City The Clog That Wasn’t
posted by on August 21 at 13:17 PM
As noted previously here, the I-5 construction disaster (“nightmare” traffic! “killer” commutes!) failed to materialize. Still, the Seattle Times can’t give it up. Their I-5 traffic blog, The Clog (“your one-stop shop during the closure”) is going strong despite the near-absence of traffic, with extra-special see-we-told-you-so coverage during the occasional slowdown (Actual headline: “Pinch Point found”). And now Nicole Brodeur, the Times columnist who once boasted that she’d rather drive five blocks than walk—to her walking path, has weighed in on the “clog,” staying at a University of Washington dorm to document the experiences of UW staffers who’d rather “sleep at the office… than fight traffic.” (“Riding Out the I-5 Clog at UW Dorm”)
“While workers resurface a one-mile northbound stretch of I-5 between South Spokane Street and I-90, traffic is limited to two lanes — but wide open to disaster.”
Disaster! That sounds scary! The only problem?: Brodeur couldn’t find anyone.
“When I checked in around 5 p.m. one day last week, there was no one around. The gothic building was as gloomy as Hogwarts.”
But then! Spanish professor Alberto Requejo stepped in to save the day—and the premise of Brodeur’s column.
“‘If I wasn’t here,” he said, ‘I would be stuck in traffic.’
“And there it was. No matter how shadows stretch across a dorm in summer, the real stuff of nightmares here is traffic. Highways choked as far as the eye can see.”
Except, of course, that they weren’t.
Nice following on the traffic......also, any election parties tonight or is it all toooooo boring?
I go north on I-5 in the evenings and I have to say it has been suckier than usual. I just take a secret back way though and it only adds 10 minutes or so.
Man, the seattle times is like a real life version of the onion.
I'm kind of surprised that even one person took the UW up on their offer. $40/day to stay at the dorms is ridiculous, considering that I was paying around $25/day when I lived there, and that included food.
Oh, and the fact that the few times I've been in I-5 North this week, it's been no worse than any other time of the year.
Bullshit - I just got back from the south end and I-5 is a parking lot as far as the eye can see to the south of the expansion joint project.
um, who cares? Isn't this redundant?
I wonder if traffic would have been worse if the buses just let people off wherever they wanted instead of at the designated bus stops.
@6 redundancy is Barnett's bread and butter, lay off!
I hate to break this to everyone claiming that this construction is not causing some traffic issues, but there are other ways to get into the city instead of I-5 North and they've been rogered every morning as people take these alternate routes. 99-North, the 1st South Bridge, Airport Way, West Marginal... they have traffic reports on the radio, people. All much heavier than normal.
As for the Seattle Times link above, that is headlined "commuters not delayed" and Erica says is evidence that bad commutes did not materialize... it mentions a 30 minute delay to get through a small construction zone on Monday afternoon. Uh, that's a bad commute. That's a shitty commute... but still faster than taking transit. And that article does not even mention the backups on the alternate routes.
The local media has done a fantastic job of terrorizing everyone into soiling their Dockers over the I-5 apocalypse.
My commute from West Seattle to Capitol Hill has been awesome - best in years!! I've made it door to door in only 17 minutes on several days.
Keep it up Seattle Times!
@5, the traffic cameras seem to contradict you. but of course, they must be made by people who haven't been in seattle that long, and shoudl go back where they came from, right?
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/
Nicole Brodeur is a moron. Why does she have a column?
BS2U - the I-5 Spokane St. camera shows traffic on I-5 backed up as far as one can see.
@12 You got that right! Nicole's columns are about as deep as those inflatable kiddie pools. In one of her columns a few years back she actually wrote that nobody did meth anymore because someone on Cap Hill told her so at a party. Um, RETARD.
Whats with the constant negative crap that is not newsworthy or redeeming? Lazy "journalism" that adds to the already mundane crap and fosters the bitchy junior high mentality that should be old news by now. KW did it best, but it was about music so it wasn't meant to be serious.
But seriously, BORING!
This burning bridges thing is getting old. If ECB wants to move on to a real career, let her go already. Jeez.
Work for the Village Voice, or the Onion or push papers for a politician. Or something UGH!
"quotes" and bold, "quotes" and bold, "quotes" and bold, "quotes" and bold,"quotes" and bold,"quotes" and bold,
insecure
Um, ECB, did you actually read her column? You state that Brodeur is "staying at a University of Washington dorm to document the experiences of UW staffers who’d rather “sleep at the office… than fight traffic.”
