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Friday, April 13, 2012

History A Bridge to Everywhere

Posted by Eli Sanders on Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Don't tell Kemper Freeman, but: "Believe it not, there were once plans afoot to replace the ferries with a series of bridges that would cross Puget Sound."

Those plans were cooked up in 1965, and they looked like this:

Washington State Archives

Which, of course, reminds me of this:

John Malta

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Comments (10) RSS

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This sounds good. In my experience, old bridges in the area have always fared well, so stringing a bunch of them across cold, dark water is an excellent idea.

Posted by MacCrocodile

on April 13, 2012 at 6:28 AM

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, a city with more bridges than all others excepting Venice, Italy. So color me not impressed with those four silly looking red lines haphazardly drawn across a map.

Posted by moosefan on April 13, 2012 at 6:31 AM

I still think a bridge from downtown to West Seattle would be cool.

Posted by monkey on April 13, 2012 at 7:57 AM

I can't believe this was ever more than someone's pipe dream fantasy. I mean, they did know that the Sound is more than 900 feet deep where the Kingston ferry crosses, right? And around 600 feet deep in most of the area near Seattle. No way could this ever have been a serious consideration.

Posted by Reverse Polarity on April 13, 2012 at 8:41 AM

I think the whole idea when the state bought the ferries in the 50s was that it would be a temporary thing until the bridges got built.

I for one am very happy we never built those bridges.

Posted by emor on April 13, 2012 at 8:42 AM

Considering how rare ferries have become pretty much everywhere else in the country, it was probably not an unrealistic expectation that they'd be replaced by bridges during the heyday of highway construction. It really would have changed the nature of Kitsap and Jefferson counties since they would have become even more massive bedroom communities.

Posted by decidedlyodd on April 13, 2012 at 9:22 AM

@5, yeah, Historylink and Wiki suggest the state only bought the ferry system because the private system had become a clusterfuck, and not through only its own fault by any means. The only way the governor could swing the takeover politically was by promising voters (both ferry-reliant ones and ones who begrudged spending a dime to support ferry riders) that he'd build bridges so they could have reliable transport at last, all to be tolled so their users would repay the construction cost.

After the preliminary plans described in this post the state realized how engineering and constructions outlay would be so massive they might as well try improving the ferry service in the meantime. Which they did, and how. The funding schemes they used were outlawed later (hence the law Kemper Freeman tried to twist against I-90 light rail) but for a while they nicely paid for a really good system.

Posted by gloomy gus on April 13, 2012 at 9:28 AM

You what would be super from that illustration? That bridge from Ilahee to Bainbridge, so one could actually drive from parts of central & south kitsap to the Winslow ferry in a reasonable amount of time. Too bad Bainbridge Island is full of... Bainbridge Islanders.

I do like the random tiny bridge across Sinclair Inlet so you can avoid driving through Gorst, though.

Posted by Unregistered User on April 13, 2012 at 11:22 AM

So they would have put a highway crossing Magnolia and Queen Anne? That would be fun. And no Discovery Park.

Posted by keshmeshi on April 13, 2012 at 12:29 PM

I guess engineers had no idea what a port looked like - seriously, how did they expect barges and other shipping freighters to cross under a series of bridges to get to the port?! Shaking my head at the baby boomer nonsense.

Posted by Wedgwood99 on April 16, 2012 at 1:04 AM