They're at it again. Trying to fix the Mercer Mess.
It's the latest in a long list of proposed improvements for the transportation corridor, and as is usually the case, funding remains a big issue.
With an estimated cost somewhere between $120 million and $140 million, the road fixes are concentrated in the emerging South Lake Union neighborhood. However, the streets in Lower Queen Anne won't see that much improvement, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation's own estimates.
SDOT staffers went into public-outreach mode on Thursday, Sept. 27, at a sparsely attended open house in the South Lake Union Armory. The design renderings on display at the meeting pictured tree-lined streets full of pedestrians - but very little traffic.
The proposal is to widen Mercer between I-5 and Dexter Avenue North so there will be three lanes of travel going both directions. There would also be landscaped medians, wide sidewalks and on-street parking.
Valley Street, on the other hand, would be narrowed to a two-way, two-lane street. It would connect to the trolley and be made more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists, according to SDOT.
Preliminary improvements stop at Ninth Avenue North, with improvements across Aurora slated for the future. That, in turn, is tied to the future of the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement, the fate of the Battery Street Tunnel and the proposal to eliminate the Aurora overpass at Mercer.
Still, eastbound traffic flows coming from the west side of Aurora would be "basically maintained" at current levels, said Angela Brady, the SDOT project manager. By the same token, she said, travel time would be improved only a bit for motorists traveling from I-5 to Lower Queen Anne
The ultimate goal, according to Eric Tweit, the former SDOT manager for the project, is to make Mercer a two-way street across Aurora and all the way to Fifth Avenue North by the Seattle Center. "I think what's really different about this is now it's going through a neighborhood," Tweit also said.
The Bridging the Gap initiative that will be used to make street improvements in Queen Anne and Magnolia also earmarks $30 million for the Mercer project.
But the majority of funding for the project depends on the passage of Proposition 1, which would form a three-county Regional Transportation Improvement District (RTID), Brady said. "RTID [funding] is enough to complete the project," she added.
But that funding source is in question as the ballot measure loses steam in opinion polls and since King County Executive Ron Sims went from "No comment" to "No way" about his support for the proposition, Brady conceded.
Asked he she'd been confident in the proposition's success during the fall election, she said, "I was till this morning." Brady was referring to an opinion piece by Sims that appeared in The Seattle Times the same day as the open house.
"We do have other funding sources we're looking at," she said of fallback positions. The sources include traffic-mitigation money developers in the area such as Paul Allen will have to pay through the State Environmental Protection Act process, Brady said.
Other sources, she went on to say, include the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration. "I think it's somewhat realistic," Brady said of tapping into state and federal funds. "It may not be a lot, but we'll probably get some."
[[In-content Ad]]
