Liberal Talk Radio

Via Slog, I see that Kevin Fullerton of The Sierra Club has jumped on the build-nothing option for the crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Professor and I disagree on this, and to be sure, there are still many questions to be answered. Personally, I just don’t see the need for TWO freeways cutting through downtown Seattle seven blocks apart. There are better uses for our transit dollars.

The thing about SR 99 that gets lost in all of this is that the road is NOT an interstate. it’s a four-lane boulevard and only through downtown Seattle does it have no traffic lights. So it’s not a HUGE change to add a couple of more traffic lights to this road going through downtown. Sure, it won’t be able to handle the same capacity that a six-lane viaduct did, but it’ll be close enough. And people will adapt.

So far, the build-nothing option hasn’t even been properly studied. A thorough analysis of this option would be to everyone’s benefit. The People’s Waterfront Coalition is starting the conversation, but it’s still very far from the “serious” planning professionals in the region. And if the Monorail project has taught us anything, it’s that a populist insurrection against an urban planning authority is futile, even if it has wide popular support and billions of dollars in funding.