Okay, Dear Reader, this dudgeon actually makes me laugh, because I work for SDOT myself, and I can imagine how frustrating this situation was for everyone involved. I mean, I shouldn’t delight in other people’s misery, but it ain’t my dudgeon, after all. Bearing witness to dudgeons from a distance is often rather amusing.
So here’s the long and the short of it: The Seattle Convention Center saw how revitalized the city became by hosting part of the FIFA World Cup, and they wanted to continue that momentum, so they decided to try creating a sort of an open air block party that would take place every Thursday evening in August, that would turn one downtown block into a pedestrian only gathering place and fill it with food, music, “local makers” and “neighborhood experiences”. They called that event Market at the Marquee, because it would be held right in front of Seattle’s iconic Paramount Theatre.
And that’s where things start to get weird. That block, 9th Avenue between Pike Street and Pine Street, is a vital part of the commute for a huge chunk of Seattle’s workforce these days, because a stretch of Interstate 5 has been closed, so people who wish to use the interstate have to use the express lanes, and the only convenient onramp to get to said lanes from downtown is, you guessed it, from that very block.
What’s the big deal, you ask, if the event is only being held on Thursday evenings? Well, the plot thickens. The convention center decided that, to make the event really pretty, they’d like to temporarily paint the street. Of course they’d restore the street to its regular “stripage” right after the month-long event, but until that time, pretty please, Seattle bureaucrats, can we paint the street?
Nevermind that without the regular street markings, that block would be rendered undrivable all month long for a 3 hour a week event. The city actually issued them a permit! That blows my mind. Somebody downtown must have been feeling really accommodating that day.
The permit was in effect through September 4th. People who work downtown were really looking forward to September 5th, because this event was adding 15 to 20 minutes to their commute each way, each day. Between that, the I-5 construction, and the FIFA World Cup traffic snarls, the entire county was getting rather cranky.
But I must admit, the street did look really cool with all that colorful paint on it. But not to the degree that it merited such a profligate extravagance and such a transit nightmare. I do love how much effort the city puts into its fairs and festivals, but this was beyond excessive.
September 4th came and went, and the paint was still there. It seems that at the end of the festivities, the convention center couldn’t get the paint to come up. They tried everything they could think of, from graffiti remover to heated pressure washers. Nothing worked. In fact, their efforts were starting to lift up parts of the pavement.
Finally, SDOT came up with a brilliant yet hilarious temporary solution. They painted over the apparently permanent paint job with black paint, and restored the street’s regular pavement markings. But eventually they’re going to have to grind out that section of the street and repave it. This quick fix reopened the street to commuter traffic, but when the weather improves enough to repave the block, the detour monster will rear its ugly head once again.
Permanent Temporary Road Paint: The gift that keeps on giving.
There’s no way to know where to place the blame for this debacle. I suspect there are several places where the train jumped the tracks along the way. But I’m guessing that somebody, somewhere, is in an awful lot of trouble.
I have never in my life wanted to be a fly on the wall as much as I did when I heard about this silly mess.
Sources:
Painted decorations keep part of Ninth Avenue closed
Ninth Avenue reopens after painted decorations are covered
Seattle Convention Center paints itself into a transportation mess on 9th Ave
9th Avenue reopens after Convention Center’s paint job kept it closed for weeks
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