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Monday, September 18, 2006

WSDOT Ignores Economic, Environmental Benefits of Viaduct Teardown

Posted by on September 18 at 12:00 PM

As Nancy Drew reported, the Congress for the New Urbanism and Center for Neighborhood Technology released a study last week finding that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), in studying alternatives for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, had overestimated downtown traffic projections, overstated the extent to which the viaduct is needed for freight mobility, and mischaracterized the car capacity of downtown streets, among other flaws. In a few weeks, the groups will release part 2 of their report, which addresses the economic impacts of the three viaduct-replacement alternatives. (The three choices are: Replace the viaduct with another aerial structure; replace it with an aerial structure and cut-and-cover tunnel; or tear it down and don’t replace it, supplementing the lost capacity by adding transit and re-routing viaduct trips through the street grid.) In a letter to Mayor Nickels, the presidents of the two organizations, John Norquist and Scott Bernstein, note that WSDOT’s analysis “did not analyze the potential benefits of more balanced traffic distribution” downtown and limited its economic considerations “solely to near term availability” of funds.

In other cities that have torn down waterfront freeways and not replaced them, Norquist and Bernstein write, the new waterfront boulevards “sparked the areas revitalization.” In Milwaukee, for example, as property values citywide went up 18 percent, property values on the reclaimed waterfront increased an astonishing 155%.

Norquist and Bernstein also criticize WSDOT and the city’s presumption that people won’t change their auto dependent habits if given real alternatives. Between 2000 and 2030, they note, the region’s residents will spend $1 trillion on out-of-pocket auto-related expenses: $10,000 per household per year. “If making the most of your existing assets… can save as much as 30 percent of that amount per household, then moving toward the direction of increasing traffic flow and inducing automobile use and dependence is an expensive mistake.” Moreover, “accomodating increased traffic and reducing [greenhouse-gas] emissions by 80 percent,” the city’s stated goal, “are not compatible goals.”

The letter concludes:

We ask that you not plan for the Viaduct replacement in isolation from the other commitments in which you are engaged, such as greenhouse gas reduction and increasing transit. We believe there are better choices to be made.

The city council votes Friday on what viaduct replacement options it will send to the ballot in November. At the moment, it appears the council plans to ignore the progressive groups’ advice, giving voters only two options: the ugly aerial rebuild and the costly, environmentally short-sighted tunnel.


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Holding an advisory vote like this will be counterproductive. This is what the monorail project did - ask voters to indicate whether they wanted a transportation project without saying which taxes would rise, and how long those taxes would be in place. When that EXTREMELY RELEVANT information about taxes finally came out (before the fifth vote), the voters could put it into perspective. Then it went down 65% to 35%.

IF we have to have an advisory vote with not tax-cost information, let the people weigh in on a retrofit option too. The cost would be much less, and traffic would not be disrupted for over five years straight. That would make the structure safe enough. If the Big One hits, lots of brick buildings will be coming down and taking out many more people than the number who'd be pancaked on SR 99.

Also, this whole "tunnel vs rebuild" debate should happen, but it should take place in context. The relevant context is the slew of RTID projects and taxes set to be put on the 11/'07 ballot. For example, if the rebuild is selected, would the money saved by not selecting the tunnel be applied against the costs of the SR 520 bridge & approaches project? If not, then how much would the RTID taxes and tolls be reduced because RTID will need less money (the difference between the rebuild and tunnel options).

In other words, don't do what SMP did - provide some scenerios with estimates of how the tax costs of all the RTID projects will be impacted by whether tunnel/retrofit/rebuild/no-rebuild is selected for the SR 99 project.

They can't provide any of that, because any honest projection of what the options are going to cost would scare the public ten times as much as the monorail did. Realistically? Five billion for the rebuild, ten for the tunnel. Except that both of these projects will be permanently halted when they find the Indian village and cemetery that's under there.

