The deep-bore tunnel isn’t evil, it won’t destroy the environment, the city will keep ticking whether we build it or not.
The only problem with the tunnel is the cash. It will cost $4.2 billion for the current Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project that includes the tunnel. The interest on bonds will reportedly cost another $1.9 billion, bringing the total to $6.1 billion. But most drivers won’t pay a $5 one-way toll. They won’t take a freeway with has no exits. The traffic diversion caused by the high tolls, as I write in a long article this week, will require more expensive mitigation for all the Highway 99 traffic that won’t use it. As per on the state’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, this will require redesigning lanes on downtown arterials, optimizing capacity on certain streets, modifying intersections, adding vanpools, beefing up transit, and boosting bus service into and through downtown. The state can’t explain how much this essential mitigation will cost, but everything the state is going to have to do to build the tunnel is, in a nutshell, the same shit the state would have to do if it went with the surface/transit option (which was chosen, then rejected at the behest of well-heeled groups in favor of a tunnel). Previous estimates say surface/transit would cost about $3 billion. So the “tunnel” option, already a megaproject in itself, is really only one half of the mega-megaproject we’re signing up for when we pick the tunnel. Because we’re going to have to build surface/transit, too.
That actual cost of all of this—the tunnel and the surface work combined—could total $7.2 billion (plus billions more in interest). Love or hate the tunnel, let’s be square here: We don’t have that money. Here’s what we do have:
The state has committed $2.4 billion, from gas tax bonds. That’s essentially in the bank.
The Port of Seattle has pledged $300 million, but we don’t have it yet.
The city has pledged $930 million, but we don’t have that yet, either.
The state says it will come up with $400 million from tolling bonds, but the legislature has yet to authorize them.
The tunnel is actually a $4.2 billion project, $1.9 billion in financing for the interest, and up to $3 billion for mitigation project on surface streets and transit. Who will pay that bill? Pardon me if this sounds strident, but it’s important here…
WE’RE GOING TO NEED BILLIONS OF DOLLARS MORE.
The pro-tunnel argument is this: It’s just money. Someone, somewhere will find that money. Let’s Move Forward, the pro-tunnel campaign, is proving that it’s good at finding money from their friends. Downtown business, labor, and nearly everyone in the local political establishment is throwing money at the pro-tunnel campaign. They’re out-fundraising the anti-tunnel groups in run-up to the August referendum vote. The Mariners gave $5,000, the Westin Hotel gave $5,000, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce gave over $20,050, the Downtown Seattle Association gave $20,550, and property owners downtown have contributed thousands more. They’ve raised about $130,000 and are reporting about $15,000 more every week (while the anti-tunnel campaign is expecting to run to the ballot with less than a quarter of that money).
The pro-tunnel folk are essentially promising that the money will be there when we need it.
Okay, fair question then, where will the extra billions—to cover the city’s part of the tunnel, the money from the Port, the unknown amount required for mitigation (a.k.a. the surface transit option)—come from?
Just to cover the city’s baseline obligation to the tunnel—$930 million—we could be paying a Chex party mix of property tax levies, utility taxes, tolls on other roads. The Port’s baseline $300 million, mostly funded from property taxes on King County residents, will be coming out of our annual property tax bill. We’ll be paying those bills for years.
And what about the rest—the billions for transit and mitigation?
More gas taxes? More car tab fees? Even more utility rate hikes? Added sales taxes for buses? Higher parking rates for street improvements? Additional property taxes? And we haven’t even touched cost overruns typical for a project like this.
It’s going to cost a lot—billion of dollars, largely from Seattle residents—and it’s going to come out of our pockets years after this summer’s decision on the tunnel. It’s just money, sure. But it’s our money. Enough money to build Portland’s light-rail network twice. And to be clear: It’s not the money of big business and the political constellation (the ones paying the campaign and making the promise) that will pay for the final tab for the tunnel. The tunnel will mostly be paid for by drivers, homeowners, renters, utility rate payers, sales-tax payers, bus riders…
The final bill for the tunnel—the tunnel plus the surface/transit option and all the financing—will be borne mostly by Seattle’s middle class and lower-income residents, not by the wealthy and connected people who backed, promoted, and underwrote the campaign for the tunnel.
But it’s just money. Mostly yours.
Thanks Dom. I’ve been trying to make this point for a while. The tunnel + mitigation is the true costs. Since the I-5 tolling article in the Times last week, we also learned that the state wants to use tolls to generate $183 million to pay for another northbound lane on the highway (as in STI5). So add that to the pile.
We can reap huge profits from paving over Pioneer Square and the ID!
