A Piece of the Viaduct Just Fell Off

Tipster Brooke (thanks, Brooke!) tells us that you want to be looking up if you're walking around below the Viaduct offramp to Seneca: "A railing just fell from the offramp down to the sidewalk below." This comes just after a walking tour of the dilapidated structure. The P-I quoted Robert Wade as saying after his tour: "Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. We need to take it down before someone gets hurt." Anyone want to run out and send us a picture?

UPDATE: Great. Now we have a shoddy cameraphone shot (above) of the damage courtesy of tipster Dan. And here's a close-up on the broken piece, courtesy of Flickr user bazcat. Looks like it'd leave a mark.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By MvB in News on October 20, 2008 11:10 AM

Comments [rss]

Troy Morris

Wow. really? Cones. That was their answer?

And MvB, I didn't know it was a sandwich. This means we should drink in celebration, not shame!

MvB

"It didn't fall--it was PUSHED!"

@Troy: well, I was checking in via my iPhone, but formatting a pic for a post is too time consuming on a phone. And there was a sandwich to be eaten!

@Saxtor: Benign neglect, huh? I kinda believe it. I don't know if it's malevolent, but I bet when it comes to thinking whether or not to spend money it, it's easier not to spend it on something that's coming down. Same deal with maintenance on the Monorail. You'd think some enterprising citizen would have collected the bare wire and sold it by now.

Saxtor

This isn't the only hazard lately. Just a few feet South of the Southbound viaduct onramp at Western and Blanchard, here has been this piece of electrical conduit sitting askew for a few weeks. Every now and then, a good samaritan will come by and prop it upright, only to have it fall askew again. Big deal, right?

On Friday, all that changed. It fell again, but this time it took appx. 40+ feet of wire with it that had been running up the viaduct's support leg, and a few feet along the bottom-side of the viaduct itself. All that wire is now laying on the sidewalk, causing pedestrians to have to walk into the street to avoid stepping through a pile of bare wire and conduit. There were six or so cones drawing attention to the wire, but after the Belltown weekend revelers (read: morons), it appears the cones were worn as hats at some point in the evening as all but one of them is now missing. Sure, it's not hundreds of pounds of concrete falling, but it is still appalling.

I guess that's just their strategy; let it fall to pieces and then they'll HAVE to do something about it.

Troy Morris

Lunch?! Aren't you a blogger? Aren't you supposed to be wired in 24/7.

For shame. Now we'll just have to drink a little bit more to deal with the shame.