Not knowing anything about your tunnel specifically, it seems to me that when cities build large things that accommodate cars (like the big dig), they take longer and cost more than expected, and don't necessarily help traffic issues. When cities invest in better public transit (like Vancouver expanding the Skytrain in advance of the winter olympics), it is more energy efficient, and has the benefit of taking cars off the road. And it doesn't have to be an above-ground train (I agree, those are pretty ugly). Once the Skytrain reaches downtown, it shunts underground. It just seems that knowing what we know about oil, and its coming scarcity, that if there are dollars available, they would be better spent on projects that move people around without cars.

That's a clever, but meaningless talking point. First, it doesn't make a meaningful comparison with current viaduct capacity. But more importantly, it doesn't say anything about what you want to happen instead of the tunnel.

I'm not sure that sound bite is as powerful as you think it is. My immediate thoughts reading the quote and your sample usages were. 1. Ballard Bridge seems pretty damn busy to me. 2. This sound bite sounds intentionality avoids the specific number of cars because the number probably sounds pretty large.

@2 - Unfortunately we live in the age of government by sound bite. Lots of well reasoned arguments have been made over the years for tunnel alternatives. What's needed to actually change things are good slogans and sound bites. Not saying I like it this way. Just the way it is. Unless you're a first time reader of the Stranger, you're already aware of the alternatives and the arguments for and against, so your question is somewhat disingenuous.

I don't really care how catchy his soundbite is. It's irrelevant. What he's doing is like witholding funding from the zoo until they agree to open a unicorn and centaur exhibit.

The question isn't: what's the best option to move cars on highway 99 through downtown? The question is: what's the best bet for avoiding catastrophic gridlock if an earthquake hits anytime in the next five years?

The tunnel's not perfect, but it was a decision, one McGinn promised not to try to reverse. Now here we are, another year plus wasted, and he's trying to set the clock back. He's the Clay Bennett of local politics.

The Nisqually quake was nearly 10 years ago. 10 YEARS!! That's how long the viaduct has been hanging by a thread. Mayor McGinn needs to stop the wishful thinking and do an effective job of representing Seattle's interests AS THE PROJECT MOVES FORWARD. As is, he's just isolating himself from every other politician in the state.

@5,

How has "another year plus" been "wasted?" The project is progressing as fast as it possibly can, and nothing McGinn has done has in any way derailed the progress of the project.

I second what #5 says. It's not the best solution. I've always felt the cut-and-cover option was better long term solution, but the current project has many advantages.
- It will not disrupt current traffic flow during construction.
- It allows for 2 dedicated lanes of north/south traffic through the downtown core. When you stop and study it, this is the same amount that currently can travel from one end to the other now.
- The waterfront will be connected to the city again.
- You eliminate the noisy eye sore that is a giant Viaduct
- You will have just as many surface and transit options.

How is this project not a win? I wish everyone trying to block this project, including Mayor McSlob, would go and stand under the Viaduct whenever they want to make some sort of obstrutionist point. Just stand there and bellow about how we shouldn't do a thing as the Viaduct slowly sinks and crumbles above them. Maybe if they stand and block progress long enough, an earthquake will bring it down and eliminate all the naysayers so we can all finally move on.

@10: The problem is that folks like you insist that nothing will be done if the tunnel is stopped, ignoring the wildly questionable obstruction of the Governor herself who insisted the viaduct would be taken down by 2012 and then backed that out by 5 years. What will be done? Well, we'll tear down the viaduct and use SCIENCE -- WOW -- and advances like ITS and active traffic management to route cars, building as necessary.

So tell me, in your opinion, why are we massively expanding road surfaces in the City of Seattle when there's already nearly 4,000 lane miles of road and 200 million square feet of road surface and many millions more of surface parking and other open tracts of concrete? That number will increase, the DBT effectively doubles the amount of pavement used in the current AWV corridor, why is that?

It's the future, why are we widening and lengthening roads? With enough lane miles to get you to Indianapolis and back, what's the purpose of saying "well, the current roads don't work, let's add more"? If a system is full of failures, it's not working, you can't slip some colorful wrapping on it and say it's THE FUTURE.

We're putting unicorns and centaurs in the zoo? Not on my watch! I am completely against that idea. Fucking libtards.

Wait, nevermind. Unicorns and centaurs are awesome.

The State doesn't want to give up a right-of-way through downtown Seattle. If we tear down the viaduct and don't replace it, the State will no longer own a peice of road.

