Orphan Road

Seattle City Council wants tolls on 520 and 90, starting in 2010. This is even more aggressive than the fastest schedule that the tolling committee is considering:

Council President Richard Conlin, who also heads the council's SR 520 Committee, presented a letter to the committee, saying council members hope tolls will help "improve mobility throughout the region." The fare, around $2.30 one-way, depending on the time of travel, is "relatively modest yet still raises adequate revenue," he said.

By signaling that he wants the tolling to help manage congestion even before a new bridge is built, this proposal would rate a solid 4 out of 6 on my home-grown congestion pricing controversy-meter. Bold, but not politically impossible.

A major sticking point is what to do about Mercer Island. Island residents might suddenly have to pay a toll to go just about anywhere if there's a toll on I-90. On the one hand, that seems fair, certainly residents of Puget Sound's other islands (Vashon, Orcas, etc.) pay tolls to get on or off the Island. On the other hand, it's not something that most residents had in mind when they first moved there.

Regardless, there are a ton of ways to mitigate this, and I'm sure they will all get discussed at the next tolling open house which is, as luck would have it, on Mercer Island. You could set up the toll transponders on the other side of the island, so that Mercer Islanders could ride free to and from Bellevue, for example, but would have to pay to get into Seattle. Then they'd be in the same boat as the rest of the Eastside ('cept for the 206 area code, natch!).

The more interesting problem is how you handle people who don't have transponders in their cars. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge has a single toll booth for people to pay cash. The 520 committee, on the other hand, is touting a "no toll booths" strategy, according to their site:

However, we know that some vehicles will not have transponders or may be visiting from out of town. These vehicles will have their license plate photographed and can prepay or be invoiced for the toll, which will include an additional surcharge for processing the video.

This seems like it's going to piss a lot of people off, especially the additional surcharge bit. And I see no way they can get 4 toll booths and the requisite right-of-ways built between now and 2010.

Sightline tries to get us thinking about more options on 520:

Overall, the visual is effective. We do need to re-think capacity in terms of moving people, and giving them options. Trying to find room for SOVs in a modern city is folly.

Still, I sometimes wonder about renderings that show highways less-than-full capacity as some kind of blissful, post-congestion future utopia. As folks at, say, Sightline, never tire of pointing out: congestion is here to stay. It's possible that tools like congestion pricing could keep our freeways flowing at 50mph all day long, but I'm skeptical that there's the political will for that. If there's no traffic, people are going to want to drive until the roads are packed. And with 235mpg cars on the way, what's going to stop them?

Even in New York, where I grew up and where there are tons of transit options, the roads are still jammed at rush hour.

Former Mercer Island Mayor Aubrey Davis takes a hammer to Dino Rossi's transportaiton proposal in today's Seattle Times:

Engineering studies show that dumping eight lanes of traffic from 520 onto an already congested I-5 and I-405 would virtually shut down both freeways and create gridlock across the region. I-5 and I-405 would become the most expensive parking lots on Earth. Connecting an eight-lane 520 to I-5 and I-405 would be like trying to connect a fire hydrant to a garden hose, and the ones getting wet would be us, the taxpayers.

It has been estimated that billions of dollars in new lanes on I-5 and I-405 would be needed to make this fire hydrant-to-garden hose connection that Rossi proposes even remotely possible. These costs are not accounted for in Rossi's plan and funding is not available.

Davis clearly hasn't read the part of Ross's plan where he promisies free jet skis for everyone.

Interesting piece in the Boston Globe talking about how cities like Seattle are re-thinking big downtown highways after the Big Dig. The article notes that the federal juice isn't there like it used to be -- the Dig would basically never have happened had Tip O'Neill not been Speaker of the House.

Of course, we've got our own Tip O'Neill here in Seattle, but thankfully she's focused on funding for transit, not big downtown highway tunnels.

I also liked this bit from John Norquist:

John O. Norquist, a former mayor of Milwaukee, concedes that his plan to tear down a 0.8-mile stretch of an elevated highway would not have passed a public referendum.

Instead, he persuaded Milwaukee's downtown property owners that the old Park East Freeway was hurting their land values and undermining economic progress. Then he took the plan to the governor and bartered a deal, he said.

Norquist is so convinced of the economic and cultural values of the project that he now goes around the country advocating highway removals, as president of the Congress of New Urbanism.

Norquist argues strenuously that successful cities are not built on their lack of traffic congestion. He offers Detroit as an example of a city that has defeated congestion, but has yet to recover from its economic problems.

"The thing that makes Boston valuable isn't its fast traffic," he said. "The thing that makes Boston is its complexity."

As much as it pains us to admit it sometime, traffic congestion is a happy problem. It means people have lots of jobs to go to. If Microsoft were to close up shop in Redmond, I'm sure it would ease traffic on the 520. But at what cost?

