Joni Balter, erstwhile pro-elevated viaduct crusader and anti-tax zealot, has now declared she’s all for replacing the viaduct with a deep-bore tunnel, no matter how much it costs. According to Balter’s own paper, the tunnel would require at least (and probably much more than) $1.4 billion in new local taxes—taxes that, unlike the Pike Place Market, parks, and Sound Transit levies (all of which Balter opposed) would not have to be approved by voters.
What gives? As Balter explained in her column today, “it is time to get moving”—cost uncertainties and new taxes be damned. In a Q&A with fellow Times editorial writer Lynne Varner on the Times’ web site, Balter added, “I am pulled by the momentum of all this. If they can pull it off … go for it!”
Huh. That’s not what Balter said in 2007, when she argued that “the only possible solution” was the “more cost-efficient, elevated roadway.” It’s not what she said in 2006, when she argued that a “pricey tunnel should not be allowed to overwhelm all the other pressing transportation projects in the region. And it’s not what she said later that year, when she compared the tunnel unfavorably to the monorail, writing, “the last thing anyone in Seattle wants is another beautiful idea, oversold, under-explained and started without enough money to finish the job.”
I don’t doubt that there are some good arguments for the tunnel. But vaguely defined “momentum” isn’t one of them. Not only isn’t the tunnel proposal fully funded, it’s almost certain to go up in cost, because it’s only one percent engineered, meaning that nobody really has any idea how it will be built or what it will look like. A tunnel this size would be almost unique the world—and in a city where shaky soil and environmental mitigation requirements make digging underground extremely expensive. Surely an editorial writer who routinely opposes projects on the mere suspicion that they might cost more eventually should be less credulous about a tunnel that almost certainly will. Maybe Balter has really had a sudden, 180-degree shift on taxes. Maybe she’s been dazzled by the prospect of “momentum”. Or maybe she just doesn’t read her own paper. Whatever the case, we should be able to expect better than this kind of sloppy, inconsistent editorializing in a major daily paper.
Depends on how much of it qualifies for the double match of fed funds.
If all of it does, ok.
If only the transit portion does, then just build surface plus transit and stop whining.
By the time the layoffs finish, all we’ll need is a rope bridge.
Forget the rope bridge, let’s go for a zip line!
we could probably make do with a narrow skateboard track, actually.
anyone who writes for the times editorial page is an idiot and a liar. Lynne Varner is a disgusting person, Bruce Ramsey is a pathological liar, and James Veseley is a lunatic.
But Erica, the cost of mitigating a cut-and-cover tunnel (which was the option before, and which is completely different than a deep-bore tunnel) was almost half of the entire projected budget. That’s no longer the case when we’re dealing with boring equipment, so the arguments from 2006 or 2007 are no longer entirely relevant. Whatever option is chosen is going to be expensive. Whatever option is chosen is going to piss somebody off. And since you never use that route, I think it’s probably ok to piss you off instead of, say, commuters and truckers and bus riders and Port workers who actually have to use it.
And also, picking on Joni Balter? That’s like beating up a blind albino first grader. You’re better than that.
It sounds less like momentum and more like frustration to the point of throwing up your hands and giving up.
If we don’t put the taxes on for the tunnel, they’ll end up putting them on for Husky Stadium. That’s right — the UW, a state-run institution, is demanding $300 million from the hotel, taxi and restaurant taxes to go to remodel their football stadium. Unlike the Sonics, nobody seems to be paying any attention to this. Maybe if it goes to the tunnel, we can at least keep it from going to the worthless part of the university.
@7 for the disturbingly accurate win.
And that was the deal Bill Gates made with them, Fnarf – haven’t you been paying attention?
Yup. Tunnels are expensive, and the uncertainty inherent in building anything underground can make costs go way up.
Plus, why does it have to be a 54′ diameter double-decker tunnel? Why can’t they go with the twin 30′ diameter tunnel, which is much more reasonable to construct and probably a fair bit cheaper?
A smaller, twin bore tunnel would significantly reduce the amount of soil that would need to be excavated. Say the twin bore is 30′ in diameter and the tunnel is a straight run of two miles:
[(54/2)^2]π [(5280)(2)/(27)] = 895,731 CY
[(30/2)^2]π [(5280)(2)/(27)] [2] = 552,920 CY
That’s not even two thirds as much soil excavated, even though you’d be digging two tunnels instead of one.
Please print and post above your desk.
Greg @10… YOU GO, GIRL!!! More math comments in Slog, please!
It would be sexier math if we didn’t assume a straight-line bore. I need to go towel off.
