Search Results for: viaduct

I just have to go back to yesterday’s article in the Seattle Times: “Who’ll be to blame if viaduct, 520 bridge collapse?” Some of the comments are truly stunning.

Gov. Christine Gregoire said state engineers told her the viaduct probably would have collapsed if the 2001 Nisqually earthquake had lasted 15 more seconds.

Since that quake, the viaduct has shifted more than four inches. If it moves much more, the state plans to shut it down.

Um… just to be clear, by “shifted more than four inches”, what they mean is that it has started tipping over towards the waterfront by four inches. And the tilt is increasing at a rate of about an inch a year.

“Our best advice is to get off it five minutes before the next quake,” state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Linda Mullen quipped earlier this year.

Laughing yet?

“It’s not a little problem, it’s not a maybe problem,” said Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington. “The viaduct is just a question of when. If you’re on the lower level when it goes down, you’re dead.”

I’m guessing being on the top deck ain’t too safe either.

Gregoire says every political leader should be losing sleep over the state’s long-neglected bridges. “There’s no question in my mind

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I keep searching for clues as to “Where’s Rossi?” on Initiative 912… but according to Andrew Garber in this morning’s Seattle Times, Dino is clueless:

The campaign, in its polling, found that former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi could have a significant impact on how people vote if he endorsed or opposed I-912. Rossi said recently he has no position.

No position? Gimme a break. This is a guy who wants to be governor, and he has no position on an initiative that will determine the ability of the state to start addressing its massive transportation infrastructure needs? He has no position on a transportation package that passed both houses of the Legislature with a bipartisan majority, and which is strongly backed by his longtime patrons in the business community? He has no position on an initiative that has been sold by its backers as revenge for Rossi’s loss at the polls and in the courts?

Actually, what he told Garber was that he was not going to take a position, not that he didn’t actually have one, and I really have trouble believing that my friends in the MSM will let Rossi get away with this prevarication. I-912 rode Rossi’s election contest trial onto the ballot, and if he wants to be taken seriously in WA politics, he has an obligation to take a public stance, one way or the other.

In a companion piece, Ralph Thomas raises the ominous question of “Who’ll be to blame if viaduct, 520 bridge collapse?”

Politicians, clerics and ethicists agree we have a moral obligation to fix infrastructure such as highways and levees that we know pose a risk to the public.

But where does that obligation lie?

Well, if I-912 passes due to Rossi’s silence, and the resulting delays result in a catastrophic collapse, I know one person I’m going blame: Dino Rossi.

A few months back I was on the Kirby Wilbur Show talking about Initiative 912, and Kirby got a little peeved when I brought up the safety issue, inferring that I was accusing I-912 supporters of being “killers”. In fact, I was implying that our roads are killers, and that the transportation bill I-912 wants to kill would fix some of our most dangerous intersections, interchanges and stretches of highway.

This point was tragically driven home on Friday, by a three car accident on I-5 near the Highway 534 overpass, that killed two people, including a 10-year-old boy. The accident occurred when two southbound cars collided, forcing Susan McGaughran’s GMC Yukon to carom across the grass median and into the northbound lanes, where it was struck by the Ng family’s Toyota Avalon. McGaughran and 10-year-old Alexander Ng were killed in the wreck; Alexander’s father, mother, and six-year-old brother remain hospitalized.

But as the Skagit Valley Herald reported on Sunday, this accident could have been prevented.

Following the crash, state transportation officials were already preparing to make improvements to the stretch of I-5 where the crash occurred.

Stan Suchan, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the department plans to install a cable barrier this fall between the north and southbound lanes on the stretch, just south of Mount Vernon.

The $30 million project will be paid for out of the 3-cent gas tax increase, Suchan said. The barriers also are slated to be installed on several other sections of Washington roadways, all of which were selected based on crash data.

It is the only project that state transportation officials haven’t put on hold because of Initiative 912, which is a movement to repeal the increase, Suchan said.