WSDOT is considering moving the 520 HOV lanes from the right-hand side to the left, where HOV lanes typically run. They might even do this before the new bridge is in.

The main impediment to moving them thusfar, in my understanding, is the fact that the right-hand lanes are former shoulders not safe enough for general purpose traffic. But maybe they're getting an upgrade, or WSDOT has decided that they're safe enough.

Could we really be driving across a new 520 bridge in just 6 years?

2018 always seemed like a bit of a worst-case estimate to me. We'll see what happens with the discussions between the various community groups, of course, but this is good news indeed. Especially the part where it magically gets cheaper.

This P-I article starts off by giving the impression that the 520 bridge issue is settled, that all groups have come to consensus. But as you read further down, you start to realize that lots of key groups -- the Laurelhurst community, fish and wildlife, UW -- are opposed to some or all of the proposed solution.

While the Governor seems to approve, I'll reserve judgement until I see a price tag on this thing, which seems to have all manner of lids and tunnels and other expensive gee-gaws.

And, of course, I fully expect Ron Sims to forcefully oppose this plan, since it contains even more of "landscaped lids" in high-income neighborhoods that led him to withdraw his support of Proposition 1.

Finally, it just occured to me that I'm probably going to lose one of my favorite Seattle driving shortcuts, which is to jump on 520 Eastbound for one exit and get off at Montlake, when I'm headed to either University Village or Drinking Liberally at the Montlake Ale House. See? I'm sacrificing something, too, here!

For a variety of reasons, I think the 6-lane option is best for a new 520 bridge, as I've said before.

But the simple fact is this: Sound Transit, the only agency that would build such a light rail line, has no interest in a 520 rail link. Heck, they still don't have the funds or a mandate for an I-90 link (as Mike @ CIS notes). And the Husky Stadium station, as currently designed, would not be able to handle the incoming connection from 520. More expensive excavating would be required, perhaps directly underneath the Stadium or Arboretum. it would be a mess.

That said, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea, pushed by Eastside pols, that using the only two HOV lanes for light rail at a later date would be somewhat problematic. Running light rail to, say, Redmond, would mean that carpoolers heading to Kirkland would be stuck in general purpose traffic, and we'd be back to our current problem. But trying to predict the technology, demographics, or business climate 50 years out is a fool's game. There's no guarantee that we'll still be using light rail then, or that Microsoft will even exist.

I'd be more interested in seeing money invested in good HOV connections from 520 to I-5 and I-405 so that buses can use the full HOV network to get around.

Looks like the plan to save money by building smaller, light-rail-incompatible pontoons for the new 520 bridge has been scrapped. Instead, we're goign to save money by building the pontoons now, before the design for the rest of the bridge is complete:

Gov. Chris Gregoire last month commended WSDOT's Early Pontoon Construction Project, part of a $4 billion fiscal plan for the bridge, citing emergency preparedness, and an estimated $400 million savings from reduced pontoon size and lower inflation-related construction costs.

The plan calls for completion of the pontoons by 2013. A bridge replacement is not expected before 2018.

Engineers are designing pontoons as long as 360 feet -- the length of a football field -- and strong enough to support a state-mandated, six-lane freeway -- two general-purpose and one HOV lanes each way -- with potential capacity for future light rail.

Sounds good to me. Not unlike the Viaduct solution: agree on what we agree on, and kick the can down the road on the rest.

State Sen. Cheryl Pflug has a rather incoherent and semi-unhinged rant the the Seattle Times arguing for ... well, it's not exactly clear. She's mad at the Governor for a bunch of stuff, the Democratic majority, too.

While I grant that the Ferry system has a lot to answer for, her argument really runs off the rails when it turns to a new 520 bridge:

Now the governor wants to take money from the viaduct and give it to 520. She wants to build a smaller version of the bridge — six lanes rather than the eight we really need. Her hurry-up plan will not relieve congestion or provide for future transit options.

Worse, in 2008, the governor and majority will propose to fund the 520 floating bridge through tolls — penalizing people for driving cars. They point to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as an example that has worked well. The public knows better.

With the Narrows Bridge, drivers do not have alternative routes. There are many alternatives to driving over 520. Some say regional tolling is a way to avoid the congestion caused by drivers trying to avoid toll roads. But regional tolling brings other problems.

Sure, there are alternatives to 520. Like I-90. Which is exactly why the Gov proposed tolling that, too. And I'm sorry, but the line "penalizing people for driving cars" has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. What, does Sen. Pflug really think that the State should be rewarding people for driving? "Sweet ride, here's a check!" Sorry Senator, but even eight lanes across 520 won't be enough to handle the demand caused by that policy.