The failure of last year’s “roads and transit” ballot measure may
have spelled doom for 182 miles of new highway lanes, but it also left
many Seattle projects underfunded, including projects that could help
traffic move smoothly while the Alaskan Way Viaduct is taken down.
Mayor Greg Nickels has proposed a measure that would release $25
million in city funding to pay for bonds on two projects: the new
Spokane Street Viaduct and the conversion of Mercer Street in South
Lake Union into a two-way boulevard. The mayor’s proposal links both
projects together in a single ordinance; passing the ordinance would
mean funding both a popular project (Spokane) and a controversial one
(Mercer) simultaneously.
The Spokane proposal, which would ease congestion for drivers coming
into the city from West Seattle, appears to have unanimous support on
the city council, while the Mercer proposal, which the Seattle
Department of Transportation (SDOT) contends will make it easier for
drivers to access I-5 and improve travel times to nearby neighborhoods,
is far more contentious. SDOT and mayoral staffers say the Mercer
proposal, which would convert Mercer into a two-way boulevard and
reconnect some of the street grid in South Lake Union, will improve
access for cars, bikes, and pedestrians if the city moves forward with
a surface/transit option for replacing the viaduct.
Some surface/transit supporters, including People’s Waterfront
Coalition founder Cary Moon, agree; Moon argues that the Mercer fix is
“really important if we’re not going to have a highway on the
waterfront.” Others, including council staff, are more dubious; at a
meeting of the council’s transportation committee on Tuesday, April 15,
council staffer Dan Eder said that while “there’s no question about the
project’s benefits for urban design and for pedestrian and bike
mobility… there have been some questions about how the project helps
during Alaskan Way Viaduct construction… That question can’t be
definitively and objectively answered at this point.”
The Mercer proposal has been controversial since Nickels first
proposed it in 2002. (“Why spend $100 million on something that doesn’t
work?” Council Member Nick Licata said in 2004 [“Under Fire” Amy
Jenniges, July 8, 2004] at a time when the Mercer proposal cost just
half of the mayor’s latest proposal.) That year, a study solicited by
the city found that the mayor’s proposal would do nothing to improve
traffic in the “Mercer Mess”—in fact, it would increase eastbound
travel times and would decrease overall capacity. At the time, Nickels
pitched the Mercer improvements as part of his grand scheme for a
biotech center in South Lake Union; now, he’s selling it as a necessary
component of any viaduct replacement plan.
Now, as then, some city council members aren’t biting. At Tuesday’s
meeting, staff from the mayor’s office and the department of
transportation presented the mayor’s proposal to a skeptical council
transportation committee. Council members’ main concern was that while
both Spokane and Mercer face funding gaps in the tens of millions of
dollars, Mercer’s shortfall is much larger—between $132 million
and $185 million, depending on whether funding from “external” sources
such as the state and federal governments comes through. (If that
sounds familiar, it is—city funding plans for replacing the
viaduct with a tunnel or another viaduct relied heavily on unsecured
outside funding.) Federal funding has historically averaged about a
third of what the mayor’s proposal anticipates; meanwhile, none of the
$36 million the proposal predicts will come in from the “private
sector” has been secured.
That money would pay, among other things, to buy up properties along
the Mercer corridor—properties the city did not anticipate it
would have to buy, and which helped bloat the project’s price tag from
$137 million to $193 million. Because the proposal would require the
council to appropriate money outside the budget process, it requires a
7–2 vote; at the moment, at least half the council seems
skeptical that linking the projects is a good idea. “It’s an awful lot
of money and it pledges that money for a long time,” Council Member
Richard McIver says. “That’s a big concern for me.” Council Member
Sally Clark echoes McIver’s concerns, adding that “there’s a huge pile
of money that we have to go find from other people. If the worst-case
scenario occurs and we get no money from the federal government or the
state, I don’t want to have a zillion dollars of [council-issued] debt
to pay off… at a huge loss to the taxpayers.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, mayoral staffer Michael Mann argued that,
contrary to what Clark contended, any delay could mean “we need to go
out and reappraise the property we were planning to buy.” That, he
argued, could drive up costs. SDOT director Grace Crunican added,
“Because a lot of our inflation is driven by oil issues and by China
and the costs of construction, I don’t see any break in the future. I
think you should count on it more than doubling in that period of
time—maybe tripling.”
At the moment, the committee appears
inclined to move forward
with funding for Spokane, and yellow-light Mercer until funding can be
locked down—perhaps 6 to 12 months. That would mean Mercer
construction would overlap with viaduct construction. Another option
would be holding off on Mercer construction until the viaduct work is
finished—an option that would push work on Mercer off until 2018
or beyond. The transportation committee will take a vote on the Mercer
and Spokane proposals on May 6. 