Before voting on Referendum 1, I read the final version of the environmental impact statement. My (independent, I’m not on the SECB) reading of the EIS for the tunnel matches with Dominic’s.
Per the report, as Dom has clearly been reporting on for a while, the tunnel will do nothing to reduce traffic in downtown Seattle. In fact, it will likely increase traffic, as drivers attempt to avoid tolling or need to bypass the tunnel to get downtown (as the tunnel has no downtown exits). (The report does not explicitly compare the tunnel to a surface street. One can infer this comparison by taking the numbers projected post-tunnel with numbers projected after a catastrophic failure of the viaduct right now. We can reasonably assume a surface street—like Lakeshore Boulevard in Chicago—would be better than the post-disaster case.)
Putting it bluntly: A pile of rubble—from the perspective of someone who walks, cycles or has to drive through the city core—would do about as good of a job as the tunnel of moving people about the city.
Who loses if the tunnel isn’t built? Mostly it’s the communities surrounding Seattle. Traffic would be significantly worsened (if no tunnel) for the alternative North-South routes: I-5 and I-405, as through traffic on the West Coast of the United States diverts around Seattle. (It’s worth noting the original purpose of I-405 was to divert long-haul traffic around Seattle. The sprawl-promoting was a side effect.)
Bluntly again: If Seattle is a gigantic speedbump to you, the tunnel is your friend. You probably aren’t a Seattle taxpayer in that case. As the tolled versus non-tolled data shows, most of you deadbeats aren’t willing to pay the costs of driving under the Seattle speedbump.
There are a few subtle points here.
Street traffic in Seattle goes up with the tunnel—whether the tunnel is tolled or not. Eliminating tolling mostly helps traffic on I-5, doing little to change the boost in traffic to city streets. (This is contrary to the Seattle Times’ pro-tunnel argument—most of the problems with the tunnel are due to the planned tolling, and could be fixed by alternative revenue sources.)
Transit ridership is projected to increase, proportionally with the increased vehicles on Seattle’s streets with the tunnel—a small plus.
“If Seattle is a gigantic speedbump to you, the tunnel is your friend. You probably aren’t a Seattle taxpayer in that case.”
That’s very true.
Keep in mind, though, that the original proposed solution was a new elevated structure. The reason Seattle taxpayers are on the hook for the cost of the tunnel is they *rejected* that cheaper, more practical option in favor of something that would be prettier and help property values along the waterfront.
Now, I know you’d like to pretend that people outside Seattle don’t matter and the SR-99 corridor is therefore irrelevant, but there are a lot of us who need to get in and out of the city for various reasons. We can’t all live on Capitol Hill.
If you put a surface street on the waterfront to replace the elevated viaduct, would it travel at 55 mph? Only if you install skywalks every 3 blocks to allow pedestrians to cross and keep the flow of traffic going. If you dont, then you need stop signs or red lights to allow pedestrian traffic to cross and at that point, traffic no longer flows at 55mph and the road no longer really can be classified as a highway.
Then you get to deal with a percentage of cyclists dont like the break their momentul when cruising downhill, Seneca is steep and when cars are traveling at high speed, with no skywalks or overpass, they would have to close down Seneca from 1st ave to the watefront to prevent cyclists from being killed stone dead every other month.
While the tunnel isnt the best solution, the alternative to using the money to fund mass transit and widen I-5, will never happen. The state would never allow a city (yet alone Seattle) to shitcan a project and use the money for whatever they want, its just stupid. The money was earmarked for road construction, not for street cars and bike lanes.
Good arguments.
I like how Purple Mark and others who do live on Capitol Hill described it, something along the lines of “It just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, and it does that at great cost.”
@2 gee, someone should tell that to the people who have SR-99 go thru all those stoplights to the south near Boeing and up in Greenwood and parts north …
Face it, you got nothing. And that at premium prices for a substandard Deep Premium Tunnel.
I’m not going to say a surface boulevard couldn’t work. But I suspect by the time you design it to handle the required traffic flow it will be a lot more of an obstacle to pedestrians than the current elevated structure is.
“If Seattle is a gigantic speedbump to you, the tunnel is your friend. You probably aren’t a Seattle taxpayer in that case.”
Downtown Seattle is a groan-worthy obstacle to an awful lot of Seattle taxpayers who live and work north, west, east and south of downtown.
“Blah, blah, blah, will likely increase traffic as drivers attempt to avoid tolling, blah, blah…”
And… now what happens when the tolls go away in 8-10 years? Why! Miracle of miracles! For the next 40-50 years there’ll be a clear route to bypass downtown for all those traveling north-to-south! Shazam! Just like magic-n-shit! Already there waiting for you and ready to go.
But it would be a stupid, stupidhead thing to plan for 10 years+ down the road, when what’s really important is how my life is today, right now. This very second. Maybe — if I’m feeling thoughtful and contemplative– I’ll think about tomorrow too.
