Comments

1
Sealth State would rename all the bridges

Just saying ...
2
I'm a PDXer, and super proud of the bridge, but our bridge is only crossing a river. Wouldn't a bridge like this from West Seattle to downtown just be way bigger of an engineering challenge? Or has this sort of thing already been studied?
3
Kinda like the Supertrain route in Singles?

http://seattletransitblog.com/wp-content…

4
you're trolling or you're fucking retarded.
5
We could use better pedestrian options from West Seattle to downtown, but a bridge across Elliott Bay is not a solution.
6
@2 It's a ridiculous fantasy. Not necessarily impossible, but Seattle can't get a fucking single city street paved properly. A Key West sized bridge ain't happening.

Direct access to/from the Port to I-5 & I-90, exclusive to commercial activity, is the project that would solve more traffic problems than a monorail & fantasy bridge combined.
7
I'm not sure exactly where this new bridge crosses the Willamette, but let's just say the Burnside Bridge is 1,382 feet long. Pier 52 to the West Seattle Ferry Dock is about 2.5 miles across the sound as the water taxi flies.

Aside from the scale of the construction required, that's a pretty substantial hike for a pedestrian.
8
@1, Just saying nothing, you mean. As usual. Actually, worse than usual.

The distance from downtown to the nearest part of West Seattle is five times as long as Tilikum Crossing, and would be longer than pretty much any bridge in the world. Bear in mind that massive ships would have be passing under it constantly, so floating bridges and the like are out. And that still only gets you to nowheresville; a bridge to anyplace useful in West Seattle would have to be twice as long and bizarrely configured to get over the hill. Either way, an engineering project about ten times as complex and costly as the tunnel that's currently stuck,and the latter would surely be the most difficult engineering feat in human history. The cost would be greater than all of the area's transit budget several times over.

Please open your browser to Google Maps and think about what you're seeing for a minute. You might as well ask for a bridge from downtown to Fremont. That's not what bridges are for.
9
@2 The only part that needs to be bridged is the shipping canal under the current West Seattle bridge. The rest could be trails or surface streets of some sort. It would be a lot of trails though since the connecting point is so far south of the city.

I'd rather see us invest in more frequent passenger ferry service to West Seattle and other destinations.
10
We already have a bridge to West Seattle. Let's just build a train on that.
11
@9, you mean like we have now? You CAN walk from downtown to West Seattle right this minute if you want to, via the Spokane Street Bridge/Alki Trail (the lower-level bridge as you suggest, under the West Seattle Bridge -- it's already there). It's five miles, though; a bit of a hike -- and it's unclear to me what kind of a bridge is going to magically shrink that distance.

For comparison, a five-mile bridge from downtown Portland could reach about half of that city -- it's almost as far as St. Johns.
12
Yes, let's destroy the beauty of Elliott Bay with this monstrosity. I don't care if it's only for pedestrians and dogs, this is a really stupid idea.
13
One of the writers on Seattle Transit Blog discusses the possibility of West Seattle Light Rail here: http://seattletransitblog.com/2013/12/27…
The quick summary is that it would cost about as much as our current system (including the UW extension) but carry far fewer riders.

Light rail makes more sense for more densely populated, congested areas like the Central Area, South Lake Union and Ballard.

Part of the problem is that West Seattle is fairly dispersed. It is not that dense overall, nor are the dense parts in a line (which would make things handy). You could certainly build a "feeder line", but building that bridge (or leveraging the existing bridge) would be really expensive. It isn't clear how it would work, either. For example if you ran a train from the Junction to downtown, how does someone in SSCC take advantage of it? You could route the bus to go over the hill and meet at 35th, but it probably makes a lot more sense to just go down Delridge and onto the West Seattle freeway.

I think it makes a lot more sense to build a real BRT system. We aren't familiar with such things because there isn't one in King County. But a real BRT system means that buses rarely deal with regular traffic (you also have off board payment, etc.). Just as light rail sometimes mixes with traffic, the buses operate the same way. For West Seattle this means adding car pool lanes (there already are a bunch) and either a SODO transit center (where you could hop on Link) or an express line to downtown. Again, the key part is to avoid the bottlenecks. We don't need to spend billions of dollars when there are much cheaper alternatives.

14
Wouldn’t it be easier (and cheaper) to give everyone in west Seattle a wetsuit, floaties and swim fins, drop a ladder off of Colman Dock and encourage them to swim? (much less environmental impact too!)
15
@13, real BRT will never happen in Seattle because you can't get the right-of-way. Look at the half-assed system they ended up with, RapidRide, and why it ended up that way.

