Gregoire tells Seattle she wants to be a one-term Gov.

[maxsolomon]

Hey Christine, guess which fire-breathing lefty will be voting & campaigning AGAINST YOU in 08? if the Tunnel is dead, fine. But the Rebuild is DEAD, too. it goes in over my dead body & those of every design professional in the state.

Doug MacDonald & WSDOT need to pull their heads out of their asses.

this:



not:



http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_XGR_Seattle_Viaduct.html

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Gov. Chris Gregoire and lawmakers rejected Seattle's scaled-down proposal for a waterfront tunnel Tuesday, with the governor saying that the only option is to move ahead with building another elevated highway to replace the aging, earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct.

The decision comes after state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald sent Gregoire a letter saying he "cannot recommend to you approval of this proposal as an acceptable viaduct replacement option." He said there are too many operational and safety concerns with the $3.4 billion tunnel design.

In a written statement, Gregoire said the DOT review showed "that the hybrid tunnel proposal does not meet state and federal safety standards. Furthermore, an accident where people could not escape this tunnel could prove catastrophic. To move forward with that option would simply be irresponsible."

[regnaD kciN]

1. What is wrong with these people...???

I'm not just talking abour "Landslide" Gregoire -- much of this "another elevated roadway or nothing" sentiment is coming from the Democratic-controlled legislature.

We hold the state house by the narrowest of margins, and the governor's office by an even smaller one. With less than two years until they have to stand for re-election, their answer is to thumb their noses at the most reliably Democratic region in the state? Even if a relatively small amount of Seattle Dems decide to sit out 2008 or cast a protest vote for the Greens, it could be enough to tip the balance of power back to the Republicans for the first time in twenty-five years.

Dino Rossi and Luke Esser must be turning cartwheels right now. :puke:

[maxsolomon]

3. and coming from Frank Chopp, who represents

Capitol Hill & Fremont!

he must be tired of being in government...

[pnwmom]

7. Well, if liberal Dems in Seattle do that because of this one issue

then they'll be shooting themselves in the foot.

[maxsolomon]

8. the devil you know?

i've had enough of the devil you know.

she's pimping for the pointless $500 million renton arena - that's fine, but something that enhances the value of the region on a global scale? she's scared.

[pnwmom]

9. I lived in Seattle for a long time, and I'm sympathetic. However

Gregoire has to balance out Seattle's interests with those in the rest King County and elsewhere in the state -- and exactly how the viaduct is replaced isn't a major issue anywhere else.

You won't like to hear this, but from my side of the lake, it appears that Seattle gets an out-of-proportion share of the transportation funding as it is. Look what happened to the light rail plan -- the Eastside is helping to pay for it, but they dropped our part of the rail system. How was that fair?

Yet I don't go around threatening to vote against the Democrats.

[maxsolomon]

10. you sound like you're on the east side of the STATE

if we divided up transpo funding based on percentage of contribution to the general fund, they'd be driving on dirt in moses lake. instead us 2 is a beautiful ribbon of seamless blacktop. that's not how it works.

the existing viaduct is a deathtrap. a replacement structure will be a tragedy that the whole state will have to live with for the rest of our lives.

seattle doesn't need 3.5 billion for the tunnel. we need the cheapest solution, a surface road. all we need is for WSDOT to get the fuck out of the way.

[pnwmom]

12. Okay, clue me in. Why would a replacement structure be a "tragedy"

and how would the "whole state" have to live with it?

And if a surface road is the cheapest and best solution, what is the WSDOT's objection?

[maxsolomon]

14. answers

surface road is cheapest & best for the FUTURE - the future not driven by internal combustion engines. WSDOT is short sighted & bases its planning on vehicle capacity & mobility, not PEOPLE mobility.

it would be a QUALITATIVE tragedy. seattle is the front porch of the whole state, and it looks like crap where it meets puget sound, the defining natural feature of our region. the waterfront should be a cultural asset par excellence - families from all over the state, and tourists from all over the world come to the aquarium, and will to the sculpture park.

no less a seattle native than ivar haglund said the viaduct was a tragedy. if ivar's agin it, why ain't you?

[pnwmom]

16. As I said, to most people in Washington, including most people in

the Eastside, the viaduct isn't a major issue. It didn't interfere with the tourists coming before, did it?

I do question how a single surface road could carry as much traffic as the old viaduct did.

[maxsolomon]

20. it can't

don't expect it to.

how much will you drive at $5/gallon? $7? when there is no more petroleum on the planet(that's less than a 100 years off)?

[pnwmom]

24. I don't see how either of your proposals will help with that.

It all comes down to how ugly you think the old viaduct was. It never bothered me, and apparently it didn't bother a lot of other people, either. It wasn't till it came down that people all of a sudden seemed to discover how much they had hated it.

[Ediacara]

2. Gregoire to City: Drop Dead

un-fucking-believable.

[bahrbearian]

4. Maybe they don't want to see a Boston Big Dig,, that went well.

[sneakythomas]

5. Washington State Politics at its best.

Stick your finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing. Since it is always blowing in several directions at once, study something and issue reports and proposals until all information is completely out of date and the situation has changed so much nothing your thinking about makes any sense.

