We’ve needed to do this for ages, people. We must build the freeway because traffic pressure is growing on I-5, and congestion will simply get worse, so we need this north-south road capacity in Seattle. Plus, we already have the gas taxes set aside for this project, so those silly activists need to stop with their facts and technicalities and protests that cause delay. Delay will cost us money. It’s been ten years already, people.
These were the arguments for the R.H. Thomson expressway—a freeway through the arboretum and the Central District that was supposedly necessary for mobility—that appeared in the Seattle Times in 1967. It was dug up by Michael van Baker at the SunBreak.
These are the exact same arguments that the Seattle Times is using today to argue that voters must vote to approve the deep-bore tunnel freeway. Of course, voters rejected the R.H. Thomson expressway. Thank god.
The two are not even remotely similar.
Hey, these morons still think the off-ramp that was the Embarcadero is the same as 99….
Of course, as a yopung whipper-snapper you of course won’t remember it, but in 1967 there were also tolls on BOTH floating bridges too.
And so (using Stranger logic) of course no one ever drove across those floating bridges — they all diverted and went around to avoid the tolls — and the bridges never go paid for and so we still have tols on them to this very day!
Oh, wait… NONE of that happened!
The tolls paid the bill and disappeared 30 some years ago, leaving us to drive those routes un-tolled for so very, very long that the morons & newcomers can no longer even conceive of the possibility that a toll for 10 years could pay for a project that will last 50.
(Fuckin n00bs — still doin it wrong!)
Except it’s not a new freeway. It’s a replacement of a freeway, not with a new freeway but with a tunnel. An underground tunnel instead of an elevated freeway. And you’re comparing this with a new freeway through the Arboretum? Uh, ok.
I would argue that we did indeed need something akin to the RH Thompson, and still do. Most emergency planners (people I take seriously) agree Seattle will be in a pretty bad way if there is ever a need to evacuate even a portion of the city. The West Coast fascination with light infrastructure is baffling to me.
The R. H. Thomson Expressway and the deep-bore tunnel were/are both transportation mega-projects that were railroaded through by the state government despite significant opposition from Seattle citizens. The vote in 1972 stopped the expressway; hopefully the vote this month will stop the tunnel.
I guess the traffic I encounter daily on my way into Seattle is all in my head.
@7: Keep in mind that, to Seattlites, the fact that you drive a car means you must be punished. The bad traffic is your punishment. It’s like how Republicans oppose birth control because they believe pregnancy should be the punishment for fooling around.
If the surface/transit option had been chosen, Seattle would be suing against the expansion of I-5.
At risk of not being a knee jerk reactionary (see comments above), this article illustrates how the Times’ scare mongering has persisted over the years. There are legitimate reasons why this tunnel is unnecessary and wasteful. But rather than acknowledging these the Times editorial board once again raises the tired bogey man of gridlock. The State’s own environmental study shows the tunnel will produce more gridlock than it resolves.
Don’t vote from a place of fear, vote for the future that we want to create.
@5: give me the scenario in which we need to evacuate the city. nuclear war? earthquake? you can’t run from those.
@11: A toxic chemical spill from a major tank car accident on the BNSF mainline comes to mind as a possibility, although you probably wouldn’t evacuate the *entire* city for that.
Disasters of any kind are a good argument for everyone owning a car. One of the lessons of Katrina is if you rely exclusively on public transit, you’re going to be stranded when the shit hits the fan.
Hahahaha! The article bemoans the “tactic of interminable legal objections in the courts”, which had been masterminded by the wonderful lawyer Al Schweppe. Al’s work was credited with giving organizers enough time to stir Seattle citizens to remove the funding for the project (remember, the Thomson was a Seattle-funded project all the way).
Dept. of Rich Irony Dept.: Schweppe was furious at the notion that there would be a surface highway like this – he thought it would have been a great idea if it had only been a tunnel.
Do you need me to repeat that for ya? Ah well, read it yourself, here in this PDF of Margaret Connon Johnson’s wonderful 1979 study, page 58:
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED205438.pdf
I hope more people will take the chance now to savor and absorb all the lessons in that study. Anti-tunnelistas may learn why they’ve had trouble mustering public opposition on the level activists (like Jean Godden, you’ll note!) did against the Thomson. For example, the Thomson was a city-planned, Seattle-funded brand new surface highway that would have destroyed existing residential neighborhoods. Replacement of our own business district’s waterfront surface viaduct with a lower-capacity tunnel literally won’t be doing harm on the level the Thomson would have: a) residential displacement is a tiny fraction of what the Thomson would have taken; b) it’s not the City that’s paying for it this time, so anti-tunnel people’s exclusive focus on City voters means there’s no power of the purse attached to any result; the tunnel at least puts some cars underground where they belong and opens up a lovely waterfront district for commerce and recreation and habitat restoration.
