From the Graveyard of Viaduct Replacement Options

We broke our vow of not caring about the damn Viaduct anymore the other day while making small talk with a building manager type who represents a waterfront-property owner type. We were killing time and the subject of building access in the event of work on the Viaduct came up (We work in a building adjacent to the Viaduct). We ticked off the big ones: surface, tunnel, rebuild and repair and then he mentioned an Elliott Bay Bridge. "They're also talking about a bridge," he said. "But it's like too expensive or something?" we guessed. "No, it would be about half the cost of the rebuild." They're certainly not talking about it, as far as we're concerned. We've never even heard of this Elliot Bay Bridge before, but we Googled it and found a Seattle Times guest editorial from last summer and a PDF laying out the case against it: Unprecedented design, difficult permitting, dramatically different views, many property impacts, seawall's gotta get fixed anyway. A bridge is born and dies before Seattlest even realizes it. We're guessing our property manager doesn't know what he's talking about. "They" discussed it and discarded it long ago here here here here.