Three years ago, Seattle City Council President Nick Licata’s
stepson, Joe Robinson, was struck by a car while crossing the street to
catch a bus and badly injured. His mother, Andrea Okomski, is suing the
city over the accident, which occurred while the driver was talking on
a cell phone. Two weeks ago, Seattle transportation director
Grace Crunican sent an unusually personal letter to Licata about
pedestrian safety, advising him that she felt “uncomfortable” with his
request that SDOT hold off on its crosswalk “removal and improvement”
program until the council had a chance to review the program, “due to
your family member’s current litigation against the city related
to pedestrian safety.” Since 2002, SDOT has removed at least 17
crosswalks throughout the city.
Business and neighborhood leaders have rallied around the People’s
Waterfront Coalition (PWC), which supports a surface/transit option for
replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, in opposing several elements of the
Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)’s plans to begin
construction on the south and north ends of the viaduct replacement.
According to the group, which includes the PWC, the Downtown Seattle
Association, and the Downtown District Council, at least two of the
proposed projects will effectively preclude a surface/transit
option, which the city council has adopted as its preferred viaduct
replacement option.
On September 24, 50-plus activists, brown-suited bureaucrats, and
technology fetishists (one guy proposed a “futurized
transportation system” called Levex) crowded into the Mezza Conference
Room at the gleaming Starbucks headquarters in Sodo to debate whether
WSDOT should spend hundreds of millions spiffing up the Battery
Street tunnel and rebuilding a section of the viaduct between
Lenora and Battery streets, knowing it’s entirely possible that neither
will be used in the future (if the surface/transit option is selected).
Retired engineer Victor Gray and one-man viaduct fan club Gene Hoglund
said yes; Cary Moon and others from the PWC (egged on, obnoxiously, by
Hoglund, who muttered, “Lies! Lies!” during Moon’s three minutes) said
no.
The suddenly ubiquitous Hoglund was also at last week’s meeting of
the 36th District Democrats in Ballard, where he praised city council
candidate David Della for, of all things, political courage.
Which makes more sense when you realize the “courage” Hoglund spoke of
was the courage to take Hoglund’s side on his one and only issue: the
viaduct, which Della also “doesn’t want tore down [sic] just for
a bunch of developers,” Hoglund said. Despite a substantial contingent
in favor of challenger Tim Burgess (“I’ve never seen any of these
people before!” one disgruntled Della supporter literally could not
stop saying), a vote to endorse Burgess failed. So did a
vote to endorse Della. 