Just an idea. I could be wrong. I’ve been known to make mistakes, and not only in bed.
@10
How does diverting 60,000 cars off the streets not help traffic? How do they just disappear if the tunnel is not built?
WSDOT’s report shows the majority of traffic will use the tunnel even at the proposed tolls.
I think the point of the post is that the rhetoric hasn’t changed regarding these big road projects, not that the Thomson freeway and the viaduct are the same per se. Although, the Thomson Expressway had a proposed tunnel crossing underneath Lake Union from Montlake to Laurelhurst, not to mention it would have demolished at least 600 homes (under the initial one-block footprint plan), and would have run from 95th NE to McClellan. It was a pretty insane idea, and an unnecessary parallel freeway to I-5, which in 1967 was only 2 years old. They were saying a lot of things about congestion that weren’t fully tested and did not pan out (partially because Seattle experienced a severe local recession and population drop). I think considering the length of the viaduct tunnel, the expected volume of traffic, and the cost of the thing, the viaduct tunnel is about as crazy to me as the Thomson Expressway.
But maybe I’m wrong. feel free to troll the shit out of me.
@6 – actually I think the Thomas Expressway lake crossing was a proposed submerged tunnel akin to the projected 520 replacement options being talked about. It would have been anchored to the bottom of Lake Washington.
@6 – oops, read your post wrong. I wish there was a delete option on these comments.
Will we get abandoned tunnel on-ramps that we can use to jump into Elliott Bay out of all this? That would be cool.
@3 as primary corridors, there wasn’t much to divert to. Diversion happens when a corridor is surrounded by free options. The lake constrains that.
Meanwhile, diversion is expected to come to 520 by people going to I-90.
“shows the tunnel will produce more gridlock than it resolves.”
Anyone else notice how bus and bike loons argue that traffic will simply adjust if we remove the Viadut capacity, but if the tunnel doesn’t have enough capacity, it’s carmageddon?
@11- Yes, the @12 scenario would be a good example. You’re also assuming that during seismic activity the main threat is from initial ground movement, I think Japan’s recent disaster illustrates pretty well that that is not the case. I have survived a number of large scale disasters, and 3 military-ordered evacuations in my life, each one has strained much more robust infrastructures.
There is no way to prepare for everything, at least not w/o becoming a survivalist nutcase, but cities do owe it to their populations to consider ‘100-500 year’ disasters of the sorts they are likely to face, and build accordingly
Why haven’t those abandoned RH Thompson on/off ramps been turned into a park like the High Line in NYC?
Tolls won’t pay for the tunnel. Not even close.
They’ll pay for a piece of it…maybe. Toll defaults are not unheard of, particularly when there’s a free alternative route available.
Same arguments.
Same end result.
Seattle will defeat this ill-planned disaster.
Even if it takes us five votes – and since we still have the federal EPA and federal protected species and the required 2 funding votes since this will go over the budget/funding cap, it’s not going away any time soon, unless someone comes to their senses and kills the Deeply Bolluxed Tunnel.
@11 you are correct.
During five of the ten most likely critical disasters in Seattle, being trapped in an underwater tunnel when the power grid dies and the fans are clogged is paramount to a virtual death sentence, especially since current plans are to close the Seven Gates of Hades on the Tunnel and seal you in.
(no, I’m not making that one up, read the County/State/Regional disaster plans and the SR-99 FEIS appendices)
Moving east-west through Seattle (e.g. Madison Park to Ballard) sucks rocks. By not having east-west expressways, we have preserved “character” in a few areas (e.g. arboretum and Wallingford), at the expense many man-years of wasted time. I’d like to reduce the impact of such expressways using greenwalls, cut & cover construction, etc., but I sure as hell wish we had them.
@12
Off topic, but you’ve got to be kidding about personal automobiles being the best choice for city-wide evacuation. Imagine for a few moments what would happen if every car in the city of Seattle tried to leave at the same time.
Then imagine me on my bike, riding through twenty miles of gridlock with ease.
Wow. The pro-tunnelers must have a team scouring the blogs, to jump quickly on anything questioning their project.
I moved here in June of 1968 and the 4-lane I-90 floating bridge was toll-free, and I believe had been for a number of years. There was a toll of 35 cents on the 520 bridge that was removed in 1979.
The R.H. Thomson (no P in Thomson) Expressway ran from the south city limits to about 95th where it connected with Lake City Way. South connection was with I-5 exactly where MLK peals off northbound into the city. It would have demolished thousands of homes and businesses in a two-block wide swath from one end of the city nearly to the other, much as I-5 did a decade earlier. Amazing to hear someone today claim that it should’ve been built anyway.
I have no qualms about supporting expensive infrastructure when I can see the benefits of same. But when I look at the numbers on the waterfront tunnel, from the EIS, all I see is very little benefit for a whole lot of money.
