Finally.

No cost overruns = Seattle pays for the transit improvements on either side of the tunnel.

Maybe we should put a whole bunch of parking nearby and route busses in and out of downtown. A bike rental shop or two?

Let's form our own state and tell the whiners outside to make do themselves.

A $3 billion tunnel that no one will use. How perfect.

Hey Fnarf, were you for or against the monorail? Just wondering.

@3 hey, the Billionaires and Millionares will use it to go to games in their limos from SLU and Gates Foundation .... they're people ...

Mean, spiteful, Seattle-hating people, but still people.

The the cost of the tunnel isn't all that bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Ho…

I simply do not believe the claim that two-thirds of traffic volume will divert to city streets to avoid a toll. I ride on that motherfucker twice a day, and on any given rush hour, I would happily pay to avoid the clusterfuck that is downtown traffic between 3:30pm and 6:30pm.

I call bullshit on the idea that 66% of my fellow travelers on the existing SR99 will be getting off at the Denny exit to save a few bucks.

Wait, didn't we read from Eli this morning that it's a $3 billion tunnel through which will pass almost as many vehicles as cross the Ballard Bridge each day?

The tunnel is the best option, out of a series of bad options, except there are no other options ready to go.

Even if you have a surface street or re-built viaduct option ready to go, the businesses on the waterfront will probably lawyer up and fight it.

Pyongyang has a subway, is finishing the Ryugyong hotel, is starving, while Seattle bickers. They get the job done. Do we want Pyongyang to kick our ass? A couple of billion ain't bad. Infrastructure ain't cheap. Let's get the job done. And, as @7 said, I will pay $4 or more to stay out of a traffic jam in Seattle. My time is worth it.

@7 it's in the WSDOT study. Read Appendix C and Chapter 9 in full.

That's how insane the Deeply Boring Tunnel is - it literally carries FEWER cars and FEWER trucks than the existing Viaduct.

For twice the price. And $4 to $5 tolls each way.

@10 China has the world's fastest high-speed passenger and freight rail line from Beijing to Tibet.

Faster than our turboprops in the air now.

Face it, we DO live in a third-world nation, but we spend like the British Empire did before it bankrupted itself doing so.

Wait for a strong breeze and go push over the viaduct. Then something will have to be done.

Until then, more talks, more meetings, more initiatives = a broken local government

Sink 520 too. That will get the yuppies to stop arguing about how much of their view is going to be blocked.

This city amazes me. I doubt I will see either the viaduct or the bridge replaced before I head to NYC in a decade.

@11 I don't give a shit what's in any study. The simple common sense behavior of people when faced with the "option" of a 1.5 to 2 hour creep through downtown on any given Friday night vs. paying a $4-5 dollar toll simply doesn't add up to a 66% reduction in traffic volume. Not on this planet. Maybe at 1pm, but not at rush hour.

"businesses on the waterfront will probably lawyer up and fight it."

and those are? argosy, pirates plunder, the crab pot, and who else?

its not like we are dealing with fortune 500 here. Do the rest of the city really care of SEATTLE TSHIRT FACTORY stays on the waterfront?

Yes, the one deep bore tunnel will carry 1/3 the traffic from the viaduct. That's why we need to build THREE deep bore tunnels! WSDOT can do it for free because they'll just classify them as "cost overruns" for Seattle to pay for. Conlin wins!!!!!!!!

Back-of-the-envelope calculations using 2008 traffic data:

Total vehicles per day on the Viaduct at its busiest point: 108K
...south of the central portion: 84K
...through the Battery Street Tunnel: 63K
...north of the Battery Street Tunnel: 85K

To me that looks like 63K in bypass traffic, roughly 21-22K traveling to and from the city from the north and a roughly equal amount from the south, and about the same amount getting on and off entirely within the city.

Current traffic volumes downtown account for all but the 63K bypass number. For example, the 85K north of the Battery Street Tunnel include 63K traveling on into the tunnel and 22K who get on or off and are counted in current traffic volume surveys. To fully replace capacity you need to find 63K in capacity on downtown surface streets.

So check out current volumes on downtown streets:

Elliott Ave at busiest point: 47K
Alaskan Way: 12K
1st-6th max volumes: 12K-21K (excepting 3rd).

