"Six to eight years to rebuild the viaduct?"

Councilman David Della writes:

For the sake of safety and jobs, let's rebuild the risky viaduct.

Alternatively, building a new, stronger viaduct is estimated to cost between $2.7 billion and $3.1 billion and is projected to take between six and eight years to build.

Besides my astonishment that it is projected to take six to eight years to tear down and rebuild 1.5 miles of elevated freeway, and further, that no one seems to find such a timeframe curious, here's my question: If we can do without the viaduct for a construction period of. say, seven years, why can't we do without the Viaduct for seven decades?

•••

Some extremely brief background on a complex subject. In the early1950's Seattle built an elevated highway along its downtown waterfront. It runs for about 1.5 miles. By all claims the viaduct is prone to collapse in case of an earthquake; many people I know are scared to drive on it. The Mayor and City Council chose a tunnel to replace the viaduct in order to — it is also claimed — "connect the city to its front door of Puget Sound." The tunnel is supposed to cost $4.5 billion. To tear-down and replace the viaduct is supposed to cost >$2 billion. (All these numbers are rough and I keep hearing them change all the time.) To rebuild the viaduct in-place — i.e to repair it in place section-by-section and keeping it continuously open to some traffic — is claimed to cost as much or more than a brand-new viaduct. The State has allocated $2 billion for the corridor, in whatever form is finally decided makes most sense.  Our own senior Senator has told us that we should expect "no help" from Washington, D.C.  A group of activists — the People's Waterfront Coalition — urge us to tear down the viaduct and leave it down, as, we are repeatedly told, was done in San Francisco. But whole neighborhoods — Ballard in particular — look to the viaduct as their transport connection to the rest of the world.

•••

Now, first-term Councilman Della breaks ranks with his senior colleagues and a tough Mayor. He steps out of line to urge that we give up the dream of the tunnel and simply rebuild the viaduct. (There's an interesting political story right there but it is not mine to tell right now.)

So here's my practical planning question:

If we can do without the viaduct for a construction period of seven years, why can't we do without the Viaduct for seven decades?

I believe that that is the central political question surrounding the viaduct. Here's one scenario/prediction. The City turns on a dime and follows novice council-member Della's leadership and concedes that the tunnel is a no-go. So then people start focusing on the rebuild. The six to eight year construction period sticks in everyone's mind. "What will life be like? How will we manage? If we can accommodate a six to eight year construction period, maybe we can do without the viaduct completely?"

Others are starting to ask the same question:

If a new freeway is built along Elliott Bay, Seattle will invest substantial talent and resources to reduce traffic flows in that corridor during construction, only to welcome the cars back upon completion. We'll find ways to reroute cars onto existing streets or take them off the road altogether in the service of a project that will later encourage us to dispense with such innovation.

That meme will delight the tear-it-down folks but scare the bejeesus out of Ballard, whose residents and commercial interests are, I believe, fairly united in perceiving that the viaduct is their essential transportation artery. Ballard will turn on the complete rebuild option because it will be scared that once the viaduct is torn down and people see how nice it is without it and how the traffic can be accommodated, there will be pressure to scuttle the project. No sooner is that last question a common one — with a great number of Seattleites asking "Hey! If we don't need the viaduct for 6 to 8 years, maybe we can do without it forever?" — then the engineers will come up with a plan to rebuild the viaduct in-place. In exhaustion, in typical Seattle fashion, the Mayor and Council will agree to muddle in to the future.

My prediction, which you should understand is not necessarily my own first choice but simply an assessment of the politics: bet on a rebuild-in-place.

•••

UPDATE: One of the things to remember is that in terms of public perception, none of the transportation investments for the viaduct corridor do anything but maintain the status quo. Neither a tunnel nor a brand-new viaduct increase capacity though they arguably increase safety, so it'snot as though there is no pereceived gain. But the seven year disruption provides no easily-perceived transportation benefit. It's not as if one can say, "Well yes we'll suffer through construction for seven years and then we will have a nice 8-lane corridor through downtown." Most people will see that we already have an extremely efficient 8-lane corridor and all this effort will only maintain it. Once you are forced to take the tunnel off the table, then the tear-down & rebuild viaduct becomes a hard sell.

 

Comments

[Hardin]

QUOTE:
"If we can do without the viaduct for a construction period of, say seven years, why can't we go without the viaduct for seven decades?"

