In yet another sign that the Viaduct Rebuild option is losing public support while the Surface-Plus-Transit option picks up steam, rumors are swirling that the state is prepared to spring a “February Surprise” on voters just weeks before a March 13 special election. According to multiple sources WSDOT will announce next week a new smaller, less expensive Rebuild-Lite proposal, an 11th-hour, 4-lane redesign that shaves tons of concrete and $400 million off the current 6-lane design’s $2.8 billion estimated cost.
Um… I think the governor just blinked.
In dismissing Seattle Mayor Greg Nickel’s Tunnel-Lite, state officials called the proposal untested, unstudied and two-years too late to the table, and yet Rebuild-Lite would borrow its primary innovation, a 4-lane design with wide shoulders that can be used as exit lanes during peak traffic hours. And unfortunately for rebuild proponents, I’m guessing the two Lite options would also share the same reputation as hastily concocted political gambits designed more to move voters than drivers.
The same arguments used to attack Tunnel-Lite can now be used to attack its Rebuild cousin: it is untested, unstudied and two-years too late to the table. And after years of being told that only a six-lane elevated replacement can maintain or increase traffic capacity at an affordable price, voters will now be asked to trust WSDOT that their last-minute 4-lane design can do the same job at a lower cost.
Clearly intended to influence voters in favor of a rebuild, the new, slimmed-down proposal would likely only sow confusion. Rather than being faced with the choice between the uncertain design and cost of a Tunnel-Lite versus an unappealing but unsurprising rebuild, voters will now have absolutely no idea what they’ll be getting (or paying) from either proposal. And I’m not sure what kind of mandate a 4-lane elevated structure can garner from a non-binding advisory measure that describes “a six-lane elevated structure, increased to four lanes in each direction between South King Street and new ramps at Seneca and Columbia Streets.”
Not only would an abrupt switch to a 4-lane proposal undermine the rebuild option’s most compelling feature — familiarity — it would also undermine the primary arguments against considering a Surface-Plus-Transit solution. If a 4-lane tunnel or elevated structure can suddenly maintain the same traffic capacity as the long proposed 6-lane versions, why can’t a 6-lane boulevard? And if there’s plenty of time at this late stage of the game to dramatically re-jigger both the tunnel and elevated designs, why can’t we find the time to properly study a Surface-Plus-Transit solution?
Yeah, at this point the Rebuild-Lite proposal is still just a rumor. But should it come true it will likely upset the current political dynamics of the public debate over how to replace the Viaduct… and not necessarily in the way rebuild proponents intend.
Hmmmm. the plot sickens.
“Rebuild Lite” — That’s cute.
Ehren Watada is still hot, hot, HOT!!
Daddy is drunk again.
Maybe Seattle voters will reject both proposals, and the $2 billion in state funding can be shifted to replacing the SR 520 bridge.
HELP!!!
The other night at a DL roundtable several relevant comments were made:
1. only 5% of viaduct traffic is commercial
2. businesses anxious about the viaduct staying include a fairly small number of firms that ship south or north of Seattle from the coastal areas … fisheries suppliers, Amgen, warehouses in SOHO.
If this is true, then the COMMERCIAL justification of the rebuild seem minimal and should be served by the Mayor’s minitunnel quite well.
The, I have asked a lot of folks who live N or S of Seattle, whether they use the Vduct now. The answer is yes … nostly Ballard and N folks go to the airport that way,
Getting to the airport is not a very good justification for the viaduct. this is one of the clearest places where light rail makes more sense,
Bottom line … accepting my random polling and beer sotted discourse,
The main reason we need a viaduct OR a tunnel, is to provide support for a few industries, some of which are in decline anyway, and for a few folks who find tis a convenient shot to the airport. Most of the traffic on I99 is into or out of Seattle and the access to Seattle, esp, from the North is horrid.
