Seattle streets never seem to get better…

Yes, this is going to be a bit of a downer post, but I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite a while now. I’m trying to make sense of it in my head, and just haven’t been able to come to any sort of an answer to the question  “Why are Seattle streets and highways SO bad?”

So here’s a few observations I’ve been making over the last few weeks/months/years that finally set off this idea for a post. Please let me know if you have any ideas regarding what’s to come.

1st Avenue South: It’s currently under construction, as it’s been for a couple of years in one section or another. The first year that the section just south of the stadiums was finished it was a really pleasant break between the awful section between the Spokane Street viaduct and the Pioneer Square district, but it’s not that great anymore, with the newer paved sections already at different heights that the older concrete blocks that were not carved out during the repairs. And with the construction now going on in the southern portion it’s pretty murderous to anything but maybe an old caddy with a soft, waterbed style suspension.

Fauntleroy Way between Alaska Way and California Avenue – this whole section is under construction. Miserable in the process, and while they “fixed” one side and are now working on the other, they did it in staccato sections. It feels like it, too.

16th Aves SW – The road to South Seattle Community College. This street has some nice pavement  - for about 100 yards to each side of the school. North of the school there is an area that has been getting patched every year as long as I’ve been in West Seattle (1997), and now they’ve added speed bumps as well. As if the bad pavement wasn’t enough to slow people down to the 35 MPH speed limit, they added 15 MPH bumps. I don’t quite understand the purpose of that. in the other direction, it’s in sections that are separating slowly, so as you cruise along you get the evenly spaced “thump, thump, thump” of a broken road.

Those are just a few of the seriously flawed streets that I can name and describe. The list could continue with Sylvan Way, 35th Ave SW, all of the connectors between 1st Ave and 4th Ave south of downtown, much of downtown itself, on and on and on.

If there is a route that doesn’t involve a rough, uncomfortable road, and gets you from one edge of the city to another, I’d love to hear about it.

I know the city is working on repairing potholes, and fixing some streets, but are they really repairing the streets or just doing the “fill/file to fit, paint to cover” type of repairs that make it look nice when they are done, and then start to degrade in a year or two? I’d really like to have a road I can drive on without knocking my teeth out and bruising my kidneys for more than a year.