So, a 3-lane one-way street (such as many downtown) can seem to hold 21K daily trips at current peak congestion levels. A 6-lane street like Elliott can carry a bit more than double that at current congestion levels. Looking at peak volumes and you can find at least 34K in capacity on N-S downtown streets. The trick is routing people from the 99 offramps to distribute equally across the grid, and routing people from downtown back to the 99 onramps. The big problem would seem to be the E-W traffic on Denny, Mercer, and Broad to the north and other streets like Jackson to the osouth. And you've got an additional 29K to deal with beyond that.

One bright point is that downtown streets have a bit more N-S capacity north of Stewart so you could probably accommodate more like 47K in additional capacity there. But it would still all have to squeeze onto 99 north of Denny.

Transit would presumably be necessary to deal with these chokepoints. So you'd need an E-W transit alternative to relieve traffic getting to and from downtown from 99 north and south, and 29K in additional N-S transit capacity through downtown.

The short-term solution would seem to be adding more bus service to Ballard and West Seattle on 3rd to fill that 29K, combined with beefing up E-W frequent service to take people off those roads to accommodate car traffic getting on and off 99. The long-term solution is a mass transit tunnel along the 99 corridor.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations using 2008 traffic data:

Total vehicles per day on the Viaduct at its busiest point: 108K
...south of the central portion: 84K
...through the Battery Street Tunnel: 63K
...north of the Battery Street Tunnel: 85K

To me that looks like 63K in bypass traffic, roughly 21-22K traveling to and from the city from the north and a roughly equal amount from the south, and about the same amount getting on and off entirely within the city.

Current traffic volumes downtown account for all but the 63K bypass number. For example, the 85K north of the Battery Street Tunnel include 63K traveling on into the tunnel and 22K who get on or off and are counted in current traffic volume surveys. To fully replace capacity you need to find 63K in capacity on downtown surface streets.

So check out current volumes on downtown streets:

Elliott Ave at busiest point: 47K
Alaskan Way: 12K
1st-6th max volumes: 12K-21K (excepting 3rd).

So, a 3-lane one-way street (such as many downtown) can seem to hold 21K daily trips at current peak congestion levels. A 6-lane street like Elliott can carry a bit more than double that at current congestion levels. Looking at peak volumes and you can find at least 34K in capacity on N-S downtown streets. The trick is routing people from the 99 offramps to distribute equally across the grid, and routing people from downtown back to the 99 onramps. The big problem would seem to be the E-W traffic on Denny, Mercer, and Broad to the north and other streets like Jackson to the osouth. And you've got an additional 29K to deal with beyond that.

One bright point is that downtown streets have a bit more N-S capacity north of Stewart so you could probably accommodate more like 47K in additional capacity there. But it would still all have to squeeze onto 99 north of Denny.

Transit would presumably be necessary to deal with these chokepoints. So you'd need an E-W transit alternative to relieve traffic getting to and from downtown from 99 north and south, and 29K in additional N-S transit capacity through downtown.

The short-term solution would seem to be adding more bus service to Ballard and West Seattle on 3rd to fill that 29K, combined with beefing up E-W frequent service to take people off those roads to accommodate car traffic getting on and off 99. The long-term solution is a mass transit tunnel along the 99 corridor.

@14 um, guy, the DBT tunnel is - in their own study - SLOWER THAN THE EXISTING VIADUCT.

Pay tolls each way AND go slower.

That's how insane it is.

@16 for best Conlin post of the day win!

@4, I was strongly in favor of the monorail. While I acknowledge that it had problems, and its board was a little shaky at times, and it was expensive, when it was finished it would have been a grand and glorious thing. Why? GRADE SEPARATION. The reason its board was a little shaky etc. was because all the real powers lined up against it and supported light rail instead -- which is nice, but just as expensive, less capable, and NOT GRADE SEPARATED for much of its length.

Seattle should be thinking about billion dollar transit projects not billion dollar highways.

I like slower better than stopped.

I like re-routing to I-5 for N-S traffic through Seattle even better.

@21 -- So the cost per mile of the tunnel isn't an issue for you for the sections where it's grade-separated? And the $4 toll isn't an issue since that's probably on-par with monorail tickets for the day.

For what it's worth, the light rail train seems to move very efficiently through the sections where it's not grade-separated. I mean, it doesn't ever try to merge with traffic. (and only one or two cars have tried to merge with it)

I would prefer a monorail to a tunnel. I live in the city.

