Go Cary!!!!!!!! You make us proud.

Tear that thing down!

My only question is how would they handle the southbound Aurora dispersion: would the Broad Street tunnel go away in favor of a series of offramps?

btw, this would also be a great opportunity to redesign that creepy West Seattle Elevated Highway.

"20 to 30K will take transit." Poof! Just like that! What a feat. She's a magician as well as a policy wonk. Gets people to take public transportation before we've funded it, built it, or planned it. Amazing!

And of course - to make the sacrifice - all these folks are going back to the days prior to almost universal mobility - when - working people lived and died within 20 miles of the village.

Geez. Only work trips are OK - some sort of rationing? No leisure, no arts, no visiting family, friends, or just sight seeing? The thousand reasons we move about - all goine, except for work. Sure Josh.

How do you win with a plan that is trumped by the state at its inception, based on retreating from Henry Ford style mobiity for the working class?

The no build is NO WAY. Some of you people are smoking too much bud.

Sorry, this is no good news. For a non solution.

Do you visit friends and family and go to cultural events and go sight seeing everyday? And do you need a car to do those things everytime?

If you answered: Yes. Well then you just proved Cary Moon's point.

Moon's suggestion would be fabulous if we had a "monorail" running over that boulevard she proposes. But the potential upshot would be traffic chaos and a strangled economy.

So Josh, did you walk, bike or take transit to the City Hall Meeting?

Ask the people who work at Nordstrom and Macy's if those "discretionary" trips are work-related.

Sorry, the statistics are bullshit. We may be using only 60% of downtown street capacity if you include Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the Regrade, but on the important north-south routes right in the choke point, during the day, we're way over capacity already. Not that that's bad; congested traffic is mostly a good thing. But to suggest that there's room for 30k more is sophistry.

I don't think Cary Moon believes it either. She just doesn't care. She thinks the city can survive being choked off. She's wrong about that, too. There are some interesting points to be made about traffic reduction, but Cary Moon and the SWC isn't making them; they're just pure pie-in-the-sky bullshit. EVERYTHING for sale on their website falls into one of two categories: plain impossible lies (like the salmon-spawning stuff) or actively anti-city evil (like vast empty areas in the heart of downtown).

Moon's work belongs in the world of foam-board architectural modeling, not the dirty streets of a real city. Her vision is suburban and false.

FNARF -- I don't see how you can call Moon's vision suburban? A suburban vision is what built all these freeways through urban downtowns to begin with. Whatever you think of her data, she is arguing against catering to cars. That is the oopposite of suburban

JACQUES Wrote:
"Sorry, this is no good news. For a non solution."

There has neither been a adequate nor city/state funded study undertaken on any no-build proposal, Jacques. You really can't criticise what doesn't exist at this point in time. I have never met or talked with Ms. Moon, but I imagine she would be the first to encourage a study which may or may not validate the idea her group has tabled.

It is profoundly nearsighted of the state and city not to examine a no- rebuild option because we might find it costs us less and better utilizes our available resources for understanding and providing for displaced traffic. Only the village idiot would suggest spending $3-$4 billion dollars fixing a problem without investigating a potentially less expensive and thoroughly engineered option.

Don't worry, my dear Jacques. Regardless of either a new tunnel or viaduct, you and I will be living the no-build option for a long time.

There is tremendous irony in that the state and city must support a de facto no-build option for the estimated three to nine years of build out time required to complete a tunnel or replacement viaduct structure. Should we expect there will be absolutely no mitigation to assist displaced traffic flow? I think not, and both the state and the city are quiet about how they are going to approach this. Why? No sense helping the no-build option supporters with their cause. Correct?

"Trumped by the state", Jacques?
I don't think so. Who do you think the state is, Jacques? I am the state. You are the state. We decide what's the city and state everytime we step inside the voting booth. They'll do what we tell them to do as long as we are loud enough.

--- Jensen

Congestion is bad today. Why spend $3.6 billion and up to a decade dressing up a tranportation network that is fundamentally flawed? Seattle claims to be a progressive, green city. A better use of public money is on alternative solutions that are already considered mature technologies throughout the world in cities with courageous leaders willing to take political risks. Seattle should reinforce the Viaduct, rebuild the seawall, and then invest in truly progressive solutions. Cary Moon and the PWC recognize that very minor sacrifices must be made today in order to achieve significant, long-term public benefits.

WHAT "benefits"? An empty downtown? Cary Moon's vision is for a vacant city, carpeted with lots of expensively maintained grass, a biology-defying "salmon spawning ground", and walks and pathways to nowhere, plus a lot of other stuff that's not going to happen but gets credited to her side of the ledger, like all the magic development that's going to go there.