@8 - Asking for a bill protecting Seattle from cost overruns when legislative experts have said the original clause was toothless, getting in a fight with the city council about the impact statement, hiring a consultant to analyze risk, holding a press conference to announce publicly he doesn't trust the governor, holding a public debate disguised as a Q&A - all of it is counter-productive. It may not have delayed the project itself yet, but I stand by the comment that McGinn has wasted the time. He's setting up a situation where he's going to wind up in direct, open conflict eventually with the state, and he'll have trouble backing down.

The problem with these kinds of numbers is they don't really mean anything. @11, are those large numbers? You can't tell. Are there other factors, like excessively wide streets (which can't be fixed) or vast areas far from downtown with low density that don't concern downtown?

One of the problems I have with your analysis and much of the anti-tunnel, pro-transit talk is that it presumes that you're starting from scratch, that there already isn't a city here. Seattle's layout isn't going to change; nothing that is done on the waterfront is going to change that at all.

The Ballard Bridge comparison is worthless because the Ballard Bridge doesn't run underneath the densest and most important part of the city. Not all lane miles are equal; quite the opposite in fact.

At this point my opposition to the tunnel is entirely about harm reduction. The money is absurd, and the north and south portals are mind-bogglingly retrograde bomb blasts in the middle of a city that needs every precious square inch of central development it can get.

This comparison with the Ballard Bridge is a little meaningless. And doesn't McGinn live in West Seattle? Shouldn't he compare it to the WS br?

It sounds good at first, but if you go across the Ballard Bridge often enough, and see what happens when it's open for boats to pass under, or stuck open, you realize, it does a truly awesome job.

To say the tunnel could even approach Ballard Bridge levels of service is to make is sound better than it did before.

This post is another wee suggestion that the mayor n' Stranger show is less about transportation planning and more about about fun and political romance and trying to capture reader loyalty.

Of course, this isn't the first time a paper's decided there's no harm in bedding its favorite electeds, but I hope my favorite newsboys find the charm of it fades sooner rather than later.

Ooh, that's not proofed at all. Sorry.

You guys, the tunnel crowd doesn't care how much traffic the tunnel actually moves. They care about the waterfront.

So here's a REALLY BIG HINT for the transit people - come up with a surface option that opens up the waterfront, and you win.

Good luck getting re-elected McLiar.

Fuck it, lets build that guy's suspension bridge idea from West Seattle, link it to an elevated vehicle skyway up Pike Street (with extra Light Rail tracks!), over the Market, through the Convention Center, and down into I-5. It's as plausible of any idea as where we're heading.

The funniest and saddest thing about the entire discussion was either O'brien or du Place pointing out, simply, that the state, county, and city can't afford to finish the tunnel anyway, and they're probably right. We can't go so far into the hole without risking our state credit rating. Everything else aside, everything else aside, it's better to just eat the traffic for a few years and rebuild the viaduct. Yes, that will suck for West Seattle. We can flood West Seattle with buses upon buses for that limited time period.

The Stranger and other sources need to also start hammering the fact that the tunnel project's impacts on the city are largely uninsured. I hadn't even heard about that until last night, and had no idea that even Lloyd's of London wouldn't agree to cover the project and the possible harm from settlement to downtown Seattle. One building gets terminal damage and there goes the entire project budget. Do any of you really think someone like say, Martin Selig or Paul Allen, wouldn't pursue the state for the full market value of their lost building? They would, and they would win.

Part of me now wishes that at 3am an earthquake would take down the viaduct tonight with no one on it and no injuries to anyone just to make something happen.

@21, more accurately, they care about their FANTASY WATERFRONT. The waterfront is actually, in real life, not particularly valuable; it's barely used for anything except tourism. Everyone talks about "connecting" or "opening up" the waterfront, but no one is talking about making the waterfront a place that attracts people. They talk about stuff like a park, which is anti-people.

Oh, and I will say this: If Timmy Eyman buries the tunnel via the toll clause on I-1053, I will vow for at least one calendar day to not think ill of him and to consider him my BFF for that lone calendar day.

"If I were advising him" being the point.

The fact remains that the Mayor only allows people frothing at the mouth to advise him, and in the end, does what he wants. While you very well may be frothing at the mouth over Mayor McGinn, keeping him on message, especially with such a good piece, and the idea of using it over and over again, is just not what this man does best.

He is a blessing to my side, to be sure, and while your advice would be good for him, I'm glad he won't take it.

Big deal. $2.8 billion. Ancient Ballard Bridge. Yawn. We spent more than that in Iraq, with no return on investment. I'm unconvinced. Waterfront? We need a port and freight mobility. Does anyone at the Stranger understand the role that freight mobility plays in the economy of Seattle? While the tunnel isn't my favorite option, something needs to be done. Definitely not a boulevard. This is the same process that kills transit in Seattle, and why Seattle is not a world class city.