Consider the economic benefit to the as yet undeveloped Elliot bay shore and Vulcantown! Improving access TO Seatlle from the North would pay for itself in property values alone.
So ,,,,
why not a minitunnel, as proposed by Nickles BUT limitted to commercial traffic and mass transit. Let the state pay for that! Then, we can spend dollars fixing North access .. inlcding fixing the Mercer Mess!
Maybe we can even place a special tax, a lid, on the propety that will benefit.
It’s gonna be fun following the money on the upcoming elections.
@6 If you could somehow shift the entire cost of the tunnel boondoggle onto those developers and speculators who would directly profit through deveoping the waterfront, their ardor woud be chilled immensely. . .much the same as if you were to make war profiteering treasonous you might bring about a peacefu solution in Iraq.
Well
If I owned some of that crappy real estate on Elliot, and someone gave me chance to make it valuable, why wouldn’t I want to invest?
I really hope this is a silly rumor. There’s no reason for rebuild proponents to blink. The poll numbers are all on their side.
Where are you getting these rumors from, Goldy?
@4:
Where are you getting the five percent figure from? The same source that told you that no one lived in the University District?
Makes sense
@4, I’m going to cotinue piling on here before I have to catch my bus to work:
I’m soooooo glad you’re not in charge of transportation policy in this state. You blithely talk about how people can use light rail to get to the airport instead of the viaduct.
First of all, that’s not what everyone uses it for. Second of all, light rail is only going to be going downtown right now. Even with the northern extension in the works, that’s really not going to help anyone in Ballard get to Sea-Tac. They’re just going to have to leave whatever earlier it takes to get through the mess downtown, whether it’s by car or Shuttle Express. Carrot first, then sticks. Any other way is downright stupid.
I like your idea of assessing downtown owners for the tunnel, though. But that would violate one of the cardinal rules of those who want a world-class Seattle: Never pay for it yourself when you can stick the bill to the proles.
OK. Time to catch my bus.
Goldy,
Just for the record, what is your choice about what to do for the AWV problem – tunnel or re-build?
We need MORE capacity to get us thru Seattle, not less.
This blog is disinformation central on the AWV. Proposals, percentages, numbers, patterns are made up out of whole cloth.
“Rumors are swirling?” Cut it out, Goldy. Leave shit like that to Josh Feit, Erica C. Barnett, and Stefan Sharkansky.
Ballots are being mailed to military, foreign and out-of-state voters today. All ballots will be in the mail by next week at this time. Why would the state put out a different proposal now? If a six-lane rebuild wins, it doesn’t mean a four-lane is what the voters want. The same if it loses.
The only way it would make sense is in the case both tunnel and viaduct lose. A wet dream of surface “option” windbags, but unlikely.
Most people I know use the viaduct to avoid the mess under the convention center (now there was a genius traffic management project).
Why the hel didn’t all the options like tunnel light get a full study up front? Was it that Nickels wanted the uber-tunnel and didn’t consider light as it would have undermined the bigger dig?
This whole thing has been mis-managed from the git go.
@10 @12
Being able to drive through Seattle to the Airport is a nice thing for folks in Ballard, but howmuch is that worth? A decision like this should consider wider needs.
Which is mor eimportnat to Ballard? Access to Downtown Seattle which now is very bad or getting t the Airport?
Is ti really best to use the waterfront to have a rapid car route through Seattle to SeaTac or would it be betetr to make it easier to get from Balalrd to I5?
If getting to the Airport is so valuable, what would you pay to use the commercial route? $5? $25?
#4/#8/#10 I was party to that conversation, and in fact the 5% number came from a couple of pretty well qualified sources. DL isn’t always just populated by drunken nobodies from off the street like me.
Now, by “commercial” traffic, I rather think everyone was thinking in terms of heavy trucks, not people driving to their office gigs in Toyota pickups or sales reps going from call to call in their cars. My own experience (I used to live on Magnolia) is that there really isn’t a preponderence of big rigs on the Viaduct. If there were, we might have had more incidents like the Shelley’s Leg fire.
