Liberal Talk Radio

Though it’s hard to tell with mail-in ballots, it looks like both options are going down.

It’s time to move on. And since consensus is the topic du jour, let me offer my own plan for where to go from here.

“Grand bargains” rarely work in politics. They’re convenient rhetorical devices, though, and they have a sweeping allure. For example, most recently, some have suggested that the U.S. make a “grand bargain” with Iran: the U.S. would allow Iran to enrich uranium and would guarantee Iran’s safety, and in exchange the Iranians would stop funding terrorists and help stabilize Iraq.

But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of deal-making and legislating, there are often too many moving parts to make a grand bargain work. It’s easier to negotiate each piece incrementally, to make change slowly.

Nonetheless, the viaduct stalemate has gotten so bad — gaining even international notoriety — that perhaps a grand bargain is all we have left. So let me suggest one.

One of the sticking points in this debate is north/south capacity in Seattle. Surface/Transit proponents claim that a surface boulevard could handle maybe half (40K - 70K trips/day) of the current viaduct use (110K trips/day). The rest of the trips would disappear (people rearrange their habits pretty swiftly when traffic gets bad), switch to transit, or be diverted to other surface streets and/or I-5 (details here).

Critics have argued that this would put too much strain on the already-crowded I-5. And they have a point. Which is where the bargain comes in. We should move I-5 across the lake, where we can expand it. That is, we should swap I-5 and I-405, making 405 the default route for north-south trips that are bypassing the city. This would increase traffic on 405, so we should expand it. Greatly. Let’s give the folks on the Eastside, who dream of a bigger 405, the road of their dreams. Let’s make it mammoth — 12 or 16 lanes. It’s what many 405 commuters desperately want.

The solution would be very similar to Portland, where I-5 parallels downtown from across the water. Except we wouldn’t have to change highways, just swap names: I-5 becomes I-405, and I-405 becomes I-5.

In exchange for this wonderful, large Eastside highway, which could cost as much as $10 billion Seattlites would want something in return. Here’s what we’d ask for:

1. A 6-lane boulevard where Alaskan Way is today. We don’t know how much that would cost, but let’s say $2 billion, including seawall replacement, etc.
2. A Sound Transit light rail spur connecting SODO to West Seattle. This would allow West Seattlites a rapid connection to downtown, the airport, the UW, and eventually the Eastside. Since it would be build using the existing ST maintenance facilities and overhead, we could probably do it for less $1 billion.
3. If there’s money left over, a second spur to serve the Northwest area of the city, either along the monorail alignment through Interbay/Ballard, or along Aurora Ave.

If those last two sound suspiciously like the old Monorail plan, well, yes, they are. The western side of the city needs transit capacity. But if it were broached as part of a regional solution, with the city and the suburbs each getting something, it would have sturdier political legs.

Will it work? Probably not. There are too many entrenched interests right now who stand to lose face if their idea doesn’t get implemented. But desperate times call for desperate measures.