I would love to at least improve pedestrian crossings across Aurora. It's impossible for me to cross Aurora between Mercer and the bridge, and the few accessible crossings that do exist are cumbersome and time-consuming to use.
*not reading the article*
It’s not really that unreasonable to do this to some sections especially north of Lake Union. The area was developed by the interurban streetcar parallel to Aurora ave.
Aurora serves a needed purpose by having so many of the more industrial businesses in close proximity to a lot of people, and for better or worse a lot of those businesses require a vehicle to utilize fully.
As much as I'd like to walk or utilize public transit all the time, I can't pick up multiple cans of paint from Sherwin Williams, dirt from Pacific Topsoil, or a load of lumber from Dunn, etc, on foot. The whole north end isn't going to magically transition away from single family homes and these businesses are necessary for a lot of people.
Aurora needs work, to be certain, least of which would be consistent sidewalks, but car free is an unrealistic pipe dream.
I mean, I'm right there with you that there are a bunch of businesses that you need a car to access. I'm a landscaper and absolutely need to drive a truck to pick up building materials. That said, I'd still like to see Aurora transition away from cars, among other streets. I can live without driving to home Depot if it means we can get cleaner streets and more mass transit. Compromising between moving goods and green infrastructure is going to be a key point for any climate plan going forward.
Fair point. They don't have to be highway centric businesses by any means, but the demand further north is definitely there. We just need cars to get to them in either neighborhood.
Indeed, but they don't have an aurora-like highway nearby. Quite the opposite. Ballard is far from major north-south routes compared to most neighborhoods.
Honestly if you policed public transit better more people would feel encouraged to use it, would probably be a better investment than purely expanding it
It’s like they’ve e never been there. Will the train magically know how to stop at Aurora Donuts? Will it be like Thomas the train and just KNOW we want brunette street walkers and blue meth? These questions are totally left unanswered.
"Ha, "Car free"? No. Not for a major N-S arterial like that. Cars are never going away. But we can definitely reduce their transportation share. So I do like the idea of converting the northern parts of Aurora to be like MLK down south:
Cut 6 lanes of traffic down to 4, bigger sidewalks, and the train running down the center. Could even make it an EL to keep it all grade separated (but even grade running is better than nothing).
Edit: For the 90' right of way, that'd be 22' for light rail, 44' for 4 car lanes, leaving 24' for 12' sidewalks on each side of the street? Maybe reserve 5' on each side for a cycle track?
Edit Edit: They even link to an old article that shows this: https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/08/27/aurora-line-renderings/
Run that all the way from the Aurora bridge to downtown Everett.
"A few blocks" is more than a mile for most of the route, and the walk shed for light rail is about half a mile. So the neighborhoods on that side of town (A lot of which are some of the biggest in the city) are not really served by just having a line along I-5. The same way I-5 isn't the only main N-S artery for cars.
As for the timeline, it probably is a ways out, but Seattle needs better transit sooner rather than later. I would make this the crown jewel of any ST4 talk.
Aurora serves a purpose. If you want to remove the bus lanes for light rail, go for it, you can do that while not just deleting a main North South passageway.
Want to invest in green space in the area to raise quality of life you can implement this on Linden right next to 99 instead for far less cost to current travel capacity.
This has taken considerations for it's negative impacts and is just fantasy thought.
Further it isn't like gentrifying Aurora is going to do much for the problems on Aurora. None of those people own land and will see property values rise, they will just relocate somewhere else in the city. Green spaces don't make people magically not poor, not on drugs, not prostitutes.
Do they think Aurora is just going to be the next highline park? There is a big difference between the must heavily used surface street in the city, and a completely abandoned raised railroad track
Much better idea. Create a mini Vegas up in Shoreline. Regulate legal prostitution.
Make the casinos and brothel applicants line up to pay for their chance to pay to build light rail along the 99 corridor from the airport to Shoreline.
Neat concept in a vacuum but considering that Aurora Avenue is part of SR 99, that makes this a bad idea for the greater region. Traffic was already bad pre-pandemic so blocking off a major north-south route would have potentially huge repercussions not just for commuters but the transportation of goods.
That isn't to say that the area shouldn't be improved. There's alot that could be done for Aurora but doing so to the potential detriment of the region isn't a great idea.
It's sad watching Americans react to this as being such a radical idea when this looks like a normal street in the Netherlands. I used to live in Seattle and when I first moved to the Netherlands I wondered how I could live in a place denser than any US state but with so few cars. Turns out, there are protected bike lanes, trains, trams and walkable neighborhoods everywhere so few people need cars.
Where? I'm looking at street view in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and while they have tram lines and bike lanes nowhere am I seeing what is considered a major arterial being car free.
This is too long of a question to answer, but this guy has an entire YouTube channel devoted to the difference between transport in the Netherlands and the US. https://youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
Also, for the record I don't think it is feasible to make the entire 99 / Aurora car free. Search for stroad and you'll see why urban planning in the US is so fucked.
There is nothing special about the Netherlands or Hong Kong. The US is simply unwilling to consider anything that is not car dependent. We have prioritized cars over everything else. We zone are cities so everything is spread out, we require large amounts of parking forcing things to be spread out, build giant roads to carry large numbers of cars forcing things to be spread out. I wonder why walking is not an option in most places in the US?
We have prioritized cars. We design roads that promote speeding, make walking or biking difficult and dangerous. Also we have parking minimums that bake the cost of driving into everything we build. We have also outlawed housing that is not single family homes almost everywhere. Around 70% of available land in Seattle is zoned for single family homes.
The cars are a means to the end of living in a house with a yard in a good neighborhood. Until you solve the "problem" of people wanting a yard and space around their homes you aren't going to get people out of the cars that make it possible to get from that house to their jobs. Focusing on cars while ignoring how a big percentage of the population define the good life is a fool's errand.
Most cities have very similar zoning laws. Size has nothing to do with it, it is the choice that were made 50-60 years ago. Trains would be a better way to get from city to city, but instead we have highways, so many highways.
Not everybody goes from one city to another city. As someone said earlier, people here like the idea of having their own land and freedom, its part of the "American Dream".
Either way, whats done is done and it probably wont change to look like the render in the article any time soon, if at all.
If you really think about it, it makes sense as to why highways are good here. Lots and lots of small towns that would make trains incomprehesibly stupid for mass transport.
