Hey wait a minute. This is supposed to be about LP, how come we’re talking about DP? Good question, read on….
view of the Sound from Discovery Park, Seattle
The upper trail, Lincoln Park West Seattle
Discovery Park is the biggest park in Seattle, and has its share of interesting history. Originally an army base, Fort Lawton, it was given to the city of Seattle as surplus land in 1970. Seems the ball was immediately in play and many forces, including national ones stepped forward with plans for utilizing those vast acres of sweeping views and winding trails. In 1974, a focused group of citizens came together as Friends of Discovery Park to protect and preserve the wild natural beauty of the park–and it seems they were (are) fierce. No push-overs these, and that’s where it gets interesting. Their mission statement made me sit up and take notice:
In years to come there will be almost irresistible pressures to carve out areas of the Park for structures or activities, because it would provide “an ideal site at no cost.” There must be a deep commitment to the belief that there is no more valuable use of this site than as an open space.
To me, that statement is revolutionary. To proclaim that open space is worth fighting for, that there will always be someone thinking about ways to monetize, utilize and rationalize something that is uniquely and stunningly beautiful as it is, especially in an urban setting…well, take a bow, Friends of DP. You deserve a round of applause.
Every city has its great parks, and those parks go through good times and bad. Central Park in NYC was on its last legs in the 70s when a group of civic leaders, Central Park Conservancy, was founded to reverse the decline. Last night at the Fauntleroy Community Association, a group that grew out of the Go Ape fiasco of last summer, presented its ideas, concerns and its mission to protect and preserve the West Seattle gem that is Lincoln Park introduced itself. You can read about last night’s meeting here in WSB--the response has been very very positive and while it’s early days yet (we don’t have a website etc), we have a vision and plenty of passion. It’s going to be a good year!
There is a proposal to install a Zipline and ropes course amusement area in Lincoln Park (you can learn more about it here on WSB, Tracy’s article garnered more comments than any in the history of the blog). There is a wave of activism against this proposal and this coming week will include a presentation by the offending developers to the Fauntleroy Community Association Tuesday at 7pm, Fauntleroy Hall. More informal meetings of outraged west seattleites are happening throughout the week.
Lincoln Park in West Seattle is a pristine old growth forest in an urban setting, a unique gem on the Salish Sea
There are two Facebook Groups you can join, just search on Zipline Lincoln Park or anything like that and you’ll find them.
Here are a few things I’m thinking about regarding the numbskull idea:
–Go Ape says the park will handle *only* 14 riders per hour. 14. That’s likely 20-30 more cars at any given point during the day in the parking lot, if you consider the inevitable wait lines for riders. There is talk that this will necessitate a new parking lot in the park.
–No trees will be harmed in the process of building and maintaining the park, the developers say. It only impacts the tree tops. THE TREE TOPS, where our eagles, hawks, owls, herons and other large birds roost and hang out. Loss of predator birds will result in a burgeoning rat infestation, which will be helped along vigorously by the waste and trash produced by the concession stands.
–Traffic along Fauntleroy—do we really need to discuss this? Sometimes the ferry lines stretch back 4 or 5 miles.
–No alternative revenue ideas to help defray the costs of maintaining the park have been investigated or attempted.
There are many communities that have successfully pushed back on these development plans and specifically against Go Ape. A few are:
We tell ourselves stories, and sometimes we can see with frightening clarity the impact of those stories on our behavior.
A recent essay in 3 Quarks Daily by Nick Werle (Competing to Live: On Planet Earth and Being in Nature)takes a careful but wide ranging look at the many stories we tell ourselves about Nature. He looks at David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series and the focus on the delicate balance in nature…and its requirements. He looks at Darwin’s story in The Origin and sees similar threads regarding competition and the urge to survive. They both have a keen interest in understanding the mechanism of competition.
“In the rain forest, which we have seen has both high productivity and unceasing conflict, ‘competition for resources ensures that no one species dominates the jungle.’”