The cables barrier would absorb the force of a crash and prevent vehicles from crossing into oncoming traffic during a collision, Suchan said. Ideally, after striking a cable barrier, a car would stop in the grass median and not ricochet into traffic. “Our goal is to protect driver as much as we can,” Suchan said.

The projects in the transportation bill that I-912 would kill were prioritized by safety, and the cable barrier along this stretch of I-5 is just one of hundreds of similar safety improvement projects scattered throughout the state. If we repeal the gas tax, and these projects are delayed or canceled, people will die. The crash data tells us that, and this tragic accident bears out the data’s predictions. That is a fact.

I-912’s backers claim that the transportation bill doesn’t do enough to solve congestion… that is doesn’t pour enough new concrete. But I believe that if most voters understood what the gas tax increase actually pays for, they’d agree that it’s the transportation package that has its priorities straight, not Kirby and John and the rest of the message senders, who ask voters to sacrifice desperately needed maintenance and improvements for the sake of sticking it to Gov. Gregoire and the Democrat controlled Legislature.

The former-residents of New Orleans — now refugees from our nation’s worst man-made disaster — have learned the cost in lives and dollars of failing to adequately invest in public infrastructure; surely, had the levees been higher and stronger, the surrounding wetlands restored, and the barrier islands rebuilt, then the cataclysmic flooding could have been avoided. If we choose to ignore this lesson, perhaps the Big One won’t strike… perhaps the 520 bridge won’t sink into the lake, nor the Alaska Way Viaduct topple over onto the waterfront and its aging seawall, causing hundreds of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in damage.

But even if Seattle “dodges the bullet” — as New Orleans briefly thought it had before the floodwaters rose — hundreds of our fellow citizens will not be so lucky, daily falling victim to dangerous roadways that could have… should have been fixed before they tragically claimed more lives, like those of Susan McGaughran and ten-year-old Alexander Ng.

If the public understands exactly what the gas tax pays for, and how the transportation package was expressly prioritized to save lives, then I believe that I-912 will fail. In his column today, the P-I’s Joel Connelly points out that passage is no sure bet, but seems to pin his hope for defeat on business and civic leaders educating the public. But if the public is truly to be educated during the eight short weeks before the election, then the media must do its job too. Levi Pulkkinen and Marta Murvosh of the the Skagit Valley Herald should be commended for doing the kind of journalism often missing from some of our more prestigious newspapers… for digging into the details and reporting Friday’s fatal accident not just as a human tragedy, but as the predictable consequence of how we choose to spend our transportation dollars.

With big oil pumping out record profits, and gasoline prices over $3.00, I ask you: is Alexander Ng’s life — or that of hundreds of others who will die in similar accidents — worth 9 cents a gallon? That is the question that should be facing voters this November, if only they understand what is truly at stake.

Kirby and John want to use I-912 to “send a message”… but repealing the transportation package will also, inevitably cost lives. And I believe, if people vote their conscience, I-912 will fail.

New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation of all 485,000 residents, as Katrina, now a Category 5 hurricane, heads towards the city for a possible dead-on strike, with the storm surge devastatingly timed to hit at high tide. The city, which sits in a soggy bowl an average 6 feet below sea-level, will likely see flood waters overwhelm levees even if it escapes a direct hit. The storm surge could reach 28 feet, topped by 30-foot waves in some locations.

This could be the dreaded “500-year storm” that meteorologists have long feared, and which no levee system could possibly handle. In addition to the storm surge, Katrina currently packs sustained winds of up to 175 mph, and could drop over 15 inches of rain on the city as it passes through.

As we sit and watch and hope that New Orleans once again dodges a bullet, a couple thoughts come to mind. The first is the practical concern of how Louisiana will effectively deal with the aftermath of the hurricane, what with so many of its National Guard units currently fighting and dying in the streets of Iraq?

