She's also proposing that the 520 toll booths be DUI checkpoints for Jane Hague and Warren Moon.

Toll I-90 as well and people are just going to clog up I-5/405, as well as Lake City Way, Sand Point Way, Juanita Drive, Lake Washington Blvd, etc etc ad infinitum. That's a lot of cars just idling on arterials.

While I agree with what you say, Erica, the only bad thing is that this precludes some light rail systems on the replacement bridge.

No possibility of light rail on 520 ever though

I applaud Maureen Dowd & Camille Paglia. Where's your applause for them?

I'm with Will on this one. Shortchange the bridge design now equals no transit on it later. 30 years from now when the money exists, all will be yelling about the short sightedness of the previous generation and how they were so stupid as to not build it with a long term vision in mind.
Much like us today derided the design of the bus tunnel for not having the right type of insulation on the rails installed on it in the 80's, etc. Or voting down mass transit in the 60's and 70's, etc.

BART crosses SF Bay in an underwater tube. Maybe that's what should happen with light rail across Lake Washington. I'm sure it would be hugely expensive, but a big part of the problem with the cross-lake proposals so far is that they take a circuitous route to downtown Bellevue.

Hmmm, looking at the specs of the thing, it's only 135 feet below the surface at the deepest. Lake Washington is much deeper than that in places, so maybe that wouldn't work.

Cascadian,

True. You'd have to have some kind of floating transit tunnel, anchored at the ends and/or by buoys. It's currently an experimental idea in Denmark, I think. But no one's actually built a tube like that.

Narrower Bridge = No Light Rail

Can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Light rail has already been planned for the I-90 bridge and the two are close enough that the redundancy was a luxury.

I would happily pay a toll if it meant I could get from my house in Ballard to my office in Redmond (a 15 mile journey) in less than an hour. Of course, I ride the bus now and it typically takes about an hour one way, after I park at the park and ride, so if this makes people abandon their car for the bus which is toll free, allowing better traffic flow I'm all for that too.

I think there is an anchored underwater tube tunnel being built in Norway, actually.

But the problem is the ship exposure profile - don't forget why we're replacing the 520 bridge - because a boat hit it. Same could happen with most of the tube designs in a storm.

The tube tunnel concept from Lake Washington to I-5 itself is much more viable.

Regardless, we need a bridge capable of supporting surface-bound monorail or light rail, not one that precludes them.

It would be logistically impossible to discount carpoolers since I'm sure the state and drivers will both prefer electronic tolling. However, carpoolers can split the cost and obviously save money that way.

didn't someone come over and evaluate the possibility of a submerged tunnel just a few months ago?

I say put light rail (and emergency and/or carpools) on a new but similarly sized 520 bridge and put the cars down below water level in a tube. Hell, you could even make the tube tunnel go right to the 520/405 interchange.

badda bing

I also applaud this decision. Let's get to work funding and building a huge bridge that will move more cars through. Let's also not hold up progress start assessing rail possibilities. Transit folks had their chance. They blew it. Time to start solving problems.

Um, Clint, they're talking about a six lane bridge, not the eight lane bridge proposals in the prior plans.

That's a reduction.

Which means fewer cars. And it's more, since two lanes will be transit/HOV only.

The eight lane proposals were either 2 transit and 2 HOV or 2 transit/HOV - but in any case no extra lanes for non-HOV cars.

Take the bus, you'll get across 520 faster.

This is laughable because third-time's-a-charm Christine's gas tax increase in 2006 has generated ample revenue to start replacing the 520 bridge once a Federal grant is established. Furthermore, there's no safeguards that such toll revenue will actually be applied to the funding the bridge.

This state is rolling in surplus revenue. We're being played as fools Ms. Gregoire and Ron Sims takes us to the clearners.

Erica C. Barnett:

The tolls on the new bridge won’t apply to HOV drivers with two passengers or more...

I dunno, Erica, maybe while we're at it, we should also spare hybrid vehicles, flex-fueled vehicles, anyone with handicapped plates, government vehicles, vehicles whose owners are making less than the median income in King County, plus vehicles owned by members of aboriginal nations.

Sheesh. Route 520, where it does have HOV lanes, doesn't even consider two individuals a carpool. It's three. How often, when we're driving with a lone passenger, are we really carpooling? But even if we make three the magic number and even if that were logistically possible considering the automation of the tolling, how effectively is that really addressing congestion, and how much is that really offsetting the lost tolls?

I'm about as pro-transit, anti-freeways as you can get. Erica C. Barnett professes to be pro-transit, anti-freeways. And yet I vehemently disagree with Ms. Barnett on just about every transportation issue that hits this region. At least Erica's position can usually be cast as pro-transit, just a difference on tactics. But to push for a tolling plan to be watered down in just about the lamest, most eviscerating possible way--I just don't see how one can interpret that as anything but pro-freeways.