David Attenborough, Planet Earth
All of Nature is Regulated and Interconnected…and we are part of Nature
At the end he raises the obvious question of how we humans, the closest relative to the marauding gangs of chimpanzees that are depicted wrecking havoc in the jungle, care or alternately don’t seem to care about our place in the balance of nature. Deregulationism has at its core a willful faith that the market will balance out all transgressions, that it is a marvelous–nay, Magic–self-regulating machine that is well within the bounds of Nature itself. It is a faith that ignores the obvious issue of interconnectedness. Witness the global concern over Japan’s under-regulated, under-managed, growth focused nuclear program in the last month. Earthquakes and tsunamis are natural disasters; nuclear meltdowns as a result of deregulation are not, and no market forces can adjust the damage done.
As we have seen with increasing regularity, our wave of deregulation–from bubble to bust, from drilling and chemicals to “clean-ups,” implosions, and overpopulation, we are not living in balance with the planet we call home.
We have managed to upset the balance of so many systems that it seems to me we are now living well outside of nature. Plastic may well be the iconic metaphor for all we have become. The story we tell ourselves, and what we are actually doing, are not concordant, even as they could be. Attenborough makes an argument that yes, we are part of Nature, and our particular playing field is uniquely human, but is nonetheless part of the large balance we would do well to have an interest in. The point Attendborough makes is more subtle than those put forth by deregulationists:
It positions humanity not as an alien force superimposed on an independently existing natural world but as a part of the same precariously balance system. The argument is so affective because it refuses to plead. Instead it suggests that we reconsider the boundaries we draw between systems we hope to keep in balance.
Instead of defining the jungle as the wild and unthinkable state of nature, this naturalist approach seeks to fuse man’s understanding of himself with the complexities of Nature in order to ensure that Planet Earth never becomes a stunning monument to irrecoverable beauty.
The other day I was paddle boarding around the bay in West Seattle. At this time of year, we have extreme low and high tides, and the slack tide in between tends to be the collection point for a lot of garbage in the water. Even as the day was lovely, the paddling exquisite, I kept coming across a disturbing pattern: big globs of muck that were built out a tangled mess of fishing line, 6-pack ring, seaweed, plastic bags, algae, bungee cords, dead fish, feathers, plastic bottles, unidentified gunk and plastic food containers. The common ingredient: plastic. And there were a lot of these little floating islands.
These congealed half-bio-half-plastic masses are very quickly becoming ubiquitous in our oceans. If the only damage were that of the scenery, I could almost but not quite shrug it off.
The damage is much, much worse. In fact, you could say that what I was seeing off Lincoln Park was just the barest tip of an iceberg.
Sierra Magazine has an article this month entitled “Message in a Bottle” and it’s worth a few minutes to read. Gird yourself, you may not be prepared for the story:
There is an area off the coast of Japan known as The Garbage Patch, three times the size of Texas and a seeming doldrums where the world’s plastics collect and degrade.
Don’t kid yourself: plastic doesn’t ever entirely degrade like things in the organic world. Plastic simply breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. Those pieces at some point become indistinguishable from krill and other food sources in the ocean
This plastic broth is making its way into the food chain; the bellies of baby fish are gorged with the stuff and yet they die of starvation. Adult birds and fish are ingesting it. It’s real, it’s happening.
One of the main culprits is a thing called plastic nurdles--manufactured plastic molded into small nuggets for easy shipment to manufacturing plants all around the world to make things like that handy blue plastic water bottle, that shovel and bucket your kids play with at the beach, the parts in your car, the caps on your soda, the packing in that new TV (not to mention the TV itself), the plastic wrapper on the grapes you brought to the picnic, the cap on your latte-to-go, your flip-flops, and that bobble-head toy you got at the ballpark. The massive ships carrying these nurdles sometimes lose their cargo, sometimes they accidentally dump large quantities of the stuff, sometimes it just gets loose.
The thing I can’t get out of my head, the thing that haunts me is how much plastic there is. We really don’t even think about plastic as plastic anymore, we think of it as normal. Diamonds may not be forever, after all they are organic structures, but plastic really IS forever. Where will all of this stuff go, this stuff that really IS forever?