My second thought is a cautionary one, and selfishly strikes much closer to home. I have been constantly amazed during the ongoing debate over replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct, by those who assert that the earthquake risk has been over-blown. While Seattle has never in its brief history experienced the type of catastrophic quakes seen elsewhere, the seismologic record makes it clear that it has in the past, and most definitely will again in the future. Perhaps both Seattle and New Orleans will be spared their disaster for another 150 years… or perhaps it will strike tomorrow. And if it does, the Viaduct might not just pancake, but rather topple over onto the waterfront as the soil beneath it liquifies and the aging seawall collapses.

A major earthquake will strike. We cannot avoid it, nor accurately predict its timing. But like New Orleans, we can attempt to be prepared.

UPDATE:
Katrina is still strengthening, and tracking towards landfall just east of New Orleans, with gusts up to 200 mph. This hurricane is not just powerful, but extremely large, and could end up being the most powerful storm in recorded history… so powerful, that it is pushing the limits of existing models. If you know anybody in and around N.O. planning to ride out the storm, urge them to get out NOW!

I’m not a huge Greg Nickels fan, and to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if a ghost writer penned the guest column that bears his name in today’s Seattle Times, “Seattle shouldn’t repeat its viaduct mistake.” But whoever wrote the words, Nickels deserves a load of credit for putting his name on the vision, and getting out in front on an issue that the MSM currently finds faddish to rail against: replacing the decaying Alaska Way Viaduct with a tunnel.

When considering Seattle’s future, it’s helpful to look back at our past.

Take the Alaskan Way Viaduct. When it opened in 1952, the “modern” double-decker highway replaced a tangle of railroad tracks along the shores of Seattle’s working waterfront.

It might have made sense to some at the time to wall off the still-gritty waterfront from the city with a noisy concrete curtain. But it didn’t take very long for people to realize that we’d made a very big mistake.

Which is why it is all the more baffling that 50 years later, when we finally have the chance to do it right by replacing the viaduct with a tunnel, some people are arguing we should make the same mistake all over again.

Another noisy, messy blight

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Day 3 of my lonely, virtual vigil dawned cool and rainy, with still no official word from David Irons as to where he stands on the anti-roads initiative, I-912. I had hoped that I might take advantage of my close working relationship with Irons’ webmaster, Stefan Sharkansky, to get my question in front of the candidate himself, but Stefan proved as resolutely silent as his tongue-tied boss. So yesterday I emailed Irons’ campaign directly, and eagerly await his response.

As long as Irons refuses to publicly endorse or oppose I-912, the best we can do is try to divine his position by reviewing his prior public statements on related issues. For example, about a year ago Irons came out resolutely behind the Regional Transportation Investment Districts’ $13.4 billion plan for critical transportation improvements in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties… a package that placed a high priority on replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct and the 520 floating bridge.

“Our transportation problem has grown beyond the ability to solve it with any one fix,” said Councilmember David Irons, an alternate on the RTID Executive Board. “But we must solve it for the mobility needs and economic survival of our region. Raising taxes is not politically popular, but the alternative of doing nothing is unthinkable. We must demonstrate leadership and make some tough decisions, and we need the guidance of our citizens in order to make the best choices for our residents, our businesses and our future generations.”

I wholeheartedly agree with Irons that “we must demonstrate leadership and make some touch decisions”… and I congratulate King County Executive Ron Sims for once again showing such leadership in opposing I-912. Yes, “raising taxes is not politically popular,” which I suppose is why Irons refuses to publicly support the gas tax increase that I-912 would repeal.

And what of his statement that “we need guidance of our citizens”…? He was referring to the advisory ballot measure on the RTID proposal which King County voters passed by more than a two-thirds margin… a margin which Irons himself trumpeted as a mandate.

“We have debated this question long enough, and the voters have told us they are tired of talk,” Irons said. “These poll results give us a mandate to move forward.”

