Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

[UPDATE, 1/16/09] Mayor Nickels and SDOT submitted to the City Council a fully-funded plan to fix Mercer and Spokane Street Viaduct. The remaining $50 million needed for the Mercer project will be from the economic recovery package.]

The Mercer street debate is not a new debate, but one that seems to effectively polarize advocates and opponents. My training requires me to look for controlling precedent, case law or similar situations to arrive at a position that makes sense or, in the alternative, reach a new, unprecedented position because I believe the facts warrant such position. I have taken it upon myself to find information that I believe is relevant and not rely on the arguments or assertions of those who seemed to be vested in advocating for a certain solution.

The Mercer corridor serves more than 5000 vehicles per hour during the peak morning hour and more than 6000 vehicles per hour during the peak evening hour. This corridor serves as the main east-west arterial to access I-5 for residents of Queen Anne, South Lake Union and even Magnolia. In 2004, South Lake Union was designated as an urban center and is expecting tremendous growth in the coming decades. The population of South Lake Union has grown by 300% since 2000 and is expected to have 30,000 residents and ten-thousand new jobs by 2030.

Improving this corridor has been an ongoing discussion for the last 40 years, but the necessity to improve traffic flow at this corridor is the result of tremendous economic growth which has occurred over the last ten years and the projected growth for the next 20 years.

Legislation related to the Mercer corridor dates back to 2004 and has received support from a total of 11 Councilmembers, with one opposition. As I review transportation projects, I evaluate whether tax revenue on public transportation projects has built a strong case for the public spending involved, the congestion relief, the neighborhood and local economic impact, and the environmental impact. Opponents of this project argue that the most intuitive measure of effectiveness for a transportation project, travel time, does not improve at this corridor. Based on the environmental assessment report, in 2030, five of the pathway measurements show significant improvement while five pathway measurements show an increase in travel time. Ten have minimal positive/negative changes. The 2010 statistics show three significant positive changes, three negative changes, and 14 minimal positive/negative changes. See Figures 1-4 below.

The City has set a vision to promote and drive dense urban centers and this transportation project is one of the results of that action. South Lake Union is an urban center and significant growth will continue in this area. This corridor will serve as a boulevard for South Lake Union and Uptown and improve the pedestrian mobility and safety in this area. In addition, the proposed plan will straighten out the grid between the Seattle Center and I-5, thus creating a more direct east-west route and easier navigation. The local neighborhood and economic development impact will be significant. The last Seattle Comprehensive Plan update in ’04 estimated 16,000 new jobs in this area by 2024. One of the main reasons that Seattle does not get the immediate brunt of economic problems compared to other parts of this country is our science and technology job sector. Of the nearly 20,000 jobs in this area in the next decade, a quarter will be in the biotech and retail sectors, and approximately 50% will be business services, finance, and real estate.

One could argue that we do not need to rebuild this corridor in order to drive science and technology businesses to Seattle, but with only two major biotech hubs on the west coast, and a few on the east coast, Seattle would leave millions and billions on the table. The strength of a cities economic vitality is its diversity, and Seattle is uniquely positioned in this respect. With the economic downturn on Wall Street, New York City is now trying to reduce its dependency on Wall Street by developing its biotech market and has a goal to make New York the biotech capital of America. New York so far has invested more than $35 million to renovate office and lab space for bioscience companies, an additional $48 million by the state of New York and also under development is a $700 million dollar complex in Manhattan. New biotech startups locate to places where the biotech industry is already established and with low operating costs. These locations are the west coast, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. With South Lake Union’s unique location to the University of Washington, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, Seattle should promote industry sustainability and be one of the top biotech hubs in the nation. Additionally, the new Presidential administration will most likely change existing stem cell policies, resulting in growth in the biotech industry.