A few weeks back, the first work to overhaul 520 and replace the floating Evergreen Point bridge began with an ironic demolition — the old toll administration building, unused since 1979, was ripped down to make way for the first segment of work on $306 million of roadway from Lake Washington to Bellevue. On the Seattle side of the bridge, however, there is no price tag — or, more specifically, Olympia hasn’t decided, yet, how to pay for it — and, unlike the east end of things where WSDOT contractors will widen the highway with bus and carpool lanes, add shoulders, a park-and-ride lot and lid at Evergreen Point Road, and create a median transit stop over the next three to four years, the plan for the west side is years behind the rest of the project and headed, the groups’ representatives say, for a legal battle with the Sustainable 520 organization and the North Capitol Hill Neighborhood Association. Here’s a look at the status of completing the overhaul of 520 and what some around Capitol Hill are doing to shape the plan.
Monday night, representatives from the Washington State Department of Transportation met with community members at north Capitol Hill’s Seattle Prep to talk about their project to overhaul 520. But this wasn’t a discussion about tolling or even the floating pontoons that must be replaced before the bridge sinks to the bottom of the lake. That stuff is a done deal. Tolling starts this summer. The pontoons are being built. Instead, the next big thing to finish the overhaul of 520 is finishing the plan for the miles of roadway between the shores of Lake Washington and I-5.
The “area of potential effects” for the westside 520 replacement. See attached PDF for larger version. (Source: WSDOT)
Sustainable 520, the NCHNA and a group of organizations from communities on the shores of Lake Washington and within the steady hum of the highway recently sent out the following open letter to the Seattle City Council:
“City council, it’s time to represent Seattle!City council members, it’s time to represent Seattle. Instead, you’ve been enabling the state to rush toward awarding construction contracts for 520 this summer.
We know that expanding 520 is a state project. But the city council could and should be ensuring the state’s project actually helps, not harms, our city. The council should be asking, not avoiding, the hard questions:
1) How can it help the city to take a lane away from I-5? The state’s currently “preferred alternative” for 520 removes a lane from I-5 on the ship canal bridge and just south of the 520 interchange. One less I-5 lane guarantees problems for anyone commuting to or from anywhere north of the ship canal.
2) How can it help the city to start a project with no reasonable prospect of the funding to finish it? The state plans to use all its available funds in expanding four lanes to six from the eastside to near Seattle. Then it will run out of money; the state budget is without the funds it would need to finish the Seattle side of the project within the next 10 years. The shortfall will exceed $2.5 billion—an amount too big to come from tolling I-90 or from the federal government.
Please don’t tell us the legislature is considering new taxes. Even assuming the legislature would devote such a huge percent of its budget to Seattle, transportation taxes don’t pass without support from the people of the 43rd district—the people most harmed by the state’s currently “preferred alternative.”
3) How can it help the city, or the region, to leave 520’s Seattle side vulnerable to earthquakes, for 10 years or more? 520’s worst safety vulnerability is on the Seattle side, where the road is supported by columns that could crumble in an earthquake. Yet the state has allocated none of its available funds to fix these columns. Why not use the available funds to fix the safety problems, now? That is, after all, how this project was sold to the public—as a safety fix.
4) How can it help the city, or the region, to start a project before understanding how it will impact Seattle traffic? Peter Hahn, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, has recently written to the state highway department, pointing out that city streets will be affected from Madison to Northwest 75th and from Lake Washington to I-5, in ways not yet understood. Hahn sensibly asks that traffic impacts be studied and that good plans to preserve mobility in the city be in place, before the state issues any final environmental impact statements. We endorse this; why don’t you?
Increasing the number of vehicles that have to get through the Montlake interchange will extend the congestion far beyond Montlake, into Capitol Hill, Roanoke Park, Portage Bay, Madison Park, and the university district. Most trip times will be longer not shorter; congestion on the Seattle side will offset any time improvement crossing Lake Washington.
