Remove the rails & close the roads to create traffic jams

[Gwizz]

Seattle is promoting light rail around Lake Washington.  Some cities across the lake do not want it.  So, they collectively removed the rails along the East side of the lake that our dinner train was using.  This line is now gone.  The state highway system is removing a tunnel where this railroad crossed above the freeway. The freeway is being widened. The planned expensive railroad bridge will now, not be needed. I suspect it will be replace with a trail bridge. This will close the South end of the major North South freeway East of the lake for 4 weekends.  Radio reports say to avoid the area if possible.

Seattle is closing the major East West Federal highway bridge on the weekend for repairs.  This double floating bridge is really two floating bridges.  The bridge would have been the way to get around the closing of the tunnel.

This action will send a large amount of traffic North through these dissenting cities to a smaller floating bridge that Seattle wants to replace with a larger bridge.  This could also cause grid lock on this small bridge as well as other roads. Maybe the people will now vote the tax money to replace the small bridge.

The timing of these actions are either poor planning or are they well planned and intentional actions?

Tax issues that the voters turned down in the past will again be on the ballots.  We already have the highest gas taxes in the nation.  I think Seattle is going for broke. But the people already are BROKE

[Gwizz]

After I posted the above, the news stated that it was raining and the painting crew stopped the work activity on the big bridge.  There was still some grid lock, but not as heavy has it could have been.  Maybe next weekend. 

[Gwizz]

Today I drove through what is left of the tunnel where the railroad crossed above the South bound lanes of 405.  The roof of the cement tunnel is about 1/3 removed to the open air.  Took a better look today and realized that the railroad would have to go through a tunnel under the North bound lanes of state freeway 405.  Also it looked like much of the rail is still in place along this 20 mile stretch.  The news had said it was removed.  Apparently only a small part was removed. It does not take much to stop a train.

There was no tunnel demolition going on today but traffic North bound was stop and go at no more than a walking speed for about 8 to 10 miles.