It was just a week ago that everyone thought the Seattle City Council was about to approve a deep-bore tunnel under downtown—the biggest tunnel ever attempted anywhere and the state’s most expensive megaproject at $4.2 billion. But things have changed.
First, on July 13, a group of citizens threatened to run a referendum to put the tunnel on the ballot. At issue is whether the city’s property owners should pay cost overruns on the state project—current state law says we must—and the city council was setting Seattle up to get screwed by approving a contract. Then the city council tried to foil a vote by declaring the tunnel an “emergency,” which would block a referendum. But then, on July 16, the council realized it can’t push through an “emergency” bill without the mayor’s okay—the city charter won’t let them—and the mayor is trying to stop the state (and the city council) from screwing the city, so there’s no way he’s going to okay an “emergency” tunnel. Oops!
Then two different consultants—one working for the mayor, one working for the city council—both said that the tunnel may come in over budget. The council’s consultant says there’s a 40 percent likelihood the project will experience overruns.
Then city council member Mike O’Brien proposed four amendments to the city’s end of the contract, including one that would make the state agree to pay cost overruns before the project can begin. The council removed similar language from Mayor Mike McGinn’s draft of the contract because—hey!—the city council trusts that the state isn’t going to screw us.
Turns out that was an unpopular move: On July 19, a poll from SurveyUSA found that 63 percent of people who live in Seattle agree with the mayor when it comes to protecting Seattle from cost overruns. And 58 percent think we should put this up for a vote.
But delaying the project with a public vote could be a problem because the state may go ahead and start on the tunnel without a contract from the city, says City Attorney Pete Holmes. That would mean the contract we’ve worked on to protect the city’s liability if the ground settles (be sure to call in sick the day they’re drilling under the office tower where you work) or if utilities are broken—and lots of stuff unrelated to cost overruns—could go out the window. Meanwhile, the city council claimed that the latest draft of the contract contained key provisions that they negotiated, but it turned out that the mayor’s office negotiated many of those clauses with the state. Regardless, McGinn warns that the council’s draft—which removed the part requiring a change in state law—isn’t enough to protect the city taxpayers.
Now it seems that the only way to avoid a public vote—get out your spectacles, city council—is to pass a tunnel contract that makes the state change the law before the project can continue. Otherwise, the contract will be tangled up with a referendum until there’s a special election in winter.
And what impacts would a tunnel have, anyway? The state’s impact study isn’t supposed to be out until October. But The Stranger filed a records request for a draft of it, which we did not receive by press time. Look for it on Slog this week. 
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Where are the West Seattle and Ballard lawyers and those in the know who can help stop this tunnel? My own (back of envelop) calculation is that for $3 billion less, the current viaduct could be retrofited to last 25 years more withou causing massive traffic problems a tunnel project would cause.
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.
The tunnel would open up the priceless waterfront down there. The potential for revenue from that alone easily eclipses the cost of the tunnel. Stop being so fickle people.
If it goes over budget so what the city will not collapse. I believe it’s over a 10 year period anyway.
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.