I call it "suburban" because suburbs are the place you go if you want wide streets like the ones in the SWC's pictures, with green swathes and no people. She SAYS it's "not catering to cars" but the fact is that's how people get there, and the vision only makes sense if all the people leave too.

You say you like dense walkable neighborhoods? Take a look at the SWC website. Does that look like Capitol Hill to you? No. It looks like Redmond Town Center, so help me god that's exactly what it looks like.

If you don't 'get it,' you are thinking way too hard. This isn't an issue that can be solved purely with charts, graphs and numbers. In fact, there may be nothing that will convince you that Seattle can do without the Almighty Viaduct until it happens.

There is no statistic for behavior modification. You only have to worry about your choice and trust that other people will figure it out, too.

Go anywhere where it's just too expensive or inconvenient to drive everywhere. People manage, the economy thrives. These places are the most lively, beautiful and energetic cities - not pie-in-the-sky but what Seattle could be.

I no longer have faith in The Stranger to plan Seattle's transit future.

Henceforth, I will be looking solely to The Onion for our pressing transit solutions.

"Go anywhere where it's just too expensive or inconvenient to drive everywhere. People manage, the economy thrives. These places are the most lively, beautiful and energetic cities - not pie-in-the-sky but what Seattle could be."

Laura--most of those places have right of way mass transit access to move masses of people around efficiently. Cary assumes that our "urban utopia" will just happen if we do away with the viaduct and do nothing else. More likely my bus from west seattle going downtown will sit in traffic on the bridge for about an hour.

Dear FNARF-

First, SWC or PWC? Just want to get that somewhat straight. Second, what exactly are you saying? That urban dwellers don't deserve green space? By this logic should we turn NYC's Central Park into a dense gritty grid of streets and other urban things that are urban (which I guess you're implying must be gray and concrete)?

PWC is pretty darned city-focused. It asks us to eschew cars for walking, biking, and transit. It asks us to look for reshaping our city into something that requires density. It challenges us to adapt and adjust our behavior so that we will not hop in a car everytime we want to get somewhere.

That sounds pretty urban to me.

Paths to nowhere? Empty downtowns? Where are you getting this stuff? Not from the PWC website, that's for sure.

What part of town does teardown advocate Cary Moon call home? Wherever it is, let's ban every parking space and close every street within a half-mile so she can soak up that paradise for herself.

Seriously, how the hell would she know whether or not only 25% of viaduct trips are work related? I suppose that she runs along side vehicles with a clipboard and shouts out the survey questions.

Oh lord where to begin. An amazing thing happens when there are less roads in a city. People adapt and choose to make less trips and choose different modes of transportation. The more roads you build the more people will drive. If Seattle chooses to spend billions on a shiny new freeway downtown it will do nothing but encourage more people to drive, especially after 5-9 years of people having adapted to not using the viaduct. This will increase our dependency on cars and make commuting even more frustrating in the long run. Its amazing to me the profound small-mindedness of American's when it comes to their cars. We can survive without them! There are other ways to commute. Having a soceity that is dependent on cars is harmful socially, physically and innevitably economically.

What was Cary's proof of that 75% stat? Because I can pull random numbers out of my ass too.

Jensen - are you deaf?

The state in question is the STATE OF WASHINGTON, who has a legal mandate, lot of money and emminent domaint on their side.

THE STATE will do two things.
One - work with the City to build a tunnel system, if the city find another billion dollars.

Two - re build the viaduct, no added cash needed, state project, state hiway, state design, state engineers, state, on and on. Be cool Seattle or the Supremes will tell you about eminent domaine in a hurry. NO permit of fee blackmail possible.

Get it? There is no third option. Just Seattle hot air, as usual.

And you must be aware the rest of the state, geographic state, would love to have DOT and Gov. Gregoire take a hard line, tell Seattle to go to hell, shut up, do as your are told, lucky to get our money, it's about time you pie in the sky freaks had to be practical, etc, - etc,

Gregoires polling would go up five points over night. She know this. She has been polite but does not fear Cary Moon, her friends, blue sky what ifs - and and amaterur instant expert theories.

By the way, DOT says they have spent millions and yeara on design and starter engineering. That is real to them. And voters. And the majority of legislators.

I can tell the blue sky has intoxicated many folks this week.

Tunnel or rebuild. Take it or leave it.
No third option.

