Comments on Last Night's Viaduct Debate: Not Too Boring for the Stranger!

Ron dreamt up Surface Plus Transit right after he finished inventing the internets.

ECB Wrote:
"probably kill the maritime industry on the waterfront. “The Port of Seattle and manufacturing businesses don’t have an alternative. If we choose a surface option they may not have a future in the city. … And that can work.”

So killing the maritime industry and
manufacturing businesses in Seattle is okay with Nickels? That is one huge open mouth-insert foot(both) moment, and he'll be reminded of it from every election onward. "Nickels wanted to kill family wage jobs in Seattle beacuse he couldn't get his financially questionable tunnel"

---Jensen

Killing the maritime industry? What a load of crap. Whether the central waterfront portion is above, at or below grade has no effect on the Spokane St - King St section, which is where the maritime action is at.

The SR 519 interchange will improve freight and maritime mobility regardless of what happens in the Central Waterfront, which mainly impacts condo developers and tourist traps.

I still don't understand why people keep saying that Port Traffic uses the Viaduct. Port traffic is essentially shipping containers or rail cars full of grain. You just don't see container trucks on the Viaduct -- they use Alaska Way and/or Marginal Way to get to Spokane or Royal Brougham or Atlantic/Martinez. Clearly I am missing something here because it comes up over and over again --can someone explain it?

@1 - actually, the phrase Surface Plus Transit was dreamed up by me at a Sierra Club Transportation meeting, but you can steal it if you want.

@4 - yes, I used to work at WOSCA - where they take boxcars from the ships and put them on short trucks and take them off trains and put them on trucks - those use the Viaduct - in fact, the Safeco exit runs right next to my old office - literally. Trucks use the Viaduct, even if you don't want to admit it.

What horseshit. I have yet to see a real study showing the 130,000 figure, or the death of industry and the port with a surface street rather than another elevated monstrosity.

Hell, this experiment happened. The viaduct was shut for months after the 2001 earthquake and the city still exists. The concurrent closure of the Ballard bridge didn't even matter that much.

The first stretch of light rail will be complete in about 2 years, with an immediate extension to UW. I can see the Allenville street car going in. What crap it is to claim the ONLY way the city can accomidate new residents is through more and more cars. Total horseshit.

Ron Sims wins. Seriously, 7-10 years of the surface option no matter what? Let's just take it down before the next earthquake does it for us. If we need a replacement so badly it'll be apparent within a few years.

from March 2, 2001

"The viaduct itself reopened yesterday afternoon, clearing up one source of some astounding traffic headaches."

I do believe that was 2 days after the earthquake. Just the facts. The viaduct has been closed a few weekends.

...and ST won't get to the U-District until 2016 - 20 years after voters first approved it, and hardly "immediate"

"Ron Sims wins. Seriously, 7-10 years"

Current rebuils will not shut down for nearly that long. They are claiming months not years.

@9 - Well, but it will get to Husky Stadium 4 years before that - and that means it can be used to link to 520.

Peter is right about the downtime - but it will have reduced capacity.

Will,

2016 actually is the estimated date that service will start at Husky Stadium. Getting to the core of the U-District will presumably take longer still...

@8. I said nothing about traffic. The city, port and industry did manage to function even with both the AWV and Ballard Bridge closed. And that was with a complete closure and no preparation, no light rail, no street cars....

Don't conflate bad traffic with a non-functional transportation system.

Even the most pessimistic view of the surface option can claim a capacity of 30-40,000 cars per day, a far better situation than post-earthquake.

You want a retrofit and wait. Here's my comprimise:

Rip it down and do the surface option. Fight for local funding for a light rail, express streetcar or even BRT service to West Seattle from the existing SODO light rail station.

If the city cannot function without the capacity, build the cable stay bridge from near the stadiums to interbay as a bypass route.

Seems like a winner all around...

#10: Who's "they"? If that's WSDOT, then I've heard that although the Viaduct will be "fully-closed" for 3-9 months, there will be 4-5 other major closures. Who the hell knows what major means.

Please, the little Fremont Bridge will have been partially closed for almost two years and it's just being repaired.

#5: The Port themselves have stood up at public meetings and said they don't use the Viaduct, despite your personal experience.

Anyone who thinks a double-decker freeway is a safe roadway in an earthquake zone hasn't seen this video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/17/newsid_2491000/2491211.stm

I almost threw up when I saw it.

dude, the fremont bridge will only be 18 months. it hasn't caused any problems. in fact, it's caused more people to take the bus. the city'd be better off if they made it bikes/peds only.

Nickels' money quote: "...probably kill the maritime industry on the waterfront. “The Port of Seattle and manufacturing businesses don’t have an alternative. If we choose a surface option they may not have a future in the city. … And that can work."

Me: That is because big developers want terminal 46 for their condos and tourist playground. Nickels works for them, not us.

