Transport Travesty in Seattle
Published March 12, 2007
Everybody worries about the Alaskan Way Viaduct here in Seattle. Built in 1953, this elevated highway skirts the rim of the downtown area - blocking magnificent views of Puget Sound and quintessential green-and-white ferries traversing it. Beyond are the blocked snowy peaks of the Olympic Mountain range. Even so, there’s a '60s-era postcard of the highway that captures the relic’s original promise: broad boulevards of smooth asphalt unfettered by congestion or side street traffic.
The best thing that can be said is this: a Sunday drive treats the motorist to panoramic views of the Seattle skyline, water, and mountains. The worst thing that can be said about the Viaduct is that you will die if you’re driving on it or walking under it during the next earthquake, because it will surely collapse.
Much has been made of the Viaduct's importance to business, especially those in the maritime industry, but truth be told, local businesses - including those who depend upon the Viaduct for daily transportation - have not mustered much support for rebuilding it.
I live in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, just northwest of downtown, which means that the Viaduct is convenient. It’s a lot easier to take the Viaduct to West Seattle or to the Sea-Tac Airport, which I do often to visit or pick up friends and family – instead of taking the I-5 as the main north-south artery through the Puget Sound region.
I work downtown, and since it costs me $17 daily to park in my employer's building (and that’s the early bird special), I never drive to work. I take the bus, and at lunchtime I make my way through one of the few passageways between downtown and the waterfront. I walk under the shadow of the creaking, imposing Viaduct to the docks lining Puget Sound, where a row of waterfront restaurants and businesses is mostly bisected by the Viaduct, separating the waterfront and its impressive views from the rest of downtown proper.
This week, Seattle voters are supposed to vote for one of two options for replacing the Viaduct:
1. A wider and certainly uglier elevated highway with larger supporting columns that will further obscure views of the water and cut off the crust of waterfront from the rest of the city
2. A much more expensive option called the “tunnel” of which the tunnel portion is really only a small part
The real kick in the pants is that this vote is not binding; it is merely symbolic. Still, even a symbolic vote gives me a chance to speak my mind, so I voted NO on both options, and I predict that I will not be alone.
An annoying aspect of modern-day democracy is that the average voter is too often presented with crappy choices. (Bush or Gore. Bush or Kerry.) Both the elevated and the so-called “tunnel” options are crappy choices, and voters know this. Very few are ecstatic.
- Transport Travesty in Seattle
- Published: March 12, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Politics
- Writer: Lisa Albers
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In San Francisco the (incomplete) bayfront Embarcadero freeway was cursed by residents for being an eyesore and by travelers for being incomplete and impeding their rapid transit thru the city. The 89 loma prieta quake solved the problem by making it unsafe so the residents tore it down. Now there are beautiful sweeping views across the Embarcadero and light rail transport up and down for residents. Since through traffic is impeded there is less of it. In fact, fewer traffic problems because there are no exits where massive traffic is dumped onto surface streets.
Freeways do not solve traffic problems. They increase their magnitude and create greater crises at entry and exit points.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/60885)
I assume that the OP is relatively new to Seattle.
A bit of possibly useful background: in the 1960s is when Seattle put up the ugly freeway I-5--which meant in the summer of 1963 the tearing down of two of our favorite restaurants--The Captain's Table (where a lunch of quilicene oysters was $1.35 and the waiter went around with a silver-plated lighter lighting our cigarettes) and The Italian Village. That freeway was also incomplete for years. It earned the enmity of most of Seattle's longtime residents.
And it did not solve the problem of gridlock. In 1967-68 when we were living in San Francisco celebrating and burying Hippie as well as going to grad school, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was designed and its implementation started. I mention this subway system because the Bay Area has pretty much the same land-water configuration as the Seattle Area, and therefore the same problems with traffic.
Seattle was still in denial that it was a "real city" in those years--and still smarting from the rejection of the I-5 freeway, so the city's non-planners decided to do nothing about improving the traffic situation.
Within a few years they were forced to do s LITTLE something--which turned out to be the Evergreen Point Bridge (a toll bridge for several years) and a couple of very short bus tunnels downtown.
It was not enough. I was working on a renovation project at the Pike Place Market in the late 70s, and I faced pretty much the same transportation problems from the U District that the OP describes dealing with today.
I stopped working in Seattle, and until we left for Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1984 I worked on the East Side--Bothell and Bellevue. It was faster for me and I didn't have to hassle with parking.
By the time we left Seattle--more than 20 years ago--it was gridlock.
I was just there last month and it still is gridlock much of the time.
None of the options suggested by the non-planners will solve the problem.
That's where denial leads you. If Seattle had designed and implemented a subway system similar to the BART in the late 60s, a lot of blood pressure prescriptions would not have been written.
Now it's too late. It's been too late for more than 30 years. Just one of the reasons why I don't live there.