Liberal Talk Radio

if you give one half a whit about what happens to Seattle’s downtown waterfront, take a minute to read This SF Chronicle article on the Embarcadero freeway from 2004. Yes, the parallels are inexact, but it’s still an amazing story of what could be:

The Embarcadero Freeway pushed north along the waterfront for nearly a mile, two thick lines of concrete 70 feet high and 52 feet wide that hit the bay at Folsom Street and ended bluntly at Broadway. It cut off the downtown from the water that gave birth to it, and it left the iconic Ferry Building — a statuesque survivor of the 1906 earthquake — stranded behind a dark wall of car exhaust and noise.

Oppressive does not begin to describe it.

…

Voters in 1986 even rejected a ballot measure to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway and construct a boulevard with jogging paths, bicycle lanes and streetcar lines. It’s what everyone said they had wanted all along — but fear of the unknown trumped common sense.

Until the 15 seconds of Loma Prieta.

(via PWF)