SR-520 Bridge Project: Reconnecting Seattle

by Brandon Musser

State Route 520 (SR 520) is a 12.8 mile corridor linking downtown Seattle and its Eastern suburbs of Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond (collectively known as the “Eastside”) which are separated by the 30 mile long Lake Washington. The route is of considerable economic importance to the greater Seattle area as it provides one of only two passages across the lake, connecting the dense downtown residential area to several large commercial centers, including Microsoft's main campus in Redmond which employs nearly 40,000 people (another employer in the area you may have heard of is Boeing). Every day, around 115,000 vehicles travel the four-lane, 2,285 meter long floating bridge which currently spans the lake. However, the bridge, which was opened in 1963, was originally designed to accommodate only 65,000 vehicles per day. During peak rush hours, traffic merging onto the bridge creates a bottleneck, turning the freeway into a parking-lot and the short 10-15 minute journey from Redmond to Seattle into an insufferable hour-long nightmare.

Construction is to begin in 2012 on a new bridge which will replace the existing bridge and expand the flow of traffic to six lanes, as well as a pedestrian path, and will be compatible with future inter-city light-rail proposals (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Partners/Build520/ ). Additional upgrades will be made to both on- and off-ramps, further improving the flow of traffic along the entire corridor, but especially in the vicinity of the bridge. The additional third lane (in each direction) will be a designated HOV lane (reserved for car-pools, motorcycles, and public transit), improving the reliability and attractiveness of using means of public transportation to commute to and from work. Much wider shoulders will also dramatically decrease the time of accident/breakdown response and cleanup/removal, which are often responsible for the worst traffic delays. The eventual implementation of light-rail will provide residents of the metropolitan centers of Bellevue and Seattle with a very quick, reliable point-to-point means of commuting which will avoid traffic all-together. The new bridge is scheduled to open in 2014, while a definite time-line has not yet been set for the light-rail.

The new bridge, along with the upgrades being made along the entire corridor in general should greatly reduce the cost of commuting between Seattle and the Eastside, not only in terms of dollars but in the opportunity cost of time as well. Using two different models of economic geography, we can speculate as to what kind of implications the drastically reduced transportation costs could have on the economic dynamics of the region. Predictions depend largely upon how one views the greater Seattle area; as two distinct regions (Seattle and the Eastside) or as one larger integrated economic region. According to the Krugman model of New Economic Geography, in a two region scenario exhibiting a mobile labor force, there are two forces in which reduced transport costs could induce agglomeration. The first being the price-index effect and the second being the home market effect (HME). Under the price-index effect, the larger market has an advantage because the price-index will fall with the size of the market, making products cheaper in that region. According to the HME, the region with higher aggregate income will enjoy a more than proportional amount of variety of consumer goods and a more than proportional amount of the higher-skilled workers, making the larger market more attractive. The NEG model would, therefore, suggest that lowering the transport costs between Seattle and the Eastside could spur agglomeration in the larger market (Seattle) at the expense of the smaller market.

On the other hand, if we consider the greater Seattle area to be one large market, the classic Von Thunen could offer insight as to the effects of reduced transport costs between Seattle and the Eastside. The model is used to examine crop selection based on bid-rent functions which depend heavily on the transport costs of various crops. In this case, we can think of different economic functions (industrial/commercial activities) with activity locations being based off of the same bid-rent functions.  According to the model, as transport costs fall, so should the area of land profitable for agricultural activity, introducing opportunities for new activities that were once unprofitable under high transport costs to become profitable. To me, this scenario depicts a region becoming increasingly integrated as the flow of goods (or people) becomes less costly.

I believe the second model is more applicable to this case of decreasing East-West transport costs in the Seattle area as I believe the area is much more resemblant of an integrated market than two separate regions. Reduced transport costs could allow smaller or less profitable firms to locate on the periphery, where it was once unprofitable to do so because of the high costs of attracting skilled-workers from the core (downtown). In other words, reducing the costs of labor flows throughout the greater metropolitan area will make the region more attractive to (external) firms looking to relocate to the area by being able to locate near the periphery (taking advantage of lower big-rent costs) while still being able to draw from a very large pool of skilled-workers in the core. Relocation of firms to the area will also attract new workers, enhancing the overall economic activity of the region.

