“Everybody’s really glad they reached a decision,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee. She said the intention is to approve the design during the current legislative session.
“The tunnel,” said Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, the Senate committee’s ranking GOP member, “seems to be something that’s got critical mass.”
That, my friends, is what politicians say when they are invited to polish a turd.
But this one is my favorite:
On Friday, Chopp said there are questions about how to pay for possible tunnel cost overruns. “Additional questions are being raised around transportation capacity, for example going from six lanes down to four,” he said, but for the moment he’s focused on the state budget and relief for families and businesses.
Doesn’t Chopp’s own Viaduct vision also reduce waterfront capacity from six lanes to four?
I’ve had this argument about the proposed 4 lane tunnel against 6 lanes of viaduct being rebuilt.
Here’s what I came up with in defense of a smaller tunnel. Most information comes from the Suface Only option study
The 3rd lane exists only between Spokane St and Elliot St on the Alaska Way viaduct.
1) The added lane is for increased volume from West Seattle Bridge. You can utilize surface streets to deal with existing traffic. “The travel forecast shows that nearly 100% of trips using the downtown grid serve origins and destinations within a mile or so of downtown. However, well over 50% of trips using the Viaduct serve origins and destinations stretching south to SR-509 and to north of Seattle” http://www.seattle.gov/council.....actors.pdf
a. “…the downtown grid can accommodate about 20-30% of Alaskan Way Viaduct traffic during the peak periods but once you go beyond this range up to 40-50%, you start breaching the capacities of the downtown local streets for their ability to convey traffic through the downtown.” http://www.seattle.gov/council.....actors.pdf
b. Those areas that utilize the Alaska Way Viaduct to travel into and out of the downtown area can be handled with mass transit as this 1933 trolley map shows http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....33_big.gif
2) Freight: “About 70% of the Port’s containerized cargo originates in or is destined for regions of the country outside the Pacific Northwest” http://www.portseattle.org/dow.....ations.pdf
a. Port of Seattle traffic destined for rail “70% moves by rail to Chicago and points east” … “Of the truck trips generated, 45% are serving the BNSF Railway Seattle International Gateway (SIG) and Union Pacific ARGO intermodal yards where the cargo container is loaded onto a train.”
b. I-5 or I-90 “The remaining truck trips are mostly local (e.g. Duwamish Industrial Area, 1-5 miles) and regional (e.g. Green River Valley, 10-35 miles).
c. Redistribution after being repackaged in South King County because warehousing and repackaging too expensive to do in Seattle city limits
3) Cost/Benefits; 4 lanes are cheaper than 6. The need for 6 lines is dealt with in point 4.
4) Ease of expansion should be restricted so expansion is channeled into mass transit. “South Lake Union Streetcar is six months old and ridership has surpassed predictions, there are plans to expand it.” http://www.king5.com/localnews.....07076.html Not that it’s needed, “Volumes on the Viaduct have been growing very slowly for a number of years and over the past 10-years volumes have increased less than one percent per year, at a rate of about a half-percent per year.” http://www.seattle.gov/council.....actors.pdf
5) Additional on/off ramps would alter the core function of a by-pass which is to pass by downtown, increasing flow between north and south Seattle areas
Will …
as with light rail, sometime, somehow, someone neds to make a decision and move on.
Personally, I have yet to hear a good reason why the surface option, combined with creating a boulevard out of Elliott Ave and 15th, would not do a far better job than this tunnel but … I sure as hell wold rather have a tunnel than more lidding of Seattle with traffic in the sky!
NOW, I wish someone would propose at lease a city wide traffic plan. This city has been, is and apparently will always be a whirlpool for bad traffic planning. We badly need some real boulevards ,, my favorites would be Elliott 15 th and the Rainier-Lake City corridor so folks could get around here on the surface rather than using effin freeways to go to the corner store a la LA. We also need some sensivle EW roads the cross the great chasm known as I5 without meandering through the back streets of Pill Hill, the ID, and Capital Hill.
THEN we can put choo choo trains, street cars or busses to better use.
from six lanes to four
I guess it depends on whether on/off ramps can be called lanes. No downtown access from tunnel means no extra lanes needed. Though if the city does reconnect the Battery Street Tunnel to Alaskan Way, there will be extra capacity added.
Er, the CURRENT viaduct isn’t really 3 lanes in each direction guys, it’s two. Have you seen the Battery Street tunnel? Two (narrow) lanes in each direction. Those extra lanes…they exit to downtown, they carry the downtown ONLY traffic. So the only lanes traveling THROUGH (Battery Street tunnel) on to Aurora are two lanes. So the new tunnel option would also have two lanes for the folks NOT going downtown (no exits) wanting to get to Aurora Ave…and earlier surface exits (around the ballpark) to the surface downtown lanes under what is not the viaduct. That’s pretty much the same thing.