First, to quote an ex-President who suddenly doesn't look so bad these days, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I absolutely refuse to step into the sandbox with the idiotic politicians on all sides who have brought what should have been a simple decision on replacing an earthquake-damaged section of freeway to a grinding, squabbling, finger-pointing, flip-flopping, buck-passing, intensely irritating stop.
However, like all Seattleites, I have been asked to render an opinion on this fiasco, via a March 13 "advisory" vote that may or may not mean anything, since Gov. Christine Gregoire ("Oh! I thought they meant a tunnel to the center of the Earth!"), who may or may not have more than one option on her water table, could just act like the whole thing is one more sports stadium to be rammed down our throats. (At the newly erected viaduct's exits to Qwest and Safeco fields, perhaps they could erect a giant statue of a hand with four digits clenched.)
Whoops, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first point of order in this confusion is that your vote counts and you should cast it. When Gregoire or other state leaders proclaim, on odd-numbered days, that there's only one choice and Seattle's vote doesn't matter, they are lying. They are explicitly trying to get you to disenfranchise yourself. If city voters reject an Alaskan Way Viaduct rebuild, it will be easier to build it anyway if turnout is low. That's the game they're playing.
Don't buy into it. If Seattle voters prefer to tax ourselves to build a tunnel, it's almost impossible for the state to force a new viaduct down our throats on the grounds that it's cheaper. If voters reject both the tunnel and the new viaduct, we make it hard for the state not to take the time to consider other options more seriously, like a smaller tunnel or a waterfront boulevard with no freeway at all. Anything we do with a decent turnout helps take the decision away from the bumblers who have brought us to the current impasse.
So here's my humble (albeit mildly annoyed and tired of the whole thing) suggestion on how to vote. Let's start with the easy one. Vote no on the viaduct rebuild. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. First and foremost, because it is the only "choice" being given us by Gregoire, Frank Chopp and the other Olympia hoohahs, and since they forced this vote in the first place, they don't deserve to win it. But beyond that, this is perhaps the first vote since George Bush's reelection (or your average Tim Eyman initiative) where a decision can be made on purely aesthetic grounds.
The viaduct is just plain butt ugly, and, as banners overhanging Rainier Avenue South last week pithily proclaimed, the new one would be "even bigger, even uglier." Taking this opportunity to bury a shoreline two-level elevated freeway isn't just a matter of catering to developers. For an example of what's possible, look at the slice of the new Olympic Sculpture Park, still under construction, that has been restored into a sheltered little beachfront. It's designed as salmon habitat, is good for fish and other living creatures, and is good for us humans, too. That's the amazing civic jewel currently being wasted on rickety ticky-tack piers, carbon monoxide fumes and the rumble of overhead trucks.
The viaduct is a relic of '50s urban planning, when nothing was thought of sacrificing whole neighborhoods to the automobile. However, especially with the Seattle Monorail Project in ashes and no decent public transit for the West Seattle/Ballard corridor in sight, the traffic now carried by the via-duct can't simply be dumped on surface streets and I-5 because people think cars are a Bad Idea. And buses need non-gridlocked highways, too. That's why, even though Greg Nickels supports it (and has done so in about as clumsy and bullying a manner as possible), some version of the tunnel option makes the most sense.
It does the best job of unifying downtown with our forgotten waterfront, putting the current SR 99 traffic (and fumes) underground rather than overhead or at street level. And the opportunity for waterfront ecological restoration is greater, because buried in the overall cost is another essential infrastructure project Seattle needs to pay for: a new seawall. The current one is both decaying rapidly and not expandable to cope with future decades' rising sea levels.
Sure, the cost is a problem. But the cost of worsened gridlock (no replacement) or a glittering downtown with a hideous waterfront (bigger, uglier, seismically sound!) is greater. Vote no on the rebuild, yes on the tunnel, and then wait and see if Olympia pays any attention whatsoever. Regardless of the outcome, they'd better, because Seattleites have just about had it with this whole incompetently managed mess.
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