But then, that was before Irons declared his candidacy for King County Executive, and before KVI fired up the anti-government crowd with misleading rhetoric in support of I-912. I suppose its possible that Irons now believes that our transportation problem has not grown beyond our ability to solve it with one fix, and that doing nothing is now eminently thinkable. Perhaps Irons now believes that leadership is unnecessary, that tough decisions need not be made, and that we have not debated this question long enough.

As long as Irons remains silent on this issue, I suppose voters are free to suppose whatever they want. Which I suppose may be exactly what Irons hopes to be the result of his silence.

David Irons had some rare, positive news last week when the Alki Foundation, the political wing of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, awarded him their “recommendation” in the race against sitting King County Executive Ron Sims. Sims had received the foundation’s endorsement in 2001, and has always enjoyed fairly strong support from the region’s business community.

So why the change of heart? Joel Connelly suggests that problems in KC elections, and Sims’ backing of Southwest Airlines’ proposed move to Boeing Field, may have had a lot to do with it. But from what I hear, what put Irons over the top with the Alki board members was his private assurances that he opposes the gas tax rollback initiative, I-912.

Both Alki and the Chamber, like most of the region’s pro-business groups, understand how vital these transportation improvements are to the local economy. Indeed, Alki refused to endorse either Steve Hammond or Reagan Dunn for county council, because both support I-912.

“These gentlemen support Initiative 912. Transportation improvement is such a central issue to the business community that we decided to make no recommendation.”

While Irons has repeatedly refused to take a public position on I-912, my sources tell me that he has been much more talkative in private. This is a very important issue to Alki members, and to earn their endorsement Irons apparently told them what they wanted to hear.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Irons hasn’t been privately telling I-912 supporters what they want to hear, too.

Irons can easily settle any lingering doubts over where he stands on the initiative, simply by clearly stating his position the way Ron Sims did. (Sims opposes it.) Indeed, he must come clean. I-912 could have a huge impact on the economy of the county he wants to govern, so reporters owe it to their readers to keep Irons feet to the fire, by bluntly asking him where he stands, and at every opportunity.

If Irons believes that the county can get by without replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct and the 520 floating bridge — both past the end of their useful lifespan — or if he believes we can replace both structures solely with local funds, then he needs to explain how. But if Irons supports the statewide transportation package and acknowledges that the gas tax hike is a reasonable way to finance it, then he needs to be upfront with voters.

Yes, Irons is between a rock and a hard place on this issue. His own polling shows that while two-thirds of his own base supports I-912, a large majority of King County voters do not. Still, running a county as large as King often requires taking unpopular positions on controversial issues… something Sims has had to do repeatedly throughout his tenure.

I find it ironic, but not surprising, that even Irons’ official campaign website (soundpolitics.com) saw fit to ask US Senate candidate Mike McGavick to clarify his position on I-912, but refuses to demand the same of its own candidate. It is absurd to believe that Irons doesn’t have an opinion on an initiative that will have such a huge impact on King County’s quality of life. And it is even more absurd to believe that he should be allowed to keep it to himself in such a dishonest and disingenuous effort to walk both sides of a controversial issue.

Read the comments from a few of my regular righty trolls, and you’d think this was a black and white world in which Republicans are purely on the side of good, and Democrats are dark allies of evil. So I guess there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance this morning among those in the trolling community who read Joel Connelly’s expose on how Republican “revolutionaries” like Jennifer Dunn, Slade Gorton and George Nethercutt are cashing in by joining “the great GOP patronage machine and permanent government.”

Wait a minute! Wasn’t it Gorton who won a third term on the slogan, “He works for you”?

Wasn’t it Nethercutt who argued that House Speaker Tom Foley had become a creature of the capital? Who mocked Foley for building a home there? Who claimed Foley had lost touch with Spokane?

Um… yeah, it was. It was also Nethercutt who campaigned on term limits, only to break his own solemn pledge to voluntarily limit himself. What a liar.

