By now you’ve read/heard/seen all the mealy-mouthed analysis of the Minneapolis freeway bridge disaster, including the obligatory references to western Washington’s own infamous span failures of 1940, 1979, and 1990.

You may have even heard informal gossip or talk-radio blather comparing the Minnesota disaster to the tragedy-waiting-to-happen moniker some Seattle citizens have placed onto the unloved Alaskan Way Viaduct. The facts that these two different structures have very different structural premises, foundations, etc. will ultimately not matter to those who Demand We Do Something Now.

And who knows: Perhaps some added haste might work in favor of the surface/transit option, rather than the more cumbersome replacement alternatives of a tunnel or a new viaduct.