- Gregoire at the lectern
The two remaining bidders vying to construct the deep-bore tunnel under downtown have submitted bids to the state that come in at or below the $1.09 billion budget for this portion of the project, Governor Chris Gregoire announced this morning while flanked by local officials. However, the state won’t release the actual amount of those bids until mid-December, after highway workers have evaluated the proposals.
The bidders—Seattle Tunnel Partners and Seattle Tunneling Group—are both conglomerates of tunneling, construction, and engineering firms. Reviewing their bids is “a very confidential process,” said State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond. Bidders will be evaluated using a point system based on each proposal’s quality of management, schedule, design, and other technical criteria. The state intends to select a bidder by January.
“I am determined to get this project done on time and one budget,” Gregoire said, fending off questions from reporters about the potential for cost overruns falling on Seattle, the ballooning budget of a tunnel in New Jersey that was canceled, and the state’s $415 million contingency fund that has been drained to less than half in the last couple weeks.
“If I get a bill from the legislature that says the city will be liable for cost overruns, I will veto it,” she said. But if a bills comes requiring the state to pay, she said, “I will sign it.” Although a generous sentiment, it seems largely irrelevant considering that most of the tunnel project’s construction—in the years costs could skyrocket—will occur after Gregoire’s current term ends in 2012. She is widely expected to not seek reelection.
Gregoire tersely denounced the surface/transit option, the de facto preference of many Seattleites who oppose a tunnel or a viaduct rebuild, saying it would create a “stalled city” and impose “social engineering to push people to get out of their cars. I have never seen that.” Paradoxically, she argued for using traffic snarls to change behavior and get people into the tunnel—kinda like, uh, social engineering—in almost the same breath. Gregoire was insisting that people may initially try to avoid expensive tolls, wind up on jammed streets, and will then decide “I am going to pay to go through that tunnel.”
Tolls on the tunnel would drive the majority of the Alaskan Way Viaduct’s current users onto I-5 and surface streets, a state study released this morning found. Unless the state builds the tunnel, Gregoire explained to justify the project’s total $4.2 billion price tag, we’ll have all 110,000 of those cars on streets and it will “stop I-5.”
Gregoire called the mayor’s concerns about cost overruns a “red herring,” adding, “The only reason I can foresee cost overruns is delay.”
“Either we take [the viaduct] down, or Mother Nature will take it down on her terms, and that could be very, very deadly,” she said.
Transportation Secretary Hammond said the state will official decide whether to proceed with the project by early July 2011.
Chris, honey, transit is not social engineering if Seattle voters have resoundingly supported taxing themselves for it.
Last time I checked the de facto preference of most people in the city was the one we weren’t allowed to vote on, the cut and cover.
Last I checked we wanted a well-managed elevated transit solution that would pull enough of these viaduct users off the road to make the DBT useless.
Perhaps we should just build Waterfront Link with all this money? You think it can’t happen, but this is pretty much exactly what happened with the Freeway Revolts in Portland and a few Euro cities.
Points to @1 for use of “honey” bringing reminiscent glow to those of us who used to flip through mom’s old Ms. magazines.
Points to @2 for super-accurate survey of de facto preferences for options crushed by unspecified but apparently obvious tyranny.
@4: When I nag, it’s in the tone of an old ladies’ magazine advice columnist.
Sounds like the mayor will get what he wants, which is to let Seattle off the hook for any cost overruns, assuming its something that gets passed through the legislation. This means the mayor will probably sign off on it. All the other problems he cited, as a reason to not dig a tunnel (safety of digging the tunnel, no bike lanes, no off ramp on/off 1st ave), are then dismissed. Just as long as somoene else pays for the overruns, McGinn is ok with this. This would free his hands up to then work on blocking the construction of the 520 bridge because it doesnt have a bike lane or lightrail. Even if it does, most cyclists will balk at having to pay a toll to cross the bridge and for light rail, its just another train to Bellevue where it should be going to Juanita or Bothell. Sure its nice to have one big loop of a rail line, but thats somethign that should have been on the planning board ….. 10 years ago!!
