Arboretum seeks big-time reduction in traffic

“Traffic calming” coming soon to a road near you!

If the Arboretum gets its way, the number of cars using Lake Washington Boulevard to transit the Park each day will be reduced by as much as 80%. And when it comes to traffic mitigation, what the Arboretum wants, the Arboretum may very well get. Frankly, the Park’s recent track record on this issue, though not widely heralded, has been pretty impressive.

Among the various constituencies of the Coalition for a Sustainable 520 (that amalgam of interested communities and interest groups, which includes Madison Park’s community council), the Arboretum was, in fact, the only immediate winner when the Governor last spring announced her new “Preferred Alternative” for 520. Rejecting the previous Option A+ Plan crafted by a legislative workgroup, the Governor eliminated the Arboretum on/off ramps from the design for the west-side approach to the new floating bridge. This, as we earlier reported, means that there will be no Arboretum off ramp from 520 beginning in 2012 (based on the current construction schedule) and no Arboretum on ramp to 520 beginning in 2015. The permanent elimination of the on/off ramps was what the Arboretum had argued for—and it’s what the Arboretum achieved.

But that’s hardly the end of the story. The Governor also mandated that the State Department of Transportation work with the City and the Arboretum to develop a “traffic management plan” that reduces the impact of cars on the Park. That’s something else the Arboretum wanted and got.

But what exactly does “traffic management” of Lake Washington Boulevard mean? I went right to the top to find out. In a narrow-ranging interview with Arboretum Foundation Director Paige Miller earlier this summer, I asked her what ideas were being debated for re-routing traffic and what kind of process will take place for developing a new traffic plan for the Arboretum.

But first, a word about Miller. She’s an attorney (Yale Law), former Seattle Port Commissioner, and one-time candidate for the Seattle City Council. She became executive director of the Arboretum Foundation three years ago. She has the reputation of being very smart and politically astute. Though she is modest about her role in the Arboretum’s recent success with the Governor ("It was a tremendous effort of a lot of people concerned about protecting the Arboretum") it’s pretty clear that the Arboretum’s cause has been advanced significantly by having Miller leading the parade.

With regard to the Arboretum’s traffic reduction objective, Miller did not mince words: “Our goal is to slow down traffic and discourage people from using the Arboretum as a through route.” And where will the traffic that now uses the Arboretum go? Miller is clear on that as well: “People should be encouraged to use 23rd Avenue E., which is a four-lane City arterial street and not an Olmsted Boulevard.” Her Olmsted reference, which is perhaps a bit obscure to some, comes from the fact that the City’s boulevards—developed in the early 1900s by the Olmsted Brothers—were intended to be parkways linking the City’s parks. When they were designed and built they were not intended to be major conveyors of through-traffic. But in the case of Lake Washington Boulevard, at least in its Arboretum portion, that’s exactly what it has become.

The City estimates that 18,000 cars drive through the Arboretum on average each day. Of these, according to Miller, about 10,000 vehicles access the 520 on or off ramps. She notes that the Boulevard—which was designed to handle only 4,000 cars per day—is only a two-lane road, while the four-lane arterial through Montlake also processes about 20,000 cars on average per day. By implication, improvements to 23rd and 24th Avenues E. could easily increase access to Montlake. To keep people from using the Arboretum in order to enter or exit 520, “we need to make sure that the logical route is to turn at 23rd,” Miller told me. “The Montlake Corridor ought to have the capacity of taking more cars than the Arboretum does.”

In order to encourage that northbound turn off of E. Madison Street and onto 23rd, Miller proposes to make the left-turn light there longer and to have the City lengthen the turn lane to accommodate more cars. Miller also wants the City to investigate ways to improve bus usage in that corridor.

But there are other ways of discouraging Arboretum use which are also under serious discussion. Miller prefers to call these “traffic calming measures” rather than traffic management schemes, but here are the major ones:

--putting a toll on cars using the Arboretum to access 520

--reducing speed limits through the Arboretum

--increasing the number of pedestrian crossings

--introducing speed monitors to tell drivers their cars’ speed

--placing a stop sign at the Boyer Avenue intersection

Miller says that no decisions have been made, but the planning process is underway. She believes that the Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee (ABGC) has been given jurisdiction by the State to develop the traffic plan for the Arboretum. The ABGC is composed of the Arboretum Foundation, Seattle Parks Department, and the University of Washington, and it jointly operates the Arboretum. The ABGC will be meeting this week (on Wednesday, August 18 from 8:00 am until 12:00 pm in the Graham Visitors Center in the Arboretum), and one of the items on the agenda will be “traffic calming and management in the Arboretum.” That discussion is expected to get started at about 9:30 and last for around 90 minutes, for those interested in attending.

