The Ongoing Saga Of The Seattle Viaduct

"The debate about Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct used to be a very public, contact sport, but as many local politicians were carted off the field, the controversy moved to a 30-person stakeholders group, who meet very quietly. Meanwhile, the politicians edge back onto the playing field and hint at solutions.

Gov. Chris Gregoire addressed a group of civic worthies Wednesday and dropped broad hints that she is now a fan of the no-tunnel, no-viaduct, surface-plus-transit solution that she used to excoriate. Noting that Seattle is an "international city," Gregoire defined that gauzy term by saying an international city could not possibly have on-street parking downtown or two-way streets. (So much for New York and Paris, but nevermind.) Those may be weird definitions, but they are unmistakable signals that she is buying into the stakeholder group's emerging consensus to divert a lot of viaduct through traffic to Seattle's downtown streets, thus needing only a four-lane, slow boulevard on the central waterfront."

"The story marks a remarkable political journey by local politicians. They have gone from thinking that all the present traffic needed to be accommodated by any solution to the viaduct to thinking in terms of moving people (in various modes), not just cars. All these urban freeways were once paid for largely by federal money. Now they are in need of expensive repair and the feds have fled. One solution is to scrape up local money to rebuild them. When the voters said a loud No to that idea (and the climate change issue moved to the fore), we quietly thought about another approach: removing freeways. It might work."