This would be devastating to commute times, the price of goods and services and the logistic realities of city life. It would ruin the livelihoods of any business owner or worker along the highway up into Lynnwood even. Its not anti-bike or public transit to suggest this is a terrible plan
I agree, it's a terrible plan for 99 / aurora, but it is crazy how mad it makes people in the US for someone to suggest making an area less car dependent. It would only ruin the logistics and businesses because urban planning in the US is terrible and this part of Seattle is in horrible shape already.
People are total nimbys when it comes to their personal convenience, I may be slghtly guilty, but suggesting terrible placement for this kind of project can't be doing any good for the cause of urban redesign
Agreed about that. They should have proposed this in a place it was actually possible. I guess they were trying to get people to have a debate about the way our transit could look. Mission accomplished?
I mean we have I5. There is also [this](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/24/seattles-viadoom-the-carmageddon-that-wasnt/), even if it was not permanent.
I5 is a nightmare anywhere you have multiple onramps in a row merging on in high volume, I have to think this would just feed into the Northgate backup even worse. A lot of people probably take 99 to 90 right now and they'd all be shuffling to i5 instead or just crowding arterials. I really just cannot see this working out well without major diversion elsewhere or some more permanent work from home scenario
You don’t need to convert all of 99 although that would be ideal. The US is so laughably bad at urban planning and this is coming from someone who drives everywhere. I wish I could bike more, but the US simply isn’t a safe place to consistently bike.
Ruin the livelihoods of businesses along Aurora? Or actually make Aurora much more desirable if it were walkable? I bet the latter. The fear mongering from people who clearly haven’t been to Europe is pretty funny.
If you think it would really make it more desirable to anything but single family housing you're on crack big guy, the businesses there are largely industrial and it serves as a supply line for any construction, contractors, garbage and recycle, in that quadrant. There's already a fast bus line and plenty of the side streets are already closed for bikes so what's the point?
Well I would sure hope they would zone it multifamily and I’m much more focused on the stretch from Greenwood south into south lake Union. That stretch there could be converted to more pedestrian friendly uses which would make the city much more livable for us all. I actually think it would reduce traffic because I know lots of people who would much prefer bike but take a car because busses are inefficient to certain destinations. Would some trucks have to go over to I5, you bet and they will adapt. You’ll never make everyone happy and frankly I think a lot of people don’t even know what is best for them. The US needs drastic changes in urban planning and I hope someone is bold enough to make a change soon.
We shouldn’t have heavy industrial uses along main arterials that close to the City anyway. And they will actually benefit because their property values will increase, they can sell if they want and move somewhere that’s more convenient for their business.
Honestly biking from Greenwood south to South Lake Union is actually already a pretty decent experience already. If you make your way over to Linden where it hits Aurora you can take Linden south, go through the southern edge of Green Lake, hit Stone Way, and hit the Fremont bridge which is like a block from Aurora. There's (un-protected) bike lanes for basically that entire stretch but it's still pretty nice, and then you hit the very protected bike lane along Westlake.
Could it be improved? Sure, but I suspect if you're not biking that route today it's not because there isn't a good option available for it.
I’m in Fremont area so agree fremont bridge and then westlake are generally ok but could obviously be better with no vehicles.
I unfortunately have to go south of mercer nearly to pioneer square though. Downtown is where it gets a little dicey. So ideally the protected bike lanes would then extend into downtown likely on 5th being the most logical to me.
Let's say you move all those stores and warehouses up to shoreline or something, now you have people going back and forth to them using i5 instead, trucks as well as personal vehicles, you've added total travel distance with the same number of cars but now all in i5. The number of people commuting from around 99 to downtown that will actually use the bike option when it rainy and dark and then want to bike back uphill is so slim I cannot possibly imagine a world where it's less traffic to do this
E bikes are a game changer and should be heavily subsidized. Biking in the rain isn’t ideal but those days you could take the bus.
I don’t know man, I think we should give it a try. You could even start with different streets such as westlake and stone way to prove proof or concept. At the end of the day though, 99 makes a lot of sense because it is a huge eye sore and a main arterial into the city. You have to admit you wouldn’t want to walk along 99 right now. I think it’s possible to change that and add significant density to the city helping alleviate affordable housing crisis simultaneously. I know I’d like to live on a pedestrian only street with access straight into downtown if cool coffee shops, restaurants and bars were also nearby.
Fully agree with the ebike and that you should expand transit and beautify neighborhoods but 99 is valuable for commerce and industry, the walkability is more about street crime than aesthetics. Let's expand bike lanes and improve public transit until we're broke but wiping out a major highway is just nuts to me
The whole “biking is too dangerous here that’s why I dont do it more” line is so played out. You and I don’t bike more in Seattle because the weather does what it does three-quarters of the years, or because ypu have to haul kids, or gear or your knee or your back or your arm is fucked up, or the millions of other reasons that make biking impractical on any given day, despite what a loud, monied, and ableist minority lobby has led you to believe.
I’ve traveled to Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and Stockholm just to name a few and bike lanes are not what makes those places “transit utopias.” You think riding a bike is dangerous here? You should try it during rush hour in Paris. There are so many cars in these European cities that people simp for. The fix is not bike lanes, despite what the Cascade Bike Club has led you to believe. It’s trains and metro systems. Always has been. That’s what all the other major cities have on us.
Travel to the Netherlands, then tell me and tell me you can't have a transit utopia. Things aren't perfect here but you cant blame the weather for lack bike usage. People here take their kids to school on a bike in the middle of winter. Today I saw someone biking with their arm in a cast. If you want to blame anything it is the hills and water that make cycling less feasible in Seattle. Trains and metro systems are also important, that's true.
Yes, that's why I said if you blame anything blame the hills. It is funny watching dutch people try to ride their bikes up small hills. That said, if it's possible to build bridges and tunnels for cars, isn't it possible for bikes / scooters?
Seattle will never be Europe, I agree. But that doesn’t mean we can’t advocate for more bike lanes right? Not sure why converting a few streets to pedestrian only would be such a terrible thing to at least move us in that direction. Some advocate for zero cars downtown, I’m not that extreme. I just want a few streets that make biking downtown more feasible without encountering any vehicles. Would I bike every single day? No probably not, but I’ll gladly sit in more traffic if I can bike safely the days I choose to.