But let’s not be distracted by Republican lies; it’s Republican greed and abuse of power that is the focus of Connelly’s column. Like Tom Delay’s fascist efforts to make our nation a one-party state by denying access to any lobbyist or trade group that hires or contributes to Democrats. Or the unmitigated gall that sends $37.74 per person in homeland security dollars to Utah, while 9/11 target New York only gets $5.41. Or the pork-barrel politics that provides only $220 million for the Alaska Way Viaduct, while Alaska gets $941 million for bridges to nowhere.

I’m not saying Democrats are pure as driven snow; never have, never will. And while I don’t tend to waste pixels on my own party’s foibles (quite frankly, that’s not the job of a partisan, progressive blogger,) no doubt there are some bad Democrats.

But those of you on the right who look the other way at the corruption and abuse of power that is rife within your own party — or who blithely dismiss the “business as usual” policies that enrich your so-called “revolutionaries” at taxpayer expense — simply aren’t living in the real world. Or perhaps you are living in the real world, and your just as much a bunch of lying hypocrites as your Republican party leaders.

The newly passed federal transportation bill includes $220 million to help replace the Alaska Way Viaduct, a project I-912 supporters apparently feel is a total waste of money. So I wonder how they feel about the $220 million the bill also gives to the state of Alaska to build a bridge between Ketchikan (population: 8,000) and Gravina Island (population: 50)…? The bridge would be taller than the Brooklyn Bridge, nearly as long as the Golden Gate… and replace a 7-minute ferry ride.

Uh-huh.

But then, since both Alaska and the US Senate are run by Republicans — and the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility — this must be a wise, thrifty use of taxpayer money, right? And I guess it also makes sense that 8,050 people in Alaska should get as much money as a tiny little town like Seattle.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens defends the bridge, saying it is well worth the money.

“I remember when I was a young person in California, when people accused the people in Washington (D.C.) of being wasteful in thinking about building a bridge called the Golden Gate Bridge because no one lived in Marin County at the time.”

Um… yeah Ted… only difference is, Marin County isn’t in fucking Alaska!

Just thought somebody should point that out.

Darryl at Hominid Views takes a break from his family vacation to report on the partial collapse of the Dunn Memorial Bridge in upstate New York.

As Darryl points out…

The relevance to the Seattle area is obvious. The Dunn Memorial Bridge was built in 1971; the Alaska Way Viaduct (AWV) was built in the late 1950s. Dunn was inspected a couple of years ago and rated a 5 out of 7 for safety. The AWV has had widely recognized safety problems since the Nisqually earthquake of 2001.

No one was injured or killed, but had the top deck collapsed entirely, it could have taken two other levels with it to the bottom of the Hudson river, with catastrophic consequences for people on the bridge, and the economy of the region. As it is, there are no estimates of when the bridge will reopen.

Will Seattle be so lucky when (not, if) the AWV fails? Let’s hope so, because the Viaduct is a double-decker structure, a collapse of one section could result in a chain reaction, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people. Even a partial collapse similar to that in Albany would result in traffic mayhem in Seattle. Interstate 5 would pick up the majority of the 100,000 plus vehicles that use the roadway on a daily basis, contributing to what is already one of the worse traffic problems in the nation.

Of course, I-912 would repeal funds for replacing the AWV, as well as dozens of other projects throughout the state intended to fix unsafe intersections, interchanges and other sections of roads with a history of accidents and fatalities. But even if we dodge the bullet of a catastrophic AWV collapse….

People will die if I912 passes

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Hmm… I’m having a little trouble getting excited about the $220 million the new federal transportation bill includes for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. On the one hand, we weren’t expecting anything, and every little bit helps. On the other hand… what a bunch of fucking cheapskates.

The federal money represents 5 to 8 percent of the total cost of the project. By comparison, $220 million is less than .08 percent of the $286 billion total the bill sends to states… or to put it another way, about 2.4 percent of the roughly $9 billion in unaccounted for cash that was stuffed into duffle bags in Iraq. Nice to know we have our priorities straight.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but let’s be honest, if a double-decker freeway was on the verge of pancaking a couple hundred Texans, there’d be a billion or more in federal dollars thrown at the project. And of course, if I-912 repeals the gas tax hike, then we can kiss even our paltry $220 million goodbye.