Cary needs to tell us how to build a cheaper monorail from downtown to W Seatttle. First segment, despeately needed - private? Joint venture with the Chinese as an experiment, all Chinese fabrication and construction - fuck the Canadians.

The mystery of Aurora:

Why does a local street suddenly become a freeway once it enters the city?

Most people I know use Aurora to get into Seattle. They take I5 or I495 to go N or S. For those who now use 99 as a freeway thru a city, surely with a few years to plan they can find I5 or I405?

Blue sky, Blue sky, Pie-in-the blah blah, blah blah . . . .

Let's start calling DOT projections BLACK SKY and SHIT-IN-THE-SKY projections . . ..

All these appeals to reason. . . .

based on a recent historical addiction to a toxic, internationally destablizing, ecocidal nest of industries (who's leaders and champions have, in only SIX years of blood-and-skat-and-money rumpus, left American democracy and all public assets in tatters).

This region cleaned-up Lake Washington, rejected the early sixites vision of infinite freeway rings (imagine MLK as another six lane Aurora) and saved Pike Place Market all in the face of SHIT-IN-THE-SKY projections from the BLACK SKY crowd.

Let's employ reason based on being part of the solution, not part of the problem. Climate change is real, kids. Mid 20th Century American Futurism is the illusion full of cracks. It is time to act from the 'civilized' part of the Western Tradition.

Remember when the sky was going to fall in because we were shutting down the tunnel and moving all of those busses to 3rd Ave? I've not heard nary a complaint from anybody since that happened.

The no-build option is looking smarter to me than ever.

I walked to City Hall.

Best option: Tear down, no rebuild.

Best option the State will allow: Rebuild a viaduct (hint, it isn't going to "wall off" the city from its waterfront, whatever that was supposed to mean).

Worst option: Tunnel in tidelands, through fill/saturated glacial till, with native american detritus & other sites waiting to be unearthed every 20 feet. This is another of G. Nickels meglomaniacal infrastructure boondoggles (read, Sound Transit, monorail, SLU streetcar). Stop this gargantuan freak, now -- he is addicted to the seratonin rush he gets when he thinks about how he can impose taxes on people around here for generations.

I'm not sure how many folks commenting here, besides Josh, were in attendance at the COW meeting yesterday, but I was. But beyond the expected non-question by Della and a feeble attempt by Godden to get a Port employee to help her shoot holes in Cary's numbers (which in fact said Port employee confirmed), council was quite supportive of the ideas and the discussion.



It's no small thing that Cary was invited by Drago (a tunnel supporter), when other folks with equally "out there" ideas haven't been invited...well, because those ideas are actually *really* out there idea--like the idea that one section of the viaduct can be retrofitted to make the whole thing safe. It's been studied multiple times; it's a lame idea.



But back to the PWC prez. Let's go over some of the arguments flying around:


1) There are only two options and the state won't allow the gas tax money to be used for a Transit + Streets First alternative.

--Wrong. This is what Della asked WSDOT's McDonald, who responded by a) reading the current law (which folks on the Slog seem to know and b) saying that this can be *changed* in the next state legislative session (or have we forgotten that legislators can change law and not just paid signature gatherers?)


2) No work has been done yet on a Transit + Streets solution yet, so it will cost us even more in time and money.

--Sorry, nope. First, as has been mentioned...Folks, there is only ONE option on the table for NOT closing the viaduct for some amount of time. The numbers people throw out vary wildly, but the minimum closure time that I've seen (and I was at the traffic mitigation meetings) is 1.5 years. The only non-closure option is with a rebuild, but not closing will extend construction to a whopping 10-12 years. Many of the improvements, mode shifting strategies etc. that PWC advocates came straight from SDOT's closure plans, as well as other city and PSRC sources. So either SDOT is lying in saying that traffic won't be a nightmare during construction of a tunnel or rebuild or they are lying that a Transit + Streets solutions will be a nightmare in the long term (which makes little sense if (a) is not the case, given time for folks to adapt.


3) Cary is pulling numbers out of her ass. Yes, a few and if you a) bothered to read the PWC site or attend meetings such as yeterday's you'd know which numbers are best guesses. As an engineer, I make guesses all the time...I call it engineering judgement, but it's a guess nonetheless, and I have no doubt that SDOT does as well. But even so, many numbers that Cary sites are from SDOT. You can get the numbers yourselves! Just email SDOT. Sightline (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) did and had a look at the numbers compared to numbers on existing and projected mobility (not car) capacity. What they found was that outside of rush hour, the downtown core does have the capacity to take the viaduct trips (and remember not all 105,000 cars will get "added" to the grid, some trips originate or end in the grid.) When we don't have capacity yet is for rush hour, particularly the afternoon. We're talking about 7000+ car trips in the space of an hour and a half that we need to find a solution for (and this is already considering people giving up discretionary trips...these are the trips that Sightline estimates won't "disappear." $4 billion for the sake for 7000 people....sounds like a deal!


