Frank Chopp has a backup plan for the bored tunnel, and it ain't pretty.

Good points Doug. And no one's talking about the other hypocrisy in McGinn's stance.

If you truly want a livable, workable, affordable urban core - a place that is friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists, a place where we can have great walking streets and sidewalk cafes like they do in Copenhagen and other great urban spaces around the world, a place that would attract people to the urban core and help avoid further surburban sprawl - you don't do that by running freight trucks up Fourth Avenue and down Second Avenue. That's what was in the WashDOT traffic modeling for the surface option, and that's exactly what would happen if we went with the surface option.

The Danish consultant that the city hired at the behest of the Waterfront Coalition and their utopian urban planning allies concluded as much, much to their horror I am sure.

I want walking streets, sidewalk cafes and great urban spaces that draw people into our downtown. That's why I am opposed to the surface option.

Great article –
• Mayor McGinn is willing to gamble that he can return over $2 billion dollars to a starved state legislature and get it served back to his specifications after riling virtually every politician, and especially the Governor, with his combative, trial-attorney tactics. He has no leverage and few, if any, friends in Olympia.
• It is not possible to get a better deal for Seattle from the state now. We are in a deep recession and many politicians in Olympia would love to grab some of the funds for their jurisdiction. Many legislators do not share our green goals.
• Responsible elected officials have agreed on and the state has funded a project that gets rid of the viaduct and practically ensures a great waterfront. These were the main objectives of progressives in Seattle over ten years of contentious negotiation. We can not afford to start over. A new viaduct would be back on the table and a great waterfront would be at risk.
• Delay is the biggest cost risk for the tunnel.

More at www.lightandair.wordpress.com

By the way, aren't we coming up to the 10-year anniversary of the Nisqually earthquake in 2011? Ten years of indecision with safety looming, on top of the 30-plus years of urban design debate -- we could shut the viaduct down and create the Highline greening of the current structure...great article dug, especially the dog catching the car.

My impression is that McGinn doesn't think farther than next week, about anything.

If McGinn 'gets his way,' the viaduct stays put and a retrofit would be in order--which it should have been all along. Then we can finally turn our attention to the seawall. That's my hope.

The WSDOT was fine with an AWV elevated solution that met seismic standards in 2008. In fact there were three of them.

A refurbished viaduct would provide the most efficient and economical transportation solution for region. People downtown would have a much more pedestrian-friendly space in their neighborhood. And the viaduct could even be the ultimate solution for a way to really manage the amount of traffic (cars) in the core.

I hope cocktails42 is right.

As a professional journalist who reports on the the Deep-Bore Tunnel I feel it is critical we acknowledge that "to build or not to build" is not a wrestling match between Mayor McGinn vs. everybody else. There are many knowledgeable, well-meaning organizations and citizens who believe the tunnel is an unwise option both for fiscal and geotechnical reasons. Both pro and anti tunnel advocates claim an earthquake will destroy their adversary's project. And while the mayor is taking the heat for his position, it is my view that indecision is wiser than making the wrong decision. Not enough information is out there yet regarding the bottom line cost, which ranges between $1.8 billion and $10 billion depending on who you talk to, nor how the earth under the tall buildings will respond to a 54-foot hole so close to the Sound.

I think it's more than just "many." I think that the majority of organizations and citizens believe the tunnel is unwise. Up until 2008 most citizens and the DOT believed that a refurbishment of the AWV would be the choice. A lot of spin and dollars were spent to avoid ever having a tunnel vs. elevated vote i.e. the phony referendum costing a million tax dollars.

I wish more had been written about this process as it was happening. It's the only protection that tax payers have.

If a vote were held on Monday between an elevated solution or a tunnel (the surface option accepted as being a disaster) the elevated choice would win.

WSDOT spent years studying the most expensive tunnel designs before settling on the simplest cut/cover Tunnelite. WSDOT then misled voters into rejecting it in 2007 using scare tactics about the supposedly horrible disruption to business-as-usual with its construction. Why did WSDOT spend another year studying Tunnelite if they didn't still consider it a viable option?

Choppaduct ruins the Waterfront and leaves Lower Belltown in its decrepit state, but it manages traffic better than the DBT.

The Surface/Transit option contains the displaced traffic to Alaskan Way. The DBT disperses it additionally through South Lake Union, Lower Queen Anne and the Denny Way corridor, thus causing more environmental impact than the Surface/Transit option.

As Mr MacDonuld says, "There is not and never will be a solution to the Alaskan Way problem that will please everybody." Fine, but the DBT pleases the least people:

-- Tunnelite would close the AWV and have the seawall rebuilt at least 2 years before the DBT, thus pleasing everyone whose fears about dangerous conditions will be eased sooner.

-- Tunnelite would never pose any threat to downtown buildings either during construction or afterwards, thus easing those fears.

-- Tunnelite achieves the main objectives of managing traffic best by leaving the main traffic pattern intact, thus pleasing motorists who use the viaduct.

-- Tunnelite removes the Columbia and Seneca ramps, but traffic should not be encouraged to travel steep Seattle side-streets to access those ramps on 1st Ave, a major pedestrian and transit corridor where there's too much traffic already.

-- Despite Tunnelite's construction disruption, motorists throughout downtown thereafter would be pleased with reduced traffic it made possible.

-- Only Tunnelite offers a car-free gardened walkway between Steinbrueck Park and the waterfront and the least amount of traffic on Alaskan Way, thus pleasing the environmentally conscientious, the civic-minded and those who wish to improve the Waterfront District economy.

In short, to please the most people, the choice is Tunnelite. What's so hard to understand about it? Isn't it obvious?

-- The preliminary south portal work is applicable to Tunnelite, thus pleasing some WSDOT public employees who can believe some of their work is worth the time and effort.

-- Greg Nickels should be pleased with Tunnelite because he invested his political capital to support it in 2007.

-- Tunnelite qualifies for the State funding, pleasing those who put money before everything else.

I didn't read this piece as suggesting that the tunnel doesn't have huge risks - everyone knows that. Nobody's dug a tunnel this big before, and below the water line and under building foundations. The point here, made well I think, is that the other alternatives also involve big risks, and those need to be acknowledged too.

There are risks to all of the strategies people have proposed. There is the risk that Seattle will have to pay for improvements without state help (and we in Seattle can't pay for potholes without bond financing these days!). There are huge known costs and unknown risks to a surface alternative. Since Seattle does not have lots of surface street alternatives, unlike most places where highways have been removed, there's an unknown risk that downtown congestion will result in much slower transit speeds and faster dispersion of Seattle employment to the suburbs. There's an unknown amount of construction needed to repair the damage to the seawall and street grid once the freeway is removed, and as Doug reminds us, we may be on the hook to pay for it. Anyone who thinks they have a handle on all these risks is insane.

But the biggest risk of all is in indecision and delay. That will result in costs and risk to Seattle, without even any construction going on. We can argue and go to the polls and imagine a perfect future all we want, but we will be deeper in a financial hole the longer we wait to act. So, like the article says, it's important not to focus on the risks of action without weighing those risks against the risks of the alternatives, including inaction.

The DBT has an inherently catastrophic risk of severe damage to downtown buildings during construction and ever afterwards. It is risky in terms of potential for the bore machine to breakdown at any point in the drilling process. It is risky in terms of water table seepage problems during and after its completion. Delay can make the project more expensive or less expensive as well.

Wells, nobody disputes that there are risks to tunneling. We know that. There are always risks to tunneling, yet cities around the world keep taking those risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes not - which is what risk is all about.

The question is whether the risks of the other alternatives are being considered, and those risks are substantial as well.

There are only two options left on the table. Bored Tunnel or nothing. Every other option is dead. The surface/transit hybrid, a rebuilt viaduct and every other fantasy option. The state finished their job and made their choice. In less than six years the whole viaduct will be ripped down one way or another.

It's Bored Tunnel or bust!

The refurbished viaduct is the best transportation solution. If you use only transportation criteria NOTHING else equals the current configuration. Major cities must have ways to shuttle traffic through and around their core areas. Seattle needs a bypass for downtown. You cannot wish away the basic requirements for moving things from one place to another. This isn't a stadium...or a planter strip for some developer. This is toying around with something that will impact both the quality of life and the economic vitality of the community. People need to move. Stuff needs to move. 90% of us still move with cars.

There are 8 or 9 districts in Seattle and about 90 neighborhoods. Downtown Waterfront is one (1) neighborhood. That one neighborhood is sucking the oxygen out of the entire city. Do you want to spend 2 or 3 billion dollars downtown on some speculative idea that will make people sit in traffic, or just avoid downtown entirely ? How rediculous.

One last thing that the viaduct has going for it that none of the other plans have is that you can see it work day in and day out. The rights of ways already exist. The configuration already can handle 110,000 vehicles a day. It already provides a bypass for downtown and off ramps for the core, Ballard and West Seattle. It already meets the demands for commercial vehicles. It can incorporate modern seismic protections and other enhancements for noise abatement, bikes, pedestrians and aesthetics. It acknowledges the fact that rubber-tired, multi-passenger vehicles are still the choice of over 90% of us.

I wish Frank Chopp hadn't swapped his idea for the viaduct for a tunnel under his neighborhood. We'd all be better off.

Still time to do the right thing.

Doug,

here is the phrase in the RCW: " (b) The state's contribution shall not exceed two billion four hundred million dollars. If costs exceed two billion four hundred million dollars, no more than four hundred million [dollars] of the additional costs shall be financed with toll revenue. Any costs in excess of two billion eight hundred million dollars shall be borne by property owners in the Seattle area who benefit from replacement of the existing viaduct with the deep bore tunnel."

Your quotation omitted the deep bore tunnel.

The deep bore as a transportation investment spends the limited state funds on improving bypass trips. the key legislative tactic is the cap on expenditures. they have bigger highway dreams than they have tolerance for taxation.

No one really wants to seek out those property owners who benefit, but they would seem to include not only those near the waterfront who will lose the noisy AWV, but also those more widespread businesses who use bypass trips. they may be located throughout a three county metropolitan area. it is a transportation investment at odds with our land use, transport, and environmental concerns.

if the dog catches the car, you warn that the Legislature may spend the AWV replacement funds throughout the rest of the state. Instead, I suspect the power of King County legislators is enough that they would stay within King County. they could go toward the surface, transit, and I-5 option, as McGinn may want. or, they could go toward the $2 billion holes that both I-5 and SR-520 have.

pretty soon the state will have to begin tolling all the limited access highways to both manage demand and raise revenue.

the January 2009 agreement on the deep bore between the three executives was abandoned quickly when the Governor and Legislature failed to grant Metro the one percent MVET. Executive Sims knew the Metro fiscal crisis was upon us. Why does the remainder of the agreement stand?

As I said, Seattle- the Lindsay Lohan of cities. Seattleites seem to have no idea that the rest of the state might get that $1.5 billion. As befits a "Queen" city, Seattle says "It's all about ME!"

Get a clue, dahling- with your drunken leer and your willingness to build an elevated highway where another city would build a waterfront park, you're no role model.

In fact, it's gotten to the point where some of us are ashamed to say we knew you.

John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur - using Fisher Broadcasting's KVI radio - were the people behind the gas tax rollback initiative in 2005. A majority of voters in many Washington counties, throughout Puget Sound, and even in Walla Walla County, rejected that initiative.

MacDonald incorrectly assigns credit for that failed 2005 initiative to Tim Eyman, who was doing the performance audit initiative (I-900) that year. Bret Bader was the guy who lost the I-912 campaign.

MacDonald might consider fully disclosing his own role in events related to the Viaduct drama if he's going to write opinions about it. My understanding is that under MacDonald's direct and constant guidance - the state of Washington wasted millions on consultants so MacDonald could bring us the long fight that is now, finally, mostly over - save for Mayor McGinn's opposition campaign that just might result in yet another vote.

MacDonald's own crazy $14 billion Viaduct proposal, and MacDonald's active promotion of it (in defiance of Governor Locke), led to the defeat of Referendum 51 in 2002 (62% NO). This $!4 billion headline of MacDonald's had one big effect by 2005: MacDonald became the reason Governors now appoint the Secretary of Transportation (after decades of a Transportation Commission control designed to help keep politics out of things like the Viaduct.) In other words: MacDonald is the chief reason why Governor Gregoire was dragged into the fight he played the starring role in starting.

MacDonald seems to be right about this: if McGinn ever gets his way (which looks increasingly doubtful), next year the state legislature and the Governor will probably find other places to spend roughly $1.5 billion currently earmarked for Seattle. The key people who secured that money in 2005 have moved out of the power picture: Helen Sommers has retired and Ed Murray has moved to the Senate, has other important duties, and far less sway over the transportation budget.

So the odds are, on the off chance that McGinn prevails, Seattle's next Mayor will find himself or herself leading the charge for the next gas tax increase that would also, without doubt, lead to a lot more road building outside of Seattle. That sound like a huge backfire for Mike McGinn and the relatively small crowd that have rallied behind him.

Tunnelite fan back again. Some digging found tons of political support for Tunnelite as early as 2006, probably before that too. Dug MacDonuld admits to regional support, Seattle Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Association, Gov Evans, environmental and labor organizations. Gee, where are all these Tunnelite supporters now? Still nursing their wounds from the March 2007 voter smackdown? That vote was rigged to favor an elevated replacement, WSDOT's evil plot to punish clueless liberals.

A refurbished viaduct is NOT the best transportation solution. Using transportation criteria, Tunnelite is EQUAL to the current configuration, and no one should deny it.

Tunnelite is even better because rectifies an AWV major design flaw by rebuilding SR99 'below' Elliott and Western Aves in Lower Belltown. The entrance south from Elliott becomes an easier, safer downhill clear-merge (instead of an uphill blind-merge), and the exit north onto Western becomes an uphill, speed-reducing, 2-lane ramp (instead of a 1-lane, speed-increasing downhill ramp that accellerates traffic onto surface streets or backs it up onto the AWV for blocks).

Boy, that engineering stuff shore be hard to get done thunkin about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P91H-l9QCfU&feature;=player_embedded

Tunnelite 'stacked' SIX-LANE version, 2007 Parsons Brinkerhoff.

Jan, I don't know where you got the idea that Secretary MacDonald was responsible for the shift in the secretary's reporting from the Commission to the Governor. That had been brewing for several years, and was, in effect, part of the price demanded by the Blue Ribbon Commission to bring business support to gas tax increases that had been impossible to obtain for a decade.

Jan, I don't know where you got the idea that Secretary MacDonald was responsible for the shift in the secretary's reporting from the Commission to the Governor. That had been brewing for several years, and was, in effect, part of the price demanded by the Blue Ribbon Commission to bring business support to gas tax increases that had been impossible to obtain for a decade.

Quasi

In 2000 the Blue Commission did recommend the switch, combined with the transition of the existing Transportation Commission to a nine member Accountability Board. Yes, the idea had been around for a long time, even during the Gardner administration, especially after the state DOT sank the I-90 "floating" bridge by mistake and no one in charge was fired or otherwise reprimanded, aside from some yelling and being put through a wringer by the Seattle PI. (Which seemed like punishment enough to a lot of people.)

MacDonald arrived in April 2001.

In 2003 the state legislature increased the gas tax by 5 cents after about 10 years of trying with the support of most of big business.

In 2005 the legislature increased the gas tax by another 9.5 cents. It also gave the Governor the job of selecting the Secretary and took other powers away from the Transportation Commission, including budget development and oversight, effective July 2005. You could argue the decisions were linked, but that's not how I remember it. And it wasn't on the list of demands made by business that year even though a gas tax increase was high on that list.

After about 5 years of MacDonald, it became pretty easy to get the votes. And that provided the motivation most people needed to make the switch.

jmrolls has it right. Retrofitting the Viaduct would work. There are just too many things that can, and will, go wrong if a DBT is attempted. Geez, they can't even get the Brightwater tunnel done, and a deep bore downtown tunnel would be far more challenging and risky, orders of magnitude more difficult. Brightwater should never have been sited so far inland, but it was, and we're all paying for it. Too late to change that but it's not too late for sanity to prevail for highway 99. Let's not throw endless money into the hole of a DBT. Fix the Viaduct!

Wow, could you draw a more pathetic picture of a loser city than Seattle "patching up" the old viaduct by pouring a few million tons more of cement? Yes, that would be exactly the kind of "can do" spirit that would make high-tech industry leaders say "Seattle- that's where we should be!"

But ya gotta love the insanity- "We're very sensitive and artistic here, at one end of our waterfront we have a sculpture park, it will uplift you and take you out of the filth, grime and noise in which we otherwise choose to live."

No one should worry about keeping the AWV or building some version of Choppaduct. NOT going to happen.

Everyone should worry about extreme risks the DBT poses to downtown buildings during construction and forever after. Everyone should worry about the environmental impacts of DBT-displaced traffic upon Alaskan Way, Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, Denny Way and Westlake/Nickerson corridors.

No one will be fairly informed about these concerns reading Crosscut editorials.

Seattlers could consider the "dreadful inconvenience" of construction disruption imposed upon them to build Tunnelite as a sort of due penance. Seattlers think a little too highly of themselves, that's for sure.

jmrolls: Chopp voted against the DBT. The overrun provision wasn't crafted to get his vote but to get votes from other dems who would only approve the DBT if there was an assurance that the project was not going to gobble up gas taxes that were allocated to projects in their districts. If you were a Rep from Vancouver who encouraged your constituents to vote for the biggest tax increase in state history, would you vote to hand the tunnel boys of Seattle a blank check?

Thanks to Crosscut's handmaiden relationship with DOT- wonderfully personified by hosting Doug McD here - few people actually saw the proposal the Speaker was promoting. Not a wall at street level as DOT fibbed, but a series of buildings with passageways at street level, the road way on the third floor and a park on top of that. So instead we will get a wall of condos 20 stories high and the rest of us poor schlubs can try for a peek-a-boo at the mountains through the piers at street level.

Claire, what are you smoking? Or have you just not looked at the plan?

You talk about condos, but there's obviously no room for developments in the viaduct path. If you mean the existing private property next to the viaduct, much of that is historic/protected and/or publicly owned. The few actual potential development sites have much lower height limits than you think.

Truly, I wish people would at least understand the topic before spouting off about it.

@serial_catowner, You say "Wow, could you draw a more pathetic picture of a loser city than Seattle "patching up" the old viaduct by pouring a few million tons more of cement?"

Is Boston a "winner-city" thanks to its Big Dig fiasco? And is NYC a "loser city" because community activists blocked a plan to carve a highway through what is now Greenwich Village?

In my view moving forward with a shaky plan for the sake of progress is not as forward thinking as taking the time in advance to consider the risks before spending billions of dollars no one has on a narrow, paved cavity that will primarily accommodate gas guzzling cars in a city whose drivers are still reluctant to carpool or take the bus.

Claire: The finer points of Chopp’s maneuvering have been discussed in a number of articles including one in Crosscut on March 26, 2009 titled, When Chopp speaks, parse it closely. You can find it in the archives. The predictions seem to be playing out.

The DBT no vote you reference had little do with the overall process, which will probably result in the most expensive plans for both the 520 termination in Montlake and the AWV. Saving money and worrying about cost overruns don’t seem to be very important to anyone except tax payers.

Not only does Mayor McGinn support a vote on the tunnel, he was in fact the force behind the effort to bring it to a referendum. The mayor is an obssessive single issue activist and is unfit for public service. He is also, quite frankly, a liar and is completely wrong on this issue. If the Mayor wants to reduce the carbon footprint of automobiles he should (a) make Seattle more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, which he is doing (b) make Seattle a leader in electric car adoption (c) help create more public transit options and (d) perhaps try to encourage a higher gas tax at the state level. The tunnel will improve our regions economic competitiveness and quality of life. The argument that the tunnel creates auto exhaust could be used to encourage the removal of the 520 bridge, rather than replacement, and all other kinds of absurdities. His position is nonsensical and he is deceitful. The referendum I would like to see is one for his empeachment.

Well written, Doug! It's too bad some of the commenters can't move on. There was a process, and we aren't in a direct democracy no matter how much some people want that when the policymakers who study the issues choose something other than what they'd do with their base of knowledge. The exception: I agree with the comment that if there were any irregularities on how the decision was made, those should be investigated. Is the majority of the public in favor of something else, as claimed (cite the survey)? Even if true, in our system they've delegated that to committee members who have been briefed on the options, have spent countless hours examining each option and listening to public testimony and discussing with their other representatives. How would you feel if you were said committee member who's having people questioning every aspect of their decision? Who'd ever want to be on such a committee in the future? In so far as I know, none of those folks commenting against the tunnel was on the committee, if so, please disclose, and they'd serve us best by investing the time and effort on future committees and/or running for office rather than trying to re-open debate. Doug's right, if $ is left on the table, the other areas will snatch it up; I've heard as much from an influential state legislator. Also note that there's only 1 person from Seattle on each transportation committee (Senate and House); it's very anti-Seattle in the Legislature. My understanding re: the tunnel is that there is a point early-on when folks will know whether it's a go or no go, so those holding out for an alternative still have that. Note that deep bore tunnels are in use throughout the world, from overseas to this country, this one's the widest single tunnel in my recollection, but not by much. As for alternatives, even if they were in play, each year of delay adds to the cost and the risk of a major earthquake doing what happened in the East Bay to a similar structure of similar age. Further, the alternatives put the AWV out of commission for 3-4 years and the 110,000 vehicles/day looking elsewhere. Those costs were not added to the alternatives to make it an "apples to apples" cost comparison. I'd rather see the debate move towards making this option, if it ends up being carried through, or any other, the best possible for a cost that's within budget.

@ SteveShay- do you even understand any of the projects you cited? The "surface option" puts a new highway on the waterfront, just as the highway in Greenwich Village would have been. Building the tunnel is the option that makes it possible to build a park on the waterfront instead of a highway.

In Boston, they built more transit in the big dig process than Seattle has built in its entire history, and went under the river, and rebuilt an existing freeway through downtown with a lid that is now a park. So, once again, the reality is entirely the opposite of what you tried to convey.

McGinn will go down as the WORST mayor in Seattle's history. He cannot seem to understand that he is the mayor of the whole city and cannot summon any long term vision. Moreover, he is an errand boy for the Seattle Music and Nightlife Association which seems to be the only group with access to "hizonner the clown".

He is a pathetic caricature of what a big city mayor is supposed to be.