Tough Choices For Seattle’s Suicide Bridge
Longtime readers will remember my writing of Seattle’s Aurora Bridge and how it’s been the site of hundreds of suicides over the years. Over the years, more people and businesses have moved in around the bridge and encountered the ugly phenomenon that many of the jumpers don’t jump over the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which the bridge spans, but jump onto dry land. With all the new residents and businesses–many of them high tech shops like Adobe and Google–loads of people are seeing the sorry results of a suicide and walking away traumatized. What’s more, Seattle police and firefighters respond to potential jumpers on the bridge twice a week and they are at great risk as well. So people and workers in the neighborhood have been pushing for a suicide barrier of some type on the bridge. Not long ago, it looked as if the project would happen easily.
Today, Knute Berger (my former boss at Seattle Weekly) writes at Crosscut.com that the price of the barrier has exploded to $8 million (it was closer to $3 million two years ago) and that some historic preservation advocates are decrying the proposed barrier designs, which are admittedly butt ugly (but the bridge is no fashion model either). I have no idea how the government and neighbors are going to sort this all out, but the $8 million cost sure makes it hard to support the project in very tough budgetary times, as I’m quoted in Berger’s piece. Anyway, it’s an interesting piece.
In other news, it appears that officials in the Bay Area have settled upon a net as opposed to several proposed barriers for the Golden Gate Bridge. Some in Seattle would prefer seeing a net under the Aurora Bridge as well.
Related posts:
Posted in Furious Seasons