Turning an elevated freeway back into a river in Seoul. (Not Just Bikes)

This is an open thread.

13 Replies to “Sunday Movie: Freeway River Restoration”

  1. Cool movie! The local connection would be the 705 freeway on the Tacoma waterfront. Tearing that “bad decision” out would be the best urban renewal plan the city could possibly have…. and we’re talking about a town with long, long list of failed urban renewal plans.

    I think this warrants a lot of thought… here’s the link from “The Urbanist” brought up last open thread that should be talked about. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/06/23/central-puget-sounds-transportation-funding-gap-tops-78-billion/
    The political leadership over the last 2 decades (and to be clear, most Seattle Mayors over this span were close to being political clones) has racked up both debt and a long “needs to done now” list future City governments will need to deal with. In real terms, no matter who wins the next mayor’s race, they’ll have little choice but to keep the City on the same course because of the choices of past mayors (the huge list of transportation projects, actual debt and 20 year old promises like Sound Transit) It’s the same song and dance with housing. The immediate needs and heavy debt pin down whoever is in office at the time.

    1. The needs don’t go away just because funding is limited. We need serious transit and housing improvements, so that people aren’t cost-burdened, wasting time with substandard bus speed and frequency, or feeling like they have to drive because the transit options aren’t feasible. That doesn’t mean putting all our eggs into a long-distance Link spine. It means addressing ALL the local+regional transit gaps. That means focusing mostly on local service. That includes RapidRide and arguably Stride. We can coast a little on regional service because soon the ST2 Link network will be complete (Lynnwood, Redmond, Federal Way), and that will make a big difference to overall mobility opportunities. (I’m including short ST3 segments in that: Redmond Tech-Downtown Redmond, KDM-Federal Way.)

      I know you and Daniel from Mercer Island have always wanted the governments to address what the likely major Metro and ST cut would look like, and the time is coming. But we should recognize the federal government’s responsibility in this: it didn’t continue the covid-era operational funding, the administration is now yanking funding and grants willy-nilly, Congress may slash Medicaid, and there have been no “progressive” projects to shore up transit and infrastructure nationwide (which would help with national security and resilience), so the local governments have to cope.

      Sound Transit is also at fault for pursuing unnecessary expensive options in West Seattle, Ballard/DSTT2, and Everett Link. And all the city/county/state governments are at fault for pursuing equity even when it contradicts transit best practices (such as the 8 on MLK, or threatening to take hours from high-ridership neighborhoods to equity areas). So those are things they will have to compromise on.

      You’re focusing too much on debt and not on how to address the public’s real needs. That should be the governments’ focus. Limited resources and debt may be a constraint, but the governments should still have a plan and phases to address the need, and show that they’re taking steps toward it. Not just throw up their hands and say, “We can’t do anything because of this debt” and let the region sink into a hellhole of neglect.

      ST has a major debt issue, but it’s all because of ST3 and its voluntary add-on options to it. So ST could fix that by simply restructuring the ST3 suite (the way agencies restructure a bus network). Re Metro, I haven’t heard that it has a lot of debt. Metro’s issue is having enough operational funding, and eliminating the driver shortage. Seattle and the other cities don’t have a debt problem as much as a resources-to-fulfill-its-needs problem. The cities’ and state’s gap will inevitably have some impact on transit operations (making it worse) and infrastructure (no money for street improvements to speed up buses). That’s really the issue we’re facing.

    2. Cities can’t take on debt; neither can counties or even the state. Only the Federal Government, which you probably pay too much attention to, is the only one that can take on debt.

      If you mean debt from lack of investment (better termed a maintenance backlog), then yes, the there has been a recurring issue of governments raiding maintenance budgets for new projects and ribbon cutting rather than maintaining the services that already exist.

      2. Before tacomee contradicts you, cities and ST have debt in the form of bonds. But it’s only the ST3 debt that I’ve heard is a pressing issue now.

      3. Yes, but bonds at the State/County/City level are issued with defined income sources and for specific purposes. Not the same as taking on debt without a plan for repayment, as implied by tacomee based on his interpretation of the Urbanist article.

      4. ST’s debt “issue” is that it has internal financial policies that prevent it from issues bonds such that its debt payments are more than 2/3rds of its revenue after paying for operations. So, it can’t just spend more without violating its own financial policies, so its spending is structurally limited by its revenue.

