Very fair.

But for one point --had the State offered an honest analysis of the Retrofit, the vote would be for it by a very solid majority.

Think a Retrofit couldn't be done? Then go take a look at the Spokane Street Viaduct repair and expansion. It's almost done and cost $160 million. One hundred sixty million. Then extrapolate to the AWV.

Sucher is spot on, of course, but see, the Spokane Street Viaduct doesn't run along the waterfront, and as such it doesn't offend the Wright Runstads and GGLOs of the world, or Allied Arts, or the "design community," or the car-hating McGinn Green Taliban.

No option would give us more value, and more traffic capacity and mobility, than a retrofit, or a complete rebuild. Most of us want only to retain what capacity and mobility we have -- because our time has value. The hours we spend in stalled traffic are hours we can never recover. All we ask is to continue to get from place to place in a timely manner.

But that is offensive to those who would profit from development and higher rents that less obstructed views would enable, those for whom a simple highway is an insult to their esthetic sensibilities, and those who share an ideological agenda -- that it is somehow unseemly, even immoral, for the masses to enjoy the benefits of personal motorized transportation. We're destroying the planet, don't you know? So therefore our time has no value to them.

Having sat through my fair share of candidate forums and endorsement interviews already this year, I think I have some basis to conclude that this year's crop of City Council challengers is the sorriest, least qualified bunch I have seen in 45 years in or around Seattle. If any of the incumbents loses a seat (highly unlikely) against this lot, the voters will indeed be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

One such hiccup every 25-30 years or so can be expected. Few people on this side of Lou Guzzo dementia will admit today to having voted for Dixy Lee Ray. I look forward to the time when even fewer will admit to having voted for McGinn.

I would have tended to agree with a retrofit two years ago, but today with the project probably 5% done, I would say bore baby bore. (Sorry for the pun.) WSDOT has already spent millions to relocate and upgrade utilities in Seattle in preparation for the bore. All that work along First Ave, the new water mains, the relocation and upgrade of the electrical, is WSDOT money. I find it most infuriating; wait until all the SODO utilities are upgraded with state tax dollars, then start complaining in earnest. Nothing would have been done by the city to repair and upgrade the utilities without state money. If the bore is halted, then the city should be on the hook to repay the state coffers for the utilities. People need to remember, construction on this project really started early in 2009.

At this point, if Seattle does not want the bore, then turn SR 99 over to the city at the First Ave. South Bridge and the north end of the Aurora Bridge and let the city figure out what to do. Other cities in Washington have had state highways turned over to them and removed from state highway status, why not Seattle. It is a Seattle roadway; let it be a Seattle problem. After all, that is in essence what the Mayor is advocating with this vote; a transportation system wholly designed by and for Seattle.

Turn 99 over to the city? With this mayor in office? Are you daft?

Finally something fair, balanced, and well researched on the tunnel fiasco from Crosscut!

As a Magnolian, I just want a few simple things. I want to be able to get to Sea-Tac, West Seattle, and Sodo safely and quickly. No added traffic lights. Through a tunnel would be just fine. I want a beautiful new waterfront full of people, watercraft, a variety of activities and some good restaurants. I want the viaduct demolished so I never have to look at it again, listen to its traffic noise, or fear being crushed by the Big One someday when I'm rushing to catch a plane. I want all this done quickly and without further controversy, on time and on budget. I want the bicyclists to shut up, stop for red lights, avoid hitting pedestrians, and stop acting so smug and self-righteous. In exchange I'm willing to cut them some slack while driving, since they are somewhat exposed and don't pollute. I would also like Mayor McGinn to resign. While we're at it, maybe we could ban cruise ship passengers from the Pike Place Market Historical District. One more thing: cheap street parking, with machines that take dollar bills.

A wildcard that may influence voters is the central waterfront revitalization plan that is premised on removal of the viaduct. The plan's chief architect recently presented some tentative "big ideas" that would reconnect the city to the bay and the western views. Although the plan is not scheduled for delivery until 2016, more early public discussion of and involvement in the planning process would provide an important counterpoint to the increasingly repetitious debate over transportation alternatives and costs.

