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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Is this a trick? :)
P.S. I'm AGAINST a tunnel (I'm from Boston, I always think of the Big Dig there when I hear tunnel... shudder)
Good one, Scott!
Fast bus service? Only exists at rush hour times in the morning and evening. All other times you are taking a long ass bus ride through White Center to get there.
And what happens to that current "fast bus service" from Burien to town once the viaduct is down? Currently the two primary routed to and from Burien take 99 and exit at Seneca to downtown. With the tunnel, where exactly do those buses go?
#1:In reality the Tunnel preserves needed cross town capacity including freight that needs get to/from the Port or other locales.
Rebut: The article Dom wrote this week shows how the majority of traffic on the viaduct doesn't bypass Seattle, it feed into Downtown. We have I-5 for a Seattle throughfare and the Surface/Transit option would widen I-5 while the Tunnel option has no money for I-5 improvements.
#2The newly opened waterfront could potentially be an excellent corridor for light rail with a fully built street car network carrying people to other points from there.
Rebut: This is a great point, one many Surface/Transit advocates are promoting. We don't need to build a costly tunnel to get this done. In fact, building the unnecessary tunnel takes money away from what could be a great opportunity to spend lots to build an integrated transit network to places like Ballard and West Seattle.
#3: And we should be fighting for a two lane, not four lane, road down the waterfront to provide space for bike, train, or pedestrian use.
Rebut: Have you seen the SF Embarcadero? It's four lanes of traffic, plus two transit, plus parking in some areas, and wide blvds. It's functionality is great.
You NEED your car right? You have kids and a job therefore you MUST have one. For emergencies, beer runs, and such.
Only you don't and all this imaginary money could be used to enhance mass transit to function better.
Really? That's your argument? That the tunnel will make traffic so bad that the state (which has a $5.1 billion deficit) will give MORE money to fix the mess it created because we cooperated with the tunnel?
Or, you know, we could skip that step.
To say there will be no cost over runs is a lie. And then to say if there are over runs, we'll won't pay them. And if they are cost over runs, then we won't be paying more than other residents. Yeah, either way you're still paying for cost over runs.
Also, no discussion of the toll.
The second argument is more honest.
This is the main reason I support the tunnel. I don't see any way the surface option can happen. Very little public support and very little political support. So that leaves a rebuild, which is horrible. So until somebody tells me how exactly the surface option is going to happen after we stop the tunnel, I will continue to support the tunnel. I don't want a rebuild, and I do not want another 10 years of this arguing and craziness. So convine me. Dominic? Cary Moon? Hello???
Tunnel plus locally funded transit is the best choice.
This is probably a stupid, stupid question, but what is the "surface option"? Does that mean repairing/rebuilding the viaduct, or does it mean demolishing it and replacing it with a road that isn't all stop-and-go like the rest of downtown? (Or something else?)
Let me back up half a step. Seattle is situated between largish bodies of water and therefore defines an important north-south corridor and SR 99 is currently one of two limited access freeways serving this corridor. Seattle's waterfront includes a shipping terminal. Speeding and slowing vehicles is where a lot of the cost is generated.
Personally, I think that this whole discussion has been two Seattlecentric for a state transportation issue and favor a rebuild viaduct with open air markets, beer gardens, parade viewing stands and parks nestled underneath it's rain deflection.
Anyway, it seems that there are several big tunnel issues, two of which are locating the damn thing next to the crumbling seawall and there never having been a deep-bore tunnel this large. With the notable and looming exception of the ferry terminal, most of the piers are basically free-standing and serve foot-traffic. It seems to me that a seawall replacement combined with a cut-and-cover tunnel done in sections with some temporary pedestrian bridging would limit this over a large stretch of the road.
I'll also add that I am not against tolls, increased vehicle licensing and fuel taxes. I am strongly in favor of improving public transportation. All of which are much better ways of promoting beneficial behaviors than simply screwing up our roads.
Never mind that less than 25% of the city supports the S/T option, the people who make the actual decisions have said we get a reduced capacity tunnel or an increased capacity rebuild.
I'm all for reduced capacity.
I know there are people who want that on purely ideological grounds, and the mayor may be one of them. But I have to think that the people putting relatively large sums of money into either side of this issue view that money as an investment in their economic interests. Moneyed interests are not a monolith. They have disagreements too.
Is there anyone besides real estate interests, the port, and the building trade unions who have a strong dollars and cents interest in the tunnel?
Who benefits from a viaduct rebuild besides trade unions?