Seems to me, the only way to really kill the tunnel, is to vote Republicans into local office. They will firmly be against making the state pay for the overruns and force Seattle to pay for it. Of course, they may just think that we cant afford a multi-billion dollar project to begin with and attempt to cancel the whole thing.
@6: Are you sure you aren’t Will?
Arrg! Why does no politician concede that during the years of the tunnel construction that “we’ll have all 110,000 of those cars on streets and… will ‘stop I-5′” anyway? Where are those cars going to go after the viaduct comes down? Are they going to evaporate? Will the state issue flying carpets? Boost the bus system with more and frequent buses? Wait till our very limited light rail is built first? WTF?!?! Either we’ll have traffic chaos the entire time, or we’ll have more proof of those traffic studies which show reducing roads actually reduces cars.
So why not opt for the quicker project, the Surface Option?
Cui bono? Is Gregoire getting some sort of secret kickback? Why is she hammering this so hard? In the face of all the obvious dangers? Loose fill, seawall damage, damage to old buildings over the site, the inevitibility of cost overruns, 110,000 cars on I-5 if the tunnel is tolled, the borer getting stuck in crappy fill/rock… It really seems the dangers outweigh the benefits here.
AND: What in transit isn’t social engineering? It’s ALL social engineering. What a duplicitous statement on Gregoire’s part. Is she opposed to re-striping roads for bicycle lanes? Is she opposed to light rail? WTF, I ask thee, W.T.F.
@6 Ten years ago? 50 years ago! — In 1963… right after the World’s Fair showed off the wonnerful, futuristic Monorail. Why didn’t Seattle start reserving lightrail/monorail right-of-ways then? Major, major fuck-up that we’re paying for now.
If the topic were buses we might more easily see there’s a meaningful distinction between diverting routes and removing routes.
Got Debt?
Under the Deeply Boring Tunnel you’ve got $10,000 of it – per household – renter or owner.
Not including tolls.
And that’s just for the inevitable cost overruns.
WE WANT A BINDING VOTE OF SEATTLE CITIZENS – NOW!
@9, exactly. “Paying for it now” means we…have to pay for it. There’s no way around that.
“it would create a “stalled city” and impose “social engineering to push people to get out of their cars. I have never seen that.”
you’ve never been to Vancouver, Chris?
@7 yes, not me.
I just keep hammering away and eventually people RTFM and realize what a boondoggle this is.
Other than the ones who stand to profit from us by it.
Will, who’s a vote of Seattle citizens going to bind on this state project? The last vote was only advisory also, you remember.
@12 – I totally agree. No major city can survive without serious mass-transit. This tunnel, however, is a highly questionable project.
You know, when Portland has the MAX light-rail system built, they included bonus money for getting done on time. And voilà, it was done on time. Seems like a very sensible bit of (ahem) social engineering to ensure a project’s timeliness. Is Gregoire et. al. doing that here? Do they have similar ways to guarantee it won’t become one of these conglomerates’ cash cow?
@15 if it bound and gagged the City of Seattle I’d be very very happy.
And Comrade Conlin wouldn’t have such a big feathered nest egg from post-council “consulting” work.
@16, my understanding is the contract here is different from older public infrastructure ones because the contract forces the extra costs on the contractor – that’s why the bond is so high. Shit still can go wrong, but the contractor builds contingency layers into the bid to protect the public purse in the long run.
Whether and how convincingly the bidders succeeded in that is what the Gov says WSDOT’s begun evaluating in the bids right now.
I’m very happy that Will started using my anonymous posting name. 😀
McGinn did a great job preventing Seattle from paying for cost overruns. The tunnel is going to get built unless something crazy happens. The next step us to prevent the new surface highway WSDOT is planning to build in the viaduct’s footprint. The point of the tunnel is to provide open space, not another highway.
@7
No Will doesnt want the Tunnel, I want the tunnel.
Dig a tunnel, re-build the viaduct, or just tear it down, people need to decide right freaking now and hope whatever options doesnt screw up businesses on the waterfront. I sure as hell have no intrest in buying Grays Anatomy scrubs, Space Needle T-Shirts or any of that cheap crap that tourists buy by the truckload each year.