Not all containers get on SR519. Some go to Harbor island, some go through SODO to get to destination there, and in Georgetown. That traffic will be impacted. It's workable, if people are willing to think about it and involve maritime industry people in the discussion. It is also easy to use neglect during the contruction phase (tunnel) as a way to kill industry in order to have cheap developable real estate (i.e. the "Livable South Downtown" scheme). Nickels would rather have $8/hr jobs replace the living wage jobs, because of short term gains for his politcal contributors.

Golob - you wrote "Hell, this experiment happened. The viaduct was shut for months after the 2001 earthquake and the city still exists."

The viaduct was closed for two days - not for months - yes we survived a two day shut down. what in the world is your point?

It seems to me that a few prolific commentors here have simply settled into their positions - the Sherwinist "renovate!" for example - and few are really willing to listen to common sense and reality.

Which tells us that by the time the viaduct corridor is all finished and done - 2020 by some estimates - we will already have light rail, and a dozen years of other transit improvements.

I don't know what the Port of Seattle has to do to get people to listen when they say the viaduct is simply not essential to their operations. Given the size of the port, their ongoing competition with the Port of Tacoma, and the importance of global shipping to the local economy, you can bet that if they thought the viaduct was important to them, they'd let you know it.

So that leaves commuters and locals who actually use the viaduct. People going from Ballard to West Seattle. Commuters going from Greenlake to downtown. Folks from Wallingford taking the quicker route to Sea-Tac. All those kinds of trips can be dealt with through the transportation we are building.

My sense has always been, and is only being reconfirmed, that the resistance to the surface/transit option is at root an unwillingness to admit that environmentalists and smart growthers are unimpeachably right on this one and that Seattle has to start moving away from the 20th century and the American "dream" of easy car mobility.

The surface/transit option is the only one that makes any sense from multiple standpoints. I would hope that either Frank Chopp or Christine Gregoire would recognize this fact, see the political benefits to redirecting some of the $2 billion to the 520 bridge project (making a whole lot more voters happy) than continuing with this idiotic and senseless attempt to ram a viaduct down our throats.

As to Nickels, he has no credibility left, so who cares.

Look, I understand the reluctance to wake up to reality. San Franciscans hated the Embarcadero Freeway and kept debating whether to replace it. Finally, the 1989 earthquake closed it for good - but even then they dragged their feet on the question of demolition. The 1991 vote on the SF Board of Supervisors was 6-5 to close it. Today the only debate is "my god, why didn't we do this sooner?!"

Erica is absolutely right. No and hell no.

"I am skeptical that a tunnel replacing the Viaduct is affordable, and believe elevated or surface structures must have consideration. All replacement plans must accomodate Viaduct traffic through and into Seattle during construction. I also have common-sense solutions that will make our system work better, such as water taxis, rapid response teams that station tow trucks at congestion points to remove stalled vehicles imediately, and I will keep the promise of synchronizing traffic signals."

--Greg Nickels, Seattle Times, September 4, 2001

PETER SHERWIN WROTE:
"Current rebuils will not shut down for nearly that long. They are claiming months not years."

A cable stayed bridge would likely shut down the viaduct for days only. It is not necessary to risk those businesses and jobs dependent on the viaduct with lengthy and yet to be realized viaduct repair issues (call it the "shipwright
disease factor"),and it can be done in a cost effective manner. There is no reason to add traffic and foul the Alaska Way corridor or decrease the amount of land that can be acquired for parks, homes and businesses in order to build additional roads.

Lastly, to jepordize family wage jobs,
as Nickels and Sims suggest as acceptable, when a viable alternative exists is criminal.

The cable stayed bridge can and should be built.

---Jensen

Who's saying that the Viaduct is heavily used by Port trucking?

The Viaduct serves as an overpass to Port/Rail (and tourist) activity. That is its function. That's what it does.

Like the pole vaulter in the Summer Olympics. Same thing.

Except the the ground isn't made in China and the Star Spangled Banner shorts aren't made in Canada.

If we'd only voted for Stan Lippmann for mayor, we'd have mag-lev and teleportation devices by now. :(

Check out this video by Action: Better City. It was made in 2003 when the tunnel was still on the table, and has interviews with Steinbrueck, Conlin, John Rahaim, and David Yeaworth. Nothing that they said is any different now that the tunnel is dead...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-658541619953982166&q=viaduct+what+viaduct

George at 20, that is THE comment of the month.

Nickels is such a tool. Why couldn't we get anyone aside from a cranky, bitter old man to challenge him in 2005?!

If Ron Sims wasn't the first to call for surface+transit, who was?

If Ron Sims wasn't the first to call for surface+transit, who was?

Eugene @ 19:

Bullshit repeated ad nauseam is still bullshit.

"Those kinds of trips can be dealt with through the transportation we are building."

What transit is that, smart guy? How much of that transit is separated from grade? If it is buses, using surface streets, then those streets remain clogged -- with buses -- long, unwieldy, underpowered articulated buses, that can't climb hills in the snow.

"Look, I understand the reluctance to wake up to reality. San Franciscans hated the Embarcadero Freeway and kept debating whether to replace it."

