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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

City Launching a Mosquito Fleet to South Park is Problematic, Says County

Posted by Cienna Madrid on Wed, May 26, 2010 at 1:37 PM

"The things we need for a mosquito fleet to work are boat docks," says Chris Arkills, spokesman for King County Executive Director Dow Constantine. Arkills says the feasibility of launching a pedestrian ferry system across the Duwamish from Boeing and Georgetown to South Park, which I wrote about earlier today, hinges on finding public land near the soon-to-be defunct South Park Bridge to build a few docks. And this might be difficult.

"The problem is that much of the shoreline along the Duwamish is privately owned," says Arkills, "we can't just come in and install boat docks wherever we want." He adds that the docks would have to be built close to the South Park Bridge to be truly accessible for foot and bike traffic.

Arkills adds that while they haven't ruled out the idea of a mosquito fleet, the county is looking at the possibility of running a shuttle bus across Boeing's private bridge, which is located downstream of the South Park Bridge. Arkills doesn't know if that option would be open to cyclists as well as pedestrians. However, he says that the upside to working in bridge-closing crisis mode is that the county is getting great ideas and feedback from the community, and some of those ideas are bound to be successful. "People are never going to pay more attention than they are right now," he says. "We're trying to capitalize on that."

Comments (8) RSS

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I'm fairly certain you mean to say that Boeing's bridge is *upstream* of the South Park Bridge. Downstream is the First Avenue Bridge, unless we sold the rights to it when I wasn't looking.

Posted by pedantic on May 26, 2010 at 2:16 PM

Why not a zip line?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on May 26, 2010 at 4:18 PM

Oh just come out and say it: South Park is fucked. All those businesses down there will slowly wither and die, and the scrappy little neighborhood by the river that had been clawing its way up and out of crack'n'gangland will start slipping back down again.

What really gets me is the fact that Those In Charge knew about this bridge needing to be replaced MORE THAN 30 YEARS AGO!!! The neighborhood of South Park in general and the bridge in particular have served as a political football for decades -- the hot potato that was bounced from agency to agency, no one wanting to take responsibility for ensuring the continued existence of this vital piece of infrastructure (it's just poor brown people down there, right? not much of a tax base, right?). Until, whoops, it's 2010 and the bridge. Must. Close. Whoopsie-doopsie.

All this scrambling around at the very last minute to try to cobble together some kind of, I dunno, SOMETHING to throw to South Park.. Well, that just adds insult to injury. Nothing short of a new bridge will do!

And if you think this is strictly a South Park issue, just wait a month when the 1st Ave S Bridge is groaning under an additional 20,000+ cars, trucks and busses EACH DAY. Everyone who drives north into the city is going to be impacted.

Posted by merry on May 26, 2010 at 4:49 PM

Did I miss something somewhere? Cienna, has anyone asked why the Bridge can't be kept open for bicycles and pedestrians?

After all, the bridge isn't ready to collapse is it? We just don't want the further wear and tear of regular traffic across it.

Heck, why couldn't they even continue to allow transit across it? Just stop all regular vehicular traffic.

Posted by Mickymse on May 26, 2010 at 5:49 PM

From what I've heard, the problem isn't so much that it might suddenly collapse under vehicular traffic. It's that the two sides of the draw span are settling in different directions, so sooner or later it's going to get stuck closed, with resulting disruption to ship traffic. There's also a chance one side of it could topple over if it were open when an earthquake hit.

Posted by Orv on May 26, 2010 at 8:29 PM

God I am so glad I moved here 6 months ago. back to Capitol Hill I guess! boo.

Posted by LEE.

on May 26, 2010 at 11:44 PM

No one bats an eye when I ride my bike across the Boeing bridge.

Posted by everyheartbeat on May 27, 2010 at 4:09 PM

The two pylons are not anchored in bedrock (kind of sub-par construction from back in '31 when the bridge opened). Bikes and walkers are out of luck because Coast Guard / Navigable Waterways laws require that the bridge must be left in the "open" position. Which means the bridge will go up permanently and the two leaves will be removed. The bridge has a 4 on the 100 point federal bridge safety scale - which leaves me with the question (since King County has known about the situation for ages) Why is it even still open? (Don't get me wrong I'm glad it is - but you'd think they'd have already closed it). And don't fret so much about the bikes - think about the hundreds of people who rely on bus traffic over that bridge. -JC

Posted by maximillian on May 30, 2010 at 1:37 PM