Just to put the issue into perspective for those of us who use the Arboretum for something other than nature viewing, note that Miller is on record testifying to the Seattle City Council in April that the Arboretum would like to see the number of cars coming through the Park each day limited to about 4,000. That’s an almost 80% reduction from the estimated level of traffic flowing through the Arboretum today. To get to that number, a lot of cars are clearly going to have to go somewhere else—or not go at all.

Miller certainly is not apologetic about what she admits might be an unobtainable ideal. “You have to have a goal,” she told me. “Lake Washington Boulevard was meant to be a leisurely parkway and not a long on and off ramp for 520.” On her watch, she said, she intends to fight for the Arboretum as the urban oasis it was intended to be, not a place that’s convenient for people to “just zip through.”

[Lower photo: cars queue up eastbound on E. Madison Street at Lake Washington Boulevard to turn into the Arboretum on a late summer afternoon. Many if not most are heading for the 520 on ramp to the Eastside.]

Stormwater project and streetlight replacements may cause traffic back-ups

Madison Parkers may experience a traffic set back or two this summer while traveling to and from the Park. Two unrelated City utility projects have the potential to slow progress on both Madison Street and Lake Washington Boulevard, though neither is expected to result in major congestion.

The biggest operation by far is Phase II of the Madison Valley Stormwater Project, which will be getting underway in July. As previously reported here, a pipeline will be constructed to collect stormwater from the northwest section of Madison Valley and channel it to a newly built mostly-below-ground tank located near the ball field in Washington Park. Bryan Nicholson, the project engineer for Phase II at Seattle Public Utilities, tells me that the project will begin next month with some excavation work related to the replacement of a major water main along Madison Street. No water outages are anticipated for Madison Park residents.

By late July we may see some traffic impact resulting from site work on the Washington Park end of the project. An access road will be created off of the north side of Madison Street, with the road’s entrance situated about halfway between the Madison Lofts Condos (2914 E. Madison) and Lake Washington Boulevard. On the site map above, which shows the landscape plan for the completed project, the “pedestrian entry” is also the location of the construction access road.

The pipeline itself will be an underground affair, with the impact of above-ground construction expected to be fairly limited—unless you happen to live in Madison Valley near the site of the staging area (shown in blue on the map below) or near one of the eight pipeline shafts. Construction of the pipeline will begin at the Washington Park end (shaft 8) in August.

There will be a lot of “spoil” removed from the pipeline route, which will have to be trucked out of the area. Originally, Lake Washington Boulevard through the Arboretum was designated as a possible truck route. According to Nicholson, it is much more likely that the trucks will exit the Valley by heading up Madison (travelling west) and approach the freeways by going north on 23rd Avenue. For one thing, it would be difficult for the double-long dump trucks to navigate the Arboretum, which is already over-burdened with traffic. A final route has yet to be approved by the City.

Phase II has an 18-month construction schedule, culminating in the fall of 2011. Nicholson reports that traffic along Madison Street should seldom need to be stopped during construction as there is enough width to allow two-way flow, even when construction is occurring along the side. For more information on the Madison Valley Stormwater Project, visit the City’s official site. Questions can be directed to a 24-hour hotline: (206) 455-5345.

The second City utility project with potential traffic impact is also long-term, but far more limited in scope. Over the course of the next year and a half crews will be replacing more than seventy Arboretum streetlights with new light-emitting diode (LED) lights. This project, which began last week, is focused on all of the streetlights along Lake Washington Boulevard, from the entrance at Madison Street on the south end to the entrance at Broadmoor at the north end. Unfortunately, the electrical cable for these lights is located underground and is deteriorating. For this reason, the cable will have to be replaced--in addition to the lights and the light poles--which means there will be boring and trenching operations. Because there is only a two lane road through the Arboretum, on occasion traffic will have to be stopped in one direction while work is underway. Flaggers will be in evidence during the project.

