From Crosscut: On Jan. 11, Seattle enters a period the city has dubbed the “Period of Maximum Constraint.” It sounds a bit like bondage, but without the fun bits. It kicks off with the closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, resulting in three weeks of maximal transportation disruption.
This will be the longest planned highway shutdown in Seattle history and will tie up commuters by displacing approximately 90,000 viaduct trips per day. The new Bertha-bored tunnel will not yet be open.
Laura Newborn, project spokesperson with the Washington State Department of Transportation, reminds us that the viaduct replacement is about safety. The structure suffered earthquake damage in 2001 and has been slowly sinking. “It’s not about making traffic better,” Newborn says. Now they tell us.
In the short term, it will make traffic much worse. The crunch should be alleviated when the Highway 99 tunnel opens after the predicted three-week interregnum following the viaduct’s closing. They won’t be charging tolls at first, so the new tunnel should absorb many of those 90,000 vehicle trips, and perhaps more, until tolling is instituted. And when tolling does go into effect — not before summer, Newborn says — no one really knows what the effect will be. Certainly better than a closed tunnel, but not everyone will want to pay. So the surface streets might be clogged with more drivers on an ongoing basis.