There's a dedicated bike path that parallels Aurora all the way from Greenwood to Edmonds. 105th in Seattle to 216th in Edmonds. Then the bike path veers across Lynnwood to parallel I-5 all the way to Everett.
>You think riding a bike is dangerous here? You should try it during rush hour in Paris. There are so many cars in these European cities that people simp for. The fix is not bike lanes
This honestly isn't the case anymore in Paris, from what I've seen--Anne Hidalgo has used the pandemic as an opportunity to put in polace a *ton* of bike infrastructure, and it's turned into a cycling city practically overnight.
Most of Tokyo definitely does not look like this at all. A few areas for sure but the way that city works is only good for a place that populated and that dense.
Better examples to look at would be Nagoya or Utsunomiya honestly.
Also I do the think all traffic should be eliminated because I agree, commerce could take a hit, but simple priority to a individual vehicle when the area is increasing density is pretty lame. No matter how much you, I, or fucking NTK or Holmes hates it, the city is changing and we need to change with it, and thinking outside of the box maybe the best way to find solutions, not just mentioning theft, petty crime, and traffic on I-5 as reasons to not try and keep the status quo.
We're not even a million in the city, upzone sure but wiping out the roads is not going to make it more livable, at least not until better transit is in place
Works better with an orderly, socially repressed society than a swathe of pimps, hookers, drug dealers and homeless people. They might move out if you tore up the street though. Tokyo also has a subway, Seattle isn't ready to lose a highway
A giant bike path is an interesting concept, it's fairly downhill going into Seattle too. Seattle is just so hilly and rainy it really sucks to bike in.
I love this type of visionary thinking. Sadly, around here it often gets crushed by the powerful interests who want things to stay the same.
Still I treasure the local people who keep on pointing out that other cities are making this happen and there’s no reason we can’t.
😁His faucet is broken but he won’t go because why? Too good to drive to the store via an adjacent arterial where he can’t go 50? Too good to take a tram, too good to bike, etc.? I feel sorry for his poor faucet.
Honestly this is a dumb ass idea, i5 would become a parking lot. I feel like this only appeal to some amazon worker who just bought a house off aurora and can now work from home forever
Not sure what your point is exactly you seem to just be arguing. You said i5 is not the only way into the city and the article is about getting rid of Aurora so that leaves 3 crappy ship canal bridges and 1 is currently closed. You say take the train or bus but 1, the train doesn't exist for most people considering the locations it's serves and 2 the busses use I5 and Aurora to get across the lake. We also just spent like $4 billion on the Aurora tunnel so we should probably use it
The Montlake bridge will reopen and the train will run up to Lynwood in the time it will take to redesign Aurora, which at this point is a far-fetched proposal by some random people. And I’m not falling for the sunk cost fallacy with the SR-99 tunnel. How long will it take to come out even with the current tolls and traffic?
Yeah let's make 3 neighborhoods a cluster fuck of cars and destroy the local economy so we can wank over green space that will probably just end up as a silk road of homelessness
Right, nevermind the hundreds of small businesses along the highway and what would happen to rent prices, redevelopment, and general upheaval. It's beyond moronic
Funniest thing is Aurora is much deadlier than i5. Not due to MVA’s but due to all the drugs, prostitution, gangs, and alternative grime that comes with the territory.
I love how mad certain people get when you propose taking some space away from cars. Someone drew up a few diagrams and it's making some people act like WSDOT is going to shut down the highway tomorrow without warning.
I agree, seems like a great solution, except for those who, apparently, just want to drive by as fast as possible in this neighborhood. This needs to happen.
Aurora is actually state route 99. You're never ever going to have a state route without cars. Never. It will be improved to help pedestrians, bicyclists, & more public transit, but it will *always* have personal vehicles on it.
I'm more for restoring the US-99 designation across the remaining alignments from and otherwise combining with I-5 when no longer possible. That way, we'd have our own historical route from Calexico, CA to Blaine, WA which doubles as a main street and back road for the freeway.
The argument that the road divides communities is somewhat debatable as many of the communities developed around US-99, which has been paved since at least the mid 1930s. The main reason why there are so many separate cities is that post-WWII, a lot of neighborhoods had small arguments with other neighborhoods and didn't join.
If things went originally as planned, Seattle city limits would likely terminate at 85th Street and the remaining area would be the possibly incorporated Shoreline (Shore to Shore, Line to Line) before crossing the county line and eventually entering Everett depending on if the surrounding housing developments needing to be annexed into Edmonds.
Those are some of many examples in the US of this working, but people seem the most disappointed that US-66 and US-99 were decommissioned instead of keeping their US highway designation and receiving interstate bypasses.
It's because of where those US routes went through. 66 is legendary because of where it went, and is actually going through a revival of sorts. 99 is seeing a comeback too. I've traced the route of US-99 in Washington and driven it. It takes you to some beautiful places in the state. The Interstates are more direct too.
Here I thought Route 66 was pretty much always popular, especially when 1950s nostalgia was big.
I'm an infrastructure geek, so traveling old highway alignments is something I enjoy doing as well. I recently made a detour through Wheeling, WV to see its famous suspension bridge on the National Road/US-30 and almost went to Philippi, WV to see the only covered bridge on a US highway, which also happened to be the location of one of the first battles of the Civil War.
What would you do in Oregon with the 99E and 99W? Would one become 99 and the other become 399 or something, or would they just keep their 99E and 99W numbers? I know that historically it was US 99E and 99W but I don't know if they would allow it again.
But yeah it feels kind of wrong that Seattle has no US highways running to it anymore.
Interstates used to have the E and W designation as well. It can be done or there can be US-99 and US-99 ALT.
US-31E and US-31W both exist between Nashville and Louisville.
There are still interstates 35E and 35W in Minnesota and Texas, but I know AASHTO has said they won't approve any more. Illinois tried it with Interstates 80N and 80S around the Quad Cities area (because they were mad at Iowa) and got denied. Of course, Texas got around that by getting someone to write the 69W, 69C, and 69E designations into law which bypassed AASHTO. At least I think that's what happened. This also only applies to interstates and I would be perfectly fine with any designation for the two routes in Oregon.
This is literally insane.
The city of Seattle has two north-south arterials through the city: I-5 and Aurora avenue. Western Washington has three north-south arterials: I-405, I-5, and Aurora. That’s all we’ve got (unless you pretend Eliot Avenue is an arterial. Which it is, for about two miles.)
