Good!

Let's say there are three options, official and unofficial, for replacing the viaduct:

• tunnel
• surface route
• another viaduct

My preference can be summed up as, "anything but another viaduct." At this point, the cause of "viaduct prevention" is looking pretty grim. Is my assessment there correct? Can anyone suggest the practical political strategy at this point to keep another viaduct from happening?

And remember any new viaduct will be wider and more bulky than what we have now because of updated standards (shoulders, seismic, etc) since the 1950's.
Can you say even more butt ugly!

whore me
ignore me
slog you bore me

So. Lovely Queen Ann and two old hags now control the city.

And Ed Murray gets his nuts kicked.

This reeks.

Huzzah!!

Now we just need to convince people to give the idea of no replacement a chance.

And hey, what's the problem with Helen and Mary Lou? We're suddenly dissin' people who are being fiscally prudent...way to go, Seattle. Why the hell can't we pick the least expensive option in this town for once?!?

You don't return State Reps' phone calls?

It's about time Nickels got a reality check - they have already squandered millions of dollars studying a project that can't be fully funded, and obviously are trying to lowball the initial estimate so they can start digging and commit the public to paying whatever it will ultimately cost - which is sure to be a hell of a lot more than 3.6 billion.

I say fix the seawall, shore up the existing AWV so it won't catastophically fail (per the recommendations of respected civil engineers Victor Grey and Neil Twelker), and then tear it down in 30 years after the next quake.

Well, they're certainly playing a high-stakes game that could backfire in their constituents' face.

The tunnel was the compromise option between people who just want to drive through downtown, and people who want to live down there.

If you take it off the table, downtowners will agitate to block any rebuild, potentially - or probably? - forcing acceptance of the surface boulevard option instead.

It's certainly the cheapest option - and would serve these northwesternites right for holding downtown hostage to their commuter desires.

As for the port truck traffic, I've lately been thinking...why not relocate the port north or south of downtown?

Would keep those diesel spewing container ships that give downtown some of the most carcinogenic air in the country out of our airspace too.

Or just abdicate to Tacoma and Vancouver BC - the say San Francisco did to Oakland. Let the gritty city - to the south - or the one with better port placement to the north - take over.

U SMITH Wrote:
"And Ed Murray gets his nuts kicked."

One deserves to have one's nuts kicked when one is wrong, U Smith...regardless of who possesses said nuts.

As I have stated before and as far as I can tell, neither the state nor the city has done any kind of EIS on a no build option. They have not done their due diligence. This was and remains completely wrong and an utter disservice to the community.

Murray, Nickles and others need to get off their collective ass and explain to us why this was not and has not been accomplished.

At this point in time, there is no basis to criticise a no-build option because there is absolutely nothing to criticise.

These people have failed us here and we deserve much, much better.

Lastly, the message via the vote the house tranportation committee sent Nickels and his staff was intended to be for our benefit as well as city govenment's. Everyone ought to take heed of that message. It's not good.

---Jensen

Yes, Mr. Mayor: you too have one month to come up with a viable financing plan, or we're pulling YOUR plug.

I'm down with MR. X on this one. Shore up the viaduct, seawall improvements, and s/t/f/u.

Has anyone who writes lines like "one of two cruicial north-south arteries in Seattle" or "key access to the Port of Seattle" actually gotten on SR-99 and driven, oh, say, 3 miles south of where the Viaduct ends? Kinda right near Harbor Island, aka, the biggest part of the Port. Just on the other side of the Spokane Street Viaduct, you suddenly find yourself...on a surface street. With stoplights. And you actually have to drive, like, 40mph instead of sailing along at 60.

How on earth have we lived this long with this terrible, onerous burden?

Yeah, I know. There's more traffic downtown. If we didn't rebuild the Viaduct or build a supa-tunnel, that's asking, like, MORE people to slow down 20mph for a 1 1/2 mile stretch. And maybe we'd have to figure out a way to route ferry traffic under or over a surface boulevard. And maybe people would have wait at a stoplight for a while. And maybe somebody at WSDOT might actually have to buy an extra computer and figure out how to program some stoplights to do different stuff in the morning as opposed to the evening as opposed to after a Mariners game.

Is there a way to make the surface boulevard and the circa-1990 technology to run the stoplights cost $2.4 billion? 'Cause I'm guessing that the only way of making it work is to turn it into a boondoggle.

PWC, are you listening?

Have you ever of you been in Belltown around 5:00 when the Viaduct is shut down because of a bad accident? The South bound traffic on the downtown sufface streets is backed up for miles. For those of you that like the idea of tearing down the Viaduct without replacing it, how do you think this would work? We can't expect that all of those people that rely on the Viaduct are going to start biking or taking the bus.

Smiles,

The Twelker and Grey proposal includes something called (I think) jet grouting to stabilize the underlying soils. The part of the Viaduct that was most damaged is the curve by Washington Street, and most of the rest of the structure was not seriously damaged. The construction is such that pancaking (what happened to the freeway in Oakland that collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake) is actually not that likely - both levels share the same rebar reinforcement and were constructed as a single section, not a stack - and the AWV consists of individual sections that are linked by expansion joints. The State has never seriously studied renovation/bracing of the existing structure (and the No-Action portion of the Draft EIS is definitely cursory at best - but some traffic analysis of the no-build option was done for its appendices).

With regard to putting AWV traffic on surface streets, the real problem is that they (and I-5) are all severely congested for much of the day already, and doubly so at peak hours. East Marginal Way is also a much wider truck oriented street than I believe no-build advocates would like to see through the center of the City.

If a West Seattleite (and there are over 80,000 of them) were to follow your suggestion (drive 20 mph and wait at a "few" stoplights) on their daily commute, it would add at least a twenty minutes each way. If they were to do so at peak hour, it would probably be 45.

I say punt!

Actually, I am a West Seattleite.

Every morning I either drive over the bridge or take the bus. And when I drive and sit in a traffic jam, I look over at that big, empty bus lane and think, why didn't I take the bus this morning? Or, alternately, Why doesn't fucking Metro run buses often enough to make that a more attractive possibility?

I also look at where the bus lane ends and think, why does it end there? Why doesn't it end a little farther on and deposit me right where light rail will be running so that I can go right into downtown? Supposedly, that's what's supposed to happen with some "mitigation money" the city gets when the Viaduct gets torn down. And maybe that'll help.

And why is it assumed that a surface boulevard along the waterfront is going to be slow? I meant to imply with my earlier post that there are already parts of SR-99 that are surface boulevards, and they move. No, the boulevard would never, ever allow me to sail through downtown at 60mph, but when does that ever happen now? At midnight on a Tuesday?

SMILES Wrote:
"While I agree with you, the reason that a no-build hasn't been considered is that by law (budget line-item), WSDOT must replace the viaduct with equal or greater car capacity. PWC's no-build option spreads out the capacity, rather than replaces it in-place."

Hmm, I do believe that if the money earmarked for that line item in the WSDOT budget is not used, it will be returned to the general fund. If the liability to the state the Viaduct poses as a state highway were to disappear, I believe the state would be off the the hook for its replacement. I think liability to the state has been the key issue as far as the state is concerned.

SMILES, please point out to me where it is codified that a replacement is a requirement. I am sorry, but I can't find it.

Thanks for the input and support.

---Jensen

I'm pretty sure gas tax money is limited to highway construction - either by law or the State Constitution.