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1. hooper1961
   Member Profile

   the city street maintenance is deplorable. how much is it costing the average driver in increased wear and tear on their car due the city's failure to provide basic service.

   the city has failed to properly fund infrastructure maintenance for years; they have essentially re-directed the maintenance fund resources elsewhere.

   seattle expends twice as much (and more) per capita than other local agencies on social services. this amounts to $60 to 80 million that need to be re-directed back to basic government service such as street maintenance; to serve the joe and jane doe taxpayer.

   Posted 1 year ago #         

2. HMC Rich
   Member Profile

   

   I will enjoy this thread. Good question Hooper. Keep stirring the pot.

   Posted 1 year ago #         

3. clark5080
   Member Profile

   

   More like decades

   Posted 1 year ago #         

4. JanS
   Member Profile

   

   so....now that you've brought it up...what are your constructive ideas to fix/change things? I guess I'm asking what you personally are going to do about it besides bring it up on a forum. Are you writing letters? Making phone calls? And, if so, Getting any answers that make sense, actually have a plan?

   Posted 1 year ago #         

5. miws
   Member Profile

   

   TCCiMO.

   Mike

   Posted 1 year ago #         

6. redblack
   Member Profile

   

   rich: more like smoking pot than stirring the pot.

   Posted 1 year ago #         

7. hooper1961
   Member Profile

   i have already identified that the city expends far more on social services per capita than any other city in the region and in so doing has short changed basic infrastructure maintenance.

   an analogy is a homeowner letting moss grow on their roof while continuing to out for dinner. it's time to cook at home and clean up the moss before the roof collapses. maintaining infrastructure is a first priority of government.

   Posted 1 year ago #         

8. JanS
   Member Profile

   

   aha...so you haven't said anything to anyone...that's what I'm hearing. You have opinions, don't mind saying them, but you haven't become more active in really getting anything done in the city. Many people are like that...they have all the answers until asked to really put it on the line. If the city heard from more people who are unhappy like you, then maybe something would change. But if they don't hear form you, how will they ever know?

   Posted 1 year ago #         

9. sam-c
   Member Profile

   

   Oh my goodness, I sort of agree with Hooper on something. My biggest frustration with the condition of the roads is the environmental impact. the roads take a toll on a car, and the more damage to a car, the more stuff there is going into landfills when you make repairs. for instance, we found a bubble / blister on our tire once after hitting a pothole disguised as a puddle. there goes a pretty good tire, into the landfill, with 60% of its tread left but it was a risk for a blowout. seen better roads elsewhere, places with higher property taxes, income taxes. if you want something you have to pay for it. but here, everyone votes for things they want and then votes down the taxes that would pay for them.....

   and if you want to get me in trouble for actually driving in Seattle, I can elaborate on why and when I do, thanks,

   Posted 1 year ago #         

10. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    jans - i have provided the city with expert data in the past; and yet they totally disregarded it even though it showed that their decision reduced safety! thus you can see my skepticism with government

    Posted 1 year ago #         

11. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    Hooper...I don't know you. I've never met you. I am curious, though, as to what makes you an expert. Are you in construction? Or are you a traffic engineer? Or both? Enlighten us as to your credentials. Thanks :)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

12. Julie
    Member Profile

    

    (I had a friend who had a business card printed, with just his name and contact information, and the single word, "Expert".)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

13. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    i am a professional engineer licensed in washington and oregon with expertise in traffic engineering, over 25 years of experience

    Posted 1 year ago #         

14. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    Beat me to it Mike.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

15. Genesee Hill
    Member Profile

    

    Hey, all:

    Now all those people that drive Escalades, Cherokees, Range Rovers, Explorers, Blazers, and Land Cruisers can have an "off-road" challenge.

    On Seattle city streets.

    Isn't that why they bought those monstrosities???