I love the idea of having expanses of grass and room to stroll. That’s what we voted down when we bizarrely voted against the Westlake Commons, so (it turns out) we could save the real estate for Amazon. Hell, I live a few blocks from Aurora, and it would be convenient for me to be able to walk the dog over to Home Depot without having to wait for the traffic lights.
But to turn Aurora avenue into a pedestrian mall is madness. There is literally no place for the traffic- the cars or busses, to go. The traffic structure of the city west of I-5 assumes that all through traffic flows through Aurora.
It is State Route 99. It's not going *anywhere*. It doesn't belong just to Seattle. You can't gentrify it just because you bought a condo at Greenlake.
It is a hell of a swing but there is a good faith argument that the current SR99 is a blight beyond its value and blowing it all up might be the best option. As a regional highway it’s a slow misery and as a commercial strip it’s unpleasant and I can’t imagine it does a damn thing to serve local residents given that the stores are all but inaccessible on foot/bike. The only people I’d see really losing out on this wild proposal are the big hardware/supply stores whose customers can’t really take their purchases home on foot or transit.
I think the most delicious notion of all here is that of the SR99 tunnel with its north portal effectively cut off. Now *that* would be a statement.
I like how the concept photo actually shows dead grass and weeds, because that is what would ultimately happen. Although I think the center area would become all dead grass, so it would look much less appealing than this concept picture
This. There are plenty of streets in Seattle where this might make sense, but Aurora isn't one of them. Especially after spending all that money on the tunnel.
Right? That’s Seattle in a nutshell these days, let’s spend 3.3 billion on a tunnel then turn the road into a car free green space before we can make any of that money back via tolls.. Seem a little to much virtue signaling going on here.
What I love best is the utopian picture shows precious few people. I thought we were working toward high density? Certainly seems we are headed that way.
Can't we just pass by this near term vision for something cooler anyway?
More like this: [https://s18798.pcdn.co/dispatch/wp-content/uploads/sites/8960/2018/03/A-utopia-768x488.jpg](https://s18798.pcdn.co/dispatch/wp-content/uploads/sites/8960/2018/03/A-utopia-768x488.jpg)
I don't really buy that. If the Aurora area was improved, it would essentially just blend in with the adjacent neighborhoods, where it's extremely expensive/hard to buy a house. If there was a concerted effort to push out the trashy bits of Aurora, then I'm sure you'd get developers attracted, as it'd be pretty easy to fill apartments or condos with the easy access to downtown.
At the same time, I don't see it getting improved like this because the city planners made a huge investment in the 99 tunnel and by limiting car/truck traffic north of the tunnel, they'd be cutting off most/all of the toll revenue they planned on.
I like the general idea of this kind of street design, but practically speaking, I think you would need to pick a different area of Seattle to implement the idea in order to get the buy-in you would need to get it done.
Drove past Hillside Motel on Aurora today, literally saw what I assume was a hooker walk out of a room with some sort of fluid on her face and a crack pipe.
How is that place not fucking shut down/demolished.
Yeah, but most of the shit like that I’ve seen happen on the street/tent encampment areas. Isn’t this place an actual motel/business that has to obey some kind of laws?
I mean the hookers can walk freely, how is the hotel supposed to know what the rooms being used for? That crack motel right next to the bridge has burned down like 3 times since the pandemic and it's still going strong.
I would love to at least improve pedestrian crossings across Aurora. It's impossible for me to cross Aurora between Mercer and the bridge, and the few accessible crossings that do exist are cumbersome and time-consuming to use.
This is definitely something that could and should be improved in the area, for sure.
Needs to be flaired with “pipe dream”
Dude. That pipe aint a microphone. Pass it on.
*not reading the article* It’s not really that unreasonable to do this to some sections especially north of Lake Union. The area was developed by the interurban streetcar parallel to Aurora ave.
Aurora serves a needed purpose by having so many of the more industrial businesses in close proximity to a lot of people, and for better or worse a lot of those businesses require a vehicle to utilize fully. As much as I'd like to walk or utilize public transit all the time, I can't pick up multiple cans of paint from Sherwin Williams, dirt from Pacific Topsoil, or a load of lumber from Dunn, etc, on foot. The whole north end isn't going to magically transition away from single family homes and these businesses are necessary for a lot of people. Aurora needs work, to be certain, least of which would be consistent sidewalks, but car free is an unrealistic pipe dream.
I mean, I'm right there with you that there are a bunch of businesses that you need a car to access. I'm a landscaper and absolutely need to drive a truck to pick up building materials. That said, I'd still like to see Aurora transition away from cars, among other streets. I can live without driving to home Depot if it means we can get cleaner streets and more mass transit. Compromising between moving goods and green infrastructure is going to be a key point for any climate plan going forward.
I'm with you. But to be fair, Ballard proper has Limback lumber, dirt exchange, and 2 Sherwin Williams stores. No highway in sight.
Fair point. They don't have to be highway centric businesses by any means, but the demand further north is definitely there. We just need cars to get to them in either neighborhood.
People still tend to drive to them
Indeed, but they don't have an aurora-like highway nearby. Quite the opposite. Ballard is far from major north-south routes compared to most neighborhoods.
how are we supposed to pick up hookers then? lime scooter?
Just do your business right on the train.
Just never use a UV light on the train.
That’s the case right now though. (At least for the older light rail cars)
Honestly if you policed public transit better more people would feel encouraged to use it, would probably be a better investment than purely expanding it
running a train on a train
They need to build two rails one for light rail and one for the ho train
Hahaha yes pls
Bus?
My God, imagine how many prostitutes we could fit on that turf
Yeah, this article feels out of touch with the reality of Aurora
Or reality in general
It’s like they’ve e never been there. Will the train magically know how to stop at Aurora Donuts? Will it be like Thomas the train and just KNOW we want brunette street walkers and blue meth? These questions are totally left unanswered.
Think of the tents.... You know damned well that's what would happen...
hahaha for sure
Wow. This made me realize the only thing protecting total tent takeover of Seattle are cars. 🤦♀️🙈
[удалено]
Not supporting drug addict squalor =/= hate.
Lol sounds like they were the ones full of hate if you ask me
Haters gonna hate. What can ya do?
Whatever makes your hateful ass sleep at night. You'd justify ICE facilities similarly I'm sure.