Crossing the Scandinavian Waters: Oresund Bridge

by Katalin Molnarfi

Copenhagen is a fairly small, but rather cool and well-run city, dressed with posters advertising green energy. Though nothing characterises it more than its delicate Oresund Bridge, the longest of its type in Europe, and winner of the IABSE Outstanding Structure Award. Board a train in Copenhagen and in a comfortable twenty minutes you will find yourself in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city. The Copenhagen international airport is also a mere fifteen minutes far away, connecting the bridge with the rest of the world. This year marks the 11th anniversary that Sweden and Denmark opened their much-talked-about bridge-and-tunnel across the Oresund strait, four months ahead of the original schedule and under budget . Yes, ahead. These Nordic people are an exceptionally professional bunch.

Denmark with its more than 400 islands is understandably ideal for bridge-lovers and already boasts two of the world's most impressive: the Great Belt Fixed Link between East- and West Denmark, and the Oresund bridge. And how about linking eastern Denmark more directly with Germany’s Baltic Sea coastline, a three-hour direct journey to, say, Hamburg? The government has already announced an even grander project for the country's biggest large scale fixed-link: a 19-kilometre road and rail bridge across the Fehmarn strait between Denmark and Germany in order to create a new growth area, similar to the development that has taken place in the Oresund region .

Birth of a new region

The Oresund brigde undeniably folstered growth, giving boost  to both Malmo and Copenhagen. It was designed to serve an explicit dual purpose: cross-border integration, with a particular emphasis on regional productivity, and competitive vitality, as well as the concentration of the North-European pattern of traffic flows. It should function as a backbone of the Oresund Region in order to abolish economic, administrative, institutional, cultural and other barriers, in one common urban system - the integration of Greater Copenhagen and the Malmö-Lund agglomeration, while encouraging citizens to cross the shared border more easily, and give incentives to foreign investors to use the area as a hub of development. Today's Oresund region  with a population of over 3 M produces 26-27 % of Sweden and Denmark's joint GDP, being of  the the most buoyant region in Scandinavia.

A common labour market

The bridge has turned the Oresund area into a single job market. As the  time-distance barrier was reduced dramatically, and the land-see bottleneck was eliminated, the traffic is steadily increasing: every day: 20.000 people commute to work between Sweden and Denmark. A daily average of 19.400 vehicles crossed the Oresund bridge in 2011. All forms of trafic have increased, but commuting has shown the strongest increase by far. Though the past three years brought low growth years for the bridge, mainly as a result of a sharp fall in economic activity caused by the turmoil of the financial crisis, the traffic did not decrease until 2010 (also due to the Swedish krona, which then recovered its former strength in 2010). In addition to greater accessibility, growth in commuting has been driven by the dramatically rising house prices, as well as the increased workforce shortages in the Greater Copenhagen area. Commuting is, therefore, embarassingly one- directional, with around 96 per cent of all commuters living in Sweden and keeping their jobs in the other side of the Oresund. In general, commuters are well-educated and well-paid young people, being pronounced targets of the bridge's policy.

Nordic countries: a happy family?

Nordic identity is alive and well: these countries have a great many things in common, though the Swedes and the Danes were not always the best friends through history (the Oresund area was under Danish authority until 1658). There is certainly a Nordic way of doing business for instance, with consensus as its main watchword. The Nordics put  greater emphasis on partnership and co-operation than most other European counterparts. Then there is religion, Martin Luther, whose reforms left a powerful cultural and moral legacy, leading to exceptionally successful, export-oriented economies. However if the two countries on both sides are to prosper together, Danes and Swedes will have to make efforts of further harmonising labour, tax and social policies. The Oresund region could therefore become a laboratory of transnational regional co-operation within the EU. Development towards a bi-national, integrated, functional urban region is in progress, though the space is much slower, than expected, but doing fairly well. 

