Goodbye, killer views! (It will be safer now)

My personal soul memory is from a sunny September evening 2003 driving back from West Seattle - what did I do there? I can’t remember. 

I didn’t plan on taking the Alaskan Way Viaduct, I made a wrong turn and suddenly there I was. Driving north with the evening-glorious Downtown at my immediate right and the stunning view of Elliot Bay to the left as well as the sunset over at the Olympic Mountains far away west. I was high on the unexpected driving pole position experience!

After decades of debate and work in progress the two deck Highway 99 Viaduct closed late Friday night. It is so Seattle how the love-hated Viaduct was packed with cars and people dancing and celebrating the six story construction like it was New Years Eve or 4th of July! Oh how I miss that playfulness of my second home town!

The road up till this day has been nothing but playful though. One part of the debate has been how the Viaduct cuts the Waterfront from Downtown not only visually and practically but by the 24-7 roar of compact traffic generating 80 decibel alongside the Pike Place Market. The shady wasteland in-under the Viaduct has been home of the homeless and rats.

Another voice in the discussion was the 2001 earthquake which made the Viaduct crack and settle. By the way, that’s the only time my father questioned a Seattle trip of mine, just a week after the quake. Do you really have to go? I felt I did. And I couldn’t cancel my ticket. It all went well though. 

Since the 2001 quake, public agencies and citizens waded through eight years of process, an advisory ballot and $325 million in tax money to study and review as many as 75 variations before Governor Christine Gregoire chose a deep-bore tunnel in January 2009 as the biggest piece of a $3.3 billion viaduct replacement.

The tunnel-bore has of course not been a stroll in the park (a story by itself) and there’s never been a clear public consensus around which path was wisest — a tunnel, an elevated replacement, street-level highway, surface road plus transit, or retrofitting the old viaduct but earth quake-secured. That debate might echo long after the sound of the concrete decks demolition.

Which will happen in the next six months. Project demolition of the 66 year-old emblem of the age of happy motoring. The four-lane tunnel will open Monday February 4, and as many as 100 000 people are expected to return the weekend before for a celebration to say farewell to the viaduct and preview the tunnel!

Until then, good luck Seattle with the upcoming there weeks without a viaduct and no tunnel. In short, good luck with squeezing all the Highway 99 traffic into the already jam packed Interstate 5, for once I am not a bit envious!