SEATTLE - They say it's been a mire on traffic for 40 years. On Wednesday, Seattle's notorious Mercer Mess officially began getting fixed as construction crews broke ground.
Earlier this year, contractors tore out buildings on the north side of one way Mercer Street, including two old gas stations, the West Marine store and the former headquarters for Taco Del Mar. Once erased, contractors began piling five feet of crushed rock on top of the ground, which compresses the soil that will, by 2012, be holding up the new westbound lanes of Mercer.
While most drivers welcome the fix, there is some angst about the current eastbound lanes going from four down to three. Rick Sheridan with the Seattle Department of Transportation says their studies show that the current fourth lane, that turns on to Fairview Street, really only slows things down. Some people try to beat traffic by driving up it and forcing their way in before getting onto Interstate 5.
Sheridan says eastbound commute times in the evening should improve by up to three minutes and westbound times should be cut by up to four minutes with traffic able to come off Interstate 5 as a straight shot.
But the question is whether those minutes are worth the nearly $161 million it will cost to rebuild not only Mercer, but create a new pedestrian-friendly Valley Street and cross streets in the revitalized South Lake Union neighborhood. That money is just for phase one from I-5 west to Dexter Avenue. It will cost an additional $100 million to go from Dexter Avenue to Elliott Avenue West.
"One thing this project does, it recognizes this is a place where people live and work. It's not just a thru corridor for vehicles," says Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. McGinn says he supported the fix as a candidate, even though the changes were the product of the previous Greg Nickels administration.
The project didn't become a reality until the U.S. Department of Transportation signed off on $30 million in stimulus money.
"When we looked at their plans, we really felt this was a good use of taxpayer dollars," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in town for the groundbreaking. "Because, all of these people did come together."
Not everyone is happy. John Fox, an activist with the Seattle Displacement Coalition, says they should have left the Mercer mess like it was. He says the changes will bring little, if any, improvement to traffic. He says the money should have been spent on the South Park Bridge, now being torn down, severing an important link over the Duwamish River between the mixed industrial and residential community and Seattle.
"Our elected leaders let that bridge close so they could fund the Mercer corridor," says Fox. He says the Mercer money will do little more than benefit property owners in the South Lake Union area.
As for the South Park Bridge, LaHood says he's been lobbied hard by local officials trying to get federal money to complete the project that is actually in King County. The bridge project has already been turned down for stimulus money, but can reapply.
