Comments on Milwaukee. Just Too Hip for Seattle.
"hep?"
Josh, is this the Milwaukee your touting?
Interstate 94 comes north from Chicago to enter Milwaukee and continues west to Madison. Interstate 43 enters Milwaukee from the southwest and continues north to Green Bay. Milwaukee has two branch interstate highways, Interstate 894 and Interstate 794. I-894 extends from the western suburbs to the southern suburbs, bypassing downtown. I-794 extends east from the Marquette Interchange to Lake Michigan before turning south over the Hoan Bridge toward the airport, turning into Highway 794 along the way.
Milwaukee also spends more money (per capita) on the arts than any US city. It also is the only major city to elect socialist mayors. It is also where Golda Meier was educated and formed her socialist/zionist views. Its also the breeding ground of Liberace! Just as Seattle has a "hep" reputation it may or may not deserve, Milwaukee has a dirty blue collar reputation it may or may not deserve. In many ways, Milwaukee is just like Seattle--socialist history, gets trumped by a neighbor who does the same schtick bigger & arguably better (Vancouver/Chicago)--but just didn't have a 1990s moment in the spotlight. Or coffee.
Milwaukee has gotten rid of an ugly eye sore of a highway, but wait...there are still rediculous unemployment rates there and the education, income, and infant mortality rate, gap between blacks and whites are huge. I praise Norquist and the visions of new urbanism, but I think our local governments should focus more energy on leveling the playing fields between those that have and those that don't than on leveling highways. Oh...and what makes Milwaukee hip is that it doesnt care if it is.
It doesn't matter if it works other places. It won't work here. I didn't move from LA to buy a house in West Seattle so that I would have to take transit. I want to take my car!!!
And what about the working class people who don't have cushy offices? The only time they can see the water is from the viaduct. Why do you hate working people?
And what about our maritime heritage? Tearing down the viaduct would mean that there would be no maritime business here whatsoever. EVERYTHING THAT GOES IN OR OUT OF THE PORT GOES ON THE VIADUCT WHETHER IT NEEDS TO OR NOT!!!!!
And if we tear down the viaduct, everyone will immediately move to the eastside because that viaduct is the only reason people live here. Killing the viaduct means killing Seattle!!!!
Wow, Liberace, who denied being homosexual his entire life, quite an honor for Milwaukee.
From what I've read Milwaukee is in the middle of a road construction project to the tune of $800 million. Peanuts compared to our projects, but hardly seems to make the point intended.
http://www.mchange.org/
Killing the viaduct means killing Seattle? Are we that controlled by the postwar flight to the suburbs mindset that we only think post-1950 attitudes (highways, 2-car garage, motels) matter? I live in the city and take public transportation because my TIME is $$. That means I forfeit my extra bedroom and that half bathroom only guests use. So be it. Its called urban living.
#4 - don't forget about the rampant racism fueled by the white/black economic gap. and i disagree, milwaukee is not hip. i am sitting in it right now, watching the news do another story that was covered by the national media three weeks ago.
but! since we tore down that freeway, there are a lot more condos going up in its place, so i guess something is happening.
i do miss norquist, though. he had the right ideas.
The Milwaukee/Seattle comparison is perfect but the crucial difference is this:
Milwaukee KNOWS its B-list. Hence it supports the arts with a startling fervor. Its Zoo bests Chicago's, etc. It knows its reputation is blue-collar Laverne & Shirley so it strive to better that without expecting national praise.
Seattle doesn't know its B-list. After all, Bill Gates lives here right??
Liberace was apropos: he's our Chihully! Love it!!
Damien: I think our local governments should focus more energy on leveling the playing fields between those that have and those that don't than on leveling highways.
Uh, so this is a reason for our local governments to be building freeways?
This kinda reminds me, whenever there's a proposal to raise a tax for transit service, somebody steps up and says, "Wouldn't we be better off spending this money on education?" Yeah, if you support transit, you must really hate the children. Funny, the same people don't make the same "save the children" argument when it comes to raising taxes to build freeways.
Anyway, it's a bit ironic to hear all this "level the playing field" concern being expressed in favor of highway building. Workin' class Joe and Mary only count when it comes to making driving better, not making transit better.
oh, and as dan has pointed out, people in milwaukee stay at a hotel downtown called "the pfister," mentioning its name without ever cracking a smile. ever.
i rest my case.
Good read on Milwaukee freeways with maps.
So let's suppose we really are sincere about leveling the playing field between the haves and have-nots, and we're not just using that as a shameless rhetorical device.
Well, if the viaduct comes down, whether it's through a tunnel or a surface route (or some variation thereof), property values will go up. That means increased property taxes. That means more money for government services that, well, help level the playing field.
