Search Results for: viaduct

Joel Connelly:

But this week, council members allocated $8.1 million to study the “surface-transit option” in replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Surface transit is a pet idea of those who seem to be forming Seattle’s agenda these days and pushing for a gentrified, politically correct, largely childless, heavily taxed city, a place that embraces bicycles and exiles NBA basketball.

This is almost Falwell-esque:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

Jesus, we embrace bicycles? And stopped having kids? We have gone too far.

To the hyper-sensitive, sports-hating, condom-using, tax-and-spend, Capitol Hill enviro-fascists, Joel points his finger at you.

Because people who do ride the bus know that this is a stupid idea:

Under its proposal, the I-90 center corridor would be acquired by Sound Transit exclusively for light rail between Seattle and the Eastside. Buses, vanpools, HOVs and all Mercer Island vehicular traffic now using this inner corridor would be rerouted to the outer lanes.

The result would be increased delays and congestion on all traffic moving between Seattle and the Eastside. The cost of building light rail to the Eastside would be $6 billion. The I-90 bridge would suffer a vehicle capacity loss of one-third compared with today. Even with an optimistic doubling of transit ridership, there would be a 9-percent loss of total (vehicle and transit) person trips.

Light rail would not give us either the flexibility or the capacity that rapid bus service offers at a small fraction of the cost. Bus rapid transit can share the center lanes, thus avoiding the one-third loss of vehicular traffic.

People who like Bus Rapid Transit are people who never ride the bus. BRT is cheaper because, almost all of the time, it sucks.

The fact that Phil Talmadge would sign on with rightwingers like former Sen. Jim Horn and the Washington Policy Center shows just how out of touch Talmadge is these days. Phil also campaigned hard for a new elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct. The vote for the new Viaduct failed in every Seattle legislative district except, you guessed it, West Seattle’s 34th LD (Talmadge was the state senator from West Seattle for years). Talmadge is opposite many Republicans on the Eastside like Connie Marshall, the former Mayor of Bellevue. She supports rail, but this one-kidneyed liberal Democrat from Seattle doesn’t. Weird.

What happened to the Phil Talmadge who told Tim Eyman to go fuck himself? The Talmadge who challenged a sitting Democratic Governor in 2003 for not being progressive enough? Phil gave an anti-war speech to the Democrats at the King County Convention that was fiery as hell back in ’04?

Go figure.

A gigantic tanker blew up on a San Fransisco area freeway interchange the other day. Gridlock was predicted for Monday’s commute. But…

It didn’t happen.

I’ll let Dan Savage explain:

How was the disaster averted? Mass transit got a boost—more trains were running, more ferries crisscrossed San Francisco Bay, and some folks opted to telecommute. Now the same people that predicted disaster today are warning us that the disaster—the chaos! oh, the humanity!—will surely come tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. It’s likelier, however, that disaster won’t come because drivers will do what drivers do only when they must: adjust. Find other ways around, switch to mass transit, telecommute, ride a ferry.

But once again freeway addicts deprived of a freeway predicted disaster and disaster failed to materialize.

Tear down the viaduct now.

While I’m not quite ready to tear down the viaduct, Dan has a point. We are often convinced we need the things we have, only to realize that, perhaps, we can live without them. I’m certain the destroyed section of freeway will be repaired, but it goes to show you just how flexible commuters can be if they have options.

NOTE BY GOLDY:
How naive can you be Will? Don’t you know that Seattle is different, and that transit can’t possibly work here? And while other major cities have torn down waterfront freeways, and commuters have managed to adapt, don’t you understand that this just won’t work in Seattle, because… well… um… it just won’t?

Drop a backpack in a garbage can on a Washington State ferry, and you will shut down the system for hours, as officials evacuate the ship and X-ray the suspicious bag for explosives. So what happens when you leave a 40-foot shipping container, unattended by a highway overpass?

This is a Hyundai container, destined either to or from Terminal 5, but is not going anywhere. There is no semi-tractor in sight, and the container is parked next to the highway 99 overpass, just a few hundred feet from the West Seattle bridge, which are two main highways that connect all of south and west Seattle, to downtown via the Viaduct. I find these things from time to time stretching along the main drags that run through Georgetown. This container is sitting on a patch of gravel across the street from Terminal 25 on East Marginal Way, just a stone’s throw from their gate security office.