Council members, we elected you. We all agree the 520 corridor needs help. But it needs to be done right.As a council, so far, you seem content with the few minor tweaks you’ve tacked onto the state’s very bad plan. Please, instead, represent the people of Seattle. Our request is simple: please critically assess the big picture and the details, before you consent to any move forward on this ill-conceived project.”
s/ Fran Conley Coordinator [email protected] 206-328-4444
s/ Colleen McAleer Laurelhurst Community Council
s/ Maurice B Cooper, P.E. Madison Park Community Council
s/ Jonathan M. Dubman Montlake Community Council
s/ Nancy Brainard Capitol Hill Neighborhood Association
s/ Gary R. Stone Boating Community
s/ Theodore Lane Roanoke Park/Portage Bay Community Council
When we asked her last month about Sustainable 520’s activities, Fran Conley would not comment on specifics about her group’s legal proceedings but confirmed that the organization has been fundraising and reaching out for support in preparation to force WSDOT to scale back its Seattle-side plans:
The communities who came together to form the Coalition for a Sustainable 520 recognize that 520 has problems, and want to make the corridor better. We worked for years in many processes, including the local impact committee, the 520 mediation, and the legislative workgroup, and we have reluctantly concluded that these processes were all form, no substance. Our issues were not addressed. We are now looking toward legal action to get us a better solution.
The state seems determined to push through its “preferred alternative”, even though it will do great damage to Capitol Hill and other communities. The preferred alternative will make traffic much worse, even for those using the expanded bridge, because the congestion in Seattle will offset any gains in crossing the lake. Because the preferred alternative removes an express lane from I-5, and because the current 520 exits near the Arboretum will be closed, Capitol HIll will get more traffic from these sources as well as the increased traffic induced by more lanes. Meanwhile, transit is not funded. We believe it would make more sense to use the available money to fix the safety problems and provide easy bus service for everyone who wants to ride a bus. Then in the future, when money is available, additional transit-only lanes can be added.
The North Capitol Hill Neighborhood Association — NCHNA — has thrown its support behind Sustainable 520’s objections. We talked to the group last spring about their opposition to the preferred plan for replacing the 520 bridge. This year, representatives from NCHNA have been holding what they have said is a series of small meetings in neighborhood homes to rally support for the Sustainable 520 effort.
Nancy Brainard, one of those reps, also contributes to a community blog on the Seattle PI where she has outlined her north Capitol Hill opposition to what WSDOT is planning for the stretch of 520 below. Here’s one recent top-ten list of concerns:
10. What we’ll get isn’t what was promised. The new six lanes across Lake Washington will likely dead-end for the foreseeable future into the same old four lanes before reaching the Seattle side. Problems with the earthquake-vulnerable columns that support the Seattle side will go unaddressed.
9. What we’ll pay won’t be enough to build in Seattle. The tolls beginning this spring would be enough to fix 520’s safety problems: the pontoons under the floating bridge and the Seattle-side columns. But funding from tolls, taxes and all other sources so far identified is $2 billion short of what the state needs for what it “prefers” to build instead.
8. The state’s “preferred alternative” can’t be built without raising taxes and tolls still higher and driving the state still deeper into debt.
7. Even if the funds are raised, the state’s “preferred” design won’t help traffic—not in Seattle.
6. It dumps its additional new traffic onto the same old I-5. The one new ramp to I-5 connects to the express lanes only and actually does away with one of them. Worse, this new ramp serves only carpools headed from the Eastside to downtown mornings and from downtown to the Eastside afternoons.
5. Today’s Lake Washington Boulevard exit/entrance to 520 will be no more. Vehicles heading between 520 and Madison will be dumped directly into the Montlake mess. Congestion problems crossing the Montlake Cut will be “solved” by adding a second drawbridge where everyone can stop together to watch the ships go by.
4. Despite its cost, the state’s “preferred alternative” ignores public health, increases noise and pollution.
3. At the edge of the Arboretum and over Portage Bay, it more than doubles—in spots nearly triples—the width of 520 today. In the middle of Lake Washington it looms 20 to 30 feet above the water—44 feet just offshore of Madison Park.
2. It wreaks havoc on the natural beauty, the trees, trails, parks, wetlands and waterfront that make this city a good place to live.