According to Seattle City Light spokesperson Mark VanOss, work will be scheduled to minimize disruption to rush-hour traffic on the Boulevard. This summer’s phase of the project will concentrate on 29 lights from the Broadmoor entrance at E. Foster Island Road to a point 500 feet south of the pedestrian bridge over Lake Washington Boulevard. These replacements should be completed by the end of October, with the work on the remaining 42 lights to begin sometime next year.

[Stormwater graphics courtesy of Seattle Public Utilities.]

Say bye bye to those Arboretum ramps!

Just in case you missed one of the implications of the Governor’s announcement earlier this month concerning her revamp of the SR-520 project, allow me to hammer the point home for you: the existing Lake Washington Boulevard on and off ramps in the Arboretum will be demolished.

And they will not be replaced.

There will be no easy out-the-back-gate-of-Broadmoor access to 520, no trips through the Arboretum to a convenient access ramp. For Madison Parkers, the new way to get onto the floating bridge will simply be this: drive to Montlake and get in line.

The press hasn’t done a very thorough job, in my opinion, of spelling out this consequential aspect of the Governor’s latest 520 decision. But it’s a fact that the Governor came through big time for those who opposed the “wide and intrusive” Arboretum access ramps that were a feature of the Option A+ plan. The earlier Option A plan for the western approaches to SR-520 had already eliminated the existing Arboretum ramps, but the subsequent Option A+ compromise plan put new Arboretum ramps back into the mix. Now they’re out again.

So, beginning with the very first stage of the floating bridge replacement project, the westbound 520 exit to Lake Washington Boulevard will be closed. Under current construction plans, that’s expected to occur in the last quarter of 2012. And eventually, as construction moves forward in what’s anticipated to be a six-to-eight year construction project, the eastbound Lake Washington Boulevard ramp to 520 will also be demolished, along with the famous “ramps to nowhere.” Right now, that’s expected to happen sometime in late 2015.

This is a great image from Google Earth showing the Arboretum ramps which will be no more (the top is north, and the “ramps to nowhere” are marked with the largest red X and with the X immediately above that):

In announcing “the State’s preferred alternative” plan for 520 at a press conference at the UW’s Waterfront Activities Center, the Governor stated that “the State Department of Transportation heard the concerns of the neighborhoods and the City of Seattle” by creating a new design for the floating bridge and its western approaches that addresses those concerns. With regard to the elimination of the Lake Washington Boulevard ramps, the Governor said that “the purpose is to protect the Arboretum.” So score this as a one big win for the friends of the Arboretum.

For the many of us who have been using the Arboretum as a sort of gateway to and from the Eastside, however, the world will be changing in a less-comfortable way. And for those unhappy residents of Montlake: expect even more traffic to be heading in your direction. Of course, there will be that lovely new “Montlake Lid” to make things pleasant for everyone.

This is what the Montlake interchange and freeway lid look like in the proposed scheme, with the yellow routes showing 520 traffic flows from and to Lake Washington Boulevard (click to enlarge):

Some of the details are reportedly still being worked out, but basically traffic that now enters 520 in the Arboretum will under the new scenario be channeled to the intersection of E. Lake Washington Boulevard and Montlake Boulevard E., where it will (after negotiating at least one traffic light) enter a freeway entrance that loops around and under the Montlake Lid, heading eastbound. Traffic from Lake Washington Boulevard attempting to go west on 520 will apparently have to negotiate both a right turn at the same intersection with Montlake Boulevard and then make a left turn through another traffic light a block further north on that street. This is how the streets mentioned line up today:

There may be some relief for high-occupancy vehicles going eastbound on 520. They will apparently be allowed to enter the freeway by making a right turn on 24th Avenue E. from E. Lake Washington Boulevard (that’s where the bridge to the Museum of History and Industry currently crosses 520) and then they can enter the HOV lanes eastbound. Presumably the same would be true for the westbound HOV lane from 520, with an exit leading to the 24th Avenue intersection with Lake Washington Boulevard.

