Comments on My Review of the Anti-Viaduct Commercial

Any city that would besmirch its waterfront with an ugly, dirty, smog-belching, climate-choking elevated freeway doesn't deserve a reputation as a "world-class city."

I'm still not sure why you think a gridlocked, smog-belching, climate-choking surface highway would be better. Heck, it might result in more smog, since stop-and-go traffic causes cars to burn far more fuel per mile than any other condition.

Yes, I know. You have faith that people will choose to ride buses, instead of drive. Buses that will also be caught in that same gridlock. Buses that are slow to begin with, even without removing highway capacity from the road system. (I couldn't find stats for Seattle, but in New York buses average only 7.5 mph.)

"You can't build your way out of congestion" is true, but you also can't subtract your way out of it. Reducing capacity is not going to solve anything.

I can only conclude that the warm fuzzy feelings the Stranger writers have for the "surface option" represent a triumph of their hatred for the automobile over basic logic and common sense.

Got my first push-poll telemarketing call for the tunnel last night last night. The "poller" pretended to be asking questions about my preferences but was pretty clearly pushing a "cut-and-cover" tunnel option.

If you can hear creaking docks downtown, that means the city is dead. You may not think a stinky freeway in the city is a clever idea, but it's a lot cleverer than a hundred stinky freeways out in sprawl-land, which is what central congestion will help create. That's what cities are FOR. A surface road will just push more sprawl further out, which is the last thing we need in the area. Surface proponents act like their central downtown should be a cute little boutique village like central Edmonds or Kirkland.

Checked out the new Target up in Smokey Point near Arlington, just past the new Wal-Mart and the new Costco and the new Home Depot and the new Casino and the place where they're building a big new hotel? Freeway's a little choked-up up there, but hey. Progress, right?

Yup. Here's why this issue sticks in my craw so badly: I'm not one of those people lucky enough to be able to walk to work. I'm not one of those people wealthy enough to live in a waterfront condo downtown. In short, I'm not one of the privileged few who would benefit from the removal of the viaduct. No, I'm one of the thousands of ordinary people who would get screwed over by the increased congestion on I-5 and the elimination of the only viable alternate route on the west side.

Tear that schitt down.

Farnf at No.3---

Edmonds has a major rail and road thoroughfare running north/south which completely cuts the town off from the waterfront. The road componant is the Kingston ferry access road and it's holding lanes. I never thought of it, however there are similarities to the problems associated with the surface-transit proposal being touted by this newspaper and others.

Thank you for the input, Fnarf.

The Stranger staffers are seemingly a collection of rubes - and mall rats.

The latest trend is so cool, and they are cool and logic is dreary and old and not cool.

Everything, every item, every piece of our urban life is trucked.

Sure walk to the beer joint.

Transportation is far more intricate and essential than the rubes and mall rats will ever understand.

They have never lived in a world where it did not exist in the latest jet plane, 70mph, speed of light society.

Try to explain basics to people who have lived that pampered middle class life?

Basic transportation infrastructure to support life itself, food, goods, raw material, parts, supplies, work transportation - huh - huh - just walk.

If I thought Seattle had the money, I liked the tunnel. No more. Rebuild.

Improve the design with a part and lid, and space for transit and or light rail.

Is this really the best way for us to spend $4 - 10 billion transportation dollars?

In another few years, we will have finished the most complicated and expensive stretch of light rail line imaginable, cutting through Beacon Hill, downtown, the densest neighborhoods in the city (Cap Hill) and across the cut to the University.

After that, expanding light rail is comparatively cheap and easy. Can you honestly tell me that a rebuilt elevated structure, or tunnel would do more to help working class people get to their jobs than Expanding light rail to:

* Northgate, Shoreline, Edmonds, etc to the North.

* West Seattle, South Park, Des Moines, Federal way, etc to the south.

* Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Woodenville, Monroe to the Northeast.

* Maple Valley, Enumclaw to the Southeast

I'd argue that doing any one of these points would be both cheaper and vastly more useful to the city and region as a whole than maintaining roadway capacity on the AWV corridor.

It's time to stop thinking about this as a road problem and think about it as a transportation problem. I'm so sick of tunnel vs elevated. Both suck. Both are the crappiest possible solutions to a very real problem for the city.

If the politicians can pull tunnel-lites and elevated-lites out of their asses, I can dream a REAL transit system. Just because WSDOT is a highway administration right now doesn't mean we should make decisions based on that idiocy.

Golob @ 8:

In another few years, eh? And what are working people to do in the meantime while you're "dreaming?"

"Oh, sorry, boss, I couldn't get to work on time. But I will when Golob's dream comes true."

I hope you keep posting here. The more crap like this gets out, the more people will vote for the rebuild.

"You can reach the Surface option only through the Repair."

Ivan.

