Comments on Re: The Tunnel is Dead

Totally agree with you. I just wrote the council saying something similar. Time for Nickels to let go of his little pipe dream, and for everyone at the state and city level to recognize the genius of the surface street plan.

How does the city LEGALLY tear down a state highway without authorization from the state?

please, can't we all take a break from viaduct talk during american idol's seattle freak showcase episode?

Yeah! And then the city can also make the Port into a giant, peaceful green park, because that's all it'll be good for. Fuck the 37,000 jobs. It can be a model brownfield development, like Gasworks, only humongous, and with garden plots so we can all grow the food that's now prohibitively expensive to truck in. And Cary Moon will be our queen, and every harvest we will sacrifice a longshoreman in her name. It will be awesome.

Condemn it and then sue the hell out of the state regarding permits for the new monstrosity. The idiot engineers at DOT keep telling us it is about to fall down, right? Someone needs to give Frank Chopp an ass-whuppin', and it's abot time the City Council made themselves useful so I'd nominate them.

And I still don't understand the argument about the Port jobs -- I almost never see any container trucks on that thing -- they seem to all use Spokane or Atlantic to get to a real Freeway instead of 99...

Yeah, and then they'll get their asses handed to them worse than the pro-tunnel Council majority and the Mayor did today.

15% of Seattle voters polled support this option - it's not exactly an election-winning idea among the broader electorate for the 5 members who have to run later this year.

Oh, and as others posted above, it's both a State highway and an essential public facility. How much of our tax money do you think the Council should spend on legal fees before they get laughed out of court?

Right now we're looking at most of the school board being tossed out in the next election - and the city council and mayor could easily join them.

There is NOT much support for the tunnel - never was. Doing a face down right now is literally political suicide.

Me, I'll see what people say tomorrow night and get back to you on the local fallout of all this.

This is the beginning of the end of Mayor Greg Nickels. If I were the legislature, I'd quick dickin around with the mayor and rebuild the thing. If the city tries to run up the costs, then screw it and move the money to 520.

Josh, you've got it 1/2 right. Rather than closing and tearing down after the City digs its heels in and the State forks the $ to 520, the City should get the retrofit engineers to the table with the surface plus transit folks, roll up their sleeves and plan a phased - according to vulnerability/seawall first - retrofit with some cool shit that the goddess (written with sincerity - come on, she is) and crew can offer.

Come on this is a great opportunity. What would you like to see the City do down there if the removal wasn't on the table? Quit looking to the models in cities that are developer's wet dreams when you get past the hype (like the convention center, stadium, biotech development cycles). Let's work with what we've got, save money and make it safe, keep it functional, build in some innovation, include capital investments for non-car transit alternatives, and add some cool. Some sound proofing, work some bike paths, a dog park, a skatepark altogether in the three blocks under the viaduct used for parking now...I dunno. How many childcare centers are downtown? Tons. Do we have a playground south of Freeway Park? How about some graffiti walls? Cary - imagine you had X$ and couldn't tear it down, how would you spend it?

I just watched a cheesy Hollywood blockbuster, 2006, last night - Harrison Ford, "Firewall," and the viaduct was shot from so many angles, so many times...*not* ugly.

Oh whatever, I'm tired of trying to convince so-called progressives that loving the viaduct is no different than loving that thrift store gem that is worn but functional and just has that perfect bit of old flavor and innovation to keep mending (preserving) it.

By the way, if Seattle digs their heels in over this tunnel, I won't understand how they will be able to call themselves Democrats. As you have rightly pointed out, the Olympia Democrats have an agenda that *really* acts on the interests of our party statewide, towards change representing our values. They also don't want to lose to the R's in 2008 cuz the tunnel for the D's (lots of money, benefiting few) is like the Ted Stevens bridge for the R's. Get it? If not, why?

My viaduct plan: Tear it down and replace it with a waterfront park but allow flying cars to traverse over it.

Cost: 100 million tops
Capacity: Eleventy billion cars a day!