    Posted 1 year ago #         

16. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    How odd that Seattle, the largest metropolitan area in the region, would spend more on social services than smaller cities and towns. Bet you simply don't see that in the rest of the country.
    --
    Maybe we should start finding out where our bums came from, and send 'em right back! That'll show Republic, and Montesano, and Ephrata!
    --
    Oh yeah, link to hard numbers please, otherwise it's just your opinion, and everyone has one of those, too.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

17. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    per capita, more than twice as much as other cities in the region. i have provided the number in other posts. see post 36 rants - potholes on west seattle streets.

    basically seattle has taken money from basic maintenance to fund other items. but the roof is collapsing and it costs way more to fix a collapsed roof than to conduct proper maintenance.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

18. skeeter
    Member Profile

    Hooper, you make an excellent point. It does not make sense to me to spend money on skate parks and non safety services when our existing infrastructure is in a state of disrepair. I recommend you contact Tom Rasmussen and share your thoughts. I did. It is important for our leaders to know that the taxpayers want safe roads.

    http://www.seattle.gov/council/rasmussen/

    Posted 1 year ago #         

19. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    Well, tough. That's what happens when you give corporations and the super-rich huge tax breaks and incentives to move our manufacturing base offshore.
    Learn to live with the new reality.
    If we are going to continue to give those same people more of our tax dollars, we will continue to become a third-world country.
    --
    Better beef up your shocks; just figure out how much more you are now making than you were under the draconian tax structure that was in place on 1/19/01, and spend what I assume is the MASSIVE amount that you are saving in taxes on upgrading your vehicle.
    Don't come whining to me, expecting ME to fix potholes I have no problem avoiding. Why should I have to pay for your inability to react quickly? What about that personal responsibility thingy?

    Posted 1 year ago #         

20. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    tax breaks for the filthy rich are stupid as is giving money to able bodied and minded people through welfare and paying for medical services to those who have chosen not to buy insurance (this is costing huge amounts of money); and those in the middle get screwed by government failing to maintain infrastructure.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

21. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    one more time...got a job for those able bodied people?

    Posted 1 year ago #         

22. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    i am doing well to keep my employee busy.

    and i was laid off in the 1993 recession and did take any government aid. the extension of unemployment was not appropriate at all and my business cost has gone up because of it.

    the post is about the failure of the city to properly fund street maintenance; and the culprit is the city taking money from maintenance to fund other stuff. maintenance needs to be a higher priority or the roof will collapse costing us all way more.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

23. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    is it possible that all of the salt and brine - not to mention taking the rubber tips off of the plows this winter - has a little something to do with the current state of our roadways? because people bitched about the city doing nothing during the '08/'09 winter storms? how about the fact that it's still winter - all the way up until spring - and maybe SDOT has determined that they don't want to do the job twice.

    possible?

    personally, if given a choice, i'll take the potholes over having tuberculin coughed on me by homeless people.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

24. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    redblack the city has failed to properly fund street maintenance for years. maintaining roads is far more cost effective than letting them deteriorate to crap.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

25. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    and spending money to coat the roads with salt and chemicals, letting water penetrate below the surface through cracks before it freezes, then dragging plows over them had what effect?

    i agree that they need maintenance, but why do you insist on picking on the poor and needy to pay for it? seattle attracts more indigent, and is forced to deal with them when smaller municipalities won't or can't. seattle is also the seat of county government and regional federal government. a lot of SS/disability, unemployment, and welfare checks pass through here. a lot of good missions and charitable organizations work here. subsequently we have a lot of folks on the streets - probably the third highest population of homeless on the west coast, i'm guessing. yet it still isn't enough to combat the problem. is it any wonder that seattle spends more per capita?

    why don't you pick on starbucks, microsoft, boeing, amazon, todd shipyards, UPS, hanjin, or calportland for a change? their freight uses the same roads that you do. and at least that financial argument is relative to roads.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

26. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    redblack you need to read my post 20.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

27. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    i did, and it doesn't address anything that i just posted in 25.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

28. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    yes it does - i am annoyed with both tax loopholes for the filthy rich as as i am with providing handouts to able bodied and minded.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

29. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    Again, more worried about the physical structures of our society, than you are the humans who ARE the society.
    Priorities.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

30. miws
    Member Profile

    

    "yes it does - i am annoyed with both tax loopholes for the filthy rich as as i am with providing handouts to able bodied and minded."

    Yet you only complain about the wealthy a fraction of the time in comparison to the have-nots, and mostly, if not only, when somebody calls you on it.