Gregoire is a moron. Plan and simple. She's had 3 years to enact a plan. Wow she is now getting around to it. I wonder if an election is coming up soon?

We need an I-520 8 lane solution period. Nothing less. King/Sno county's population is growing faster and faster. We are adding more vehicles every day. Less lanes crossing Lake Washington is a riduculous farce for any new projects. I don't care what the price tag is. Just get it done and stop delaying as it gets more costly every year. Gregoire's 3 year delay have already cost the citizens another $500 million dollars.

All you eco-rabid freaks need to wakeup to reality. Taking away lane miles will not force a suburban population on the Eastside to start driving less. That is a liberal folly idea.

King County has to be the worst county government I've ever seen in this country. They refuse to address the fact we have a huge lack bisecting the 2 most important economic areas of the state. In 10 years Bellevue will be more of an economic force than Seattle. Have any of you seen the number of new skyscrapers going up in downtown Bellevue? The traffic nightmare will only increase unless we add 2 lanes in each direction across the middle of the county.

This whole issue is fraught with incompetence, mis-management, and stupidity.

We need to address King Co's automobile needs across Lake Washington immediately. Once that is done we can play with your other transit ideas.

@17

Are you a Republican or something? Are there Rs that read slog? If so I'm actually sort of impressed.

Anyway, the toll is to reduce congestion and automobile use not to fund the bridge. It will most certainly be successful in that regard.

Also this one was delicious (@19):

All you eco-rabid freaks need to wakeup to reality. Taking away lane miles will not force a suburban population on the Eastside to start driving less. That is a liberal folly idea.

It really brings up the point peak oil and worldwide catastrophe caused by global warming will get a lot of people out of their cars and wake up a lot of people to reality eventually, as long as everyone maintains your attitude. But it would be great if they'd get out of their cars and wake up to reality now, so those things don't actually have to happen. Tolling just gives people a nudge in the right direction. It also probably reduces congestion, something maybe even you could support.

Also, if they stopped their commutes at Bellevue, that would mean driving less.

Want me to get out of my car and take the bus? Fine. I'm all for less congestion, less pollution, etc. But until King County Metro implements better service (or even SOME service) for people who live in Seattle and commute to the east side I have no other choice.

Not tolling drivers in the HOV lane is a completely fucking stupid idea, which must be why Erica C. loves it, because at the end of the day Erica C. is all about teh stupid, as witness her mindless support of light rail or her hypocrisy regarding BRT as a viable alternative, unless of course the BRT is part of the surface/transit option for replacing the viaduct, in which case it's full speed ahead (see, Erica C. thinks that BRT is teh suck for her, she needs white rail, but BRT is *great* for other people.

Now, this is simple math, but I'm going to dumb it down a bit more for Erica. See Erica, your plan is stupid because it introduces a huge logistical hurdle for no substantive benefit (making dipshit eco-puritans such as yourself is not a substantive benefit). See, if you have a toll of Y dollars and you have X passengers in a car then the toll costs are Y/X per passenger. Now, if you're carpooling you agree to split the costs, so you split the cost of filling up at the pump (because gas stations don't give gasoline for free to carpools, although Erica C. would probably be in favor of that, but only so long as the carpool includes a handicapped person that otherwise might be riding a bus that she's on) and you split the costs of the toll. So implementing a toll all by itself makes carpooling more desirable because you split the cost of the toll among the passengers in the carpool. If we have a six dollar toll and I get two co-workers to carpool with me then we're each out 2 bucks and we've saved 12 dollars, just in toll costs, by not driving alone. Smart people, well people smarter than Erica C. anyways, can figure this out all by themselves and will, and thus you don't have to figure out how to implement a special discount for HOVs.

Of course HOV lanes are completely fucking stupid anyways, feel good bullshit designed to placate the sensibilities of stupid eco-puritans such as Erica C. In most of the places they're implemented in Seattle, most notably on I-5 south through downtown Seattle, they don't do anything but slow traffic down because they force SOV drivers to merge right, which slows down traffic for the other lanes, then the lane goes away just south of the James street exit and resumes south of I-90, which is completely fucking stupid. Also stupid is the fact that HOV lanes can be used by people with kids. Sorry soccer moms and dads, but hauling your little bastards to soccer practice is not commute trip reduction. It's not as if the little fucks are going to drive themselves.

A few judiciously placed tolls would do more for carpooling than all of the HOV lanes we've built so far. Of course if tolling is implemented I want to see 100 percent of the tolls go to road maintenance and not one dime for public transit or any other purpose. Public transit is subsidized enough as it is and in some cases over subsidized (Sounder heavy rail anyone?).

@13 - even with electronic tolling, the transponders can be covered with a shield when the vehicle is HOV, preventing the toll from being charged. This is what will happen on SR167 when HOT Lanes open this year.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR167/HOTLanes/faq.htm#e-sticker

This from someone who believes Port Townsend is is a Seattle suburb.