The tunnel is a stupid project.

If you like to bleat about "wasting taxpayer dollars," look no further than this tunnel project for a reason.

@27, but does the tunnel do anything for freight mobility? I'm not convinced that it does. It's going to drop it's entire load of cars right in the middle of freightland, in fact.

Maybe we should be building a tunnel for freight instead, from the cranes to the rail line.

Tacoma is the NW's freight terminal of the future. Our container port is destined to become a dog park or freeway ramp, one or the other. Maybe both. There's no room for freight in a civic vision that is equal parts "bedroom community" and "shopping mall".

@29, I'm convinced that if surface/transiteers had spent their energy years ago not only doing a hugely better job planning and presenting their plan and responding civilly to public questions about it, but also speaking with the freight-dependent employer constituency as people with vital interests rather than castigating them as misguided demons, the tunnel vision might not have won the freighters' hearts as the most likely reliable option for their businesses.

(That sentence was too long, but my coffee intake is just insane so far today.)

Smell @27.
Yes, I think you are right. We can all put aside our differences and agree that a tunnel would be a better use of money than the invasion of Iraq!

@24: "Opening up" the waterfront is the first step towards making it into something that attracts people.

I don't share your cynicism. This is a one-time-ever opportunity with enormous potential. Should the roads be removed from that property, it hasn't been committed to any particular usage yet, and there's a very interesting discussion to be had about what should go there. Your suggestions of a rabbit warren of markets, bars, restaurants has merit. So does your suggestion of building a huge architecturally significant tower. How about an amphitheater as well? Or even city owned development, the proceeds of which can be put towards walk, bike, ride, and other worthwhile projects. And, if it starts out as a park, that still leaves open the possibility of more interesting things in the future if the park thing doesn't pan out.

And what's with all the tourism bashing? Personally, I want to live in a city that attracts visitors from all over the region, country, and world. Besides, tourism pays many of our bills.

It will also be 3-5 minutes SLOWER than the existing Viaduct.

And that's both with and without the tolling.

@4 is correct and @5 is disingenuous.

About 40 to 50 percent of the current usage of the Viaduct is trips originating in or ending in Downtown, and the DBT has ZERO downtown exits.

Which is a net loss of capacity no matter how you slice it - for twice the price.

@30 - Exactly. If the surface crowd had leadership that was a) actually interested in debating the subject as opposed to screaming about what a bunch of idiots/cowards/republicans/trolls everyone else is, and b) able to acknowledge and address at least some of the competing interests involved here, they might have actually won this fight. Maybe they still could.

Instead, they've undermined themselves with polemics.

@32, I'm not tourist-bashing. Though I'll be honest and say that whenever I see a cruise ship -- floating toilet of the sea -- in Elliot Bay I say a little prayer that it sinks. Tourism is fine. But you don't destroy the thing that tourists come to see in order to attract more of them.

I'm afraid you missed the joke about the tower. The only significance of the Hotel of Doom in Pyongyang is that it is a symbol of a failed state that can't do anything right. Maybe I should have mentioned the Renaissance Center in Detroit instead. To be honest, towers are not going to work there -- but low-rise buildings with street-level uses work anywhere.

The problem with tourism as a waterfront use is that it's low-intensity. There are tourists, but not that many of them. They go to Ivar's or Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe (the fake new one) and stand around, then they go somewhere interesting. It's just not that big a deal. And it's not going to get more so.

What would make the waterfront attractive is WATERFRONT USE. That means boats. If you can think of something that would attract a hundred thousand boats in and out the central waterfront, you've solved the problem.

But that's not the way people think; they think "durr, big open spaces, look real purty, like being in the countryside". But countryside belongs in the countryside, not in the center of downtown. We have it exactly backwards; we want countryside downtown at the same time that the countryside is being paved over as rapidly as possible. Go look at the outlying counties sometime. This is a regional problem, not just a downtown one.

I agree that it is at least remotely possible to reuse open space for something interesting in the future. The N and S tunnel portals obliterate possibility forever. If I thought there was the slightest chance that something good would ever happen in the space above the tunnel, though, I'd support the hell out of the tunnel. Alas, I do not.

@30, I agree. In Seattle, "visionary" means "I picture a lot of...nothing...here", and "advocacy" means "you don't need to know anything about it, just shut up and say yes". The only plan that ever appeared for surface was Cary Moon's, which is hostile to the very idea of a city.