Here’s how we can pay Seattle’s portion. Institute a tax of $18.6 million each on each one of these 55 organizations:
http://letsmoveforward.org/index.php?pag…
Just because a billionaire or millionaire rides in a plug-in electric limo to Boeing Field, doesn’t make it green.
Unless you count the vast amount of cash subsidy for double the total pollution at twice the price.
That money could have been used, as China requires for every province, to double wind energy by 2020, instead of the epic boondoggle of the Seattle-subsidized Deeply Tolled Tunnel that moves tax dollars from the poor and middle class to the Rich and Ultra-Rich, most of whom aren’t Seattle citizens or taxpayers.
Investing in wind farms would be Green.
Investing in polluting tunnels fir the Rich isn’t.
It is money out of our pockets…but on such a small scale. My position is that our city is going to be here how long.?. Hopefully hundreds of years right? If that is the case, then let’s build a better city – one project at a time.
Using the Portland rail cost comparison didn’t seem like it was worth much. Seattle-ites should have bit the bullet when Portland did…but we didn’t and now we have to pay twice as much. If people in the northwest would put their money where their mouth is, we would be in a different place – from a transit standpoint.
It is money out of our pockets…but on such a small scale. My position is that our city is going to be here how long.?. Hopefully hundreds of years right? If that is the case, then let’s build a better city – one project at a time.
Using the Portland rail cost comparison didn’t seem like it was worth much. Seattle-ites should have bit the bullet when Portland did…but we didn’t and now we have to pay twice as much. If people in the northwest would put their money where their mouth is, we would be in a different place – from a transit standpoint.
Money, in a recession. During a “jobless recovery“. During a time when we are already slashing social services in order to pay for road repairs.
In an era where municipalities are recognizing that car culture is fundamentally unsustainable, and are turning to more intelligent transit options. Viz the changes made in London and Paris, for example. Car taxes to enter the city centre, bicycle and walking belts created where there were once cars.
If Seattle wants to be a world-class city as we head into the future, we should lead by NOT BUILDING THIS TUNNEL, and instead making ourselves an icon of green design: Open the waterfront, make the surface/transit option happen. Solve the actual problems instead of building a multi-billion dollar road that won’t even solve the single problem it is supposed to solve.
Don’t Fuck This Up, Washington. Don’t.
There are currently five all-purpose limited access lanes in each direction (north and south) through downtown Seattle. Two are on I-5 and three are on Highway 99. If you believe we can eliminate 60% of this capacity without any negative impact on the industrial economy of this city, you’re simply mistaken. One flat tire on I-5 would lead to unimaginable congestion, and a death-in-an-overturned-burning-vehicle accident under the Convention Center would make Snowpocalypse look like the Indy 500.
But all anyone wants to believe is that if we just put a couple more buses on the streets (which can only run on the same few lanes), everything will be just fine. Tell that to the businesses and industries that can’t afford to have their products stranded. They’ll move elsewhere. Fast.
@8 Yeah, and how much free-er will we all be when we can get trapped in a tunnel build on in-fill when a car blows a tire or an engine block catches on fire?
Especially during a bumper-to-bumper rush hour. (Which is what you want right? So we can pay for this travesty.)
@7
Actually we sold off some plot of land for 20 million, most of which is being used for road repairs. So were not really slashing anything to pay for that. Maybe in a few years, but not now. Also, gas taxes pay for road maintinence and construction, it really cant be diverted to pay for anything else. You and I may not like it, but thats the way it is.
Being green wont make this a world class city. We could be as greener than the Greenvile Greens Soccer Team in Greenland, but hsoting something large like a super bowl or the olympics? No, not enough hotels and technically, not enough hookers.
To tax cars when they enter the city, wont work in Seattle. Those laws will just get recalled via the initiative process, just like we did on the plastic bag fubar. It only works in France because the majority realize this and agree. In Seattle? Wont work, majority still need to use cars. Even the moderate democrats will come out in opposition to this. For some reason lets say it cant be recalled, why thats Seattle’s far left community way of unrolling the welcome mat to anyone who foolishly decides to visit Seattle.
King County is spending 18 billion for light rail, majority doesnt care, we all voted for this and its a sensible investment even though the per mile costs are obscene compared to other cities. But to spend 2 billion on a 2 mile tunnel, just for cars? Aparently thats an outrage.
@9 “Yeah, and how much free-er will we all be when we can get trapped in a tunnel build on in-fill when a car blows a tire or an engine block catches on fire?”
What do you do? You do what they do on 520, which is send a WSDOT Tow Truck and endure a one to two hour bottleneck while they clear out the stalled car. But on 520, east bound traffic can see the west bound one and yes people do indeed slow down to see what all the big deal is. In a tunnel like this, you wont even know theres a stalled car until you exit the tunnel and see a backup.