I dont own a car, dont have a license so it doe not benefit me. Its really emabarassing when 8-10 years can go by and were still debating on what to do with a roadway that absolutely is a risk to the public. Every seems to care about how much it costs, very few seem interested in the public safety.
@20: What’s the debate? It needs to be torn down. Arguing about the replacement avoids that and tries to squeeze as much money out of the situation as possible.
True enough that Gregoire won’t be governor when the overruns might come to pass. But this does establish a precedent that any Democratic gubernatorial candidate will be under pressure to uphold. The fact that Gregoire is even addressing this concern is a small win for McGinn.
BTW, I realize it’s already well-established that the current Frank Chopp-masterminded “make Seattle area pay for overruns” language is toothless. And (someone correct me here) it would violate the state constitution for the state legislature to impose a tax exclusively on a given municipality or region. I’d love to see some in-depth, impartial analysis of the possibilities, but it looks to me like the only way Seattle is going to get stuck with cost overruns is through some indirect route, such as the state shortchanging some obligation, and where the city willfully picks up the cost. In other words, I’m more fearful of our own City Council than I am of the state legislature.
Every time I’m on the lower deck of the viaduct I take a good long look at the two foot long piece of rebar exposed on the north face of a support column around Yesler, I remind myself that state engineers are signing off on this broken down roadway every six months despite it’s continual “settling”.
Thanks God the grownups are actually moving along with a plan rather than waiting for Mother Nature to drop the damn thing while we whine and argue about the necessity for a state high way running through downtown.
@23: They will have to sign off on it about 9 or 10 more times before it’s (hopefully) shut down. In the interim, if you drive by every workday, you will get to look at that piece of rebar a good 1,000-2,000 times in that timeframe.
The “grownups” you cite have gone through several shutdown timelines, each of them getting further and further into the future. In order to get their way, they’ve completely removed advice that they tear down the viaduct for public safety reasons as soon as possible.
You know, one roll of det cord and two rolls of good duct tape and a box of caps and I could have that down for you in a couple of days.
Freeway construction is the biggest infrastructure-led social engineering experiment in history. That includes both the interstates that fed suburban sprawl, and local freeways that divided neighborhoods in the name of “urban renewal.” Deciding not to build a replacement freeway may be social engineering, but it’s aimed at reversing a much bigger example of the form.
Yeah, and building a below-sea-level deep bore tunnel in questionable glacial till mixed with mud in a major earthquake zone isn’t just stupid, it’s beyond stupid.
As the bidders obviously realize, since they required $230 million in BRIBES not to bail from the bid.
@26, that’s absolutely right, and I wish somebody could have sold that during the selection phase, before most people even wanted to think about it. Some tried, but didn’t do well enough to overcome the downsides.
The Stranger shows itself again to not be a credible news source. You attempt to be the “independent” source for the tragically hip and end up being a “think as us or you are stupid” Fox-esque rag. Seriously. Do your homework on the tunnel Dominic and stop playing off propaganda as journalism.
@29 lol.
You know the Stranger reportes 100 times more news than the suburban “Seattle” Times does any day of the week.
The BART tunnel that goes under San Francisco Bay routinely enjoys earthquakes. It’s still there. Just dig the tunnel or build a new viaduct. Quit diddling, voting and debating. Seattle’s economy, port and the state’s economy relies on freight and people mobility. Without the port, Seattle has an anemic economy. As the most trade dependent state in the nation, 20% of Washington’s GDP is dependent on trade, and Seattle’s port is a major factor in that. Also build some goddamn transit and separate bike roads. That’ll get people out of their cars, and make it safe for bikers. As a biker, I hate sharing the road with cars and trucks. In Europe, they invested billions in bike roads, while we invested a Ronald Reagan wimpy amount in bike lanes. Europeans have a lower injury/fatality rate with their bike riders than we do because they invested in it. Let’s invest billions in our infrastructure and get the job done. The time is now.