When all is said and done, assuming the “preferred plan” is the final plan, the Arboretum will not be a jumping off point for traffic to or from the Eastside. And a lot of the traffic that currently goes through the Arboretum before or after a 520 trip will no longer find Lake Washington Boulevard the most direct or convenient route. Anyone watching the E. Madison Street/E. Lake Washington Boulevard intersection during rush hour knows the extent to which traffic from downtown, First Hill, and Capitol Hill currently makes use of Madison Street and the Arboretum as a means of getting to and from 520. When the 520 ramps are reconfigured, however, all of this Madison traffic will benefit from turning left onto 23rd Avenue E. at the top of the hill, rather than coming down into Madison Valley for an approach to 520 through the Arboretum.

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Madison Parkers, however, as well as drivers from Denny-Blaine, Madrona, and Leschi who currently use Lake Washington Boulevard to enter or exit 520 in the Arboretum may still find that route is the shortest way to get to the Montlake entrances. But using the Arboretum for this purpose may not be possible, or it may be severely restricted. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) notes on its site that it will be working with the City of Seattle “to develop a traffic management plan for the Arboretum.” The goal? Limiting auto traffic through the Park.

So the Arboretum really came out ahead in the Governor’s new plan, while Madison Park, Madrona, Leschi , and—most spectacularly—Montlake were badly inconvenienced. Give credit to the Coalition for a Sustainable 520, the Arboretum Foundation, and the City of Seattle for the success of the Arboretum’s efforts. They all wanted the Option A+ Arboretum ramps drastically scaled back, and the Governor effectively said “Fine, no ramps at all.” The Coalition issued a statement today deploring the Governor's new plan, stating that it will channel all of the Arboretum traffic (which it estimates at 15,000 cars per day) onto 23rd Avenue E. and into Montlake. "The neighborhoods got shafted," says Coalition head Fran Conley, adding that the Governor's failure to plan for all of this new traffic in Montlake is "infuriating."

Note, however, that the timing for all of these 520 changes—including those affecting the Arboretum—is still very much in doubt. One big problem is that the money's not there. Unless another $2 billion or so of revenues is found, there will be no re-engineering of the western approaches to the new floating bridge (which does have funding). Also, delays in funding could mean that the construction schedule is pushed back. Another factor to consider is the willingness of the opponents to continue their fight in both the political and legal arenas, with changes to the Governor’s “preferred plan” a distinct possibility. In other words, this ain’t a done deal.

Nevertheless, I think we can still kiss those Arboretum ramps goodbye.

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[Graphics courtesy of SDOT, Google, and Google Earth. Photos by Tagas. For more information on the Montlake Interchange, click here.]

Arboretum to remove 34 mature trees as prelude to constructing the “Gateway to Chile”

Described by the Seattle Parks & Recreation Department as “the first major new exhibit in the Arboretum in almost 50 years,” The Pacific Connections Garden is an ambitious 14-acre project that will eventually feature five eco-geographic “immersion” forests within Washington Park: one each for Australia, New Zealand, China, “Cascadia” and Chile.
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Located at the south end of the Arboretum, the Garden is about to enter Phase II, with construction to begin late this spring on the “Gateway to Chile” section. A significant number of existing trees will be removed in order to make way for the 72 Chilean trees that will be part of the new garden, located on the east side of Lake Washington Boulevard E., just inside the entrance to the Park.

This construction phase also includes the restoration of an existing park feature, the Holmdahl Rockery, which has become overgrown.

The Japanese Garden was the last major new exhibit to grace the Arboretum, so The Pacific Connections Garden, which is a large component of the Park’s twenty-year master plan, is much anticipated. It’s purely coincidental that the Chilean garden will be developed in the wake of the massive earthquake which recently hit our South American neighbor. As the Parks Department notes, the timing of the tragedy “imbues the project with special meaning to Seattle as we respond with the rest of the world to the crisis.”

Funding for the project comes from both public and private sources. The Arboretum Foundation contributed $290,000 toward the $450,000 construction cost, with additional funding provided by the Parks and Green Spaces Levy.

“Gateway to Chile” will display Chilean species such as Fuchsia magellanica, Chilean Fire Bush, and Pilgerodendron uviferum, a tree that can grow to be 500 years old--or so we are told. The Arboretum is inviting those interested in learning more about the project to tour the site tomorrow, Wednesday, March 10 at 5:30 pm (meet at the south end of the parking lot of the Washington Park playfield, 2500 Lake Washington Boulevard E.). There will be an additional opportunity to hear about plans for the project at a public meeting next Tuesday, March 16, at 6:30 pm in the Graham Visitor Center. More information about the project can be found here.