Cancellation of the DBT & MercerWest would not mean going back to square one. The intentionally indecipherable studies still contain useful information to carry forward on alternatives, including a 'temporary' retrofit. Boulevard first (Post-Seawall/Pre-AWV era), then a sensible cut/cover tunnel or more elegant viaduct as best feasible options eventually if necessary. Characterizing opposition as a car-hating taliban is ludicrous. Declassifying the AWV segment of SR99 as city street is likewise bogus. Portraying opposition as a plea for a sensible alternative is respectable. I don't relish being rude about it, but the
DBT & Mercer West will do grevious harm, vote or no vote.

Of the realistic options, retrofitting or replacing the Viaduct, making a cut-and-cover tunnel, or boring a tunnel, the bored tunnel is the worst option for carrying the existing load. By that measure, Seattle voters should love it. But they don't. I hope that if the Seattle voters turn down the state's plan for this state highway, we will do the sensible thing and retrofit the Viaduct. That should be good for 50 years, and maybe after that amount of time has passed anti-car agitators in the Queen City will quit acting like spoiled princesses and work constructively with the state for a viable solution.

Knute, what are you for?
All that noodling and you failed on the same point if clarity you apparently wanted from the council. The "opposition" failed to put an alliterative forward.

"If tunnel proponents are so certain of the rightness of their faith — that the deep bore is indeed the only or optimal way to go — they should embrace rather than fear the ballot."

Walk the walk, Knute. What are opponents afraid of?

Trying to discover meaning in the tunnel vote flap is the kind of trivial pursuit that only a devout political junkie could love. It only serves to distract us from more important concerns. The term "deep bore" carries multiple nuances here.

Congratulations Knute, you have struck the tunnel nerve. Again. I sometimes think of the much admire "Viaduct Repair" as being sort of a Pogue Carburetor (http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.asp) for Seattle's mobility junkies.
Viaduct Repair enthusiasts believe Seattle and State of Washington officials (the elected ones) should frown, scratch their heads and say, "...you know, I think those consultants we hired and who wrote those cost comparison reports are just wrong. We really should design and contract out a repair project for the existing Viaduct just to tide us over until the next earthquake. Then, maybe the solution will become clear, one we can all agree on. (ha!) In the meantime we'll get a nice low bid and proceed" Ha!, again.

An about-face by elected officials in a situation like this is very unlikely and for good reason (even Mayor McGinn has shown zero interest in a Viaduct Fix). What data the politicians have all indicate that the "Repair" is expensive, has a relatively short life expectancy and low operational standards. Not to mention that it's ugly and noisy. I hope they don't need anything more than that.

I firmly disagree with you Kieth. Even if the politicians have the "data" on the "rapair" that you indicate, this data can be interpreted in hundreds of different ways. For example, the data that suggests "short life expectancy" can be interpreted as kicking the can down the road and therefore a waste of money, a way of maintaining current auto capacity cheaply without increasing the size of the waterfront structure, or an acceptable short term solution for transit advocates who don't think long term investment in a freeway there is worth the cost. In this case the same data on costs etc. can have different meanings depending on one's transportation philosophy. In addition, considering the pressure politicians face from construction unions and property developers, its no wonder that such a solution got axed early even if it didn't deserve to.

@ Dbreneman. Anti-tunnel advocates don't "pretend" traffic will disappear, they KNOW traffic will disappear and reach a stable equilibrium in short order. Traffic will most certainly not become constant gridlock because people WILL change their habits and transportation and driving time choices because NOBODY would sit in traffic for whatever apocoliptic time periods you envision. The only question is what the costs of those modified trips are and whether those costs exceed the billions of savings and freed funds for transit invest etc. that not building a new freeway creates, and in my opinion those traffic problem costs a much smallar then the billions of savings.

