There is a local Seattle group that wants to strengthen and remodel the viaduct with a quieter roadbed, sound suppression panels at a cost below $600m. I have an engineering background and believe the Twelker & Gray structural remodel of the viaduct is quite doable. You can bet WSDOT & SDOT do NOT like that idea one bit.

So recent history. The infamous “Viaduct Stakeholders Group” was organized, vetted and run by WSDOT, SDOT and the King County transportation departments. I went as a public observer to several meetings. All the members of the stakeholders group were chosen exclusively by these transportation departments. The majority of members were “cars are evil”, surface option, transit only solution partisans with just a few token “save the elevated Viaduct option” members. Each meeting’s agenda was supplied by the transportation departments and the meeting chaired usually by SDOT dept head Grace Cunician (sp?). The effect, perhaps unintentional, was a sham PR dog and pony show that not so amazingly concluded a very expensive solution was called for - the deep bore tunnel with contractor pleasing massive new public works projects at each end of the viaduct corridor (BNSF tailtrack mitigation, Port of Seattle pork…etc). The “cars are evil” People’s Waterfront Coalition and Allied Arts boosters got what they wanted as well; a elevated Viaduct free tiny part of the Seattle Downtown waterfront.

When you walk the length of the existing Viaduct as I have you notice many important things. The elevated Viaduct only impacts a small part of Seattle’s waterfront. It turns away from the waterfront heading up toward the Battery Street Tunnel leaving blocks and blocks of unspoiled waterfront all the way to the Bell Harbor Center, the SAM Sculpture Park further north and at least 1 1/2 miles of Myrtle Edwards Park with lovely Puget Sound water frontage. All of this waterfront is quite devoid of people most of the time except for the occasional bike commuter continuing to Seattle from Interbay and Ballard. We have 2+ miles of EXISTING non-viaduct downtown waterfront right now without spending a dime and yet the 10 blocks in front of only half the waterfront piers is considered worth $4.2 billion to restore ! Our waterfront is cut off from the upper city core by elevation and topography not the Viaduct. Don’t believe me, walk along all of it or look at a topo map. This is scandalous. The Viaduct will come down but 14 stoplights and 5 lanes of car congestion will take it’s place. My understanding is, the current configuration of the deep bore tunnel has NO downtown entrances or exits. The “cars are evil crowd” waves their arms and proclaims the new design will substantially reconnect the Seattle street grid. This is hogwash, just study a map for goodness sakes. Our grid is constrained by hilly topology, Queen Ann Hill, south Lake Union, the Interlake train tracks, I-5 …etc…etc. Reconnecting the street grid works in flat mid-west urban centers NOT Seattle.

San Francisco’s Embarcadero “Freeway” removed to open up their waterfront was NEVER A FREEWAY, it was a 1 mile long elevated on-ramp to the neighboring bay bridge. The short elevated Embarcadero was supposed to be a piece of a much bigger 10 mile long freeway project circumnavigating downtown San Francisco, but was never completed. Unlike our Viaduct the Embarcadero never carried substantial thru traffic. Like I said it was just a white elephant on/off ramp to the bay bridge. Any comparison to the Seattle Viaduct is intentionally misleading “apples to oranges” which many in the Allied Arts crowd probably know full well. Tell a lie often enough though and soon it is taken as fact by too many parties around an issue. Big Oil lies and so do my fellow well intentioned enviro friends. As long as the end is justified, the means are not questioned. Sadly Mike McGinn has a very slick video regarding the San Francisco Embarcadero which never (intentionally I fear) mentions any of the true context of this elevated roadway. Propaganda in service to a cause we like should still be labeled as such - factually inaccurate propaganda, lest we on the progressive left become hypocrites no better than the Bush era Iraq War neo-con boosters we like to demonize.

With new technologies why can’t we rebuild the Viaduct to look more appealing and be done with it?