Perhaps this is the real Port scandal… the 95-percent of containers that go uninspected, and the lax security and lack of accountability throughout our entire shipping and trucking industry?

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Carl Jeffers Tribute Hour.
I’ve got too many things I want to talk about tonight, so with a hat tip to Carl (who’s on fire tonight from 10PM to 1AM) my first hour will be a torrent of consciousness streaming from topic to topic, including an update on the pet food recall (it’s in the human food supply), the JOA settlement between the Times and the P-I, the Alberto Gonzales hearing, and more.

8PM: Guns don’t kill people… no wait… maybe they do?
In the immediate aftermath of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, the White House made a point of reassuring the nation that the President still supported the 2nd Amendment, while righties immediately suggested that this never would have happened if the students and teachers had all been armed themselves. Figures. Fellow HA blogger Will joins me for the hour talk about the shootings and the controversial topic of gun control… so controversial that Will and I actually disagree. Oh… and in other news, hundreds of Iraqis died this week in sectarian violence. Just thought you might want to know.

9PM: How’d the Governor do?
The legislative session is coming to a close and WA State Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz joins me for a recap, and to rate the performance of both the Legislature and Gov. Chris Gregoire. (I’m guessing he’ll give them A’s.) Domestic Partnerships, children’s health care, simple majority on school levies, transportation financing… while we were all focused on the Viaduct and the Sonics, a lot of stuff actually got done.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

This article is a few days old, but it’s still relevant:

State leaders are beginning the Highway 520 bridge rebuild with an uncertain and speculative finance plan that would fall short of the project’s estimated $4.4 billion cost even if all their gambles pay off.

These are the same officials who pulled the plug on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ plan to build replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a $4.6 billion tunnel because it lacked a solid finance plan.

Though the groundwork for the new 520 bridge is already underway, it will likely be years before the state secures the money to complete the project.

If I remember correctly, the knock against Greg Nickels and his proposed tunnel was that the plan lacked a finance plan that stood up to scrutiny. The tunnel plan included dollars from this fall’s RTID vote, and also federal funds not yet available until 2009 and beyond. It looks like hypocrites in Olympia are slamming Nickels for doing exactly what they’re doing now.

Transportation leaders in the House and Senate are banking on $1.1 billion from a regional transit and roads tax package that even supporters fear may be rejected by voters in November.

They’re also counting on nearly a $1 billion from a pooled account established to cover cost overruns for 520 and also the Alaskan Way Viaduct — but under current projections, the 520 project would require all of that and more.

And unlike the House plan, the Senate also assumes $200 million in federal transit money that could trickle in over the next 16 years.

All while the final design remains a topic of vigorous debate.

And good luck with that design stuff. The major players in the 520 game (the UW, the city, the state, nearby neighborhoods, Sound Transit, and lots more) aren’t on the same page.

Here’s the money quote from a Seattle Times article on West Seattle and the Viaduct:

“People want to put the same thing up there because anything new is different, and people are concerned because it would be different,” said Mark Wainwright, president of the Admiral Neighborhood Association.

Is the Viaduct a roadway or a security blanket?

Leave it to working-class Delridge to provide some common sense:

Paul Fischburg, Delridge Neighborhood Association president, said he personally supports a surface road, as long as there’s an “enormous investment in transit.”

“If I could just wave a magic wand, it would be extending light rail in the southwest and northwest through downtown … that would be the best-case scenario,” he said. But “you know this city’s history on mass transit.”

Long term, I’d like to see a train that connects with the current Sound Transit train at SODO. Until then, there’s the E-3 Busway which can be configured to connect with the Spokane Street Viaduct.

Unfortunately, the light rail planning is concerned with Bellevue and Lynnwood at the moment. Seattle residents have no way to mandate additional transit projects through Sound Transit’s governence structure.

Maybe Ed Murray isn’t on the wrong track after all.

Still recovering from your post St. Patty’s Day hangover? Tune in for a little “hair of the blog that bit you” tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Who (or what) won the Viaduct vote?
A lot of pundits and politicians say the big winner in Tuesday’s election was the one option that was not on the ballot. The Stranger’s Erica C. Barnett was the first local reporter to cover the surface-plus-transit alternative, and she’ll be joining me in the studio for an analysis of the vote, a first-hand report from the big Olympia press conference the next day, and a discussion of our region’s broader transportation issues in general.

