Peter spoke the most eloquently of all the speakers at the 43rd last night. Well, except for Frank Chopp.

Sherwin's proposal is the worst of all of them. We'd spend $2 billion retrofitting the viaduct now, so in a few years when we've made up our minds, we could ... spend another $2-3 billion again?

The $2 billion figure was devised to make the Repair look bad.

"The vast majority of state residents don't want to lose mobility and have little interest in beautifying 13 blocks in Seattle." (From Peter's op-ed)

So true. No matter what you think, if you put this up for an honest vote, instead of this crap we have to deal with in March, the results wouldn't even be close, probably not even in the city limits of Seattle.

While this obvious fact gets ignored by most people debating the issue, as if voter opinion doesn't matter unless it can be misdirected to support your own pet project, there is a bright side. Nickels is no longer invincible. A smart politician could knock him out of office in 2009 based on his extremely poor viaduct leadership alone. Not even Paul Allen/ downtown developer and lobbyist $ can ensure his reelection like they did in 2005. He effectively marginalized his competitors during his first term while consolidating a very wealthy base of support, but total hubris could turn out to be the source of his undoing.

Once again, people, we can have mobility _and_ a waterfront for everyone. That's why the surface + transit option being advocated for includes a new boulevard like SF's Embarcadero and Octavia - it's not, as the caricature has it, the "tear it down and do nothing" option.

Keep in mind, too, that the mayor of SF at the time of the Embarcadero controversy, Art Agnos, supported their surface-transit option, got that chosen, then (gasp!) lost re-election. Today, they are literally building monuments to him out of gratitude for the new, revitalized Embarcadero.

http://www.sfgov.org/site/port_page.asp?id=41391

I swear, for the probable cost savings of surface-transit over any other option, we could fly every single doubter in the state down to San Francisco for a tour.

I'd fundraise myself to pay for such a trip for the Legislature, so they could just pull themselves out of the 1950's-vintage, "I've got a fever, and the only prescription, is MORE CONCRETE" way of thinking.

I want mass transit now. Fewer cars now. Less dependence on oil now. Development of alternative energy sources now. But, man, right now the viaduct works. It moves people relatively efficiently (to hell with the views). Fix it so it doesn't crumble in an earthquake. Now. Then, if in a few years, or twenty years--if you look at the city's track record, hell, thrity or forty years--COMMIT to something for the greater good.

An ode to Mayor Nickels.

To be sung to the late Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistible"

SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE

How can it be permissible,
A tunnel non-financiable
The finance plan is mythical,
Inflation rates non-typical

Its a craze Greg's endorsed He's a "Bush-onian" force
You're obliged to conform cause he wants to stay the course

He used to look good to me but now I find Greg

Fiscally irresponsible
Fiscally irresponsible

A tax debt in the thousands
For every woman man and child
In the City of Seattle
Many decades of tax burden

Transit plannings a need, In this we should all agree
But the mile-long three billion dollar tunnel
Has no added capacity, I now find this

Fiscally irresponsible
Fiscally irresponsible

(fiscally irresponsible) It's so fine, there's no telling where the money went

(fiscally irresponsible) It's all mine, there's no other way to go

WashDOT numbers unavoidable,

Greg's backed against the wall

the state’s against him but he still says stay the course

The council watches pretty videos and rushes to the call

Let's vote without financing, I find this totally

Fiscally irresponsible

It's so fine, there's no telling where the money went

(fiscally irresponsible) It's all mine, there's no other way to go

His finance plan's inscrutable

The proof is irrefutable -hope is not a plan

It's so completely ridiculous, huh

The tax debt that he'll leave us

Roads and transit's a need, in this we all agree

But a tunnel without transit and one that bypasses the CBD

At the risk of being exhortative I find this simply

Fiscally irresponsible

Fiscally irresponsible

It's so fine, there's no tellin where the money went

(fiscally irresponsible) It's all mine, there's no other way to go

It's so fine, there's no tellin where the money went

(fiscally irresponsible) It's all mine, there's no other way to go

Fiscally irresponsible!

Vote em out.

Thanks Erica for the link.

JTR et al. that throw out the big numbers for repair - it includes all of the other parts that the new viaduct and tunnel i.e. seawall, 519 work, waterfront trolley, etc. etc. - and we can start by shoring up the most dangerous parts first. It would really help if people took the time to study the issue, both the city and the state have breakdowns of the costs.

