A future Highway 520 bridge should have narrow lanes, big lids and as few columns in the water as possible, the Seattle City Council says....
Council members voted unanimously for the resolution, after working on it since last fall.
It doesn't specify support for either a four- or six-lane option.
That's nice. Glad they can speak to the aesthetics without getting into such crazy details such as how many cars and buses the new bridge can handle. Even Governor Gregoire - of Viaduct indecision fame - has voiced clear support for the six-lane version. That state mediator to settle the design debate is looking more and more prudent.
UPDATE: And in a fun turn of affairs, the P-I's story claims the Council backed the six-lane option: "City Council backs 6-lane 520 bridge". The Times story seems the more accurate of the two in describing the true nature of the Council's actions, particularly given this bit from that paper: "Councilmember Jean Godden emphasized that the city is not making a choice between four lanes or six."
Wouldn't want to do that, of course.
UPDATE II: Casey Corr isn't optimistic about the issue over at Crosscut.
Posted by Eric Earling at April 24, 2007 07:13 AM | Email ThisBTW -- has reality finally sunk in to the NW housing market:
Existing home sales plunge in March
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1310ap_home_sales.html
Those two fixes would go a long way to clearing up the mess in that area.
Here's a prediction: 4 lanes, just as now. 2 of them will be HOV lanes. It will be more than wide enough to handle 6 lanes, but that space will be taken up by large shoulders and bike lanes.
Only in Seattle!
The best we can hope for is that a major natural event causes 520 to close or sink, and then Olympia will be forced to do something.
Posted by: Palouse on April 24, 2007 09:59 AMif not, I guess I shouldn't be suprised.
Posted by: k2 on April 24, 2007 10:09 AMAn easy 10% savings here without having to sacrifice any functionality.
Posted by: RJK on April 24, 2007 10:14 AMsave $$ by making all lanes Prius wide....less concrete and they keep thosy dastardly Escalades off the freeway
Posted by: righton on April 24, 2007 10:19 AMhttp://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=520,+seattle&daddr=i-90,+seattle&layer=&sll=47.597565,-122.31485&sspn=0.019737,0.040169&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1
Why do we need two bridges???
It's ridiculous.
At worse, add some lanes to I-90...build on what works and remove what doesn't.
If we get rid of the 520, the neighborhoods will sign on for anything.
We don't need two bridges.
The problem is that at either end of the bridge, I-90 goes into a long tunnel. One of the tunnels is under a residential neighborhood. Are you proposing that those tunnels be widened as well? If so, are you willing to pony the money for that? Or would you prefer to widen the bridge, but leave the tunnels at either end the same width, which kinda defeats the purpose? With 520, you have 6 lanes up until about the bridge on the eastside, so it makes more sense to widen it to ease traffic.
Also, that attitude of "we don't need any more bridges" isn't a whole lot different than "we don't need any more roads". I don't know where you drive, but I have to come from Renton to downtown Seattle for work, and when 520 is shutdown, it is extremely noticeable on I-90, even on the weekends. What are the alternatives? I can take 405 to 5, or SR900, which isn't really practical as it adds a lot of time. For most folks, driving that way, or around the other way to 522 or taking 405 to 5 in Lynnwood isn't practical either.
520 works, it just needs to be widened when it's replaced.
And as an aside
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1310ap_home_sales.html
That article is about the national market. Seattle isn't the national market. As long as more people move here than there is available housing, prices will continue to go up.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2003652949_webhomesales05.html
Posted by: Mike H on April 24, 2007 11:32 AMIt is the source, not the solution, to traffic flow problems through Seattle.
That and get the Sonics to move downstream to Tacoma.
Posted by: John Bailo on April 24, 2007 11:38 AMScrapping the bridge and only going with I-90 is a horrible idea.
Posted by: Mike H on April 24, 2007 11:45 AMA license surcharge could be used to pay for the bridge without having to go to the bother of tolls except for those who don't pay the surcharge. The surcharge could be graduated so that those in the immediate counties pay more than those further away. The state would know with greater accuracy how much money would be available every year to pay the bonds issued to fund the bridge.
Posted by: Clean House on April 24, 2007 11:56 AMI'm having a hard time understanding just what the local governments are doing for us. They seem to have abandoned the idea of providing for the common good. Transportation - ride your damn bike, and pay through the nose for laughable amatuers to dream a monorail. Crime - pay millions to WTO rioters. Education - if the kids can't pass the standardized tests, eliminate them.
We are becoming a laughing stock. We should throw all the Seattle and King Co. legislators out forthwith, before there is nothing left here but single, childless, bike riding baristas and grunge musicians. Not that I have anything against such persons, but you can only ignore us differently lifestyled people (married, working, commuting, child rearing, tax paying, law abiding) for so long. I hope we all figure this out, move to Boise, and leave the others here to sell lattes to each other for a year or so until the economy collapses and Seattle reverts to the trees and fish.
Posted by: Steven Adler on April 24, 2007 12:00 PMSteve,
I want us to invert the paradigm. I don't see Seattle as a hub (or urb), but as just yet another "suburb" of the Puget Sound.
As such we should do every thing to "normalize" it to the rest of the region. That means pulling out the Sonics and now automatically building over-capacity into its roadways.
According to a recent Seattle PI podcast, Puget Sound actually has more roadway per capital than 50 percent of other cities.
The reason for the traffic problems are not resources -- but poor and stupid uses of resources. I lay that blame squarely at the inadequacies of the public policy makers.
Translation: no politician, especially Gregoire, wants to decide a damn thing on 520 prior to the 2008 election.
Posted by: Palouse on April 24, 2007 03:01 PMLush life, comrades, bullshitting your way through life without a care, but what's this about narrow lanes? Most highways are partly constructed with Federal Aid money, and such largess comes with some insensitive strings attached to design standards, such as minimum lane widths. Even Patty Murray will have a hard time posing as our regal Dispenser of the Federal Slush Fund, if the Feds unfeelingly enforce those standards.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on April 24, 2007 03:38 PM