What ever happened to the “looming dissaster” or “urgent need to replace” the viaduct that was the theme behind the new gas tax?
At this rate, the AWV will be in place for my kids to fix.
As I recall the vote on the gas tax was under the premise to replace the current viaduct….( with a new viaduct.)
The whole “Nichols legacy” tunnel wasn’t part of the discussion.
The Viaduct will probably stand another 50 years. After impossible deadlock results in deciding what to replace it with, Gregoire will shift the $2 billion in funding to replace the SR 520 bridge. Gregoire needs to shore up her support on the Eastside, which is a swing area. Seattle, on the other hand, is solid Democrat and won’t vote Republican no matter what.
My guess Pope-A-Dope is that the Governor doesn’t need political advice from a guy who got his ass rejected by the people more than a dozen times.
I think Richard’s crystal ball will turn out to be pretty accuarate. AWV will have to crumble before anything gets done. Depending on what gets crushed, it may not be a bad demolition strategy.
@19 clafify.
The debate wasn’t about the gas tax, rather the initiative to repeal it. The tax passed by the legislature was for a number of projects. When I-912 was initiated was when the “urgency” came into play with regards to AWV and SR520 bridge.
If DL inebriates are being raised to the level of “pretty well qualified sources”, I think this stay-at-home drunk should get the same promotion. Hell, I actually drive on the AWV.
From my experience entering on both the Elliot and Columbia on ramps at rush hour, I can state that there are always plenty of cars coming from both the Battery Tunnel and the AWV itself when I get on. It is much easier to get on at Columbia, BTW, what I’d consider “downtown” of the two entrances.
That tells me there is one hell of a lot of cross-town traffic on AWV.
Goldy, before you start saying things like “the governor just blinked,” shouldn’t you first (a) find out whether the rumor is true, and (b) if true, whether the governor had anything to do with it (or even knows about it)?
WSDOT is notoriously a fiefdom that doesn’t necessarily dance to the governor’s (or legislature’s, or anybody else’s) tune. It’s more like an obstreperous prince than a loyal butler.
@4 “Improving access TO Seatlle from the North would pay for itself in property values alone.”
Then raising the extra money for a tunnel shouldn’t be an issue, right? Get the property owners whose property values will icnrease to pay the difference, leaving my checkbook out of it, and you’re there.
But dollars for donuts say any financing scheme that Nickels and his downtown business backers come up with will reach into the pockets of suburban homeowners who don’t even get to vote in the advisory election.
@26 Just as Renton’s civic boosters of a new Sonics arena are eyeing taxes that will be paid by the 99% of the state’s population who DON’T live in Renton.
Everything is a lot more attractive and affordable if you can make someone else pay for it.
@4 “Maybe we can even place a special tax, a lid, on the propety that will benefit.”
That’s what I’ve been saying all along — form a Local Improvement District and tax the commercial property owners who will benefit from improved views and (much) higher property values. His name is spelled “Martin Selig” …
26 Oh, great…let’s start a war between Laurelhurst and Broadview.
@15 “military, foreign and out-of-state voters”
Why the hell are these people even voting on this? They don’t know anything about it, don’t care, won’t use it, won’t pay for it …
@17 AWV is Seattle’s ONLY alternate route if I-5 is shut down (because of construction, accident, or whatever) unless you want to cross the lake and try to use the perpetually congested 405 route … think twice before you leave Seattle with no through route in case of an I-5 closure … it takes only one accident to close I-5.
@26 I like it … should be fun.
@24 I agree with you — if anyone wants to see how much of AWV traffic is through traffic, all they have to do is drive on AWV once — and they’ll see for themselves that the vast majority of it is. There really isn’t a lot of the total traffic exiting downtown.
Just exactly how is this thing going to be paid for, whatever it turns out to be?