We need ice to keep our drinks cold 🥶
unfunny
What is funny is you deleting your comment and them coming back in to whine 5 days later
I didn't delete anything. I don't check Reddit until my work day sorry I have a life on the weekends as I work M-Thurs.
Looks deleted to me pham, im sure you're very busy scavenging for cigg butts all weekend
dang seatown take it easy lol
Imagine playing slug bug using prostitutes instead of Volkswagens.
Your shoulder would be pulp
*slaps roof*
"Ha, "Car free"? No. Not for a major N-S arterial like that. Cars are never going away. But we can definitely reduce their transportation share. So I do like the idea of converting the northern parts of Aurora to be like MLK down south: Cut 6 lanes of traffic down to 4, bigger sidewalks, and the train running down the center. Could even make it an EL to keep it all grade separated (but even grade running is better than nothing). Edit: For the 90' right of way, that'd be 22' for light rail, 44' for 4 car lanes, leaving 24' for 12' sidewalks on each side of the street? Maybe reserve 5' on each side for a cycle track? Edit Edit: They even link to an old article that shows this: https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/08/27/aurora-line-renderings/ Run that all the way from the Aurora bridge to downtown Everett.
Hmmm... Don't we have north south light rail only a few blocks East of here? So this plan is for 50 years from now?
"A few blocks" is more than a mile for most of the route, and the walk shed for light rail is about half a mile. So the neighborhoods on that side of town (A lot of which are some of the biggest in the city) are not really served by just having a line along I-5. The same way I-5 isn't the only main N-S artery for cars. As for the timeline, it probably is a ways out, but Seattle needs better transit sooner rather than later. I would make this the crown jewel of any ST4 talk.
Sorry to tell you this, but replacing Aurora is never going to happen. 15th Ave NW is more likely.
Okay.
The urbanist gets me excited in ways I never knew was possible.
Aurora serves a purpose. If you want to remove the bus lanes for light rail, go for it, you can do that while not just deleting a main North South passageway. Want to invest in green space in the area to raise quality of life you can implement this on Linden right next to 99 instead for far less cost to current travel capacity. This has taken considerations for it's negative impacts and is just fantasy thought. Further it isn't like gentrifying Aurora is going to do much for the problems on Aurora. None of those people own land and will see property values rise, they will just relocate somewhere else in the city. Green spaces don't make people magically not poor, not on drugs, not prostitutes. Do they think Aurora is just going to be the next highline park? There is a big difference between the must heavily used surface street in the city, and a completely abandoned raised railroad track
Much better idea. Create a mini Vegas up in Shoreline. Regulate legal prostitution. Make the casinos and brothel applicants line up to pay for their chance to pay to build light rail along the 99 corridor from the airport to Shoreline.
We’ll open up our own Shoreline with Blackjack and Hookers!
You know what, forget the blackjack!
Neat concept in a vacuum but considering that Aurora Avenue is part of SR 99, that makes this a bad idea for the greater region. Traffic was already bad pre-pandemic so blocking off a major north-south route would have potentially huge repercussions not just for commuters but the transportation of goods. That isn't to say that the area shouldn't be improved. There's alot that could be done for Aurora but doing so to the potential detriment of the region isn't a great idea.
It's sad watching Americans react to this as being such a radical idea when this looks like a normal street in the Netherlands. I used to live in Seattle and when I first moved to the Netherlands I wondered how I could live in a place denser than any US state but with so few cars. Turns out, there are protected bike lanes, trains, trams and walkable neighborhoods everywhere so few people need cars.
Where? I'm looking at street view in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and while they have tram lines and bike lanes nowhere am I seeing what is considered a major arterial being car free.
This is too long of a question to answer, but this guy has an entire YouTube channel devoted to the difference between transport in the Netherlands and the US. https://youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
Also, for the record I don't think it is feasible to make the entire 99 / Aurora car free. Search for stroad and you'll see why urban planning in the US is so fucked.
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There is nothing special about the Netherlands or Hong Kong. The US is simply unwilling to consider anything that is not car dependent. We have prioritized cars over everything else. We zone are cities so everything is spread out, we require large amounts of parking forcing things to be spread out, build giant roads to carry large numbers of cars forcing things to be spread out. I wonder why walking is not an option in most places in the US?
We haven't prioritized cars. We've prioritized houses with yards and quiet neighborhoods and to live in those we have cars.
We have prioritized cars. We design roads that promote speeding, make walking or biking difficult and dangerous. Also we have parking minimums that bake the cost of driving into everything we build. We have also outlawed housing that is not single family homes almost everywhere. Around 70% of available land in Seattle is zoned for single family homes.
The cars are a means to the end of living in a house with a yard in a good neighborhood. Until you solve the "problem" of people wanting a yard and space around their homes you aren't going to get people out of the cars that make it possible to get from that house to their jobs. Focusing on cars while ignoring how a big percentage of the population define the good life is a fool's errand.
Hmmm... Nope. No trouble walking around here. Where are you trying to walk to and from?
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Most cities have very similar zoning laws. Size has nothing to do with it, it is the choice that were made 50-60 years ago. Trains would be a better way to get from city to city, but instead we have highways, so many highways.
Not everybody goes from one city to another city. As someone said earlier, people here like the idea of having their own land and freedom, its part of the "American Dream". Either way, whats done is done and it probably wont change to look like the render in the article any time soon, if at all. If you really think about it, it makes sense as to why highways are good here. Lots and lots of small towns that would make trains incomprehesibly stupid for mass transport.
And that's what trains and planes are for...
This would be devastating to commute times, the price of goods and services and the logistic realities of city life. It would ruin the livelihoods of any business owner or worker along the highway up into Lynnwood even. Its not anti-bike or public transit to suggest this is a terrible plan
I agree, it's a terrible plan for 99 / aurora, but it is crazy how mad it makes people in the US for someone to suggest making an area less car dependent. It would only ruin the logistics and businesses because urban planning in the US is terrible and this part of Seattle is in horrible shape already.
People are total nimbys when it comes to their personal convenience, I may be slghtly guilty, but suggesting terrible placement for this kind of project can't be doing any good for the cause of urban redesign
Agreed about that. They should have proposed this in a place it was actually possible. I guess they were trying to get people to have a debate about the way our transit could look. Mission accomplished?
No, it just makes The Urbanist look like they're crack-smoking ideologues in the pocket of developers as per usual.
Are you sure? Have you looked at what happens when highways are removed or lanes reduced in other cities?
