Behold, 14 lanes of cement:
- WSDOT
Yesterday, the Seattle Design Commission saw this, um, beautiful watercolor painting—a proposed suburban-scale freeway interchange for the deep-bore tunnel a few blocks from the historic district of Pioneer Square—and sent highway officials back to the drawing board. Katie Zemtseff at the Daily Journal of Commerce has the full report. It’s behind a paywall over here.
The big issue was not just the size, but the overpasses reaching 25-feet that block views facing west. Don Vehige, an urban designer with GGLO, reportedly said, “We can talk about lipstick on the pig all we want but this is a gigantic change that fundamentally alters many of the assumptions that were built into this in the past.” Here’s a pedestrian view:
- WSDOT
“Ron Paananen, administrator of the WSDOT project team, said it would have been nice if commissioners had approved the south portal design yesterday but hearing feedback is part of the design process,” Zemtseff reports.
I’ve obtained the drawings presented by the Washington State Department of Transportation and posted them here (.pdf). If you want hard numbers on the project, my long-winded breakdown on how the deep-bore tunnel will make traffic worse is over here.
There is no truth to the rumor that they intend to build more elevated freeways after they build the Tunnel of Doom.
Even if that’s what they’re planning.
All your traffic congestion is belong to Deep Boric Tunnel.
So where will those other 10 lanes lead?
You need to choose your battles. Have you driven through that neighborhood? It’s all container stacks, warehouses, and muddy parking lots.
@3: And stadiums and a planned multi-thousand unit redevelopment and the southern reaches of Pioneer Square and Pyramid…
In fact, I see they’re planning several 80′-150′ development spaces adjacent to the portals.
They should paint it with litter, broken sidewalks and hookers, you know…like the real seattle.
Could one of these planner boffins explain WHY, exactly, every other city that has a tunnel running through a congested area is able to achieve it without having fourteen lanes. The Battery Street Tunnel in lower Manhattan has two lanes each way, and the approach is two lanes each way (with a surface lane on either side, but the whole point is because there’s something on the surface — Manhattan — whereas here it’s just blank concrete as far as the eye can see.
@2: Most of those other lanes are the on/off ramps into/out off downtown. (The ones Dominic, et al, keep saying don’t exist!)
How many of you folks honestly think that if the tunnel is voted down and a surface street option is built, that the new road wont be toll free?
Beacuse I have a strong feeling that if it is voted down, with millions of dollars wasted, in addition to possible lawsuit by a dozen construction companies, the state may decide to put a toll on the surface street option to pay for the millions wasted up to this point.
Because if there is a toll, then people will simply avoid it like they would avoid paying a toll on the tunnel. Putting far more traffic onto 1st ave and make traffic worse. All those cherry picked WSDOT studies that suggest a surface option would be better for traffic, would be wrong, due to unforseen factors that most people (who cherry pick these studies), normally do not see.
See here: actually TWO major tunnel systems, side by side, that dive right down into the middle of an ultra-dense urban environment without flattening it for half a mile in every direction (why Google labels the Battery Tunnel “South Street Viaduct” here, when that’s only the part that comes out the other end, above-ground, like a, ahem, viaduct, I dunno).
That looks fantastic. Good design.
@5: The real Seattle would also have bicycles. The DBT is designed for Bizarro World Seattle.
@8 the State could impose Tolls on us, but we’ll just put Toll House Cookies in their online data readers and make their Windows XP computers BSOD.
@7, because Seattle traffic engineers can’t imagine doing anything that doesn’t involve a dozen separate dedicated lanes heading off to separate places? That’s one of the things about this city that makes getting around so damn difficult.
And that second picture isn’t even of the tunnel! That’s the view looking at the on-ramp to northbound 99 from the corner of Royal Brougham Way (see page 14 of the PDF) That overpass pictured? The off ramp from 99 onto 1st Ave. at Dearborn!
@5:
“The Surface Option: Bringing all the glamor of Aurora North & Sea-Tac South into the heart of downtown!”
@15 at least you could get downtown. With the Deeply SLOOOOOOOOOOW Tunnel you’d take 8-15 minutes longer and still have no downtown exits, so you’d have to add 20 to 30 minute to your total one-way commute time.
Or at least for the 40 to 50 percent of users of the existing Viaduct.
You know, the people that will get More Congestion for More Cost plus an extra added bonus of not just $8 to $10 roundtrip tolls and zero transit capacity but a probable $10,000 per household PROPERTY TAX INCREASE that would be passed down to not just homeowners but renters.
All this if you Phone Now!
@14, because this is the kind of cutting-edge concretification of our city that they think represents their best work is all more reason to keep these people the hell away from the rest of our city.
Slide 7 is a perfect example of why you should always be weary plans have the word ‘open space’ in them.
Wow, 37% more open space! That’s entirely unusable. In a downtown. But hey, at least there are a ton of tree dots on the plan, right!
@4: Generally the neighborhood around a stadium is not considered prime development space, because it’s a noisy, high-traffic area. In pretty much every city I’ve been to the stadiums are surrounded by seedy neighborhoods and vast parking lots.
@18 we need more water fountains with trees.
Preferably with art sculptures promoting open gaming.
@20: Well, it does make things much more scenic for the homeless people who will inevitably end up sleeping there…
‘The big issue was not just the size, but the overpasses reaching 25-feet that block views facing west.”
God forbid they block the beautiful view of shipping containers and port cranes.
@22, people who actually like living in cities think views of cranes and containers, against a backdrop of hills and Elliott Bay, are pretty damn spectacular, actually. You know, life, activity, movement, work being done, things happening. A CITY. Cranes are gorgeous.