In my own little life, we have upped our efforts to decrease the amount of plastic in our lives, but it’s an uphill battle. We reuse our plastic bags and buy in bulk as much as possible, we forego the plastic cap on the latte, we avoid the over-architected containers.
And we have to content ourselves with that. It’s not enough, but it’s something we can do.
The clean-up on this mess will be monstrous; if we started today, we could have 100% employment for decades. The one upside to this is it’s undeniable: the massive three-times-the-size-of-Texas floating islands of garbage are real. You could go there today and be blown away by the iceberg-depth and island-breadth of the mess.
Yesterday I posted a comment that lamented our collective and general inability to put large concepts into practice in our daily lives, a large generality that is mostly true, but startlingly untrue sometimes. I read today in the Seattle PI about how the mass transit part of the transportation bill that was voted down Tuesday (Prop 1) would have passed if it hadn’t been bundled with the new roads plan. Very interesting indeed.
It appears there is a new and growing group of voters who do indeed vote based on the large concepts:
But Riehle said he saw a new concern that could have changed Prop 1’s outcome.
“A new group of voters played a decisive role in determining the results,” he said. “We found that there was a group of voters who we would describe as pro-transit defectors.”
This new class was identified by cross tabbing voters who said they would have voted yes to a transit only plan with those who voted no on Proposition 1.
“Of that group that were pro-transit defectors…the single largest reason they gave (for voting no) was environmental impacts like global warming.”
That group of pro-transit defectors represented about 6 percent of all the voters who participated in the Proposition 1 election.
“In an election where the final margin might be around 12 percent, that suggests that in the absence of their concern about global warming this would have been a much closer election than it was.”
And what does that mean for the future of transportation issues in this region? I think it probably means that the Sierra Club and other groups will be invited to the Big Boys’ conversation next time. And that can only be good for everyone.
On another front, there is talk of a Bus Rider’s Union here in Seattle. I’ve seen the mention a couple of times in The Stranger and I’m curious to learn more. To quote one fed up bus rider in his Stranger article:
Rail is one solution. In every city I’ve ever been to—even cities with decent, clean, reliable bus service—riding rail is a more pleasant experience than riding the bus. But we aren’t going to get rail until 2009, and then only to the South End. So in the meantime, what could be done to make the experience of bus riding more pleasant for the 95 percent of riders who don’t stink, aren’t wasted, aren’t selling drugs, aren’t harassing other passengers, and aren’t raving loudly to themselves?
A bus riders’ union, like the ones formed by fed-up citizens in many other cities? More police on buses? A stricter hygiene and drug use policy—one that’s actually enforced, rather than the completely toothless system we have now? More frequent bus service and a kiosk at bus stops telling riders when the next bus will arrive? A faster, perhaps curbside, ticketing system?
Most of the buses I ride are okay, but downtown, the buses can be pretty terrible sometimes. I think a whole lot could be done if there were a Union that Metro Transit listened to and worked with, you know: actual riders at the table helping to figure out how to build ridership and make bus riding a viable alternative to cars. I want to investigate this more. The articles in the Stranger I’ve come across indicate other cities are doing this–stay tuned.
Thanks to Carless in Seattle for surfacing the above vid, a commercial which actually made the hair on my neck tingle with anxiety.
I’ve posted a couple of times about Prop 1/RTID referendum here in Washington; of course we had the election yesterday and it looks like the proposal is going down in defeat, if not flames.
I’ve been watching the comments on the news articles in the local papers and thought several of them were worthy of repeating here, as I think sometimes we underestimate our citizenry and they’re ability to rationally think through an issue. Of course there are lots of posts that do not represent the most rational approach, but hey. You can’t please everyone.
Posted by lowerwallfrd at 11/7/07 12:28 a.m.
I really wanted to vote for Prop 1, it just did too little for too much money, I had to vote no. I hope we have a similar and better planned bill next year. Light rail to Tacoma is stupid. I think Sound Transit is a nightmare waiting to happen. There are no additional funds that should be given to those pretenders.