Brodeur, though, states that the UW offered the spaces to staff in order to avoid traffic, and that Brodeur "asked to check in, too, to see what it was like and maybe relive my own college days of flip-flops all day, Aerosmith all night."
Later, she states that the nightmare of traffic actually contributed to people using transit and/or other routes, thereby avoiding mass congestion"
"...it took the fear of traffic and lost time to force an entire region of people to use mass transit. Because of one mile of roadwork. It was, and remains so far, a beautiful thing. Packed Sounder trains. Car pools. People got up before dawn to catch a 6 a.m. water taxi."
Brodeur is a joke, but so are you, ECB.
When I woke up to the radio this morning, traffic reports suggested heavy traffic and a look at WSDOT's traffic maps right show several stop-and-go sections of the highway around the construction zones and re-routes.
She also wrote that 24 people had checked in. I don't know why anyone's shocked that UW staffers didn't run right home to their temporary dorm housing promptly at 5 pm.
Sure, it's not a lot of people, but what all of this non-disaster seems to show is that a lot of people temporarily re-arranging their schedules and commuting patterns has been something of a success I just can't figure out why this inspires such indignation.
I took SR-99 to work recently and it was fine. (Fremont to downtown).
Heck, no traffic jams for me today, skateboarding to work near Gasworks Park from Fremont.
Don't know what the fuss is.
Besides, real Seattleites never take I-5.
Nicole Brodeur is a moron. Why does she have a column?
Hi, I just wanted to say thanks for bringing so much attention to my column. And no, my feelings aren't hurt!
xo nic
@11 -
I was southbound, and the area that is currently black (as in stop-and-go) between the Yesler and Albro cameras was and is indeed jammed up with traffic that is going nowhere fast. The stretch where the work is going on (and between the areas the cameras on either side of it cover) is as much as you can see of northbound I-5 from southbound if you get off at Corson/Michigan.
That section may look pretty small on the area map, but I bet I saved at least 20 minutes on my return trip by taking the Viaduct. Was it a traffic jam all the way to the City limit? No, but it was probably still plenty inconvenient if you were unfortunate enough to be stuck in it.
I don't know if ECB is the Nicole Brodeur of the Stranger or the Joni Balter. Sometimes when she's penning one of her bullshit pro-transit screeds, or writing about how much she loves driving a Mini, or bitching about those nasty cripples who make her trips to the VD clinic slower she comes off as Anne Coulter (but without the big hands, Adam's apple and Y chromosome). I drove home on the first night of the I-5 closure, going south on I-5 at 11PM I could see that traffic on the northbound stretch was backed up all the way past Boeing Field.
If ECB were intellectually honest (I know, big assumption) she'd admit that restricting capacity on one roadway for three weeks isn't the same as tearing down a big chunk of capacity and replacing it with nothing (please, stop telling me about the surface+transit option, it's as much a load of shit, smoke and mirrors as the surge in Iraq). But that's if ECB were intellectually honest, which is like assuming that Dan Savage is straight or Charles Mudede coherent.
ECB, to be fair, that columnist never said she's RATHER drive than walk to her walking path. She simply said she did.
The column you linked to seems clear to me she's poking fun at herself for her absurd habit and then points to the virtues of others who are better than here.
She's self-effacing in the best way. And then you seem to feel the need to slam her too? It really just doesn't make sense to me.
Then you twist her words. And that's just not fair.
So when I turned on the radio yesterday morning and this morning and they were citing 1 hour plus commute times to Seattle from Tacoma given the current traffic, were they lying, ECB, or did you just choose to ignore that?
You pitiful chinless thing: you just get cuntier as the week goes on. I have no idea how old you are, but this back-of-the-school bus, pea-shooting, ain't-we-got-fun bullying the Stranger staff is so fond of is getting tired. So, nyuk-nyuk on, and get used to working for peanuts for the rest of your career. Names get passed around and remembered in this business, bitch.
Totally agree with JMR @9. It's easy to talk about how there was no "clog" if you only read about it on the Times website from your Cap Hill office, but coming into town from the South End on the bus yesterday and today, it was fucking slow, and I took a 4th Ave bus Monday and a Viaduct bus Tuesday.
A friend's company is letting everyone work from home 1/2 time if they want during construction. She lives in Redmond, works in Seattle. Her carpool is still going into the city, so it's not one less car on the road ... but she's enjoying the extra hour a day. :)
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