1. Seattle can do better than this.
Brainard also posted this list of questions she suggests residents hit WSDOT with at upcoming community meetings WSDOT is holding to discuss the project:
- May 25: 6 to 8 p.m. at Ravenna Third Place Books, 6504 20th Ave. N.E., Seattle
- June 1: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Montlake Community Center, 1618 E. Calhoun St., Seattle
- June 6: 5 to 7 p.m. at Madison Park Starbucks, 4000 E. Madison St., Seattle
- June 9: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Laurelhurst, Fifth Floor Sound Cafe, 4800 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle
Kerry Ruth, WSDOT’s engineering manager for the 520 project from I-5 to Medina, said despite issues with organizations like Sustainable 520, the state has been working hard to make sure the area’s communities are well represented in its process.
“We’ve worked hard with these communities to understand their interests,” Ruth told us back in March.
The fruit of much of this outreach and communication will be the publication of the west-side project’s Environmental Impact Statement which is expected in June. The document, Ruth said, is an overall environmental analysis representing more than a dozen agencies, organizations and tribes and three years of community meetings and discussions about the project. As part of the document, an area of effect is designated and resources and potential mitigation is agreed upon and recorded for future stages of the project. It’s high level stuff — but it will also define the rules of the game — and who gets to play the biggest roles — going forward.
For residents in Montlake, the stakes are high as the project will mean significant changes in the area including the removal of some homes and a new “shell” built over the transit interchange in the neighborhood above 520. For more on the Montlake transit shell and the plans for transit — including light rail — on 520, see http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR520Bridge/520transit.htm
The Montlake community site, by the way, does a great job of documenting the neighborhood’s efforts to work with WSDOT and the status of the project.
Up on the northern edges of Capitol Hill, the threats are of a more distant variety though the work around a smaller “Delmar lid” will bring some more direct contact with the project. There’s also a list of historical properties that may qualify for funds to help protect the old homes from the impacts of construction and the changes brought by a new 520. Additionally, some construction haul routes may end up crossing the Hill.
Brainard’s group is also concerned about a new HOV ramp that will connect I-5 to 520 that may cause increased noise in the area. Ruth said the flyover ramp issue like many issues in the 520 process will be open for community input during the public design phases of the project. While there’s no construction funding approved yet, Ruth said there is some funding available for the design processes to begin after the Environmental Impact Statement is published in June.
WSDOT’s goal is to have the new 520 floating bridge open to traffic by at least 2015. How much longer it takes to complete the west side’s last miles between the floating segment and I-5 will have a lot to do with how groups like Sustainable 520 and its north Capitol Hill allies respond.
I guess it’s easy to raise objections and throw up roadblocks, but what is the group’s specific alternative plan?
If there’s truly a $2 billion shortage, we can build the new 520 “lid-ready” and just not put in the lids over Montlake and 10th until there is funding to do so, but put in the foundations so the lids can be added it in. That will save $$.
Finally, about the noise, how many complaining residents purchased their homes before 520 was originally built? Because otherwise they purchased homes within earshot of a freeway, and it is more than reasonable to expect that at some point in the future that freeway by your house will be expanded.
Just a few thoughts. I’m not wild about this 520 plan, but I have yet to see anything better put forth by anyone.
well – then you haven’t been to any of our PBRP neighborhood meetings for ten years!
Montlake, NE neighborhoods from husky stadium, Eastlake – us – proposal after proposal after proposal for years.
Fran Conley and TEd lane coul drun the engineering dept.
So if what you’re saying is true, then all of your proposals have been considered and rejected.
“how many complaining residents purchased their homes before 520 was originally built?”
Why does this matter?
“”how many complaining residents purchased their homes before 520 was originally built?”
Why does this matter?”
It matters because anyone who did that has a right to complain but anyone who bought their house after 520 was built really does not. That’s like buying a house near an airport and then complaining when they want to add another run-way. That’s what bridges and airports are for, to move people and one shouldn’t be surprised at them adding capacity!!!
I’d love this bridge rebuild if it were optimizing for moving *people*, but it isn’t: it’s optimizing for moving *cars*. Seattle can handle a lot more people, but we can’t handle more cars without loss of both utility and pleasure to everyone (including the drivers in the traffic jams).
