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Podcast - A Report On Transportation Planning For The Seattle Viaduct

22 March 2007 - 9:00am

This installment features a report on transportation planning in Seattle, where local politicians and planners are trying to decide how to deal with a damaged downtown highway, the Alaskan Way Viaduct. After a recent vote in which Seattle residents overwhelmingly turned down two options for replacing the busy waterfront highway, we talk with some of the local officials and planners involved in finding new transportation solutions in the shadow of the highway's impending closure.

This podcast also includes the Planetizen News Brief, our weekly analysis of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Report Transcript

A congested double-decker inner-city highway in Seattle, Washington, has been a headache for downtown commuters for decades. Structural damage from a 2001 earthquake has also made the waterfront highway a headache for local and state politicians, who’ve been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since. The damage to the 54-year-old, 2.2 mile-long Alaskan Way Viaduct means that it’s going to have to come down sometime, but nobody’s sure about what – if anything—is going to take its place when its gone. Seattle residents were recently asked in a non-binding vote to offer their support for two possible options: rebuilding the viaduct as a new double-decker highway, or digging a tunnel and putting it underground. Both options would be multibillion dollar engineering projects, and each was supported by big-name influential politicians. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was pushing for the tunnel, while Washington Governor Chris Gregoire was in favor of the rebuild. But when the ballots came in on March 13th, both options were overwhelmingly opposed by voters.

Marianne Bichsel is the spokesperson for Mayor Nickels.

"The mayor said the day after the night of the -- when the results came in and the day after that clearly the voters of Seattle have rejected both of these options, so we need to find a new way. They don’t want a freeway on their waterfront, whether it’s above-ground or below-ground."

“It sent a message that we have some more work to do.”

That’s Ron Paananen, project director of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement Project for the Washington State Department of Transportation

“I think part of the issue here in Seattle is that there may not be a majority in favor of any particular alternative. And so in the end, it’s going to be a tough decision by our elected officials what meets the best overall interests of the city of Seattle and the state in general.”

Clark Williams-Derry has been closely following the Alaskan Way Viaduct project for the last two years. As research director for the Seattle-based urban and environmental think tank Sightline Institute, he has written extensively about the circulation and planning issues surrounding the damaged highway, and the political ramifications of the recent vote.

"It puts politicians here in a bit of a bind because they’ve been sort of pushing this idea that we have to rebuild the aerial, we have to rebuild the highway. Basically, the public has said ‘No, we’re not going to do it your ways. We have to come up with another alternative.’"

One local politician who is in favor of going with another alternative is King County Executive Ron Sims. For much of the history of the Alaskan Way Viaduct controversy, Sims has been a vocal proponent of refocusing the planning efforts on improving surface streets and access to public transit. With recent voting results leaning away from the rebuild and the tunnel and towards another unidentified option, he seems to relish the indirect support for his surface streets and transit approach. But the fact that this option was not included in the ballot for voter consideration is a sign to Sims that the political and planning mindsets are stuck in highway building mode.

"Your models determine your outcomes. And the issue is that all of us are going to have to think through whether our modeling is correct."

“So, What kind of model should we be working from, is it going to be a vehicle model or a people model. And I think the position I am taking and have taken is that in areas of density, and where land is expensive, and project costs are high, you’ve go to talk about moving people."

But it might not be that simple. According to Paananen at the Washington State DOT, the role that the viaduct currently plays in handling traffic in downtown Seattle is too big to ignore. More than 110,000 cars drive on the viaduct everyday, about one-quarter of all north-south traffic in Seattle. Paananen says that about half of the north-south traffic travels on nearby Interstate 5, and the remaining quarter of the traffic fills the city streets of downtown Seattle. Removing the viaduct would put traffic 50-50 on the interstate and the streets of Seattle – streets that wouldn’t be able to handle the doubled load.

“At the project level in the past when we’ve looked at surface alternatives, we haven’t satisfied ourselves that we can take down the viaduct and replace it with a surface street that has the same kind of benefits as a new elevated highway or a tunnel."

“People accuse us of being highway focused, but really we looked at the whole picture, and in the end had a hard time of making the whole system work without this critical link.”

