Comments on: Tasty Tunnel Facts

By: Marcelle Grona

Marcelle Grona — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 23:16:49 +0000

I truly liked this article, this one will go straight to my stumble upon account :)

By: TunnelFacts.com | Deep-boring holes in bad ideas | TunnelFacts.com: Week Two

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:20:26 +0000

[...] had a few good mentions in the press: Publicola, HAC, and Seattle Transit Blog, and some nice links from environmental sites WorldChanging and [...]

By: dan cortland

dan cortland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:04:28 +0000

“Gridlock” here is about one hour of people trying to get to the freeway after work.

Strictly speaking, Seattle doesn’t have gridlock at all. It has traffic congestion.

By: Zed

Zed — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:42:38 +0000

What I don’t understand is why the state insists that there is a huge demand for a bypass route when their own traffic counts show that the majority of viaduct users are going to and from the city, not through it. And why the need for a limited access highway when SR-99 is a surface street with traffic signals at both the north and south ends of the city? If SR-99 functions just fine as a surface highway along the rest of it’s route, why not make it a surface street through downtown?

By: dan bertolet

dan bertolet — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:35:05 +0000

David @2: So I guess the city of Seattle paid Nelson/Nygaard half a million dollars for vapor. You should probably file a complaint. Nelson/Nygaard seems to be doing plenty of transportation consulting nationwide, so it’s up to you alone to reveal that all they produce is vapor.

http://nelsonnygaard.com/HTML/About-Us-Clients.htm

Michael @4,5: WASHDOT and SDOT had both signed off on surface/transit option C before the tunnel came back at the eleventh hour:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/waterfrontscenarios.htm

What is your definition of vetted?

By: Joshua Daniel Franklin

Joshua Daniel Franklin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:31:04 +0000

Michael, I agree Seattle has “no viable alternative to roads,” but luckily we’re not talking about taking out all our roads, just not building a new deep bore tunnel to replace one stretch of elevated freeway.

Perhaps you meant no alternative to the Single-Occupant Vehicles that currently clog our roads? I think we all know there are many viable alternatives to SOVs. Personally I’d rather fully develop the surface transit plan instead of spending $2.4b on “1% engineered” guesswork

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:05:41 +0000

“Seattle already suffers from gridlock.” Ha! Having moved here from San Francisco, I always find it humorous when people complain about downtown traffic. “Gridlock” here is about one hour of people trying to get to the freeway after work. Adding more cars in the North-South direction won’t affect these east-bound cars at all.

Actually, a good way to get rid of this gridlock would be to remove the downtown on-ramps and pull everyone down south to hop on the freeway. This will just move “gridlock” south, but it would remove it from downtown.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:35:04 +0000

Oh, and LOL at “fully vetted.”

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:33:13 +0000

Here’s a “tasty” fact for you: three of those “comparison” cities have usable non-auto mass transit, and the fourth never had a traffic problem in the first place.

Seattle already suffers from gridlock. We have no viable alternative to roads like SF, PDX or Seoul do (I cant even believe a smart person would use those cities as comparison – oh yeah, vested interest.)

Sounds like “Tunnel Facts” is more like “Tunnel Stuff We Want to Believe.”

By: mahanoy

mahanoy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:33:33 +0000

What I find telling right now is that you don’t see a lot of anti-tunnel rhetoric coming lately from People’s Waterfront Coalition. If anyone has a platform or a place to reignite the tunnel-vs.-surface/transit fight, it is Cary Moon and company. And yet, they’re holding their fire.

Their last mailing list message was a January 13 response to the governor, mayor, and exec’s agreement. And it contained this passage toward the end:
“The bored tunnel still has lots of unanswered questions about its feasibility. Details about its cost, constructability, schedule, and funding will be refined over the next few months. If it ends up not looking like the silver bullet people envision today, People’s Waterfront Coalition will be happy to help figure out Plan B. Until then, it looks like we’ll mostly focus efforts on ensuring the street and transit projects are done fully and quickly, and keep collaborating with others to lay the groundwork for the best possible future waterfront.”

Thems folks are politically savvy, and I think there’s something to be said for their not saying anything. Something that is maybe lost on the righteous Dan Bertolet, Mike McGinn, Ben Schiendelman crowd.

I have some hypotheses myself about what Cary Moon is thinking that these other folks are not, but I have to formulate my thoughts first.