Rog @ 31:
@15 “military, foreign and out-of-state voters”
Why the hell are these people even voting on this? They don’t know anything about it, don’t care, won’t use it, won’t pay for it …
I am an technically an out-of-state voter, Rog. I am in Seattle on a fairly regular basis, and will hopefully return permanently quite soon. I will pay for the AWV rebuild and will likely use it, even if I won’t be using it much in the next six months or so.
Now, more to the point, the reason why out-of-state (or out-of-country) voters get these is that when you are an expat voter, you are registered to vote somewhere in the United States. When I was in Taiwan, my voter’s registration was tied to my mum’s house in Issaquah. My sis (who returns to the US for about 3 weeks a year) is registered at a friend’s house in Laurelhurst, and so on.
You get the full set of ballots for primaries, school levies, every initative on the planet, and so on. If you are courteous, you skip voting on the stuff you don’t know anything about, and focus on the top-of-the-ticket races.
There is no such thing as an “expat’s ballot”. If it ever comes to pass that there is a big American disapora, things will be change. For better or worse, the vast majority of Americans overseas come home sooner or later, so they vote from their “home”.
People won’t use light rail to go from Ballard to the Airport. They won’t want to lug their carry-on luggage any further than necessary, so they will still either (a) have someone drive them to the airport, (b) take a cab, (c) drive themselves and pay for parking in a lot, or (d) take an airport shuttle bus.
The only people who might use light rail to go to the airport will be business travelers who pack light, and will depart either from downtown Seattle or possibly Bellevue (in the distant future).
Opps, I said “carry-on luggage”. I meant the opposite – “checked baggage”.
@37,
Having lived in both the Bay Area and the DC area, I can personally testify that lots and lots of people take BART & Caltrain, and Metrorail, to the airports – leisure travelers, business travelers, students, etc. And yes, it does depend on how much you are bringing with you – but at couple of dollars for the train vs. $25 minimum for a shuttle, you just plan ahead and pack more lightly.
Most people pack too much crap with them anyway. Like Rick Steves says, if you can’t carry it or roll it along yourself, you’re bringing too much. (Maybe I’ll make an exception for when I have kids and they have skis.) When you’re, say, moving, and you _need_ to haul tons of crap, by all means take a cab. But people’s silly overpacking habits aren’t a strong argument against light rail.
I know see why Goldy has been mentioning Erica C. Barnett lately.
The surface options is a a proposal by the fantasy team at teh Stranger and apparently has talked Goldy into supporting their lunacy.
Seriously Goldy, you should have just given Erica a Co-Credit for this post.
it’s not just erica; josh feit, too. people who don’t drive telling the rest of us what the best traffic plan should look like.
“it is untested, unstudied and two-years too late to the table.”
yeah, goldy, just like the surface/transit option. most of the people advocating for it are mostly advocating for another two-year delay to study the option properly. only the true bastards, like yourself, are advocating that we tear down the viaduct immediately & see what happens.
another day goes by & i’m continually appalled at the people who claim they only want the best for this city but advocate for the option which will do the most harm. they point to other cities which have fewer hills or a lot of mass-transit as comparables, ignore what they’re going to do to people who live west of Hwy99, and pretend that people are just going to stop driving if we ask them nice enough.
the surface/transit option is only gaining popularity among deluded bloggers. congrats on joining that elite circle.
Consider the Surface option from another perspective: imagine that you are an elected official. You have an artery which is well-used and works even if admittedly imperfect. So you are going to take the political risk of tearing it down to see if your traffic consultants are correct? i.e. that you can get by without it? What’s the benefit? Goldy and Erica will praise you? (Until they get pissed at you for some other reason?)
You have to risk your political future on the “studies” and “research” of traffic engineers who have no stake in your own future. Many elected officials may be venal and unimaginative, but they are not so stupid as to commit political suicide. As Josh Feit pointed out, the supporters of the Surface option are mostly young people who don’t vote and don’t pay property-taxes. That’s not a political constiuency which gets you re-elected. The political risk of the naked Surface option is just too great.
