The Never-Ending Repairs of Front Street
A skeptical editorial questions the city's approach to maintaining the crumbling bulkheads and sidewalks of the waterfront.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It looks to us as though a very expensive piece of repair work is under way on Front street. These repairs will certainly cost more than the original work, and when done will probably be good for a few months only. Instead of undoing all the old work and doing it over again, why not brace the old work as it is, but strengthen it under the sidewalk by substantial posts? If posts alone are not sufficient, dump a few carloads of earth there also, so as to support the posts and bulkhead and render them immovable. To repair a little break of a few feet, an expense of several hundred dollars is undergone. At this rate to repair the street from end to end will cost twenty thousand dollars or more.
“Such slow and temporary repairs as those now being made on Front street cannot have an end too soon—and should never have had a beginning.”
The frustration over 'temporary' and 'expensive' infrastructure fixes in 1883 Seattle sounds strikingly similar to modern complaints about city roadwork and budget management, proving that the struggle between long-term durability and short-term cost-cutting is eternal.
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