A lot of people are playing up the potential loss of this money as a selling point for defeating I-912, but I’m wondering if that argument might be counterproductive. Judging from some of the nastier emails and comments I’ve received lately, there are many in Eastern WA who would be absolutely giddy over the chance to deny Seattlites a couple hundred million in federal aid. Hell… there are some folk out there who could absolutely give a shit about whether the Viaduct collapses, a sentiment that was clearly expressed in the following missive from “James” with the fake email address:

“… I hope it comes down during rush hour. A few hundred dead liberals might make the difference in the next election.”

I suppose “James” thought he was being funny, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that all I-912 supporters are such total and complete assholes. But a comment like this is just more evidence that this has become an emotional issue, not a rational one, and that we don’t have a chance of defeating I-912 merely on the basis of sound public policy arguments. We need to start making it clear to people in Eastern WA, and other rural voters, exactly what they’re going to lose if I-912 passes. And I’m not just talking about the specific local transportation projects that the gas tax hike is intended to fund. I’m talking about what they risk losing in the future: our good will.

If they want to balkanize state transportation funding, fine. Because while King, Pierce and Snohomish counties have the majority of the infrastructure needs, we also own the vast majority of the state’s wealth, and in the short run, Seattle voters have the most to gain from spending all gas tax dollars locally. Ironically, if I were to seriously run an initiative that requires transportation revenues to be spent locally, its most fervent supporters would come from Eastern WA. What a bunch of dumb fucks.

But while we’re on the subject, why just balkanize transportation dollars? Let’s devolve the state portion of the property tax to local school districts, and let that money be spent locally too. After all, it’s not my problem if some poor kid out in Ferry County get’s a crappy education. If parents can’t afford private tuition, that just represents a moral failing on their part, doesn’t it?

I mean really… why should I give shit about you people if you don’t give a shit about me? Hell, I only drive east of the pass once or twice a year, and if the roads on the other side fall apart, I’ll just borrow or rent an SUV for those occasional excursions. So go ahead… split the state in two… divide King County between rural and urban… drop your taxes, raise your Confederate flags, and collapse into the ranks of a third-world economy. We’ll just sip our microbrews and lattes and laugh… before we buy up anything left of value, until all of Eastern WA is comprised of little more than the quaint vineyards and gentleman-ranches of dot.com millionaires.

See… we didn’t so much mind subsidizing the schools that educate your children and the roads you drive on and the ports that bring your products to market, until you started pissing on us in return. The Viaduct and the 520 bridge are crucial to our economy, and we’re going to rebuild them, with or without you… but if it’s without you, then Katie bar the door, because you’ll have driven me and a whole bunch of other urban voters firmly into the “fuck you” camp. And you know what? There’s more of us than there are of you… so prepare to be fucked.

And one more thing… nothing tastes better than a firm, crisp, tangy New Zealand braeburn apple… so hell if I’m going to continue buying mealy, WA state, storage apples out-of-season, simply out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. So there.

[NWPT55]While I hate to disappoint the knee-jerk righties over at (un)Sound Politics, I have to say that I’m not a huge fan of the Seattle Monorail. But as long as they continue to lead their coverage with the headline “Die, Monorail, Die”, it’s hard not to oppose the opposition, despite my misgivings. Monorail opponents seem to have a one-track mind, and that mind has long be set on derailing the project, whatever the final proposal might be.

I voted for every monorail initiative, except for the one that authorized the final project. As much as I believe in public transit, and as much as I believe a fancy new monorail will become an instant symbol of 21st century Seattle, when I saw the details, it just didn’t seem worth the cost, especially given the means of financing it. Still, the people had spoken — however narrowly — and when the incredibly cynical “Monorail Recall” initiative hit the ballot last fall, I voted against it. If we’re going to allow opponents of public projects unlimited opportunities to kill them by plebiscite, we’ll never build anything.