The "reluctance to wake up to reality" is the repeated claim that the Embarcarcadero had anything to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct. A spur and a through highway are not the same thing It gets like Bush repeating that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"My sense has always been, and is only being reconfirmed, that the resistance to the surface/transit option is at root an unwillingness to admit that environmentalists and smart growthers are unimpeachably right on this one and that Seattle has to start moving away from the 20th century and the American "dream" of easy car mobility."

Your sense, is it? Seattle *has* to, does it? Quite the little social engineer, aren't you?

"Erica is absolutely right. No and hell no."

The most preposterous statement of the lot. Build the transit first, get it in place -- I'm all for that -- then let's deal on the Viaduct.

SF in 1990 had a 50 or so miles of BART and multiple Muni rail system lines (running underground only a few blocks from The Embarcadero). When we have that kind of transit in place then we can have a proper debate about ripping out roads. If we start now, that can be around 2050. Keep the roads till we have transit. I don't care if its surface, tunnel or viaduct as long at it connects to Aurora.

We want to keep a stronge economy and bring in a million plus more people yet not build real transit that quickly and rip out roads before we do that? That's the surface/"transit" proposal in a nutshell. Ron Sims: Just a note to you- you won't get to be gubernator that way even though you want it real real bad.

If Nickels said that it was ok to kill the maritime industry, he's probably signed his political death warrant in this city. How can one say that the whole maritime industry shall change with no input from the Port, the unions involved, etc. Pat Davis will have her knickers in a bunch over that one. People seem to forget this is one of the busiest ports in the country.

Ivan - wow - you just don't get it - we want Seattle to be a paradise and Eden didn't have a viaduct so Seattle shouldn't either - it's in the Bible you can look it up - the biggest irony is that those that had the most to do to stop and/or kill the monorail are the ones bleeting the loudest that we need S&T including one of the activist writers now writing for the Stranger.

The stop cars now gang could actually support doing the monorail green line now - they had a fixed price contract at under $1.7 billion - of course it will cost more now and won't be done by 2010 but do they have anything else? If people would rather do some other grade separated system, fine.

@12 - sorry, 2012 is Sea-Tac airport.

@26,27 - I was - it was at a Sierra Club Transportation meeting, back then it had some stupid long name, and I created the name - and then spread it everywhere, SLOG, PI, even the Weakly - and in politico circles. Effective phrase, huh? You'd never know my first degree was Business (Sales and Marketing focus). That's where Surface Plus Transit came from.

Oh, and @30 - yeah, it's ironic, ain't it - we're talking multiples of the monorail cost which if we HAD built we could have torn down the Viaduct and used only four-lane highway to replace - we still need the transit just for the population growth and the density upzoning downtown and along the line, regardless.

We shouldn't tear down the viaduct until we have transit in place, but we shouldn't build a new viaduct either.

We need more rail faster. Decouple ST2 from RTID, vote yes on that. Then put together another rail package for the following November that accelerates construction and includes rail going north and south, west of the central line, to serve people currently using the viaduct. The University and ST2 expansions alone would bring the light rail system to at least 56 miles. A 99 rail route, depending upon how extensive it is, could bring that total to 60-70 miles. We just need to pay more money up front to speed up the process--likely saving money in the long run.

Once all this rail is in place, we'll be in much better shape to remove the viaduct. We should live with it until then.

This could be done even if the roads and transit package can't be decoupled. We just need an additional package for rail only.

It's clear that the Stranger, Councilmember Steinbrueck, and others don't give a damn about the industrial jobs. These are union, family wage jobs that will be affected. I'd go tunnel as my first option, elevated as second otion and the anti-labor surface+transit option NEVER! Freight can't take the bus (or the trolley, or the monorail).

Ivan 29, Coffman as usual 30, and Cascadian 33 all have it nailed:

More buses on the surface is a bullshit answer.

No demolition until mass transit is in place.

Nickels killing Maratime? Laughable.

We all know that money is an issue for transit/via-whatevs. But, ahem: Show me the urgency!

Can someone remind me how taking the small portion of SR-99 that is now limited-access and making it -- like the rest of SR-99 -- not limited access, would kill the Seattle maritime industry?

This is like saying that putting stoplights on the viaduct would shut down the port. I don't get it.

Union Boy wrote, "I'd go tunnel as my first option, elevated as second otion and the anti-labor surface+transit option NEVER! Freight can't take the bus (or the trolley, or the monorail)."

Right, freight wouldn't be using the "transit" portion of "surface plus transit", it would be using the "surface" portion. Freight cannot take a bus, a trolley, or a monorail, but it can take a road -- whether that road is in a tunnel, on a viaduct, or on the surface.

A few blocks of surface street might take a little longer for freight to travel than a few blocks of tunnel or a few blocks of viaduct would, but that's the cost of doing business in a dense, urban environment. I understand that time is money, but please don't ask us to subsidize the freight industry by building a special multi-billion-dollar route through our city for it.

Sherwin @ 30:

I hear ya loud and clear, brother. We fought like hell to get the Monorail and fought like hell to save it.

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Best for you :)

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