The viaduct is far more crucial to Seattle than the Embarcadero was to SF - and SF had much more transit in place. BTW the PWC last night indicated that 20% of the viaduct traffic would go to AWB - if that is acccurate and true it would triple the traffic on AWB from 12k to 36k - please what happened to the Embarcadero?

There is no way from here to there (S&T) without going through repair -

dont want to leave out surface alternative either so sing along to "Ridin Dirty"

BITCHIN NIMBY
(sung to “Ridin Dirty” by Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone)

Chorus:
You hear me bitchin
‘bout traffic
Rollin by my newest condo blockin my view

Think I m just a bitchin nimby
Cant you see im a bitchin nimby
Think im just too rich and nimby
Look at me im a bitchin nimby

See me bitchin
Bout traffic
Rolling by my newest condo blockin my view

Think I m just a bitchin nimby
Cant you see im a bitchin nimby
Think im just too rich and nimby
Look at me im a bitchin nimby

Verse (rapped):
We-got-us-some-glossy-pictures-
An-Oz-of-a-grand-boulevahd- dahling-
Where-traffic-gridlock-and-homeless- don’t-exist-
And-see-the-polo-field-goes-right-over- there-
With- the- new- yacht- club- in- the- distance-
don’t-the- peons- know-as-they-grind- their-way-to-work-that-there’s-lots-of options-
There’s-lots-of-empty-arterials-
Go-forth-you-drones-and-find-em-don’t-bring-your-damned-
Commuting-ass-round- here- disruptin- our- big- buck- views-
Let-them-eat-cake-our-real-estate-escalates-
Tell-those-worker-bees-they-exist-to-grease-
The-economic-wheels-but-take-the-bus-(tho-I- never -will)-
Did-we-at –PWC- say- we’d- raise- OUR- taxes,- silly- me-
Having-no-highway-on-the waterfront-will-empty-traffic-onto-unclogged-city- streets- says- our- website- so- must- be- true-
Tolls?- No- problem- add- em- to- I-5-
PWC- proposes- I-5- lose- its- reversible-
Express- lanes- we- don’t- need- em- nor- do- you-
Propaganda- abounds- we’ll- tell- ya-
Sugar-coated- nimby- lies- of –coiffed-greens
Did- we- say- transportation- serves- communities?- oops-
We ‘re interested-in-serving-our-own-mile-long-community-,hell-with-y’all-

Chorus:

You hear me bitchin
‘bout traffic
Rollin by my newest condo blockin my view

Think I m just a bitchin nimby
Cant you see im a bitchin nimby
Think im just too rich and nimby
Look at me im a bitchin nimby

See me bitchin
Bout traffic
Rolling by my newest condo blockin my view

Think I m just a bitchin nimby
Cant you see im a bitchin nimby
Think im just too rich and nimby
Look at me im a bitchin nimby

Peter Sherwin? Why would anybody listen to that dolt? We must be desperate.

Crankster.
True to your name.

we have a waterfront blvd already...it's nice. slow traffic, wide sidewalks on the waterside and wide, safe crosswalks, beautiful water and mountain views. go have lunch down there some time!

IMHO, to do the surface part of surface-transit right and not half-assed, you have to tear down the Viaduct. It's in the way. (Consider the half-assed Kingdome, which we ended up replacing after only 25 years with two far more expensive stadia.)

But, the timelines for any of the scenarios have the Viaduct demolition beginning in 2009. That's time to a) implement "Transit Now," that we passed last fall; b) to begin implementing ST2; c) for Central Link to be completed and begin operating, scheduled for 2009; d) for Ron Sims' "49 ways" list of small street and transit improvements to be implemented; and e) for any other additional transit or transportation demand management programs to be designed and put in place.

In fact, what I just listed is pretty much what's already being planned by WSDOT. What we're debating is what's going to happen after demolition - a new Great Wall, a Big Dig, or a boulevard.

As to the Seattle-SF comparison, Octavia Boulevard is perhaps a better apples-to-apples comparison than the Embarcadero from a traffic flow perspective. From reports and pictures (and I think I have driven on it once), Octavia, w/ only four through lanes (it has one service lane on each side as well) flows 40-50,000 cars/day at 30 mph _and_ has a park in the middle. People love it.

