Seattle Press on Line - Little Fixes Make the Bigger Difference

Small Ideas for Seattle

Little Fixes Make the Bigger Difference

By Dick Falkenbury

Oct 18, 2000 -- So I am driving down Montlake Boulevard that goes by the Husky Stadium and heading for the bridge. It goes up. Or I think it does. It's worse: there's been another accident on the slippery open metal grate of the bridge deck.

Montlake is one the secret traffic bottlenecks in Seattle. And it affects all the other traffic in the University District and beyond; people head to 45th to get on the freeway to get across the Ship Canal, knowing that the Montlake and University Bridges might be up or jammed. The old ripple effect. (Not to be confused with the effect you experienced in 1972 when you chugged a bottle of Ripple.)

The wrong answer is "Build another bridge." Another bridge means more traffic and when it is opened or plagued with an accident, it is no different from the existing bridge. Don't even think about a high level, non-opening bridge. If the cost doesn't stop you, the tearing up of neighborhoods and houses for five blocks should do you in.

But there are little things that the city can do:

It is time to admit that Seattle is a big city and should not be brought to its knees every time some rich dotcom-er wants to pass through. Open the bridge only on the hour, at the top of the hour and no other time. We already limit boaters--they can't open the bridge during rush hours. This is no different.

Drivers would know to avoid the bridge at the top of the hour, but feel rather confident otherwise.

For a nominal cost, the city should install one-foot-tall flexible pipe down the lane lines of the bridge. Most of the accidents happen when some idiot changes lanes and begins to slide. You should never change lanes on these bascule* bridges. But if you absolutely had to in an emergency, the pipe I am talking about would not prevent you from doing so and would not damage your car.

For just a little money, the city should install a short series of increasingly high speed bumps in front of the approaches to the bridge to slow people down. These are not the bone-breakers of a decade ago, but wider and gentler ones that will remind everyone to slow down.

I am coming to believe that most of our problems could be largely but not completely solved by little changes rather than the huge capital projects--and that includes monorail. I still want a monorail, but I also want to do the little things that will make our mobility that much better. Not just cars, but everyone's mobility.

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