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.
