There’s a forum coming up at Town Hall that the governor doesn’t want you to know about. Tunnel supporters on the city council, like the governor, hoped to shut the forum down by refusing to show up and defend their troubled megaproject.
For those reasons alone, you should go.
The forum is Wednesday, December 1, at 7:30 p.m., and you would think that backers of the tunnel would welcome the opportunity to talk about their project with the public—there is, after all, a lot of new information to discuss.
In October, officials released an exhaustive report on the tunnel’s impacts in Seattle (most important are impacts on traffic). It turns out, nearly two-thirds of the traffic that currently uses Highway 99 won’t take the tunnel, because the tunnel will have no exits and roughly $4 tolls in each direction. All those cars would instead clog already-jammed downtown streets. There’s not a plan or penny to deal with all that new traffic.
The state is supposedly accepting public comments on the tunnel project until December 13. But the state refused to participate in the forum—during the comment period, a time when the state is supposed to be soliciting public opinion, in an iconic venue for dialogue about city business. And this event, which will be broadcast by Seattle Channel, is the best chance to reach a huge audience about the tunnel study. Fair-and-square C. R. Douglas, the Seattle Channel’s lead political anchor, invited the state secretary of transportation, the project managers on the tunnel project, and the eight tunnel supporters on the Seattle City Council.
All of them—after consulting each other—refused to show up.
Why won’t the council members or the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) talk about their own project?
“WSDOT declined to participate in a debate about the tunnel because we are in the middle of a public comment period,” said WSDOT spokeswoman Amy Grotefendt (emphasis added). So let’s get this straight: Nobody at the state will show up at a public forum and answer questions from the public during an open public debate because the state is in the middle of the public comment period?
Grotefendt defended the state by pointing to three “public hearings” that provided the “opportunity for the public to tell us what they think.”
I went to one of these public hearings.
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.)
Twenty-three colorful boards were set out on easels around the room. But not one of the boards explained that most drivers wouldn’t be using the $4 billion tunnel. It was possible to read every display in this big, empty room and never know that the tunnel doesn’t do the only job it is designed to do: move people and cars along Highway 99.
One signboard suggested that tolling might divert more traffic to city streets, but it didn’t make it clear that tolls must be charged in order to build the tunnel. And while one signboard indicated that 46,000 vehicles a day were predicted to use the tunnel, not one signboard indicated that 110,000 vehicles a day currently use the viaduct—so there was no way for a member of the public to figure out that the state’s plan would shove 64,000 vehicle trips per day off Highway 99 and onto clogged city streets.
“We can’t have every detail on the boards,” said KaDeena Yerkan, a WSDOT consultant, when asked why the primary transportation impacts of a transportation project weren’t detailed. “We tried to put things on the boards that we thought people would be interested in, like how you would build the tunnel.” She said people could ask any question and the state “experts” in attendance would answer.
How could attendees know what to ask? For instance, how would they even know what’s buried in the report if it’s not presented at the public hearing?
“People could potentially read the material online in the document or they could read articles in the newspaper,” she said.
Another state employee, Angela Freudenstein, said, “Our hope is that people can come here and get informed about what we are doing.”
Valerie and David Enger attended one of the state’s public hearings. Asked as they were leaving what they learned about the tunnel’s traffic impacts, David said, “I have not studied their numbers.”
And those numbers—buried in the report—weren’t displayed on any of the “informational” signboards. You could find them only if you opened the report and looked at the fine print in chapter 9. Even then, you’d have to extract numbers from different chapters of the 258-page report and do some math—and know what numbers you’re looking for—in order to make sense of them.
“They are obviously putting their best face forward,” Valerie said.
And putting their best face forward requires avoiding rooms filled with people who know anything about the tunnel. Unlike the state’s sham public hearings, the upcoming Town Hall forum is likely to be filled with people who know about the tunnel.
Council Member Mike O’Brien, who was on the state’s official stakeholders group that recommended a surface/transit alternative in 2008 (but the state went with a tunnel anyway), will be attending the Town Hall forum. O’Brien has also read the entire state tunnel study (called a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or SDEIS for short), and he knows about the problems with it.