I know, I know… nuance is a weakness progressives simply can’t afford, and with the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-infrastructure crowd attacking the gas tax and the monorail on purely ideological grounds, somebody on our side has to be just as reactionary if we’re going to have a hope of maintaining an informed debate in the middle. From what I’ve seen the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) board is more than up to the task, so I don’t have to be. That’s why I’m going to take a long, hard look at the final proposal released yesterday, before voicing my opinion one way or the other.

But one detail already has me worried. My main reason for voting against the monorail was the huge chunk it took out of voters’ car tabs… this year I’m paying a $177.00 monorail tax on my four-year-old Nissan Altima (the older, anemic model, not the newer fancier one.) My concern was that during the 25 years it took to pay off the bonds, voters would never approve a similar tax for other important transportation projects… you know, like the other half of the financing for replacing the dangerously crumbling Alaska Way Viaduct.

Now we’re told that due to rising costs and lower revenues, the car tab will be needed until 2050… nearly twice the number of years originally estimated. Ouch.

If I were a Seattle City Council member, I would be loath to overturn the will of the voters and reject this proposal… but I would still need to be convinced that it delivers something reasonably close to what voters were promised. I urge the Council to explore the details very carefully, and vote their minds not their hearts.

I’ll come back to this issue with a more informed opinion after I’ve had the opportunity to digest the facts.

I tuned in late to catch the score of a World Series game back in 1989, only to find coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. I was somewhat confused by overhead footage of what reporters kept describing as a massive freeway collapse, that to me appeared to show an elevated freeway still standing. Unfamiliar with the Bay area, I had no idea that this was the remnant of a double-decker freeway, the top deck having collapsed onto the bottom, crushing cars and their occupants underneath tons of steel and concrete.

Since moving to Seattle a couple years later, I have always been wary of this doomed freeway’s kissing-cousin, the Alaska Way Viaduct. Whenever I drive across the Viaduct or walk beneath it, I do so speedily, with images vividly in my mind of the dead being pried from between the decks of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway. While I know my chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time is exceedingly small, my discomfort is not the product of irrational paranoia. A major earthquake will hit the Seattle area, and left as-is, the Viaduct will collapse, killing dozens or even hundreds, depending on the time of day.

And if this tragedy occurs due to the partisan bickering currently transgressing in Olympia over funding the Viaduct’s replacement, I will personally blame these deaths on the petty, heartless legislators who are clearly willing to risk sacrificing the lives of innocents in exchange for a few extra dollars of spending in their own districts.

This exploitation of regional tensions is politics at its most disgusting… and incredibly stupid and shortsighted. House Transportation Committee Chair Ed Murray (D-Seattle) sums it up bluntly:

Murray said complaints that state spending is too concentrated on Seattle-area projects were misguided. “We’ll come back here in two years when that thing falls down and we’ll get all of it.”

Lives are at stake. The Viaduct is a human and economic tragedy waiting to happen… as is the 520 floating bridge, one of the oldest structures of its kind in the world. In a region that has witnessed not one, not two, but three major bridges collapse or sink, it is absurd to pretend that it could not happen a fourth time, especially with a structure so in need of repair or replacement.

To oppose this transportation package because the spending is too “Seattle-centric” is an arrogant, absurd and dangerous fiction. Transportation spending is Seattle-centric because Washington state is Seattle-centric. Seattle is our cultural, economic and population center… it produces the lion’s share of the tax dollars, and currently has the most immediate transportation needs. If Republicans want more money for projects outside of the Seattle area, then they should propose raising additional tax dollars to pay for them.

Like most Seattle voters, I’m willing to pay my fair share to fund needed transportation projects in the rest of the state. But personally, I’m not willing to die to save a couple pennies on a gallon of gas.