Seattle voters scrap proposed Bay Freeway and R. H. Thomson Expressway on February 8, 1972.

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In a special election on February 8, 1972, Seattle voters endorse cancellation of the R. H. Thomson Expressway, previously recommended by the City Council, and abort the proposed Bay Freeway linking SR 520, I-5, and SR 99 along the south shore of Lake Union.

The plans for R. H. Thomson Expressway dated from the 1950s as part of a "ring road" system of interlocking freeways including 99, I-5, Spokane Street, and NE 50th Street. The expressway, named for long-time City Engineer Reginald Heber Thomson (1856-1949), would have followed the general route of Empire Way (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way) from Renton through Southeast and Central Seattle, and north through the Washington Park Arboretum, linking to SR 520 and I-5. The highway would then dip under the Montlake Cut and reemerge near University Village, with a link to an east-west expressway cut and tunneled along the route of NE 50th Street, before proceeding north to Lake City. The more modest Bay Freeway would have created a new viaduct to smooth the notorious "Mercer Mess" links between 520, I-5, and 99.

Both projects fell victim to rising anti-highway movements led by environmental and neighborhood protectionists, who organized Citizens Against R. H. Thomson (CARHT) in the late 1960s. Mayor Wes Uhlman (b. 1935) and the Seattle City Council effectively abandoned R. H. Thomson in June 1972 and submitted the project to a referendum. Opposition to the Bay Freeway was fueled in large part by fears of a massive viaduct walling South Lake Union from the rest of the city. The growing citizen campaign to cancel or scale back plans for a massive Interstate 90 trench through central Seattle served as a backdrop for the 1972 vote.

Sources:
Walt Crowley, Routes, An Interpretive History of Public Transportation in Metropolitan Seattle (Seattle: Metro Transit, 1993).

By Walt Crowley, March 19, 2001

This file made possible by:
The Schooner Project:
The Hon. Jan Drago
Seattle City Council
Seattle Department of Neighborhoods
Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)