But many in Seattle remain unconvinced that the surface street and transit option has been adequately explored. Williams-Derry of the Sightline Institute outlines what’s lacking in the research and planning for this alternative.

"Really what’s been missing from the streets and transit approach has been a detailed plan, developed by credible transportation planners that ‘this is how we’re going to take care of that capacity: we’re going to ramp up transit capacity here, we’re going to put extra buses on the street, we’re going to figure out the choke points in the street network and try to figure out how to move traffic through Seattle, downtown Seattle more efficiently’"

And while he sees many shortcomings in the planning process, Williams-Derry can empathize with the complex nature of the viaduct issue.

"It’s a tricky problem. I mean, I don’t want to say that ‘oh, it’s simple to solve this thing without a highway’, so I understand that they’re not just trying to force a solution down Seattle’s throat."

But County Executive Sims is less forgiving. He feels that many transportation planners and public officials are still stuck in the mode of doing things the way they’ve been done for the last half century: building freeways to deal with circulation issues.

"The reason we still have mobility in the United States is that we have been slowly migrating from that, and that’s why light rail’s in play, and bus rapid transit. Those in fact are admissions that the model needs to be tweaked."

And whether the model in Seattle is tweaked or not remains to be seen. But for now, local, county, and state officials are looking to put aside -- or at least ignore their differences and develop a plan for Seattle that will benefit the city’s circulation. Many are predicting a 10- to 20-year planning and implementation timeframe for this project, whatever it ends up being. As Williams-Derry says, the only thing left to do now is figure out how to do it.

"Of course, the devil’s in the details, and I don’t think we’ve really taken the sort of detailed, fine-grain look at what we could do to make this work, but I think it’s possible."

Related Planetizen News Stories

Seattle Voters Say No To Two Viaduct Plans
Will Too Much Public Input Create 'The Big Ugly'?
Rethinking Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct
3 Proposals For Replacing Seattle's Viaduct
Proposal To Tear Down Obsolete Viaduct Gains Momentum

Full Planetizen News Brief Transcript

Right now it is the place for redevelopment in cities across the U.S., but is the old song right? Will things really be great when you're downtown? Not if the downtown you're in is in Las Vegas or in San Jose, California. A recent article in The Economist outlined attempts by the two cities to revive their city centers - and the disappointing failures that followed. In San Jose, the burst of the dotcom bubble brought downtown office vacancies to record highs that have continued to climb since. The city has tried to lure developers with tax incentives and even free land, but the area continues to struggle. Meanwhile, downtown Las Vegas is experiencing a similar fate, suffering while the main Las Vegas strip enjoys exponentially greater occupancy rates and economic activity. But downtown Vegas is fighting back -- forcing people to come to the city center by relocating county, state, and federal courts to the historic downtown. But even with a boom of lawyers occupying downtown buildings, the area still lacks the permanent residents it has sought for years.

Another problem facing urban areas is the lack of affordable housing. However, this issue is not just affecting lower income brackets, but also the middle class. According to an article in Apartment Finance Today magazine, more and more middle class residents in urban areas can hardly afford to rent homes, let alone buy them. A Harvard University Study reports that in 2004, more than 15.8 million people were paying more than half of their income to rent housing, the equivalent of about 44% of the nation's 36.2 million renter households. Census figures show that rents raised an average of 22.6%, while median income wages raised by only 15.5 percent. Housing experts are projecting an increasing nationwide trend in renting households due to higher housing prices.

And in other nationwide statistics, USA Today recently reported that ridership on U.S. public transit systems has seen a big increase, rising to its highest level since 1957. More than 10 billion bus and rail trips were taken in 2006, a 2.9% increase from 2005, according to the American Public Transportation Association, a non-profit transit advocacy group. However, critics of public transit subsidies argue that the transportation association's statistics overlook the fact that the percentage of total passenger travel that utilized traffic was actually lower in 2006 than it was in 2005.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Is Downtown Renewal A 'Fool's Errand'?
Will Renting Become The New American Dream?
U.S. Transit Ridership Soaring

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The circumstances that many localities and planning departments are suffering in the current economic winter will no doubt generate stress on administrations and service levels. The economy, combined with the housing bubble, has dealt a double blow to local budgets and revenue streams.
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