    Does anybody have any Spackle they can spare?

    I need some to patch up the hole in my wall.

    And my forehead.

    Mike

    Posted 1 year ago #         

31. Julie
    Member Profile

    

    I do wonder if we are paying the price for failing to fund durable construction in the first place. When a contract to build a road is awarded, how much are long-term quality and long-term maintenance costs taken into consideration, along with the up-front cost? Are we penny-wise and pound-foolish?

    (I do actually agree with Hooper1969 that road conditions are pretty deplorable; I can't agree, however, that we should fund repairs by reducing social services.)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

32. metrognome
    Member Profile

    miws -- word to the wise: pound your head against a brick or stone wall. it accomplishes the desired effect more quickly and with less damage to the wall. something i learned as a gov't employee ...

    julie -- you've kinda hit the nail on the head; the problem is that our road conditions are caused by the fact that Seattle is built on hills that are riddled with underground streams. Paving over them doesn't make the water go away; it just hides it until the water percolates up thru the pavement and then freezes. The type of winter we've had is the worst possible for pavement -- lots of water and lots of cold temps.

    The cost to pave 'correctly' for this environment is astronomical and even that paving isn't foolproof. There are new types of pavement that are being tested that show some promise, but the capital cost of paving means very few road miles can be done, regardless of the type of pavement used. In the meantime, potholes are filled as a temporary measure.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

33. Julie
    Member Profile

    

    metrognome, Seattle is surely not the only city with this geography. Are there cities in the world with similar challenges that are able to factor in long-term costs rather than taking the lowest bidder for construction, and do they find it overall less costly to build differently?

    I remember reading an article in (I think?) Scientific American decades ago describing the different approach taken in European countries to road construction, namely, that they were able to build more durable roads because they were able to invest in better construction up front, thus reducing lifetime costs. But I don't remember which countries, and Europe certainly covers a varied terrain. And I have no idea if this is still the case. Do you know anything about it?

    Posted 1 year ago #         

34. dyn99
    Member Profile

    

    Hooper, have you compared Seattle's expenditures on social services, per capita to another city of comparable size, stature and political affiliation, say Boston or San Francisco?

    What about road maintenance, per capita compared to other cities?

    Can you identify specific areas that we spend money on social serivces that those cities don't?

    Not that I don't like one paragraph rants about city government, but if we are going to make apples to apples comprisons, let's do it with other cities that are truly similar, as compared with say Bellevue.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

35. metrognome
    Member Profile

    Julie -- thanks for asking; I must admit I am not that knowledgeable re: pavement. I think to research your question, I would need access to membership-only engineering web sites. However, I would take an educated guess that our combination of groundwater and geology is fairly unique for a large city; add a wet, freezing weather to the mix and we should change our name to Pothole City.

    I have only lived in Spokane and Seattle, altho I have travelled along the West Coast. Spokane has much more severe winters but is much drier, so it doesn't have an extensive problem with potholes (I left there in 1978, so who knows now ...)

    I have never been to another city where water seeps up through the pavement like it does here, even on a dry day after a dry stretch. The best nearby examples are Beach Drive where the landslides have been and Morgan St/Sylvan Way between 35th and Delridge (you can actually see the long-term effect of the water draining diagonally across the roadway.) There is a cistern in front of my condo on California a few blocks south of Morgan St and you can hear water running in it 24/7, 365 days a year.

    Frankly, the Europeans take a long-term view of these things; American culture is as yet not willing to invest in the future.

    Here are some good explanations of how Seattle's water problems impact our roads:

    http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/potholes/

    http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Roads/RoadsMaintenance/RoadRepair/PotholeRepair.aspx

    Posted 1 year ago #         

36. metrognome
    Member Profile

    Julie -- after I posted the above response, I did some further research and Binged 'pothole repair'; turns out potholes are a problem throughout the country (even Honolulu has a pothole patrol.) England also showed up frequently as having a major pothole problem.

