Guest columnists
A no-highway waterfront

By Cary Moon and Ralph J. Cipriani
Special to The Times

LESLEY BAIN / ALLIED ARTS This is how architect Lesley Bain envisions Seattle's waterfront without the viaduct.

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Planners are floating ideas about how the demise of the Alaskan Way Viaduct can — finally — connect Seattle to its waterfront. Many local leaders favor replacing the highway with a tunnel. In this scenario we get back a visual connection to our waterfront, but at an outrageous cost: billions of tax dollars (roughly $80,000 per viaduct driver), an unimaginable construction mess and an entire business district left hanging for seven to 11 years.

There is a better way. We believe the future of the entire central Puget Sound region will be more vital and more successful without a new highway along Seattle's central waterfront.

To imagine the alternative transportation solution — improving our existing network without a new viaduct or high-capacity tunnel — requires looking into our collective travel behavior to understand how we get around. Together, we are a lot more flexible than you might feel as an individual.

• On average, people change their place of work or home every three years, entirely changing their commute.

• In the months after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, viaduct use dropped by 30,000 trips a day. Some trips weren't made; others took a different route.

• When prices are too low, demand for a commodity expands to use up all of the supply: Likewise, if road space is plentiful and free, we drive more — a lot more.

A Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) study of viaduct drivers asked who would use a new facility if a $1 toll were levied. The department found there would be 40,000 fewer trips a day.

Unfortunately, WSDOT assumes the current 100,000 daily trips on the viaduct are fixed and permanent, and insists on accommodating them in what is, perhaps, the most insane location for a highway.

But what about trips that really do need to happen — where would they go without a new highway?

In case the viaduct fails before a new one is built, the Seattle Department of Transportation is studying many smaller projects to improve our larger transportation network.

These projects include linking underused arterials through and around downtown such as Fourth Avenue South, Airport Way South, and Sixth and Eighth avenues; fixing chokepoints at the edges of downtown, such as the Mercer Mess; connecting South Spokane Street to multiple north/south routes; and retiming traffic signals.

Timed lights alone could increase traffic capacity within downtown by 10 percent. Truck-only lanes on freight corridors would rightly prioritize connections for the 4,000 maritime and industrial viaduct users, crucial for keeping in-city jobs.

Tolls at peak periods could fight rush-hour congestion. Interstate 5 capacity could be increased by more effectively reconfiguring express lanes and correcting weaving problems caused by placement of ramps.

As a four-lane surface street, Alaskan Way could handle twice as many trips if it were better connected to the grid. Monorail, an expanded streetcar, better-targeted bus service and a Mosquito Fleet of pedestrian ferries could all lure viaduct users from their cars.

These improvements fill in the missing links in our surface network, capture the capacity available from existing resources and improve mobility for everyone — not just viaduct drivers.

Smaller projects that increase travel options are a smarter long-term solution than a single costly mega-project that lacks flexibility to adapt to changing travel needs.

Still think you like the tunnel?

Check out the state Department of Transportation's picture of the tunnel's gaping maw right next to Pike Place Market. Note the sectional drawings of the surface above the tunnel: Up to 80 percent of the available width is still paved. And remember the Big Dig: Boston's tunnel, priced at $6 billion, is running a tab at $18 billion so far. Why should we pour this much money into repeating a mistake that cuts us off from our waterfront, when there is a simpler way to solve the problem?

We pride ourselves in being environmental leaders. At the same time, we are pouring polluted runoff from streets into our struggling bay. We are a city that remembers its recent wilderness, in love with our watery terrain, yet cut off from contact with the water itself.

Not replacing the viaduct would allow us to create a functional shore ecology and parks along Elliott Bay, inject year-round vitality into a tourist zone and bring density downtown, while lessening sprawl, to absorb regional growth.

A no-highway solution on the waterfront is "Seattle-smart."

Humble and ingenious, it reconnects us viscerally to a sacred place and saves our money for what we believe is important: caring for our people, economy and environment.

Cary Moon is a landscape and urban designer, former member of the Seattle Design Commission and co-founder of the People's Waterfront Coalition (www.peopleswaterfront.org). Ralph J. Cipriani is former manager of the Metropolitan Transportation Plan for the Puget Sound Regional Council.