"Viadoom"

The Seattle Alaska Way Viaduct
(in better times)

Some mornings, all you want to do is stay in bed and pull the covers over your head. For months, we've been bracing for a traffic nightmare known as "Viadoom"-- the nine day closure of the Alaska Way Viaduct. The Viaduct, as we call it, is a crumbling 1950's elevated highway and one of only two north-south arterials in Seattle. This week more than 100,000 Seattle drivers (many of them living in our area west of downtown) are being forced to find a way around as the Viaduct is oh-so-slowly being demolished and replaced by a tunnel. No one quite knows where the money will come from to finish this wildly expensive project, but that's another story.

Here's my morning view as the gridlock lurches along toward I-5, inch by painful inch. For the evening commute, just reverse the picture. As for finding "a way around" as we've been advised to do, there really isn't one unless you have a magic broomstick or helicopter in the backyard. For all practical purposes, coming and going to West Seattle requires crossing this bridge. The Viaduct was still open when I took this picture a month ago, so you can imagine the mess now. California had their "Carmagedden" last summer, but click here for the LA Times take on our "Viadoom."

I think I'll stay home and bake another cake.