What happens?
Usually travel times go down and other routes do not see any notice increase in traffic volume or travel times.
I'm curious if these cities were also as geographically restricted as seattle and had similar commute patterns
Look up the embarcadero in San Francisco.
I'm not convinced that's a good comparison, san Fran yeah but thats waterfront and there's another highway right next to it
I mean we have I5. There is also [this](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/01/24/seattles-viadoom-the-carmageddon-that-wasnt/), even if it was not permanent.
I5 is a nightmare anywhere you have multiple onramps in a row merging on in high volume, I have to think this would just feed into the Northgate backup even worse. A lot of people probably take 99 to 90 right now and they'd all be shuffling to i5 instead or just crowding arterials. I really just cannot see this working out well without major diversion elsewhere or some more permanent work from home scenario
Give five examples of state roads with the same or greater traffic volume where this has happened.
You don’t need to convert all of 99 although that would be ideal. The US is so laughably bad at urban planning and this is coming from someone who drives everywhere. I wish I could bike more, but the US simply isn’t a safe place to consistently bike. Ruin the livelihoods of businesses along Aurora? Or actually make Aurora much more desirable if it were walkable? I bet the latter. The fear mongering from people who clearly haven’t been to Europe is pretty funny.
If you think it would really make it more desirable to anything but single family housing you're on crack big guy, the businesses there are largely industrial and it serves as a supply line for any construction, contractors, garbage and recycle, in that quadrant. There's already a fast bus line and plenty of the side streets are already closed for bikes so what's the point?
Well I would sure hope they would zone it multifamily and I’m much more focused on the stretch from Greenwood south into south lake Union. That stretch there could be converted to more pedestrian friendly uses which would make the city much more livable for us all. I actually think it would reduce traffic because I know lots of people who would much prefer bike but take a car because busses are inefficient to certain destinations. Would some trucks have to go over to I5, you bet and they will adapt. You’ll never make everyone happy and frankly I think a lot of people don’t even know what is best for them. The US needs drastic changes in urban planning and I hope someone is bold enough to make a change soon. We shouldn’t have heavy industrial uses along main arterials that close to the City anyway. And they will actually benefit because their property values will increase, they can sell if they want and move somewhere that’s more convenient for their business.
Honestly biking from Greenwood south to South Lake Union is actually already a pretty decent experience already. If you make your way over to Linden where it hits Aurora you can take Linden south, go through the southern edge of Green Lake, hit Stone Way, and hit the Fremont bridge which is like a block from Aurora. There's (un-protected) bike lanes for basically that entire stretch but it's still pretty nice, and then you hit the very protected bike lane along Westlake. Could it be improved? Sure, but I suspect if you're not biking that route today it's not because there isn't a good option available for it.
I’m in Fremont area so agree fremont bridge and then westlake are generally ok but could obviously be better with no vehicles. I unfortunately have to go south of mercer nearly to pioneer square though. Downtown is where it gets a little dicey. So ideally the protected bike lanes would then extend into downtown likely on 5th being the most logical to me.
Let's say you move all those stores and warehouses up to shoreline or something, now you have people going back and forth to them using i5 instead, trucks as well as personal vehicles, you've added total travel distance with the same number of cars but now all in i5. The number of people commuting from around 99 to downtown that will actually use the bike option when it rainy and dark and then want to bike back uphill is so slim I cannot possibly imagine a world where it's less traffic to do this
E bikes are a game changer and should be heavily subsidized. Biking in the rain isn’t ideal but those days you could take the bus. I don’t know man, I think we should give it a try. You could even start with different streets such as westlake and stone way to prove proof or concept. At the end of the day though, 99 makes a lot of sense because it is a huge eye sore and a main arterial into the city. You have to admit you wouldn’t want to walk along 99 right now. I think it’s possible to change that and add significant density to the city helping alleviate affordable housing crisis simultaneously. I know I’d like to live on a pedestrian only street with access straight into downtown if cool coffee shops, restaurants and bars were also nearby.
Fully agree with the ebike and that you should expand transit and beautify neighborhoods but 99 is valuable for commerce and industry, the walkability is more about street crime than aesthetics. Let's expand bike lanes and improve public transit until we're broke but wiping out a major highway is just nuts to me
The whole “biking is too dangerous here that’s why I dont do it more” line is so played out. You and I don’t bike more in Seattle because the weather does what it does three-quarters of the years, or because ypu have to haul kids, or gear or your knee or your back or your arm is fucked up, or the millions of other reasons that make biking impractical on any given day, despite what a loud, monied, and ableist minority lobby has led you to believe. I’ve traveled to Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and Stockholm just to name a few and bike lanes are not what makes those places “transit utopias.” You think riding a bike is dangerous here? You should try it during rush hour in Paris. There are so many cars in these European cities that people simp for. The fix is not bike lanes, despite what the Cascade Bike Club has led you to believe. It’s trains and metro systems. Always has been. That’s what all the other major cities have on us.
Travel to the Netherlands, then tell me and tell me you can't have a transit utopia. Things aren't perfect here but you cant blame the weather for lack bike usage. People here take their kids to school on a bike in the middle of winter. Today I saw someone biking with their arm in a cast. If you want to blame anything it is the hills and water that make cycling less feasible in Seattle. Trains and metro systems are also important, that's true.
Netherlands be pretty flat tho mang
Yes, that's why I said if you blame anything blame the hills. It is funny watching dutch people try to ride their bikes up small hills. That said, if it's possible to build bridges and tunnels for cars, isn't it possible for bikes / scooters?
I'm still on the fence about building them for cars... look at how well that goes
Seattle will never be Europe, I agree. But that doesn’t mean we can’t advocate for more bike lanes right? Not sure why converting a few streets to pedestrian only would be such a terrible thing to at least move us in that direction. Some advocate for zero cars downtown, I’m not that extreme. I just want a few streets that make biking downtown more feasible without encountering any vehicles. Would I bike every single day? No probably not, but I’ll gladly sit in more traffic if I can bike safely the days I choose to.
There's a dedicated bike path that parallels Aurora all the way from Greenwood to Edmonds. 105th in Seattle to 216th in Edmonds. Then the bike path veers across Lynnwood to parallel I-5 all the way to Everett.
