The Urban Blog

While We’re On The Subject

Sydney, NSW’s Elevated Rail & Auto Conduit along Circular Quay, CBD

Seattle: A Spirited Defense of Replacing the Viaduct With a Viaduct

Usually I agree with Seattle’s Only Newspaper(tm), The Stranger.  The Stranger is the world’s best alt-weekly from where I’m sitting (which happens to be Seattle at the moment)  Their blog, SLOG, makes for great reading most times of day or night and can lead to a dangerous sucking sound around the productive hours of your day if you don’t watch yourself.

The Stranger also takes an active interest in urban planning, having attracted a fair number of people who write well on the topic.  Sadly, one of the things that makes The Stranger so much fun when they’re right, their shrill and sarcastic tone, is the thing that makes them so annoying when they’re wrong.  And the thing they’re wrong about is State House Speaker Frank Chopp’s plan for replacing the SR-99 Viaduct roadway which runs along downtown Seattle’s waterfront.  (Follow this link to get an overview of all the alternatives.)

Existing SR-99 Viaduct

The SR-99 Viaduct, an elevated roadway running right along Seattle’s waterfront, may well be in danger of collapsing when the “big one” earthquake hits, whenever that happens.  Designed and built in the 1950’s, this shoulderless, not particularly attractive road isn’t easy for anyone to love, and it’s especially hard for the car-haters over at El Extranjero to love, which is why they don’t love it.  Seattle is not exactly embroiled in a civic debate about the topic despite what The Stranger would like to believe or promote believing, but the topic does have its share of ahderents to various points of view who utilize the media to have some kind of public conversation, er, shouting match about the topic.  And despite The Stranger’s strong advocacy on the subject, Chopp was re-elected despite the plan he’s proposing – in a pretty liberal district in Seattle.

Chopp’s proposal - is it pie in the sky?

Chopp is proposing to replace the existing viaduct structure with a new viaduct structure much like it, only walled in.  Sort of like a big box on legs sitting above the ground below.  Inside the box is where the cars travel north and south, and under the box would be retail uses.  The renderings of the thing call for it to be faced with interesting materials and have hanging vines and flowers and other things to make it not look like a giant concrete box.  The Stranger points out that these decorative elements are not paid for up front in Chopp’s funding plan.  They would be financed through a tax overlay on the waterfront district.

Opponents of this and any other highway that could replace the existing highway are generally in favor of what is called the “surface option”.  The surface option would take SR-99 and run the traffic onto the ground, on a 4-lane boulevard, which would have nice wide sidewalks, and possibly some sort of streetcar (streetcars along Seattle’s waterfront are a different blog post entirely).

The Surface Option – minus buses, tractor trailers, or ferry commuters

One glaring problem with the surface option is that it doesn’t account for all the functions the existing roadway performs.  The Stranger argues correctly that sans viaduct, Seattle will figure out other ways to get around, but they also paint a rosy picture of how much easier it’s going to be on everyone when the viaduct is finally gone for good, which simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.  SR-99 serves buses, ferry traffic, and a whole lot of tractor trailers – none of which is pictured in any of the surface option’s renderings.

Finally, it seems to me that if Chopp’s proposal were a rail conduit instead of a highway, The Stranger would have no problem with it.  Instead, they’d be exhorting the opponents to consider the positive benefits such a structure might have, and they would argue that in a dense city, man-made structures fit into the landscape because the city is full of people, and people have needs that are served by such things.  So I exhort them to do the same in this case.  If this roadway will not serve auto traffic well, then tell us how that is the case.  If it is detrimental to pedestrian access to the waterfront, tell us how that is the case.  Frankly, I’ve always considered the key barrier between Seattle’s downtown and waterfront to be the big hill on which downtown is built that rises above the waterfront.  Neither boulevard nor elevated highway will fix that.

The Urban Blog On Transportation Measures

It’s not every day a person sees their name in the newspaper, but I saw mine in the paper today.  It’s ok, it’s for a good reason.  I wasn’t arrested.

