City Hall, News & Politics, The City, The County

No Money for Local Transit or South Park Bridge in Latest Round of Federal Funding

By Erica C. Barnett, Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 12:20 PM
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The latest round of TIGER (federal stimulus money) grants, announced yesterday, includes $30 million in funding for the $200 million Mercer project, which will turn Mercer Street into a two-way boulevard in South Lake Union. The announcement prompted a flurry of praise from City Council members for Sen. Patty Murray, who created the TIGER program.

The bad news? The grants included no funding for local transit projects, including a request by Sound Transit for funds to help accelerate the construction of light rail to South 200th St. from the airport by two years. And they skipped over a request from King County to replace the deteriorating South Park Bridge, which links South Park and White Center to the Duwamish industrial area and downtown Seattle across the Duwamish River.

The bridge is scheduled to close at the end of June.

In a statement today, King County Executive Dow Constantine said he was “very disappointed” in the decision, adding that while the South Park Bridge “may not be a glamorous or high-profile project … it’s one that is vitally important to our economy and our society.”

According to a statement by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood excerpted on Seattle Transit Blog, projects “were selected based on their contribution to economic competitiveness of the nation, improving safety and the condition of the existing transportation system, increasing quality of life, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrating strong collaboration among a broad range of participants, including the private sector.”

Editorializing here, it’s hard to see how Mercer beat out both the South Park Bridge in terms of safety, and light-rail extension in terms of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

  • musichandra
    Tell Senator Murray that she needs to look closely at this project before making false statements to justify transportation federal grants for SDOT. Everyone knows that this project is not aimed to "improve port and highway access and reduce commute times", as Patty Murray claims.

    To shrink a street from 4 to 3 lanes, to built new metered parking, plant trees and flowers with bicycle lanes and crosswalks at every block on a truck route that's connected to the interstate express lanes is not a transportation project. It's a beautification project, to beautify the property lots for developers, which city can milk for taxes in the future. Most importantly, the city is trying to use federal grants at the expense of an existing 4th lane for metered parking. In other words, The city of Seattle is using the federal transportation grant to create a new steady revenue by building metered parking instead of preserving the 4th lane of traffic for regional commuters or transit. As a result it will create nothing but pollution and congestion, as well as dangerous conditions.

    Tell her this is not what the federal transportation grant is for.

    You can contact her here:
    http://murray.senate.gov/email/index.cfm
  • mathewrenndawgrenner
    There should be no federal funding of local transit. It is stealing from the other 49 states.
  • Seattle_Steve
    It is true that Haugen was the chief barrier to doing anything more sensible with last years stimulus funds, but she had a lot of help from Judy Clibborn, Paula Hammond and Christine Gregoire.

    It would not have mattered for South Park last year. The project wasn't ready last year per rules established by Congress, not by a long shot. It was ready this year, but not as ready as other things that were funded, like Mercer, which needed three times less funding.

    This was a good decision by the feds. The big loss for the South Park bridge came when voters rejected the road and transit ballot a few years back. That would have funded the fix. Ron Sims and Mike McGinn take credit for successfully fighting that ballot measure.

    Looks like there is plenty of blame to go around. But at the end of the day it is King County's bridge and the County's responsibility. Ron Sims never made it a priority. He had lots of ways to do that, but didn't. Never.

    Dow will get it done. He'll win plenty of support to do that.
  • TranspoGuy
    knowssomethingbiggerabouttiger is right. There are all kinds of ways why South Park bridge was not well suited to the TIGER grant criteria. TIGER is essentially a pilot grant program that was not really meant to address broken infrastructure. As knowsomething indicated, it was only a $1.5b pot of money for the entire country.

    The real crime is that state Senate transportation chair Mary Margaret Haugen and the governor screwed King County and Seattle last year when the state distributed the big pot of transportation stimulus funds. That pot of money was very much intended for bridge rehab projects like the South Park crossing.

    King County went to Olympia to ask for the needed funding, but Haugen, who drove the stimulus award process said no. Instead she directed the money to projects like a new sprawl inducing I-82 interchange near the Yakima Valley Mall. The only project in King County that got state stimulus dollars was a project to add 4 new lanes to a section of I-405. Like most bad transportation decisions over the last 10 years, Mary Margaret Haugen deserves the lion's share of the blame for this one too.
  • Ruggerducky
    South Park is sick and tired of politicians all blaming each other. Meanwhile the neighborhood is DYING. People will literally die as a result of increased police/fire response when there is no bridge, especially since SPD in all its idiocy doesn't station officers in SP, but sends them "as needed" from Georgetown. When traffic is backed up on the 1st Ave S bridge, this is going to be a danger to us all.
  • lucer
    We need a little perspective here. Lets start with some facts:

    USDOT funded only 51 projects NATION WIDE

    Out of $1.5 billion in available funds, there are only 2 projects funded at or above $100m. Note that South Park / King County asked for $100m -- to have the federal government fully fund the project while most all of these projects are getting the last dollar in by the federal government. Meaning: South Park needed a full $100m to do their project, not a lesser amount - and in this context, $100m was absolutely not feasible. Plus lets be honest, its irresponsible for any entity to assume the federal govt is going to pick up the entire tab. seriously.

