A handful of new reports regarding the Viaduct replacement options have been released. Yesterday the Times covered two reports regarding the urban design and open space aspects of all the designs.
The first, from a Copenhagen architectural firm, found that none of the designs are friendly to pedestrians:
The study found flaws with the surface, tunnel and aerial options and said none provides a “positive pedestrian” environment that would tie downtown Seattle to its waterfront.
The authors of the 40-page report, Gehl Architects of Copenhagen, were asked to find ways to get more people to walk and bicycle along the waterfront, to increase the amount of time people spend in the city and to increase the potential for new activities on the waterfront, such as outdoor events.
What the city needs to do, according to the report, is discourage cars and get more people walking, bicycling and taking public transit.
A strong ideal, but it’s a reality that this corridor will still have to move many tens of thousands of people daily regardless of the option. Hopefully, with a surface option, demand patterns will change and the waterfront can be made more accommodating to people (and thus less accommodating to cars).
A second report in the same article, from the state Department of Transportation, analyzes the open space and urban design aspects of the plan:
A report issued by the state Department of Transportation found the waterfront promenade would increase from an average of 20 feet to between 40 and 106 feet wide. All, except for the elevated options, would open up the waterfront to improved views, visibility and sunlight.
[...]Chopp’s plan “is the least desirable option from an urban-design and open-space standpoint,” the report found. It said it is worse than the existing viaduct because it provides a lower quality of public space and compromises the historic identity of the waterfront and access to it from downtown.
Finally, an economic study of the plan found negiliable economic impact on the I-5 corridor.
A summary of the report said new highways near the waterfront would not lengthen a trip to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport more than three or four minutes. The viaduct highway replacement options assume some lane improvements on the freeway.
The report said there would be longer travel for replacements that remove the viaduct and disperse traffic on surface streets and use more buses.
The study said there’d be little effect on the region’s economy from any of the eight options under study, because of relatively small differences in the resulting travel times.
The decision for the Viaduct should be reached next month. The walls say that the city prefers some sort of hybrid B+C that combines the capacity of a pair of three-lane one-way streets with a strong transit investment.
I think that the existing ramps should become long pedestrian walkways down to the waterfront. A nice swooping flyover with views of the city.
I want a petition to keep those as pedestrian walkways. I’ve always wished for something like that. If they put a building on either place, they can have the walkway go through the building.
The Seattle Waterfront Promenade?
It would make pedestrian access better (1 major access point every few blocks, one by the north part of the Financial District, one by the south part, access to the DSTT), bikes could use it, etc.
Look at all those pretty stoplights in the B/C option. Can’t wait to start sucking on car exhaust in the Battery Street Tunnel while I sit in traffic and idle. Hmmm…perhaps they can implement some sort of carbon catching devices in the tunnel while they’re at it.
There are exhaust fans on Battery St above. If you walk down Battery St you’ll hear them. The ventilation system will be upgraded to current standards as part of the project, no matter which plan is used for the Viaduct.
These reports are consistent with my feelings about the viaduct. The surface options in some combination are the best of bad options, and the open space design in every option is really bad.
What I’d like to see is no viaduct and an Alaskan Way that looks like the other north-south streets in the city except for the open waterfront on one side. Put in decent bike lanes, reserve one lane for freight and buses. Add a streetcar. Plan for light rail connections to Ballard and West Seattle if a second tunnel ever becomes feasible. Accept that traffic will get worse.
Could you explain to me how you’re ideal is different from option C? As I read it, Option C makes Alaska/Western look a whole lot like 2nd/4th. It includes bike lanes and is open to the waterfront on the west except for the existing buildings on the piers. ST is studying and preserving ROW for Light Rail from Ballard to West Seattle as part of the Prop 1 package that was just passed. The streetcar is going to happen at least along 1st ave one way or another. I think the only thing missing from your ideal is dedicated freight lanes, but dedicate lanes won’t help freight mobility that much over a 1 mile corridor.
On-street parking?
why not model the waterfront after portland’s? (downtown side)
the thing that is most troubling about the models is that the whole damn pedestrian area is brick pavement. that’s just fascist.
for the surface options, separate the n and s bound lanes with a wide grassy patch (with a streetcar running down it) like you see on so many european cities’ main boulevards. put in grass with a paved bike path and separate cement foot path flanking on each side. how about a few civic amenities like a fountain (that you can go in in the summer), statues, flowers, gardens, etc. that make it look nice.
in boston, the (outmoded but still fairly tolerable) storrow drive parallels the charles river waterfront. if my estimates are correct, the scale is similar to seattle and the traffic that uses storrow drive is actually probably even heavier than goes by on the waterfront. yet, it all works. there’s grass, trees, and other civic amenities that get PEOPLE down there, and the amenities have the wonderful characteristic of also being able to create a nice barrier between the people and the cars.
