No Tunnel Alliance blog. Look at who is pushing for the rebuild, and whose support they tout: Helen Sommers, Joni Balter (and the Seattle Times editorial page), Joel Connelly, the Washington State Alliance for Retired Americans, Nick Licata …

It is a veritable who’s who of Seattle oldsters.

The rebuild is endorsed by the WSARA? (Their slogan: “We’d like some deli and a comfortable chair.”) I think retired people are great, don’t get me wrong. They still use checks, drive the speed limit, and their houses smell like medicine. But…

Of course, if we take their advice and rebuild this monstrosity, most of these folks won’t be around in 25 years to explain why the city made such a dumb mistake.

A friend who works in politics once told me a story about a room full of folks listening to a transportation planner talk about the region’s future. The speaker says, “Now, most of this won’t come to fruition until the year 2015…”

An old man rose to his feet, and slowly walked out of the meeting. I guess he figured he’d be dead by then.

The question of how to replace the viaduct is too important to be left only to those who’ll never see it’s consequences.

State and city leaders met for hours yesterday to decide the fate of the Alaska Way Viaduct, but couldn’t come to a decision. That’s pretty much because city leaders refuse to accept the rebuild option, and state leaders refuse to pay for anything but that. But as recalcitrant as the participants were, one new idea did emerge from the meeting:

The joint statement says there are two options, build an elevated replacement or, “Reprogram funding to the 520 replacement project.”

I think this was supposed to be a threat or something, the implication being that the city risks losing $2.2 billion in state funds if we don’t budge on a rebuild. But if the governor does repurpose the Viaduct money towards the 520 bridge, it could actually end up saving local taxpayers a ton of money.

Stick with me on this one.

The region needs to replace both the Viaduct and the 520 bridge, but the total amount of money thus far committed by the state towards construction of the two projects combined is less than the projected cost of the 520 bridge alone. Who makes up the difference? Local residents, via various city, county, port and RTID taxes. And possibly tolls.

If the governor forces through a rebuild, not only would Seattle get a double-decker freeway it doesn’t want, but we’d be forced to tax ourselves to pay the difference between the state share and the total cost. Talk about adding insult to injury. And then we’d also have to tax ourselves to make up the difference between the cost of a new 520 bridge and the state share of the project.

But… if Governor Gregoire were to repurpose the state’s Viaduct commitment towards the 520 bridge, local taxpayers would pay much less for their share of that project. And then freed from the strings that come with state money, Seattle could choose a surface-plus-transit alternative that costs much less money than a Viaduct rebuild.

Think about it. The state share of the cost of the two projects remains the same, but the combined cost is substantially slashed. This saves local taxpayers money.

As far as I’m concerned, this might be the perfect political compromise. The state refuses to pay for any Viaduct replacement that reduces capacity. Fine. Don’t. We’ll use our own money to tear it down and do what we want with it. It is our city afterall. But as long as the state keeps the money in the region, local taxpayers don’t actually lose a dime. Indeed, by choosing a less expensive surface alternative, we actually save money.

Sounds to me like a win-win situation.

As a Belltown resident, I’ve got a great view of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. I should, because the thing is fifty feet outside my window! Fifty feet! When I wake up every morning, I look out my window at the rush hour traffic whizzing by on the Eisenhower-era structure. The Viaduct is not some political abstraction for me.

There’s a debate about how to replace the Viaduct. Some folks want a tunnel, or a rebuild, or what is being called the “roads and transit” option. Lots of people are against the tunnel option, but not all of those folks are for another viaduct. A new viaduct will be at least thirty percent wider than the current viaduct, thanks to modern DOT guidelines. Maybe it made sense in the 1950’s to build freeways through the city’s core, but it sure seems like a bad idea these days.

Do we need to replace the car capacity? Not necessarily. Plenty of car trips made on the viaduct could be made on arterial streets. We could mitigate the West Seattle to Downtown and Ballard to Downtown routes. Most Viaduct users make local trips. Is it cost effective to spend billions on a mile of roadway? It may not matter what a Seattle guy like me thinks, as these big decisions are made in Olympia. If only Seattle had an ace up their sleeve, a power broker with influence to spare, someone to push for a progressive solution. Someone like…

Frank Chopp!

He’s the ‘big dog’ of the Democrats, and he’s against a tunnel. He’s corralled a bunch of Democrats into signing a letter stating the tunnel option is a bad idea. Big shots like Frank can stop things, but what plan would Chopp actually go for?