I was quoted in the Reno News & Review this week in a piece regarding some Washoe County transportation ballot measures.  I’ve written a fair bit about those subjects here, so it was nice to be contacted by the story’s author.  After dipping my toe into the water of talking about current affairs vis-a-vis the ballot box by making a presidential endorsement, here’s a roundup of the transportation-related ballot measures affecting both Reno and Seattle.

Reno

WC-2 Sales Tax Increase for Public Transit

Yes

As I said in the RNR, everyone could end up on the bus at some point.  Cars are great, I like having one, but cars break, and people still have to get to work.  People still have lives to live with independence.  A good bus system goes a long way toward keeping everything moving.

RTC Ride isn’t a perfect bus service.  In fact, if this blog were going to the ballot with a transit measure, we’d be pretty specific about the improvements in service that would be made, and we’d ask for all the money we’d need.  Our bus service would feature 15-minute headways on 80% of the routes during 12 hours of the day and no less than 30-minute headways on all routes in the system.  Express buses would run all day, every day, between Reno, Sparks, Fernley, Spanish Springs, North Valleys via TRIC, and Carson City.

Turns out they’re not giving buses away, and bus drivers need food and shelter.  So this would cost a pretty penny.

Alas, The Urban Blog’s new bus system isn’t on the ballot this year in Washoe County, and with service cuts looming in the wake of some other service cuts, it does make sense to go ahead and raise the sales tax an eight of a percent bringing the total sales tax rate to 7.5%.

WC-5 Gas Tax Indexing Advisory Question

Yes

If The Urban Blog were running the show, gas tax would be used primarily for the operation of public highway facilities and excise tax would be the way public highway facilities were paid for.  That way, every time you registered your car, you could see line items to tell you about the bonds you’re paying off, and you could see their expiration date.  Suddenly major public facilities such as a road between Sparks and South Meadows or a Spanish Springs Freeway or a US-50 East Freeway, would now have an established, dedicated funding mechanism.

The Urban Blog is not running the show, but in our ideal system we figure we’d probably want our operational budget to account for inflation.  This measure merely lets the RTC know if they should go to the Legislature to ask for the gas tax to be indexed to inflation.  So even though it pains us to say it, this measure should pass.

Seattle

Initiative 985 Traffic Signal Timing & Other Assorted Related Items

No

The bane of the existences of many Washington citizens is a guy by the name of Tim Eyman.  He’s forever getting stuff put on the ballot that sounds great, would break three things to fix one, and usually gets invalidated by the court after it passes.  This measure is one of his.  It would siphon funds off from every transportation budget in the state to fund timing every traffic signal in the state, and would open the HOV lanes to general traffic considerably more than they are today.

The Seattle area is working on finally getting light rail service to its major destinations and for a while now has had great express bus service between major destinations and that express bus service depends largely on what I call the “bus freeway”, which provides all kinds of dedicated ramps and lanes for buses, carpools, and vanpools.  The HOV network should remain closed to general traffic most hours of the day.  Traffic in Seattle is wretched, and public transit ought to be on time.

Timing the traffic lights in the state is a great idea.  We’d support a measure that provides a dedicated funding source that doesn’t impact other budgets.  This is not that measure.  This measure is a turkey and needs to be voted down.

Sound Transit Proposition 1

HELL YEAH!

Sound Transit is the Seattle-area regional transit authority which operates the aforementioned express bus system, and is building the aforementioned light rail system, and also operates the regional commuter rail system.

In 2009 the first trains from downtown to the airport will begin operating, and that’ll be a glorious day.  Downtown Seattle has for many years had a tunnel running underneath it carrying buses.  When the tunnel was originally built, tracks were installed to carry the light rail trains they were going to purchase any day.  Turned out the tracks were not installed properly and the tunnel had to be closed for two years while they installed the track for THESE trains.  Once the initial segment to the airport is complete, another segment will begin construction linking downtown to the University District.

This measure would authorize the expansion of the system further, across Lake Washington to the technology and business havens of Bellevue and Redmond, and would also push transit further north from the University and south from the airport.  It would add to the commuter rail and express bus services.  In short, it would authorize the expansion of the regional public transit service to a point where its usefulness would be greatly improved.

And that’s why we say “HELL YEAH!” to this one.  The population of the tri-county area served by Sound Transit is about 3 million.  This is long overdue.