people are remarkably adaptable. i don’t buy formulaic estimates that certain acreage / square footage of open space dictates anything – what’s *there* is what matters, and if it’s just another vague, empty, paved space like westlake center, then of course, nobody will want to linger there or even go there. what’s the draw? you can see the water from a lot of places in the city. if there were grass and pleasant surroundings (independent of N-thousand cars passing by) i could see the area being incredibly popular on weekdays for downtown office workers (look how coveted sunny grass space is in steinbruck park on sunny weekdays) and on weekends and early mornings later in the evenings for joggers, cyclists and people who live in the large number of condos nearby.
this is a chance to fill in the gap of seattle not having a good, centrally located “park” that really does the beauty of this city justice. the transportation problem is independent of this problem. if the chopp and elevated options go off the table, which they will, then the real problem to solve is how to make the most of that space – right now pretty much everybody who should absolutely have nothing to do with designing what is potentially the largest new downtown park seattle will get in a hundred years is calling the shots. that should change, and both transpo nerds could win (more streetcars and surface transit) as well as the people who actually spend time in our city (via a wonderful new park, etc.).
the surface options really can be a win-win – however, the real focus should be on how to make the best use of the space, not in figuring out how to fit the space into an arbitrary formula. if something like this can work in boston, why not here?
This was my instinct as well. It doesn’t seem like space itself would attract people–there needs to be some actual reason to go there. On the other hand, if you’ve got space, you can fill it with stuff. Shops, places to eat, probably half a dozen Starbucks… (I can only hope all that continuous empty space covered in red bricks isn’t their final vision.)
From the article:
“Integrated elevated option proposed by State House Speaker Frank Chopp: ‘Unattractive spaces are created on top of the elevated structure, an area that would be unsafe and unattractive and likely to remain unused by pedestrians or bicyclists.’”
That, too, looked like a park for the sake of a park. And like the empty space, what’s the motivation to go? Can you even walk through it to get to something on the other end? With the exception of the connection at the market, will people really want to climb what looks like about 6 stories to get to the park, especially if there’s nothing in particular to do once you get there? And what happens to all the traffic noise? (The area above the Battery Street tunnel is pretty noisy.) I can’t see it being as crowded as their artist rendering suggests. (I’m picturing Freeway Park when there are no conventions in progress.)
another boston example – the central artery. the space left behind after the elevated roadway was torn down was given a huge amount of consideration – how to return that space to people and connect the city. what i’m seeing with the seattle viaduct project is treatment of the possible beneficial use of the space by actual human beings as an afterthought. if that mentality continues, we’ll probably end up with 11 acres of bricks, plop art, and concrete terracing a-la freeway park that look good on a foamcore model but in reality are terrifying, unenjoyable, hostile and forbidding places that people simply want to pass through as quickly as possible. i’m not sure i’d blame the seattle process on this – rather it’s simply the seattle civic mentality of heavily subsidizing private interests while throwing a few lousy crumbs to the people who actually inhabit the city.
it’s nice that people have been pushing hard for what is ultimately a no-brainer, rational decision in building a liveable city (by tearing down the viaduct). but shouldn’t alarm bells be going off that nobody’s talking about how we can make the absolute best use of the extra waterfront space? what’s the master vision there? that’s a big item that could have a lot of impact on the project as well – if it’s not being fleshed out now, chances are it will be a half-assed empty nod to “progress” as opposed to a civic centerpiece that is living, breathing “progressiveness”.
Hear, hear. Dedicated lanes for streetcars don’t have to be “hard”… groundcover (grass, ivy) is much more attractive. See the St. Charles streetcar in New Orleans for a beautiful example.
Also, traffic noise is not well addressed in the renderings. One need only climb both sides of Denny between Terry and Boren to fully appreciate the difference a few shrubs can make.
We are still very early in decision making so I remain hopeful the renderings are no indication of final landscaping, &c. But it’s important we’re ready to speak out for smart design when the time to flesh out the plans comes.
Here’s a question I’ve been wondering about for a while. How does Vancouver (a similar-sized city) manage to survive without any highways going through downtown, but we apparently need two highways? (or so everyone says.)
What I’ve always heard is that it’s regional geography. Vancouver is basically an end-of-the-line city, while Seattle acts as more of a hub. Seattle has suburbs expanding in all directions plus the mid-sized cities of Everett & Bellingham to the north; Tacoma & Olympia to the south. Vancouver just has their southern and eastern burbs (which are serviced by 2 highways that feed them into downtown) they aren’t surrounded by any other mid-sized cities looking to connect by getting through their downtown. Seattle has to deal with much of that cross traffic passing through it – downtown isn’t the main destination. That’s further complicated by the fact our natural landmass is an hourglass that funnels things between the Sound & Lake Washington, and our original by-pass highway (I-405) is now it’s own clogged artery through the eastern edge cities.
ZOMG! The waterfront walkway will be super wide. How will pedestrians survive. Look, we’re not gonna do the regular-sized street options (too unpalatable for all the car peeps). We’re not doing any of the tunnel options (too much money, when we have some other things like 520 and a major recession going on).
So let’s do the best of the surface + transit options.
Just get going already. The Seattle process sucks.
as long as jan gehl is involved with this project, it will turn out excellent, he is the best urban designer in the world.