Cutting through the pointlessly nasty crap you wrote, I have some more questions for you: How long is the rebuild going to take? How do you propose "working people" get around during that time?

Do working people only live in West Seattle and points Southeast?

Sorry, I'm refusing to choose among two crappy choices. Doing a bad idea quickly doesn't make it better. Ask Bush.

Let's have transit. Golob is right about that. Ivan's right as well. There is not few years to be had. Barnett and the Stranger though live in a fantasyland. Tearing out roads comes AFTER we have the infrastructure in place to replace it, not before. This isn't an either/or proposition. With many more people packing in Puget Sound over the coming decades it's time we adequately invest in our infrastructure.

I'm tired of the comparison to San Francisco. Or the other "85 cities" Barnett (list of which is unknown- it's grown somehow) refers to. If we had the public transit available in San Francisco (and was available at the time of the Embarcadero Freeway teardown) this would be a different debate. We don't, and it will take 40 years of intensive transit improvements to get to a comparable place.

Yes, OF COURSE transit is the answer, but you are forgetting a simple little fact: transit has lost at the polls. I supported the monorail, but we're not getting monorail. Serious expansion of Sound Transit isn't "a few years" away; it's DECADES away. They haven't even finished the deliberately-crippled basic system yet, and the expansion plans are going to go to places like Northgate (see the original plan) and after that it's the Eastside or nowhere, because of the way it's funded; Eastsiders have to have a crack at the money.

That's what crippled BART for decades as well: fighting over regional dollars. As a result, it took BART thirty years to reach SFO, which is asinine, and never will reach San Jose, the largest city in the area, which is even worse.

If we go surface, and wait for Sound Transit, WE will become the second or third city in this area, as the pressure of business's need for transportation will drive all economic activity out to the burbs and Tacoma. The Port will die, for starters, and the ferry system will have to rebuild, at magnificent expense, a new central terminal somewhere that cars can get to. Meanwhile, smug Seattleites will be enjoying their $10 coffee drinks and $20 martinis in swish converted manufacturing facilities, while vast new horrors are erected in places like Bellevue, Renton, or even Arlington. Seattle is already despite its growth about a fifth of the total conurbation; are you ready for it to be a tenth or a twentieth? Are you ready for a million-plus Bellevue? Are you ready for LA-style congestion to the Canadian border? It's coming.

Tearing out the viaduct leaves the doughnut without a hole.

Please contact me if you are interested in learning about & supporting "Repair & Prepare."

david @citycomforts.com

golob @ 11:

I have no patience with people who insist on being obtuse. That traffic has to roll, period. To willfully and purposefully reduce our traffic capacity to fulfill some moonbats' "vision" is akin to mortifying the flesh to exalt the spirit.

I have supported every single mass transit project that has been proposed in this city and in this county. For whatever reason, we don't have it in place.

I will continue to support any and every mass transit option that is proposed. I have become a telecommuter so that I do not have to commute to earn a living. But damn it, when I need to get from Point A to Point B, I don't want it to be like the Joads going to California.

The earthquake damaged the Viaduct and now we have to replace it before it collapses. There is no reason, no reason whatever, to diminish traffic capacity, and the state won't allow it anyway.

One day we can all ride the new transit systems that will be built eventually, and people can all drive around in little eco-friendly Geo Metros that get 200 MPG and run on urine. Then we can tear down the viaduct, and all the "new urbanists" can jack off in paroxysms of ecstasy.

Until such time, we will have a Viaduct. If that is nasty, deal with it.

Ivan - run for city council.

Oh, wow. If we rebuild the viaduct, we won't be a "world-class city." Oh, the horror! Oh, the devastation! Oh, the huge manatee!

Why the fuck should I care about whether we're a world-class city or not? If you have an inferiority complex about Seattle, then either go into therapy or move. Don't stick the rest of us with a huge bill just to satisfy your vanity.

My position is consistent: I'm in favor of a six-lane tunnel (and not the four-lane fraud) if the downtown interests that will benefit from it will pick up the extra costs and overruns. I'm not sure why that's an unreasonable position. Well, other than it violates one of the cardinal principles of those who want a world-class city: Never pay for something yourself when you can stick the proles with the bill.

Sammy @ 16:

Run for City Council? Not without the Stranger's endorsement, haha. Besides, then I'd have to commute to work.

Well, Ivan, you could always come to the 43rd District Democrats meeting on Feb. 20th for an actual debate by the pro-tunnel, pro-viaduct, and the No-No side(s) (Surface Plus Transit, Tear It Down, and Retrofit - probably not the cable-stay bridge thing ...).

Might prove useful.

I walk to work. Much more fun. But have to drive some days.

@6 - "Edmonds has a major rail and road thoroughfare running north/south which completely cuts the town off from the waterfront." - no, there's a pedestrian bridge from downtown - I have seen people on it and crossed myself. But most just drive.