So basically nobody can complain about anything in an urban area that existed before they did. That makes no sense.
Besides, if it is for the greater good you can’t really complain if you were their first. Like all of the cafe arguments.
The new 520 plan is a proverbial square peg in a round hole, and Seattle City Council needs to be held responsible. I am not confident they have a full grasp of the multitude of problems that will be created by the current 520 rebuild plan – problems that we will be paying for literally and figuratively for years to come. Imagine the onslaught of traffic that will be forced on to narrow neighborhood roads, often traveling at high speeds as commuters get to/from 520. Imagine the Arboretum, a city gem and nature preserve, to be bisected by a highway twice the size of what is there now. Our environmentally aware city is quickly becoming redefined by our ability to move mass amounts of car traffic. Might as well change the name to Los SeaAngeles. Seattle City Council and Gov. Gregoire are responsible here, but Mayor McGinn, why does the downtown tunnel get all your attention? Our leaders have chosen the slightly less expensive option that will only be a bandaid for the real problem. Other options proposed may be somewhat more costly but will reportedly have less maintenance issues as well as minimal environmental and neighborhood impact.
Our city and state leaders should truly listen, once and for all, and look toward finding a 520 solution that will show the region that we are innovative and have long term impact and growth in mind. Remember the tortoise and the hare? May I remind you, the hare lost in the end. Slow and steady truly wins every time – it is not too late to make the west side of 520 right.
The discussion has been going on for TEN YEARS. Enough is enough. The plan isn’t perfect. It can’t be. The plan won’t please everyone, as there will always be some neighborhood group opposed to this or that, or wanting something else.
Ten years of discussion is about eight years too many. Time to move forward.
@HTMT. You’re not understanding HFNY’s point. You can’t move next to a freeway or an airport, then complain about the noise. You can’t move next to a garbage dump or composting facility and then complain about the smell. It’s called coming to the nuisance. People who do should, frankly, be ignored.
The point is well understood.
We are not talking about moving next to an existing structure. We are talking about a structure that is changing/expanding. An airport going from 2 runways to 3 runways or a freeway expanding. Every “neighbor” has a right to provide feedback (or what you call complaining) when there is a change that has an impact on the surrounding community.
The “I” or “it” was here first mentality in an urban area that is constantly evolving is just plain stupid.
The Seattle obstructionists are nothing but a highly financed bunch of NIMBY Montlake Attorneys trying to increase the worth of their neighborhood at the expense of the those north of the ship canal and the arboretum.
Don’t buy their crap….
The Seattle obstructionists are nothing but a highly financed bunch of NIMBY Montlake Attorneys trying to increase the worth of their neighborhood at the expense of the those north of the ship canal and the arboretum.
Don’t buy their crap….
These neighborhoods are not the same neighborhoods that were devastated by the first SR 520. Rehabilitation with volunteer labor and volunteer dollars along with matching funds from City agencies has gone on from practically the minute the first SR 520 and I-5 were opened. My neighborhood has improved in countless ways since I moved in, and I’m a relative newbie. It’s silly to say that people should live with the situation they bought. We work to improve our lot, and the high property taxes we contribute to the commomn good verify that we’ve done a good job of that. But the preferred SR 520 alternative as designed is so wide and so high that it just might be an insurmountable, unfixable “feature.”
We’re always learning, too, but what Jane Jacobs told Robert Moses more than fifty years ago in New York doesn’t seem to have reached our state highway department and some of these commenters. Freeways don’t belong in cities. Freeways break up neighborhoods. Freeways are out of scale. Doing more of the damage we created in the 1960s just doesn’t make sense. We’re supposed be the second-most educated city in America, but you’d think that most of the members of our City Council who are ready to embrace this project had never picked up a book on urban development.