Supplement with transit, preferably flying buses.

make it safe, keep it functional, build in some innovation

You realize that in doing that -- fixing it, making it safe, bringing it up to code -- you're essentially building the tunnel, just putting it up in the air on huge concrete stilts? A "safe and functional" viaduct will be a massive tube of concrete: the lower deck will be a tunnel; the upper deck will be open to the sky but not to the sides. From the outside even the "peekaboo" views between the decks will be gone, and the piers supporting it will be vastly larger. It will cast a larger shadow and present even more of a wall than it does now.

Not ugly? Are you fucking blind? If you don't think it's ugly, how about we build a viaduct through your front yard? Because that's what we've got right now: a viaduct through Seattle's front yard. For a seaport city, the waterfront should be the centerpiece, the necklace that sets off the face. Instead, that face is marred, disfigured, almost hidden by a cancerous grey scar oozing the pus and roar of a hundred thousand vehicles.

There may not be the money to do the right thing, fine. But don't try to portray this is some kind of valid aesthetic choice or make insipid allusions to thriftstore gems (at least not until the thriftstores start selling sweaters made of barbed wire and dogshit). You can pretend it's not ugly, just like you can pretend the passed-out junkies are flowers and the vomit on your shoes is fairy dust. Yes, you may be able to convince yourself otherwise, but just watch the tourists at the north end of the Pike Place Market, as the vista across the harbor draws them into Victor Steinbrueck park; watch as they walk up to the wall, look down, and recoil in disgust at the noise and the exhaust and the hurtling vehicles. They haven't fallen under your delusion, and they see it for what it is. And it's not pretty.

I'm so tired of viaduct. It needs to be fixed, but if Gregoire is saying that it's a state highway, then let the state pay for it. If all they want to do is replace it with an almost identical one, well, as much as I'd like more open space, you know if a tunnel would be built, it's just going to be covered with more unaffordable housing and stores for tourists.

I think 520 is a lot bigger mess that needs to be fixed now. As far as I can see, (I ride the bus) a lot of the gridlock on I-5 is caused by people trying to get 520 East from I-5, and then again at Montlake.

Now will someone blog about how fucking retarded Metro has been during "The Blizzard of 96/97"?

Joe,

Right, those millions of waterfront and Pike Place Market visitors wouldn't dream of going there because of the big, bad, horrible Viaduct. Except they have, in droves, for the last 50 years. Go to Victor Steinbrueck Park on just about any decent day and you will, in fact, see lots and lots of folks at the exact location you cite enjoying themselves. That's right - on each and every reasonably decent day (and even on some crappy ones).

And, just to repeat, you won't be able to get ONE INCH closer to the waterfront if the AWV is removed than you can now.

@11,

I believe LH was referring to preserving the existing viaduct, not building a larger, uglier one.

Keshmeshi - yup!

@11, LH @9 makes an indirect point. Successful urban areas are often a combination of good and bad development and growth decisions in the past. I'm doubt that anyone, if we could go back in time to the 1950's, would rebuild the viaduct. However, its what we have and there is not a limitless bucket of money to replace it. I don't think it wins any awards for beauty or safety but I grew up with it sitting there...and it won't kill me (unless I am on it) if it sits there for another 40 years.

Personally, I think perhaps the best option is to shore up what is there while improving surface and transit options and maybe, just perhaps, in a few years it might be feasibly to simply tear it down without spending the money to replace it. Pipe dream? Perhaps. But wouldn't it be nice if State and City policy was to try and move towards a future of LESS capacity vs. more?

Less capacity? Nah, how about replacing SOV capacity with more HOV and transit capacity. Like the rest of the first world does.

Either retrofit or rebuild viaduct! Those are Seattle's two options. We have the money to do and have had it for years. Nichols has wasted millions by not moving forward with a rebuilt viaduct years ago! If you support a tunnel than those supporters can get together and have it built with their own personal money. The taypayers are fed-up with paying for Nichols stupid plans. We are tired of funding the developers that Nichols has over for his summer barbeques. Get a life Seattle and vote down a tunnel! It would takes years longer to build a tunnel and then all the developers would make millions off their new real estate that the taxpayers paid for! I don't know about you, but I'm sick of funding the rich! What are we, Republicans or Democrats? Please, please, please support Gregoire and send her emails supporting the rebuilt viaduct.