    Only another 6 projects are funded at or above $50m

    32 of the 51 projects are less than $25m

    Mercer and North Spokane Corridor were in top 20 for highest amount of funding and they received $30m and $35m respectively (Spokane - 13th highest) (Mercer - 19th highest)

    Neither Mercer or Spokane Corridor received their full funding request.

    Not all 50 states received funding (41 states had projects or inter-state projects)

    For Washington State to get two projects is a huge coup, and speaks volumes to the quality of those applications. Remember -- Washington State entities submitted more than double the amount of the entire TIGER grant (submitted over $3b in requests).

    for the facts, go to USDOT.gov.
  • Tiger It Is
    Thanks for your suggestion. I went to usdot.gov and got the facts. Point #1 in the rationale the feds gave for funding Mercer was:

    "Provides accessibility for economically disadvantaged populations, senior citizens and persons with disabilities and links them to jobs, housing, shopping, services and recreation."

    Economically disadvantaged populations? Wow.
  • joshuadf
    That's hilariously ridiculous. To be fair, SLU actually does have a large amount of senior and low-income housing, but I do not see how the Mercer project provides any accessibility to them. There still won't even be crosswalks at every intersection.

    By the way it's DOT.gov, and the TIGER PDF is at http://www.dot.gov/documents/finaltigergrantinf...
  • musichandra
    Crosswalks are conflicts points, especially on a super congested roads like Mercer st. Do seniors or anyone really need to walk anywhere near such congested and polluted streets?! You point makes no sense... The more appropriate concern here is that the city of Seattle is using these false statements to attract the federal transportation funds to beautify the property accesses along Mercer in SLU and building new metered parking. This is a total conflict of interest. The federal transportation fund, that the city was finally awarded, is not designed for building new steady revenue incomes for organizations. Instead of preserving the 4th lane of traffic to reduce congestion and pollution, or to create a transit route, the city will install metered parallel parking to milk them as income in the future. Helping property owners to landscape their properties with this transportation grant is also wrong.
    So, don't get side tracked, because that's what the city wants. They want you to talk about crosswalks and bicycle lanes, which in reality is absurd, dangerous, and unhealthy on such a congested street.
  • joshuadf
    Considering I work at 815 Mercer St, yes I need to walk near such a congested and polluted street. While one use of Mercer is to get on I-5, it's also in the middle of a neighborhood where people live and work. If the city/county/state/feds were serious about improving freight mobility, they would be working to reduce the congestion caused by single-occupant vehicles (and believe me, that's most of the traffic).
  • joshuadf
    For the record, I don't like the Mercer redesign because it doesn't deal with the problem of too many single-occupant vehicles. There is a physics problem here: too many vehicles wanting to use the available space. Some of these drivers have good reasons to be alone behind the wheel, but many do not. Carpooling and transit are options. I'm not a traffic engineer, but I have to think that it also would help to dedicate at least one lane to freight (both local and long haul).

    Getting back to the point above, the "accessibility for economically disadvantaged populations," it's pretty obvious that this was just an excuse to fund Mercer.

    Re "Not everyone can afford to live and work in SLU", sounds like you have been fooled by Vulcan advertising. There are many low-income (Brewster Apts has a sign up if you know anyone looking) and market rate apartments (I live in one). In fact, only one condo project, Veer, made it to market at all. SLU is also very close to Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill which also have a ton of apartments. So... yes, anyone can afford to live here.
  • musichandra
    What are you talking about?! are you like 5 years old?! Do people really like driving in traffic. Not everyone can afford to live and work at SLU. Don't like single occupant vehicles? ok, so how is this fraud of a project is going to solve that? There are no regional transit plans in this project. and no, not everyone has masochistic desires to ride a bike next to semi trucks. I really want to watch you and your loved ones in some sort of a financial crisis... when you can not afford to live where you work and/or looking for a job or housing... wonder what you will say then. You'll be there, in that miserable traffic on Mercer st in a single occupancy vehicle! So unless you are some old-money-spoiled-rich guy, stop being so selfish and open your eyes beyond cliche statements of saving the planet.
  • Ruggerducky
    Economically disadvantaged--like Paul Allen and his Biotechs.