But that long term future, down the road? Way too many tomorrows away to include any of that data in the ol’ mental calculus, I tells ya!
@4
My apologies, I have never owned a car and never traveled south of Spokane Street on I-99.
I believe my comments about the safety aspects involving cyclists, when cruising down Seneca, would be spot on. City would have to close that road from 1st ave to the water front to prevent cyclists from being killed by cars (who have the right of way).
And again, to use state funds earmarked for road construction, for local mass transit, never going to happen in a million years. If the viaduct tunnel gets canceled, you will never be able to use that money for anything. It will immediatly get diverted to pay for 520 bridge or the Portland/Vancouver Interstate bridge. Many who are against the tunnel, assumes that this will happen, but its really wishful thinking. You’ll get a re-built viaduct or nothing at all.
Tolls would be used for O&M and there are plans for broader tolling schemes so the idea that tolls vanish with plans for more tolling is wishful thinking. Cheaper tolls, by the way, inclue two scenarios that toll tunnel traffic AND traffic headed from West Seattle into downtown.
Of course, tolling might be impossible to implement systemwide if, say, a shoddy toll scheme shows up in between DT and other population centers.
As far as a bypass goes, the viaduct was originally just that. Seattle voters passed a measure to build ramps into the city.
By then the damage had been done and our loss was Shoreline and Renton’s gains. We didn’t start to recover from the freeway frenzy until the 90s. We built a streetcar to lure folks back!
Reject Ref 1 🙂
Damn, I was hoping someone over there would break from the herd.
And… now what happens when the tolls go away in 8-10 years?
Is there an unequivocal guarantee that they will stop tolling within ten years? ‘Cause if there isn’t, then they won’t.
@8: there’s lots of uses for gas tax under ST5 😉
@10: Surprised that the doctor’s against it? Smart people, ruining everything!!!
@10: I thought about this one long and hard, believe it or not. And I double-checked Dominic’s math and analysis–because I’m a nerd like that.
@8: I’d vastly prefer the city, county and state’s limited road dollars to go to the West end of 520 than this project. And I honestly believe that the 520 – I-5 – Seattle interchange in the more important roadway, more deserving of a tunnel or new bridge.
@11,
Aren’t they required by law to stop tolling once the project is paid off?
@10, it would have been surprising if the good doctor were the one – though such a great writer on science and economics, not much on transportation stuff. This one reminded me of his conclusions about local driving habits after he visited (gasp) Bellevue that one time.
Which in turn reminded me of cressona’s memorable comment on that post.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
@15: The cynical article he wrote in response to a bitter tirade from Kemper Freeman (which he alluded to as sarcasm in comment 7)? That’s your proof that Doctor G can’t say anything in response to the tunnel? Well, if you’re going to try to gnaw the beams so unashamedly, might as well do it in grand style, right?
You want to see a city with less congestion? Visit Detroit. Or Buffalo. Now that they have no industry, there’s no congestion problem at all.
Cities have congestion. Get over it. Every city that you drool over with an effective mass transit system has unimaginable congestion–that’s why people take transit. Even Dan Savage will admit that: you take the subway or the El because it’s faster than driving, not because it’s pleasant.
The point of the tunnel is NOT to alleviate congestion. So all your arguments about how it doesn’t help congestion are simply uninformed and misguided.
The point is–are there alternatives to congestion? And your answer is, there shouldn’t be any alternative.
Well, not even blessed New York is like that.
The Brooklyn Bridge is jammed up 24 hours a day, because it’s free. But if you want to save an hour, you can pay a toll and take the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel.
Who pays the toll? Lots of people. People whose time and goods are valuable. So if you love New York, you’d back the tolled tunnel as an alternative to congestion.
Instead, you back ST5, which eliminates the HOV lane on I-5 so that even transit riders can’t catch a break from congestion, which is completely insane.
@16, I’m not aiming for “proof that Doctor G can’t say anything in response to the tunnel” – quite the opposite. Now that you mention it, I wish he’d have said more about it, and more often, over the last year or so.
I love the superb sharpness of his writing on matters that have attracted his sustained attention and study during the years he’s had me reading him so avidly here. Science, medicine, economic theory. He can’t contribute as often since he began practicing medicine, I know.
Which is why I have no reason to doubt that if he’d had the paid time to give transportation issues the same sort of attention that Dominic has, the level of acuity and comprehensiveness on all the tunnel talk around here would be a lot higher. We’d be going into this election a lot better protected against the spin, falsehood and hype being hurled around. You know?
@17: The construction of more and more freeways in Detroit strangled the city and gave that one big push folks needed to abandon the city en masse and exacerbated social upheavel that made things worse. I should know, my grandma and mother grew up there. And you’ve been called on your BS over the HOV lane — it’s simply not true that it will “remove” an HOV lane. In fact, there’ll be a new HOV lane off Stewart to actually speed things along. Shocking!