All this is not to say that no freeways are useful or nobody should drive, but rather is a simple acknowledgement of the fact that each additional dollar spent on roads is less beneficial than the previous and the fact that increased road capacity induces demand meaning that over the long term most roadways, no matter how wide or narrow, will become congested as growth patterns react to the infrastructure in place. To not acknowledge this is to be playing a game of pretend and in this situation the evidence is clear that a freeway is not neccessary, especially considering the fact that WSDOT, a road building agency with obvious bias, strongly considered surface and transit as the final option going forward(http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Viaduct-options-Down-to-2-1294430.php).

Evidently the best solution isn't enough, nor a perfect(?) solution; those opposed are looking for the "Magic" solution! Cue the obfuscation. HaHa, Good Luck.

Retrofit supporters knew the fix was in when WSDOT changed the criteria for a retrofit of the AWV from being able to survive a likely earthquake to being usable after a 500-year event. Sort of a difference, that.

Hey Knute, nice article!
It was interesting that the Seattle times called this vote a Yawner but didn't bother to investigate any of the claims of the anti tunnel crowd. Some independent newspaper eh? Where as "The Stranger" ran a list of all the things that could go wrong.

"http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/what-could-possibly-go-wrong/Content?oid=4399657"

You would think that the Seattle Times could do an article talking about how these issues can be mitigated by the WSDOT plan. Instead of telling voters "don't worry, nothing to see here."

@Bubbleator.

Just fwiw, the Spokane Street Visduct was repaired/expanded using the 500 year seismic event.

So no idea why 500-year event should be an insurmountable issue for the AWV.

"Seattle is not alone in being contentious, but we just don't pay close attention to the long, drawn out civic fights in other cities."

So true, but once the civic fights are over in most cities, they move on. However, revisiting every decision, no matter how settled, is apparently the Seattle way, validated by Knute himself: "It might be ugly, complicated and messy, but it's what we have...We somehow carry an illusion that we are uniquely dysfunctional."

I freely admit that I haven't researched every single city (anyone willing to do that?), but none of the cities and states that I've lived in don't come anywhere near the dysfunction of the "Seattle Process" where we chew on an issue over and over and over and never swallow, and when we do finally swallow, regurgitation is allowed.

It seems that these days barf bags should become standard issue for every Seattle voter.

Amazing how all these "how we got here" articles never mention the phony 2007 three-way up up down down referendum vote cooked up by Jan Drago to confuse voters who tunnel supporters feared would choose an elevated solution over a tunnel. Or the facts that even the WSDOT assumed that a rejuvenated or rebuilt viaduct would be the plan of choice up until the end of 2008. Then "Stakeholders" bolstered by late breaking news of special boring equipment by contract consultants at the Discovery Institute (those folks who brought you intelligent design) demanded that the tunnel option be pushed into consideration with the remaining options. Or that the outside studies for the WSDOT intended to disqualify the viaduct still confirmed that a viaduct could be replaced or refurbished for half the cost of the tunnel.

And then there are the cold hard facts that no other proposed configuration for the AWV matches the existing viaduct in any transportation related category. 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 provides a way to modulate how much traffic is allowed downtown. And it acknowledges the fact that rubber-tired, multi-passenger vehicles are still the choice of over 90% of us. And it's billions of dollars cheaper than this present mistake in the making.

Refurbish or rebuild it. It works, it's affordable, and if an honest vote were held tomorrow it's the solution that voters would choose.

Not dysfunctional? Seattle? Wasn't it in 1970 that the battle for light rail began? We finally got a line 39 years later and now a nasty battle rages in Bellevue over its expansion. Meanwhile, in Portland and Vancouver.....need I say more?

Kieth,

The Lin study identified a viaduct solution with a service life of 75 to 100 years. What other wrong-headed claims do you have? Lin wasn't just passing through Seattle. They were hired to put a stake through the heart of an elevated plan and were given criteria with which to arrive at the desired conclusions.

The business of getting rid of the viaduct has nothing to do with any concerns about transportaion or people's safety anyway. It's about money, greed, ego and social engineering, not in any special order.

More's the pity.

