On April 16, 40 local citizens gathered at the Madison Park Bathhouse for the Madison Park Community Council's regular monthly meeting to hear state Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald speak and answer questions about the state's plans to replace the state Route 520/Evergreen Point floating bridge.
MacDonald, a Harvard-educated lawyer who has held the post for the last six years, has been very visible in the Seattle area campaigning with Mayor Greg Nickels for an underground tunnel on the Seattle waterfront to replace the failing Alaskan Way Viaduct. When this proposal was rejected by the voters on March 13, the state Department of Transportation's attention was redirected to its new No. 1 priority: the 520 bridge, according to MacDonald.
MacDonald exclaimed that not only did he not want to be on the 520 bridge if it went down in a storm or earthquake, he did not want to be in charge at such a time of calamity. As such, McDonald announced on Friday, April 27, that he was leaving the department in July.
EIS FORTHCOMING
After 10 years of study, starting with the TransLake Study Committee - on which committee the Madison Park Community Council has always had a representative - the governor recently announced that a new cross-lake bridge must have six lanes.
MacDonald pointed out that even this conclusion was not cast in concrete. Many communities on the east side of Lake Washington were still clamoring for an eight-lane bridge, while many organized groups in Seattle, such as No Expansion of 520 and the Transportation Choices Coalition wanted to limit a replacement bridge to four lanes, plus bike lanes and transit priority.
However, MacDonald said that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project, issued on Aug. 11, 2006, discussed only the four-lane and six-lane options because of the inability of Interstate 5 to handle any more traffic.
He also pointed out, in response to a question from the audience, that the most severe transportation problems in the Seattle area remained north-south connections.
MacDonald said that a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement would be forthcoming, primarily because of the controversy surrounding the options for the replacement section of 520 within Seattle. The state's preferred approach to resolving the current standoff is to employ a professional mediator.
MacDonald let slip that his personal preferred option was not to pour much more concrete, and that he saw tolling of major highways, as well as bridges, in our future - congestion pricing as it's now called. This would be a way to pay for the phenomenal expense associated with all the upcoming projects, plus a way to limit congestion by reducing demand (also known as demand management).
He stated that roadways were the only utility that had not yet switched over to pricing by the amount of use.
OPTIONS GALOREAs far as 520-replacement options within Seattle are concerned, the state had previously narrowed these to two options known respectively as the Standard Six Lane and the Pacific Interchange.
The Standard suffers from a wide footprint through the Montlake area and the Washington Park Arboretum (up to six times as wide as at present).
The Pacific Interchange option, originally conceived by a couple of Montlake residents and apparently now preferred by the state, involves a large interchange in the northwest corner of the arboretum, together with a new Lake Washington Ship Canal bridge and a new roadway past the south end of Husky Stadium. This would, in turn, impact the University of Washington because of a possible loss of development opportunities on that land.
As a result of these obvious conflicts, the state has recently become slightly more open to other alternatives, of which there are three.
The first is another look at the four-lane option.
The second, developed by Craig Dalby, is named the Arboretum By-Pass Proposal and takes 520 entirely out of the arboretum by routing the highway farther north, landing the over-water roadway north of the University crew-house building, adding on- and off-ramps at Northeast Pacific Street and tunneling under the ship canal to connect with the existing highway alignment at the Seattle Yacht Club.
The third option, less formally developed at this point, calls for the use of an immersed tube/tunnel, which would bring the highway under Union Bay.
John Milton, the 520-bridge replacement project manager, echoed MacDonald's concern that the affected communities were having a very difficult time agreeing on an acceptable solution.
FINDING COMMON AGREEMENT?Local community-council presidents and the official representatives of all the interested and organized groups have been meeting on alternate Saturday mornings at the Roanoke House on the north end of Capitol Hill to establish areas of common understanding and agreement with respect to the project.
So far, the meetings have been productive, and the city has adopted certain design guidelines developed by the group, such as limiting future traffic-lane and shoulder widths with a view to minimizing future overall highway width, requiring the use of quiet pavement and calling for the highest transit priority (if not exclusive transit lanes) on the bridge.
The state, however, is not mandated to follow the city's preferences.
Maurice B. Cooper is president of the Madison Park Community Council.
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