COMMENT:
My question would be: If we can do without eating for seven hours, why can't we do without eating for seven days? Or seven months?

[dustin]

You've hit upon an interesting idea that is even embedded in the Viaduct's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Essentially, (and this is the extreme short version), the EIS states that they can mitigate the impacts during construction by implementing a slew of projects that lessen commuter's reliance on drive-alone vehicles.

•Do give you an idea of the projects, check out the section titled "What would be done to minimize traffic impacts during construction?" in this pdf from WSDOT's Viaduct site .

Some of the mitigations include:

• Direct transit enhancements

••
• Expansion of FlexPass program during construction

•
• Traveler information systems

•
• Personalized transportation consultation


• (there's a total of 15 bulleted strategies...)
  

Essentially, many of the mitigation strategies have a substantial cost (which I think is implied in your post, but never explicitly stated).

So, another interesting question becomes.. Is the annual cost of mitigating these transit impacts less than the annualized cost of constructing the viaduct? I'm not sure how much they are planning on spending on transit enhancements, transit passes, and personalized transportation consultation(?), but my educated guess is that this amount is substantially less (by orders of magnitude) than the annualized cost of building the viaduct.

I think this adds another dimension to your point... i.e. not only can we go without the viaduct for seven years, but if the cost of this improved transportation system (i.e. much better, cheaper, faster bus transit... do I hear BRT anyone? :) ) is orders of magnitude less than the cost of replacing the viaduct, AND it provides for an acceptable transportation system, then this would seem to be a viable option...

[Jon Stahl]

I'm a Ballardite, and I certainly don't think of the viaduct as my "connection to the world." In fact, I avoid driving on it because it scares me. (Perhaps slightly irrational, I know, but that's not the point.) When I want to go south, I take I-5. If I'm going to downtown, I take 99 and get off before the viaduct.

The point is: Ballard is not that dependent on the viaduct. We're much more dependent on the non-viaduct portions of 99 to get to and from downtown.

[David Sucher]

So, Jon, what is your take onthe whole issue? What option do you favor?

[Gomez]

Noble intentions, bad logic.

Any change of the status quo should improve our circumstances. Tearing down the viaduct and leaving it gone, with our lack of mass transit options, only makes our transportation situation worse, because any efforts to build a significant citywide system (I mean the ENTIRE city, not single-line systems like the Green Line that only cover a small portion of ground) to compensate for the capacity loss will take at least a decade, likely longer. Removing the viaduct for good will only hurt the city's economy and quality of life in the long run, even if you eventually build mass transit in its place.

San Francisco's removal of the Embarcadero was offset by BART, Caltrain, Muni and over a dozen bus systems. We have Metro, SoundTransit, Link and the Sounder. Apples and oranges.

Plus, the reason we built the viaduct over those train tracks in Downtown decades ago is because nobody could build anything else there.

[Cary]

One misperception worth clearing is about exactly what the PWC is proposing. We advocate a set of fixes to existing roads and transit so that most of the trips that had been on the viaduct can be accommodated. We propose specific fixes to remove bottlenecks and improve flow in the surface grid so it functions like a grid should, with lots of choices. We advocate fixing the entrance/exit problems on I-5 so there are enough through-lanes and more direct flow -- which means more trips can get through downtown on that corridor. We advocate improving transit service and adding high speed transit on the west side of the city serving the route the monorail would have. We advocate freight priority lanes and priority access on freight arterials, strategies that work just fine in cities with bigger distribution economies and fewer highways than Seattle. We advocate replacing the 4 lane surface street on the waterfront -- no more pavement than exists there now. And we advocate coordinated land-use policies and incentives to create denser more walkable neighborhoods so mobility becomes less and less dependent on car use over time.

Our planners estimate that with the right mix of fixes, 50% to 60% of the trips can be accommodated by car on other roads, 25%- 30% can shift to better / new transit, and 20%-25% of the trips will stop happening when the road goes away because they were not that important anyway. Check out the Comprehensive Plan which lists measures of actual use/capacity in the grid, and you'll see there is plenty of unused capacity. It's not readily available now because of an accumulation of loony decisions, but could be if SDOT were tasked with that priority and given $500 million to do it.