I'm all for considering a range of options for dealing with the viaduct (I live on Queen Anne and depend on it to get around). But I think the no-rebuild option is somehwat Seattle-centric. I think we are forgetting that the viaduct is part of a STATE HIGHWAY that runs from Fife all the way to Everett. It's not just a bridge through the city, it's part of an existing transportation corridor. Removing the viaduct and replacing it with nothing bifurcates a major route through the Puget Sound region for goods and people. A future without the viaduct might be fine (hell, it might be great) for SEATTLE, but I question whether it's the best thing for the REGION.

The "no-build" option on the ballot will get maybe 15% of the vote in progressive Seattle; statewide would be less than 5%. It's a fringe suggestion.

The experience of Milwaukee and other cities is not comparable, as their highways are not similar. The claimed excess street capacity of downtown has no more to do with the discussion than the excess street capacity in Redmond, which is similarly nowhere near where it's needed (i.e., N-S through downtown). A viaduct can be perfectly compatible with a vibrant waterfront; see Sydney, Australia.

Virtually all of the reasoning presented in favor of no-rebuild is specious and anti-factual. I'm still waiting for the reality-based discussion to start....

The reason any honest projection of what the options would cost would scare the public ten times as much as the monorail green line projections did, is that the underwater tunnel option will end up pencilling in at around TEN TIMES what the green line monorail would have cost.

Not to mention the forthcoming cost for the SR-520 bridge replacement (hearing tonight 4-7 at MOHAI).

I'm going for the option of taking the fully paid-for state funded elevated Viaduct with ZERO added tolls rebuilt to modern standards - at least that doesn't involve local taxes (and massive debt for inevitable cost overruns) other than what we have to pay to rebuild the sea wall (in all three plans).

It's time to get real.

Thank God, the City Council will make somesort of progress... giving two, simple choices... viaduct or tunnel.

Too many fringe political groups keep getting their names in the paper (pick your favorite media outlet, they have gotten exposure), all saying the same thing... "My study is correct, more valid then other bozo's. They're wrong, pick mine and here's why..."


This thing has been talked about into the ground. Which is where the Viaduct is going to be, the first time a semi-truck cuts a corner close and brushed into one of the support beams. Hey, it not like the viaduct will get fixed if it just sits there... let's fix the fucker already and stop talking about it.

KILL THE VIADUCT!

Trucks and cars hit the support beams all the time.

Goodgrief, I actually agree. How can we siphon money to terrorists for a nice Highway 99 meltdown? From past examples, that might make citezens of a city start cooperating.

Phenics. I'm looking forward to the truck in that video they have of the tunnel jackknifing and exploding in a tunnel filled with flames that we can't even escape from.

Something just occurred to me - I mentioned in an earlier thread that the essential question for the no-rebuild seems to be whether we need two uninterrupted north-south highways through downtown. It's not just a question of whether I-5 could absorb the through traffic. 99 would become a route into and out of the city, just not through it. It would indeed suck for Queen Anne and Ballard residents needing to go south of the city, and West Seattle residents needing to head north of it, but you can't have a highway for everyone. But, much of the traffic on I-5 now is into and out of the city, and if through traffic that previously would have taken 99 diverts to I-5, traffic in and out of the city that currently uses I-5 could use the future, more lightly-travelled 99. Simulations used in engineering studies would take this into account... but, for the layman slog discussion, something to keep in mind.

Hey Erica, what did you go to school for? I'm guessing they don't teach traffic engineering in journalism do they? Before you go off discounting reports you probably didn't even understand half of (I'm sure you only looked at the pretty pictures) maybe you should actually talk to someone without a political agenda. How about a WSDOT engineer? Or a PIO even? The engineers doing these studies are not are not sitting around with the mayor figuring out ways to screw over Seattle. You should think about getting information from a source that actually knows something about what's going on.

Erica, stop. You sound like an idiot.

You missed one of the most important components of this "story": the Congress for New Urbanisam and the Center for Neighborhood Technology never support the reconstruction of urban highways. They're highly biased special interest groups, dedicated to removing urban highways from the US, regardless of practicality.

Flaws with their "reports" have already been widely discussed: they don't consider the traffic impact on I-5, they don't consider that most of the "capacity" through downtown is discontinuous, and they play fast-and-loose with the notion of "capacity," from the start, including roads in their analysis that were never meant for high-traffic use.

