simple solution to viaduct freight worriers

[maxsolomon]

trucks are 4% of daily trips on the viaduct, per this article. how about this: freight shares an HOV lane with transit & carpools? nervous nellies.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-02-28/news/the-truckers-magic-carpet.php

<"It's going to screw everything up," says Skrivan, whose concrete plant sits at the foot of the First Avenue bridge, just south of the viaduct. "There's no good way through our city as it is." Skrivan manages a fleet of about 60 cement trucks in Western Washington, roughly half of which use the viaduct each day to get to and from jobs. These trucks have had a hand in 60 percent to 70 percent of the Seattle skyline, he says. He tracks their movements using GPS-assisted software: On a good day, his computer screen will show lines of animated trucks crawling up and down I-5, Fourth Avenue, and the viaduct. On a bad day, such as when the Nisqually earthquake hit Seattle six years ago and closed the viaduct, those trucks stand still in downtown traffic or wander off in circuitous routes on the city's outskirts. Twenty-minute trips can stretch into two-hour slogs. And taking the scenic route is not good for concrete.

"We're not carrying something that's like, 'OK, we're two hours late, so what?'" says Bill Parfitt, Glacier's vice president and general manager of its Washington division. "We're carrying something that if we don't get if off the truck in a reasonable period of time, at the very best the product's just wasted. And at the very worst it's setting up in the truck—and then you have huge problems."

Glacier's not the only trucking company fretting about a viaduct-less Seattle. Though trucks account for only 4,000 of about 100,000 vehicle trips on the viaduct every day (according to a study conducted last year by two groups that have supported removing highways), the people in those trucks really, really like their viaduct.>

[sneakythomas]

1. Silly

Makes sense, trucks are trying to do what buses are trying to do in the HOV lane: get someplace else quickly. Given that we're talking about 4% of traffic, and the HOV lanes are only about 1/2 used, it seems like a good idea to me.

However, we're trying to impose logic and good sense on a problem in Seattle. I'm going to go have a quadruple shot at the coffee shop down the street and see if I get back to normal.