Now if you combine the Repair with the Prepare to tear it down when the transit infrastructure is in place, you have a viable alternative. But tearing it down cold-turkey is a joke.
David @42,
Who is talking about tearing down the Viaduct cold turkey? Why do you assume that’s the goal of surface supporters? There are dozens of things we can do now to improve N/S traffic through Seattle, but we’re not going to do any of them if we just blow our whole wad on a tunnel or rebuild.
The transit just doesn’t exist. Get the transit options in place, then let’s talk about doing away with roads.
#42, 44,
A problem with public projects in Seattle is that we do them the first time half-assed, on the too-cheap, then have to do them again too soon afterwards, spending vastly more money the second time. Witness:
-mass transit – we vote down rail in 1968 and ’70, vote for buses, and are just now building rail w/o the huge federal subsidy we had lined up
-Kingdome -> Safeco Field and Qwest Field
-Key Arena (actually, a good idea for reuse, but the Sonics are bitching) -> some newfangled thing in the ‘burbs
And while I don’t know whether this was necessarily done half-assed, it’s a classic for second time’s the charm:
-“Galloping Gertie” -> Narrows Bridge v. 2, that’s still standing
So, my observation is that trying to put in light rail or a modern streetcar on the waterfront and repair the seawall while the viaduct is still standing, then trying to tear it down and integrate a new boulevard with that rail, would cost more, take longer, and probably be done half-assed.
Now, if by transit improvements you mean proposals like the bus ramp from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the Busway, allowing buses from West Seattle to bypass Hwy 99 and go into the bus tunnel or at least straight to downtown… that should have been done yesterday, and definitely should be done before tearing down the Viaduct.
But Goldy, “cold turkey” is indeed exactly what Cary and you and Erica et al are suggesting. Or else you would be supporting the Steinbrueck/Sherwin “Repair & Prepare.”
Look, taking the Surface option seriously, even in the very best of circumstances it will take at least 3-4 years (the way things work around here) to develop the infrastructure to replace the capacity offered by the Viaduct. Developing a plan, figuring the bus routes, buying the buesses etc etc will take time. No one seems to acknowledge that. The rhetotic is all “Just tear it down!”
So what happens to the “emergency” of the Viaduct in tghe meantime? We just let people driove on that “extremelt dangerous” (sarcasm intended) structure until we have the Surface option in place? No, we have to make interim Repairs. I haven’t seen you or Erica or Cary supporting that approach.
So I assume that you just want to tear it down and “see what happens.”
If I am wrong, then you might want to visibly and loudly support Repair & Prepare.
The state DOT has a new boss. His name is Frank Chopp. And Chopp is chiefly to blame for this problem. Little known is the extent to which the engineers have abandoned their professional integrity to play to Chopp in an amazingly stupid way. This idiocy will haunt Chopp and the DOT for years to come. The result for the public: far less confidence in the direction of transportation in this state and an escalating problem.
If you are interesting in learning more and/or supporting the “Repair & Prepare Option,” please write to me at
david@citycomforts.com
“If a 4-lane tunnel or elevated structure can suddenly maintain the same traffic capacity as the long proposed 6-lane versions, why can’t a 6-lane boulevard?”
Perhaps the answer lies in the word “intersections”?
/23-year transportation engineer not working for WSDOT or CoS
#16
“Most people I know use the viaduct to avoid the mess under the convention center (now there was a genius traffic management project).”
Although no great fan of the convention center design, I’m sure that the economically-disadvantaged whose homes lay along the path of destruction for a (potentially) wider I-5 — in the 1960s — heaved a sigh of comparative relief when the right-of-way agents didn’t show up to offer chump change for their homes a short time before the bulldozers showed up.
So, ummmm, we’re still waiting.