The gridlock and the damaged economy that WSDOT threatens if capacity is reduced is not substantiated by any real-world evidence. Every other city that defied their state DOT and reduced highway capacity found that the dire warnings were just plain wrong. For the most alarming epiphany, look at the London example. Before congestion pricing went into effect, business leaders screamed bloody murder that it would kill their economy. After a few months of living with it most realized the traffic flow was actually better with fewer cars, and their economy didn't suffer at all.

If we're going to spend this kind of money, we should be investing in the future city we want to become, not in preserving the status quo. Spending $4.5 billion on a new highway that delays the problem for 9-13 years instead of investing in a long-term solution only makes sense to a) politicians and bureaucrats who want the power thrill of a megaproject and b) the businesses on the receiving end of the $4.5 billion.

The only way for a city with limited funding and limited real estate (two constraints that aren't going away) to improve mobility long-term is to invest in making walking, biking, and transit more convenient than driving for most trips. Yes, true, for our plan to work means some big changes have to happen pretty quickly. But it's not risky; it's actually quite sensible, modest and efficient compared to a massively expensive and disruptive megaproject. Smart leadership is already in place at the appropriate City departments (SDOT and DPD); all they're lacking is the political will from their boss.

[David Sucher]

Cary,
I am personally persuaded that the PWC's proposal should be given a thorough, fair-handed examination. In fact I am surprised that WSDOT hasn't done so (is that true?) through its EIS process because I would think that if they don't study it, they will be very vulnerable to legal challenge on the adequacy of the EIS.
That said, I think that the politics are intractable, as I write above. Taking away the viaduct will seem, I believe, like a dramatic and radical and dangerous step to many or even most people. Do you have any specific comment on the politcs as I outline them? i.e. that the "retrofit in place" option is where we will end up.

[Cary]

If we started every battle with "the politics are intractable" we'd never make an inch of progress. This battle has happened many many times before, and sometimes the highway loses. Read "Seattle Citizens Against Freeways: Fighting Fiercely and Winning Sometimes" for a great account of the courageous folks who took on WSDOT and blocked several new highways in our beloved city in the 1960s and 1970s. Dan Carlson at the UW also has a book of national case studies of citizens successfully blocking highways in their communities, "At Road's End."

So while we're not political geniuses at the PWC, here's why we think this is the right time to fight this highway:

1. There is no money for new urban highways. Nearly every other city faced with failing urban infrastructure has come to this conclusion. They've become too expensive to replace. Seattle voters don't like impractical spending.

2. The opportunity is too big to waste. This is a poorly used road occupying some of the most valuable public real estate a shore city can have. The ecological, civic, and economic benefits of getting rid of the traffic are high enough to outweigh the inconvenience cost of shifting trips to other facilities.

3. Many market and demographic trends point toward declining car use in the future: rising gas prices, boomers retiring, concern for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, interest in healthier lifestyles and richer community life. Seattle voters want to be a transit city, and they want to be a green city. If you show people a solution that invests in those values and that future, and show examples of how these approaches have worked fine elsewhere, the politics become less intractable.

4. As the public becomes more aware of exactly how terrible and unlike what they're imagining the tunnel* will be, support will plummet. The parts of the design the public hasn't seen yet and the financial risk of this project given the other projects we'll be funding in the next decade are scary.

5. Despite WSDOT's and the daily's efforts to pitch this approach as radical, an ubiased observer would see that it's actually a sensible and affordable approach. Making better use of capacity we already have in the grid, shifting more trips to transit, and creating a less car-dependent urban fabric is consistent with every planning document that our city and region have produced. And any logical person will reach the same conclusion you did: if we will have already invested in the fixes necessary to live without any highway for five years, why rebuild? Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco are all a couple decades ahead of us in prioritizing investment in transit and alternative modes above car trips, and they're thriving.

Check out the other thread for our perspective on the retrofit in place option. And I can explain how WSDOT sidestepped the requirement to study anything but a new highway if you're really interested.

[David Sucher]

Btw, Cary, you write in reference to the Viaduct that it is a "...poorly used road..." I don't get that. The Viaduct carries some 100 thousand cars per day. What do you mean?

[cary]

Because if congestion is so bad and it's so important, why isn't actual usage even close to its capacity? Why did the number of trips on it drop 30% in the months after the earthquake if those trips were so important? And how important were those trips to people making them if WSDOT's models predicted that 40,000 users a day wouldn't drive on it if a $1 toll were charged?