Tunnel supporters: Show us the data from the EIS that supports your claims of gridlock. Please, show us the numbers that equate to gridlock.
@28: they don’t have any such numbers. Just feel good “look what I built!!” rhetoric.
@25
I don’t seem to remember any flooding or collapse of the bus tunnel or the train tunnel during the last earthquake.
Where exactly in the FEIS does it say the tunnel is a deathtrap?
Read the whole thing.
“that supports your claims of gridlock.”
But I thought the main point of bus and bike loons was that gridlock magically cures itself? You know, people ‘find another way’?
If we have the tunnel the economy and traffic will continue to move, and, accepting your theories, there will be no gridlock caused by tolls, because when you reduce capacity, people simply ‘adjust’!
@31
Like this part?
“Tunnels are built to be safe during natural disasters
Earthquakes
Geotechnical and structural engineers agree that tunnels can be designed as one of the safest places to be during an earthquake.
The proposed SR 99 bored tunnel is being designed to withstand an earthquake that only happens every 2,500 years on average (in the range of a 9.0 on the Richter scale) without collapsing.
Rising sea levels and tsunamis
The Seattle Department of Transportation is designing the Elliott Bay seawall replacement to protect waterfront facilities, such as the bored tunnel, against sea level rise and moderate storm surges.
In the event of a tsunami, it is highly unlikely that a wave would overtop the seawall and reach the tunnel. WSDOT and the City of Seattle found this could only happen during a very high tide – an event estimated to occur only once every 6,000 to 24,000 years. Washington’s early warning system would allow us to restrict traffic from entering the bored tunnel during a tsunami. If necessary, drains and pump systems would help to quickly remove any water from the tunnel.”
You assume power and ventilation continue to function in a twin disaster likely that creates both quakes and a tsunami.
Ask Japan how that worked.
It didn’t.
PluS, we literally don’t have the manpower to rescue you if you’re in the Tunnel – for at least 15 days.
@27-has just discovered the difference between being a survivalist and a civic planner. It speaks to a false choice of ‘Me or Us.’
@35
Just admit it you can’t provide any reference in the FEIS about disaster concerns.
I understand the desire for the tunnel opponents to toss any and all arguments against the tunnel to make their point, but declaring the tunnel unsafe in a earthquake is moronic.
Both Kobe and San Francisco earthquakes have shown tunnels fair very well in earthquakes.
@35, give up on Will, is my advice. When it comes to disaster concerns Will bears no relation to reality whatsoever. I remember he used to fantasize constantly about Mount Rainier erupting and somehow *instantly* burying the tunnel. Gems like this:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
Sorry, meant @37.
@35 15 days? did you just pull that number out of your ass?
@40, pretty much anything Will ever says is just straight of his ass. He is best ignored.
This post makes as much sense as the earlier one comparing the Ballard Bridge to the tunnel.
@34, San Francisco’s deeply bored BART tunnel seems to function just fine in the earthquake prone San Francisco Bay.
@42: The Transbay Tube is, indeed, quite possibly the safest place to be during an earthquake.
But it wasn’t bored. It was built in pieces on land and then submerged…and designed to move during a quake.
blah, blah. The tunnel is nearly sure to be built, and yeah it’s a disaster– but not a disaster that will kill you, for fucks sake. You guys are frickin’ drama queens (Yo, Will: there’s emergency exits. You can walk out. Shut up.). As for the historical opinion piece, nice find Dom.
Yeah, I’m with 27 on the idea that a car is the best way to get out in a disaster situation. In a minor disaster (subway crash) impacting the ability of just a portion of regular commuters to get home (one part of one of 5 lines, with all other lines and buses still running and shuttle service available), it took me 45 minutes to drive a friend who lived in the area beyond the crash home. It’s a 15-minute drive on any normal day, and I didn’t even attempt to drive him home until 5 hours after the crash, and 3 hours after any traces of rush hour are usually gone. Cities should PLAN for large disasters, but the idea of building capacity to get everyone out in their own car is insane. Better to have a plan to commandeer public and group transit modes to remove people (how many city/local buses, trains, private buses, etc., are generally available and what is the manpower needed to deploy them? Could a “slugging” system be established where random carpools are formed to remove people?), bring in nearby resources (other localities’ buses, trains, etc., if possible), and establish logical systems for making this happen (for example, driving the other city’s buses into the city would probably not be a good idea as having every available lane turned outbound would probably be the fastest removal situation, so they might be best deployed moving those who arrive at a way-point by train even further from the mess…here in DC that would mean assembling the buses at the ends of the subway lines to move people from that point, to give a real-world idea). Individual cars seem to work in a city where lots people don’t have them and the disaster at hand gives lots of notice (i.e., Katrina), but would be far too slow for things like a chemical disaster which require rapid evacuation, or even a tsunami which may have limited warning.