Boy, these guys sure hate tunnels. As Capitol Hill readies for twin boring machines to drill through its substrate, The Stranger and Seattle’s leading politicians against deep bore tunnels are gathering Wednesday night for a discussion about the risks for the city in allowing the state’s current plans for the Viaduct replacement to go forward.
You can read the state’s version of the project’s cost/benefit analysis here. Meanwhile, Seattle Transit Blog has a thoughtful piece on the situation here.
Deep-Bore Tunnel—What Could Go Wrong?
Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 7:30 – 9pm
Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street.Governor Gregoire recently announced that bids for the deep bore tunnel on Seattle’s waterfront are at or below budget; tunnel opponents scoff at the likelihood they’ll stay there, and maintain that Seattle will be left holding the bag for inevitable overruns. And this is just the latest battleground—after years of bruising political battles, opponents still voice concerns about tolls and downtown access, while many proponents seem glad simply to have a plan to replace the endangered viaduct. Washington’s Department of Transportation is accepting public comment on the project until December 13th, so if you take them at their word, the conversation isn’t officially over yet. Advancing the skeptics’ case, Stranger news editor Dominic Holden will moderate a session with Mayor Mike McGinn, Councilmember Mike O’Brien, and Drew Paxton (Move Seattle Smarter). Presented by The Stranger.
Free, no tickets required.
If you’d rather stay on the Hill and talk Seattle Police, reps from the East Precinct will be at Seattle Central for another community forum.
…I don’t hate all tunnels, but I do hate the proposed tunnel under downtown.
(a) No HOV/mass transit feature. Investing billions in last century’s transportation technology is dumb; climate change and peak oil mean we have to start making smarter long-term decisions. Why not start now?
(b) Replacing the viaduct with smart, tactical improvements in surface streets is far cheaper, and hasn’t been seriously considered by the state/DOT. ( http://www.peopleswaterfront.org/transportation_solution.htm)
(c) The risks associated with building this particular tunnel are high: the diameter of the tunnel is extremely large and means the technology will be experimental, and the soil they need to dig through is, to use seismic jargon, “sketchy”.
I’m just an amateur, but Sightline took a careful look at the cost overrun risks, and I encourage anyone to check out their report if you can’t make it to Town Hall tonight: http://www.sightline.org/research/sprawl/res_pubs/cost-overr Publicola has had some great articles, too.
Making a dumb $4+ billion decision hurts twice: it’s sad to see so much money used on something so pointless, and extra sad to think of how we better spend that money making our transportation network more rational.
It’s extra bizarre that no one from the state agreed to come to the forum tonight. They were invited, and it’s the height of the public comment period. Why wouldn’t they want to come discuss the project with the public? The problem may be that they don’t feel like debating its merits with informed critics…
Viaduct moves 100k plus cars a day. A surface street option is dumb. Rebuilding the viaduct is the most financially responsible option. There is a reason why they built it in the first place.
That or re-address the bottleneck of I-5 at the convention center.
With a $4 toll each way on the tunnel, a ton of those 100k will switch to surface streets anyway.
The street option that has been proposed by the opposition does include improvements to I-5, and would cost far less than the tunnel. ( http://www.peopleswaterfront.org/transportation_solution.htm) You can do a lot with $4 billion besides digging a big hole.
Why would they put mass transit into the tunnel? There’s already a heavy rail tunnel running underground through downtown (Sounder Rail, Amtrak & freight) as well as a bus tunnel 4 blocks east for light rail and buses.
Continuing the bus tunnel towards queen anne would be a great separate idea, but having a secondary tunnel NOT connected to the current mass transit tunnel is poor design.
Sounds like a good ‘ol bitch session. Why should the mayor and WSDOT meet and discuss anything more? Their opinions are known and they have chosen to agree to disagree. Enough said. Build it and enjoy the views afterward while eating ice cream.
Rebuild the viaduct and repeat a major mistake that was made in the 1950s? I don’t think so!
Can you not envision our waterfront without a viaduct?…it will be a beautiful thing, and will finally reconnect our city to Elliott Bay. Yes, a few commuters will miss the view from the viaduct, but they will just have to adjust. Far more people will enjoy the westward view from downtown, unblocked by the atrocity that is there now.
I was at the town hall. One important thing to discuss is the newly released SDEIS which contains important revelations. For example:
If there are no tolls, 1/3 of Viaduct traffic will divert to surface streets (because the tunnel has only one entrance and exit).
With the tolls required to pay for the project, 2/3 of Viaduct traffic will divert to surface streets. There is NO money in this plan for any surface or transit improvements to mitigate this. The state administration does not consider it to be their problem.
There are other important reasons to reopen the executive decision made by Nickels, Sims and Gregoire. For example, Gregoire is not fulfilling her agreement to provide transit funding that was in the LOI, and in fact has vetoed additional transit funding voted by the Legislature.
Other important parts of the LOI are not being delivered also (for example the Port is supposed to provide a big chunk of money which is nowhere to be seen).
I could go on and on.
Mike McGinn made an excellent point last night. Eli Sanders at the Stranger does a great paraphrase here:
“Hey, you’re in favor of the tunnel because you think it will solve our transportation problems, right? Well, consider what we know for sure already: It will cost about $2.8 billion—maybe more—and when it’s all done it will move fewer cars than the Ballard Bridge. Sounds like a bad deal to me.”
That’s according to the state’s own numbers. A big chunk of traffic will skip the tunnel because it has no downtown exits. Another chunk will skip it because of the $4 toll (each way!), and that leaves you with a miserable trickle of traffic and a $4 billion price tag with a crazy amount of risk attached.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/12/02/the-dow
A simple solution taking the wind out of both side’s sails would be to repeal the law requiring benefitting Seattle area property owners pay any tunnel cost overruns. The original sponsor admitted it could not be enforced, so what’s the big deal? Come on Chopp, exercise some sensible leadership!
Then we can get back to judging the merits. Pay for a solid-gold, world-class, largest-in-the-world, risk-prone tunnel, or find a cost-effective solution best fit to today’s economy.