So all you populist demagogues out there, why do you hate all those less-fortunate people who benefit from Seattle government services? What's more important: your view while hurtling along at 50 MPH or the poor, needy children of Seattle?
More anti-viaduct bullshit from the same fine newspaper that was pushing the Seattle monorail. Given the shit record of mass transit planners in Seattle why should anyone trust anyone in Seattle who is advocating mass transit. "Shit record" you say? "What shit record?" Well, let's look at the record. The downtown bus tunnel, killed off third avenue businesses and went 60 percent over cost, and they still didn't put in the right kind of rails for light rail. Sound Transit, over cost and years behind schedule. It's two great accomplishments are building an extremely expensive heavy rail line that helps white commuters come into Seattle from their McMansions in Kent at a price of 30 dollars per rider, a price paid by urban residents and a light rail line which will be no faster than taking the bus and whose ridership will largely be taken from existing bus lines, thus doing little or nothing for congestion or to alleviate global warming. Then of course there was the monorail. Where the *did* all of that money go? That would be a good story for someone to do; finding out what happened to the millions of tax dollars taken from Seattle residents for that piece of shit project? Pity that we'll never see the Stranger do it.
Let's face it, mass transit planners in Seattle are world class fuckups and anyone who thinks that these people are qualified to address this region's transit problems are idiots. If there was an Olympic medal for fucking shit up Seattle's mass transit planners would be able to go for the gold with Michael Brown's FEMA and the neocons who got us into Iraq. So the idea that the fuckups who gave us the downtown bus tunnel (the one that they built with the wrong rails and which isn't open after 8PM), and L. Ron Sim's High Church of Soundtransitology, aka Sounder Rail, Link Light Rail and of course the Seattle monorail could come up with a plan to move those 100,000 or so people a day who use the viaduct is completely insane.
WSDOT has it's problems, but I'll trust WSDOT a lot more than I'll trust any of Seattle's transit planners, and more than I'll trust any of the morons at the Stranger who were pushing the monorail.
14,
You ask where all that money for the monorail went. It went into producting an admirable plan for a world-class elevated transit line.
We could have the transit line everyone is whining about Seattle never having for $2 billion. Fixed price contract. If senior governments had stepped up with a little down payment help, we coulda been a contenda.
Instead, morons like Mayor McCheese and Fairview Fannies editoral assholes killed it. Now we spend all our time arguing about ONE MILE of road as if the fate of the region hangs on getting people from Virginia to King street in 5 minutes.
Seattle has its problems, but they ain't caused by transit planners. The voters who rejected Virgil Bogue and Forward Thrust (twice) are what got us into this mess.
It's funny, I was just thinking about the very kind of chutzpah exhibited by wile_e_quixote @14, and then, whaddaya, he/she makes that post about how all transit planners are incompetents and all highway planners are the second coming of Gen. MacArthur.
You see, one of the favorite techniques of the demagogues is to say:
Well, the real chutzpah of it all comes when these same people get any kind of power. Then they do everything that can to obstruct and degrade the programs they don't like, so their hypocrisy can become self-fulfilling prophesy.
wile_e_quixote, that was an interesting little rant. Too bad you are so amazingly wrong. Who's been feeding you your "facts"? Do they let you out without a helmet?
Let's just focus on your dumbest assertion, which should set the table for the rest of your moronic comments: The rails that were put in the tunnel were fine for the technology at the time. Then the ADA was passed, requiring platform level access. It's not the wrong rails, it's the wrong depth. That's the reason for the retrofit.
But I'll throw the ball back in your court: Just what businesses were driven out of business by the bus tunnel? After that, we can go into your assertion that Seattle's transit planners are actually from Seattle.
Here come the anti-progress progressives again. Down with freeways, look nice clean unreliable mass transit. always not on time.
You critical mass people make me sick. Why don't we just go burn our cars and hug a tree and by the way dont fart the methane emmesions cause global warming
@8:
but! since we tore down that freeway, there are a lot more condos going up in its place, so i guess something is happening.
Heh heh heh heh.
@9:
You. Nailed. It. Perfectly. Bravo!
@14:
I disagree with you on the need for mass transit, but I'm with you on transit planners around here having a less-than-stellar record. Interesting how so many of your critics can't really defend Seattle's mass transit planners but would rather mindlessly attack you instead.
We do desperately need good mass transit around here, but the leadership is out of its depth. World-class? Nonsense. They're not even Milwaukee-class.
" Removing I-794, a mainline freeway, would have been a more radical change in transportation patterns than removing the Park East spur: I-794 carried 89,000 vehicles a day while Park East carried only 35,000 a day and was clearly underused.
