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Friday, April 2, 2010

Transportation City Council Releases Draft Report on 520 Bridge Options

Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:44 PM

Today, the Seattle City Council released an 87-page report, authored by consultants, on ways to mitigate the negative impacts of a 520 bridge replacement, which focuses on reducing the footprint of the freeway interchange in Montlake, increasing bicycle and pedestrian access around the interchange, and mitigating traffic through the arboretum.

I touched on the report summary earlier this week. I have yet to delve into this big one in detail—it's 87 pages, after all—but you can start reading it now (large .pdf). I'll have more to say about it next week.

The report outlines some options that are more viable than others. For instance, one design that's off the table would create a freeway exit from Montlake over to the future light-rail station at Husky Stadium. The state studied that option, but it exceeded the budget for the project overall. However, the more realistic options don't address the fundamental problems with the bridge—increasing vehicle capacity by 50 percent without accommodating dedicated transit lanes or light rail—but make minor tweaks.

"It’s not a game changer," says City Council Member Sally Clark. "It does what we said we would do: Stay on time and try to make it better."

Two options that the city council is reportedly examining seriously are represented in the diagrams below (that said, nothing in the report is binding). Here are the graphics:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Consultants from Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates will brief the council on Monday, April 5 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at City Hall in the City Council Chambers. The council will hold a public hearing at the same location on Thursday, April 8, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

In addition, Mayor Mike McGinn will release his own report on Tuesday that examines ways the bridge could include light rail. That should be interesting: None of the options the state studied have integrated light rail into the design. But such a design process now, many predict, would delay replacing the dilapidated span and require money the region doesn't have.

Comments (5) RSS

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There's a difference between building light rail in the bridge (option A, delays construction), integrating light rail into the bridge design (option B, affects only the on/off set downs mostly and the LR capable exit structure), and having the bridge be light rail capable (option C, ensuring sufficient lane width, lanes designed for LR/BRT/Bus/Vanpool only usage, provision in design for offramps to be adjusted when light rail is built).

Part of the problem is that, if the light rail coming in to play is separated from the 520 construction too far, you have to basically have a parallel lane build for the light rail or pre-build it with removable strips for where the rails will go (hint to ST, don't try to lay the rails, put road pads that cover the area).

The funding mechanism for the light rail, due to the insane restriction of not using gas taxes to pay for transit (bummer), means the vote for the light rail portion will FOLLOW construction of the 520 bridge.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on April 2, 2010 at 3:16 PM

Eastside: We need a new bridge. Here's our plan.

State: Looks good. What do you guys think, Seattle?

Seattle: *crickets*

State: Seattle? What do you say?!

Seattle: *crickets*

State: OK, Approved.

Seattle: WAIT!!! Let's reduce shoulder widths to nothing again. And, lets not extend HOV through the whole freeway. And, keep four lanes of traffic still. We like driving at 10 mph.

State and Eastside: STFU.

Posted by TheMisanthrope on April 2, 2010 at 7:30 PM

And still no way for transit to get into the HOV lanes eastbound without merging across the entire set of GP lanes in the pictured modifications. And the eastbound onramp is essentially the same configuration as what is there today, which already backs up onto Montlake causing the intersections to lock up.

Ms. Lipstick please meet Mr. Pig from a car/transit perspective. But having a bike lane across that thing will rock.

Posted by Action Slacks on April 2, 2010 at 7:31 PM

Ok, who the fuck thinks putting light rail on the bridge now is a good idea? Sound Transit doesn't have a plan for putting light rail across the 520 corridor AT ALL. Not on the east side, not on the west side, not on the bridge. This is putting the cart before the horse, except the horse hasn't even been bought yet.

And don't get me started about how appallingly stupid the Rainier Vista land bridge idea is.

Posted by Greg on April 4, 2010 at 10:05 PM

What we need is a smiler plan to what happened with I-90 for the bridge. We need to make the middle able to support rail in the future, and build the bridge like that.

Also, TheMisanthrope,

Seattle is not saying it wants two lane traffic, nor is it saying it want no shoulders. But when the state, eastside, and city are claiming that want to make this area more transit oriented, you don't go ahead and build a $4 billion road project without thinking about transit. The "crickets" came when Nickles was in office. Now he's out, and the city is actually doing something about it.

The Seattle times did a poll showing that a majority of people on the Eastside support what the city's proposed changes.

Posted by Natehc1984 on April 7, 2010 at 1:17 PM