NO and NO
That’s how I voted on Seattle’s two March 13 advisory measures. It’s the latest chapter in our interminable struggle to figure out what the hell to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The waterfront highway, built in the mid-1950s, almost collapsed during the February 28, 2001 Nisqually earthquake (6.8 on the Richter scale).
The Seattle area breathed a sigh of relief after the quake, knowing how close it had come to repeating the horror (and the 42 deaths) of Oakland’s Cypress Freeway in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In the six years since Nisqually, the Viaduct has been shored up and semi-stabilized, but that’s been mere band-aids. Because the Viaduct is built on loose fill, subject to liquefaction during severe shaking, each inspection shows a few more inches of movement in some of its support columns.
You’d think that there would have been a sense of urgency hereabouts after that close call. You’d think that a serious and comprehensive study by blue-ribbon experts in construction, transportation planning, urban design, environmental impact, finance, and political relations would have reached a consensus solution to the problem. Whether that solution would be a new elevated structure, a cut-and-cover tunnel, a surface boulevard with dedicated rapid transit, or something else ... none of that would really matter to me, if the process resulted in a decisive and well-defined solution.
But that’s not the Seattle way, not the Washington way. No one with the power and expertise to make decisions ever does so. Instead, we have endless discussionbabble, repeated votes on incomplete and ill-formed ballot issues, and utter inertia.
I’m basically an agnostic regarding the eventual solution to replacing the damaged Viaduct. I’d really like to see our leaders actually lead by taking bold steps to expand an integrated rapid mass transit system and act to cut fossil fuel emissions in anticipation of the future of carbon credits, but I’d even be willing to accept a more automobile-centric outcome if they’d just make a damn decision.
To be honest, what I’d really like to see is an enlightened 21st-century version of Robert Moses. Not the Moses who never met a highway he didn’t want to build, or the Moses who destroyed neighborhoods ... no, I seek the part of Moses that articulated a comprehensive regional vision for an entire metropolitan region, and then had the political persuasive power to marshal resources and get it done.
My NO/NO vote, then, is more of a complaint about the way this thing is (not) being done than any sort of assessment of the (meager) relative merits of the two crappy, incomplete, half-assed alternatives offered up to us—six full years after the earthquake—in this meaningless glorified opinion poll. I’m saying NO/NO to the inane way it’s being handled, the way important issues always seem to be (mis)handled in Washington.
Amongst all the hot air being discharged hereabouts concerning replacing the Viaduct, last week I came upon a refreshing viewpoint in the Post-Intelligencer. Chi-Dooh Li is a Seattle lawyer and semi-regular columnist in the paper. His February 22 column, Outdated mind-set won’t move us forward, is well worth reading. Here are a few highlights:
Ever since the first gas tax was passed by the Legislature in March 1921, that mind-set has worshiped highways as sacred objects—so sacred that in 1944 the 18th Amendment to the state constitution was enacted, prohibiting the use of gas tax money for anything other than highways.
No highway project exemplifies this thinking as much as the Alaskan Way Viaduct. When it opened in 1953, the viaduct was the first major state highway project built with funds protected by the 18th Amendment. It did not matter that the viaduct divided a city from its waterfront. The highways religion considered questions of urban aesthetics sheer blasphemy.
Earlier generations of transportation planners had enough regard for what a waterfront meant to a city by putting rail tracks underground from the point where today’s north viaduct entrance begins all the way to the King Street Station.
But by the1940s, the high priests of highways held it as an indisputable article of faith that there could be no higher purpose in heaven or on Earth than the free movement of the automobile.
Li concludes:
Who needs a viaduct anyway? By 2020, the optimistic projected completion date for a new viaduct, we’ll have light rail in place and running from Northgate to Federal Way. The line will be farther extended north to Everett, south to downtown Tacoma and east to Bellevue and Redmond.
By 2027, a light rail system with about 60 miles of track, considered unnecessary and not viable by the 1967 PSRTS report, will be taking thousands of commuters out of their cars. Interstate 5 and heavy rail will continue to accommodate freight traffic needs.
Second, and most heretical of all: For the sake of future generations, let’s repeal the 18th Amendment to the state constitution, so that gas tax money can be used for all transportation modes, not just highways.
That last portion may be a key to finding a real answer to the Seattle transportation problem. The combination of lost Viaduct capacity—no matter what, most current traffic on the road will have to find some sort of alternative for many years—and expansion of rapid transit alternatives like light rail and, perhaps, dedicated busways or other approaches may eventually determine the final outcome. No matter what WSDOT ends up building on the waterfront in the next decade or two.
PS. I wonder whether there’s a Las Vegas book taking wagers on when the first shovelful of dirt will be turned for the Viaduct replacement project. Whatever date they’re betting on, I’ll take the over.
Comments
Thank you M’luv; together you and I have cast four “NO” votes. In case you’ve forgotten, “Skip” Li was, among other things, a speech writer for Dan Evans, but he has rehabilitated himself.
Our state constitution, and several statutes, earmark taxes from various sources to go to specific purposes. There really is something super-arrogant about that. It is saying, “I am so wise at this moment that I want to prevent my future self and all future generations from spending this money to meet problems which I cannot possibly foresee.”
When the 18th amendment was passed, fewer than half of all families in the state owned a car; virtually all commuting trips were by bus, ferry, or train; and no one who voted for the 18th could imagine a time when we would see cars as anything but a blessing.
Make that two comments!
I’m with you though - this whole process has been so dysfunctional. I am also encouraging a No and Hell No vote....
Excellent post. I’m glad Gibney linked to it.
I voted no and no as well.
Moi aussi.
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