I was never convinced that the city needed anything more than a surface street. It's a little dicey putting any tunnel there against the waterfront in landfill in an earthquake-prone area. Moreover, it was never clear that the traffic patterns would have been improved by any sort of tunnel option. The whole thing always had the feel of a land grab for real estate developers, too. On top of that, a tunnel was really the worst for Seattle since it wouldn't help anyone get into or out of downtown, just through downtown.
I didn't support a surface street because it would have stop lights, in which case it wouldn't begin to replace the viaduct. (For some reason the US can't have Germany-style streets that dip below cross streets.)
> The whole thing always had the feel of a land grab for real estate developers, too.
Yep. A quote from the NYT article:
> “They’re talking about greenbelts and all that, but I think it’s a bunch of baloney,” he said. “I think it’s going to be all condominiums.”
I agree, the project is mainly about $700K 1-bedroom condos.
Yes, I thought about surface streets as well but I ended up feeling like it would be too forced. A cut and cover operation seemed like the best of both worlds - and hell, have surface streets on top of it for normal thru traffic. People passing from south to north Seattle on the viaduct path would zoom through with 6 lanes and no exits. If they want to go downtown, they can debouche west of Pioneer square - spend some money making sure that's a possibility. Anyway! Even surface streets would have been better than this ridiculous tunnel.
Yes indeed! that superior plan was promoted as an alternate by the city folk and was totally squashed at the state level (i watched it happen in committee)