If you're going to be a shill, at least be honest about it, Erica. Don't dress up your biases as journalism.

Well here in Milwaukee the DOT thought, as did many people oh my god what will we do without that highway. Guess what NOBODY misses it at all. And now development is lining up big one approved today, one under construction and many in thw works) for the property and the land in the area around it has been booming.

Down with the viaduct

Why does the Stranger always state, or at least imply, that the Milwaukee freeway segment that was removed was along the city's waterfront? It wasn't, and using Milwaukee's experience to argue for - or against - any particular solution for Seattle is misleading and a waste of time.

Milwaukee's Park East Freeway was, like the San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway, a terminus and a stub. It didn't connect to anything; the hookup with the proposed Lake Freeway, back in the 60s, never happened, so the Park East just crossed the river and ended.

It could not be more different than the Viaduct, which connects north and south in a city that is extremely dependent on north-south travel; in the downtown core I-5 cuts off an increasingly narrow slice of the city; whereas down in the Regrade you can travel N-S on 9th Ave. and above, by the time you get to the CBD 6th is as high as you can go.

All the studies about supposed "excess capacity" downtown assume that barrelling down 8th Avenue will accomplish the goals of all the viaduct drivers, but that's ridiculous. The reason those streets have excess capacity is because they don't go anywhere. The real N-S streets do NOT have excess capacity at all.

The southbound viaduct traffic is going to back up on Alaskan Way, probably several miles up Elliot and Aurora. This traffic nightmare isn't shown in the pretty pictures put out by the lying bastards at the PWC, because they know that if their pictures represented reality, no one would listen to them.

Actually no one is listening to them now. Their plan is a thinly-disguised project to ease traffic by encouraging economic activity to leave Washington State altogether. Hello, Detroit!

Every time I bounce over the half-buried old streetcar tracks, it's a painful reminder of why traffic is so bad here. Take a city built on a narrow isthmus that grew up with an excellent city-wide streetcar system, rip it up, and shove through two north-south freeways. How could traffic not be horrible?

It is impractical to have a city the size and shape of Seattle without a serious mass transit system.

Without significant tolls (about $5 a trip), the tunnel would divert too much away from the obvious and practical solution to the traffic problems.

Face it, the AWV was a horrible idea when it was built, destroying the waterfront for an entire generation. Why propogate the mistake? We're going to learn to live without it, at least for the duration of construction. Why not go back to what worked, and caused Seattle to grow in the first place: an intraurban rail system?

There is a perfectly resonable compromise to a tunnel or an in situ elevated rebuild:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=earlbell26&date=20060726&query=earl+bell

Unfortunately, nobody seems to be able to get their minds around it. It would be neither disruptive to the current waterfront, and if proven feasible, could be built in less time than a tunnel or rebuild.

It is amazing this continues to be ignored by the state and city.

Fnarf --

Having grown up in metro-detroit, there is a good case to be made that the excellent freeway system hastened the demise of the city's economy.

It was too easy to move out of the city and still commute into jobs. The jobs followed a decade or two later, leaving the mostly-empty shell behind.

I fully agree that N-S capacity is critical for Seattle. I'm not not convinced that it should be TWO freeways rather than keeping I-5 and taking the billions of dollars to start remaking Seattle's rail system. Wouldn't Ballard and W. Seattle residents be better served by a grade seperated rail system?

Fnarf,

Have you ever been to NYC? The West Side Highway was an elevated viaduct that served signficant N-S traffic, not just a spur to nowhere. It still serves significant N-S traffic, as a surface boulevard. Just what we could have here.

I agree the PWC is being a little disingenuous, as we would need three lanes each way, plus frontage streets for ferry and business access, to maintain an acceptable traffic flow. One left turn pocket to downtown for southbound traffic. Limit intersections by turning most streets west of Western into dead ends. Widen the promenade along the piers, and add narrow landscaped berms to reduce traffic noise and channel pedestrians to the remaining intersections.

