Yes 'HONESTLY', and then how much MORE expensive will a replacement, of whatever type, cost in 25 years? At least double or triple or sextuple times what it will cost now.... So if you want to have your cake and eat it too, realize that no matter what year/decade/century a project of this magnitude falls into, it will always be considered too expensive.

So, I ask you, why spend 1-2 billion to upgrade a structure to get, maybe (and your "25 years" is a HUGE maybe), a few more years out of it when we could spend $4-6 Billion and, if properly enginieered & constructed, get a brand NEW STRUCTURE built to last 100 years? The latter would be the better investment.

On top of this....retro-fitting would still require replacement (not just re-surfacing) of all the roadway's concrete (which has crumbled, in spots, to almost see-through!), which WOULD disrupt traffic and therefore cause delays and potentially more accidents.

If we wanted to "save" money, we tear down the out-dating viaduct and stick with the once-recommended surface street idea. No viaduct and no tunnel. It opens the waterfront up, but also has just as much traffic noise as the viaduct, but without the cost a new one or a tunnel. Simple as that.

Hmmm....in 25 or 100! years - did anyone mention how much automotive traffic will still be around then? Maybe there's another angle too? Maybe we should consider (gasp) investing this magnitude of money in something more future-relevant, like say, education, or fortune portend rapid (and I *do NOT mean Bus-Rapid) transit. In the odd case that cars are sill huffing along poisoning the shit out of us and continuing their reign of dysfunctional urban blight, there will be so many of them that the 100 year old once- brandy-new "structure" will be vastly too small anyway. But hey if we get rid of public education I bet there would be more than enough money to drill an oil-tanker wide tunnel at that point. A pitiful state of affairs. Those tunnel people should go suck a tailpipe somewhere and let the good mayor and the reasonable folks take care of things.