The Alaskan Way Viaduct
The Alaskan Way Viaduct, carrying State Highway 99, is one of the two narrow, obsolete north-south highways shoehorned into the city of Seattle. A two-tier structure that runs right along the downtown waterfront, it was designed and built at the same time, and with a similar plan, as Oakland's ill-fated Cypress Structure.
The Cypress Structure collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake, and our Viaduct took damage, but did not collapse, in our smaller Nisqually quake a few years ago. Frantic seismic improvements have been made, but the fact is that the Viaduct must be taken down before it falls down. How, or if, it should be replaced has become a topic of great debate.
The Mayor, the City Council and many others including me, favor burying the highway. The seawall that protects downtown Seattle from Elliot Bay is also in need of replacement, and a single project involving using a rebuilt seawall as one side of a cut-and-cover tunnel carrying the road seems efficient. It would replace the huge, noisy highway that cuts downtown off from the waterfront with vistas, access, and parkland.
Just one problem. It would be expensive. Opponents continually compare it to Boston's Big Dig. It is while listening to this debate that I feel like the transplanted outsider that I am.
I grew up on the East Coast, in the Connecticut suburbs of New York. I lived in Boston before the Big Dig, and have been back during and after. In terms of the size and scope of public works, and highway infrastructure, Seattle is, frankly, minor league. There are dozens of highway structures back there on the scale of the Viaduct which people in Washington State have never heard of. This project is vital to Seattle, and it will have a dramatic effect on downtown, but compared to the rest of the world, it's just not a big deal. And it certainly isn't a Big Dig.
Boston’s “Big Dig” was several orders of magnitude more complicated than burying the Viaduct, perhaps the most complex public works project ever. An analogous project here would be widening and burying I-5 through Seattle, without re-routing any of the existing traffic or disturbing existing structures above ground, while at the same time building a new suspension bridge to Bellevue and a tunnel under Elliot Bay to West Seattle. The Big Dig project not only buried a longer stretch of a wider highway with heavier traffic, it also included a new tunnel underwater to Logan Airport and new bridges across the Charles River, including that pretty cable-stay number that now appears in any TV show or film set in Boston. (By the way, we're also struggling with planning a replacement for the floating bridge to Bellevue, a completely different project from the Viaduct.)
It's true that the Big Dig had enormous cost overruns, in part because it started before planning was finished. (Ask your home remodelling contractor how cheap that practice is.) But, for all its expense, Boston has now addressed decades of increasing traffic hassles and crumbling infrastructure problems, and now has both vital transportation facilities that will continue to serve it and the New England region for half a century or more, and bustling new, taxable, waterfront developments.
Washington State has a history of badly-bungled public works projects, including the billion dollar default of the WPPSS project ("Whoops!") that helped cripple the nuclear power industry. There is also lingering resentment about some political manuvers involved in funding new sports stadiums. There is a traditional divide between the East and West sides of the state, with unwillingness to see money go to the other side of the Cascades. A much-ballyhooed light-rail system was overpromised, and is overbudget and behind schedule. All of this makes funding public works projects here contentious.
But I've seen Boston before and after they took down the Central Artery. I've also seen San Francisco before and after they took down the Embarcadero Freeway. There is a huge improvement in the quality of life in the city when you remove huge aerial highways and connect the downtown to the water. I'm sorry, it is just plain silly to suggest that we should build a newer, bigger aerial structure to replace the Viaduct.
It might be, as in San Francisco, that we could live without any real replacement. Some are arguing for that. I remain unconvinced. But to claim that the tunnel proposal has the potential to be a Big Dig-type debacle is absurd. The planners and engineers of Washington have the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past, and even if they didn't the Viaduct is physically a much, much smaller project.
Sometimes I really wish people in Washington got out of the state more.
The Cypress Structure collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake, and our Viaduct took damage, but did not collapse, in our smaller Nisqually quake a few years ago. Frantic seismic improvements have been made, but the fact is that the Viaduct must be taken down before it falls down. How, or if, it should be replaced has become a topic of great debate.
The Mayor, the City Council and many others including me, favor burying the highway. The seawall that protects downtown Seattle from Elliot Bay is also in need of replacement, and a single project involving using a rebuilt seawall as one side of a cut-and-cover tunnel carrying the road seems efficient. It would replace the huge, noisy highway that cuts downtown off from the waterfront with vistas, access, and parkland.
Just one problem. It would be expensive. Opponents continually compare it to Boston's Big Dig. It is while listening to this debate that I feel like the transplanted outsider that I am.
I grew up on the East Coast, in the Connecticut suburbs of New York. I lived in Boston before the Big Dig, and have been back during and after. In terms of the size and scope of public works, and highway infrastructure, Seattle is, frankly, minor league. There are dozens of highway structures back there on the scale of the Viaduct which people in Washington State have never heard of. This project is vital to Seattle, and it will have a dramatic effect on downtown, but compared to the rest of the world, it's just not a big deal. And it certainly isn't a Big Dig.
Boston’s “Big Dig” was several orders of magnitude more complicated than burying the Viaduct, perhaps the most complex public works project ever. An analogous project here would be widening and burying I-5 through Seattle, without re-routing any of the existing traffic or disturbing existing structures above ground, while at the same time building a new suspension bridge to Bellevue and a tunnel under Elliot Bay to West Seattle. The Big Dig project not only buried a longer stretch of a wider highway with heavier traffic, it also included a new tunnel underwater to Logan Airport and new bridges across the Charles River, including that pretty cable-stay number that now appears in any TV show or film set in Boston. (By the way, we're also struggling with planning a replacement for the floating bridge to Bellevue, a completely different project from the Viaduct.)
It's true that the Big Dig had enormous cost overruns, in part because it started before planning was finished. (Ask your home remodelling contractor how cheap that practice is.) But, for all its expense, Boston has now addressed decades of increasing traffic hassles and crumbling infrastructure problems, and now has both vital transportation facilities that will continue to serve it and the New England region for half a century or more, and bustling new, taxable, waterfront developments.
Washington State has a history of badly-bungled public works projects, including the billion dollar default of the WPPSS project ("Whoops!") that helped cripple the nuclear power industry. There is also lingering resentment about some political manuvers involved in funding new sports stadiums. There is a traditional divide between the East and West sides of the state, with unwillingness to see money go to the other side of the Cascades. A much-ballyhooed light-rail system was overpromised, and is overbudget and behind schedule. All of this makes funding public works projects here contentious.
But I've seen Boston before and after they took down the Central Artery. I've also seen San Francisco before and after they took down the Embarcadero Freeway. There is a huge improvement in the quality of life in the city when you remove huge aerial highways and connect the downtown to the water. I'm sorry, it is just plain silly to suggest that we should build a newer, bigger aerial structure to replace the Viaduct.
It might be, as in San Francisco, that we could live without any real replacement. Some are arguing for that. I remain unconvinced. But to claim that the tunnel proposal has the potential to be a Big Dig-type debacle is absurd. The planners and engineers of Washington have the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past, and even if they didn't the Viaduct is physically a much, much smaller project.
Sometimes I really wish people in Washington got out of the state more.
posted by Paul at 9:22 AM |
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