I was yapping on the Dave Ross show for a while, so I missed the comment exchange of the day until now. In comments of this post, Baconcat says, "stuckie, you've won the internet. Dom, stuckie's comment deserves its own post." Anything you say, Baconcat. Here's stuckie's comment:

This might sound crazy, but don't ALL viaduct replacement options start with taking the existing structure down? Can we all agree that THAT part needs to happen, and we can start in on it while deciding what to do next? Whether we build a tunnel, replace the structure, or go without, given that we'll be directing traffic onto surface roads for the entire duration of construction of ANY option regardless, why hasn't anyone brought up the idea of just waiting a year and evaluating how bad the traffic problem becomes before deciding the magnitude of the solution we implement?

For instance, if we determine that the main problem is just I-5 overflow - people trying to get into town from Burien, South Park, West Seattle, etc - the exitless tunnel will not help at all.
Posted by stuckie on July 27, 2010 at 12:00 PM

To which Gloomy Gus replies:

@15, you've put your finger on a very large part of why the DBT option was considered the best-lipsticked pig - it seems to offer the only option that would keep the existing viaduct open to traffic during construction of the alternative.

If somebody could ever debunk that it would win some hearts and minds. Get to it, best and brightest.
Posted by gloomy gus on July 27, 2010 at 12:13 PM

It's worth noting that the state preference all along has been an Alaskan Way Viaduct rebuild—which is guaranteed to require at least a year or two of life without a viaduct. And to mitigate those impacts, we'd have to beef up transit, increase capacity for traffic on alternative routes, learn to live without a second downtown highway, etc. So we should do that now. The viaduct is a deathtrap. The state even produced a video to animate our doom:

EGADS! At least, that's what the state wants us to think. But the governor called to leave the human juicer standing for four extra years—from 2012 to 2016. We should tear it down now.