It wouldn't be fancified like the tunnel allows, but it wouldn't be the traffic disaster that some are claiming. And it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg, or require years of closures.

I'd like to hear a rational response from the surface option haters to that plan, other than "the state won't allow it, and it can do whatever it wants, city be dammed"

I have been in NYC, and have walked the West Side Highway area, down by the Village. It certainly doesn't resemble anything I'd like to see in downtown Seattle: a super-wide, heavily-traveled surface boulevard that cuts off the waterfront more effectively than any viaduct ever could. The only other people I ever saw down there were teenage boy prostitutes.

As for transit: yes, OF COURSE transit would be better. But we're not getting it. Building transit in the viaduct right-of-way ISN'T HAPPENING. The monorail LOST, remember? And there are no other proposals on the table, now or in the foreseeable future. This is what I mean by "imaginary transit systems".

We're not getting transit with the tunnel either, unless you've got some magic plan that involves teleporters or fairy dust, FNARF.

Face it, we just can't afford the tunnel. We never could.

SomeJerk,

That sounds reasonable enough - but the PWC and Allied Arts crowd would never let it happen. The kind of surface boulevard that could actually start to replace the capacity of the Viaduct would be incredibly pedestrian unfriendly (far worse than the AWV is now), and wouldn't fit the agenda of the autophobes who want to tear down the AWV without replacing it.

If it weren't for that, I'd say it was the most reasonable option after retrofitting the existing structure, but the truth is the PWC vision is of a much smaller street that wouldn't begin to get the job done...

...oh, and once again, you won't be able to get ONE INCH closer to the water if the AWV is removed than you can now (but the 6-lane boulevard actually would "cut downtown off from its waterfront" in a way the AWV doesn't).

BTW - the quote about "cutting downtown off from its waterfront" wasn't supposed to be attributed to anyone in particular, but you still do hear it an awful lot...

Actually, Mr. X, all three plans will impede pedestrians, if you actually read the plans:

A. Surface Plus Transit - removes Viaduct and replaces with surface major arterial (6 lanes, no parking, no left except at light, no lights except every 5 blocks, double transit in area).

B. Elevated Viaduct rebuild - same as before, possible expansion of streetcar (if not killed by SAM) - most likely some reduction in ped crossings for safety reasons (don't believe me - look at Fremont Bridge rebuild and SDOT removal of crosswalks wholesale).

C. Underwater Tunnel - surface arterial (four lane, green center ped/bike option) - but same SDOT removal of crosswalks.

It doesn't matter which plan - cheaper Surface Plus Transit, fully-paid-by-State rebuilt Viaduct, or massive-boondoggle underwater Tunnel - you won't be getting an increase in pedestrian access, once the large buildings are built over the next 10-20 years, based on zoning.

The imaginary state of transit planing in Seattle is what worries me. To a large extent, we are dealing with a zero-sum situation of limited transportation funding. If we spend an extra $2b for the tunnel over a rebuild, that is $2b less for lightrail, streetcars, bus service and so on.

Hence my reaction to go for the plan that spends the least on roads, leaving the most for future transit projects.

Yes, the monorail failed, mostly because of inept financial management, but also from our incompetent political leadership. If anything, the mayor and city council's role in that whole debacle should have immediately resulted in their coming up with an alternate plan for the corridor. We should be holding their feet to the fire for transit, rather than endlessless debating the tunnel.

I agree, Golob. How did we get dragged into this zero-sum game of talking about wasting billions for roads and tunnels when we could spend it on transit and actually improve things around here?

We need to demand a literal DOUBLING of transit in Seattle. As a precondition for new roads/bridges/tunnels.

Ummm for fuck sake, so, how non-pedestrian friendly exactly is today's waterfront? Do you mean the port? Then you are right, people can't walk around the cargo containers, as it should be for safety. But that is in the south, where the viaduct does not reach anyways, so it isn’t germane.

But really, a person can walk the length of the waterfront, from the ferry terminal, miles north, to the Magnolia Bridge... albeit on a sidewalk flanked on the sides with piers, and along piers, the piers of which are all shops and restaurants, with maybe a few select offices. Once past the Edgewater Hotel, then Myrtle Edwards park carries a person over to Magnolia, along a very nice and well maintained trail.

