"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."
