Unity on the Viaduct
The holy trinity (Sims, Nickels, Gregoire) have a joint op-ed in the Times today on the "multidimensional" problem of replacing the Viaduct.
Mike @ CIS sees tell-tale signs of squishiness, and I tend to agree. But they do at least seem to be softening up the public for the idea that there might not be a new waterfront freeway in Seattle's future.
For folks like me who are obsessed with this stuff, the idea of going to an Embarcadero-style surface boulevard makes so much sense, we can tend to forget how much of a shock it might be to the general public when our elected leaders announce that they're going to tear down a highway and replace it with... nothing.
Well, nothing you can see anyway. Sure, gas is at $4/gallon, yes, Americans are starting to drive less and think about alternatives. But it's going to take some real public education before they announce the plan later this year.
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Actually, I think the shock to the general public came when it looked like the state was going to build a new elevated freeway on the waterfront.
The fact is, Seattle ain't what it used to be. Lots of Seattleites today are fairly recent arrivals, on the memory-building scale, and lots of the development of the past decade just doesn't relate much to 99 as a transportation corridor.
I think the realization that the ferry system was just stumbling along in dreamland, absent-mindedly planning hundreds of millions in spending for car ferries that probably won't happen, was the wake-up call for Governor Gregoire. I'm guessing that a close look at the highway department's planning would show a lot of planning based on buck-and-a-quarter gas, and not very much based on AGW.
If this is a stepdown for Gregoire from her new-freeway-in-December position, more power to her.
I think removing the freeways from our downtown cores is the first step towards transit oriented development. Look at all the major mass transit cities in country. Boston removed their downtown freeway with the Big Dig. San Francisco removed one of their freeways and now only has the one. WDC has very few miles of freeway in the district itself. NYC has no freeways that go through Manhattan.
Many European cities don't even have freeways that enter the city. The greatest thing is that it's been shown to improve traffic, just cause you remove a bottle neck and allow people to flow in whatever direction they need to.