Posted yesterday evening and moved up.
The eight streets that cross South King Street in downtown must bear an additional 40,000 vehicle trips a day if we build the deep bore tunnel, according to the latest draft of the state’s environmental impacts statement for the project. But officials say that neither the state nor the city have a plan—nor any money set aside—to manage the flood of new traffic that will fall overwhelmingly on just three intersections.
Asked at a briefing last week how the state would manage the increase in traffic on city streets, Ron Paanenen, project manager for the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project at the Washington State Department of Transportation, punted to the city. “The City of Seattle has more power over city streets,” Paananen said. Because the state hasn’t studied the intersection-by-intersection impacts, he says, “It is too early to say any kind of mitigation is required.” Asked if the state had any money to mitigate the traffic there itself, Paanenen said, “No.”
You can see the area at issue—the portion of King Street between 1st Ave and I-5—in the screen grab below from Google Maps where 40,000 additional cars a day crossing it. It’s about 50 percent more traffic running perpendicular to King Street than present volumes. Only three of the intersections are arterials (First, Fourth, and Fifth Avenues); most of the streets are the tiny, slow-moving side streets of Chinatown:
- Google Maps
Street traffic would increase in lots of other places, too, as you can see in this graphic (one of several) from the state study. It compares the traffic we have now with the viaduct to a tunnel with tolls (we can’t afford to build it without the tolls). For instance, traffic across Harrison street near the north tunnel portal increases by about 30,000 vehicle trips per day. But nowhere is the increase in traffic as great as south downtown, where vehicles avoiding the tunnel will exit the highway and attempt to navigate northbound between 1st Avenue and I-5. In addition, there’s more traffic on Alaskan Way, I-5, and city streets east of I-5.
What is the city’s plan—since the state said this is the city’s problem?
Oddly, the chair of the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee, Tom Rasmussen, looks elsewhere for help. “I think we will be working with the State, King County Metro, the Port of Seattle, and any and other entities that have a role in transportation to reduce the amount of traffic on those streets that could be caused by tolling,” he says. He also puts stock in a business group, including the stadiums, to mitigate traffic. Add to their complications, several skyscrapers are planned in the lot north of Qwest Field, further increasing traffic demand at the choke point.
But the state, county, or city are broke. A four-year projection in Mayor Mike McGinn’s budget shows the city’s financial obligations will likely outpace revenues through at least 2014. The county is facing a $1.2 billion shortfall at Metro between now and 2015. And the state is in a similar position. Would voters increase taxes to pick up the tab for transit? Not if this recent anti-tax election serves an indication.
More after the jump.
This highlights a bigger problem with the deep-bore tunnel. Because it has no exits and because tolls will drive off the majority of users, the tunnel unloads about 65,000 to 70,000 cars a day onto city streets and I-5. However, the city and state are prepared to blow their $3.9 billion wad on the tunnel—leaving no money left over to mitigate the shift in downtown traffic patterns.
“We have at least five years to plan for that and I think an important part is getting transit funding,” Rasmussen says. Paananen—who, again, said it was the city’s problem—also echoes the need for transit support by saying, “One of the ways to reduce that traffic diversion is to work with partner agencies… and get trips on transit where it’s feasible.”
“We are spending billions of dollars to make traffic worse and doing nothing for transit service,” says Craig Benjamin, a transit advocate and spokesman for Streets for All Seattle. The problem with the tunnel design, he says, “They are going to do all the expensive things they would have to do for a surface/transit option anyway or this is not going to work.” In other words, the tunnel will make traffic worse, and will leave us broke to actually improve traffic—what the tunnel was supposed to do all along.
The state will officially decide to proceed with the project next summer. The city council, including tunnel-advocate Rasmussen, is expected to approve tunnel contracts this winter.
It absolutely slays me to hear people talk about “protecting freight mobility” (a mallahan and labor meme), when in fact, the tunnel is going to fuck up freight almost as bad as the viaduct falling down.