8PM: Blogger roundup!
Fellow HA blogger Will joins me in the studio for a roundup of this week’s news.

9PM: TBA

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck is taking Tuesday’s election results and he’s running with them:

The outcome of the advisory vote will likely add momentum to a third choice that politicians kept off the ballot: the so-called surface option that would tear down the viaduct and route traffic onto downtown streets along with beefed-up transit.

Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, who favors that option, said he’ll submit legislation today to effectively kill a tunnel by shifting $8 million in city funds that had been budgeted for a tunnel to work on designs for a surface plan.

“This clearly opens the door to an alternative solution,” said Steinbrueck, who recently announced he would not seek re-election so he could dedicate more time to fighting a new viaduct.

Now that the tunnel is toast, Steinbrueck is pushing hard to make the “surface plus transit” option the city’s official preferred option. I, like Peter, am estatic that Seattle voters dumped two bad choices in favor of some new ideas.

But Seattle is not an island, politically. At the big press conference after the election with Gregoire, Sims, and Nickels, all the parties decided to work together. (Read more about this presser here, here, and here)

What Steinbrueck is doing may be good public policy, it ain’t necessarily in the spirit of a “collaborative” “consensus-based” discussion.

While us city folk can do all we want about the viaduct, there are folks like Mary Margaret Haugen who want to punish Seattle residents by tearing down the viaduct tomorrow. While Frank Chopp isn’t off the deep end in the same way. (He has to answer to Seattle voters, a great many of which are dead-set against rebuilding the viaduct)

The big fear is that Olympia decides to strip Seattle of the ability to issue permits for viaduct construction, essentially taking away our leverage. I would hope that Peter does not make the same mistake Nickels and Co. did with the tunnel by being too single-minded and not playing ball with other parties.

Blethen the Younger is all pissy ‘cos voters didn’t vote his way:

Seattle voters gave politicians a free pass to spend more political capital on a one-mile stretch of highway, when a vote for the elevated rebuild could have ended the debate. All Seattle voters had to do was use reason on a nonbinding vote to let Olympia, the Seattle City Council and the mayor’s office know that a rebuild is the best option for the city and region.

What a load of garbage! Seattle voters saw their options, and they said “we can do better.” Some folks want a surface option that uses transit and other improvements to move freight and people. I know several voters who chose “No-No” because they want to retrofit the viaduct. Neither was on Tuesday’s ballot.

The Seattle Times Editorial Page has a history of treating their readers like retarded children, but this column is just too much.

No matter how you spin it (and God knows our friend Stefan is trying,) backers of both the rebuild and the tunnel were big losers yesterday, when Seattle voters decisively said “No” to both options of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. And I’m not sure if surface-plus-transit supporters could declare victory either, as I’m guessing that might have been rejected too by an ornery electorate.

But there was one big winner yesterday: the election itself.

For all the effort to rile up a controversy over King County’s move to all vote-by-mail elections, yesterday’s first ever of that genre was a huge success, with election officials projecting a 55-percent turnout — a stunning number for a special election, let alone a non-binding advisory vote. And by all accounts, things went smoothly. Wasn’t it a treat to get election results by 8:15 PM, instead of waiting until the wee hours to be told that we wouldn’t really know for several more days?

Personally, I just couldn’t completely give up election day, and dropped my ballot off at the Rainer Community Center. (Saved a stamp, too.) But that’s just me, and I’m guessing that just like the vast majority of voters, I’ll adjust in time.

In decisive fashion, Seattle voters voted against putting another freeway on the waterfront.

I spent much of the night at the Spitfire. I’ll wait until tomorrow to weigh-in in depth, but here are some thoughts.

How much bigger would the “No Elevated” vote have been if Mayor Nickels had read the writing on the wall? The tunnel plan was blown away, over two-to-one. If the Mayor had pulled his support for the tunnel (an embarrassing thing for the Nickels team, I’m sure), they could have run up the score.

Stefan is funny. This is perhaps the “spinniest of spins” I’ve read thus far. A close second is Nick Licata:

City Council President Nick Licata, who supports another viaduct, called the nearly 45-percent vote in favor of it “a pretty solid base.”