They could run the existing Link up from the airport to Burien and then north to SSCC and then to the junction, I suppose. But it's going to cost a fortune. Maybe with the explosion in ridership will come new ideas, but instead we're going the other way, destroying funding for transit, not expanding it.

Density in West Seattle is increasing pretty dramatically along the California corridor.
16
I mean, we effectively have a pedestrian bridge from Downtown to West Seattle called the West Seattle Water Taxi.
17
@16, as I said, we have an ACTUAL pedestrian bridge called the Alki trail from downtown to West Seattle.
18
@13 But West Seattle should be more dense. It won't be more dense however, until it has better transit options.

We should certainly serve those areas too, but you don't just build a transit system for current needs, you have to anticipate future ones.

What we really need is the ability to decouple our urban needs, from regional ones. The current transit governance structure makes that impossible and holds us back.

But since Sound Transit needs our votes to pass a regional system, and Metro needs to keep Monroe happy, our local needs are held hostage. Keeping transit from people who want it, to force it on people who don't. Gotta love Metro and ST.
19
@15 About the only nice thing about RapidRide are the screens that tell you how late the bus will be.
20
@17 I know, but the Alki Trail doesn't have that "direct from downtown" appeal of this fantastical utterly impractical bridge that Paul proposed.
21
@14 - I was thinking more of a dual human-cannonball setup. Does anyone here know how far you can safely fire a pedestrian out of a cannon?
22
go ahead a build the bridge - as long as those of us driving cars dont have to pay a fucking dime of it.

23
#6, you clearly do not understand the issue of you believe direct commercial access to/from the Port to I-5/I-90 would solve anything. The majority (by a significant margin) of the freight that comes into the Port is immediately put on rail lines. More truck access wouldn't help much at all.
Talk to people at the Daily Journal of Commerce if you don't believe me. They used to have a Seattle office, and they have the numbers.
24
Who cares about West Seattle. We need a no-car bridge across the ship canal. There are zero ways to bike or even walk to north seattle that aren't a car-fueled nightmare.

We have, what, 6 bridges for cars? Give us one, please. Bridges with a few inches for us that technically can be walked/biked across don't count.
25
Seattle voted for the wrong mayor for ideas like this.
26

What about ridesharing vehicles like Uber, and regular taxis, or ShuttleExpress?
27
Raku has a point. The Ballard bridge is a biking/walking nightmare. Other bridges across lake union/ ship canal aren't much better. West Seattle deserved to get real mass transit to downtown at least 15 years ago. Instead we have the silliest trolley lines in the planet, while Portland has a transit system they are proud of!
28
As has been noted, we already have this.You can see bicyclists on the lower bridge and East Marginal Way all the time going between West Seattle and Downtown. The Water Taxi fills a similar niche and offers a more direct route.

Maybe transportation isn't the goal here. Maybe the goal is to do something really cool and impractical. If so, there are better choices than a bridge.

How about a zip line from Admiral to the Waterfront? It would only go one way, but what a ride that would be!

One step up from there would be a gondola from Admiral to the Waterfront. People could use that for a round trip, but it would require one big-ass parking lot in Admiral.

Both a zip line and a gondola would be high enough to stay out of the way of any Harbor Island traffic and they would satisfy your craving for an impractical transportation option without private cars.
29
I've been riding the Alki 'trail' to the Waste Water Treatment Plant every day for two weeks now, and it is probably the worst hour of bike commuting I've done since I left SF. The connection between the SODO trail and Alki trail is a broken back of heavy traffic and crossing railroad tracks, (I picked up one flat tire the first day). Several times I am put into a crosswalk with the pedestrians, who's last priority status challenges the much vaunted patience of Seattle crossing etiquette. Throw in some angry truckers, stoned skate kids, and power walkers striding three abreast down the beach front, and I can sympathise with my West Seattle bike commuters now.

The water Taxi costs $4.00 each way and does not count as a transfer on my ORCA card when I get off, plus it dumps me into the war zone that is the Alaska way construction area, so , yeah I can see why people choose to never leave beautiful W. Seattle. I'm personally embarrassed to have to come back to the city after my SODO experience.

I tiny improvement would be to link the SODO trail to Spokane st and thus the Alki trail, as it is they are both bike trails to nowhere, isolated from meaningful transportation hubs by said rail tracks and hungry cars.
30
Vancouver/Richmond have a nice Skytrain/pedestrian/bike bridge across the north arm of the Fraser. Very pleasant ride across, though you end up on Richmond or a uninteresting part of Vancouver rather than Portland or Seattle. Some day we'll have the technology to fix that...

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2020634,…
31
As #6 mentioned, managing truck traffic would help, someone else suggested a park and ride, and last, but not least, a light rail line!

Please wait...

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