@10: Sound Transit is spending less than that here, maybe $5bn after bonds and servicing. The remainder goes elsewhere, by law.
The difference is stark, however, when you recognize that the ST system will move two or three times more people. For the same amount, if not less.
Also, sorry, Seattle *wants* to be green.
All of Dom’s articles on this talk about traffic impacts downtown being the same either way. There are no exits from the tunnel to downtown, so it stands to reason that unless the tunnel is literally empty at all times, all of its capacity will be dedicated to throughput, especially to the Port etc., which is VERY useful.
I really want to know what happened to cut & cover. That was the only proposal that made any sense to me at all, and one day it was just *poof* off the table. Why?
@11 truck fires don’t care who you are when you’re trapped underwater in a powerless tunnel during a quake.
But they do burn real good until you die of asphyxiation …
The estimated cost of $8-10 a day round trip becomes $160-200 a month. Who can afford to add that to their existing car expenses? And then there is going to be a surface street on top of it anyway?!
The more I think about the tunnel project, the more I believe it to be a quasi-private north-south access route for the wealthy. Something like you might imagine in a Singapore or an Abu Dhabi. The tunnel will ultimately be a diamond lane of a different sort… call it the Platinum Lane. We ca
n’t have all of those wealthy “job-creators” getting stuck in Seattle traffic, can we?
When all is said and done, I’m certain these fine overly affluent folks will find a way to use the tunnel without paying the tolls either.
@16 limo drivers in plug-in electric cars don’t pay tolls if the vehicles are owned by non-profits.
Fun Fact.
Yes, you – the poor and middle class – pay for their sweet sweet ride.
@14 –
Cut and cover died due to various issues around construction, disruption of the waterfront, and ultimately that it required the Viaduct to come down during construction. The percieved need for WSDOT to mitigate all of this, plus the fact that they really just wanted to rebuild the thing and be done with it, ultimately resulted in a cost issues.
The final proposal was to cut and cover up to about Columbia and then build a new ‘mini-viaduct’ to connect back into that Battery Street Tunnel. It had a little bit of everything that people hated built right in. The earlier versions that connected directly into Mercer were much more visionary and interesting to consider.
“Just to cover the city’s baseline obligation to the tunnel—$930 million”
Dominic, as you pointed out to McGinn during his election, the Surface Option would cost $960 million. We are on the hook for that with all options, including the do nothing non-option.
I’m happy to see that you are starting to come around to my opinion, good for you.
I think that we will, in the end, need the Surface Option as well as a bypass tunnel when a million people move here and we want to convert surface streets into bus only lanes. The question is, what is the state most willing to participate in funding?
The tunnel.
And what McGinn has failed to capitalize on is the mitigation required for the tunnel. He should have been pushing the mitigation to the tunnel diversion starting a year ago.
I think Seattle could have leveraged this into BRT or help funding part of that West Side LR, maybe we still can, just not with the human sandbag as mayor.
Attempting to kill the tunnel and demand a Surface Option completely removes the “mitigation” leverage and puts more on Seattle to come up with money beyond the $930 million we already have to pay. We would get very little help with street improvements after killing the tunnel.
Over the lifetime of the Surface Option the state would implement some kind of bypass, over, under, or through Seattle.
Over the lifetime of the tunnel surface mobility issues will have to be resolved.
In the end, I think we have both, with the state actually participating up front with one if the more expensive parts.
Push the mitigation, make lemonade.
Fwiw, anybody that thinks we will have a $190 million dollar promenade is fooling themselves.
@20, that was mentioned many, many times during the city council’s meetings, as well as the testing, monitor placement align the route. Publicola tried to turn that into a story last year.
Print more money!
@14, cut and cover was “advisory voted” off the table. People rejected both the rebuild and cut-and-cover. “Rebuild viaduct” was a closer vote. The C&C Tunnel was landslide “No”.
@19
I don’t understand why the transit portion of the “surface/transit/I-5” should be expandable over time in lieu of the tunnel. You don’t have to have the car tunnel to continue increasing mobility in the 21st Century Seattle.
@15 truck fires don’t care who you are when you’re trapped underwater in a powerless tunnel during a quake.
If its a strong enough earthquake to collapse the tunnel, then its going to toppple buildings as well. All of the current tunnels stood up to the nisqually earthwuake, no damage.
Kind of a bizarre title for this article. Doesn’t seem to describe the upshot of what’s in it.
Another benefit of doing surface, transit, and I-5 improvements is that if costs rise and you can’t do everything right away, you’ll still get partial benefit from whatever was built to that point. With the tunnel, if you run out of money halfway through you have to bite off the whole thing even if costs escalate precipitously.