It’s like when the Seahawks are down by three points at the end of the game. They didn’t really lose, they just have a good base, you know? It’s the new math, people.

In my humble opinion, here are the big political winners:

Cary Moon Does she want run for City Council? Folks at the Spitfire party said she’d be a shoe-in after going toe-to-toe with the big boys and kickin’ ass. Eric Earling As much as it pains me to say it, he was one of the first of the GOP to realize that the top two options were bad and worse. Cynara Lilly (and everyone else at Friends of Seattle) After fighting the monorail, she redeems herself by torpedoing the rebuild option. All is forgiven, says this old monorail die-hard. Enviros who ditched the tunnel for the surface option You know who you are. Gutsy. Peter Steinbrueck MVP (Most Valuable Pol) for standing up to Olympia without wavering. Danny Westneat Even though the Times endorsed a rebuild, Danny didn’t fall in line. Good on ya’.

Here are some political losers:

David Della He’s vulnerable, and he favors a rebuild. He’s up this year. The viaduct will be an issue. Greg Nickels Well, at least 30 percent agreed with him. Frank Chopp Will he ignore the vote and rebuild the viaduct? While Frank’s bulletproof, his viaduct ideas get weirder and weirder. The Seattle Times Editorial Page They’re wrong- again- on an issue concerning local Seattle politics. They guy aren’t even trying anymore. Cue a Joni Balter column on how “goofy” the vote was and how Gregoire should “be tough” on Seattle and build that freeway. Puh-leeeaze. Joel Connelly, Nick Licata, and Gene Hoglund These guys see rebuilding the viaduct as a part of Seattle’s “class struggle,” meaning we have to build another viaduct or the “little guy” gets screwed. While only five percent of the traffic on the viaduct is freight, you’d think it was a thousand percent. Sheesh. After all, Steinbrueck wants to give freight much higher priority in the surface plus transit plan.

Some folks who neither win, nor lose:

The Governor She got her vote, and now she’s heard the answer. It’s up to her to decide whether to cooperate with Seattle or fight it right up until Election Day. Here’s to hoping a little birdy by the name of Ed Murray or Ron Sims whispers in the Gov’s ear and says, “go with the third option.” Dino Rossi He’s too busy beating his kids at basketball to weigh-in. Remember, he’s not running for Supreme Court (they handle viaduct stuff, right? Right?) People who drive cars in the city Honestly, over time, things won’t change that much for folks who decide they can’t live without their cars. Traffic jams happen in other big cities. But those big cities tell complainers to take the fucking train (I really heard that from a local pol, seriously) Waterfront businesses Let’s face it: Ivar’s fish and chips will be delicious no matter what happens to the viaduct. It’s full of tourists now, and always will be. God bless’m!

Oh, and I forgot: David Sucher is neither a winner nor a loser. He’s just irrelevant. His odd comments (such as accusing Goldy of being for the tunnel) and cryptic personal attacks (read any Slog post on the viaduct to find one) have put me off to his argument (“Repair and Prepare”, which is actually quite good). If you want to win people to your side, to get them to think the way you do, do the opposite of everything Mr. Sucher has done concerning the viaduct.

Stay tuned!

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Come join me in saying “Yes, Yes” to some hoppy beer as Seattle voters say “No, No” to the tunnel and the elevated Viaduct.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

There’s an election today, folks. If you have a ballot sitting on your counter, fill it out and put it in the mail. It’s gotta be postmarked by today for it to count*.

Tonight you can join me and others as we get our “drink” on at the following election night parties:

Event #1

The Not Another Elevated Viaduct
7:00 PM
Edgewater Hotel on the waterfront
(2411 Alaskan Way # 67).

Event #2:

Spitfire Grill Party
2219 4th Ave
9:00 PM

Hope to see you there!

*I know, it’s an advisory vote. But still!

The Seattle P-I headline asks the rhetorical question, “Will Dino Rossi run again for governor?” — and then pretty much provides the answer in the lede:

As Dino Rossi ponders a possible 2008 election rematch against Gov. Chris Gregoire, he’s doing everything, at a state level, that a Republican candidate for president might do at the national level.