Park East Freeway Was Conspicuously Underused.
Because of its low traffic volume, Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson and the state Department of Transportation dropped their opposition to removing the Park East freeway. Traffic volume was low enough that state transportation planners found that it was not necessary to build a boulevard to replace Park East. It would be enough simply to restore the local street grid and to build a new bridge across the Milwaukee River...
"The city expects the freeway removal to bring at least $250 million of investment in the Park East redevelopment area. The first project proposed in the area, a $90 million complex of condominiums and apartments on 7.5 acres on two blocks of North Water St, is made up primarily of with urban-scale residential development. As of the beginning of 2007, five more projects have been approved and are under construction in the redevelopment area, representing an investment of over $140 million, an additional five projects are going through the city's approval process, representing an investment of $339 million, and more projects have been proposed.
The freeway removal has also helped to stimulate development in nearby locations that are not in the redevelopment area itself, beginning with a proposed $300 million development on the former site of the Pabst brewery, including restaurants, offices, nightclubs, and 200 to 300 loft apartments. It seems likely that the freeway removal will bring even more development to the surrounding areas than to the redevelopment area itself."
From:
http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysParkEast.html
Food for thought when making comparisons.
#20:
the $300 million proposed project in the pabst park brewery was shot down. the brewery still sits vacant.
and btw, the park east freeway was torn down in 2001. it is now 2007, and it has taken six long years to convince developers to take a look at the pile of rubble as a plausible site. finally, now you can see three condo projects going up in the area.
it is far from the revitalization boon that people had hoped - it's really just a torn down freeway at this point. a torn down underused freeway. that was not along the water.
I think it is funny that the only people who want the viaduct don't live in Seattle (West Seattle...not Seattle.) Selfish L.A. transplants who "want to take [their] car" everywhere are the reason we have traffic problems. I don't even own a car anymore. I take mass transit everywhere. Also, I stopped taking the viaduct years ago, after the first earthquake that damaged it (the image of the flattened elevated freeway in San Francisco has stayed in my mind.) Oh, and if we have no viaduct it will "kill Seattle" because everyone would move to the East side. Really? Everyone? Or just assholes? Because if it is just assholes I will help tear it down with my bare hands.
I hope all the West Seattlites move to the Eastside. Then there will be plenty of real estate with dampened, if not lowered, prices over there. Without the viaduct, driving downtown from West Seattle will take about the same time and hassle as any other outer neighborhood like Greenwood, Lake City, Rainier Beach, Seward Park. They just won't have their private expressway anymore.
There seems to be an ongoing problem with sarcasm-comprehension in these here comments. Maybe we should put a checkbox in the comment form - "mark as sarcastic" - and then color sarcastic comments blue. Would that help?
anthony! i love that idea. very user oriented. so simple and direct.
(not sarcastic)
@14 & 19:
Might be good to remind folks that the monorail was a citizen idea, then designed by good consultants, and then bid upon by two internationally-recognized corporations, one of whom submitted a final fixed price contract proposal.
There were only two major problems with the monorail proposal -- a mistaken financial planner, and certain political and business leaders who didn't want to help fix an idea that they couldn't take credit for, and which wouldn't allow them to make lots of $$$$.
That's why we have bad planning around here... *SIGH*
hysterical ninny NAILED IT.
screw the Blethen Times. i switched to the PI, and it sucks, too, but at least i don't have to put up with the neandertal editorials & LTE from ignorant, gun-crazed hinterlanders.
@27 - true. No real Seattleite reads the "Seattle" Times anymore.
First off let me say that I am not for the 'tunnel lite' option.
That said - how does the tunnel "upend any chance for a real neighborhood on the waterfront"?
I don't follow Josh's reasoning here at all...
What am I missing?
Or is this an example of stretching the truth to prove a point? While it's true that during cconstruction the waterfront will disrupted ("devastated"?), won't this have to happen sooner or later for the seawall replacement and Viaduct removal?
If the tunnel option were selected, couldn't a "real neighborhood" be built on top of the tunnel?
I'm voting No, No but not to bring about more discussion of the surface/transit option (which I am confident will be fucked up in typical Seattle fashion) but because tunnel-lite isn't enough, and a bigger, noisier, darker Viaduct would suck.
How about repair the Viaduct while we study a bridge, and inrease transit? Realistically we are going to talk this to death and have several more useless (but expensive votes) for the next decade or so, so we might as well repair the unsafe viaduct we are stuck with for the time being...
Milwaukee was the "breeding ground" of Liberace?? Yet he was born in Yankton, SD. They're very proud of him. Jason--time for more coffee?
