Results tagged “theviaduct”

There are 14 weeks until Election Day, which is great because there are only 14 issues in our state's gubernatorial race (15 if you count Eastern Washington's concerns).

With the Ballard Denny's landmark status is-it-or-isn't-it debacle still fresh on our mind, comes the latest chapter in Seattle's ever-exciting "What Constitutes an Historic Landmark?" debate. According to local historian Art Skolnik, the death-trap we formally call the Alaskan Way Viaduct should be declared and preserved as an historic landmark.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is closed for its semi-annual inspection this weekend. The viaduct will be closed from 6am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday. The Battery Street Tunnel will be closed all weekend to traffic. The semi-annual inspections check for that settling Dan was talking about earlier this week and the cracks we all pretend aren't there when we speed down the viaduct, fearing for our lives.

Glory be! Is this the year all our wishes come true? It wasn't but yesterday that we asked whether a decision would be made on the Viaduct this year.

Holy crap are we not getting enough sleep. We woke up this morning and did battle with the dueling alarms we have to set to enforce our five hours of shut eye, slugged ourselves to the bus stop, inched our way downtown to the soothing sounds of Don Edwards and then experienced our first radical optical illusion since a beach rave and a handful of mushrooms five years ago. We peered into a newsbox and the letters of the Seattle Times headline picked themselves up from whatever arrangement they were in and realigned to read "Viaduct fight: Could streets be the answer?"

Okay, Okay, so we cribbed basically this entire entry from Historylink --but only because it is such a great site. However, so that we don't feel too plagiarific, Seattlest has run the original essay through the the in the back of the office (right near the alley where we all go out to smoke). Needless to say, we cribbed all of the following photos from UW Special Collections Division's assortment of awesome digitized archival photographs.

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!

If you look at this post sometime outside business hours YouTube should have its traffic down to a managable size and actually be able to serve up a video. Right now you're screwed and there's going to be a big blank space under this.

The Viaduct chalker we've mentioned in the past is still at it. This picture was taken a week ago, but we're down there a lot and are constantly coming across new wisdoms. Actually this person is definitely not the same writer we photographed in the past so maybe the mayor's office has a whole clandestine Ministry of Chalk Propoganda going? Wonder what that crossed out portion was going to say...

The Viaduct's closing this weekend for repairs and we should keep it closed. We're never going to decide anything while traffic is flowing freely because the problem isn't apparent enough. The Viaduct isn't safe. We're going to replace it with a tunnel or a bigger viaduct or maybe nothing at all, but we'll vote on that for the first time at the end of 2007 and who knows how long it'll be after that. We'll be zipping around with jetpacks and hover cars before we decide anything so either an earthquake is going to bring it down or we're going to decide it's time to shut off traffic.

It's rained for 22 straight days which seems pretty excessive to us, but we were really dry last winter so maybe our perspective is just skewed. Mud slides are happening and home owners are getting their first looks at puddles in the basement. Generally, it sucks. Anyway, other media outlets have been broadcasting the fact that we might meet or exceed the historical high for consecutive days of rainfall which is 33. Seems to Seattlest like we're only two-thirds of the way there. The 33 days of rain happened in 1953 so we're going to count down the days to the record by giving you a history tidbit from that year.

The gas tax bobbed and weaved its way through our state legislature and was signed by Governor Gregoire last week to the great cheer of many, despite our current gas prices. Others aren't so sure a 33% tax increase on gasoline is such a good idea. The Viaduct needs money badly, as does 405 and 520. Our transportation infrastructure is crumbling around us, but certainly drivers shouldn't have to contribute to maintaining the roads and bridges they use every day. We can get the money from somewhere else (public education, for example), because obviously if there's not enough money in a budget to keep viaducts from dropping onto our heads we must be wasting it all on some commie program or other.