What about the surface option? Who benefits economically from that?
With the monorail fight, it was easier for me to see why certain forces did not want a competing train along the western edge of Seattle. You build trains so you can develop real estate along the route. If you're hoping to gentrify the south end of Seattle, you don't want another train going through neighborhoods that are going to be desirable to the very people you're hoping to lure to the south end. That makes sense to me. Two trains right now could potentially mean too much supply chasing not enough demand.
The tunnel, I'm a little more confused about. In economic terms, who fears they might be an economic loser if a particular option is chosen?
Why is the governor and the state so hardcore on the tunnel?
I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that it comes down to some high-minded ideal about the soul of Seattle's future, or a lack of vision. Why aren't we getting more reporting on these kinds of nuts and bolts.
Also, given the cost of viaduct replacement, if they rebuild it, won't that be tolled too?
Scott and michaelp are trying to pretend that political forces don't react to the Voters and the will of the Citizens, but must be obeyed since we are all Serfs and they are our Masters.
Which isn't true, of course, unless you let them convince you that when we Kill Roads & Transit there will never be Transit funding for light rail ever again ...
Oh. Wait. There was. Which means we do have a CHOICE.
And we - the citizens - are in Control.
So the bus tunnel was closed for like 2 years. People predicted downtown would be an even bigger clusterfuck than it usually is, but guess what, traffic improved. 3rd Ave was closed to traffic during rush hour, people made adjustments to their schedules(carpooling, driving during non-peak times, taking transit) to accommodate the change, and 3rd Ave has now permanently been made a transit only corridor during rush hour. There was prep work. The regional authorities spent months working on traffic mitigation and signage and all kinds of studies to make sure the disruption was as small as possible.
Give people time (say, don't we have about a year before the Gov. said the Viaduct was coming down no matter what?), study the mitigation options (isn't that what SDOT, WSDOT, and Metro are for?), and make a solid plan.
The question I have for all the "let's build a tunnel cause the Gov. said we have to people" is, why aren't you questioning the research? I'm not saying come down on the anti-tunnel side, but if you look at the traffic, environmental, and financial aspects, the tunnel looks like a boondoggle waiting to happen. Why do we realistic folks have to keep beating the same points over and over while the pie in the sky "no cost over runs, wide open downtown streets cause of the tunnel" people get a pass?
Also, does the entire anti-tunnel thing not carry a whiff of the "Seattle Way," i.e. this town's ongoing commitment to complete buy-in from all parties involved, which continually stymies project after project? Isn't there an argument for just moving forward on something for once, now that we're this far along? After all, while we suspect there will be overruns, we don't KNOW that as stone-cold fact, nor do we know how serious they might be. Who knows? Maybe it'll work out. And I have to say, I'm excited about the prospect of a big, ole waterfront park downtown.
Lastly, while I agree that the tunnel doesn't make sense because a lot of people use the viaduct to get INTO downtown, not around it, isn't there some way for the tunnel to provide an exit or two into downtown? Do we need to ditch the whole project just because of this, or is it just a matter of tweaking?
I'm sure I'm wrong...just playing devil's advocate here. Still, I wonder now if I should've written one of these rebuttals (or is that what I just did?)...
Most of the local transit impacts were replaced by the Seattle "Bridging the Gap" replacements.
The biggest drawbacks to the tunnel don't have anything to do with the tunnel portion of the project itself, but everything else that needs to happen.If you think Pioneer Square should be converted into a freeway onramp, then yes, the tunnel might be just your ticket.
And as I pointed out to you yesterday, R&T lost mainly due to an anti-tax vote with McGinn ans his fellow liars playing the role of Nader.
On the larger issue, I think it's unfortunate that the surface and transit elements have been combined and separated from the rebuild/tunnel elements so that we don't think about surface and transit as an essential part of ANY solution, including a tunnel or rebuild.
A rebuild without more transit just induces more traffic and leaves us a generation down the road with another expensive, congested highway and no way to deal with the extra trips we'll have in the corridor. A tunnel without more transit will be gridlocked, and the surface streets without transit will be gridlocked (both with or without a tunnel.) The city should focus on transit and surface improvements regardless of whether there's a tunnel, rebuild, or entirely surface option.
Even the configuration of Alaskan Way doesn't depend upon a tunnel. It should be at most a four-lane road (as it is now), preferably with street parking (though that can't happen if there's a rebuild.) There are arguments for an even narrower frontage road but we'll be lucky to keep it at four lanes so that's unrealistic (plus we do have to accommodate ferry loading and unloading). The linear park/open space vs. development vs. retaining the current state as a side road with parking is a separate issue from fixing surface streets and transit.
