Cary, another great piece. But I'm afraid it's too late; this project has taken on a life of its own, no matter how logical the arguments are, or how great the obstacles are (or become in the future...), the tunnel is full steam ahead.

We're supposed to be working to reduce VMT per capita, and instead we pay billions to increase them. We're supposed to be trying to reduce carbon emissions (see Richard Conlin's newsletter today), and instead we pay big money to increase them.

I'm sure we had a window of opportunity a year or two ago when we could've done what the governors of Oregon and Washington did to The Columbia River Crossing -- kill it and start over with something more realistic. Some historian will undoubtedly document when that moment was, and when it ended.

I expect the tunnel will get built, with a few setbacks that will basically entail pumping more grout into the soil to stabilize building foundations. And and when the tunnel opens, as has already been predicted, most current viaduct traffic will channel onto surface streets due to (1.) the tunnels absence of any (ANY!) on- and off-ramps, and (2.) the high toll that will be charged, especially during rush hours.

Surface streets will be a mess because they won't have the improvements that Cary's Surface/Transit alternative would've provided; same with I-5. And the tolls won't raise enough money, no matter how high or low they are set, to pay off the bonds.

We're leaving a fine mess for future generations. Our children will indeed be asking: "What WERE they thinking?"

And the answer is, clearly we weren't thinking enough.

Where can we get a firsthand look at the amazing 2008 version of the Surface/Transit plan that solves all of the city's viaduct problems for less money?

Please provide a link with pretty pictures of the proposed waterfront.

But the money isn't there and never was. Hundreds of millions are missing as Cary points out. The legislature has imposed a hard cap on the state's contribution.

Cary is right, it's time to stop this faith-based charade and take a serious look at this project.

Dumpsters, No-Future Imaginations & The SeattleSinker - Thank you!

At this point every time I see a semi-sane diatribe about the SeattleSinker I practically weep. I can't fathom why this project was not killed years ago and this article does a nice job of reminding us of the many flaws in the tunnel plans, as well as the fact that much more viable, more far-sighted plans were available that could still be implemented.

One aspect which gets touched upon here is traffic volume and toll-backed bonds. As the author points out, traffic in Seattle has already dropped. The SeattleSinker plan counts on ever- increasing boom-town traffic projections. Proposing that automobile and truck traffic will just continuously increase is a symptom of corrupt 20th century American expansionist thinking. It’s entirely unlikely that auto and truck traffic will continuously increase in the face of imminent fossil fuel limitations. Who the hell is going to drive downtown from Shoreline for example, when it costs $10 in gas plus a no-doubt exorbitant toll, and then additionally hiked parking rates--practically no-one. What is needed is transit. Look at King County Metro, and there you will see a real upward trajectory in terms of ridership numbers despite there being more and more of a budget gap and despite the fact that bus-based transit is pretty much the crappiest form of mass transit. The ridiculous factor here is that it is insane to spend this kind of money (BILLIONS are ‘REAL MONEY’ folks!) on antiquated and unrealistic transportation technology that mostly benefits the wealthier segment of the population and which encourages inefficient and unhealthy urban land use patterns while harming the natural environment at the same time. That kind of money should be invested in long-term, future solutions--not patches for the now, based on the questionable data we have for the now.

This is exactly the kind of mistake that’s caused so much pain and degradation in cities like Detroit, where city planners keep putting together propositions and tearing apart neighborhoods to encourage old-style growth so the city will go back to its old self. What Detroit loses in this process of limited-future-imaginary is the chance to evolve into a better, smaller city, something that could happen there. Instead Detroit’s planners look towards a future that looks like the past and which will never happen (and in the face of climate change and energy reduction shouldn’t happen).

The SeattleSinker is just that kind of pathetically unimaginative sort of planning. It’s a no-future solution. What we need is a) imagination and b) transit. Fixing I-5 is a much better idea. Tearing down the viaduct is obviously a necessary act. Throw in some non-Paul-Allen-type ‘toy’ transit and we may be well on our way to a better city. As has no doubt been stated before, multiple other U.S. and Canadian cities have torn down their urban highways and never replaced them with nothing less than fantastic results. The SeattleSinker is a faulty plan hatched out of a petroleum and past-future addled imagination. Let’s see the reality and possibility of a better future that we can actually work towards and build rather than get saddled with the staggering debt of a past that should have been left in the same dumpsters the viaduct will soon fill.

It's interesting that all those awful things that would happen without the tunnel are appearing in traffic and congestion projections for the tunnel itself.

