Comments on For Fuck's Sake

And she should go to jail too.

WWWHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

This ruined my day.

Since she is not planning on holding people accountable for anything I think I will vote for Rossi.

Sorry, the Dems have held the Govenor's Mansion since 1984; it is time to shake things up and frankly a loss would actually help the Democrats to come back stronger in 2012. So focus on the Democrats gaining more state House and Senate seats to keep Rossi from doing anything for his one term.

This is ridiculous. The state of Washington has done very well under the guidance of democrats and voting for a republican just to shake things up will potentially stall or screw up any progress we've made so far.

Why would they go to jail for solving the problem at a vastly reduced cost?

I mean, I know engineers don't always agree, so the fact you, with your engineering experience, disagree with Gray and Miyamoto isn't too surprising. But jail? Really?

The viaduct isn't at serious risk of falling. There's one small section that's subsiding a little, and it has been repaired. There's more to do, of course.

Sure, cutting off your nose to spite your face is a great idea!

@4, Name 5 accompishments that Christine spear headed on her own in the past 4 years. And I mean things that came from her, not the legistlature or anything that started under Locke.

Confidence is expensive.

At least a Republican would have told all the consultants and lawyers to take a flying fuck and actually would have gotten something done by now.

What the fuck is she thinking! The viaduct can't be fixed. Seattle doesn't want another one, tear the stupid thing down already.

Maybe this study will show that the Viaduct cannot be successfully repaired (with a reasonable amount of money). Maybe this study will eventually be used to illustrate why it should be replaced. It might shut up opponents of replacing it.

Too much optimism?

@7, name five accomplishments that came from ANY of Washington State's 22 governors. Come on, we know you have high standards. Let's see what you think we should be achieving.

They could just post signs as you approach it: "Drive At Your Own Risk - The structure you are about to enter has been deemed unsafe in the event of a major earthquake." That's much cheaper than fixing it or replacing it.

How many studies do we need? HOW MANY? 20? 30? 50? HOW MANY MORE CAN WE GET? Maybe an engineer from Germany can weigh in on this?

*UGH*

We have had studies. and more studies. and MORE studies. We've done them for every major roadway. I realize it looks like progress, yes. It looks like something is happening and people don't have to actually spend money. But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Just doooooooooo something. Pay me $17,000 and I will look at it and say "needs to either be rebuilt or not. Tear it down"

Every study says that. EVERY ONE. Hell, you can pay me $5K and I'll say it. And I will have saved us money and time. I'll go out there tomorrow Mrs. Govner. Give me a hard hat and a clipboard.

The new 35W bridge in Minneapolis, is, for all intents and purposes, finished. Not much more to be done besides connecting it to the interstate and doing all of the requisite painting, signage, etc. ONE YEAR from the date of its collapse. Yeah, I'm gonna feel REALLY safe driving on that. Let's hope if they ever do replace your viaduct, they put as much effort (though not necessarily time) into it as they've spent studying it.

@12 - A larger parking lot at Rick's.

OK, that's one.

Just moved to LA from Seattle. I was in Seattle for the Nisqually quake. And I must say that I felt safer here during the Chino quake a few days ago than I ever did in Seattle.

I hated driving Southbound on the Viaduct. That thing scared the hell out of me. It settling isn't the issue, it's the unreinforced columns that will crumble in the next big earthquake, effectively pancaking hundreds of people to death in a matter of seconds. (Remember Oakland?)

You people in Seattle debate things too much for too long. By all means, talk about it, but in the end, have a friggin' project manager with a stopwatch on hand.

@15 After the Northridge quake here in LA, the I-10 La Cienega overpass collapse was rebuilt in mere months and under budget. And it seems to be standing just fine now, some 14 years later.

Seattle, shut up and DO SOMETHING before I turn on the news to see the KING 5 helicopter hovering over a stretch of burning rubble.

You've had 7+ years. The goddam WAMU/SAM tower was built in that time!

$17000 isn't enough money to do more than read Gray's assertions. It's a joke.

Stranger babes give novel Rize, novel drink Rize, NOVEL BECOME HAIKU!

No, I don't.

Can't we just do a no-knock drug arrest on Eyman and happen to shoot him by "mistake"?

It would solve a lot of problems ...

This shit is tired. The Viaduct was designed during a time when earthquakes were not understood to be a major risk in this area. Retrofits won't change the placement of rebar splices inside the columns, nor make the dowels longer. It's time to replace both the Viaduct and the seawall.

@17 - The I-10 overpass over La Cienega was temporarily rebuilt in two months. This was an amazing feat, and necessary to get the 300,000+ cars it carries daily off of surrounding surface streets.

