Alaskan Way Viaduct

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is an elevated section of Washington State Route 99 that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle's Industrial District and downtown. It is the smaller of the two major traffic corridors through Seattle, carrying up to 110,000 vehicles per day. Interstate 5, the city's other major traffic corridor, handles about three times as many vehicles. The viaduct runs from S. Nevada Street in the south to the entrance of Belltown's Battery Street Tunnel in the north.

The viaduct, which takes its name from Alaskan Way, the surface street it runs next to for much of its length, was completed on April 4, 1953, with capacity for 65,000 vehicles per day. Its route follows that of previously existing railroad lines. Heavy commercial and commuter use means that the viaduct has a strong economic impact throughout the Greater Puget Sound region.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 destroyed (with considerable loss of life) a similarly designed structure that was part of Interstate 880 in Oakland, California, some Seattleites came to doubt the viaduct's structural integrity. Those concerns were magnified after the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake, which damaged the viaduct and its supporting Alaskan Way Seawall and required the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to invest $3.5 million in emergency repairs.

Experts give a 1-in-20 chance that the viaduct could be shut down by an earthquake within the next decade. Since the Nisqually Earthquake, semi-annual inspections have kept the viaduct open, but have also discovered settlement damage that continues to worsen.

Replacing the viaduct and seawall has become a necessary but contentious political issue in Seattle. Most concerned parties acknowledge that the viaduct must be torn down, but there is as yet no consensus about what to replace it with. Money is the major concern: Seattle's budget in the early 2000s is stretched thin because of unemployment, the loss of Boeing jobs and the lingering effects of the dot-com crash. Replacement options under consideration range in cost from $2.5 billion to $4.1 billion and could take up to 11 years to complete.

Five replacement alternatives were identified by Seattle, the WSDOT, and the Federal Highway Administration in an official environmental impact statement:

• Rebuilding the viaduct
• Replacing the viaduct with a new, wider version
• Replacing the viaduct with a six-lane tunnel along the central waterfront
• Replacing the viaduct with a four-lane tunnel along the central waterfront and expanding Alaskan Way to six lanes
• Replacing the viaduct with a six- or eight-lane surface-level Alaskan Way

Many residents liked the idea of a tunnel, arguing that it would open up Seattle's waterfront to more scenic views. They believed that the viaduct itself is an unattractive blight on the city that cuts off easy access to the waterfront. Other residents argued, however, that the views from the viaduct itself are worth preserving.

On September 7, 2004, WSDOT announced that the alternatives had been narrowed down to two:

• Rebuilding the viaduct (estimated cost, $3.2 to $3.5 billion; estimated time, 6-8 years)
• Replacing the viaduct with a six-lane tunnel (estimated cost, $3.6 to $4.1 billion; estimated time, 7-9 years)

As of yet, little money is available to fund this project, aside from $177 million included in a gas tax increase passed by the Washington State Legislature in 2003. Mayor Greg Nickels is attempting to get the U.S. federal government to contribute $1 billion. Other funding options have not yet been determined, though a gas tax passed by the state legislature in May, 2005, is expected to generate $2 billion additional to the project.

External links

• SR 99 - Alaskan Way Viaduct & Seawall Replacement Project (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/viaduct/)
• City of Seattle Alaskan Way Viaduct page (http://www.cityofseattle.net/dclu/planning/commdev/Waterfront/Alaskan.htm)