Rich

City tackles Mercer Mess.

The plan for fixing the Mercer Mess continues to chug along, even though more analysis by the city of Seattle is showing it won't do much to get people around faster.

Comments

[Matt]

Got boondoggle?

A quick timeline:

Early/Mid 1960's - City of Seattle acquires property on Mercer/Valley to build elevated Bay Freeway between Seattle Center and I-5

Late 60's/Early 70's - Citizens kill Bay Freeway (and RH Thompson). City leases out the properties on a month to month basis to several different businesses.

70s - 80's - several planning efforts on what to do with Mercer Corridor arrive at same conclusion - you can spend a ton of money reconfiguring the streets, but it will have a negligable effect on traffic

Early to mid 90's - Commons proposal plans to put Mercer under a lid as part of a grandiose park plan

Early to mid 90's - WSDOT proposes some changes to Mercer as part of a plan to turn the AWV into a toll tunnel.

1995 - WSDOT public/private toll road projects are all eliminated except Tacoma Narrows Bridge project.

Sept 1995 - Voters reject Commons

May 1996 - Voters reject Commons

1996 - City has a backlog of approximately $500 million in necessary maintainence for roads and bridges.

1997 - Seattle voters reject $90 million plan to raise property taxes to fix roads. Most widely cited reason - City ought to already be funding this out of existing budgets.

Late 1990's - South Lake Union adopts neighborhood plan, which calls for keeping Mercer/Valley corridor as is and making minor improvements to the most problematic section. City of Seattle adopts the plan - plans are made to straighten the westbound dogleg intersection at Mercer/Valley/Fairview (at the time, CM Jan Drago said "let's be clear, today we are making a policy decision to live with the Mercer corridor as is").

Late 1990's/early 2000's - City writes a proposal to surplus old Bay Freeway properties with conditions that can only be met by Paul Allen. Allen buys propertes, $5 million in proceeds are earmarked to be used to do revisions to Mercer/Fairview/Valley intersection.

Early 2000's - Alaskan Way Viaduct EIS process is running out of money, Nickels Administration diverts $5 million designated to fix aforementioned intersection to prop up dying WSDOT planning process

Early 2000's - Vulcan hatches plans for 2-way Mercer Street to improve development potential in neighborhood (they were presenting this plan privately at least a year before the Nickels Administration got on board and started championing it).

Early 2000's - Vulcan also gets installed on AWV "Leadership Team", and writes $300 million lowered Aurora project into all AWV EIS alternatives (and WSDOT and the Mayor still fully intend to do this - they just aren't including the price in the initial cost of what they euphamistically call the "core tunnel" project).

Early/Mid 2000's - Seattle Parks Foundation, largely comprised of former Seattle Commons Board members, offers to "donate" $20 million to South Lake Union Park - IF the City agrees to do Vulcan's planned reconfiguration of Mercer/Valley (this donation also duplicates some of what they had already agreed to in the terms of purchase for the Mercer/Valley property, and is contingent on taxpayer funds of approx $100 million to reconfigure Mercer/Valley).

Early/Mid 2000's - close to $10 million is spent by the City to study (and promote) Vulcan's Mercer scheme.

2004 - City Council staff analysis shows that proposed Mercer scheme has a negligable effect on traffic, and that eastbound trips from Seattle Center to I-5 will actually take longer.

2005 - Citizens pay for a poll, find that Seattle voters overwhelmingly oppose spending $100 million on Mercer if it doesn't significantly improve traffic.

2006 - City votes to spend another 2.5 million tax dollars to do planning for a Mercer project that currently has no capital funding.

2006 - first cost overrun on SLU park ($4+ million) is picked up by the City of Seattle and taxpayers.

2006 - Greg Nickels, citing a $500 million backlog of road and bridge maintainence that hasn't been addressed in the previous 10 years, proposes a property tax increase for fall ballot. Still unclear whether this includes AWV tunnel funding or Mercer $$$.

2007 - Regional Transportation Improvement District likely to go on ballot, City hopes to include funding for Mercer project.

If all of this isn't a good enough reason to kill the City of Seattle's proposed property tax increase for streets (and RTID if they try and put funding for this vanity project in it), I'm really not sure what is. By the time we vote on this (if they even let us, which they surely wouldn't if they could just take the money from other neighborhoods), the City will have flushed well over $10 million real dollars down the planning toilet at Hallivulcan's behest.

I guess we do know who REALLY runs Seattle, though.

[Holly B]

What exactly IS the Mercer Mess and why is promising to alleviate it considered a political priority by everyone who runs for office? I had a van driving job in the 1980s that required frequent traveling on Mercer between I-5 and Aurora, including the morning and afternoon rush hours, yet I don't recall that stretch of roadway being notably more congested or dangerous than other city arterials and cross streets.