The Battle Over the Bridge

The 520 bridge is going to sink. Highway workers have sealed more
than 30,000 feet of cracks on the floating span between Seattle and
Medina in just the past 16 years. Still, Lake Washington continues to
seep into the concrete pontoons. “Bridge components have been sheared
off because of severe rocking, and the pontoons are cracked and leaking
from past storm damage,” warns the Washington State Department of
Transportation. “The frequent fixes and maintenance can’t keep the
bridge in safe shape forever, and it needs to be replaced.”

Lawmakers agree that a catastrophe is inevitable unless we build a
new bridge by 2014. (The aged floating Hood Canal Bridge sank in 1979,
and the I-90 floating bridge sank 11 years later, both in storms.) But
there is no consensus on how to rebuild 520. The costs are
astronomical—at least $4.5 billion—which is more than the
deep-bore tunnel under downtown.

While most state lawmakers are focused on reducing expenses,
Seattle’s elected leaders—including those in the state
legislature, the city council, and the mayor’s office—all want a
520 bridge that links to Seattle’s growing mass-transit network.

“If we are talking about something to last 50 to 100 years,” city
council president Richard Conlin says, “we should consider making it a
worthy investment instead of having people stuck in traffic for that
length of time.”

On November 17, a workgroup of state lawmakers—most from rural
districts and the suburbs, which have little to gain from strengthening
Seattle’s transit network—voted on a plan to replace the bridge.
According to the design they chose, the state would replace the
four-lane span with a six-lane bridge and build a second drawbridge
across the nearby Montlake cut to handle all the extra traffic. This is
called Option A+. Only two lawmakers in the group voted against it:
house Speaker Frank Chopp and state representative Jamie Pedersen.
That’s no coincidence. Chopp and Pedersen both represent Seattle’s 43rd
District, the only point in Seattle where the 520 bridge hits land.
State senator Ed Murray (also from the 43rd District) opposes the
workgroup’s proposal as well.

The most obvious problem with the plan approved by the legislative
workgroup is its failure to connect the new freeway with Seattle’s
future light-rail network. As it stands, the new “A+” 520 would only
connect to a stop for bus riders (and future light-rail riders, if rail
is fitted to the bridge) in the Montlake neighborhood. The problem:
This A+ stop is across the Montlake cut from the planned light-rail
stop at Husky Stadium—creating a considerable hike for people
transferring between the two systems.

“This is an example of our disconnected transportation planning in
the region,” says Murray. “You have to get off at the transit station
and then stumble over a few streets in the dark and the rain and get on
a bus.”

In the drawing above, you can see that one of the proposals for the
520 bridge includes an arm that reaches from the central shaft of the
freeway over to the Husky Stadium light-rail station. If light rail is
ever to be built on 520, this arm could connect light rail on 520 to
the rest of the light-rail network. “I think that connecting Microsoft
to the University of Washington is a good idea,” says mayor-elect Mike
McGinn. (There are currently no plans to build light rail on 520.)
“Imagine if you could continue all the way across to Ballard.”

Indeed, connecting 520 to the light-rail network would reduce
transit travel times and relieve congestion, and it would reduce the
bottleneck of vehicles that clog the Montlake Bridge. But that’s not
what the legislature is currently supporting.

Conlin is ready to fight in Olympia for a better bridge, and he
wants the council to “be very engaged as the legislature convenes.”

One of the challenges for people on his side: A 520 rebuild that did
connect with the light-rail station would cost far more. The state
legislature—which controls improvements to state
highways—established a price limit of $4.56 billion for a new 520
bridge. The A+ option, the one approved by the workgroup of
legislators, is the only one that clocks in under that figure.
Estimates for other layouts range from $5 billion to $6.5
billion—though Pedersen calls those figures “controversial” and
Conlin calls those estimates “just guesses.”

The test over whether Seattle can prevail in rebuilding 520 to link
with our light-rail network will come over the next several months,
when Seattle lawmakers try to influence the decision-making process in
Olympia (and, perhaps more importantly, the pre-decision-making process
that will end this spring with a recommendation from the state
department of transportation on the new bridge design).

That is, if they can get along with each other. “This is the trend,”
says McGinn. “Seattle loves transit, and the legislature won’t give it
to them.” Meanwhile, Murray sees a different trend: “a lack of
leadership of the council and the mayor.”

In addition to figuring out how to play in the same sandbox, local
leaders need to find a way to generate money for the bridge of their
dreams. One solution is simple: Seattle should begin tolling all major
Seattle highways (a move that legislators from other cities shouldn’t
mind). Starting in 2010, we should charge a toll of at least $1 to
cross the 520 bridge, the I-90 bridge, the West Seattle Bridge, the
Alaskan Way Viaduct, the Aurora Bridge, and the downtown corridor of
I-5. Doing so would generate hundreds of millions of dollars a
year—if not more than a billion dollars. As much as possible,
that money should be saved to fix 520 correctly, fix the ailing South
Park Bridge, and keep building a light-rail network around the city.
But that will take extraordinary cooperation among the mayor’s office,
the city council, and Seattle’s legislators in Olympia—three
groups that haven’t played nicely together for years.