If everyone agreed transit and surface improvements are needed regardless of tunnel, rebuild, or no build options for the 99 freeway, we could START with those elements and get to the controversial replacement option later. The first thing we need is BAT lanes and BRT. We should also consider surface light rail and/or streetcars. We need to connect the east-west grid across Aurora. We need to provide ways for freight and passenger travel to use surface streets as an alternative regardless of how we replace the viaduct. I'd even argue that we should do a transit tunnel for Link light rail before we settle on a replacement for the freeway (or not). Do transit and surface first, THEN worry about the completely separate freeway question.
How? Please explain. This is the biggest tunnel ever made, how would semi trucks be banned from its use? Its going to be built using steel re-enforced concrete along the walls, which as you know, is good enough to errect 80 story buildings, but somehow its not good enough for semi trucks or heavy machines?
The reason I'm so incensed by the tunnel project is the lack of planning the supporters are going off of. The EIS isn't done, which state law requires be completed before agreements are made, yet agreements are being made left and right.
The pro-tunnel people keep telling us we're too far gone in planning, but that's just not the case. We are as far along in the studies for all the options as we've ever been, but for some reason the Gov. wants to stymie the EIS to only look at one option. How is that good policy?
*no snow, no sports events, no riots, no presidential visits etc.
What I wonder is if freight volume is the most important measure. From a quality of life point of view, I would prefer to have fewer trucks downtown (preferably, only those delivering/picking up downtown).
But yeah, it does sound like the "tunnel for freight" argument is dubious.
That will occur no matter what option you go with. Tear down the viaduct, built a 4 lane road, if that makes traffic worse, then the state will have to spend more money to fix the problem. If the tunnel is not an option, then you still face an expesive re-build of an elevated highway. All the money used to build the surface option might go to waste as its much cheaper to trash the existing street option in order to have room to build the elevated option. If you want to keep the surface street and build an elevated platform ontop of it, then its going to cost more to build around that street without destroying it.
Tearing down the existing Viaduct does not preclude the State from building any of the following:
a. Surface plus Transit
b. Rebuilt Viaduct
or even c. Covered Tunnel (currently option 2 in the DEIS, option 1 being the DBT)
In fact, tearing down the existing Viaduct is a necessary step in a, b, AND c.
The Tunnel is going to be a boondoggle from every metric. We have civic examples of tunnels being bad in Boston, and tearing down waterfront freeways being good in San Francisco. This isn't ground breaking territory, and building the tunnel is going to waste a lot of our resources in a time of scarcity.
Anyone with that much free time should instantly be suspect.
Dig baby dig!
The city's responsibility should be to institute those elements. The freeway elements are the state's responsibility and it should pay for the whole damn thing (which amounts to 25% Seattle funding anyway because city residents pay state taxes.) Just don't go forward with that state freeway until we have clear evidence that it's needed. Which we don't have until we put surface and transit improvements in place and demolish the current unsafe freeway.
We should put surface and transit improvements on the ballot, not as a freeway alternative but as something that needs doing regardless. Something of value by itself. Transit is not an alternative to a freeway. It is something that helps the city and this corridor whether we have a new freeway or not. If people vote it down as a standalone measure, then all the tunnelites blathering about how people don't want more transit and surface improvements might finally have a point.
http://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/ne…
Nobody? Seems kind of important but oh well.
Okay, I'm going to step back and give my support to what should be referred to now as the "Realistic Option". Cascadian is right in that every single option needs to have the viaduct torn down, improvements need to be made to the surface grid and I-5 regardless of option. So all those people who are on the fence as regards the tunnel can get behind the city putting their weight behind the tearing the Viaduct down, doing these improvements, and seeing what kind of tunnel or rebuild needs to happen, right?
Fixed that for you.
And hey, this referendum will be a great way for those same political leaders to win big. If it gets on the ballot and loses, well they can say how much Seattle supports it and run full steam ahead. If the referendum wins and those same political leaders keep ignoring the anti-tunnel folks, well, an election is coming up and quite a few are being challenged because of this very issue.
In a poll one year ago, the surface option got 21% support: If you combine the two freeway options, they got 71% support. It is to your advantage that the freeway support is split between tunnel and rebuild.
http://publicola.com/2010/03/29/publique…
Tear down the existing Viaduct.