To anyone bitching about 30 mph, consider that that would add all of one minute to your trip through the central waterfront (assuming synchonized stoplights, and that you'd do 60 mph now)... vs. hundreds to thousands of additional tax dollars from you to pay for a rebuild.

With improvements elsewhere in the street grid, creating better access to _and_ through downtown (also already being planned as construction mitigation), deciding now to rebuild the Viaduct to open sometime around 2012 is, frankly, not "critical."

Peter Sherwin's got the right idea for the most part. But Peter, you specifically mention a streetcar. That's not effective transit. Streetcars are good for local travel, but aren't going to reduce ridership along 99 enough to allow for removal of the viaduct.

We need to get light rail for the corridor. The West Seattle half of the corridor can be served by a light rail spur from the Lander Street station. The spur to the north is more troublesome, because it has to integrate with the transit tunnel or bypass it somehow, but it can be done.

Let's start with the cheap short-term viaduct fixes and surface improvements, come up with a light rail plan within Sound Transit over the next year or two, and implement it fully within ten years from now.

Actually, it sounds like they may double-track the streetcar when they rebuild the Viaduct, if I parsed correctly a number of conversations last night.

Note that the No-No (Surface Plus Transit) side won the endorsement of the 43rd Dems. Even if the Viaduct Rebuild (#2) won the 34th and 36th.

#15 Cascadian -

At public planning meetings for light rail, a number of people specifically requested that Sound Transit locate a station in line with Spokane Street and the West Seattle bridge to facilitate a West Seattle spur.

Sound Transit ignored the suggestion and effectively destroyed much chance of a potentially affordable (as if) light rail connection to West Seattle.

Slip, when were these planning meetings? My impression is that ST started by focusing on the central line, and figured it could build to secondary routes like West Seattle later. Then the Green Line proposal happened, and ST stayed away from that corridor. Now that the Green Line is dead and the appropriate mourning/whining period has passed, it's time to find a way to serve the same corridor within ST.

@15--No kidding an immagined, integrated light rail spur to the north would be more troublesome. What's even more troublesome is that like surface transit proponents, you want to eventually move displaced AWV traffic to so called, but undefined, "surface improvements", and your HWY 99 light rail spur has no credible foundation or cost analysis outside of some vague notion that it will service density. You may be a bit surprised, but a fleet of buses is already doing that job.

We do not need any additional motor traffic in the Alaska Way corridor.
Surface Transit an the Rebuild Option
all promote additional Alaska Way traffic. This lands is far to precious to sacrifice to additional roadways.

What does continue to trump all proposals to date is the cable stayed bridge. It will minimize motor traffic
in the corridor; reclaim more land and space for public and private uses;
allow for a sequenced dismantling of the current viaduct; minimize distruption to business and industry;
provide a landmark, iconic stucture
gatewaying the city; maintain state desired capacity and do all this better than any other proposal at a cost which by all estimates is as cheap or cheaper than any of the proposals put forth to date.

A bridge can be built and it should be built.

Cascadian - I completely agree about trolleys - I mention that the same trolley work would be done in any plan - repair, rebuild or tunnel.

Asdf - sorry I don't understand about Octavia - what I asked was what happened on the Embarcadero - before and after - PWC predicts as of last night that AWB will go from 12K to 36K - what happened to the surface street in SF? The point here is that if we increase the traffic on AWB and if they didn't on the surface Embarcadero then the result will be way different.

The rebuild actually has now lost in every leg district in Seattle. The 34th voted no. The 36th narrowly missed a 2/3 no vote, but clearly opposed an elevated viaduct. And it has now lost in the 46th and 43rd.

I still wonder how the foundation of the existing AWV can be repaired. The only engineering report is pretty dubious about the prospects....

Golob,
The foundation of the AWV is repaired as is every other structure which needs foundation repair.

My understanding was light rail could not make the grade over West Seattle bridge or the slope up to alaska junction, hence the need for Monorail.

S+T backers are delusional about real cost savings. Most of the costs of the project are fixed -

Again here's the breakdown of major cost components (most costs not stated are mitiation, financing, and contingency costs):

Components common to all choices (approx):
$700 MM Seawall
$300 MM SR319/S. of King
$100 MM Battery Street

Central Waterfront choice:
$150 MM surface
$250 MM aerial
$400 MM 4-lane bypass

S+T people, Its a difficult argument to say we don't need the capacity through downtown for trucks and some passenger traffic. I don't know ehre this 30 MPH concept comes from - that's the speed limit, not the speed AWB would be moving from 3-7 at night - which would be 7-10 MPH tops.