O’Brien will explain other portions of the SDEIS that the state wants to keep quiet: The project will create only 480 temporary jobs, which isn’t a lot for the $3.1 billion the state is spending; the Western Building and Polson Building face “the need for demolition to avoid the possibility of collapse”; an extra 40,000 vehicles a day would attempt to pass through the already jammed streets of Pioneer Square; and lots more.
Doesn’t the Seattle City Council, which passed a resolution to approve the tunnel contracts in January or February, want to talk with citizens about whether the tunnel makes sense during the comment period?
“I don’t know that we need a public forum with the mayor to discuss the SDEIS,” said council spokeswoman Laura Lockard, explaining why other council members are boycotting the Town Hall event. The council has no hearing scheduled on the tunnel. In other words, not everyone on the forum panel (including tunnel critic Mayor Mike McGinn) thinks the tunnel study shows a rosy return on investment—and tunnel backers “don’t know that we need” the public to be informed by critics of the plan.
When asked personally, Tom Rasmussen, chair of the Seattle City Council’s Transportation Committee, said that he can’t speak at Town Hall about the state’s report because “I have only read the first page.”
He must be an awfully slow reader.
The state provided the city advance copies of the study this spring, again (in more complete form) in September, and (in final form) in October. The Stranger posted copies of a draft (obtained from a public records request) in July, O’Brien sent comments about that draft to all of his colleagues in midsummer, and several groups have been sending letters to the entire city council about it since last winter.
“Letters in the past year have been raising all of these issues, telling them what to watch out for,” said People’s Waterfront Coalition director Cary Moon. “It’s unconscionable for him to pretend like he’s not aware of the serious risks.”
The SDEIS details the city’s biggest transportation project, and Rasmussen—again, the transportation chair of the city council—hasn’t read it. But he has, since it’s been available, voted to pass a resolution to let the state build the tunnel and for the city to chip in $930 million, and potentially much, much more if this project, like all megaprojects, runs over budget.
“My primary interest is to protect Seattle’s interest,” Rasmussen said.
“If this is his watching out for our interests, we’re in deep shit,” said Moon. 
Show up to the forum at Town Hall, hear about the stuff they’re not telling you, and fill out a public-comment form. We’ll send it in to the state. (Wed Dec 1, Town Hall, 7:30 pm.)
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.
I’ve also read the SDEIS, and I see Appendix U is missing – you know, the Political Shenanigans and Graft section. In fact, the real role of our former Mayor ChumpChange has been positively minimized – I didn’t see any reference to his threatening to sabotage Gregoire’s re-election bid in 2008 either. A few other details were also left out, like the Advisory Ballot results being ignored …
And as I predicted would happen at the time, the big money won again. The skids are greased, and the fix is in. You really thought you’d stop the tunnel juggernaut, McGinn? O’Brien? Ha. Welcome to the big leagues.
As for all the rest (ability to handle current traffic volumes, shunting traffic onto other city streets due to tolls, or congestion, or fear of flooding during an earthquake, etc) – mere details that were never important in the selection process. What WAS important was to keep our local condophile developers happy. Nothing else. We common peons could never understand what this city really needs. They can, and they will prevail.
Ah, but why the state isn’t sticking its neck out? This is a Seattle party. I think WSDOT is smart enough to stay out of the shrapnel zone, just in case the project implodes. Their original recommendation was to rebuild the Viaduct. Instead, now they’re cowed into submission by the 800lb gorilla that is Seattle. They don’t need to carry the Jet City’s political hod.
For proof that there’s nothing unique about the Seattle Process, here’s a movie suggestion for sometime between now and Dec 1 – Hands Over The City (Le Mani Sulla Citta), a slightly fictionalized documentary from 1963 of the Napoli Process in Italy. Its headline star, a young Rod Steiger, who bears an uncanny resemblance to our dear former mayor …
So, as we commence the Big Dig West … Can you say ‘boondoggle?’ I knew you could.
LoveYourViaduct
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&hellip😉
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.
The tunnel is going to happen, and I hardly feel sad that the State didn’t come to this meeting, especially since they’ve had dozens of others with more credible audiences. Boo hoo.
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.