City Plans Mercer Improvements

During my time in college at SPU, there were two convenient ways to get to the freeway. To go north on I-5, you would wind around along the canal through Fremont to the 45th Street onramp. To head south, it was Westlake to Mercer Street, which was always fun since that last stretch of Mercer before the onramp feels like it's been the victim of a sustained air campaign. Every time I drove that stretch, I wasn't thinking "man, this traffic is horrible," but rather "why don't they fix this road?" Now, almost ten years later, they're finally drawing up plans to do just that.

The plan for fixing the Mercer Mess continues to chug along, even though more analysis by the city of Seattle is showing it won't do much to get people around faster.

The city's latest analysis of travel times under Mayor Greg Nickels' $100 million plan to widen Mercer Street and turn it into a two-way road will be unveiled at a community meeting this afternoon. That analysis, completed this week, shows that commuters could save a few minutes heading west on Mercer from Interstate 5, but they actually could spend more time in traffic going east toward the interstate.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind spending a few more minutes in traffic through there if the road was at least pretending to be smooth and non-bombed. My main beef is that they didn't do this a decade ago.

(Kery Murakami, Seattle P-I, 04.20.2006)