Peter S., can you agree that a retrofit might save, at best $250 million over the tunnel. And if so, wouldn't a waterfront free of the viaduct be worth it?

My understanding was light rail could not make the grade over West Seattle bridge or the slope up to alaska junction, hence the need for Monorail.

S+T backers are delusional about real cost savings. Most of the costs of the project are fixed -

Again here's the breakdown of major cost components (most costs not stated are mitiation, financing, and contingency costs):

Components common to all choices (approx):
$700 MM Seawall
$300 MM SR319/S. of King
$100 MM Battery Street

Central Waterfront choice:
$150 MM surface
$250 MM aerial
$400 MM 4-lane bypass

S+T people, Its a difficult argument to say we don't need the capacity through downtown for trucks and some passenger traffic. I don't know ehre this 30 MPH concept comes from - that's the speed limit, not the speed AWB would be moving from 3-7 at night - which would be 7-10 MPH tops.

Peter S., can you agree that a retrofit might save, at best $250 million over the tunnel. And if so, wouldn't a waterfront free of the viaduct be worth it?

Well, light rail better find a way to get to West Seattle, because I'm not voting for an elevated monster-rail.

I noticed in my Sound Transit flyer I got in the mail yesterday no "future rail line" was anywhere near West Seattle.

West Seattle, Seattle's biggest neighborhood, gets the shaft again. Way to go Sims - see you at Sunfish!

A streetcar to West Seattle would be so easy, it amazes me Sims or Nickels hasn't put it on the front burner.

1) Westlake - SODO, ST has already built.

2) Spokane St. Plenty of room in the median. Swing bridge is built for big trucks, can handle streetcar tracks.

3) Avalon Way supported streetcars in the past, isn't too steep.

4) Fauntleroy is wide enough for a median track.

So, for four miles of track and a few streetcars, WS could have rail. Sure, light rail would be higher capacity, but not any faster.

NIMBY's just another word for nothing left to do but talk about it for another 20 years ...

Flo - the P Y Lin study of the Gray proposal says that the total cost of a 2500 year retrofit would cost 2.3 billion including all of the other work. They say it would save $500m from the rebuild cost or $1.1B from the SDOT mini tunnel estimate.

Don't know where you get your numbers but even the SDOT numbers say the mini would be $600M more than rebuild, you seem to be saying $150M.

Contigency costs are a real part of the real costs - ST got in big trouble by reducing them and as it turned out they were not nearly high enough in the first place.

Wouldn't a monorail have been cheaper?

@27

"Swing bridge is built for big trucks, can handle streetcar tracks."

Two things:

1) It swings open to let ships pass. At random times. For about 8 minutes each time. Makes transit scheduling kinda difficult.

2) The big trucks. Constantly there. Sometimes many, many, many, clogging the street. Also at random times. Until the day the port shuts down.

If someone in the S+T camp could come up with the T part that actually solves this problem, you might have some iota of support of the 1/5 of the population of Seattle that lives on the W.S. peninsula. The monorail did have some rabid supporters out here.

Oh, but I forgot. There is no T in S+T.

Did no one notice that someone just did a friggin' RAP about the Viaduct problem? How numb are we? Christ.

31:

Can't disagree with the bridge argument, but somehow we run transit over the Fremont, Ballard, Montlake & University Bridges. All of which have more frequent openings. Not ideal, but hardly a deal breaker.

And yes, there are big trucks down there. There is also plenty of room for tracks in the median. The only place the streetcar would actually have to run in the street is crossing the bridge.

Yeah, true, Some Jerk. Compared to the pain that is a bridge opening, I would prefer BRT in a dedicated lane on the enormity that is the high bridge, which may be sorta what we're getting with Transit Now!(tm). Unsexy, but potentially functional, particularly if there's ever money in the budget to pay someone to drive the damn bus more often than every half hour at night.

But I suppose it's better to push the responsibility and cost onto (drunk-at-night) individual car drivers.

"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

Say Wa #32
There's 80s rock there too with Fiscally Irresponsible not just friggin rap :-D