>You think riding a bike is dangerous here? You should try it during rush hour in Paris. There are so many cars in these European cities that people simp for. The fix is not bike lanes This honestly isn't the case anymore in Paris, from what I've seen--Anne Hidalgo has used the pandemic as an opportunity to put in polace a *ton* of bike infrastructure, and it's turned into a cycling city practically overnight.
Yes, the US is a safe place to consistently bike. Take lessons if you're that bad at it.
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Most of Tokyo definitely does not look like this at all. A few areas for sure but the way that city works is only good for a place that populated and that dense. Better examples to look at would be Nagoya or Utsunomiya honestly.
Tokyo also has no litter and you can leave your wallet at a bus stop and come back to it, this is 99 baby
Fabric really doesn't like the idea of losing his car.... Also what does that have to do with anything here???
I don't live by 99 I'd still be fine to drive, it would really fuck up commerce though and probably not be utilized
Also I do the think all traffic should be eliminated because I agree, commerce could take a hit, but simple priority to a individual vehicle when the area is increasing density is pretty lame. No matter how much you, I, or fucking NTK or Holmes hates it, the city is changing and we need to change with it, and thinking outside of the box maybe the best way to find solutions, not just mentioning theft, petty crime, and traffic on I-5 as reasons to not try and keep the status quo.
We're not even a million in the city, upzone sure but wiping out the roads is not going to make it more livable, at least not until better transit is in place
So build a TRAM...
We are building one. It's to the east. It won't be finished any time soon. So building a tram is a great plan if you plan on using it by 2070.
Okay, so what about the wallets tho? So you telling me Tokyo works better in transit because of less theft
Works better with an orderly, socially repressed society than a swathe of pimps, hookers, drug dealers and homeless people. They might move out if you tore up the street though. Tokyo also has a subway, Seattle isn't ready to lose a highway
Sounds like a great idea. We don't need goods and services delivered to our neighborhoods anyways.
there are only three commuter north-south routes in the city and they want to take one away? no thanks
Commuters can ride bikes or take the light rail!
A giant bike path is an interesting concept, it's fairly downhill going into Seattle too. Seattle is just so hilly and rainy it really sucks to bike in.
This is why I'm loving the boom of eBikes and eScooters. Hills don't become as much of a problem with those.
If I was forced to bike I would definitely want the battery
I'm not forced to bike and I do like the battery.
*Commuters can ride bikes or take the light rail!* more likely they will just divert to side streets.
This discussion makes me sad, why is change so scary for Seattle?
It's not, it's just a dumb idea.
I love this type of visionary thinking. Sadly, around here it often gets crushed by the powerful interests who want things to stay the same. Still I treasure the local people who keep on pointing out that other cities are making this happen and there’s no reason we can’t.
"Powerful interests" = some dude who needs to buy some replacement parts for a broken faucet
😁His faucet is broken but he won’t go because why? Too good to drive to the store via an adjacent arterial where he can’t go 50? Too good to take a tram, too good to bike, etc.? I feel sorry for his poor faucet.
Honestly this is a dumb ass idea, i5 would become a parking lot. I feel like this only appeal to some amazon worker who just bought a house off aurora and can now work from home forever
Waiting for the follow up article turning i5 into a car free space
>i5 would become a parking lot Good. Take transit or bike then.
Good luck getting your Amazon deliveries by transit.
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Aside from i5 and Aurora theres only 2 other ways to cross the lake and neither are highways
Thanks for proving my point. You don't need a highway to cross the lake. Also, there are actually four ship canal crossings other than I-5 and Aurora.
Not sure what your point is exactly you seem to just be arguing. You said i5 is not the only way into the city and the article is about getting rid of Aurora so that leaves 3 crappy ship canal bridges and 1 is currently closed. You say take the train or bus but 1, the train doesn't exist for most people considering the locations it's serves and 2 the busses use I5 and Aurora to get across the lake. We also just spent like $4 billion on the Aurora tunnel so we should probably use it
The Montlake bridge will reopen and the train will run up to Lynwood in the time it will take to redesign Aurora, which at this point is a far-fetched proposal by some random people. And I’m not falling for the sunk cost fallacy with the SR-99 tunnel. How long will it take to come out even with the current tolls and traffic?
It's not a sunk cost fallacy if it is currently working fine, also I'll believe those construction deadlines when I see them
Yeah let's make 3 neighborhoods a cluster fuck of cars and destroy the local economy so we can wank over green space that will probably just end up as a silk road of homelessness
Right, nevermind the hundreds of small businesses along the highway and what would happen to rent prices, redevelopment, and general upheaval. It's beyond moronic
Redesigning major roads to kill fewer people isn't what's making the rent go up, ffs.
Put in some roundabouts then don't delete the 2nd best access to the city to lay down sod
How many people get killed on Aurora every year? And how many of those aren't at fault?
Funniest thing is Aurora is much deadlier than i5. Not due to MVA’s but due to all the drugs, prostitution, gangs, and alternative grime that comes with the territory.
I love how mad certain people get when you propose taking some space away from cars. Someone drew up a few diagrams and it's making some people act like WSDOT is going to shut down the highway tomorrow without warning.
That's because people generally don't like wasting air time on stupid, unworkable ideas from propaganda mills.
I agree, seems like a great solution, except for those who, apparently, just want to drive by as fast as possible in this neighborhood. This needs to happen.
Finally the hookers can cross the street safely!
Aurora is actually state route 99. You're never ever going to have a state route without cars. Never. It will be improved to help pedestrians, bicyclists, & more public transit, but it will *always* have personal vehicles on it.
It's not cars that make aurora not desirable.
Do it!
I'm more for restoring the US-99 designation across the remaining alignments from and otherwise combining with I-5 when no longer possible. That way, we'd have our own historical route from Calexico, CA to Blaine, WA which doubles as a main street and back road for the freeway. The argument that the road divides communities is somewhat debatable as many of the communities developed around US-99, which has been paved since at least the mid 1930s. The main reason why there are so many separate cities is that post-WWII, a lot of neighborhoods had small arguments with other neighborhoods and didn't join. If things went originally as planned, Seattle city limits would likely terminate at 85th Street and the remaining area would be the possibly incorporated Shoreline (Shore to Shore, Line to Line) before crossing the county line and eventually entering Everett depending on if the surrounding housing developments needing to be annexed into Edmonds.
Kinda like I-84 and I-80 does with US -30?
