Roads, Blocked
The P-I ran an editorial last week calling on city leaders to fast-track local transportation plans, including plans to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and consider “shift[ing] toward a plan that is affordable in this political environment” if the city and state’s “preferred” alternative, a $4-billion-plus waterfront tunnel, isn’t viable. (New federal money isn’t likely, and the state has already coughed up more than $2 billion in the form of the recently upheld 9.5-cent gas tax.) Perhaps reflecting a growing public awareness of those political realities, in a poll that ran alongside the editorial, 47 percent of readers said a the viaduct should not be replaced with a tunnel; just 46 percent believed it should.
Tunnel critics like the People’s Waterfront Coalition argue that instead of building a tunnel, the city should tear down the viaduct and replace it with a surface roadway and improvements to the transit system and transportation grid downtown. It worked in San Francisco, where city leaders tore down two elevated highways: the waterfront Embarcadero, which carried 100,000 cars a day, and the Central Freeway in the middle of the city, which carried 90,000.
Last week, I visited the Embarcadero with four members of the Seattle City Council. Although the Embarcadero differs from the viaduct in certain ways (it was never a route through the city, although it did carry a level of traffic comparable to the viaduct), it offers a promising model for our waterfront: a wide urban street with six lanes of traffic (proposals here call for four), two lanes of trolley transit (used by both tourists and locals), bike lanes, trees, and wide-open sidewalks, plazas and parks on both sides of the roadway.
Apparently, people in Seattle are starting to catch on. Among the comments left by readers on the P-I’s web site:
The easier you make it to drive the more people will. In the meantime, we are all afflicted by perpetual highway construction. ... We need to build a two-lane tunnel for buses and rebuild the sea-wall. Then tear the viaduct down.Calls for more highways or widening highways will only attract more traffic, in turn leading for future calls for more highways! This is a never ending circle of gridlock - building more highways - attracting more traffic - gridlock - building more highways - attracting more traffic - and so on!
The tunnel is a boondoggle. We can't afford it, since the pot of Other People's Money for pork like this doesn't exist anymore. ... Despite its huge expense, WSDOT's predictions show it won't even reduce congestion. ... The most ironic part: after the existing highway is closed for five years, Seattle will have already learned to live without it.
Tear down the Viaduct, and put the money we would squander on a tunnel which would *not* reduce congestion into fixing our existing problems - re-connect our street grid, put more money into in-city transit solutions, and start working on our land-use issues.
Can all of us who support mass transit and dense, pedestrian-friendly, urban development agree on one thing? Unless a tunnel were to turn into the next Big Dig, the worst possible replacement for the viaduct is another viaduct. The overriding goal for any viaduct replacement should be creating an unobstructed waterfront. Think of all the people who would be living in condos on the waterfront rather than being sprawled out all over the suburbs or the vast suburb-like stretches of Seattle. We're talking thousands of wealthy people who will be driving a lot less than if they were living elsewhere and who will create a powerful natural constituency for mass transit.
Look at cities like Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Honolulu that have an unobstructed center-city waterfront. What do their waterfronts all have in common? They all have a great amount of density--and desirable density at that--precisely the thing that we as urbanists and environmentalists should be striving for.
With this in mind, in an ideal scenario I don't have anything against a People's Waterfront Coalition solution where we just rebuild the seawall and do a surface route instead. But I think it's naïve to try to defeat a tunnel in hopes of seeing it replaced with a surface route. If the tunnel is nixed, the viaduct will be replaced by another viaduct. Didn't that much become clear when I-912 was defeated? The money is there to rebuild the viaduct, and I can't imagine the state backing off from doing anything less. I'm not sure which is more misguided: believing you can convince the likes of Christine Gregoire, Ed Murray, and Doug MacDonald that they're wrong, or believing you can actually outmuscle them politically. Between I-912's defeat and the monorail's defeat, for all practical purposes November 8 was the day the PWC alternative died.
Also, let's not conflate opposition to a tunnel with support for a surface route. I'm sure if a scientific poll offered Seattle voters--or more aptly regional voters--a three-way choice between tunnel, new viaduct, and surface route, a new viaduct would fare a lot better than a surface route. I've talked to a number of non-activist regular folks, and I can tell you, the no-build option goes right past 'em. Most Seattleites just can't grasp the no-car paradigm yet because we don't have it yet.
The tunnel gives us a rare opportunity to build density at the same time we're feeding the roads beast. If the tunnel ends up costing $5 billion, that's $5 billion that won't be spent on new capacity. But what's really ingenious and even devious is that it's money being spent to ultimately undermine the very thing it's being spent on. A vibrant, livable downtown is the next best thing to true rapid transit when it comes to giving people a competitive alternative to sprawl and driving everywhere.
My worst fear is that a certain faction of environmentalists and Greg Nickels opponents will end up only having a Ralph Nader effect, where:
* Nader = surface route
* Gore = tunnel
* Bush = another viaduct
Just like the Naderites only succeeded in getting Bush elected, the surface-route supporters will only succeed in getting another viaduct built. If I were a powerbroker with a vested interest in seeing Seattle eclipsed by its suburbs, I would do everything I could to defeat an Alaskan Way Tunnel, and that includes giving succor to Seattle City Council members and anyone else who wishes to advance the PWC alternative.
To me, it's telling that post-election the alternative I'm hearing buzz about from Transportation Choices Coalition, just about as reputable a transit advocacy group as there is around here, is not the surface route; it's a tolled, two-lanes-each-way tunnel.