And let the DEIS finish with the best option that the Citizens Vote For.
But either option is far superior to an insane overly expensive lower capacity massively inefficient DBT option.
@65 i think he said that was this year. Last time I checked it was still March, not November.
Personally, I think whatever is built should have Naming Rights for each Exit sold to the highest bidder. Because even the cheapest option is still damned expensive.
I don't want a new freeway build anywhere in the US until we have high speed rail crisscrossing the country. I'm not cool with a rebuild and think it's a horrible legacy to the freeway culture of the 50's.
But I'm asking you as a tunnel supporter why the rebuild is a bad thing.
No, everything at both ends would have to be torn down, probably including part of the Market and half of Pioneer Square, and the whole structure would have to be twice as wide as it is now. One of the charms of the current viaduct is the way it doesn't really impede the foot journey to the waterfront. That would all go away.
2) The Seattle rush hours are a joke compared to any major American city. 90 minutes when cars have to go 10mph below the speed limit and stop at lights in the downtown grid. Boo hoo! Adjust your schedule 30 minutes and you'll miss them.
And then instituting a $5000 confiscation fine for anyone illegally using handicapped parking permits who did not have a handicapped person in the vehicle.
That would have several impacts:
1. force lazy suburbanites to take transit;
2. increase city revenue to cover the overage from the insane DBT supporters sticking it to us;
3. give SPD a good reason to shoot car drivers for driving and parking illegally; and
4. make it obvious the entire DBT was an excuse for rich people to get their limos from SLU and Seattle Center down to their private jets at Boeing Field.
Tear the thing down in 2012 like our Gov. promised us, then reassess.
The Tunnel represents the limited scope thinking of all urbist ideologues.
Error upon error is compounded with the single idea of cramming as much stuff into the 1 square mile of the Seattle Pennisula.
Anyone looking at Google Earth on Western Washington, heck all of Washington State, will see that the Seattle Peninsula is singularly the worst place to build any kind of density.
And because it is a peninsula, all access is restricted, cumbersome and expensive.
If you want to do something great, start using the other 66,582 square miles of Washington.
Put a new convention center in Issaquah.
Put an NBA stadium in Bellevue.
Heck...put it in Yakima and build a 300 mph maglev to get us there.
Just stop cramming every single person, car, train and boat into the Seattle Peninsula.
Everybody else didn't drink the koolaid.
But ... in the end, killing it resulted in Lots of Transit and No Roads.
Seattle is an isthmus: a relatively narrow strip of land squeezed between two bodies of water (in our case, Lake Washington and Puget Sound) that connects two larger land masses. Although even this is a somewhat tortured usage of the term IMHO.
Identifying an isthmus got me to the state level of the Geography Bee in middle school. Learn it, love it, bitches. Isthmus.
In my response at 77 I never advocated for any option except taking the Viaduct down ASAP. So why aren't you for that option? You say you aren't really for the tunnel except that the Gov. says this is what we're getting so shut up and take it. Do you think the Viaduct needs to be left up for the next 4-6 (to8-10 depending on the boring machine and state of soil) years while the tunnel is built?
What do you have against redoing the surface streets/adding transit/improving I-5 before we sink billions of dollars into the tunnel?
Why does the tunnel have to be rushed like this?
And now, I will continue to ignore you, like everyone else.
The study also noted “If Viaduct capacity were reduced, or trips diverted downtown, future decision-makers would have little flexibility for the surface street system to accommodate transit needs in the future, because the Downtown grid can accommodate about 20-30% of Alaskan Way Viaduct traffic during peak periods; once you get to 40-50%, you start breaching the capacities of the streets.”
So the tunnel is really a surface/transit/tunnel option.
The Deeply Bent Tunnel does in fact provide access to Downtown.
You just have to take AN EXTRA 8-20 MINUTES TO GET THERE AND HOPE MSFT IS NOT HOLDING A SHAREHOLDERS MEETING LIKE TODAY.
Or hope it's not a game day. Or no LPG fueled cars set on fire in the DBT. Or it didn't rain.
You know, perfect weather - but not too sunny cause that will make you even slower too.
Before the Ship Canal was completed 95 years ago, you could call the whole city an isthmus. Not now. And it matters for more than just pedantry, because this geography affects how the city has been developed and how we connect all the different parts that are separated by bodies of water. It's exactly why we need a second light rail branch on the west side of Lake Union--that's two miles north-to-south where you can't have any connecting corridors to a central spine. It's why we have a freeway on both sides right now. We need to replace it either with another freeway, or with transit that can carry as many people during peak hours. Transit's actually cheaper in the long run and has higher capacity, plus all the environmental benefits.