4) Josh walked to city hall.
--I coulda sworn I saw you get out of the back seat of a black caddy....

The Daily Score post about Sightline's look at SDOT's numbers:
http://www.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2006/04/19/rush-hour-by-the-numbers

I am getting that stuff from www.peopleswaterfront.org -- that's the only website I'm aware of. It is filled with urban planner verbiage and artists' conceptions of an empty city -- like all artists' conceptions that come out of urban planners' offices. (It's also packed tight with out-and-out lies).

Urban environments by definition cannot come out of urban planners' or architects' offices. Architects design buildings, not cities. Cities design themselves -- always have, always will. If an area has attractions people will come to it; if they don't, they won't. Green swathes are not attractants; they are nuisances. Anyone comparing what's going to happen in place of the waterfront with Central Park is deeply confused, and ignorant both of New York and Seattle.

The no-build option removes one of the cornerstones of the city's economy. I get all of your "cars bad" pretty-flowers rhetoric, more than you know, but it doesn't apply here. Seattle is, or wants to be, a CITY, not a park. Wiping out a critical artery not only CHOKES OFF the waterfront, and insulates the city's most important economic base, it replaces a problematic but barely functioning part of the fabric of the city with empty space and a crop of new buildings all in a row.

The result is going to look like the Embarcadero in SF, or the ugliest stretch of West Hastings in Coal Harbour, Vancouver -- a urban-planned-up-the-wazoo wasteland. It is NOT going to look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fnarf/122241996/

Because there aren't going to be any people there.

PWC: how are you going to feed the ferry dock? How are you going to feed the container docks? How are you going to feed the West Seattle Bridge? How are all those cars coming off Aurora at the Battery Street Tunnel going to be redirected? What about during Mariner games? What about DOWNTOWN?

This is not like building another random freeway. It's not like expanding road capacity in a place that doesn't have it now. It's not like mowing down thousands of acres of forest land for a new road and a crop of new single-family homes (which is where your anguished concern SHOULD lie, because it's happening TODAY).

Frankly all three of these options show a remarkable lack of imagination. NONE of them have a realistic urban idea for the waterfront. I am sorry for this city, because imagination and creativity and drive have no place here. I have no illusions about a replacement viaduct. I'm sure it'll be horrible. Horrible is the only thing Seattle can dream of now. My preferred solution is "tons and tons of steel reinforcement on the existing one". That's not going to happen. But in the meantime, a lot of people need to get about their daily business, and the viaduct makes that possible for a lot of them.

Realist raises an interesting point: Native American ruins. The chances of ANY construction project in the viaduct corridor striking Duwamish relics are 100%. We saw what happened on a much smaller project in Port Angeles; they shut it down.

So I don't know a whole lot about tunnels and the ocean and such, but something about the tunnel that has been on my mind for a couple months now is this:

In a region just waiting for another big earthquake, it seems like a lame ass idea to build a tunnel so close to the ocean that might be under construction at the time of that big earthquake.

And for the record, I think we're in a shitty spot, but if we're gonna have to live without it for 3-9 years I think we'll be fine. Throw your numbers at me!

All these naysayers are typical Seattlites: "Big thinkers" with an inferiority complex.

Getting rid of the viaduct wouldn't kill downtown. Even during those times when downtown was "dead" (back in the 70's, and especially back in the 90's after Frederick's, Klopensteins, Magnin's, and Woolworth's all disappeared practically overnight due to outside pressures) downtown was still better than 90% of the American downtowns.

Be bold. Tear it down.

PWC: how are you going to feed the ferry dock? How are you going to feed the container docks? How are you going to feed the West Seattle Bridge? How are all those cars coming off Aurora at the Battery Street Tunnel going to be redirected? What about during Mariner games? What about DOWNTOWN?

Fnarf: You seem truly blinded by your anti-green rage. And frankly, your single-mindedness seems unsuited to the pluralistic concentration of values you claim to honor in your particular take on urbanism.

SMILES just addressed your questions: PWC has used SDOTs own projections for how traffic will be handled during the build out of the proposed 'whatever'. All of your hysteria will be have to be addressed, no matter what happens.