@22 I like tolling I-5 and charging Eyman $500,000 each time he uses it the best.

@23, where on earth are you getting that? The tunnel and monorail are very different beasts. And a toll is not comparable to a ticket, because you're already paying for your car. A tunnel that no one drives in is a waste of money. How is this not clear?

As for light rail, there's more to life than avoiding collisions. The at-grade system impedes traffic, to some degree even when a train is not present. But what does that have to do with the tunnel?

@ 7/14, what's "common sense" actually rarely matches up with facts and solid data... but I don't imagine that matters to you.

"Common sense," however asks why anyone would pay as much as $5 to go one-way for 2/2.5 miles? Sure you might do that on a bad traffic night, but not on a regular basis. And not when there's a street running directly above the tunnel that you can get on.

My monorail ticket price was just a guess.

What I'm trying to get at:

The anti-monorail crowd suggested no one would pay to ride the monorail, that it was too expensive per mile, and that it wouldn't move as many people in the right ways as well as other solutions.

The pro-monorail crowd responded: it's not at grade, a monorail train ride is more comfortable than a bus ride, etc..

Now the anti-tunnel crowd says: no one will pay to drive on it, it's too expensive per mile, and it doesn't move as many people in the right ways as other solutions.

And the pro-tunnel crowd says: it's not at grade, it will shuttle people through downtown without traffic stops, its more comfortable than a bus ride, etc.. etc..

I'd just like to know when to listen to which argument. It seems to me expensive, not-at-grade megaprojects are OK so long as they don't help people go places in their cars. It seems to me expensive, not-at-grade megaprojects are not OK if they do help people go places in their cars.

@26 -- the point: driving on the street for 2 / 2.5 miles is GOING TO SUCK and the city hasn't suggested anything to help MAKE IT NOT SUCK. Every day on the city street above the tunnel will be a bad traffic day.

Where is this $5 toll coming from? The state made multiple toll scenarios the most expensive scenario had at peak a toll of $3.50, with an average cost of $2.15. Other scenarios proposed no toll at all during non-peak periods.

In every other conversation Will in Seattle is derided as a liar and a fool, yet he came into this one quoting $5 and everyone since then has kept that number. It's a falsehood.

The state also said they purposefully estimated at the highest end how much traffic would detour - based just on that the reality is likely to be LOWER amounts of diverted traffic, but also based on polling, could be ¼ to ½ of that amount. When reality strikes - pay a few dollars or make a detour - drivers in most other states where tolling is heavy choose to simply keep going.

Another thing missing from this conversation, and all conversations at the Stranger, is that tolling may impact more than just the tunnel. Tolls may apply fully or partially all the way along the refurb corridor all the way to the West Seattle Bridge.

Something else missing: This project rebuilds Alaskan Way. Where do you think the cars are going to go? Right there: Alaskan Way. The tolling scenarios shows most drivers would NOT divert during peak hours based on a toll. It is during peak hours that traffic on city streets would need to be mitigated.

So:
1. The number of cars diverting is almost certainly less, drastically less, than the state projection, even so, it only represents a 15% increase in car miles traveled through the downtown core.
2. Few cars would divert during peak hours, when the impact on city streets would be noticable.
3. Alaskan Way is being rebuilt with this project, which is the route diverted cars would most likely take.

GET OVER IT. If your going to oppose the tunnel at least do it fact based, please?
(Data source: January 2010, SR 99 Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Updated Tolling Report to the Legislature)

#27: Umm, the surface crowd has been asking for the surface couplet options for years, which would include two one-way surface highways (with greater capacity than the tunnel) PLUS widening I-5 PLUS improved downtown streets PLUS $300 million in transit PLUS the entire cost of the seawall, for the same price as just the 4-lane tunnel.

Everyone would win: Drivers, transit users, Seattle taxpayers... Pretty much everyone but Richard Conlin and the deep bore tunnel contractors.

@29 -- If the surface couplet option expects to pay for all of that for the same cost as the tunnel, the surface couplet option is crazy.

@25, Seattle should be thinking about billion dollar everything projects, transit, highway and bikeway. Throw in a seawall and a Ryugyong Hotel. No more can't do. That's for Republicans and people at the Stranger who supported the monorail, then turned against it. Pyongyang will humiliate us.