Now Gregoire says we can get a new 520 by 2016 with a cost of about $3.7 billion and $3.9 billion, assuming $2 billion from tolling.
The sooner the better is great, but that’s still more than $2.5 billion per mile of bridge…
7 Replies to “Faster, Cheaper, Stronger…”
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good numbers to keep handy when people whine about how expensive light rail is
seriously, it’s really sad to see how much we spend on roads without batting an eye, but everything transit related has to be done on the cheap
sigh
I think an immediate need would be to look at how many trips per day that bridge is going to take at that cost.
It gets 100K/day now. I am sure they guess it’ll carry more.
Still ULink is less than half that price and will carry that many people.
The $3.7-3.9 billion buys a brand new SR 520 from I-5 to I-405. So that’s more like $450 million a mile.
6 lanes isn’t even enough for today, let alone 10, 20, 30+ years from now.
Sad.
[sam] I’d argue that 6 is too many. Especially for 20 years from now if we’re serious about transit.
Our region has reached a density where roads filled with SOV’s just can’t handle our needs. Sure you could argue that adding 4 more lanes to 520 (and I-5, and I-405, and adding higher capacity on/off ramps to meet this new traffic flow) will relieve traffic in the short term.
But then the incentive to live in a city is reduced, which combined with increased population increases commuters until we’re back at our current condition, but with 4 extra lanes to maintain and a larger and more expensive bridge to rebuild next time.
Then what? Keep paving? At what point does our road welfare become an oppressive financial burden? At what point will we have unwalkable communities, parking lots between each building, brown skies, and downtown gridlock?
I think we’ve already hit that point. Our area has grown up. The only way to decrease road traffic is not by building more roads but by building more transportation.
Unfortunately adding more lanes results in more backup since you’re still feeding into a single lane on the west side. Of course, you still have the left lane exit from I-5 S to get on 520…