Increased VMT, increased congestion, increased emissions -- isn't the tunnel supposed to reduce these? It's increasing them! And dozens -- if not hundreds -- are losing their jobs.

As far as the AWV itself, we were all set to tear it down in 2012 with or without a plan. So much for that safety thing.

Finally, if it's easy for drivers to bypass Downtown Seattle, it'll be easy for business to do so. I heard Federal Way is aggressively upzoning. With Link coming and being so close to Sea-Tac, I think we'll start to see suburban flight sooner than later.

I absolutely agree with Cary that surface/transit is still the best alternative for replacing the viaduct. I also firmly believe that:
* The Affordable Care Act would have been a heck of a lot more cost-effective with a public option.
* The Iraq invasion was a trillion-dollar, 4,000-life con job perpetrated on a gullible American people.
* The Supreme Court made a completely political decision in Bush v. Gore.
* The Seahawks got screwed by the refs in Super Bowl XL (or, as Paul Constant would call it, "Superbowl XL").

Today in 2011, there's an incredibly important debate surrounding viaduct replacement that we're too righteous and set in our ways to be having. It's whether Seattle is going to get the shaft with this tunnel project or stand up for its interests through the process. It's whether Seattle is going to leverage this tunnel project to establish better rights-of-way for transit or whether we're just going to sit by and hope that lovely, little panaceas like traffic signal prioritization will make us forget about the tens of thousands of vehicles diverted by the tunnel that are about to swamp city streets every day.

Cary is starting to remind me of one of those Japanese soldiers trapped on an island who were still fighting WWII years after it had ended.

Actually no, that analogy doesn't do justice to the tragedy of Cary's lacking/lagging leadership. The better one might be Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Signed,
Water under the bridge

Still have the two mandatory federal EPA hearings on particulate and carbon emission violations, the mandatory federal EIS hearings on enviro impacts and the listed federal protected species impacted, and the literal fact - as Cary points out - that we don't have the funding.

No funding.

No bonding authority without a mandatory Public Vote of the Citizens.

And nobody wants it.

Excellent post by Citizen R @1. One passage I want to respond to:

I expect the tunnel will get built, with a few setbacks that will basically entail pumping more grout into the soil to stabilize building foundations. And and when the tunnel opens, as has already been predicted, most current viaduct traffic will channel onto surface streets due to (1.) the tunnels absence of any (ANY!) on- and off-ramps, and (2.) the high toll that will be charged, especially during rush hours.

You're right about the literal reasons for most would-be tunnel traffic getting diverted onto surface streets. But I'll tell you the real, underlying reasons, i.e. whom we can blame. That impending flustercuck will be the result of a failure of leadership and imagination by elected leaders like Mike McGinn and Richard Conlin, by the press, by environmentalist/urbanist activists like Cary Moon--well, I could go on.

The consultants hired by City Council have already told us what we need to be doing:

Nelson\Nygaard suggests several methods for mitigating the traffic: Dedicated transit lanes through downtown, wider sidewalks, tolling a longer segment of RS 99 to discourage drivers from siphoning off en masse at the portals, expanding tolling to surface streets and I-5, timing traffic signals through downtown, and others.

There are some politically painful choices we could be making now to mitigate the tunnel's impacts, and yet who is there with some political skin in the game (consultants don't count) who's really championing those hard choices?

@2, +1

@2 - you're probably asking a sarcastic rhetorical question, but here are those links:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/77C…

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/FAF…

I always hear about the port needing the tunnel, which to me implies they currently also need the viaduct. If that is the case, why then do I see next to no trucks on the viaduct?

And no, this isn't only a rhetorical question.

@10: I was being skeptical, but not sarcastic.

The plan you linked to is the one that turns the waterfront into 6-lanes of stop and go traffic that cuts the city off from the waterfront even more so than the viaduct. As Cary put it, "the six-lane waterfront highway from the 2004 study -no one (literally, not one person) liked that".

Cary implies there's a new plan without a 6-lane highway. If so, I'd genuinely love to see it.

I hear a lot of talk about cost and ease (regarding the surface option) with a spattering of fear pumped into the risks (associated with the tunnel). What about the experiential quality of the surface option - from a pedestrian's perspective? I can easily imagine noise, safety and perceived barriers of a multi-lane and assuming fast-pace surface option as barriers for pedestrians to access the waterfront. My initial visions lay just a little north of this talk, in particular, Aurora Ave N.

A link with the referred surface option would be valuable to this argument.