Comparing the Pike Place and ST levies to the tunnel tax is disingenuous — the car tab fee attached to the tunnel is much closer to a user fee, since only people with cars will pay it (read: not ECB). The Pike Place and ST levies relied on property and sales taxes, respectively.
@10, yeah except a 30′ wide tunnel isn’t enough space for two 12′ lanes and an 8′ and a 4′ shoulder.
When we have been mired in bickering and divisiveness for year after year — and suddenly a choice has been made and it seems that many, many people are happy that it’s just over with and want to get to it, already — that is momentum and it is very rare for Seattle, from what I can tell. When so many people around here are like Erica and would rather bitch and moan and bicker and file initiatives to stop anything they don’t like, then yes, momentumis a damn good reason to go ahead with the tunnel.
@14: And a completed 54′ diameter double-decker tunnel doesn’t yet exist anywhere in the world. But you’re right about the space. You’d probably have to upsize to 36′ tunnels. But if you did that, you could make them each double-deck and squeeze an extra (carpool or transit) lane in each direction, and still excavate less soil overall:
[(36/2)^2]π [(5280)(2)/(27)] [2] = 796,205 CY
which is only 88% of the soils removed for the 54′ diameter tunnel.
All to replace a road with twice the traffic of 45th. Ridiculous.
Nice thinking, Greg, but the savings comes in not duplicating the ventilation, fire suppression, lighting, and evacuation systems. These systems are far more expensive than excavating that extra soil.
@17 – true dat.
It’s like they only plan on building just enough to get the limos from the Gates Foundation and EMP to Boeing Field with no distracting downtown exits to slow them down on the way to their private jets …
Just a thought .. . .
Perhaps “the tunnel” means one thing when it refers to one tunnel, and something else when it refers to a different tunnel.
Here’s a list of 90+ highway tunnels longer than 3 miles.
@20: Nope, you are either for tunnels, or against ’em.
I can’t tell if this headline is a perfect example of hypocrisy or just a massive lack of self-awareness.
Also: EVERY tunnel presents unique challenges. This project has some possible issues but they’re not singular nor insurmountable.
ZOMG! A Tunnel! No one’s ever built a massive tunnel without killing hundreds of people! Everything’s the Big Dig!
Except for the Chunnel. And all those tunnels across Europe. And many around the US.
Look, tunnel’s not perfect, and if it were only cost the surface + transit option is better. But I’d rather have us spend a ton on a tunnel + waterfront improvements (with transit added on later) than a ton on adding lanes to 405, or clear-cutting more land in Issaquah or whatever.
ECB,
We have Jonl, now it’s your turn.
“One of us. “One of us”
“Gooba gabba gooba gabba.”
erica – can we all agree perpetual whine has not been a productive process
most of us, at leat theis one, just want to get moving and build
and the idea of federal money is icing, big dollar icing
and this will CREATE jobs – and good paying jobs
onwards, I liked the tunnel option the first time around
Grant Cogswell @17: All to replace a road with twice the traffic of 45th. Ridiculous.
Great observation. What always struck me odd about the desire to lavish untold billions replacing the viaduct was this: there are a lot of highway corridors in this region that get a lot more traffic than the viaduct corridor does.
The news that we apparently are going to lavish untold billions on replacing the viaduct is, to me, a testament to a simple, sad truth of democracies: once people have gotten used to having something, they simply cannot imagine giving it up.
This fact of life does not bode well for Barack Obama, or this nation. Because if he doesn’t convince a lot of people to give up a lot of ground and a lot of goodies, things are going to be even worse in four or eight years than they are now. Hard to believe but true.
@22 — Is this totality of opposition principle confined to tunnels?
Or does it necessarily extend to more encompassing categories … holes, for example?
@27: “once people have gotten used to having something, they simply cannot imagine giving it up…”
…especially if giving it up adds 25 minutes to their commute and reduces the value of their house by 20%.
My first reaction when I heard about this plan to replace the viaduct with the deep-bore tunnel was something along the lines of “May they rot in hell.”
Then upon further reflection, I realized it’s just a waste of energy to try to fight this. The reality-based approach at this stage is to assume the tunnel is a done deal and focus on fighting the remaining battles over what happens above ground.
Then once I realized that, I went back to “May they rot in hell.” Gregoire and Nickels know it just comes across as too Quixotic and unreasonable at this point to fight the tunnel in the name of surface+transit.
Sure enough, the email that went out from Cary Moon and People’s Waterfront Coalition read like a concession speech.
seandr @29 on how it’s impossible to convince people to give something up: …especially if giving it up adds 25 minutes to their commute and reduces the value of their house by 20%.
