Moving from the Gas Pedal to the Bike Pedal
The old adage, “My way, or the highway,” gets thrown around so much it’s become cliché. But for Seattle urban planner Cary Moon, it’s the cornerstone of her career.
In 2004, Moon co-founded the People’s Waterfront Coalition, a grassroots group that supports sustainable alternatives to the city’s crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct, a three-story highway that runs along Seattle’s west-side waterfront. The viaduct was badly damaged in a 2001 earthquake and has since sunk more than 5 inches. Its structural integrity is poor—yet 105,000 carbon-emitting cars still travel on it each day.
All of which begs the question: would you like to be driving this roadway during the next earthquake?
While city planners investigated building a sturdy new submerged highway to replace the crumbling Viaduct, Moon’s group took their thinking outside the box. Instead, they proposed replacing it with four lanes of pedestrian- and bike-friendly city streets, with nearby bus rapid transit.
Once considered a fringe proposal, it has gained traction in the last year.
Shortly after the 2001 quake, Washington’s state highway department hunkered down and started designing a bigger, stronger highway to replace the sinking viaduct. Moon was on the city’s design commission at the time and was troubled by the direction the designers were heading.
“They’re going to ruin the waterfront for another 100 years!” she thought.
So Moon, along with several other commission members, attempted to enlist the help of local environmental organizations in fighting the new bridge. But the groups, Moon recalls, turned them away.
“They told us, ‘You can’t fight the highway department,’” says Moon.
But Moon is doing just that—and says she’s got the power of facts on her side.
First off, she says, highway I-5 runs parallel to the viaduct. Does Seattle really need two highways running side-by-side?
And not only that: the viaduct isn’t really used like a highway—most car trips on the roadway are in-city trips where drivers use the viaduct as a shortcut around downtown. Well-designed city streets could serve that same purpose.
Several US cities have torn down highways. San Francisco famously ripped out the Embarcardero freeway after it sustained serious damage during damage the city’s 1989 earthquake. And Boston recently completed the costly Big Dig, which re-routed Interstate 93 underground. Just five years ago Seoul, South Korea, also tore down a massive motorway running through the center of the capital, replacing it with a 1000-acre park.
Interestingly, studies show that traffic doesn’t simply shift elsewhere after a highway tear-down; up to 50 percent of it simply disappears, Moon says.
“That’s what’s great about highway tear-downs. People just readjust their travel plans and decide to drive less.”
“It’s the wrong time to invest in car convenience instead of making other modes more viable,” Moon adds. “It’s the wrong place for a highway, on our most valuable public real estate. There’s a simpler more sustainable solution.”
The success or failure of efforts like Moon’s may have broad implications for urban re-development throughout the United States. That’s because Seattle is an environmental leader to which other cities look for guidance. Its mayor, Greg Nickels, launched the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2005, which urged city leaders in America to sign on to the Kyoto environmental protocols.
The coalition’s proposals are gaining traction. In December 2008, a panel including Washington’s governor, Seattle’s mayor and the county executive will decide which way to go on the viaduct. Three of the eight proposals they’ll consider are variations on the coalition’s suggestion.
“If a city wants to reduce emissions and really be a sustainability leader, it has to invest in the development patterns, land use policies and transportation infrastructure that can achieve that,” Moon says.
As an environmental leader, she adds, Seattle “has an obligation to the rest of the country to get it right.”
