Remember, everyone: The specter of cost overruns on multi-billion-dollar tunnel projects is a fabricated non-issue ginned up by liberal car hating hippies:

The nation’s largest infrastructure project may be about to head off the rails as New Jersey Gov.Chris Christie prepares to pull the plug on a multibillion-dollar train tunnel beneath the Hudson River, a source close to the project told CNN Tuesday.

Christie ordered a 30-day halt to all work on the Access to the Region’s Core on September 10, amid concerns that the $8.7 billion public transportation project might run over budget by as much as a several billion dollars. The Republican governor ordered a review of the project because his state would have to commit to covering any cost overruns.

But that couldn’t happen to the deep-bore tunnel in Seattle:

Gregoire said of viaduct tunnel cost overruns: “It’s a hypothetical, it has no bearing. There’s no reason to expect cost overruns.”

We shouldn’t “expect” unbudgeted costs because they have “no bearing”; we should instead wait—without a plan—until that unexpected stuff does have bearing. Then we halt work. Genius.

27 replies on “Seattle’s Tunnel Will Be a Magical Tunnel That Won’t Have this Happen”

  1. I love my car.

    I just don’t like paying $10,000 per household – enough to buy a new one – for a tunnel that has half the current Viaduct’s freight capacity and has zero downtown exits.

  3. Breaking news…Richard Conlin just boarded a non-stop flight to Newark airport…he’s going to sign the tunnel go-ahead!

  6. I am completely for and in favor of the tunnel. However, I don’t really know why. And as soon as the costs go through the roof I will change my mind, but not before.

  8. Stop freaking out! The council already has plans to tax the whole city should we lack the money to build the tunnel. Thank god for citywide tolling and taxing districts, another Conlin-backed masterpiece.

  9. Wouldn’t it be something if that transit tunnel project gets killed for cost overruns but our highway tunnel project barrels ahead, overruns be damned? Such is the way of things.

    I can guarantee you, if that tunnel project under the Hudson were for a highway, it would be in no jeopardy whatsoever. Just like the Big Dig in Boston.

    And I’m writing this as someone who doesn’t oppose the deep-bore tunnel but who can’t help but marvel at the Orwellian depths to which the likes of Conlin and Gregoire will stoop to make it happen.

  10. You’re being taken to the cleaners.

    And when you start to notice there will be reduced library hours, reduced arts funding, reduced homeless services, and reduced street and sidewalk repairs – it will be too late.

    Have fun living in a totalitarian state ruled by your Elites and their armed prison guards we call cops.

  11. I dislike the terms “DBT” and “deep-bore tunnel”. We need a name that evokes images of a grand project of sweeping scale and importance. One of those long names with an outstanding acronym.

    I propose: Downtown-Omitting Underground Bypass Tunnel, or DOUBT

  12. Gregoire said of viaduct tunnel cost overruns: “It’s a hypothetical, it has no bearing. There’s no reason to expect cost overruns.”

    He obviously has never been involved in a retrograde, rebuild, refurbishing, remodel or new construction of any kind, even a new dog house.

  14. @10: ‘Cause your opponents can’t just be wrong, they must be EVIL!!!1!

    For my part, I love the “there’s no reason to expect unexpected cost overruns” logic. It is kind of hard to argue with. I mean, if you expected ’em, they wouldn’t be unexpected. Gregoire kind of has a point. It’s a really stupid point, but it is pretty much true by definition.

  15. @13 Actually, Chris Gregoire has gone to great lengths in the past two elections to not be called “Christine“. She doesn’t want to lose any votes to rednecks who’d never vote for a woman, but will vote just the same.

  20. @18 – You mean the Car-Only Subterranean Tunnel? That’ll COST ya’.

    Is it okay with everyone if we just turn this thread into a string of snarky acronyms?

  25. So, Dom, waiting on the Stranger story about why we don’t have light rail under Beacon Hill (OMG! TUNNEL!!) and how more Sound Transit mass transit tunnels under the ship canal, etc., will result in massive cost overruns, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  27. So here we go with the inevitable news: “Christie Kills Hudson Train Tunnel Between New Jersey and New York”:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/nyregi…

    Now, we’re looking at a potential 40% to 70% overrun being sufficient justification to abort a project that’s already underway. Hardly the astronomical overrun that occurred with Boston’s Big Dig and entirely within the realm of possibility, or even expectation, with our own deep-bore tunnel.

    And yet, to follow up my comment @9 (which Dominic was kind enough to break out into its own post), nothing could stop the Big Dig and nothing can stop our deep-bore tunnel.

    The difference is not Democrat vs. Republican. It was largely Democratic politicians who kept the Big Dig alive, and it is largely Democratic politicians keeping our Seattle tunnel alive. And I can guarantee you that if Chris Gregoire and Chris Christie exchanged governor’s mansions, their actions would scarcely differ.

    No, the difference is simply highways vs. transit and the way the oil and highway interests have seeped into our politics and our culture. As long as we as Americans continue to view freeways as a necessity and mass transit as a luxury, we will continue to see our economy gradually, inexorably decline compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

Comments are closed.