You’d rather look at a 25-foot concrete wall. Maybe you should move to Mercer Island and drive back and forth on I-90 there all day. I’m sure they’ll etch something vaguely Native American into the walls for decoration.
@23 I don’t really disagree with you at all. I like the cranes too. Just seems like a silly argument against a functional overpass because it bocks the view from the back parking lot of Pyramid Brewery. Then again, there are a lot of silly arguments on both side of this issue. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by one more.
@24: It’s pretty simple. Someone owns that back parking lot, and they’re hoping to eventually cash in on the views. Just like the people who own property along Alaskan Way are hoping to cash in on the new views that will be created at taxpayer expense when the viaduct comes down.
That slide 7 is unintentionally hilarious. No one is going to hang out around the “open space” surrounding a massive 14-lane freeway.
This does make it easy to imagine what a “surface option” would look like, though…just extend that all the way up the waterfront, and voila.
A surface option would not have to look like this. The surface option proposed by WSDOT looked like this (or this split in two on Alaskan and Western) because the only thing they know how to do is build highways.
What a surface option should look like is like any other downtown street, except probably with fewer lanes (and parking on both sides). There’s no reason to have Alaskan Way be a huge multi-lane highway. It doesn’t even connect all the way along the waterfront–it terminates at Broad St. It should be for people going to and from the waterfront (including people coming on and off ferries and other boats). Through traffic should be directed to other N-S streets. Alaskan Way should have businesses and residences on the non-water side, parking on both sides, and be no more than 3-4 lanes total. The goal should be to retain current uses while turning it into a neighborhood where actual people live and actual locals will go when they’re not hosting tourists. You’ve got all that wasted land under the viaduct. Use it for more buildings! There’s not a lot of space there once you put in broad sidewalks and street parking but there’s enough for a narrow row of development.
Why does our tunnel need this massive 747-grade runway that belongs in Sea-Tac Airport, when all the tunnels in New York City can get by with a ramp and a downward slope in a wall, essentially?
@29 because wer’e Seattle! The laws of physics are different here!
@30 seriously — if by chance in the end we’re stuck with the tunnel, why do we possibly need such a massive array of lanes to get into it? SR99 works perfectly fine today with the footprint it has in SODO.
@23: THESE ARE NOT THE ONRAMPS OF MY PEOPLE.
@29: My guess is they’re trying to avoid the traffic bottlenecks caused by weaving traffic by giving traffic that’s exiting separate lanes from traffic that’s going into the tunnel. These are exactly the sort of backups that currently plague I-5 under the convention center, and the interchange at the 1st Ave. S Bridge. New York City’s freeway system was designed a long time ago when those things weren’t generally given much thought.
I’m not sure New York is the model we want to follow when it comes to traffic management…
Repair the viaduct.
@25 for the insightful Follow The Money To The Deeply Borrowed Tunnel win.
@28 “What a surface option should look like is like any other downtown street, except probably with fewer lanes (and parking on both sides). There’s no reason to have Alaskan Way be a huge multi-lane highway. It doesn’t even connect all the way along the waterfront–it terminates at Broad St. It should be for people going to and from the waterfront (including people coming on and off ferries and other boats). Through traffic should be directed to other N-S streets. Alaskan Way should have businesses and residences on the non-water side, parking on both sides, and be no more than 3-4 lanes total. The goal should be to retain current uses while turning it into a neighborhood where actual people live and actual locals will go when they’re not hosting tourists. You’ve got all that wasted land under the viaduct. Use it for more buildings! There’s not a lot of space there once you put in broad sidewalks and street parking but there’s enough for a narrow row of development. “
Um. No.
A functional Surface Plus Transit looks more like a wide boulevard without on-street parking dwell space, with the outer lanes used for transit and freight and turn-lane widenings every 4 to 5 blocks that are only triggered by transit or freight with transponder signals or a five car delay or a five minute wait. The purpose is to move vehicles and freight thru, optimized for capacity, not for convenience (in other words, cabs and SOVs get the short end of the stick, since they move the least).
The neighborhood can go fuck themselves. If they want a free neighborhood-friendly boulevard, they can pony up the cash for it FIRST.
@33: “I’m not sure New York is the model we want to follow when it comes to traffic management… ”
Maybe you don’t. But at this point I’d love to. Screw building more road capacity. The one thing we know for sure about building more capacity is that it will get used. It’s time to think about diminishing road capacity. Make it a pain in the ass to drive from Ballard to downtown and put in sufficient transit so that it’s far easier and cheaper.
@37: So, perpetually bad traffic and buses that are slower than walking are what you aspire to?
Well, it’s an intriquing viewpoint, gnossos.
Are you basing this on a slowdown in downtown residential growth, or expecting that to have a heavier bike/ped proportion, even with population density increases?
@ kinison, #8:
so, what YOU are saying is that we can achieve exactly what the tunnel will do (anemic capacity, TOLL, traffic jam pagnet) if we build a surface street.
Basically, if you are right, we can achieve the same worthless undersized overpriced thruway if we only spend 100 million bucks on surface street, instead of, how much is that tunnel? 3, 4 billion bucks when the tunnel’s all said and done?
Oh, and there are these unique tunnel problems you are (deliberately or you are a moron) not mentioning, so there’s no way surface and tunnel can ever be the same, and no way I will be caught in it:
The tunnel is: underground, right next to Puget Sound, no on/off ramps through downtown so essentially useless to Seattle city proper, and dug through land-filled soil.
What a moronic design. It’ll be like paying $4 to see if you live through it each time you go. For thrill seekers only.
@23 – I love cranes, containers, highway ramps and overpasses equally. They are all part of life in a city.
Give it up Dominic, you are getting obsessed.
My prediction: Whatever ends up getting built will end up sucking horribly at first and eventually become a totally beloved part of the city.