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September 15, 2010 at 7:39 pm #596379
blissMemberMeeting tonight at Benaroya Hall 7-10 pm presenting the top 7 choices for design.
Glad our vote didn’t meana thing to our city.
September 17, 2010 at 5:34 am #703549
HMC RichParticipantThey added four more? Hmmm. Something smells fishy, Oh wait, I am near Spuds.
September 18, 2010 at 5:01 pm #703550
redblackParticipanti don’t recall any coverage of this. bliss, do you have a link to info on this meeting, its purpose, and its results? is a viaduct still an option?
IMHO, the west seattle freeway is a beautiful structure with 3-4 legal lanes in each direction, and the city and state should consider something similar for 99 through downtown.
but, like the tunnel design, they should eliminate the intermediate exit/entry points (western, seneca, columbia, first ave.)
remember, it doesn’t have to be ugly and utilitarian in design.
September 18, 2010 at 6:54 pm #703551
c@lbobMemberThe tenth anniversary of the Nisqually earthquake is only a few months away. I think the time for talking about options is past. Build the tunnel.
September 18, 2010 at 7:19 pm #703552
maplesyrupParticipantNaw, in true Seattle fashion I think we need to un-decide.
Let’s hold another vote in which we can say no to every option and then debate it all for another decade!
September 18, 2010 at 8:01 pm #703553
JayDeeParticipantI heart the Viaduct, and will miss it when it: 1) falls over, or 2) we knock it down. Normally I’d think #2 more likely, but since Seattle Process takes place on a geologic time scale, it isn’t certain what will happen first.
September 18, 2010 at 9:32 pm #703554
JoBParticipantJaydee
i sincerely hope they knock it down before it falls down.
I was living in the Minneapolis St Paul areas when the freeway bridge came down. Talk abut a heart stopper.. literally for anyone on that bridge…
i don’t want to tell stories about nearly being on the viaduct when it went down…
September 19, 2010 at 12:50 am #703555
dobroParticipantI wish they would have taken the option to rebuild the viaduct properly. that was the lowest cost, quickest turn around option on the table originally but the developers and money changers couldn’t stand it. My secret hope is that it will still happen if every other plan is stymied. I signed the petition for another vote.
September 19, 2010 at 3:14 am #703556
JoBParticipantDobro…
please tell me you are joking..
another vote?
here we go again down the long narrow path to nothingness…
September 19, 2010 at 3:19 pm #703557
redblackParticipantwell, let’s see. we voted “no” on a tunnel and “no” an elevated structure – on the same ballot! – and suddenly we’re looking at a tunnel and a “big dig” scenario. who decided that?
reminds me of voting “no” on funding construction of a baseball stadium and then having to fund construction of a baseball stadium.
or voting “yes” five times for a monorail and the means to fund it, and then not getting the monorail. (which would be running to my front door as of last year, and would have made the loss of the viaduct a bit more bearable.)
so, for the second time, no. screw greg nickels’ hare-brained insistence on publicly funding development of the waterfront for private stakeholders. i mean, his whole argument was, “the viaduct is ugly.” give me a break. caltrans is building a new east bay section of the oakland-san fran bay bridge for $1.4 billion – with state-of-the-art self-anchoring suspension engineering, no less. they want over $4 billion for a tunnel here? i think we can do better.
and one other thing! any development involving the hwy 99 corridor through downtown should include grade-separated mass transit, preferably light rail, since that’s the system already in place through the bus tunnel. does anyone in this town have the vision to connect the buses, ferries, highways, and trains? or the neighborhoods?
September 19, 2010 at 3:22 pm #703558
JoBParticipantredblack…
that monorail you didn’t get is about to become the alternate route through town you didn’t get..
and the viaduct will come down one way or another.
it’s the unplanned tumbling that worries me most.
September 19, 2010 at 8:05 pm #703559
TKDguyParticipantI’m just curious who will actually use the tunnel. As I understand it, it will cost $3.50 each way ($7 round trip) and there are no exits to downtown. It seems like everyone will just take I5 or use the smaller downtown streets to get anywhere. I don’t think anyone will have the money to pay the tolls anyway after we get done footing the bills for the tunnel cost overruns.
September 19, 2010 at 8:17 pm #703560
c@lbobMemberA good question, TKDguy. Getting off of 99 at a proposed stadium exit will put me close enough to downtown for most situations.
Realistically, I use the existing viaduct mostly to give visitors a good view of the city. Apres viaduct, I’ll just use the Admiral viewpoint.
September 20, 2010 at 12:02 am #703561
ellenaterMemberThe tunnel is SUCH a bad idea on every level. We need to fix the replace the viaduct with similar and better. Redblack, I agree with you completely…
The tunnel is going to be the biggest abomination should it go through. Also, regardless of how stupid it is to hold up a solid plan do to indecision, it is even stupider to put one through JUST to have a plan.
Asinine.
September 20, 2010 at 2:01 am #703562
dobroParticipantMy sentiments exactly, ellenater.
