The Viaduct and Prop. 1
Larry Lange, in a great roundup of Proposition 1, highlights some viaduct goodness in the package:
Seattle stands to get $323 million in regional money if Proposition 1 passes to finance about 90 percent of three major road improvement projects on Mercer, and South Lander and Spokane streets. Those routes could handle traffic during the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and ultimately facilitate a surface-street replacement.
Indeed. Improving east-west connecitons south of downtown will make it easier to move people and freight without the viaduct. Additionally, adding lanes to I-405 will help realize one of my own little surface-transit ideas: routing Everett-to-Tacoma through traffic onto 405, freeing up capacity on I-5 to handle the viaduct-free future.
Either way, passing Prop. 1 will make a surface-transit replacement for the viaduct far easier.
- Frank's blog
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You are overlooking the negative effects of the 509 extension to I-5. Now relatively underused, if it taps into I-5 as called for in RTID, 509 will become a firehose of cars hitting the 1st Avenue South bridge, the industrial area, and the south end of the viaduct. It will impede freight mobility, and make it harder to implement the surface transit solution. It will also burden South Park with more pollution from cars idling at the 1st Avenue South Bridge, and more traffic as drivers bail off that traffic jam to cut through South Park to Airport Way.
Medina gets a lid, South Park gets tens of thousand more cars a day. Seattle gets some projects useful to surface and transit, and big one that makes it much harder. The region gets light rail, and massive highway expansion that makes global warming worse. The politicians have really messed this one up. They need to come back with a better plan.