Rantz: Seattle I-5 lid is ‘technically feasible’ but still an awful waste of money

The outrageously expensive and disruptive plan to place a lid over I-5 in Seattle was declared “technically feasible” in a recent engineering study. But even so, it’s still a truly awful idea not worth the expense or disruption.

I-5 lid a great idea, but a nightmare to implement

The I-5 lid would cover portions of the freeway that cuts through the Capitol Hill, First Hill, and downtown neighborhoods, and provide land for housing and green space. Proponents believes it would cost at least $22 million per acre of lidding — so let’s go ahead and add another $15 million per acre to account for general increased cost of labor and materials, plus the expected incompetence by the contractor the state and city agree to use.

The study, which was detailed by The Urbanist blog, goes through a number of tough issues the project would have to overcome, including difficult variances in topography and limitations on what can be built on the lid.

Study aside, it’s remarkable that we’re still talking about this unnecessary idea. We’re in the middle of an unprecedented and intertwined homeless and opioid crisis. Why would we waste hundreds of millions of dollars on this project? Imagine the money being spent efficiently on treatment-on-demand and more mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Some proponents argue the lid will somehow address our “housing affordability crisis.” We don’t have a crisis when it comes to housing costs — if you can afford to live here but would rather not spend so much, welcome to life.

No one wants to pay the rent they pay. It is true that some people can’t afford some neighborhoods in Seattle; that’s normal of every big city. Remember, the city’s median income keeps going up.

Still, the argument claims that new “affordable housing” units on the land would help low-income residents. This is virtue signaling; a way an activist can declare on Twitter that they care about people without having to do anything else.

Building any housing that exceeds demand will bring costs down. Allowing more homes to be built, no matter the kind or location, has similar impacts long term.

What an I-5 lid might look like through downtown Seattle

Then there are the folks who decry the ugly car culture on display smack in the middle of the city!

“We care about the environment in Seattle, not cars,” they declare while walking and avoiding the parks that homeless people have taken over and ruined with out-of-control trash and waste. We can’t even care for the parks in the area around the lid — in Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s district — but we’ll add more green space for tens of millions of dollars an acre?

In a lot of ways, this bad idea is emblematic of the Seattle approach. Talk about big emergencies we need to solve, then, instead of solving them, pitch a big idea that distracts from the immediate emergencies.

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