September 20, 2010 at 2:41 am #703563
villagegreenMemberThe people that want to “fix” the viaduct or “build something similar” make me laugh. If it cost 10 bucks to rebuild the viaduct it still wouldn’t happen. That is the one option that will NEVER happen. The city has decided, and rightfully so, that an elevated highway along the entire downtown waterfront is, to use ellenater’s language, “asinine.” It was complete idiocy when the viaduct was first built and it’s complete idiocy now.
September 20, 2010 at 3:14 am #703564
JoBParticipantSeptember 21, 2010 at 4:33 am #703565
ellenaterMemberWhy do you think it’s idiocy, villagegreen?
September 21, 2010 at 6:03 am #703566
dawsonctParticipantI don’t know about villagegreen, but the viaduct is idiotic because it separates our city from the bay, is supremely unattractive any way you look at it, and the “great views” every supporter crows about (Which last less than three minutes, and you need to be watching the road, not the scenery), will only be improved for EVERYBODY upon it’s removal.
The Spokane St. viaduct is completely different; it bisects a flat industrial zone, blocking no views, hovering over no pedestrian areas. It is utilitarian and serves it’s purpose well. No other alternative makes sense along it’s route. the same can not be said at all about the waterfront viaduct.
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And for all you scaredy-pants out there, ask any structural engineer whether they would rather be in a tunnel, on a bridge, or a downtown surface street during an earthquake.
September 21, 2010 at 6:17 pm #703567
villagegreenMemberTurning one of Seattle’s greatest assets, its waterfront, into an elevated highway was not good city planning. But that was the 50’s, when cars ruled all and gas was cheap and plentiful. Rebuilding the viaduct today would be a travesty.
Cities grow and thrive when those that work in the city live in the city. Downtown Seattle isn’t housing near the number of residents that it takes to have a thriving downtown core. Part of the reason for this is that we have not one, but two highways gutting our downtown. There is no reason to live downtown when you can drive into the city so easily. It’s a catch-22, since not many live downtown, there aren’t a ton of amenities downtown (such as grocery stores), so not many people live downtown, etc.
In a nutshell, the viaduct promotes sprawl, which is not good for cities. The tunnel, on the other hand, would be used by those that absolutely need it (and are willing to pay)to get BY downtown – not so much as a route into downtown (there are no downtown exits). Compare the livability of these two cities: Vancouver and Phoenix. I’ll admit, Vancouver is a pain in the ass to drive into, but once you’re there you realise there’s no reason to leave. The city is thriving in a way that makes Seattle seem somewhat suburban and antiquated. Where is our public transportation? Where is our Robson St? Where is our downtown culture?
On the other hand, Phoenix is what happens when all common sense city planning is thrown out the window. The place is a ghostland at night. No culture to speak of and terrible public transportation. But they sure know how to build the hell out of roads.
Oh, and ditto everything dawsonct said. Ignoring the whole city planning theory stuff for a second, cutting your city off from the waterfront is just sad. I can’t remember the last time I was down there. I refuse to simply write off the area as a tacky tourist trap. The city needs to reclaim the area and make it our crowning jewel. There is no reason it can’t be a tourist area AND beneficial to the locals – just look at the Pike Place Market.
September 21, 2010 at 9:58 pm #703568
nighthawkParticipantI hate when people say we voted against the viaduct. The ballot was the worst idea ever. People could vote yes on both options, they could vote no on both options or yes on one and no on the others. Statistically it doesn’t tell you anything.
September 21, 2010 at 10:21 pm #703569
cjboffoliParticipantHaving personally experienced the beautiful, quiet pedestrian plazas and surface streets that replaced the the dirty/loud/ugly/polluting Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and also the Central Artery in Boston, I could never vote in favor of another auto viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront. Our beautiful city deserves better than another monument to the almighty internal combustion engine.
September 22, 2010 at 1:45 pm #703570
redblackParticipantvillagegreen: don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a lot of us here in west seattle work north of downtown. and there are those of us who work construction and whose destinations change frequently. i use 99, because the interstate goes nowhere near my most frequent destination, ballard.
but i find your larger argument specious. if connecting north and south promotes sprawl, then a tunnel does exactly that, as well.
a bridge is about a quarter of the cost of a tunnel, and – for the 80th time – it doesn’t have to be ugly.
so if i have a choice of tunnel or nothing, i’ll take nothing, and will head for ballard at 6 or 6:30 a.m. on surface streets.
September 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm #703571
redblackParticipantcjboffoli: san fran’s and seattle’s waterfronts are quite different. along the embarcadero, there aren’t many destination points between pier 1 and pier 39. tourists mainly cluster around pier 1 and girhardeli square. without the freeway, it’s just a quieter, more attractive ghost town.
seattle’s waterfront, on the other hand, is a vibrant destination point. but it’s also oriented along what is essentially an isthmus within an isthmus doewntown.
September 22, 2010 at 7:12 pm #703572
dawsonctParticipantAgain, you are focusing on the SOV. We need to refocus our communities on the human beings that occupy it, and not the vehicles they have become dependent on. Hate to sound harsh, but adjust and adapt; destroying the quality of life in pursuit of convenience and efficiency isn’t a path we want to continue down.
Frankly, I agreed with the surface street option you mentioned; with strategic rerouting N. and S. of downtown, traffic could have been disbursed evenly through the city. Increased emphasis on trip mitigation would have helped reduce traffic as well.
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