But, that was just getting the freeway opened again, not the complete rebuild.

hmm. 2001 earthquake, Viaduct needs fixing, Nickels does nothing (mistake). 2002 monorail, Nickels pushes it (mistake). 2003-2008, nothing happens on Viaduct issue except Nickels gets his stupid 2-option advisory vote and public rejects both (mistake). 2008 Nickels backs ST2 Redux, which does mostly nothing but indebt Seattle for decades so the East King Subarea surplus from ST1 can be spent on *something.* Big, big mistake.

Look, Nickels is greener than the Jolly Green Giant's pecker BUT he can not do jack shit right when it comes to transportation infrastructure. He's a disaster in that area.

@7.

1. The Puget Sound Partnership

2. health care for all kids

3. simple majority for schools

4. vastly increased funding for schools (including better pay for teachers and more early childhood education)

5. investments in climate change and renewable energy (HB 2815, the Climate Action Team, the Western Climate Initiative, etc)

I am FAR FROM Gregoire's biggest fan, but my complaints about her have nothing to do with the argument that she "hasn't gotten anything done," because that's bullshit. She's gotten a lot done above and beyond the few things that I listed here.

@12 -- I believe the Seattle City Council is responsible for the larger parking lot at Ricks.

if you visit Gregoire's campaign website http://www.chrisgregoire.com/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpLead&s=gregoire, you'll learn she's responsible for:

1. Protecting children and helping families
2. Strengthening our economy
3. Creating a cleaner future

If I could only find two more accomplishments.

The fault is us, the electorate, because we keep re-electing politicans who don't solve things or make decisions.

Why would you expect them to change, if the nondecisionmaking approach is working, for them?

@17,

Actually, the columns supporting the AWV are of a very different design than those in the Oakland freeway that collapsed, and pancaking in the event of an earthquake is highly unlikely.

And yeah, Dan Savage is obviously the authority on all matters related to engineering, so clearly his opinion should carry a lot more weight than that of the former HEAD WSDOT highway engineer.

Now, granted, spending $17k on this is a joke - purely going through the motions so WSDOT can arrive at the same conclusion it has since about 1995, but a real study without the manipulation of criteria (ie - that a retrofit would need to survive and be operational in the fairly unlikely event of a 1000-year quake, or whatever bogus standard they set to make it a non-starter) would likely show that the AWV could be retrofitted at a much more modest cost than the $1.5 billion WSDOT has been using.

Oh, and Dan, Lake Shore Drive by Navy Pier in Chicago looks as ratty or rattier than the AWV, and it doesn't seem to have impeded the world-class status of that waterfront.

@25 - Former Gov. Rossellini was the bag man.

17: Comparing Lake Shore Drive to the viaduct is like to comparing, well, Lake Shore Drive to the viaduct. They're both highways and they both run along the waterfront through a big city downtown.

But the similarities end there. LSD is flat, and the viaduct is a structure, and a mile-long one at that. (We've had mile-long viaducts here, but they ran through industrial areas. And we tore them down when they started falling apart.) Make no mistake about it, I'd like to see LSD gone, but it's not the visual affront that the viaduct is. You don't really see LSD unless you're looking down on it from the Hancock tower. It's flat here, 'member?

The only truly valid comparison is to the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco. LIke the viaduct, it blocked views from water and land, and like the viaduct, it made the waterfront noisy, dark and unpleasant. The difference is that the Embarcadero freeway is gone and scarcely missed.

And it takes a great leap of imagination to walk along the structure-free waterfront and say that what's really needed here is a double-deck highway.

LSD (love that acronym!) sure looked like an elevated highway for about 1/2-3/4 mile at the location I am referring to - and I couldn't help but notice that it was elevated as I walked under it.

You think an elevated double decked structure is bad for pedestrians on Seattle's waterfront, wait till you see a 4-6 lane surface road with traffic crawling at 10 mph. Also, since most of downtown rises up a hill at that point, there isn't really much in the way of view blockage.

Repeating the "horrible Viaduct cuts downtown off from the waterfront" mantra doesn't really make it so.

@9

No, a republican governor would have given the contract to one of his cronies who would have jacked the contract price up to $30,000 while simultaneously moving his company offshore so he doesn't have to pay taxes.

Also, the consulting firm would claim that all of the employees that worked on this project are contractors and that they are not required to pay payroll taxes on their behalf. Finally, they would have farmed out all the technical work to be done in India or Singapore so they wouldn't have to pay the high labor wages of professionals.

This is a straight-forward look at government incompetence, but republicans create a backwards-ass, topsy turvy, extremely expensive alternative to the problem of government incompetence. Give me a Democrat any day.