I live in one of the seven communities (not just those “Montlake millionaires”) that belong to the Sustainable SR 520 coalition. The group’s specific, alternative plan is safety first. Fix the Floating Bridge, adding adequate shoulders for disabled vehicles, and reinforce the columns of the West Approach and the Portage Bay Bridge, which WSDOT has said are the most dangerous components of SR 520 after the Floating Bridge. There isn’t enough money to finish the gargantuan Preferred Alternative all the way across the lake and to I-5, and I-5 can’t handle the traffic more lanes of SR 520 would send to it. When there is enough money to build the whole project and we have the benefit of some enlightened perspective , build a better, more modest four-lane bridge. And why can’t it be beautiful as it runs past our Arboretum and across some or our city’s most precious recrational waters and through some of our city’s finest neighborhoods? The Brutalist style of the Preferred Alternaive as currently designed is just plain hideous. We say we hate the ugly Viaduct on our waterfront and yet embrace a viaduct across Lake Washington that with noise walls will be 44 feet high.
WSDOT seems to be saying nevermind that the West Approach and the Portage Bay Bridge are dangerous, we’re going to spend the money we do have on expanding the highway from Medina to Redmond and build three lids, one right after the other, on the eastside before the higway even gets from Lake Washington to Bellevue. That’s politics, not safety first.
Great comment. Could not agree more. let’s be thoughtful here. learn from cities with great city transit like NYC, not LA/Atlanta. the guys saying we should just accept it and move on (esp. because it is taking too long) are just ridiculous – there is a better way. we should at a minimum wait to see the impact of the tolls on 520 before carving out and expanding existing roads. i have been riding the bus (49 & 271) from Cap Hill to Bellevue for 4 years now. Would be great if a new system could make my commute more efficient and encourage others to ride the bus. I am not confident that this plan will do that though. I also like the comment about moving *people* rather than moving cars.
I agree with you. One only has to look north to Vancouver, B.C. to find a great example of a major city without ANY freeways through the urban area. It seems to work there quite well, but then they also have had an extensive light rail system in place for many years.
In all of these great cities with world-class transit systems there is still tons of cars on the road. New York, Boston, London, etc…
For SR 520, the Washngton State Department of Transportation (“WSDOT”), will be taking at least six acres of park land and land dedicated for arboretum and botanical garden purposes north of the current SR 520. It is providing no replacement land at all. WSDOT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with WSDOT signed by all members of the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens Committee — which oversees management of the arboretum — the Acting Superintendent of Parks, and the Seattle Director of Transportation. It calls for restoration of the wetlands, where the R.H. Thomson and Arboretum ramps now are to wetland status, but allows WSDOT to retain title and to use or dispose of the site in accord with its surplus property procedures.
WSDOT’s property management manuals require it to use premises — e.g. parking or equipment storage — or to surplus it. Under WSDOT’s surplus property pricedures it may lease the property or grant concessions to others, e.g. refreshment stands on the uplands by Lake Washington Boulevard or canoe rentals, or it may sell the premises to the highest bidder.
SR 520 takes from the Arboretum the southerly portions of Foster and Marsh Islands, McCurdy Park, the “canal reserve” (between McCurdy Park and Montlake Boulevard); and the new bigger, taller, wider bridge does severance damages to the remainder of the arboretum, impairing views, looming over the woodland and wetlands, disrupting wild life, reducing development potential, etc. SR 520 also takes the south half of East Montlake Park. Yet, City officials signed on to an Arboretum Mitigation Plan as complete mitigationof adverse impacts. That Plan and the MOU calls for traffic calming and for restoration of the wetlands, which federal agencies already called for. It has nothing to say about replacing the six acres being taken or preserving the restored wetlands in perpetuity.
Citizens needs to protest loudly to the Mayor, City Council members, the Governor, and State legislators insisting that making the Arobretum whole from SR 520 impacts requires return of the wetlands occupied by the ramps to be removed to the Arboretum or a perpetual easement from WSDOT restricting its use to Arboretum and Botanical Garden purposes. This needs to be part of the federal government’s record of decision. The time to act is now.
The issue is that this plan does not allow for mass transit options. it is not the best solution for the situation of moving people into and out of Seattle in an environmentally friendly way. The aboretum, a clear gem of Seattle will lose lots of acerage. The greater good is better transportation AND trong environmental protection. We know the impact more fossil fuels has on the environment – we need to do something about it. And if the plan is not going to fix that, then groups should fight! Keep going neighborhood associationsQ!