Here’s a snippet of The Stranger’s Josh Feit’s interview with Rep. Frank Chopp.

Then Chopp surprised me again: “That leaves two alternatives that I’m very open to.” He started sketching again, drawing two options he felt hadn’t been given a fair hearing. “One is the surface transit option,” he said. “I’m okay with this if it’ll work.”

By “work” I asked him if that meant “maintain capacity”… and he said simply: “I don’t know if the surface transit option is good or bad, but I’m open about it. If that’s what we end up with, I’m happy.”

Others aren’t so happy. Some are attacking the People’s Waterfront Coalition, the folks behind the plan, saying the idea is non-starter. Then again, lots of people thought the R. H. Thompson Expressway was absolutely necessary for Seattle’s economic health. You can see what happened to that proposed freeway when you drive through the Arboretum. (Look for the freeway ramps that just… end.) The Washington State Department of Transportation is a highway building bureaucracy. That’s their job. Where they see traffic problems, they see highway solutions.

As the tunnel option seems unaffordable, and the elevated option unpalatable, a truly progressive solution to the Viaduct problem is at hand. Instead of spending millions studying the same old auto-centric ideas, I hope the WA-DOT can think about moving people, not just cars. That would make this Belltown resident sleep more soundly.

I’ve pretty much pooh-poohed Viaduct retrofit proposals, mostly because WSDOT engineers had insisted it wasn’t a cost effective option. No doubt we can extend the life of the Viaduct — we’re doing that now — but at some point it just becomes safer, less disruptive and cheaper over the long haul to replace the thing than it is to constantly repair it. Damn entropy.

Now comes a new WSDOT report that suggests a retrofit might be possible, though it doesn’t yet project the cost or the serviceable years added to the life-span of the structure.

Does this change my assessment of the various options? Well, sorta.

Money aside, there’s absolutely no doubt that given the choice between a tunnel and a bigger, wider rebuild, the former is by far the preferable option… and anybody who tells you different is either lying or crazy. The current Viaduct is a gaping wound through our city, a hunk of crumbling concrete that physically separates the downtown from the waterfront. It is a dirty, noisy, ugly monstrosity that lowers property values and offends both the physical and the aesthetic senses. It is an embarrassment to Seattle’s aspiration towards being a world-class city.

One can forgive city planners a half-century ago. I mean… who knew? But absent the existing Viaduct from our current city landscape, nobody in their right mind would ever seriously propose building one today. Such a proposal would be a nonstarter.

The only serious argument against a tunnel is the cost — at least an extra couple billion over the $2.8 billion estimate for a rebuild. But even that calculation is shortsighted. The tunnel option would dramatically increase property values in the area, and with more than double the serviceable life-span of an elevated replacement, a tunnel could end up saving future generations many billions of dollars in early replacement costs.

If we can afford the tunnel — if we can find the extra money to pay for it — we would be nuts to pass up this once in a half-century opportunity to reshape our downtown and waterfront for the better.

Which brings us back to the retrofit option.

If in fact we can safely extend the life of the Viaduct for another couple decades at the relatively bargain-basement price of say, only a billion dollars… given our region’s unique consensus-driven political culture, perhaps such a half-assed stopgap measure is the best solution we can come up with at this time. It would not only be less expensive, but less disruptive, as a retrofit is presumably the only option that doesn’t require tearing the damn thing down.

And best of all, it would give us the twenty years we obviously need to make a major decision in this town.

With a retrofit temporarily preventing the Viaduct from toppling over onto the waterfront, we would now have several years to develop complete engineering plans for the tunnel, rebuild and no-build options, which can then be put out for a public referendum by 2011… and again in 2013, and 2017. It’ll take a few more years to get the contract bids in place before voters approve the final project in 2021 and again in 2023, before repealing it only one year later in 2024. At which point the Legislature will finally step in and override the will of the voters. At this rate we can expect construction to begin sometime shortly before we’re all eaten by the Morlocks.

I know that’s not much of an endorsement of the retrofit option, but if the perfect is the enemy of the good, that’s about as good as you’re going to get from me.

Head on over to BetterDonkey.org to watch their new No on I-912 video… great concept, great script, great production values… great video. Really.

Just make sure to buy your viaduct tape at a true blue retailer like Costco.