I think if you solved the freight problem, in a big, visionary way that not only linked the cranes with the trains but foresaw a doubling or tripling of freight volume somehow, the rest of the picture would have fallen into place almost automatically. But we never think ahead.

@36: "I say a little prayer that it sinks"

LOL.

You may be right about the potential of the waterfront. Or not. Regardless, my original point still stands - if the surface crowd wants to get anywhere, they should throw a bone to the naive romantics among us who won't so easily let go of our "fantasy".

P.S. I got the joke about the tower, but I actually still think it's a good idea, in part because it would end the Wright family's monopoly on the space needle business.

@36, they're completing it! I'm excited!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Ho…

@30 and @37 have good points.

The problem is that most of the people pushing the Surface Transit option, unintentionally, used phrasing that scared the bejesus out of the business folk.

If a surface transit option is revived, it's going to have to have combined freight/transit lanes with pre-emptive signaling for any transit usage (bus not taxi, low emission truck not current emission truck) to ensure freight and transit can get thru faster than the rest of the vehicles. And the bike people will need to learn to shut up, cause they just piss off the business folk, and it's a small fraction of project funding to add bike lanes, easily done thru local measures later than at the initial point of construction.

I doubt they'll do that tho.

Best thing pro-bike and pro-transit people could do today is file a BRIEF individual response from 1-9 people at a time on a SINGLE point of argument, forcing the DEIS to address that issue for the next hearing. One small point per person. Part out all the points, and have your kids file each one. Use people not in the 98103 zip to file most of them.

@29, @30, the tunnel is not my favorite. Another viaduct is, but sadly, I don't think that will happen. My humble opinion is that the tunnel is better than nothing. With the volume of trade that Seattle gets, and the increase in trade with Asia and the rest of the world that is happening, I don't think the port will evaporate into thin air. I agree, Tacoma has invested, to their benefit, a fortune in their port.

I really like port commissioner Rob Holland, who advocates for investment in a lower environmental impact port, but a vital, healthy port. Seattle became big due to it being the launching pad for the Gold Rush. It is a port city, and believe the port is an asset that will remain. We can build office buildings and condos wherever we want, but not a port. That said, I think we can make the waterfront scenic and have a some tourism in the mix.

I also favor a huge investment in mass transit and bicycle infrastructure, which Seattle has diddled on for decades. That would take vehicles off the road, ease gridlock, and lower our carbon footprint.

@41, if you favor huge investment and transit and bikes, you really should oppose this, as the City is going to have to find $811m to support this project that has zero transit capital funding.

If we had just left well enough alone and let the state rebuild the viaduct, we would have saved the City north of $500m, enough to handle a very big chunk of the transit and bike master plans. If we renegotiate now, we can still save at least $300m or so, which is enough to complete the ENTIRE bike master plan.

It's clear by now that a tunnel will both "massively expand road surfaces" while taking the viaduct's seven lanes down to four, so forget the tunnel.

We already have a transit tunnel and a communter/freight rail tunnel through downtown Seattle but we should build another!

No wait, we should tear down the viaduct and put all the traffic on the surface streets. But we'll have more transit even though there is no funding for it (since under the state constitution gas taxes can only go for roads). Well, what the hell. We already have the most regressive tax structure in the country, and 1.5% of every purchase we make goes to Metro for transit or to Sound Transit, but we should hike the sales tax anyway. So we can have more transit right next to our existing transit tunnel. And commuter/freight rail tunnel. So it will be much, much better transit.

Then, because downtown parks are stupid and for billionaires (and their millionaire friends), we can run all the surface traffic and much, much, much more (unfunded) transit through the wasteland of the Olympic Sculpture Billionaire Playpen, the Myrtle Edwards Billionaire Playground and the Port of Seattle Billionaire Playfield. Hempfest 2011 can be conducted on transit!!

Problem solved.

Since I have lived here, I have noticed the city of Seattle has no intention of doing anything for the people. The projects are completed for the political monkeys with the connections with the deepest pockets. Look at our transportation options:

1. Buses - that cant run in the snow very well. However we are constantly stuck with fee increases. Yet, King County Metro is never held accountable when the buses are rarely on time, and constantly blow thru the traffic lights, somethings causing backups and more gridlock in dwntwn.

2. Paul Allen's street car to NO where. Great, we can get the tourists from Westlake to Lake Union. SO what about us commuters and taxpayers? Now we plan to "extend" the street car up to cap hill, via 1st Hill, down Broadway. Oh, yea thats right...Broadway where there are buses already. Yet 12th ave is un- serviced.

3. Now we have this tunnel option. Why??

We need to have a real option for fixing the transportation issues in this city. This is not it!