Sounds like you chose some hyperbolic numbers there. But I can’t deny that people would be adding a certain number of minutes to their commute. That’s assuming commuting patterns would remain stagnant.
I will admit, though, that as someone who lives not far from North Aurora, that new tunnel won’t hurt my own property value.
@28 – Holes, burrows, mines, caves, catacombs, call them what you will, we all know what they really are – tunnels.
Now, whose side are you on?
This bored tunnel baloney shows Gregoire to be a devious political genius of the highest order. Cost estimates for the tunnel are based on less than 1% design. They’ll skyrocket. She knows this. It will be too expensive to build. She knows this.
By the time cost estimates get that high, she will have stuck Nickels with the entire bill for the billion or so in work that actually gets done, while letting him think he won. Sucker. Watch the state legislature go for this, proof positive Chopp is in on the scam. She and Chopp end up with an extra $2 billion or so in spare change to scatter around the state and cement their power.
The work Seattle pays for has lots of surface elements, and the 1% MVET Metro gets will be a transit godsend and pay for a helluva lot of bus service county-wide.
So what do we get in the end? Surface transit. Stop whining. You’ll thank her in the end.
@27: I think the problem here is that you’re asking people to sacrifice with no obvious reward. The surface + transit option would increase average transit time and may or may not overall cut greenhouse emissions. It would have continued the separation of the waterfront from downtown with a wall of impenetrable traffic. The only clear benefit was a lower overall cost.
People will only quit driving when transit is cheaper and more convenient than using a car (see New York). Otherwise, you just get traffic and suffering and smog (see LA).
Jigae @34: People will only quit driving when transit is cheaper and more convenient than using a car (see New York).
And spending billions to make driving more convenient is not exactly the way to get there.
And yes, I am asking people to sacrifice with no obvious reward. All the solutions to all the big problems facing the world today require sacrifices and are anything but obvious to the layperson.
BTW, speaking as someone who used to work alongside the viaduct with a view right down on it–and as someone, yes, who has driven the viaduct… That is, speaking as someone who has witnessed for himself how the viaduct doesn’t come close to being one of the major traffic corridors in this region, I can attest that this idea of a “wall of impenetrable traffic” with a surface option is a bunch of hyperbolic, “sky is falling” hooey. Much of the traffic goes away anyway once you put lights in and it ceases to be so convenient. In any event, this is an academic debate.
@35: But our other choice is to spend millions (to billions) to make all transit more inconvenient.
The idea that sacrifice is inherently noble is one of the worst lies perpetuated by organized religion and more extreme elements on the left.
Believing that sacrificing a major traffic corridor in favor of less roads and more surface transit ON THOSE SAME ROADS will somehow save the world requires more faith than I have.
I am sorry you hate cars, but please get down off your cross. We need the wood to build something useful.
Jigae @36, you seem to have fallen prey to two classic misconceptions that are part of why our transportation system is so dysfunctional.
One is this idea about noble sacrifice. The reason we sacrifice something or pay some price in the public sphere is not because it’s noble. It’s because we realize that doing so will accrue some collective benefit–that it’s in our collective self-interest. We give something up to get something.
The other misconception is that transit supporters like me hate cars. Actually, I love cars and I’m not averse to driving. The problem is when the deck is completely stacked in favor of driving so that we’re dependent on cars and we have to be making some noble sacrifice whenever we choose an alternative. It’s really a question of balance.
We’re about to spend $5 billion to make sure that driving past downtown remains as effortless as possible. When we considered spending $2 billion (with the monorail) to make taking mass transit through a similar corridor as effortless as possible, it was treated as some frivolous waste of resources.
Really, the highway-vs.-transit debate of the 2000s was decided back in the 1950s when the viaduct was built. If we’d built a subway back then instead, people would be treating that as a sacred entitlement. Never underestimate the importance of facts on the ground.
@37: I agree with you about sacrificing to get something — I’ve just seen the mess that is public transit here and have very little hope for it. I would MUCH MUCH rather have a functional subway — I’ve just learned a hard lesson about trusting Metro to get anywhere quickly or during holidays or times of emergency.
I’m amazed at how many people seem so unconcerned about how to pay for a deep bore tunnel that will take years to create and will likely experience massive cost overruns at a time of major budget crises. The wishful thinking among people who should know better is off the charts.
grant & cressona 45th is about 1/3 the viaduct traffic not counting the surface traffic on AW.
the costs of the tunnel will double.
the seawall is now about $200 million but it was $800 million only two years ago…hmmmmmm.