Everything, that is, except actually talk about issues.

For a man who promised to bring bold new leadership to the governor’s mansion, and whose 2008 campaign essentially kicked off in December of 2004, Rossi has been resolutely silent on absolutely every single contentious issue that has wracked the state these past few years.

The gas tax, I-912’s effort to repeal it, gay civil rights, the inheritance tax, the Viaduct, I-933’s attempt to dismantle land use regulation, and nearly every other editorial inducing issue… Dino Rossi, the titular leader of Washington Republicans, has refused to weigh in by publicly lending his voice of authority to one side or the other. You’ve got to admire his discipline and consistency.

But then, we shouldn’t really expect anything less from a man whose 2004 campaign was long on the promise of new leadership but short on any prior history thereof. After a legislative career distinguished mostly by the nastiness of his campaigns, Rossi adopted as his singular accomplishment his personal authorship of the 2003-2005 state budget, a bit of GOPropaganda repeatedly echoed by his patrons on the Seattle Times editorial page, though clearly contradicted by the Times’ own contemporaneous reporting:

The Republican budget has much in common with the all-cuts plan that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke unveiled in December. In fact, Rossi opened a press briefing yesterday with a PowerPoint presentation titled: “Following the Governor’s Lead.”

Yes, Rossi’s budget was a tad more draconian, eliminating health care for 46,000 children, but as Rossi made perfectly clear at the time, the fiscally conservative budget adopted that session was largely authored by a Democratic governor.

Apart from his business-friendly pronouncements and promise to shake up the state bureaucracy, Rossi’s 2004 campaign was short on substance, while his personal beliefs and political ideology were intentionally obfuscated. Even on abortion, the emotional issue that most vividly defines our nation’s Red/Blue divide, Rossi, a devout Catholic, refused to take a public stand. “None of us are running for the U.S. Supreme Court,” Rossi quipped, brushing aside the thorny issue by insisting that the governor had little power over Roe v. Wade.

That kind of non-denial denial is simply not going to fly in 2008 — and not just on the issue of abortion, which a far-right-wing Supreme Court is preparing to throw back to the states. Rossi and his advisors are relying on resentment over his narrow 2004 loss and the circumstances surrounding it, to cement his Republican base and bring back many of the independent and crossover voters who almost carried him to victory. But his bitterly fought election contest also gave rise to what is perhaps the most active, organized and influential local political blogosphere in the nation, and while our tactics may not always be appreciated by our friends in the legacy press, our reporting and our media criticism cannot be ignored.

The media landscape has changed — somewhat thanks to Rossi himself — and he simply will not be allowed to run the same sort of tabula rasa campaign that almost snuck him into the governor’s mansion in 2004. The danger in attempting to be all things to all people is that if you leave yourself undefined, your opponent will define you for you. The Gregoire campaign failed to do that in 2004, but I doubt they’ll make the same mistake twice. And this time around she will be aided by a maturing progressive media infrastructure that will push the political press corps to force Rossi to take a stand on substantive issues, or look foolish refusing to do so.

The 2004 Rossi campaign provided the boilerplate strategy for how Republicans might run and win in Washington State — specifically, try not to look so much like Republicans. That David Irons and Mike McGavick failed to successfully ride this strategy to victory is not necessarily due to the fact that they are inferior salesmen (though, they are,) but rather, an indication that both reporters and voters have grown hip to the strategy.

But even given a media time-warp Rossi would be hard pressed to duplicate his 2004 near-success in a 2008 campaign governed by an entirely new set of political dynamics. This time around Governor Gregoire has a record, and in attacking the specifics, Rossi will be forced to specifically enunciate what he would have done differently. Would he have brokered a gas tax increase, or allowed our transportation infrastructure to languish without it? Would he have vetoed the gay civil rights and domestic partnership bills? Would he have fought to put more money into education and children’s health care, or argue that fiscal constraints just don’t allow it? Would he have supported repealing the estate tax, and if so, what would he have cut from the budget to offset the loss of revenue?

Rossi’s conservative legislative record and political ideology puts him outside of the mainstream of Washington voters — and outside of the mainstream of many of the independents and so-called “Dinocrats” who voted for him last time around. I look forward to playing a small role in finally introducing the real Dino Rossi to Washington voters.