      5. Nathan Dickey,

        You’re right. There’s actual interest occurring “on the books” debt and them there’s the dreaded “lack of investment” type debt that’s actually “not on the books” that’s currently choking most Left Coast States and Cities.

        My question is… What’s causing the “lack of investment” debt that’s rampant in Seattle? It’s not like Greater Seattle hasn’t spend plenty of money on housing and mass transit over the last 30 years, right? So what’s the problem here? According to “The Urbanist” Seattle’s transportation system is in dire shape! And the same for public housing, fallowing record levels of public spending on both.

        I don’t have much insight to the workings of Sound Transit, but I do know how most public and low income housing gets build. There’s a whole industry that bundles money (private, Federal, State and City) and then plans and builds low income housing. The trouble is this takes twice as long and costs twice as much as say…. just buying an apartment building on the open market, or even taking public bids a build regular run-of-mill building. Low income housing always seems to be “extra” in the most costly way. The real crazy thing about the whole system is the people working on these projects actually think they’re doing good.

        My semi-educated guess is Sound Transit is just one big pack of grifters who are all buddies. Dow, the board, the big construction companies…… Any reasonable person looks at this cabal and sees corruption. When contractors make mistakes in free market projects, the contractor fixes them at their cost and the principal chews their ass about the time wasted. No one seems to held responsible at ST…. on cost or time. Every damn project is way over budget and way behind schedule. How about ST stops making excuses and we use the extra money to shore up METRO?

        Right now I’d guess Katie Wilson has an outside chance to be mayor…. politics aside, electing a political outsider in Seattle would never a bad thing. I’m sure she’ll have big plans for change, but do those plans even stand a chance? Looking at Seattle Police Department. SDOT, City Light, the Homeless Industrial complex, METRO and Sound Transit…. would it even be possible given the entrenched nature of all the players?

      6. Tacomee, I suggest you rethink your assumption that the $78B is 100% Seattle. Consider the extent of unmaintained I-5, of underfunded roads and “state highways”, of worn-out ferries, of aging buses, across the Puget Sound. Much of that, most of it, even, is not Seattle’s fault. If anything, most of it is Olympia’s fault for being unwilling to increase gas taxes or other revenues to pay for basic road maintenance.

        Also, we may have spent some money on public housing and transit, but it’s an incredibly faulty assumption to think that it’s been a sufficient amount to satisfy the needs of the region. In fact, the point of research like this is to determine the explicit lack of spending on roads, transit, and other needs.

        Breaking news: things cost more money than people think.

      7. Nathan Dickey,

        Oh, but that 78 billion dollar transportation backlog is 100% Seattle’s problem! Sure, maybe the Feds or the State didn’t kick in enough funds for the last 30 years. So what? Take that as a sign that it’s very unlikely the State or Feds will help Seattle out of this mess. Doesn’t matter what’s “fair” or the details about how this mess happened. Seattle will have to deal with this on its own.

        If “The Urbanist” can’t connect the dots between Sound Transit cost overruns, the underfunded overall transit system, the limited amount of tax funds coming in and political reality of raising more tax revenue…. gosh, I just don’t know what to tell you.

        The average voter is going to link the 9 billion plus West Seattle subway boondoggle to the fake Metro bus driver shortage that’s threatening bus service. You might think they’re two separate issues… but the rest of us don’t.

  3. I wish King Country Metro had a way to make on-the-fly schedule adjustments in situations where a traffic Armageddon makes it impossible to run certain routes at their advertised frequency, given their available fleet of buses and drivers.

    In particular, I would rather see Metro issue a temporary schedule modification where a route is running at a reduced frequency that Metro can actually keep, rather than leave riders guessing when a bus is going to show up. The problem is, I don’t think the software in either the backend or the apps is designed for temporary schedule modifications that only last a few hours, it’s designed for schedules to be set twice a year and apply for months, thereafter.

    This could be useful in special situations, like if a major accident causes a big bottleneck with long delays, spanning several hours.

  4. I just returned from Korea . . . and the Cheonggyecheong Stream restoration is simply amazing. I saw a heron trying its luck catching fish! In addition, Korea quite possibly has the most extensive national network of bicycle trails. There are wide, dedicated bike paths on both the north and south sides of the Han River bisecting Seoul, as well as many feeder trails from all parts of the city. I did 375 miles of the 395-mile, cross-country “Four Rivers” Trail which goes from Incheon (NW of Seoul) to Busan.

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