    Economically disadvantaged is what South Park really is. This is economic racism, pure and simple. The majority of SP residents are persons of color and blue collar workers.
  • gbelau
    Correction: KC was NOT asking for full cost of SP Bridge. $100 mil represents about 2/3 of the cost of replacement.
    Your other point is well taken, but don't make it look like KC is just being irresponsible. Seriously.
  • Drive-By-Trucker_(Soapboxin')
    Didn't mean to imply that. Just know that KC is a bit strapped for cash, and won't be coming up with ADDITIONAL funding any time soon. Sorry if my facts were a bit off. I did admit that I'm not an expert.
  • gbelau
    Soapboxin - I was responding to the above post, not your response. Carry on.
  • Drive-By-Trucker_(Soapboxin')
    Agreed. This was a much-needed piece of good news, and a lot of people did work very hard on those applications.
    -
    And your point about King County not coming up with any funding on its own is well-taken.
    -
    I'm not an expert on the South Park Bridge, but it sure does seem like the bastard stepchild of all Puget Sound transportation projects. I just hope it doesn't become a crisis because it was brushed under the rug for too long.
    -
    And it's funny how certain things are considered life-threatening emergencies while others are not.
  • Free Advice to King County
    Re South Park Bridge: It needs to be replaced of course, but isn't a significant portion of the bridge's expense due to it being a draw bridge? Furthermore, isn't the need for the drawbridge functionality now limited to a single user up-river from the bridge? Therefore, would it not be cheaper to buy out the property and relocate the owner and build a fixed (non-draw) bridge?
  • gbelau
    Answers to your questions: No, no, and therefore no.
    1. The bridge is failing because the massive concrete piers do not extend down to stable soils or bedrock. One pier is slowly moving upstream, the other downstream, and both are moving in toward each other.
    2. There are at least 2 marinas and a large ship-building operation upstream of the bridge. Those businesses (and others, I'm sure) are dependent on the ability to navigate in the river.
    3. Even if it were cost effective to move the businesses (I suspect it is not, when all said and done), the Duwamish Waterway is federally listed as a "navigable waterway" from Harbor Island to the Turning Basin, which is about a mile south of the bridge. The process to get this far with the bridge replacement project has taken 8 years. More, if one considers past attempts. Changing the federal designation of a navigable waterway? I don't know what the process would look like, but you can bet it's neither pretty nor speedy. In the meantime, the South End loses jobs, and a neighborhood dies.
  • Free Advice to King County
    I get point #1. As I said earlier, the bridge needs to be replaced.

    Hmm. So current course and speed don't seem to be working. What has the 8 years of process you mentioned done for moving bridge replacement forward?
  • gbelau
    It's a big, complicated project. There are complicated jurisdictional "issues". There are multiple agencies and stakeholders involved, who all have a say. Multiple possible solutions must be examined to a certain level of detail, then decided upon. Due public Process must take place. A Draft EIS, then a Final EIS must be compiled, reviewed, and submitted. (The Final EIS, by the way, is public record and available to view, if you're really curious about how things came to be the way they are...)
    Sh*t takes time. The work of the last 8 years has brought the project to the point of "shovel readiness", as defined by the feds. It's a big, complicated project.
    My frustration is with the insinuation that it would be easy to just move all the businesses and build a fixed span. The project is "shovel ready" now. Another 8 years or more of process is more than I can handle.
  • Drive-By-Trucker_(Soapboxin')
    I'm gratified that the city got some funding for the Mercer mess, but I think the losses in federal money almost outweigh the gain. I agree with Constantine. It seems like the Feds took the easy way out, funding the most visible project but leaving less glamorous but equally important projects to wither on the vine.
    -
    I will not be holding my breath for the County to find funding for the South Park Bridge. And we sure could use a break on funding public transit. Disappointing for sure.
  • joshuadf
    For what it’s worth, I don’t really like the new Mercer design but the plan does have dedicated bike lanes.
  • musichandra
    what's good about bike lanes on a congested truck route connected to the interstate express lanes?
  • Pro-Duwamish
    The greenhouse gas emissions that will be generated by all the freight and commuter traffic waiting to squeeze over the First Avenue bridge after June 2010 will be glaringly evident. "Mercer Mess" becomes "Duwamish Disaster." Also, the Superfund cleanup of the Duwamish River (5.5 miles of the river from Tukwila to Harbor Island) could be compromised by this decision, since the EPA and the responsible parties have been assuming both bridges would be in use during the future cleanup and restoration. It's another example of infrastructure injustice to the lower-income and industrial neighborhoods.
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