The other one that fractures me is the labor talking point that it’s good for Labor. Any project is good for labor, sure, there’s jobs. But the tunnel is especially hard on rank and file laborers (and the middle class, too), as the tolling will mean we can’t even afford to use the damn thing.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, as I haven’t lived in Seattle for 10 years, but isn’t the traffic problem going to exist regardless which solution was chosen? Rebuild the viaduct requires it to be removed and rebuilt, pushing that traffic on to the other streets. Make it a surface boulevard – same thing. Tunnel – same thing. The reality is that traffic is going to be screwed. The only solution that doesn’t have an impact on traffic is to do nothing and live in wait/hope.
@2 You’re not wrong. But the point of the article as I read it is that by spending everything they have (and a whole lot more too) on the tunnel, there won’t be anything left over to mitigate the traffic increase through, say, better transit and improving I-5, along with improving the grid. The tunnel will make traffic worse, and we’ll be paying so much for it for so long that we won’t be able to do anything to protect ourselves from it. Fuck.
Let’s ask the question Mayor McGinn has been asking this entire time: who’s going to pay for it and how?
Oh bullshit. Where there is political will there is a way. Republicans have been programming that we can’t get anything done for anything short of way too much for so long the gullible have come to take it as gospel. If a political consensus forms that the viaduct replacement shouldn’t have tolls, then there won’t be tolls. Money is fungible, and we can go get it if we form the political consensus to do so.
I’m hoping to live long enough to see us actually eat the rich, or at least a decent portion of their groceries.
None of this would be such a problem if the upper class would start pulling their share once again, since they haven’t been doing that for about 30 years now.
Build the tunnel. We need the appetite stimulus.
I’m being nit-picky, here, but King St doesn’t connect, commuters wouldn’t be using it. I think you meant to write Jackson St, because that seems to fit your description of the crossing arterials, not South King.
Good article. How many more articles do we need pointing out that the planned tunnel simply doesn’t work? Why isn’t there more outrage at spending so much to get so little?
Truly, I don’t know of anyone except WSDOT who says it will work. A few people who haven’t followed closely HOPE it will work. But anyone who has been following knows it will result in more congestion, less ability to get where we want, no improvement in alternative ways to travel, and more taxes.
Why are we doing this?
#2: No! The surface couplet option included almost $1 billion for transit and widening I-5 and improving city streets. The tunnel plan includes $0 and costs $1 billion more. Plus the surface couplet had about as much capacity as the tunnel, but with no tolls, so more people would use it.
And remember, unlike the I-5/Transit solution (which was the preferred plan by everyone until big lobby/$ got to Christine) the tunnel plan doesn’t widen I-5 OR increase transit. So all of us that can’t afford the tolls and still need to drive will be jammed up in gridlock AND the buses will be jammed, too, so people that could and want to move over to transit won’t be able to. Freight, unfortunately, will have no choice but to slow down.
@6, my guess is that instead of “King Street” he originally wrote “that one street named after King of Pop Michael Jackson” and some editor made the wrong guess what he meant. Maybe something in the broken “this graphic (one of several)” link could clarify.
@6) WSDOT defines the screen at South King Street (the link called “this graphic” should work now, so you can see where they identify the screens). It’s not how many vehicle trips would be taken along South King Street, but how many cross it. Some of the streets don’t go through, but that’s part of the problem–it’s a bottleneck.
That north lot development seems wildly optimistic:
420,000 feet of office space. All on spec.
Tunnel Killers Get High Praise from Voters
New Jersey Voters Back Christie Tunnel Kill, Want New York Help, Poll Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-10…
@11
Oh, yeah, the working link sure helps :-). Still, odd that they would use King St. in the header for streets that connect I-5 & 99, since King doesn’t go all the way through.
