Two separate collisions are blocking multiple lanes on the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge in both the north and southbound directions in Seattle. The northbound collision is currently four miles. The southbound backup is currently one mile. Check your traffic.
Also….
A large chunk of cement has fallen from the Seneca St. offramp of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and onto Western St.
In March at the last tour (or was it Feb.?), I was told that “unless concrete is falling on busy streets,” they wouldn’t condemn the viaduct. My question was pretty pointed and pessimistic, but now it seems appropriate.
Is Western not busy enough or something? Was the concrete chunk tiny?
I was stuck in a huge back-up on southbound AWV two fridays back – at about 6pm. Traffic was trickling from the Aurora bridge all the way down past Columbia. When we passed the scene, it was a similar situation: car based into guardrail, and pieces of concrete had fallen to the street below. I-5 is routinely blocked (it always seems to be the HOV lanes which get hit) by accidents.
It’s ridiculous for the Kemper people to say we need to widen freeways. What our interstate and state highway system needs is modernization. Which would cost tens of billions, alone. Not to mention the fact the state doesn’t even have enough money to repave and maintain existing roads.
Highway modernization isn’t generally a winning investment at this point. The construction greatly reduces capacity for a short term, and only slightly increases capacity in the longer term. Usually there are better uses of the money.
I think maintaining our current highway infrastructure is just as important as build badly needed mass transit. If the Ship Canal Bridge or any major bridge in this region failed, it would affect our economy whether we have light rail or not. The key is having the choices and variety of modes to use.
There’s a post on Streetsblog with a chart showing cumulative capital investment in Transit and Highways since 1956. Highways have received 9-13 times more funding than transit (not surprising).
Nothing as serious as the “Alert” made it sound. Car hit a guardrail and knocked it down.
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_102008WAB_viaduct_guardrail_falls_SW.130265f9c.html
I don’t think an umbrella can protect you from something like that.
SLOG has it right that this will probably appear in an attack ad since it does have quite a bit of weight to it. Guardrails keep cars from flying off the viaduct, so if protection measures come apart at the seams it’s a massive deal.
Oh, and the part about people walking down there is pretty notable as well.
I’d point out, however, that unlike Gregoire’s, Rossi’s timeline does not include measures to patch the viaduct and his timeline for removal and disuse pushes its closure back further than 2012.
Bringing up the vulnerabilities of our single-mode transportation system has its merits, but as an argument for proposition 1, you’re sitting in a glass house. Do you think subways don’t have accidents and breakdowns? This is not so much an argument against trains, or freeways, but more about the dangers of having one long line (I-5 or Central Link) rather than multiple alternative routes. Of course, sub-area equity forces us to build one long, vulnerable line that stretches to Everett before it gets to Ballard. Ah, politics.
Tony,
We’ll have Sounder, Express Buses, and LINK. I think that’s pretty good redundancy for the main corridors.
It’d be nice to have multiple overlapping train lines a la NYC. If you have $40 billion or so sitting around for just such a project, let us know.
That’s an interesting point. Does anyone know how frequently MAX breaks down? I don’t know why, but I have the general impression that mechanical problems are rare for electric rail.
I just realized I do know why I consider electric rail to be so reliable. When I lived in SF, BART would make headlines when it (rarely) broke down.
I was on BART this morning and there was a problem, however, there are many cross-overs on the the BART tracks and “fluff” built into the schedules (like bus layovers) that allow BART to adjust to delays. Within 2 hours a 15 minute delay in one direction was “erased.”
When I did Accounting in North Portland, we had the following incidents in 8 months:
1) Breakdown in the tunnel, 10 minutes delay
2) No power to Steel Bridge, 5 minutes delay
That’s it.
Makes a good idea to include High Speed Crossovers in future lines, won’t totally solve blockages, but some service is better than no service. When there are MAX Disruptions in Portland, they run a bus bridge, plus, it is done more easily because TriMet has two yards for MAX Trains on the Blue Line, one West of Portland, another East of Portland. Some of these disruptions are often due to expanding Light Rail in Portland, as each new line over the past decade has branched off the Blue Line.
I don’t know if this is exactly what you mean, but ST Link has (federally mandated) cross-overs every few miles or so.
I spoke to a planner and the idea is if one direction is unable to use its tracks, central command will be able to switch it to the other direction’s tracks. Obviously this will slow down the whole system, but the system should still move along.