And all that congestion you cite comes from density and doing. There’s people there, lots and lots of people. They cared more about getting people into the city instead of figuring out how to get people around them. The city of big shoulders asserted itself, the big apple made itself truly big. Robert Moses had to more or less force freeways through to get things done, and what happened? Nassau County happened. Ooooh, bravo.
@18: Nice spin on your own spin <3
@13 –
Agree with the comments on 520 and the I-5 interchange, but would add that the seawall should be a very very high priority. We now have ‘compromise’ solutions on the table for the viaduct and 520 that only demonstrate a continuing and long-term inability for SDOT and WSDOT to work together.
By voting against the tunnel the implication is that some other solution will come forward that is more palatable. I see no data to support that based on the last 10 years of dysfunction between our transportation agencies.
Mercer weave still in place – check
Reducing HOV/express lane capacity on I-5 – check
Stupid, stupid transit integration on designed Montlake 520 interchange – check check check
I voted against this piece of shit, but have zero faith that people involved in PSN movement have the ability to deliver anything better.
@19: Under ST5, the southbound HOV lane between Mercer and Spokane is converted to general purpose use during peak hours. Fact. That is an elimination, not BS. (After all, who gives a shit if it’s an HOV lane at 3:00 a.m. on Sundays.) You simply do not know what you are talking about.
And yes, the express lane entrance at Stewart Street is made HOV, but the far more frequently used ramps at Cherry and Columbia streets are made general purpose. So there’s FAR MORE general purpose traffic on the express lanes.
The whole point is to have fewer HOV lanes to improve the throughput.
Basically, a solution that Tim Eyman put on the table years ago that truly fucks over transit and carpools.
But that’s pretty much the intent of tunnel-haters. Since you are determined to squeeze everyone on to fewer lanes, you’re willing to throw bus riders under the bus in order to make your numbers look good.
@21: Er, it is BS because you’re calling a reduction in use an elimination. Even if you have it for an hour a day, it’s still available and, well, not eliminated.
As far as your attempts at spinning it as anti-transit goes, I’ll pause to remind you that there’s actual intent for transit in the ST5 option. In fact, I’ll go so far as to point out that your argument is so patently dishonest it sounds like you’re desperate. Pivoting to a nonsense argument regarding “throwing bus riders under the bus” is as big a whopper as putting a bus on the pro-tunnel campaign placard.
If you want to check your math: Stewart has 18,500 total throughput, Columbia has 16,700 coming off, Cherry is 11,200 on and Stewart’s nearby friend Olive is 26,000 on. The number of people getting on at Olive is almost the same as get off/on at Cherry/Columbia.
And what buses use the HOV lanes in that portion of I-5, by the way? I can only think of 3 different CT lines and a couple of Metro buses. For buses from the south end, they’re exiting already and so that new traffic configuration wouldn’t matter much. Buses to/from the north end use the Stewart access.
So I think you’re grasping at straws, sorry.
@22: Having an HOV lane for an hour a day counts as preserving HOV capacity? Wow, you’re even more pathetic than I thought. (I love having you remind us about the intent for transit. Well, of course it’s absolutely unfunded–and given how desperately Metro has lied to get its latest car tab, never will be funded. And after we get rid of HOV lanes during peak hours, all that magically-funded extra transit can sit and spew diesel fumes in the general purpose lanes.) Do you actually live in the real world?
Baconcat, here’s the bottom line. We can dig the tunnel and still dispense with HOV lanes during peak hours (not eliminate them of course–they’ll still be there at 3:00 a.m. on Sundays) to boost your precious throughput numbers. Did you ever think about that? That we can still trash all the HOV lanes even if we build the tunnel? Which means the tunnel numbers would be just that much better?
I mean, it’s obvious that if you have some ingenious system to run the express lanes better we should do that, regardless of whether or not we build the tunnel, right?
Well, obviously, it’s NOT better to make your ill-advised changes, because the entire point of the current HOV system through downtown Seattle is to provide an incentive to people to ride transit and carpool. Yes, getting rid of that incentive will result in more vehicles going through downtown Seattle–but why would you want to encourage more SOVs through downtown Seattle? You wouldn’t–unless you’re grasping to find a way to get numbers up after you fail to replace the Viaduct.
Tunnel supporters don’t depend on destroying the HOV system through downtown Seattle to pretend that somehow that will make things better. Only the anti-tunnel crowd does that.
Baconcat sez: If we trash the downtown HOV system, we can put a bunch more vehicles through downtown Seattle and won’t need a tunnel! Who cares if transit and carpools get fucked over by that? It’s the PRINCIPLE of tearing down highways and not replacing them that matters!
Well, tunnel supporters don’t tend to be short-sighted idiots like Tim Eyman and you.