Repeat.

God forbid our leaders should actually lead us some where.

[Pierzin]

6. Classic WA, NW, Seattle politics, No One Will Lead

Let's study Sound Transit to death, let's not do anything that might make sense! Does anyone remember we used to have steetcars that went everywhere?
And we had the Interurban that went from Tacoma to Everett, back in the 40's(or maybe that is just a legend)? Whose great idea was it to take all those great things out? Really! This city has it ass-backwards, but it's too late to start the game over, now whatever improvements have to be made will have to be paid for, big time.
Yep, Gregoire has told the city to drop dead. Why the hell cant we get someone else up there in the batters box???

[PSPS]

11. That "artist's conception" of a boulevard is fantasy land

If the viaduct is going to be replaced, it will have to be replaced with something that can handle the traffic it carries today. That's over 100,000 vehicles a day. It's funny how that artistic representation of a street-level replacement shows about 12 cars.

Let's face it. The only reasonable solution for a replacement is another elevated structure. A tunnel would be like the Big Dig, an utter waste of money that would make the scuttled Monorail's ridiculous billion-dollars-a-mile price tag look like a blue light special.

I'm with Gregoire 100% on this.

[pnwmom]

13. As a former resident, I'm wondering what all the fuss is about

just replacing the old structure. Is it just that some people have decided it was too ugly? Funny how no one ever talked about that twenty years ago.

[maxsolomon]

15. it was built 50 years ago

and people DID talk about it, but the waterfront was a jungle of train tracks & functioning freight piers - hard to envision as a cultural asset.

go ask a chicagoan about putting a viaduct along the shore of lake michigan.

[pnwmom]

17. So it's the ugliness factor. You know what's really ugly?

Children without enough food. People without adequate health care. Polluted water.

The problem is that transportation costs have to compete with every other cost in the state budget. Building an expensive tunnel because a replacement viaduct would be less esthetically pleasing might make sense to a lot of Seattleites. But reasonable people can have a different opinion, too.

[maxsolomon]

19. oh please. don't let resentment motivate you.

this is local politics, not the starving ethiopians. don't extend the discussion to absurd extremes. if the feds or the state holds firm & fucks over the uppity limousine liberals of seattle because we think we deserve everything we want, do you think they'll take a surplus $500 million & shunt it into a single payer health care plan? no, you're not that naive. avoiding a replacement viaduct is a drop in the bucket. $500 million to build the tunnel lite alternative.

the difference between a viaduct & a tunnel is 2.2 days of murder & mayhem in iraq. we could have ended every tropical disease on the planet for 1/10th of what we've wasted killing iraqis. ask jimmy carter.

and please, don't dismiss the qualitative. its not "just ugly". there is noise & visual pollution just as surely as there is air & water pollution. are the houses next to the highway worth more or less than those on top of the hill with a view? if you pay property taxes, you know. why did we pay to put up noise barriers along highways, or bury i-90 in a trench across mercer island (the most expensive piece of the nation's highway system), if not for aesthetics? our seattle tax dollars paid for those gifts to citizens of other munincipalities in washington.

so, does downtown seattle deserve to be polluted by a replacement viaduct because we need that $500 million dollar difference in cost to feed starving children? or because we prefer to waste it on a sonics arena in renton? or throw away billions in cash in futile bribes of our iraqi "allies"?

besides, i want the surface solution, the cheapest alternative, not a tunnel.

[pnwmom]

25. Are you kidding? There are needy children in Seattle. There are homeless

people in Seattle. And there are people sitting in emergency room for hours because they have no other access to health care.

You're the one taking the discussion to absurd extremes. The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Washington state's budget.

[flamingyouth]

18. LOL - you noticed that too?

And there's not one semi on that road either. So I guess the cargo from the Port of Seattle is going to magically transport itself up from the waterfront under this scenario (that is, if we haven't lost all of our container business to the Ports of Tacoma, et al, by then).

BTW, my parents live on Queen Anne, about four blocks up from Aurora Ave., and believe me, it's LOUD; whether or not it's a surface street or a viaduct, six lanes of traffic is dirty, smelly and loud.

[maxsolomon]

21. so lets just embrace the dirtiest, smelliest & loudest solution?

if the 'artist' had rendered the surface solution realistically enough for you, would you then vote against the rebuild?

the port has never answered this adequately - where is the northbound 99 cargo GOING? to green lake? over the mercer mess? most cargo goes right onto trains & over stevens pass. if it goes on trucks, it goes over i-90. no one drives cargo to blaine.

:eyes:

[flamingyouth]

22. never mind

this is pointless

[Fenris]

23. So all of those trucks on 99 near the waterfront are simply imaginery?

And I would be interested to see where you got your "no one drives cargo to Blaine" statistic, because it seems highly unlikely that no cargo heads north on 99 toward Blaine.

[maxsolomon]

26. not a statistic

opinion.

cargo is tranported on i-5.