West Seattle Can Look Forward to More Traffic

[bdixon21]

To my fellow West Seattle residents,

As someone who spends 30 to 45 minutes in traffic every morning on the West Seattle Bridge, staring longingly at the empty west bound lane, the thought of adding nearly 700 apartment units within a half mile of the bridge makes my skin crawl. I certainly think that West Seattle can benefit from a little increased density, but adding such a vast amount of housing without a comparable increase in jobs is exacerbating an already troubling problem we have.

4 development projects that are in the pipeline are:

3062 and 3078 Avalon

These projects are described as multi-family 8-story structures with 108 residential units each.

4724 California

This project is described as a 7-story building with 5,000 square feet of retail area and 73 residential units above.

4755 Fauntleroy

You may know this site as the giant hole on the northwest corner of Fauntleroy and Alaska St. This project is described as two, 5-story structures containing a total of 370 residential units over 62,750 sq. ft. of retail space.

A total of 659 residential units and 67,750 sq. ft. of retail space will be constructed over the next couple of years. Assuming an average of 2 people per unit, this totals 1,318 in new resident capacity. According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), there is an average of 945 square feet per worker in retail and service buildings. Therefore, we can expect that these developments will create 71 new jobs; sending 1,247 towards the bridge. DOE statistics also show that the average number of persons occupying a car is 1.59, so we can expect an additional 784 cars on that bridge every morning. Sounds pretty lousy to me…

West Seattle is primarily a residential neighborhood, which I absolutely LOVE. But we have to be realistic about the future development of our community and plan with some common sense. We have to have a better grasp on what sustainable development really is. A neighborhood is certainly not “walkable” because you can stroll down the street and grab a coffee before you hop in your car and drive 40 minutes to work. If we want to grow, and this certainly is not a rhetorical question, then we need to think about how to increase our ability to live AND work within our system.

I’m not advocating for complete isolation from downtown, although some of my neighbors might argue for that, but we are at a point that either we need to improve our transportation capacity, or we need to provide more employment options right here. Given the geographical constraints on West Seattle transit alone, I think our only option is the later.

I’m not a community planner, just a concerned resident trying to start a dialogue. Thanks for reading.

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[Sonoma]

Thank you for the intelligent and well-reasoned post. I agree that this isn’t a matter of NIMBY, it’s a matter of livability and sustainability (as well as sanity).

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[JanS]

and that’s not counting development at Cali. and Alaska…and Youngstown Flats….and the building going up at 42nd and Oregon,and the development in the works for Calif. and Hanford, etc.etc.etc..

density is putting it mildly…

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[birdrescuer]

I think that is what rapid ride is for.

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[WSB]

Not to pile on but actually, as we’ve reported previously, there are more than 2,000 units in the pipeline – and we’ve reported a couple more developments since the last time I updated the map.

West Seattle development, mapped: 2,000+ planned units

Dialogue is vital. And difficult because the question remains, who are you talking to, since there is no specific elected position, let alone body of positions, representing just this area.

In addition to airing ideas and thoughts, might I also suggest that anyone who is concerned should first start with involvement with their neighborhood council – find out how (if) it is advocating on/discussing these issues, and if it’s not, get involved and make that happen. In The Junction, for example, there is no currently active neighborhood council, unlike the other two junctions (Admiral and Morgan).

TR

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[socamr]

I agree this is as much a public transit issue than a housing issue. RapidRide has all sorts of problems, including the fact it uses the viaduct (still lots of traffic and it’s going away soon). The 50 actually works pretty well, because it gets a dedicated lane most of the way from WS to SODO (15 minutes no matter the traffic on the bridge) We need more routes like that.

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[birdrescuer]

While it is true rr uses the viaduct, it is still very fast to get down town and when the viaduct goes away it will still have priority routing. More buses will help a lot.

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