@1 Why do you continue to have The Stranger read to you if you so disagree with everything in it? I don't take the Seattle Times' writers seriously, but I also stopped reading or commenting in it many years ago.

Greg Scaggs is telling us he's a poor dumb fuck who can't afford a car and wants everyone else to be inconvenienced because of it.

There is already a large amount of public space on either side of Alaskan Way near Pier 70, and there will be even more south of there after the viaduct gets demolished. So having a street party on Alaskan Way will be wholly optional.

@1: You do understand the proposal is to close Alaskan Way, not SR-99, right? Please tell us you do.

There are literally a dozen other N-S corridors going through downtown Seattle between the waterfront and I-5; we've even numbered most of them for easy convenience. Aside from tourists, people driving to Coleman Dock, and the comparatively small number who work on the waterfront or make deliveries to those businesses, it's not like Alaskan Way is heavily utilized by commuters even now - that's what the Viaduct was for. Will that change with the opening of the downtown bypassing tunnel? Perhaps to a very modest extent; but it seems highly unlikely that someone working at any of the downtown skyscrapers is going to be using Alaskan Way as part of their regular commuting route, especially given that it's going to be nearly impossible to cross over from there during the several years needed to demolish the viaduct and redevelop the soon-to-be vacant land underneath.

You won't be happy till horses are pulling fire trucks again.

@7- that's animal cruelty.

The “people” drive cars. Get cyclists above 3% of commuters and .... well, we’ll still tell you to stfu.

“perhaps even a concrete vision of the Seattle Commons many of us now pine for as an alternative to Amazonia”

The Stranger helped kill that project and now you lament Amazon is there?! Fuck all the way off.

"it's not like Alaskan Way is heavily utilized by commuters even now - that's what the Viaduct was for."

The viaduct provided significant traffic capacity into and out of downtown. Which the tunnel does not. That traffic will have to use surface streets. One of which will be Alaskan Way. And a lot of that viaduct traffic was commercial traffic from south Seattle into the downtown area to serve businesses. So that traffic will not be hopping on public transit as an alternative.