Safety first: Alaskan Way Viaduct has been demolished and a NO on I‑912 promise kept

It’s final­ly gone.

With the excep­tion of a few sin­gle deck sec­tions near the BNSF Rail­way tracks, the Alaskan Way Viaduct no longer stands, WSDOT declared today.

The anti­quat­ed, seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble struc­ture has been suc­cess­ful­ly demol­ished, remov­ing a major eye­sore from Seat­tle’s water­front and great­ly improv­ing the safe­ty of the neigh­bor­hood that bor­ders Elliott Bay. By com­plet­ing this work, WSDOT and its con­trac­tors have avert­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the struc­ture could have col­lapsed in an earth­quake like the Cypress Street Viaduct did in Oakland.

The Alaskan Way Via­duc­t’s replace­ment — a bored tun­nel under­neath Down­town Seat­tle — opened to motorists back in Feb­ru­ary and has car­ried State Route 99 below the city’s Finan­cial Dis­trict since then. The tun­nel pro­vides right of way for thru traf­fic, while trav­el­ers need­ing to access the cen­ter city can use sur­face streets, includ­ing Alaskan Way, which is itself slat­ed to be reconstructed.

About four­teen years ago, I stood at one of the entrances to the Alaskan Way Viaduct and made the case for the rejec­tion of Kir­by Wilbur and John Carl­son’s I‑912, explain­ing that it would gut the fund­ing for the via­duc­t’s replace­ment. Togeth­er with oth­er pro­gres­sive activists, we held up a sign that said: “WARNING! ENTERING I‑912 DISASTER AREA. TO FIX THIS ROADWAY, VOTE NO 912. ”

Our mes­sage in oppo­si­tion to I‑912 was sim­ple: “Safe­ty First”.

Vot­ers lis­tened and hand­i­ly reject­ed I‑912, pre­serv­ing the Leg­is­la­ture’s 2005 Trans­porta­tion Pack­age and allow­ing work on the via­duc­t’s removal and replace­ment to pro­ceed. It took over a decade, but a plan to replace the viaduct was final­ly agreed upon and imple­ment­ed by WSDOT.

There were lots of hur­dles that had to be over­come, includ­ing show­stop­ping prob­lems with the tun­nel bor­ing machine, Bertha, which paused tun­nel con­struc­tion for many months. Some pun­dits and observers pre­dict­ed the tun­nel would nev­er be fin­ished. But it was, and today it is open to motorists.

Now the viaduct is final­ly gone and the water­front has been opened up.

Seat­tle is enter­ing a new era… an era in which its down­town will be prop­er­ly con­nect­ed to its water­front again, with­out the hulk­ing viaduct in the way.

To cel­e­brate this momen­tous accom­plish­ment, WSDOT has been post­ing videos depict­ing how the viaduct was safe­ly brought down.

In this six minute clip, you can go inside the work zone for a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s real­ly like to tear down the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

If you liked that, there’s anoth­er behind the scenes mon­tage you can watch:

There are also some great time­lapse videos, like this bird’s eye view one:

Or this one from near the stadiums:

This clip shows the removal of the Mar­i­on Street pedes­tri­an overpass.

Again, con­grat­u­la­tions to WSDOT on reach­ing this huge milestone.