In a lengthy, detailed resolution adopted last week, the city’s parks advisory board (a body that makes nonbinding policy recommendations to the mayor and city council) came out against the state’s preferred six-lane option for replacing the 520 bridge across Lake Washington, as well as all the alternatives the state is currently considering as part of its environmental review process.
Calling 520 “a blight on the Washington Park Arboretum”—the park and wetland area on which a new, larger bridge would have the biggest impact—the resolution says that the parks board “cannot endorse any of the alternatives” being considered “due to the profound negative environmental impacts the project would have on the Washington Park Arboretum and the other City of Seattle Parks along the SR 520 corridor.”
Instead, the board recommends a narrower bridge with as few lanes as possible, a “park-like lid at Montlake”; and “to avoid any adverse impacts to the Arboretum, both during construction and through the long term operation of the” bridge, among many other recommendations.
It’s unclear how many of those recommendations would be met by Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposed 520 alternative (which would include four lanes for cars and two lanes for light rail or bus-rapid transit), but it’s likely that McGinn’s proposal, with its narrower bridge on- and offramps, would have less impact on the Arboretum overall than the state’s preferred six-lane “A+” option, pictured above. Aaron Pickus, a spokesman for the mayor, says, “It’s pretty clear that the Parks board is not satisfied with any of the state’s proposed replacement plans for the 520 bridge. Light rail over 520 means that the impact on Seattle neighborhoods and the Arboretum is far less than if an expanded highway is constructed.”
