(Another) Seattlest Inspected the Viaduct

WSDOT and SDOT engineers went over the Viaduct with a fine-toothed comb, examining it on over, under, and on all sides.

As we remember from our past lives as aspiring earth scientists, this is partially what starts the process from solid rock to loose sediment. We saw a lot of moss covering the structure (below), which is not surprising for this climate. What did surprise us, given its heavy traffic , was finding weeds growing in some of the cracks on the ramp.

Here's a major spall, which is basically chunks/pieces/layers of stuff flaking and falling off of a larger surface the chunks were once part of. This spall measured about 18 inches on the outside of one of the columns --that's right above the bike and walking path down below.

At one of the stations, they were giving out samples from a bucket of Viaduct chunks.

Notice the concrete rail just in front of the middle column in this picture. See how it seems to dip? This is one of the columns that is settling.

Cracks are another concern with the Viaduct. This is a gauge that WSDOT uses to measure movement between two sides of a fracture. Each end is bolted to one side of a fracture and the two separate pieces move freely with respect to one another to tell engineers how much the structure has moved.

In the photo below, we can see one of these gauges placed across a fracture.

The whole damn thing is full of cracks, everwhere on every surface. The (sealed) cracks below run from the surface of the top deck to its underside. This is where water seeps in and percolates through the entire thickness of road deck. Along the way, it leaches out the cement, enlarges fractures, and corrodes the rebar.

This is your father's lowest-bid concrete; it looks nothing like today's svelte concrete. It's full of pebbles and gravel. It reminded us somewhat of a Hershey's Krackel bar.

The steel beams should keep the columns acting as one unit instead of the brittle concrete that they are.

Everywhere we walked underneath the thing, we had to step around drips. We couldn't tell if they were coming from the drain pipes underneath the road deck or from the road deck itself.

The pipe below was completely corroded and breached. We wonder if this corrosion extends up into the concrete that encases this pipe. If so, it must provide a nice path for the further erosion of the structure's interior. On closer inspection, this corroded surface was somewhat glazed and ...fascinating, much in the same way that gross stuff on the surgery channel is fascinating. We're no chemists, but we believe that the Viaduct Juice running through these pipes is pretty special and potent.

Several things impressed us when we spoke to a WSDOT engineer after the tour. First and foremost, we realized that WSDOT is made up not only of engineers, consultants, and planners but it is made up of citizens and residents. It's easy to forget this when one just accepts the media's --and especially the blogosphere's-- mindless chatter. Therefore, it was refreshing to listen to an informed professional "speaking as a taxpayer" or a Seattle resident in addition to his assigned professional roles. It was nice to speak to somebody who is actually familiar with what is going on.

Much gets lost in the media coverage. The person we spoke with commended the City for having a certain vision, namely reconnecting downtown with the waterfront. He did not seem to regard this dismissively; rather, he understood that this was an important vision. On the other hand, the WSDOT has a mandate to move a certain amount of people, goods, and vehicles through this corridor --in the absence of another. And that is the dilemma of urban planning with finite resources: somebody's feet are always going to get crushed.

Interestingly, though, some of WSDOT's future usage projections take into account a larger proportion of transit usage. Furthermore, they acknowledge that the trouble with projections is that it is difficult to predict what transportation in the future will look like, specifically its modal distribution (percentages of auto, bus, rail, etc.). Our engineer even said something like "maybe the monorail would have addressed some of this". Therefore, to say that moving cars is all that WSDOT cares about is perhaps a bit unfair.

One other thing that became clear was that WSDOT seems to be entertaining all outcomes on their drawing boards: elevated, tunnel, and even surface. Regardless of the eventual outcome, they will have to mobilize with one of those plans.This seems to be par for the course as far as municipal infrastructure goes; apparatchiks and activists yell a lot, policy-makers change their minds. Finally some plan is thrown out to the planners and engineers which must be implemented five years ago. We don't envy any of the people involved in this affair.

Before the inevitable accusation of being a WSDOT toady gets shot across our transom, we'll say that we, personally, favor the surface-transit-and-road improvements option. We're much more likely to link arms and march with Cary Moon and Peter Steinbrueck than anyone else. However, we know that while consensus is impossible (and naive), cooperation is necessary.

This leads us to wonder whether anybody's talked about putting in, say, bus lanes on a possible new structure... or to make it a multi-modal structure. We're just thinking out loud here; maybe we missed this in all of the yelling these last few weeks. But if somebody's gonna muscle through a new structure, say, it would go down a little better were it not so auto-centric.

Having said all of that, we drooled at the chance to tour the Viaduct. It was novel and damned cool to, for once, stand and walk on a structure that is normally the province of the automobile. We felt a sense of reclamation. We did not want to leave and give it back to the automobile. It felt righteous, albeit temporary. Maybe the feeling was even prescient and visionary, much like the Viaduct was in its day:

After World War II, as Seattleites relied less and less on the railroads, these tracks on Railroad Avenue were relatively little used. They became bleak and dirty reminders of another transportation age, and occupied critical space perfect for what was at the time a new, streamlined corridor for automobiles.

(Source: Historylink.org Essay 1691)

That was over 50 years ago. Maybe it's time we look 50 years ahead. The Viaduct came of age in 1953, the same year that Joseph Stalin died. And the Viaduct is the most perfectly Stalinist structure we have in this town, both in look and function. It talks of being all about The People and moving The People along. And it's not so bad when you are on it, of course, a privileged party member zipping along in your automobile. Yet it is perfectly oppressive to the masses around and under it. Like many of the 1950s' misguided ideas, perhaps it is time we put it to rest.