My hunch is that when gas is $6 -7/gal. It will be fun and fashionable for Mariner Fans to park in Kirkland, get wasted, and ride free busses in to town.

You're drunk, Jensen, if you think anyone's ever going to take an hour-and-a-half bus ride from Kirkland to see the Mariners.

And I am not blinded by anti-green rage. I have plenty of GREEN rage, which is directed where the crimes are taking place: beyond the green belt. Building or not building a elevated road in downtown isn't going to affect the "green balance" much of one way or the other; the action is all out in Marysville and Arlington and beyond across Skagit County. They're paving the forests and the farms as I type this.

Cities aren't supposed to be "green"; they're green by default, because the densities of cities make for vastly more efficient use of resources and waste. It's not green to push that out of the city, it's brown.

I don't agree with the PWC plan, but a boulevard could certainly work. Here's the letter I sent the council:

Dear Councilmember ,

I write in support of building a surface boulevard to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. As someone born & raised in Seattle but now living in New York City, I have seen the promise of the boulevard option.

When criticizing the boulevard, highway planners deride the positive examples of Portland removing the McCall Freeway and San Francisco removing the Embarcadero Freeway as unrepresentative because of the lower traffic volumes and the claim those roadways were not as "critical" as the Viaduct.

However, New York City contains a very analogous example of a freeway making way for a boulevard successfully: The West Side Highway. The old, decrepit elevated roadway literally collapsed in the 1970s. There was much debate over what to do, and eventually a tunneled/elevated freeway plan much like Mayor Nickel's big dig was proposed.

The immensely controversial plan eventually collapsed under community and environmental objections. What replaced this absolutely critical freeway? A surface boulevard, with raised landscaped medians, wide sidewalks, and between six and eight lanes. It works very successfully, and is certainly no more congested than the FDR or other local freeway routes.

There is no reason a six lane boulevard could not do the job the Viaduct does, with a frontage road for ferry access, a few pedestrian overpasses, limited left turns, and adaptive synchronized traffic lights.

This would cost a lot less, eliminate years of construction, and free up money for improving the downtown street grid and implementing BRT or streetcar service to West Seattle and Ballard to capture some Viaduct trips.

If a surface boulevard option cannot be put on the ballot this fall, I would like to see a no action choice, so I can vote against both of the establishments ill-conceived options. If those are the choices, it would be better to follow New York's example and wait for it to fall down. Then perhaps a similar fit of common sense will seize Seattle.

Sincerely,

Dan

Everybody's favorite example of a green city that works is Portland, Oregon. Portland has freeways running up and down its waterfront.

Nah, my favorite example is Vancouver BC - they make Portland look like anti-Kyoto pikers.

They have an ancient forest on their waterfront. And eagles. Can't beat that.

Why can't we simply have the police arrest everyone who doesn't have a work-related purpose for driving and confiscate their cars?

re Native American remains...actually odds may not be so high. First, most of what is now waterfront was actually underwater when built on and probably for a long time before that. Additionally, all of the intervening building, filling and sluicing probably destroyed what might have been there. But, it is an interesting point.

The Emabarcadero is not the appropriate SF analogy. The old City Freeway (which formed the main connector between the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate) is...that freeway is gone, gone, gone and SF has not fallen to it's knees...folks have adjusted quite nicely.

If ya wanna tunnel something, cap I-5 completely thruough the downtown area.

In the meantime, how about a 2 year trial? Tear down the viaduct and see what happens. If it's a total nighmare then go to the drawing board and work on a solution.

GNOSSOS Wrote:
"re Native American remains...actually odds may not be so high. First, most of what is now waterfront was actually underwater when built on and probably for a long time before that. Additionally, all of the intervening building, filling and sluicing probably destroyed what might have been there. But, it is an interesting point."

Actually Gnossos, when the Port of Seattle built out Pier 66 they ran into a number of human remains which may have been determined to be of Native American origin. I honestly don't remember what transpired as a result of the find. A money exchange seems to stick in mind, however I may be completely wrong. Better to ask the Port or Duwammish and/or Muckleshoot nations about this....or check the local newspaper archives.

---Jensen

Not really trying to split hairs here, but that's why I said "may not be so high."

The 66/World Trade Center Site is further north than the intended tunnel and is more original terra firma than artificial fill; also, my recollection is that it was unclear if the remains were actually placed there or simply ended up there as a result of previous digging.

But, it is true that we're sitting on top of several thousand years of Native occupation and so virtually any project involving digging (including home remodels) runs a risk.

Ergo, build light rail or monorali.