Yes, they are avoiding talking about the problems, but I gotta say, this passage pisses me off:

"It was held in a big room at Plymouth Church on November 18—one block from Town Hall—and there were 11 state employees in attendance and only four members of the public. (It turns out, among all the three meetings, only 100 people showed up.)"

So here's the state, having a public meeting. And here's the Stranger, a publication doing awesome work in attempting to sift through all the bullshit on this project, and we can't promote the state's OWN PLANNED EVENT enough to get more than a few dozen people to show up? Really? So now let's have our own event, and get pissed when no one shows up?

Why didn't we use the same level of promotion and engagement on the meetings that were held by the state? Why not publish a feature and scream it from the rooftops then. I'm not saying no one was promoting it. I'm wondering why it seems MORE energy is going into the Stranger's event than went into mobilizing people for the STATE'S OWN EVENT. Why wait around and get pissed AFTER THE STATE GAVE US A FORUM because the state won't show up and listen to us a second time?

It just is really aggravating to me.

I used to work with my local community/neighborhood council. The same gaggle of 0.00001% of the neighborhood would show up to every meeting, do their usual complaining, and we would all go home. Meanwhile, comment boards on the internets are full of people in the community whining about how the city won't listen to them, and they'd really rather that one project that was decided on YEARS ago was totally different, but they never bothered to show up when everyone said, "HEY, anyone have any comments on this new development/project/thing?"

Sorry, but why are we so indignant? If we can't even show up when they give us a forum, why should we be pissed when they don't want to come to our party? We should have taken the fight to them when we had the chance. Instead we had an event where fewer people showed up than panelists showed up to "inform us."

Even if they were all BS, with enough people, we could have sent a message. But nobody fucking showed up.

And now we're indignant?

Makes us look like a bunch of fickle brats, frankly. And I wasn't among the 4 there, so I'm including myself.

I'd put more credibility into this particular report if there wasn't also a paid banner ad at the right of the article touting the very same event. There's no conflict of interest there, right?

Who paid for that ad? Did they also ask for an editorial promoting the event? Or did Dominic offer to do all this gratis just for the honor and pleasure of breathing the same air as the Mayor as the "moderator" of this event?

No shit none of the supporters are going to show up. No shit they don't give you very good answers to your questions. You're a biased hack. Seriously, which tunnel supporter in their right mind would show up to a public event that was moderated by someone - we're all looking at you, Dominic - who is so demonstrably biased in opposition to the tunnel?

So the cars that won't use the tunnel because there won't be an exit downtown are going to be using downtown streets. How is this different than today? They use the viaduct to...get to downtown streets... Where they will be driving. It seems what the tunnel will do is divert the through traffic past the city while the cars that currently go downtown will go downtown.

@1, Why is it the Stranger's responsibility to publicize a state-sponsored event? Why didn't the state publicize it? And @2, How long have you been reading the Stranger online? A day? Because if it's been longer than that, how is it that you haven't noticed that the ads come up randomly, on rotation? I, for example, have a page in front of me that does NOT have an ad for the event.

The banner (which is the ad at the TOP of the page) is for the Nutcracker, and the ones on the side (which are not banner ads) are for the Nutcracker, Lucero, Bedouin Soundclash, Andrew Jackson Jihad, the Greenhornes, Stranger personals and Stranger Presents: Savage Love Podcast, Blitz Capital Hill Arts Walk, and T-shirts for sale.

Unless the ad you saw was in the "Stranger Presents" section, it was paid for by the event organizers, just like the State-held public meetings SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUBLICIZED BY THE STATE. They who hire the piper, _pay_for_him_.

The whole point about no-one showing up to the meetings was that no-one who didn't have a significant fraction of his life wrapped around knowing these things (like, say, working for a media outlet) or, alternatively, just happened by the room when it was on, knew about the event(s) and therefore no-one attended. Which is exactly what the State wanted, else why was it not better publicized?

If the people responsible for pushing the project had any interest in disseminating information about it, you can bet that a better job of said dissemination would have occurred. These people are not idiots - they just think that taxpayers are. Everyone has a blind spot, and this is theirs. Go ahead, ridicule the Stranger for not paying the State's costs; prove that you, as a taxpayer, ARE an idiot.

Oh, and @3: What the article says the report says is that the through traffic will NOT be diverted because the drivers will not pay $8 tolls. So the traffic that is currently going downtown will go downtown, and the traffic that is NOT currently going downtown will go downtown. Clear?

Dear Stranger:
The tunnel is coming. You lost. Get used to it. Move on.