Why tunnel opponents are suddenly so concerned about how many vehicles can get through Seattle is completely insane. Who gives a shit about how many VEHICLES get through the city? Isn’t the point to put PEOPLE through the city?
So why are you advocating a system that CUTS DOWN on the amount of HOV usage?
The reason is, because you’re stupid and dishonest.
I repeat, NOTHING in the tunnel plan prevents us from going down your insane merry path to fuck over carpools and transit riders in downtown Seattle. Go ahead! After the tunnel opens, by all means get rid of the HOV lanes through downtown Seattle during peak hours and see if that makes things better.
And with your support, it appears likely that Eyman will get us to a point where we don’t have an HOV system.
@ Orv – What the hell does Capitol Hill have anything to do with the viaduct??
@23: You do know that the tunnel doesn’t actually improve transit and increases transit travel times by up to 20 minutes in some cases, right? Writing this hagiography of tunnel supporters while grasping onto the only — and entirely meaningless — thing you can find to suggest that tunnel opponents are “anti-transit” is inane.
HOV/Express capacity is kept, dependence on long distance rail increases (i.e. Lynnwood by 2023!) and there’s more transit inherent to a plan that doesn’t rely on a freeway with 2 lanes and a third ghost lane to “improve” downtown transit by increasing travel times and demolishing regional transit.
Nice try, though 😉
@25 Way to completely miss the argument. If the ST5 recommendations for the downtown HOV system are so great, why not make them now? Taking down a bunch of HOV signs doesn’t cost anything.
Oy Vey! So for the future of traffic patterns, environmental impact and flow in this city we’re supposed to rely on the McGinn yes-press “analysis” (entrenched, much?) of a journalist who opened previous articles on this subject admitting to having not read the “thousands and thousands of pages” – your words not mine, Dom – included in the final environmental impact statement, the Stranger’s resident doctor, who answers questions like, “Does Diet Soda Make Me Fat?,” and the group from the Reject Referendum 1 campaign. Love your writing guys, love the people who are passionate about their city, but let me say this in as polite a way as possible – YOU’RE NOT TRANSPORTATION PLANNERS! Dom, while you were learning to write like a superstar, another guy was somewhere else learning how to be a transportation planner. I don’t know any way else to break it to you, to our single-issue Mayor, and the rest of the people in our community who just can’t resist waving the “it’s our city” banner. Guess what?? It was your city a few years ago, when this debate came to life, and YOU elected city leaders to work on these projects. Maybe you’re having buyer’s remorse because you were asleep at the wheel electing people who disagree with you on this, but who’s fault is that? You sent them there to do a job and they’re doing it. Seattle is afflicted with people who spend lots of time articulating and envisioning, but not much time doing. In this case, it’s people who have the best of intentions but honestly are not qualified by education or experience to make any real assessment. How about this – if you want to study impact, go commission a study on the last time lay people jumped in on transportation issues. Go interview the people who lost property and any of us who paid in via our car tabs to the failed people-proposed and people-killed, Monorail project. Remember that little gem? All the good do-bee, envisioning enviros were out there then as well, because they had some vision to exact on everyone else. This was going to be the best thing since sliced bread, and look what happened then? Are we willing to go 0 for 2 in handing this off to people who, while well-intentioned in that Seattleish way, are not qualified as experts on this subject in any sense? I certainly am not. APPROVE REFERENDUM ONE and finally, Seattle can move on, for god’s sake. In the words of Chris Matthews, “this is pathetic.”
@27: All you’re doing is trying to play the “why do you hate freedom” card. In this case, implying flatly that I’m against HOV lanes and transit by opposing a SOV-oriented tunnel lacking substantial longterm transit investment and because an alternative I support changes management of existing facilities.
Your argument is nonsense and I’ve very clearly pointed out its flaws. Trying to force guilt is an absolute failure and only highlights a long-running pattern of bitter backbiting and logical fallacies coming from your keyboard.
Nice try, though 🙂
@29: No one is forcing any guilt. It’s just that ST5 doesn’t make sense because it is not an alternative.
What ST5 says is that if we don’t build the tunnel, we can manage our existing facilities in a way that puts more vehicles through the city (principally by limiting the effectiveness of HOV lanes, which reduce vehicle capacity but increase the incentives for carpools and transit). And ST5 promises a lot of–unfunded–transit.
But we can do those two things whether or not we build the tunnel.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
It’s a false choice.
If ST5 makes sense, we should do it regardless of whether or not we build the tunnel.
The thing is, for reasons that are (or should be) obvious, ST5 doesn’t make sense: (1) trashing the HOV system would hinder, not help, the transition to a less-car-dependent city, and (2) more transit funding would be great, but we already spend twice as much as the next city per capita, and it’s not likely that we’ll see huge increases in spending–but if we can get it, great.