Comments

1
Your face is a geo-technical issue.
2
To read the Stranger, you'd think that no tunnels ever get built, and that every issue that comes up in a project is invariably fatal to it. This is a pretty classic Seattle attitude, isn't it?
3
Fnarf...

Dom isn't saying—here—that the tunnel couldn't or shouldn't be built. He's saying that sometimes things go wrong—because sometimes they do—and, as things stand now, Seattle taxpayers are on the hook for cost overruns that Gregoire, Conlin, et al, insist won't happen because nothing will go wrong. Even though things do go wrong. As Dom demonstrated.
4
@2 I think we should hold a vote on whether that's a classic attitude.
5
I stand by my predictions for an eventual price tag for all Seattle households - renters and owners - of an additional $10,000 per household in addition to the $5 each way tolls and the resulting road chaos created as everyone crowds onto the city's arterials and chokes traffic to a grinding halt, just to make a few rich developers and a few workers happy.
6
A shallow bored tunnel should hit no faults, so that should not be an issue to the viaduct. Why doesn't the 'news' staff see how the new lightrail tunnel to the u-district is going, because I never hear about how that's going to shut down the city.
7
Wow. A water leak in an underground tunnel. Stop the presses, get me re-write!
8
The "Sometimes things go wrong ..." line reminds me of the classic Fox news attack of "Some people say ..."

As in some people say Dom's report is disingenuous piece of "journalism" that wreaks of carrying the mayor's water.
9
So this is going to be what the Stranger will devote itself to for the next several years. But I wonder if the tunnel under Cap Hill to the U-District goes over budget or has collapses if they will be as diligent with their reporting? Hmm, I bet we can answer that one.
10
@9 The transit tunnels have pretty wide popular support. When's the last time anyone that wasn't part of a pro-transit right wing think group type of group really went off on one in any quantity?

The DBT, though, doesn't share that level of acceptance by a long shot.
11
Now, if they came back and wanted to build a below surface transit tunnel to extend light rail to West Seattle and Fremont/Ballard, that would be different, as Joe says.

But they're not. The Billionaires Tunnel specifically won't have transit, and in fact will reduce both road arterial and transit times in Seattle as everyone avoids the $5 toll by using the adjacent surface arterials. Even WSDOT studies show this.

By the way, the "solution" for the Mercer Mess actually increases the time it will take you to get from Queen Anne to I-5 by 4 minutes each way.
12
Don't worry everyone, Will in Seattle knows everything and will be sure to post about it more!

Thanks Will!
13
Ok, so first we disproved the myth of "Peak Oil" with the Deepwater Gusher, now you're telling me that Nevada really isn't a desert and the Southwest has or will have plenty of H20?

What's next...ice free beaches on the north coast of Canada?
14
When did ECB start writing as Dominic Holden?
15
Well, he certainly seems to know a lot more than you do @12, that's for sure...

@9:

While there's no guarantee the tunneling under CapHill won't collapse, the fact is that it's far less likely to do so than the proposed deep-bore tunnel by virtue of the very different subsoil compositions each project will encounter.

Take a look at a map of Seattle from roughly 100 years ago: most of the land the DB tunnel will cut through didn't exist back then. It's all basically infill sluiced into Elliot Bay when Denny hill was regraded to create present-day Belltown. As such, it's very soft, so much so in fact that, should we ever get hit with a substantial earthquake, it's all going to essentially liquify, soaking up water like the natural sponge it is, and anything resting on top of it (or in the middle of it) is going to sink, which is exactly what's been happening to the viaduct since the 2001 Nisqually quake, albeit at a much more gradual pace.

Capitol Hill, OTOH is a composed of an aggregate of materials that have been compacted over millennia; it's not immune to shearing fractures, whether by natural or manmade means of course, but it's far more stable from a geological standpoint than what's downtown, which is in essence a large pile of loose dirt.
16
@15,

If posting a comment on EVERY mundane topic on slog is how you measure intelligence, then by all means keep on.

My theory is that Will likes to hear the sound of his own keyboard more than anything. Must be a fun guy to talk to at parties too.
17
@13

I'm not sure what you're point is on either of those topics.

Assuming your last sentence isn't a tell for serious sarcasm...one oil well gushing does not disprove that oil reserves are finite, and a previously undetected amount of water stored in a fault that happened to get transected by a tunnel, thereby filling said tunnel, does not make Las Vegas not a desert.
18

This is by the way the deepest underwater Tunnel in the WORLD, (Lake Mead Intake 3) The company will be back on track here in a few months. Once the TBM Machine is in place things will be much more controllable, it's geological conditions only in the last bit of "starter tunnel" excavation, where we will assemble the TBM and then work will cpntinue as planned, have no fear.....

Please wait...

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