Over the weekend there was a ribbon cutting event to mark the opening of the tunnel. Free tickets were issued to those requesting such, enabling the ticket holders to join a multi block line leading to walking through the new tunnel, then getting bus shuttled back to start, or walking back via the soon to be demolished Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Around 100,000 people took the opportunity to experience the new tunnel. You can read about this in the Seattle Times article about Pedestrians swarming Seattle as the Viaduct comes down.
I have been watching this long in the making Seattle development during the same time frame I have been watching a Fort Worth development following a similar timeline.
With that Fort Worth development being the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, more commonly known as America's Biggest Boondoggle.
Seattle began focusing on taking down the Alaskan Way Viaduct about the same time Fort Worth began focusing on what has always been an extremely murky Trinity River Vision.
The impetus for Seattle's tunnel vision began after the Nisqually Earthquake badly damaged the Alaskan Way Viaduct, near the start of this century.
Around that same time some Fort Worth schemers came up with a bogus flood control economic development scheme, poorly conceived, ineptly implemented, and never approved by a vote of the Fort Worth public.
In Seattle, in 2014, a boring machine nicknamed Bertha began tunneling under Seattle. Also in 2014 those aforementioned Fort Worth schemers, such as Congresswoman Kay Granger, her frat boy son, J.D., and Fort Worth Mayor, Betsy Price, were part of a bizarre explosive ceremony celebrating the start of construction of three simple little bridges being built over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.
The Bertha boring project was fully funded, to the tune of somewhere over $3 billion. Qualified adults were in charge of the Bertha boring project. About a year into Bertha's boring she hit a steel snag which ground the boring to a halt for a year.
The damage to Bertha, the repair, and the adjusted project timeline were all totally transparent to the public, including a round the clock live cam aimed at the Bertha repair operation. Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, around the same time Bertha hit that steel snag, the construction of those three simple little bridges ground to a halt.
For over a year in Fort Worth wooden bridge forms gathered moss, weeds and mold.
With no explanation as to what the problem was. Eventually slow motion construction of those three little bridges started up again, with the original astonishingly long four year project timeline now stretched into the next decade.
And, what with a total lack of transparency, it has never been revealed what the problem has been with the building of these three simple bridges.
The executive director of that which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle is Kay Granger's son, J.D., paid a salary over $213K a year, plus perks and an expense account. J.D. Granger had zero qualifications for being hired for such a project. He was a low level prosecutor who had graduated from a low level law school. It is not known if J.D. ever prosecuted a case. J.D.s embarrassing utterances in the press make it hard to believe he could possibly have the presence of mind to prosecute anyone about anything.
Why would grown adults think it a good idea to have a TNT exploding ceremony, with a lot of pomp and propaganda nonsense, which time has rendered ridiculous, marking the start of construction of three little bridges?
I could understand, maybe, if some sort of TNT exploding ceremony had happened back when Bertha began boring, what with that being a HUGE project, including rebuilding the Seattle waterfront. Yet no bizarre TNT ceremony in that town, a town which has long worn its Big City Pants.
So, if those simple little bridges ever get finished in Fort Worth will there be another ceremony? A ribbon cutting? Free tickets issued to the thousands wanting to experience walking across the little bridges before they open to traffic?
Fort Worth, well, those who run Fort Worth in what is known as The Fort Worth Way, well, it really is a Confederacy of Dunces, building bridges in slow motion, over dry land, connecting to an imaginary island, a project not fully funded, with a ditch possibly dug sometime in the next decade, with water added to the ditch, finally rendering a purpose for those simple little pitiful bridges.
Why does the Fort Worth public put up with this nonsense?
So, perplexing...
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