King County now has all the funding needed to replace the South Park Bridge (16th Av. S. in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood). The 79-year old drawbridge closed June 30th of this year due to poor structural safety, requiring a 2-mile detour across the 1st Av. bridge (Highway 99) to access this neighborhood.
The south half of Seattle has a longstanding east-west transportation deficit. West Seattle neighborhoods and Southeast Seattle neighborhoods exist in isolation from each other, separated by steep hillsides and the industrial valley, with its Duwamish River, railroads, Interstate 5, and most of all, Boeing Field (King County International Airport). The general aviation airport’s 10,000 foot long runway prevents any east-west travel for over 2 miles. This results in a three-mile gap with no exits from I-5. There were only three crossings of the Duwamish River in Seattle (currently two): The upper and lower Spokane Street crossings, the 1st Av. bridge, and the now closed South Park Bridge. The result is that West Seattle and Southeast Seattle aren’t socially or economically connected – all connection goes through downtown Seattle or to freeway network. The south half of Seattle is fragmented and isolated, and not coincidentally, poorer than the north half of Seattle. The opening of Link light rail , from downtown Seattle to Sea-Tac airport via Southeast Seattle, brought home this point to me. As a West Seattle resident, there are no connecting buses that I can take to the light rail line in Southeast Seattle. A transit user must travel north to downtown, and then back south on the rail line. But I don’t blame King County Metro for this predicament. There are no buses because there are not even roads. The only roadway paths, south of the Spokane Street Viaduct, are long and circuitous, requiring a great many counter-intuitive turns.
My proposal: construct the replacement South Park bridge on a S. Cloverdale alignment (east-west) instead of the previous 14th Av S. alignment (north-south). Then extend the new roadway, South Cloverdale Way, in a tunnel under Boeing Field, a bridge over the mainline rail tracks and I-5, connecting to the existing S. Cloverdale Street, two blocks north of the Rainier Beach Link rail station. This 1.4 mile roadway would provide a direct seamless travel path from Southeast Seattle (near Rainier Beach) to South Park and White Center at the southern edge of West Seattle. An interchange could be created at the I-5 overpass, with a freeway bus station. The alignment and surrounding can be seen on this Google Map application.
View Proposed S. Cloverdale Way in a larger map
South Cloverdale Way would be built as a complete street, with one automobile lane in each direction, a bi-directional cycle track, and concrete curbs and sidewalks. Near intersections and in congested areas, dedicated turn lanes and transit/HOV lanes would be included. The new route would include all-day 15-minute frequency transit service from White Center to Rainier Beach via South Park. Metro route 60 would be divided into two, and the White Center-South Park segment would be extended along the new South Cloverdale Way to Rainier Beach, serving the Link rail station and the neighborhood center. The roadway, transit service, and separated bicycle access would knit together these sections of the city, providing opportunities for exchange and growth, and create the conditions for building great city neighborhoods along the southern edge of Seattle.
Chad Newton
That seems rather excessive. But I do like the idea of connecting the neighborhoods. In all seriousness though, the easier solution would be for Boeing to sell off the whole blasted airfield and open one up further from the city – preferably somewhere along where they could connect a rail line to it that would be out of the way of neighborhoods.
The airfield, as it stands is a direct blockage to what could amount to billions of dollars of investment, building, and neighborhood cohesion. As it is now, building a big tunnel and all under it wouldn’t do much to help connections – it would just encourage people to avoid either or neighborhood in their attempt to get through either or neighborhood. One of the problems of continuing to build circuitious roads through everything without a plan for things that really connect neighborhoods. Think parks, commerce centers (town centers), and other residential “walkable” connection points. The problem isn’t the neighborhoods aren’t “physically” connected, the problem is a giant ass airport that creates a vacuum of commonality between the neighborhoods. Get rid of the airport, and all of a sudden you have two neighborhoods that are together, in commonality and in physical connection. At that point things would just work themselves out.
Minus the nasty airport (which doesn’t really help downtown that much and can much more easily be relocated than “built under”), plus a whole lot of awesome!