Please tell me this is a misquote:
“…the chair of the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee, Tom Rasmussen, looks elsewhere for help. “I think we will be working with the State, King County Metro, the Port of Seattle, and any and other entities that have a role in transportation to reduce the amount of traffic on those streets that could be caused by tolling…”
How in the hell can they be gearing up to spend $2-billion and Seattle’s transport chair says “I think” we’ll be working this out with others. Either you are, or you aren’t. “I think” is a punt, and just another dodgey way to say “no, we have no plan.”
@14, as Dom said (and then repeated for dolts like me), King and Seneca, etc. aren’t meant to depict streets by which people will be trying to get from 99 to I-5. They’re just measuring points for traffic flow along the streets people who get off the viaduct will use to enter downtown. The measure is of arterial crossings of King: Alaskan Way, First to Fourth but no further east, if the graphics WSDOT did of their sample intersection stoplights are anything to go by.
It’s not hard to see that crossings of King east of Fourth, the little streets in the International District where each intersection’s a four-way stop, weren’t monitored simply because those streets don’t lead drivers north through downtown. It’s why nobody takes them for that reason now, nor will.
(Yes, I downloaded the DSEIS finally, dammit, just to see what was going on. I was amused to note that on the page from which “Exhibit 9-11” was pulled, to the left WSDOT itself had written that the traffic increases they found under tolling scenarios so far were unacceptable, so there’d be no tolling until they figured out how to make it right.)
Sorry. I could not care less what happens to you people who roar through downtown every day. You’re the ones who want more and more cars to go through smaller and smaller spaces in shorter and shorter times because all of have so many supposedly important things to do! Tough shit.
You want bigger, better roads? You have to build them. You should have done this 15 or 20 years ago, but not one of you fools listened to the people you sneered at as being “doomsayers.” Now you’re reaping the fruit of the seeds of stupidity you planted.
Good riddance, and don’t ask people who make 12K a year to pay gas taxes for your ego-machine addiction.
You think the viaduct replacement plan(?) stinks, wait til the residents of Sesttle see how the new 520 bridge screws them over. Two new traffic lights will be added to exit and enter; nothing will be done to widen Montlake Blvd southbound (today held upper by traffic lights at stadium, hospital, Shelby and Hamlin than any 520 back up except for prime commute hours) and WSDOT now defines a lid as grass with traffic lanes running through it! Horrors – lots of prime parkland will disappear, too.
Two more BAD ideas going forward for 520 are the half- bridge for foreseeable future. Make 6 lanes to western high-rise, then stop. Feed traffic into four so Medina west bound afternoon jam up will now dot out over Lake Washington for our city people to breathe the fumes. Number 2 bad idea, start construction without funding in this sour economy.
Let’s be crystal.
If you care about:
a. freight mobility;
b. tax burden on citizens;
c. the environment;
d. clogged downtown arterials; or
e. actual views (since the whole area where the tunnel is has a zone of 8-20 story tall buildings already and will be developed to the max …
Then you don’t support the Billionaires’ Deep Due Due Tunnel.
And you support one of the other plans.
Got sidewalks? Not with the tunnel you don’t – it uses up ALL that money.
if 35% diversion from the tunnel is bad, what about 100% diversion from the Surface Disaster the Stranger advocates? Evidence, again, that math education is NOT succeeding in our schools, at least in the case of Dominic Holden
@20 hey, did you hear what happened to the Sheriff’s budget?
You’re next.
“Let’s be crystal”…?
Lunch be lost…
You shouldn’t eat lunch after you do meth, @22.
Will, you’re such a jackass. You really don’t know much about politics, do you?
@24 you set this in motion. Not I. I warned you what would end up happening.
Cities are obsolete.
The more they try to “reurbanize” the worse they make it, and so, people are leaving.
Quickly.
En masse.
Urban night life…with knife wielding vagrants? No…stay in your Quandrant living room and play Kinect with your friends with Team Coco on the browser.
That’s night life!