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[Illustrations provided by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation and the Arboretum. Map by the PI. Upper illustration by Mike Kowalski, courtesy of The Berger Partnership. Lower illustration courtesy of The Berger Partnership.]

The Japanese Garden celebrates 50 years

The Japanese Garden in the Arboretum is about to end its winter hiatus, reopening on Sunday, February 14, for its 50th Anniversary season. Rated by a garden journal as one of the ten most favorite Japanese gardens in the country, Seattle’s Japanese Garden was inaugurated in July 1960, after only four months of construction. It’s now ready to celebrate a half century of giving pleasure to visitors seeking sanctuary and a connection to nature.

The concept of adding a Japanese Garden to the Arboretum goes back to 1937, but it took another twenty years for the idea to gain enough popular support to enable fundraising to begin for the project (a war against Japan had intervened). In 1959, with funds in hand and the design completed, Juki Iida and Nobumasa Kitamura were hired to build the garden, which originally was scheduled to take up to three years to complete. Using heavy construction equipment, a somewhat scaled-back design, and a capable crew of mostly Japanese-American gardeners, the builders transformed an Arboretum ravine into a colorful and tranquil garden, offset by boulders, water features and formal elements. And they did it all in record time. (That’s Juki Iida in the photo below, standing on the site during the construction).

The original design of the Garden was by the Tokyo Metropolitan Park Department, and Iida carried out the scheme by installing in a combination of traditional Japanese plantings, such as maples, gingko and bamboo, and Pacific Northwest natives, such as rhododendrons, azaleas, and cedars. In 1959, a hand-built teahouse was added to the Japanese Garden, the gift of the people of Tokyo. A fire destroyed the teahouse in 1973, but it was rebuilt in 1981 with the help of the Arboretum Foundation and Urasenke Foundation of Kyoto. The Garden itself was significantly renovated earlier this century, after over forty years which saw little change. Koichi Kobayashi, who undertook the renovation, called the Arboretum gem “one of the finest Japanese gardens to be constructed outside Japan.”

You will get an opportunity to view the Japanese Garden for the first time this year when it reopens one week from this Sunday (on February 14), at 11:00 a.m. There will be formal tours of the Garden at both noon and 2:00 p.m. on opening day, as well as a Shinto/Buddhist Opening Blessing at 1 p.m. Information on the Japanese Garden, including hours and scheduled events, is available here. There is also a nice, short video about the Japanese Garden available from Lonely Planet TV . The narrator sums up the Garden as an example of one of the “few places left in which you can approach nature in a small area and have it serve as a kind of textbook on life and how to live.”

[Upper photo by jamec199 on Flickr. Lower photo of the Japanese Garden in Winter by Spiral Cage on Flickr. Middle photo of Juki Iida courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives. Information included in this posting was obtained from “Legacy of the Japanese Garden of Seattle” by Prof. Koichi Kobayashi of the University of Washington, available here.]

Preview of a possible SR-520 solution

Although it is not anticipated that the upcoming construction of State Route 520 will have significant direct impact on Madison Park, we will certainly have a front-row seat from which to view the expansion project when it gets underway in 2012. And it is almost certainly the case that the Arboretum will be directly affected by both the construction and the placement of one of the freeway on-ramps, depending on which design option is ultimately chosen.

Given the probable interest in all this by MPB readers, I thought I'd take a look at what the Washington State Department of Transportation (DOT) is saying about the SR-520 expansion and floating-bridge replacement program. Without much investigative effort I discovered that DOT has some pretty interesting information easily available on its site. The video above provides a visually arresting simulation of driving on one of three options for the "west side" approach to the new bridge (click on HQ in the lower right corner for higher-resolution video quality). Simulations of driving on the other two options are also available on the DOT website.

To date, the only construction that is underway on this project has to do with the testing of various methods for building the pontoons. This is happening in Satsop, with ultimate construction of the pontoons to take place in the Grays Harbor area. Some of the pontoons for the new bridge will be the largest ever built, according to the DOT: "360 feet long, 75 feet wide and weighing over 11,000 tons. That’s as long as a football field and as heavy as 23 Boeing 747 jets." That's big.

In case you wonder why the State thinks that the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (pardon me, the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge) is vulnerable and needs to be replaced, you need look no further than this simulation of the bridge's likely response to an earthquake: