When the city council endorsed the tunnel as its preferred option for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct last week, it looked like a rare bit of good viaduct news for Mayor Greg Nickels. However, a closer look at the legislation reveals that the tunnel the council endorsed was the "full" 4-mile project, of which about one mile is a tunnel, from South Spokane Street (in SoDo) to Comstock Street (in South Lake Union)—an option for which no new cost estimates (reflecting the increase in construction-cost inflation that elevated the "core" tunnel to a range of $3.6—$5.5 billion) have been made. Escalating the costs for the full tunnel by the same factor as the core tunnel gets you a range between $4.4—$6.9 billion. If the tunnel turns out to be unaffordable, the council could decide to build the surface option (its official backup plan if the tunnel proves "infeasible") instead.
At the council's meeting on September 22, transportation chair Jan Drago said she wanted to endorse the full tunnel to give the council "flexibility" in the future. Nick Licata, however, noted that the city doesn't even have enough money to build a truncated core tunnel from South King Street to Pike Street—much less the full tunnel, which includes between $200 million and $400 million in improvements to the street grid in South Lake Union.
"I don't want to use the term 'con game,' but somebody could look at this legislation and accuse us of doing just that," Licata said. "With this amendment we are sending a clear message to the public that we don't care what the cost is." On October 2, Council Member Richard Conlin called the council's decision "odd," adding that the "ambiguity" in the legislation "could be deliberate on the part of those who did not support [even] the core tunnel" in the first place. 