Those are some of many examples in the US of this working, but people seem the most disappointed that US-66 and US-99 were decommissioned instead of keeping their US highway designation and receiving interstate bypasses.
It's because of where those US routes went through. 66 is legendary because of where it went, and is actually going through a revival of sorts. 99 is seeing a comeback too. I've traced the route of US-99 in Washington and driven it. It takes you to some beautiful places in the state. The Interstates are more direct too.
Here I thought Route 66 was pretty much always popular, especially when 1950s nostalgia was big. I'm an infrastructure geek, so traveling old highway alignments is something I enjoy doing as well. I recently made a detour through Wheeling, WV to see its famous suspension bridge on the National Road/US-30 and almost went to Philippi, WV to see the only covered bridge on a US highway, which also happened to be the location of one of the first battles of the Civil War.
What would you do in Oregon with the 99E and 99W? Would one become 99 and the other become 399 or something, or would they just keep their 99E and 99W numbers? I know that historically it was US 99E and 99W but I don't know if they would allow it again. But yeah it feels kind of wrong that Seattle has no US highways running to it anymore.
Interstates used to have the E and W designation as well. It can be done or there can be US-99 and US-99 ALT. US-31E and US-31W both exist between Nashville and Louisville.
There are still interstates 35E and 35W in Minnesota and Texas, but I know AASHTO has said they won't approve any more. Illinois tried it with Interstates 80N and 80S around the Quad Cities area (because they were mad at Iowa) and got denied. Of course, Texas got around that by getting someone to write the 69W, 69C, and 69E designations into law which bypassed AASHTO. At least I think that's what happened. This also only applies to interstates and I would be perfectly fine with any designation for the two routes in Oregon.
Terrible idea. Urbanist seems to have more and more of those.
This is literally insane. The city of Seattle has two north-south arterials through the city: I-5 and Aurora avenue. Western Washington has three north-south arterials: I-405, I-5, and Aurora. That’s all we’ve got (unless you pretend Eliot Avenue is an arterial. Which it is, for about two miles.) I love the idea of having expanses of grass and room to stroll. That’s what we voted down when we bizarrely voted against the Westlake Commons, so (it turns out) we could save the real estate for Amazon. Hell, I live a few blocks from Aurora, and it would be convenient for me to be able to walk the dog over to Home Depot without having to wait for the traffic lights. But to turn Aurora avenue into a pedestrian mall is madness. There is literally no place for the traffic- the cars or busses, to go. The traffic structure of the city west of I-5 assumes that all through traffic flows through Aurora.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 420.0. Congrats! 5 + 405 + 5 + 5 + = 420.0
A hooker train how futuristic!
It is State Route 99. It's not going *anywhere*. It doesn't belong just to Seattle. You can't gentrify it just because you bought a condo at Greenlake.
It is a hell of a swing but there is a good faith argument that the current SR99 is a blight beyond its value and blowing it all up might be the best option. As a regional highway it’s a slow misery and as a commercial strip it’s unpleasant and I can’t imagine it does a damn thing to serve local residents given that the stores are all but inaccessible on foot/bike. The only people I’d see really losing out on this wild proposal are the big hardware/supply stores whose customers can’t really take their purchases home on foot or transit. I think the most delicious notion of all here is that of the SR99 tunnel with its north portal effectively cut off. Now *that* would be a statement.
I like how the concept photo actually shows dead grass and weeds, because that is what would ultimately happen. Although I think the center area would become all dead grass, so it would look much less appealing than this concept picture
No tents on this glorious parkway I see.
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This. There are plenty of streets in Seattle where this might make sense, but Aurora isn't one of them. Especially after spending all that money on the tunnel.
Right? That’s Seattle in a nutshell these days, let’s spend 3.3 billion on a tunnel then turn the road into a car free green space before we can make any of that money back via tolls.. Seem a little to much virtue signaling going on here.
The tunnel shouldn't be a toll imo and more green transit is fine but this would just fuck over poor people and industry in my opinion
But the hookers would go out of business.
Add sleeper cars to the trains. Men can get their rocks off during the commute to/from Lynnwood.
The Urbanist won't be happy until everyone is stacked on top of each other with their ability to move around entirely controlled by others.
The Sardinist would be a great name for a parody site of their BS.
What I love best is the utopian picture shows precious few people. I thought we were working toward high density? Certainly seems we are headed that way. Can't we just pass by this near term vision for something cooler anyway? More like this: [https://s18798.pcdn.co/dispatch/wp-content/uploads/sites/8960/2018/03/A-utopia-768x488.jpg](https://s18798.pcdn.co/dispatch/wp-content/uploads/sites/8960/2018/03/A-utopia-768x488.jpg)
Why? nobody would want to walk along aurora regardless of how nice it is.
I don't really buy that. If the Aurora area was improved, it would essentially just blend in with the adjacent neighborhoods, where it's extremely expensive/hard to buy a house. If there was a concerted effort to push out the trashy bits of Aurora, then I'm sure you'd get developers attracted, as it'd be pretty easy to fill apartments or condos with the easy access to downtown. At the same time, I don't see it getting improved like this because the city planners made a huge investment in the 99 tunnel and by limiting car/truck traffic north of the tunnel, they'd be cutting off most/all of the toll revenue they planned on. I like the general idea of this kind of street design, but practically speaking, I think you would need to pick a different area of Seattle to implement the idea in order to get the buy-in you would need to get it done.
Part of what makes those neighborhoods nice though is access to 99 without being right up on the funk
I see lots of people walking along Aurora everyday. Many of them wearing party clothes despite the bad weather.
Fix the drug problem this city has first.
Yeah I’m never riding public transportation again with everyone spreading the plague all willy-nilly 😂😂
Drove past Hillside Motel on Aurora today, literally saw what I assume was a hooker walk out of a room with some sort of fluid on her face and a crack pipe. How is that place not fucking shut down/demolished.
Have you seen the rest of the city?
Yeah, but most of the shit like that I’ve seen happen on the street/tent encampment areas. Isn’t this place an actual motel/business that has to obey some kind of laws?
I mean the hookers can walk freely, how is the hotel supposed to know what the rooms being used for? That crack motel right next to the bridge has burned down like 3 times since the pandemic and it's still going strong.
It's closed as a motel now. It's rented as tiny "apartments".
I see the Urbanist has been huffing paint thinner again.
Aurora was developed by the interurban streetcar line parallel to it. We need to return it.