The Interbay and Ballard-bound traffic is about 35,000 vehicles daily. About 60% of these vehicles is expected to take Alaskan Way. The remaining will head for the DBT north portal via Mercer through Queen Anne. The steep hill of narrow Mercer Place must be widened to 3 lanes and Mercer Street widened from 4 to 6-lanes east of 5th Ave. This sets up a new traffic pattern to/from I-5, as if there isn't already too much traffic on Mercer. The Mercer route to access SR99 is longer, slower, has more stoplights (12-13 instead of 7-9 via Elliott/Western), and a severe hillclimb through residential neighborhood and busy commercial center.

The traffic between Lower Belltown and SLU via Battery Street Tunnel is about 6,000 vehicles daily. Combined, the displaced traffic is about 41,000 vehicles on surface streets; not counting the number of motorists expected to avoid the DBT and the toll, estimated at 20,000.

WSDOT has a villianous disregard for public health, safety, and environmental impact to the Queen Anne neighborhood. WSDOT only serves automobile-related business interests. Supporters of the DBT are halfwits, money-grubbing fools or crooks.

The only sensible tunnel is the cut/cover. All studies show it handles traffic best, nevermind the boo-hoo inconvenience to construct it. WSDOT exaggerates the disruption in their falsified reports.

The WSDOT consultant, KaDeena Yerkan, suggests interested residents prepare themselves with info prior to meetings by reading articles in the newspaper. Fair enough; but how do we get The Stranger home delivered to the entire Seattle metro area? I live out in the burbs, but most of what I know about the DBT is courtesy of Dominic Holden. Keep up the good work, Dom.

I'd pay $4 to get out of some of those traffic jams I've encountered in Seattle. I'd pay that on whatever they decide to build, be it another viaduct or tunnel. Just look at the tolls on bridges in the SF Bay area. And there is a successful tunnel under earthquake prone SF Bay, the BART (I love the BART).

The Budget is coming.

All your tunnel are belong to unfunded black holes.

Sincerely, Seattle Citizens.

@12 - actually, WSDOT projections show somewhere between 3-5 minutes SLOWER trips in the tunnel than on the existing viaduct, so get used to waiting - after you pay $10 total for the privilege ...

Three more minutes behind the wheel if there's a tunnel, boo frickin hoo. When the viaduct comes crashing down and kills dozens because all the senseless idiotic bickering prevented a safe replacement built in a reasonable amount of time, it'll be arguments like those I remember the most.

@4 - It's the Stranger's job to publicize events that give the public a chance to weigh in on issues they've been reporting on because THEY ARE RUNNING A NEWSPAPER. THAT'S WHAT NEWSPAPERS DO. They give citizens information they need.

Do I necessarily blame the Stranger for not covering the state meeting ENOUGH - as in, anticipating and promoting it as a venue to bring this information to bear on public officials (or at least their PR lackeys)? Maybe. But it really gets ridiculous and makes tunnel opponents looks like a bunch of NIMBYS when not only do we not heavily promote the one event where we are GIVEN a chance to express our views, but we then turn around and try to promote a similar event/forum all over again, and get mad when the state says they're not coming because they did that already.

We just set ourselves up for that one by not showing for the first meeting. If you brought a ton of people to the first meeting, and demanded a second with more dissenting voices, you have a case. If you ignore your first opportunity and then try to manufacture a do-over, you just look silly.

And I happen to agree that something needs to be done about the BS, borderline constitutional way this project is being funded.

The big picture:

And more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars, and more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars... until mysteriously, one day the whole fucking thing was under water and the only life form that could tolerate the polluted watery hellscape was Kevin Costner.

(http://www.amazon.com/Asphalt-Nation-Aut…)

The little picture:

If the reporting in this article is accurate, the tunnel will fail in a major way to solve even one of the key short-term problems that those pushing it myopically set out to solve: making it easier for cars to move around. And this, apparently, according to the very people working on building the tunnel.

"And the cynics said it couldn't be done..."

The big picture:

And more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars, and more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars... until mysteriously, one day the whole fucking thing was under water and the only life form that could tolerate the polluted watery hellscape was Kevin Costner.

(http://www.amazon.com/Asphalt-Nation-Aut…)

The little picture:

If the reporting in this article is accurate, the tunnel will fail in a major way to solve even one of the key short-term problems that those pushing it myopically set out to solve: making it easier for cars to move around. And this, apparently, according to the very people working on building the tunnel.

"And the cynics said it couldn't be done..."

The big picture:

And more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars, and more cars begat more roads, and more roads begat more cars... until mysteriously, one day the whole fucking thing was under water and the only life form that could tolerate the polluted watery hellscape was Kevin Costner.

(http://www.amazon.com/Asphalt-Nation-Aut…)

The little picture:

If the reporting in this article is accurate, the tunnel will fail in a major way to solve even one of the key short-term problems that those pushing it myopically set out to solve: making it easier for cars to move around. And this, apparently, according to the very people working on building the tunnel.

"And the cynics said it couldn't be done..."