Posted by cj in seattle at 11/7/07 3:53 a.m.
Perhaps it would help if we had smaller $$ for more specific spending goals. I think the size of this and the fact that it was a multiple project package scared people off.
Both my self and my husband ended up voting for it even though it size of it made me think on it a while. I recognize the importance of the responsibility of one generation to those who come after.
I think though that if we could get a package for just mass transit that it would take off nicely with voter support. There has been so much corruption in government that the public has become jaded by it. They don’t trust it anymore. Its important to public servants to recognize this.
Posted by jungleal at 11/7/07 5:51 a.m.
Prop 1’s flame out is worth getting up out of bed early to celebrate. Let’s have the media bring to light every penny of gas tax hike spending. Bring back those “Your Nickel at Work” project signs, and how about some “Your Another 9.5 Cents at Work” signs and some “Your Original 23 Cents at Work” signs and a breakdown of where the 18.4 cents per gallon of federal gas tax is going. If the Alaskan Way Viaduct and 520 bridge are so fragile and dangerous, why are they not receiving more immediate gas tax money??
Posted by rwb77 at 11/7/07 6:33 a.m.
For affordable light rail: build it like many other cities are at much less cost, at-grade, not elevated or tunneled. Build it on existing rights of way, like highways and abandoned railroads. The gold-plated Sound Transit version is great for contractors but bad for taxpayers. And for a route, how about a simple loop around the lake? Start at Southcenter, branching off from the current elevated line, go to Renton, follow the old railroad right of way north to Bothell, around the upper end of the lake to Northgate, then past Husky Stadium into downtown. Don’t try a potential engineering nightmare with tracks across the lake; dedicate both floating bridges to Bus Rapid Transit; those are the two corridors where it would probably be most feasible.
For highways, spend dollars first on safety and maintenance (remember a certain bridge in Minneapolis this past summer …..). It is not WSDOT’s responsiblity to enable people to commute 40 miles one way at 60 mph on the same road at the same time as 100,000 other people. That’s what happens whenever new lanes are approved: developers come in with new housing and new strip malls and by the time the lane opens, it’s as gridlocked as the older lanes.
Posted by SleeplessInSeattle at 11/7/07 7:31 a.m.
Proposition 1 is NOT a comprehensive package. It is mainly an Eastside improvement project, with a small fragment thrown in for the rest of the area in an effort to gloss over what it really is. Is there anyone out there who is really dense enough to believe that light rail to Mercer Island and Bellevue addresses this area’s major transportation problems and environmental concerns, much less does anything to repair the roads and bridges in most need of improvement?!
We already voted in and pay an exhorbitant gas tax in this state for what was supposed to fund road/brige repair and improvement projects. At the time, 520 and the Alaskan Way Viaduct were specifically mentioned as projects that would be completed with that gas tax money. Senators Murray and Cantwell also got federal disaster money to help repair 520 and the Viaduct. Almost immediately after those two money sources came into fruition, our new governor began looking for ways to legally divert the Viaduct portion of those funds to 520. So, mark my words, 520 will be rebuilt whether Proposition 1 passes or not. Proposition 1 was just the boondoggle they were looking for to build the new 520. Now they’ll just have to use the money that was already budgeted for it, plus impose tolls. Gee, what a concept. And, yes, I certainly was thinking of my children, and their children. . .when I voted no. They would be the next generation paying for this mess, and they too would have no money left to devote to projects which would actually improve the quality of life in this area.
It’s interesting that when push comes to shove, the vote was anger directed at the government, and bewilderment over taxes already set aside for projects that are not being done. Very few of the comments really take on the larger issue of Transportation Alternatives or the issue of global climate change. Those issues are likely too big for most people to actually apply to a vote on roads. Nevertheless, and for whatever combination of reasons, we have wisely elected to not get sidetracked building roads to Redmond as a weird panacea for the rest or our many, many transportation problems.
Daily Stats: (Tue, Wed)
Car: 0
Bike: 0
Ped: 3.5
Bus: 0
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