Yes, Virginia, there really is a viaduct decision. "After years of debates, arguments and advisory votes the replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct will finally be chosen next month," says the P-I. The viaduct is all over both dailies, with the Seattle Times pointing out that the state's projected $4.6 billion deficit isn't likely to affect transportation decisions as much as you'd think: "Transportation has a separate budget with its own source of revenue —......

The scale of this crime--six heisted parking meters!--is what impresses us. Also the location, beneath the Viaduct, is kinda noir. We can imagine a lot of deals going down in the shadows. Not usually involving parking meters, though. Someone cut the bolts off the bottom of the new electronic parking meters, say the police, who were notified when their parking meters stopped reporting electronically for duty. The thieves didn't get much besides change--and possibly credit......

One of the oldest jokes in the book is at the expense of the Sixth Amendment: how can twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty be counted as your peers? Juries, after all, are populated by the unemployed and retirees--people who don't have to actually work for a living. But alas, should you find yourself accused of knocking over a liquor store, defrauding a bank, or killing your significant other, retirees and the......

Via Slog, here's the video of the Minneapolis 35W bridge collapse. Looks like it just went WHUMP. No warning. Of course you immediately think of the Viaduct, but the 35W bridge is a steel truss bridge, just like the I-5 Ship Canal bridge. And the Ship Canal bridge is six years older (it was finished in 1961, 35W in 1967). The Alaskan Way Viaduct, made of reinforced concrete bridge, opened in 1953. We don't know......

This Saturday offers at least three ways to make a difference in Seattle, or at least look like you care whilst furthering your own selfish interests. Start things off at the Egyptian Theater for the SIFF volunteer meeting from 10am to noon. This is your best opportunity to learn about all the different jobs that you can do to pitch in for the festival. It's also a good way to get a few good......

It's hard to believe that you were born 54 years ago today, Alaskan Way Viaduct. You don't look a day over 50. Sure, your reinforced concrete could use some work. We all need a little health maintenance as we get older. Viaduct, we admire the way you embrace your age. So stoic. You don't celebrate it; getting old is, in many ways, a pain. And you don't complain about it or submerge yourself in......

ELECTION NIGHT PARTY: Get happy with Cary Moon and the People's Waterfront Coalition, the prophets of the surface/transit waterfront. 7:30-9pm (votes trickle in circa 8:15) // Edgewater Hotel [2411 Alaskan Way, Pier 67] 9pm-? // Spitfire Grill [2219 4th Ave] MUSIC: What does it do to your "keeping it real" status when your hip-hop album, which more than touches base on drug culture, only blows up after attention from the Vices and Pitchforks of the......

Doesn't matter whether you rebuild, retrofit or dig. Doesn't matter if the State Dep't of Transportation pretends they need to maintain the Viaduct's current capacity of 110,000 vehicles a day (even if The Stranger and others make it clear the number is closer to 75,000). No matter what, there's still the annoying question of what happens to all those northbound cars when they get to the northern end of Alaskan Way. Or to the southbound......

The state DOT today said that one of the two choices on the March special "what to do with the viaduct" election isn't safe, effectively rendering the election pointless.Seattle's proposal for a reduced, four-lane Alaskan Way tunnel should be dropped from further consideration, because of "serious operational and safety problems found during our technical review," the State Department of Transportation said in a letter released this morning. Here's the letter [pdf]. The DOT's issue is......

Recently Governor Gregoire's been taking a lot of heat for her ambivalent handling of the Viaduct sitchyation we got here. Today, the Seattle Times rides to her rescue. The blame-reallocating story by David Postman and Andrew Garber begins: Gov. Christine Gregoire got so frustrated trying to broker a compromise between Mayor Greg Nickels and House Speaker Frank Chopp on the Alaskan Way Viaduct that she turned to a Republican wise man for advice. "She......

Sonics owner Clay Bennett, displaying an uncanny sense of timing, delivered an estimate on keeping the Sonics to Governor Gregoire today, 24 hours after she'd decided there wasn't enough money for an Alaskan Way Tunnel. From the letter [pdf]:To make this project work, it is clear that we will need at least $300 million in revenue sources authorized by the state. These would be taxes collected only in King County... The entire project, Bennett says,......

A woman tried to incinerate herself in an elevator at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront this morning, reports the Seattle Times: The woman, who hasn't been identified, suffered burns to 60 percent of her body and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, said Seattle fire spokeswoman Sue Stangl. The woman had been a guest at the Marriott-Waterfront. Firefighters were called to the hotel, which is at 2100 Alaskan Way, at 12:54 a.m. on report of a......

The latest chapter in the drama (using the term loosely) around WSDOT's updates of the Alaskan Way Viaduct article on Wikipedia. Wiki administrator Crzrussion posted on the article's talk page this explanation from Amy Grotefendt at WSDOT : No offense was intended in providing updates to the Wikipedia page, and we want to abide by the expectations and guidelines involving the Wikipedia community. The Wikipedia page was updated on October 27, 2006, to correct inaccuracies......

If the Wikipedia user WSDOT Alaskan Way Viaduct Project wants to spin any more entries they're going to have to identify themselves to the powers that be at the site. As noted in the comments of our post on Friday and at Wikipedia's discussion page for the Alaskan Way entry, WSDOT Alaskan Way Viaduct Project has been banned.......

Have you read Wikipedia's article on the Alaskan Way Viaduct lately? Here are the two most recent versions of the opening paragraph. The first is from September 21, last revised by Bibliophylax: The Alaskan Way Viaduct is an elevated section of Washington State Route 99 that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle's Industrial District and downtown Seattle. It is the smaller of the two major traffic corridors through Seattle, carrying up to 110,000......