If someone wanted, a person can have an entire vacation on the waterfront... breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep, bars, aquarium, boat rides, ferry rides, a walk in the park... all without so much as having to cross Alaska Way.

Good fucking grief already. I have tuned this argument out, and will vote how I want to vote, since the City Council and the Mayor can't be bothered to decide on the issue and punted the issue to the voters. Those other groups and the study, after study, after study be damned. Seattle has a great waterfront already. Unless you want the entire thing to be a sandy (err rocky beach, this is the PNW after all), dunes, maybe a nature trail through a pristinely restored forest, which in that case... shut up. This is a city. Want a beach, leave the city and go live in one of the waterfront towns already; its not like salty water is at a premium around here (unless you count Seattle as the only place in the PNW as a good place to live. Which I don't and neither should you.)

Seattle people love to get upset about something so they can feel superior. It's funny how a post about the most boring thing will get Seattle people's panties all bunched up.

Fnarf,

Actually, you're wrong. The excess street capacity is ONLY north-south through downtown. The study didn't consider any other corridors.

Anyone who can say that the north/south streets through Downtown Seattle have excess capacity with a straight face obviously hasn't ever tried to get through town on them.

Yes, Erica, the study considers all N-S routes -- including all the ones that run into the freeway, like eighth. A street eight blocks away from your route of travel, that ISN'T A THROUGH STREET, can bolster your bogus study but doesn't mean anything.

Meanwhile, I need to get from Ballard to Columbia City, which means three lifetimes on the bus and four once the viaduct is gone.

no East to West options? Bad on the studies part... like, Starbucks HQ, Amazon.com HQ, Pioneer Square lawyers and artists, blah, blah, blah, don't have employees who find value by jumping on the Viaduct, going north to a 520 on-ramp, slide over to 405, then WHAM!! there they are home in BFE.


Guess they all will needed to do that trip without a viaduct (I'll assume someone factored in the expected population growth of the next 50 years) by what was that, going down fourth then olive or maybe they head up dearborn, then swing down 14th, coast on over to maybe madison or maybe join up on with the colleagues already on olive... either way, they want to get to 405, which is, oh wait, under construction. No problem, then I-90. the Coal Creek Parkway interchange is just a breeze these days, and I-90 everyone says you can just fly down.

gag


For goodness sake, build a cable stay
bridge over Elliott Bay which connects the Battery Street Tunnel with the West Seattle-Hwy 99 interchange. It's cheap and doable. It allows us to tear down the current viaduct and reconnect the city to waterfront---whatever that means. Much of it could be built off-site and ferried to position. Have a design competition; build something stunning and world class. It is amazing how shallow this argument has become when the solution is so terribly obvious.

A little late here, but the rest of SR-99 is not a freeway, it is a highway. Some, but not all of the Seattle portion is without traffic lights. Outside of that, you're hitting lights north of the Aurora Bridge and south of Boeing Field. Continue north or south and it is all traffic lights, from Everett to Tacoma.

I'm shocked to see Fnarf and Will in Seattle coming to their senses and talking about feasibility w/r/t to proposed plans.

Seattle eventually needs to develop mass transit, but until it gets a solid system in place, tearing out a major thoroughfare in the name of Urbanism is irresponsible and will lead to disaster. And for the umpteenth time, the WSDOT are engineers who are paid to get it exactly right and get it done the first time. You can't expect them to dispose of all their precedent, experience and reason to get behind an urbanist pipe dream that, in Seattle's context, has no basis in the present reality.

Fight for good mass transit, but don't fight to screw the city with the foolish idea that doing so will magically convert them to your way of thinking. It doesn't work that way.

Cross out 'coming to their senses'. You guys may have seen things this way throughout and I just didn't realize it.

My views on the viaduct haven't changed a bit, Gomez. I've been saying all along, for at least five years, since the talk started after the earthquake -- and I was the FIRST to say it on the Slog -- that the costs are going to be twice the worst estimates.

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