Seattle May Not Need Alaskan Way Viaduct
Seattle finds out that closing their major highway doesn't result in traffic chaos. Maybe closing another one - the Alaskan Way Viaduct - permanently, as some citizens would like to see, is more feasible that some would have us believe.
"Every time a highway is closed for repairs or due to damage - such as the "Maze Meltdown" in San Francisco, in which a major off-ramp which carries over 200,000 vehicles per day was destroyed; or the recent tragedy in Minneapolis; and now the closure of Interstate 5 in Seattle - officials predict "gridlock" and "traffic chaos". However, this prediction rarely comes true, as Seattle is finding out this week. People are getting around just fine despite the closure of their major freeway. Perhaps closing another downtown Seattle freeway permanently - the Alaskan Way Viaduct - as some citizens would like to see, isn't as crazy a notion as many think."
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Close 'Em All
All these remodelling speculations derive from a a single study from England more than a decade ago.
Of course Seattle doesn't "need" the viaduct. By exactly the same criteria Seattle doesn't "need" transit of any form. Are there any willing to do both nevermind transit first?
Antiautomobilia in the guise of cost benefit analysis risks greater comparison.
Urban Freeways A Mistake
I am glad to see that you agree with me and John Norquist that urban freeways are a mistake and we should get rid of them (as Norquist says in his essay "Tear It Down!" at http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysTear.html.
Freeways induce more long-distance trips, making cities less livable and making urban transportation no more convenient, as I show at http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysInducedReduced.html.
That "one study in England more than a decade ago" is actually the only comprehensive study of the subject that I know of, and it was published nine years ago.
"With funding from the city of London and British government, a team of researchers at University College, London, examined 60 cases where road capacity was taken away from cars, with examples from the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, the USA, Canada, Tasmania and Japan. Often, there were predictions that reducing capacity would cause gridlock, but the researchers found that, though there was sometimes short-term disruption, there were no cases of long-term gridlock."
Of course, there have also been many studies of individual cases of capacity reduction. For example, we know gridlock did not occur when freeways were removed in Portland, Milwaukee, New York, and San Francisco.
Charles Siegel