The Viaduct is closing this weekend for a semi-annual inspection, which we like to imagine as Mayor Nickels walking up to and attempting to shake a support column. Thumbs-up, DOT, looks like we're set for another year or until such time as a replacement tunnel is funded! While the official inspecting is going on, there is an opportunity for some private citizen-types to get a close-up look at the Viaduct decks. The Alaskan Way......

Upon hearing that Alaskan Way viaduct tunnel or rebuild will cost billions more than originally thought, some on the city council are calling for...oh, you'll just never guess, so here's what the Times says: "Some council members are unhappy with the choices they've been given and plan to introduce a resolution today asking the state to study other options, such as tearing down the viaduct and distributing its traffic through the city with transit......

Dear pansy-ass liberals at KUOW--stop the relativism. Just as there's a difference between Gitmo and My Lai, there's a difference between East and West Marginal Way. This morning, the KUOW traffic reporter advised listeners that "Marginal Way is closed." OK--but there are TWO Marginal Ways. There's West Marginal Way, which connects West Seattle to Burien, and is consequently used by no one, and East Marginal Way, which connects the Alaskan Way Viaduct to the......

Someday the Viaduct is going to collapse and kill a bunch of not-so-unsuspecting Seattleites and maybe a few guys from Everett. Only the elevated highway nymphs and the guy deep in the earth who pulls the earthquake levers knows when, exactly, that will be, but we have a pretty good idea that it will happen "someday." So we busy ourselves fixing it, or, failing that, arguing about how to fix it. So far we've got......

NEW is history, say the policy pundits at Cascadia Scorecard. Call us the Sightline Institute instead. (Someone's been busy in the art department turning wonky into wowzers! Ha ha! No, seriously, the site looks hot.) We mention them because of this recent, wonktacular post -- in which they spend a good deal of time talking about Alaskan Way Viaduct-less traffic -- and argue, "Why spend billions of dollars to fix a problem that that city's......

Magnolia is getting a new bridge, if the city can get some money to pay for it. Damaged in the 2001 Nisqually Quake, the current Magnolia Bridge is in a race with the Alaskan Way Viaduct to fall over. While it will probably take decades for something to be done about the Viaduct, the city will move ahead with the Magnolia project in 2009. Two options were proposed: rebuild the bridge in its current location,......

At 2:30 p.m. today, March 13th, the Seattle City Council is holding a hearing with members of the Washington State Department of Transportation and the Seattle Department of Transportation concerning the controversial Alaskan Way Viaduct program. Grace Crunican and Bob Chandler of SDOT and Ron Paananen of WashDOT are expected to be questioned by council members about funding issues with regard to Team Nickels' increasingly questionable replacement choice for the earthquake damaged waterfront highway. The......

Earlier in the week it looked as if Mayor Nickels' plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel had run out of time. Olympia lawmakers wanted him to present a funding package by April 1, an almost impossible task given the project's 3 to 4 billion dollar cost. Yesterday, the state House approved a plan that would give Governor Christine Gregoire until January 1 to decide the future of the viaduct. The plan......

We're not sure exactly what Ghost Cycle is. Is it a protest? Against what? Is it an awareness campaign? Possibly. It is very powerful as a visual image - We saw one of the white bikes off of the lower Alaskan Way yesterday while we were on foot and then later almost massacred a number of bicyclists while driving home along that very route. That road, by the way, may be one of the safer......

Until we had to actually consider it we had absolutely no opinion of the waterfront trolley. We just watched it going by day after day from the loading dock behind our office. Generally empty. Everytime it clang-clanged its way through the intersection across the street we'd glance up and mutter curses at whichever driver thought they could beat it through. Just once did we see it hit someone. It was a minivan and we only......

Seattlest has let a day or two go by without yammering on about the Viaduct, and we're sorry. Luckily, there's new doings in the bass-ackwards transportation saga, reported in the Seattle Times: a bridge concept. Actually, Seattlest already came up with this idea months and months ago, after consuming a bottle of a "quaffable" Cotes du Rhone one evening and being thus reminded of the bridge they built over there that looks so appealing.......

Republicans, they are a lot like us, except wealthier with a better knowledge of Big and Rich lyrics. They also have little say in the Seattle political spectrum-- except that there are enough GOPers in the city to tilt a close election, if they bother to pick which lilly liberal Dem they want to go with. The point is not much attention is paid to Republicans in Seattle . However, there are two races......

Initiatives, they are the voice of the people-- which is a really sad thought. Sure, Tim Eyman may have ruined everything in this state with his grand plan to fix local government and buy as much stuff as possible using his supporters' money; however, he is not behind the latest effort to get tax reform on the ballot. Initiative 912 would repeal the 9 cent per gallon tax passed by the state legislature. The money......

It looks like we can celebrate some resolution on the waterfront trolley issue today. Gov. Gregoire, speaking at a press conference this morning, surprised administrators and reporters alike with a sweeping plan to preserve the streetcar that has been threatend by plans for a sculpture park and the impending razing of the viaduct. Work will begin in late 2005 to extended the tracks through Myrtle Edwards Park and into the Seattle Center, where a privately......

There's no doubt that between the viaduct and the 520 bridge the sexier demolition project is the viaduct. It's ugly, dangerous, noisy, hateful, holds grudges, is jealous of our success and a whole lot of other bad stuff. We want it disassembled and buried deep inside the earth; replaced with something shinier and happier like a park or condos or a dozen new cruise ship terminals. The 520 we can live with. Who would......