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Rest in peace, Tubby... As are most Seattle natives, I'm waiting for 'the big one' to bring down our other terrible bridge-ish thing, The Viaduct. But this is

Rest in peace, Tubby... As are most Seattle natives, I'm waiting for 'the big one' to bring down our other terrible bridge-ish thing, The Viaduct. But this is probably all for nothing once they find Cthulu as the Bertha drill starts moving again, only three years behind schedule on that one!

zw123456 11y ago
The sinking of the old I90 Bridge was pretty spectacular as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridg... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY I think there was even a song written about it. All because some dummy left a hatch open and it filled with water. Even more fascinating, I recall that when divers went down to investigate they found a bunch of old cars at the bottom and solved a bunch of missing persons cases. People apparently drove off of it back when there was a turn around in the middle of it, which was later fixed before the sinking, because so many people drove off the bridge.
- rconti 11y ago
  Yeah, I remember the sinking. That was crazy. The Bulge was well-known to eat cars: http://blog.seattlepi.com/bellevue-pi/2011/05/18/looking-back-on-the-floating-bridge/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/bellevue-pi/2011/05/18/looking-bac...
- bebop 11y ago
  Not to mention the Hood Canal bridge collapse. Washington really has had a hard time with their bridges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge
  - zw123456 11y ago
    That's right! Here in Washington we like to build cool bridges and then destroy them :)
vvanders 11y ago
Really happy I moved out of the Seattle area. From what I understand most of Seattle-proper is built on sandstone and the fault line running through Seattle seems like a huge liability. Difference between earthquake insurance in Seattle and just over 100mi south is incredible(~1.5k/mo if I remember correctly).
taurath 11y ago
As a relatively recent Seattle transplant coming from California, WSDoT seems to be one of the worst transportation departments I've seen. The road quality, traffic and general propensity for disaster (in the form of Bertha, bridge collapses, deathtrap viaducts, and destroyed roadways along the mountains lately) seems much higher than I remember in California. Might just be the weather, but I'd love an explanation for why its been so bad.
- zw123456 11y ago
  That is completely true, I have lived here my whole life and it has always been that way. It is weird, we can build airplanes, software and tons of other great things, but the whole transportation thing is just completely baffling to Seattle for some reason.
  - taurath 11y ago
    A friend of mine who's a civil engineer says its because the freeway exits are a mile apart rather than 1.5 miles, so that creates a lot of very short merges and ramps up traffic heavily. What really gets me is the travesty that is 405 between renton and bellevue, feels like it should be 5 lanes but its only 2 full-access lanes and there's a crash every 4 hours because of how much the road bends suddenly.

zw123456 11y ago

The sinking of the old I90 Bridge was pretty spectacular as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bridg... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY I think there was even a song written about it. All because some dummy left a hatch open and it filled with water. Even more fascinating, I recall that when divers went down to investigate they found a bunch of old cars at the bottom and solved a bunch of missing persons cases. People apparently drove off of it back when there was a turn around in the middle of it, which was later fixed before the sinking, because so many people drove off the bridge.

rconti 11y ago
Yeah, I remember the sinking. That was crazy. The Bulge was well-known to eat cars: http://blog.seattlepi.com/bellevue-pi/2011/05/18/looking-back-on-the-floating-bridge/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/bellevue-pi/2011/05/18/looking-bac...
bebop 11y ago
Not to mention the Hood Canal bridge collapse. Washington really has had a hard time with their bridges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge
- zw123456 11y ago
  That's right! Here in Washington we like to build cool bridges and then destroy them :)

vvanders 11y ago

Really happy I moved out of the Seattle area. From what I understand most of Seattle-proper is built on sandstone and the fault line running through Seattle seems like a huge liability. Difference between earthquake insurance in Seattle and just over 100mi south is incredible(~1.5k/mo if I remember correctly).

taurath 11y ago

As a relatively recent Seattle transplant coming from California, WSDoT seems to be one of the worst transportation departments I've seen. The road quality, traffic and general propensity for disaster (in the form of Bertha, bridge collapses, deathtrap viaducts, and destroyed roadways along the mountains lately) seems much higher than I remember in California. Might just be the weather, but I'd love an explanation for why its been so bad.

zw123456 11y ago
That is completely true, I have lived here my whole life and it has always been that way. It is weird, we can build airplanes, software and tons of other great things, but the whole transportation thing is just completely baffling to Seattle for some reason.
- taurath 11y ago
  A friend of mine who's a civil engineer says its because the freeway exits are a mile apart rather than 1.5 miles, so that creates a lot of very short merges and ramps up traffic heavily. What really gets me is the travesty that is 405 between renton and bellevue, feels like it should be 5 lanes but its only 2 full-access lanes and there's a crash every 4 hours because of how much the road bends suddenly.