Have Citizens of Belgrade Paid Too Much?

by Snezana Ilic

In everything that man pushes by his vital instinct, builds and raises, nothing is more beautiful or more precious than bridges. Bridges are more important than houses, more sacred because they are more useful than temples. They belong to everybody and they are the same for everybody, always built in the right place in which the major part of human necessity crosses, more durable than all other constructions and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.

Using those words the Yugoslavian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ivo Andric, explained his ardor for bridges almost 50 years ago.

The Sava Bridge, Belgrade, Serbia

A few months ago, when I saw  the newly built bridge on the Sava River in Belgrade, Serbia -  I felt the same enthusiasm. The bridge is standing proudly and waiting to be officially opened for traffic in December 2011, aiming to become the new symbol of the city.

The necessity of the bridge is clear having in mind that the city is situated on the constellation of two rivers, the Danube and the Sava, and has 1.7 million residents  with only two functioning bridges across the rivers to connect the old part of the town (The Old Belgrade) and the new one which stands for business center (The New Belgrade). Furthermore, the bridge represents the missing element of the The Inner Major Half-Ring (UMP)  that connects Western and Northern part and much larger area of the city.

However, the opponents of this construction were very loud in the years before the building started. Many architects stated that this bridge would present physical danger, and it would be unsuitable to build a main road through the city core which would give to the residents of Belgrade an enormously expensive and dysfunctional bridge in the wrong place.

According to the results of previous studies on the bridge , estimated positive effects are numerous. First, the results of the analysis which used the volume of traffic in 2005. showed that there would be decrease in mileage by about 100,000 km per day if only passenger cars are taken into consideration. This would save about 11 tons of fuel a day. There would be used  3,250 tons less fuel per year. By 2021 year, when the volume of traffic is expected to increase by 35%, results are even more significant amounting to savings of about 35 tons of fuel per day or 10,000 tons per year. As a consequence of those savings, there will be less air pollution. Second, the average time required for travel would be shorter by around 30 minutes. Third, the new bridge and the ring would reduce traffic flows on existing roads and bridges in the center (30%), and thus eliminate delays and adverse effects caused by this (the project itself provides a series of effective measures of environmental protection, specific pavement, protective sound barrier, etc.). This list can be extended with less tangible benefits such as the bridge would provide a look of a metropolis to the city.

However, now I would like to turn to the indirect economic effects, sometimes more difficult to assess but equally important. Concerning its position, the bridge will provide higher accessibility to the business core of the city which will lead to the higher employment density.

Proof for this can be found in the case of construction the Auckland bridge . Furthermore, in the same study, the strong relationship between employment density and productivity  measured by the average wages was proven. Based on this, one might expect the same relationship to be established between two parts of the Belgrade  that are now connected. This is the case especially because the productivity measured in terms of average wages (Table 1) is the highest in the business part  (out of 17 municipalities). The main factors of agglomeration are benefits arising from increase in wages and productivity coming from densification of activities in urban areas. It is planned to build a tram road across the bridge as part of a public transportation network which will improve accessibility even further since transport possibilities are important in determining whether the city will be dense or detached. 

Table: Annual average wages by municipalities, Belgrade

In addition, the improved accessibility between two parts of the city optimizes land use over the city, and it will surely increase the land prices in the areas close to the bridge.

Having in mind the role that cities can play in enhancing both regional and national development, the significance of an increasing productivity in the cities itself is one of the major urban policies to be considered.

Next time while crossing any bridge make sure to devote a few moments of admire to those magnificent constructions whose great impact we tend to forget. 

Interesting: Discovery channel made a documentary movie “Built it Bigger” about this bridge, since it is the longest single pylon cable bridge in the world.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaMBNwpcpx8&feature=player_embedded

More information: http://science.discovery.com/tv/build-bigger/projects/serbia/sava-river-bridge.html?fb_ref=fb2&fb_source=profile_oneline