    The Roads section of the latest ASCE infrastructure report card doesn't specifically mention potholes, but road repairs are consistently underfunded in the U.S., and the condition of roads in general was graded at D-.

    http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ (video with sound starts automatically)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

37. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    pothole humor....

    it's danged cold in NYC....and there are potholes...and then they expand...and a pipe breaks, and adds to it...and a poor Jets fan goes to watch a game at a friend's....observe:

    http://news.yahoo.com/video/newyorkcbs2-15751042/car-frozen-in-place-23949191#video=23952814

    Posted 1 year ago #         

38. HMC Rich
    Member Profile

    

    Well, the potholes are getting very bad, but it is not the worst we have had. Ever read "The Sons of the Profits"? Or taken the Underground Tour in Pioneer Square.

    It seems one person drowned in old Seattle and if memory serves me correctly, they put life preservers on the corners of the streets.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

39. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    ha...instead of crossing flags, there could be crossing preservers :)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

40. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    julie: a couple of things could help - if there was money to fund actual improvements. i'm no engineer, so if anyone has answers to why these are dumb ideas, please be gentle.

    1. put utilities under the sidewalks, not the streets. why do american cities locate utilities where they're the most expensive to repair and necessitate impacting vehicular traffic to do so?

    2. use recycled tires for aggregate in pavement.

    3. remove the old brick substrate before you repave. duh! the old brick street failed for a reason, too. your new road surface will last longer if you fix the grade - and the way it drains - below.

    again, just spitballing. evidently we can't afford smarter solutions these days, which is just plain sad.

    (that's still no reason to cut social services, though.)

    Posted 1 year ago #         

41. miws
    Member Profile

    

    Fill the potholes with moss!

    Mike

    Posted 1 year ago #         

42. Sue
    Member Profile

    

    Great video, Jan! I remember well when my car doors would freeze shut back in NYC, and if that took a long time to thaw, this guy doesn't have a chance!

    Posted 1 year ago #         

43. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    I don't recall where I saw this, probably some USGS press release years ago, but Seattle is the hilliest city in the U.S. (sorry S.F.), and as it was pointed out earlier, there is always a LOT of water percolating up through the ground which makes for a lot of maintenance problems.
    Couple those issues with our CLIMATE extremes and I'm sure it is difficult to find the "perfect" material for all the paving tasks.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

44. hooper1961
    Member Profile

    redblack post 40 decent ideas; but if we fail to maintain the infrastructure no one will have a roof over their head. i for one would limit social service spending to the handicapped and mentally challenged only.

    Posted 1 year ago #         

45. Ken
    Member Profile

    

    Let's give the republicans what they want. No redistribution of wealth. I propose a moratorium on SDOT projects in all RED counties in this map. That would leave plenty of cash to fix roads here.

    For that matter cut everything but education back too the input percentage for each county.

    http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/01/25/since-red-counties-enjoy-a-disproportionate-share-of-the-state-budget-they-should-expect-a-disproportionate-share-of-the-cuts

    I was always amazed by the dimwits in Yakima county whining about taxes while growing apples on WPA project irrigation land and driving on empty 6 lane state highways. The yakima Vally could not produce dwarf sagebrush without the federal irrigation projects. And those railing against Native Americans while farming land they lease from the tribe for .99 cents an acre...

    Posted 1 year ago #         

46. Ken
    Member Profile

    

    geology info for Seattle

    http://www.seattle.gov/projectimpact/pdfs/Sea_geo_map.pdf

    Those roads we find metastasizing potholes on are all in slide danger areas where water moves along glacial deposit layers.

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2009/10/27/2010146943.pdf

    Posted 1 year ago #         

47. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    Funny how, when you pile a bunch of gravel and sand on top of clay, then saturate it with water, things begin to slide. Who coulda seen it coming!?

    Posted 1 year ago #         

48. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    Just wait until the word 'liquefaction' becomes a commonplace term among Seattleites.
    Got your houses bolted down, neighbors?

    Posted 1 year ago #         

49. Ken
    Member Profile

    

    GOP lawmaker: King Co. residents paying double for services

    http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/237129.asp

    Posted 1 year ago #         

50. metrognome
    Member Profile

    Ken -- I'm absolutely sure that's not true ... someone from E WA told me their money goes to build stuff in Seattle, which is why they always vote for Eyman's initiatives ...

    Posted 1 year ago #         

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