Look, I'm not the one trying to cram 50,000 to 85,000 EXTRA CARS onto downtown arterials like you DBT koolaid drinkers are and hoping for the best.
You are.
And at twice the price.
There's a reason why the Deeply Breaded Tunnel is a really really bad decision. Heck, there's tons of reasons.
And if you'd stop trying to loot every Seattle household - renter or owner - of $10,000 in extra taxes and $8 to $10 roundtrip tolls for a Tunnel We Don't Want you wouldn't have a problem here.
But you are.
And it stinks to high heaven.
I could go into the massive tomes of appendices to the DEIS for the SR-99 Project if you want and prove it to you. If in fact state revenues from gas taxes are dropping due to a. higher mpg vehicles b. greater use of electric and electric-gas hybrids c. people living closer to work - then this actually means over the total lifetime of the SR-99 segment from Denny to Boeing Field we will see LESS POLLUTION from either a Surface Plus Transit OR a Rebuilt Viaduct than we would from all the diesel trucks choking in downtown arterials due to a DBT dumping them.
Or do the fans and pumps required for the DBT run on magic fairy dust that comes from the wings of angels?
I understand people have to drive too, and that's why I'm anti-tunnel. The tunnel does nothing for people living in West Seattle or Ballard. It costs more than the city, county, and state can afford, and it doesn't have the transit/surface grid/I-5 improvements that are necessary to even make it usable.
I actually don't hate cars. I've never owned one, but I enjoy driving when I get the chance (I volunteer as a driver every year for SIFF to keep me in practice). I built model cars as a kid and think they can be very pretty.
What I want is for the Gov. to give me a good reason we're not planning to take the Viaduct down in 2012. She promised she would and we should have been planning mitigation for the past year to be on that schedule. And we could have done it. People adapt- that's one argument the pro-tunnel folks like to ignore. If the Viaduct weren't there tomorrow, it would be a clusterfuck for a few months, but people would adapt. They'd carpool/ride transit/rearrange schedules, and maybe bug their representatives to build transit.
But the Viaduct isn't coming down tomorrow, we have time to plan. And if people like you who say you're anti-car really meant it, you'd be writing in to the city council and Gov. office letting them hear it. But you're not, your resigned to a freeway because people with money said that's what they want.
I'm for the tunnel because it's a compromise. People/goods get to move through the city AND we get a freeway off the surface. And once that happens we can work on augmenting our transit options. And I-5 has no way to increase capacity.
Anyone who thinks surface is a good idea has never spent a minute walking or driving downtown in rush hour or tried to cross Aurora north of Greenlake.
We didn't try to force a Tunnel That Makes No Sense on Seattle - you did.
Just because you pro-tunnel peeps are on crack doesn't mean we can't point out that a. crack is bad b. stop taking it c. there are better things to take instead.
it's in the DEIS supplements.
the worst case is FAR WORSE.
As in TOTAL FRICKIN GRIDLOCK.
If you really wanted to do something for the surface option, Will, you'd lay your fingers across a railroad track when a train is coming. STOP TYPING.
1) Capacity - research shows that the tunnel will have less lanes than the current viaduct. Logically, less capacity.
2) Getting downtown from North/Ballard - I live in North Seattle and I have 3 options to get downtown within walking distance of my house. Ballard has two option I can think of, without the need to reference the Metro website.
3) Cars will move to the waterfront with a surface option - not if you plan out a waterfront that is more about accessing the waterfront as a place to go. Even without planning, people won't go to a traffic prone area once the word gets out. Every driver I know in Seattle says "We're not going to place X at Y time of day, that place is a dead stop".
4) Less exits means more headache downtown. Let's get something out of the way here. You shouldn't be driving downtown in the business core unless you just want a headache. Take public transit. We have buses and light rail. Downtown is already a headache during peak travel times. People still don't know how to avoid 3rd avenue which you aren't supposed to travel on between 3 and 6:30 pm (or something like that, not sure of exact times). In the end, refer to 3.
5) If the tunnel is killed, a rebuild is the most likely result - not true. If the tunnel is killed it makes the city and state re-evaluate the situation and another viaduct is not the only option. There are other options, including a 6 lane above ground "tunnel" that could have parks and open spaces on top of it.