The Milwaukee “Park Freeway” that was torn down was proposed to connect an extension of I-794 to an extension of US-41. It was originally planned to connect several freeways.
The piece that was actually constructed only connected I-43 to the downtown. Essentially the facility was a connector that took people from the interstate to the downtown and carried about 50,000 vehicles a day. It did not link two limited access facilities and did not service a working waterfront. This roadway was torn down and replaced with a surface roadway which carried about 50,000 vehicles per day on a 6-lane facility and was a direct replace of previous demand.
Re: Roadrunner's "get your facts straight" rant:
"Let's just focus on your dumbest assertion, which should set the table for the rest of your moronic comments: The rails that were put in the tunnel were fine for the technology at the time. Then the ADA was passed, requiring platform level access. It's not the wrong rails, it's the wrong depth. That's the reason for the retrofit."
According to Ben Brook's Metro Transit Tunnel info page,
"While the tunnel was built [in 1990] primarily to serve dual-mode diesel/electric buses (to be replaced with these), as a last-second afterthought tracks were laid in the tunnel for a future light rail system. The future is now with the design and construction of Sound Transit's Link light rail system. However, a couple problems with this existing design were found during the planning stages:
--The station platforms are too high for new low-floor train cars
--The rails were not properly insulated, and therefore need to be replaced with insulated rails."
Let's not blame it entirely on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The rails were a last-minute, poorly engineered effort to mollify the Seattle transit types and to make the tunnel appear "forward-thinking." Indeed, poorly engineered and/or installed.
Hey Roadrunner, were you ever downtown in the 1980s? 3rd avenue was an impassable wasteland for five years while they were working on the bus tunnel, just like parts of MLK are now.
As far as cressona goes in #16, the argument is that Seattle area transit planners are incompetent and incapable of formulating a realistic and workable plan to move the 100,000+ people that the viaduct services. If you have evidence to the contrary that's great, please provide some instead of your pathetic strawman argument.
Again, Sound Transit is a project that only a fuckup could love. Seriously, you've got a heavy rail system that has to shut its northbound tracks down a couple of times a year because of mudslides, plus there's the 30 dollar per rider cost, that's right, 30 dollars per head, which subsidizes white suburban commuters at the expense of the more ethnically diverse Seattle area. Can we say 'regressive taxation and redistribution of wealth'? I knew we could.
Then there's Link light rail, it's behind schedule, runs at grade for a significant portion of its route, thus making it vulnerable to the same disruptions as any bus line, is over budget and behind schedule. Plus there's the fact that most of Link's riders will come from existing bus lines, meaning that congestion will not be reduced and nor will global warming. And Link won't be any faster than existing bus service to the airport (which works quite well if you take the 194 express).
Also here's a little fact that most of the 'tear down the viaduct' crowd forgets or is totally ignorant of because they're a bunch of clueless Capitol Hill hipster dipshits. How the fuck do you think the buses get to downtown Seattle from points south and west? The answer is that they take the viaduct. Getting rid of the viaduct means that you really fuck over mass transit into downtown and Steffany, West Seattle is part of the city, really, it is. I know that you didn't learn this in hipster dipshit geography 101 (and apparently Greg Nickels and the Downtown City Council aren't aware of it either) but Seattle does not begin at the ship canal and end at South Jackson.
As far as the monorail arguments about how the monorail project was a noble endeavour that could have succeeded had it not been stabbed in the back by local politicians such as Greg Nickels are nonsense. I knew that monorail advocates were clueless when they were telling me that the monorail was going to be so cheap and efficient that it eventually wouldn't even need public funding, that it would support itself via fares and other mechanisms.
Sorry, but Seattle's transit planners are fuckups, pure and simple. Based upon their record trusting these people to develop a coherent and realistic plan to move people around the city sans viaduct is like trusting the Bush administration to do the right thing in Iraq, hell, trusting them is like trusting the Bush administration to do anything even remotely competent. Only the insane, ignorant or ideologically blinkered would do so.
Based on casual observation, I'd say the tunnel is the hippest option. Tunnel supporters tend to be smart, rich, beautiful, and liberal, and throw cool parties in big old houses attended by people who count.
Second hippest is surface/transit, popular among the unwashed masses of Capitol Hill 20-somethings living on 25-grand a year.
But the rebuild option? Totally uncool. It's all boring, dim-witted, middle class, buttheads from West Seattle or Ballard.
I love Seattle and I hope that this viaduct matter does not end up in a rebuild. In Seattle's defence, Vancouver and much of British Columbia greatly admire the city that you have, maybe not for the same reasons that some of you admire us, but the envy is mutual. Good luck, sister!
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