Viaduct Revisited...

The Seattle P-I has some really cool graphics illustrating the differences between the various plans for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which I blogged about in this post last year. State officials have said that they will make a final decision by the end of the year.

Now, if you live in Seattle, you probably know all about this already. If you don't live in Seattle, take a look at the pictures (especially the "Waterfront view") and tell me which option you would choose for your own city. The differences in the images are glaring. This area has the potential to be one of the coolest (and most valuable) parts of the city. It makes absolutely no sense to spend so much money on another giant concrete slug running through there... especially if it's just to save a couple minutes on a trip to the airport for people who just have to drive their cars everywhere. The alternative option of an elevated freeway dressed up with grass and other development just looks odd to me, and extremely expensive. The tunnel options all seem extremely dangerous given the crumbling seawall.

Take that money, invest more in Metro buses and streetcars and light rail, make the streets surrounding that area easier to travel on, and let the citizens enjoy that area finally. Boom, I just solved Seattle's biggest problem.

Bye Bye Sonics...

Boy am I glad I came to this conclusion a year ago, so I could avoid feeling the sting today. Not so much, though... it still stings.

The interesting thing now is whether the mayor and city counsel are allowed to keep their jobs come election time. I'm betting no... as the Sonics memories come bubbling up, it's going to sink in with even the armchair sports fans just how much the citizens of Seattle got FUCKED.

So bye-bye Greg Nickels... my track record of predictions on this subject has been pretty good.

Full Disclosure...

My hatred of rednecks is a little skewed right now, as one of 'em is in the process of stealing my hometown basketball team. I have a lot of fond Sonics memories (I still use my '96 Finals gym bag) that are going down the drain thanks to a lying redneck sack of shit named Clay Bennett (again, of course, I'm referring to the redneck owner of the Sonics, not the editorial cartoonist of the same name... the latter is a great guy). But, of course, it's not just Clay-Clay's doing... thanks also go out to Howard Schultz (the dumbass Starbucks CEO who sold the team and now claims he didn't see all this coming), and, of course, David Stern (the toad who is responsible for destroying the NBA).

More on the Alaskan Way Viaduct...

Coincidentally, I was planning on doing something on one of Seattle's own disaster-prone bridges for this week's toon before the disaster in Minnesota happened...

For readers outside Seattle, the Alaskan Way Viaduct is a butt-ugly, elevated freeway in the downtown area that has been a source of great controversy over the years. The viaduct is one good ground-shake away from completely falling to the ground, possibly in a manner similar to San Francisco's Cypress Street Viaduct, which came down during the '89 Loma Prieta earthquake. For quite a few years now, local government entities have bickered like children over the best way to handle the viaduct problem, with little progress made on coming up with a final solution.

Clearly, doing nothing with the viaduct is not an option, unless we want to see the thing collapse in rush-hour traffic like 35W did in Minneapolis. Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire has decided that the only option is to replace the viaduct with an even bigger, "butt-uglier" elevated freeway to accommodate all the people who just have to drive their cars everywhere. Mayor Greg Nickels wants a super-cool tunnel to replace the viaduct, a tricky and expensive project that would probably end up bearing a disturbing resemblance to Boston's Big Dig. Both of these choices are wrong, though...

What's the right choice? Tear the sucker down!

The People's Waterfront Coalition site has a good roundup of the arguments and numbers involved in the fight over the viaduct. A new elevated freeway would cost $3 billion, and wouldn't be fully open until 2020. A new tunnel could cost at least $4.5 billion, and who knows when that thing would be completely done. For that kind of money, the best choice would be to tear down the viaduct and invest in making surface street improvements, redirecting traffic out into arterials, and repairing the crumbling seawall.

But most importantly, we could afford to finally start investing in public transit. Every time I visit Washington, D.C., I am really impressed with how easy to learn and use their metrorail system is. And every time I get back from a city like that, I find myself pissed off that we Seattleites (who are supposed to be "enlightened" on environmental issues) don't have something like that here. Seattle has a bus system, but it is extremely unreliable and, of course, vulnerable to traffic jams.

Nickels has received all kinds of accolades for being an "environmental hero" and a "rising green star," but take one look at the ridiculous traffic here and something doesn't smell quite right (literally and figuratively). Any promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Seattle are meaningless unless something is also done to break Seattleites of our car addictions. As Erica Barnett notes in an outstanding article, no other city in the world is building a new elevated freeway; in fact, cities like Portland, Chattanooga, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Sydney, Australia are actually tearing them down. By contrast, building a big new freeway here in Seattle would be "inducing demand"... people are gonna drive on it.

The viaduct runs right down the Elliot Bay waterfront, along property which would otherwise be extremely valuable were it not for the gigantic concrete monstrosity hovering over it. The new viaduct that Gregoire wants to build would be 71% larger than the current one, and would put 50% more of the waterfront in shade. Consider instead this vision of the waterfront, which would finally put this "amazing civic resource" to good use. An analogous situation would the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, which was demolished in favor of a surface street after the '89 earthquake. The result there has not been gridlock, but rather a decrease in traffic. People sought other options.

On March 13, voters in Seattle overwhelmingly rejected both the tunnel option and the new elevated freeway (the surface street option wasn't even included on the ballot). It looks like the State couldn't care less, though... they're just going to do whatever they want anyway.

Fighting Words: 8/7/07 Cartoon...

"The Futuresons: Seattle!"...

Trying out a local issue cartoon... sorry, non-Seattle folks. I'll explain the viaduct debacle in my next blog post.

Previous episode of the Futuresons:

The Seattle SuperSonics are Dead.

As always, ignore this post if you don't care, but I had to document my displeasure at yesterday's events in the NBA. June 28, 2007: the day the Sonics died. They're done. Over. Bye-bye. Finito.

We go from the high of the #2 pick, to trading Ray Allen for... excuse me, Wally "Whiney-Little-Bitch" Szczczerbiak (or however you spell it)?!?! The guy who, with the Timberwolves a few years ago, bitched and moaned for a whole game and stomped around like a 2 year-old, throwing the ball to the ceiling and not getting ejected... which got him booed heartily at the Key Arena for the next couple years? THAT guy?!

This was the final middle finger from Clay Bennett (the Sonics owner, not the cartoonist!) to the fans in Seattle. We said goodbye yesterday not only to Ray Allen, but to Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, Fred Brown, Gary Payton, and Shawn Kemp.

Go TrailBlazers. You're our local team now.

It's nice being a football/baseball town, anyway...

Oh yeah, I have a blog...

I think the tryptophan has done fogged-up my brain... I totally forgot I had a blog to update. Here are a few articles that have caught my eye, that probably won't end up in cartoons:

• I ain't no "feminist" (not that I disagree with them, it's just not a focus of inquiry for me), but this is pretty messed up. What century is this again?
  
  See also some analysis of the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the Partial Birth Abortion Act.


• Turns out Seattle isn't so environmentally enlightened after all...
  
  And everybody who spent time in Thanksgiving traffic this week lets out a collective "DUUUUUUHHHHHH".........


• Introducing the new home of the Utah Jazz, EnergySolutions Arena, aka "The Dump"...

So smart we don't have to act like it...

So Seattle is the "smartest city" in the country, huh?

Apparently, these rankings don't factor in the percentage of soccer moms, yuppie assholes, and general upper-middle class idiots who drive to work every day by themselves in giant, hurking SUV's and sit idling in McDonalds drive-thru's without a care in the world about the broader context....

I grew up here too, so I feel entitled to criticize us...