$50 Million to Beautify Aurora?
Our Legislature has just allocated $50 million to plant trees, fix sidewalks and add bike lanes to less than a mile of Aurora Avenue North. The intent: to encourage pedestrian and bicycle traffic along what has been objectively referred to by The Seattle Times as a “transportation workhorse” dominated by rundown buildings and strip malls.
An admirable goal. But is this the highest and best use of critical transportation dollars, given the continuing hazard of crossover head-on collisions on the Aurora Bridge?
Aurora Avenue North began in the 1880s as a wagon road, ultimately becoming a direct route to and from Everett.
In 1930, “North Trunk Road” was christened “Aurora” as the highway to the north -- toward the Aurora Borealis. By 1932, the George Washington Memorial Bridge was completed, linking North Seattle with downtown.
Only 70 feet wide, the “Aurora Bridge” has the narrowest lanes of any six-lane bridge in the state, at 9½ feet per lane. Buses are 8½ feet wide, allowing 6-inch margins. The side mirrors of container trucks often exceed the width of the lane.
Notwithstanding the old, narrow lanes, the Aurora Bridge has no protective median barrier down the centerline. The concrete Jersey barrier along Aurora stops near the entry onto the bridge, and resumes again at the south end upon exiting the bridge – leaving northbound and southbound drivers with only a few feet separating them from a head-on collision.
1998 – The driver of a southbound Route 359 express bus is shot twice as the bus enters onto the Aurora Bridge. The bus crosses two lanes of oncoming northbound traffic and crashes through the bridge railing, killing one passenger and injuring 32 others.
The resulting litigation produces existing plans for a concrete Jersey barrier down the centerline, with pedestrians and bicycle traffic on a separate walkway below the bridge deck.
The plan had been engineered, but never implemented [1].
2003 - A WSDOT study warns that the bridge’s narrow lanes and lack of a center barrier creates a risk of crossover/head-on collisions.
2015 - Five people are killed and 50 injured in a crossover crash involving a Ride the Ducks vehicle and a bus [2].
Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore case file – Moreno v. State of Washington and City of Seattle, King County Superior Court Cause Number 02-2-03849-2 SEA
Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore case file - Dinh v. Ride the Ducks, King County Superior Court Cause Number 15-2-28905-5 SEA
According to reviewing engineers, a median barrier would have redirected the Duck vehicle, and prevented the crash, saving lives.
In response to the fatalities, vertical plastic poles have been installed along the centerline of the bridge.
Obviously, these plastic poles will not prevent more crossover collisions and resulting fatalities.
So why are we using $50 million to beautify what has always served simply as a highway? Why in the world would addressing strip malls take precedence over head-on collisions?
And how could we have spent $4 million on vertical centerline poles that are useless in preventing deaths?
Sources:
Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times, 3/25/22 (“$50 M experiment aims to make Aurora Ave more welcoming for bicyclists, pedestrians”
“What's to be done about the Aurora Bridge?” (https:\\www.got99problems.org\blog\aurora-bridge) 7/16/21
Stephanie Klein, “Seattle DOT installing vertical posts on Aurora Bridge”, My Northwest
For an overview of Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore coverage of other Highway Design issues, go to www.keithkesslerlaw.com and www.stritmatter.com.