Sorry for the accidental thread spamming-apparently the "back" button is a dangerous thing...

There is 250,000,000 square feet of paved road in the City of Seattle. 10% of the usable land area of the City of Seattle is paved road operated by SDOT. This excludes state and federal roads, parking lots and parking structures. To get an idea of the uncounted scope of surface parking spaces in the City of Seattle, there are a combined 6,000 spaces between Northgate and North Seattle Community College; with each parking space on average taking up 160 square feet, that's 960,000 square feet of parking spaces. With 20,000 surface spaces in and around Qwest and Safeco field (Madison south to Holgate, waterfront east to I-5), that's another 3.5 million square feet of surface space.

On top of all this, if you took the lane miles within the City of Seattle that are operated by SDOT and put them into a straight-shot single two-lane road, that road would stretch from here to Indianapolis, IN.

It should be noted that if we only include the roads owned and operated by SDOT, there are roughly 20 million fewer square feet of road than total park land in the City of Seattle. If we include all paved surfaces, there is far more asphalt in the City of Seattle than parkland.

@15: Here's who you have to thank: http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/…

The most basic of facts is that the new tunnel is only 2 lanes in each direction. How is this forward thinking for an increasing population over the next 20 years. I am pretty sure you cannot add a lane onto a tunnel after it is built, pretty sure.

Take a look at I-5 through downtown where it is 2 lanes each way for less than 1/2 a mile. That section causes the longest backups of any stretch of I-5 between Lynnwood and the Tacoma Dome. We need to learn from this problem SO WE DON'T REPEAT IT.

I suggest re-exploring a 3 lane each direction cut & cover tunnel along the current viaduct route. Above the tunnel, at ground level, build either lightrail, street cars or monorail as well as a public plaza to attract more tourists to the waterfront.

The most basic of facts is that the new tunnel is only 2 lanes in each direction. How is this forward thinking for an increasing population over the next 20 years. I am pretty sure you cannot add a lane onto a tunnel after it is built, pretty sure.

Take a look at I-5 through downtown where it is 2 lanes each way for less than 1/2 a mile. That section causes the longest backups of any stretch of I-5 between Lynnwood and the Tacoma Dome. We need to learn from this problem SO WE DON'T REPEAT IT.

I suggest re-exploring a 3 lane each direction cut & cover tunnel along the current viaduct route. Above the tunnel, at ground level, build either lightrail, street cars or monorail as well as a public plaza to attract more tourists to the waterfront.

In my view, the DBT should not be built due to:
o Excessive, unpredictable cost
o Reduced mobility
o A huge (and costly) 'carbon footprint', and
o Public/life safety issues from cutting corners. To drill down one level on these, be aware that WSDOT plans to ignore its own Design Manual requirements by implementing deviations therefrom regarding:
o Shoulder widths (6 feet & 2 feet!!!)
o Length of Grade
o Overhead clearance (15 feet)
o Lane widths (11 feet)
o On/off ramps (on the left--their signature).

It also has downgraded fire safety standards, with insufficient fire suppression. In summary:

O IT VIOLATES THE LAW—RCW 8.43.010: “SAFEGUARD LIFE, HEALTH…PUBLIC WELFARE”
O EMERGENCY RESPONSE UNITS WILL BE UNABLE TO REACH ACCIDENTS
O IT FAILS TO MEET ADA STANDARDS FOR HANDICAPPED EGRESS (ZERO NORTHBOUND).

These are not opinions--the data are buried in WSDOT documents. Folks need to know.

Since I normally complain, I'd like to say that this is an informative article, something that I like to see in a local paper.

@26: Who gives a fuck if the audience is credible? They're not saying anything.

@5:
I find it hard to believe the drivers who need to bypass downtown will go through downtown to bypass an $8 toll. They will never go all the way through that mess. And forget I-5 it will be so backed up for the first couple months, there will be no choice but to take the tunnel. People will be bitching and bitching and forking over however much money necessary to avoid that whole rat's nest until it is no longer seen as outrageous to pay $8 to use a tunnel. It'll just be the way it is.

What people should be fighting for is legislation which says Once the tunnel has been paid for, the tolls will be reduced to just cover the cost of maintenance and repairs. Still a shit-load of money but most likely less than $8 per trip.

The Tolls acros the Bay Bridge are at least $5 a pop now. It'll probably go up as soon as the new bridge is in service. People pay it just as much as they did before it was that much. The alternative? Drive around the Bay. But who in the fuck is going to do that? The way I see it, this will be more incentive for people to use the light rail system into downtown and to expand it to other majorly inhabited parts of the city...West Seattle and Magnolia/Fremont/Ballard.

@29: Um, the study says people will avoid the tunnel to skip the toll. That's far more convincing than what you, some clown on the internet, has to say.