And following up on JM Rolls:

Kieth,
Please take a look with your own eyes: the City is finishing (on budget so far as I can tell) work at Spokne Street Viaduct which would be very similar to the work at AWV. Use your own common sense. The numbers used by WSDOT were created to make the Retrofit look bad.

Sure I do Wilbur, but the way special interests turn bad ideas into reality is to confuse issues, withhold information, misrepresent facts and lobby behind closed doors until the public gets bored, loses interest and wants to move on to the next shiny thing. This process is arguably the biggest problem we have in the county today.

Anyway, what else would you like to discuss?

...country too.

David, you bring up an interesting comparison and if I knew anything about Spokane St. I would cheerfully comment. There could be dozens of reasons why Spokane St. can be done relatively efficiently. I did spend time looking at the schematics that someone (Victor Grey, to begin with) did on the Viaduct retrofit. I know enough about construction to know that it is a mess. The work would involve a steel bracing system above ground
all the way to the second deck (with sizable outriggers) and undefined "soils stabilization" everywhere under the Viaduct (as near as I could tell) from the ground plane down to the (I think) wooden pilings. The work would stop all use of the Viaduct during the construction period and from what I saw would interfere with some of the usage of the existing parking/driveway area under the Viaduct permanently. I have no idea what "soils stabilization" means other than the hammered-in coils that are, so far as I know, fairly experimental (sort of like the tunnel).
It's the mother of all cans of worms. The Deep Bore Tunnel is a terrible idea until you seriously compare it to all the other choices. Then it starts to look good.

You know enough about construction to call it a mess, but not enough to consider the practical uses of steel bracing above ground, or outriggers, and “no idea” about soils stabilization? And since most studies have been for the purpose of tearing it down, there’s been little real information about how construction could be staged. Had it not been rejected out of hand, who knows what elevated solutions might have emerged?
It’s also misleading to compare the tunnel to the viaduct without clearly stating that the tunnel costs twice as much as the viaduct and provides half the capacity and virtually none of the access.

And to keep falling back on aesthetics as a reason to sacrifice the mobility provided by the viaduct is astounding. Is it a transportation project for the region’s commuters, or a parks and recreation project for one downtown neighborhood?

OTOH, we have the Aurora Bridge retrofit that the ST announced today: "Construction workers began seismic repairs on the Aurora Bridge Wednesday, according to a news release of the state DOT... part of a $5.7 million project ... to better withstand a major earthquake... funded by the 2005 gas tax.. construction expected to be completed by fall 2012." Not to mention the finally completed suicide fence. Is this a great place or what!

The Spokane Street Viaduct work cost $160 million.
It appears to be about 5 thousand feet of roadway.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is about 8 thousand feed of road.

Can someone help me do the extrapolation?

Of course we do not know if it is a linear extrapolation.
But it should give is an order of magnitude.

Assuming someone else out there is interested in the true events (or at least the record that WSDOT saves) here is how the bored tunnel leapfrogged the front running hybrid alternative and even bounced it from EIS consideration. Again, is this a great place or what?

Go to: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/eis.htm [Works!]
Drop down the page to "Why is the I-5/surface/transit hybrid alternative not analyzed as an alternative in the 2010 Supplemental Draft EIS?" and explore both the hot links in the answer to that question.

The first of those hot links explains the then front running hybrid alternative, and the second explains how it got bounced (eventually to the point of being "unreasonable— excludable from evaluation in the required EIS.

See Wa State SEPA Rule WAC 197-11-060 (3) "(iii) [general rule] and WAC197-11-440 (5)(b) [specific rule]:

5 (b) Reasonable alternatives shall include actions that could feasibly attain or approximate a proposal's objectives, but at a lower environmental cost or decreased level of environmental degradation.

(i) The word "reasonable" is intended to limit the number and range of alternatives, as well as the amount of detailed analysis for each alternative.

Btw, I'd like to point out that the seismic event design standard used for the Spokane Street Viaduct and many (if not all) for the AWV retrofit studies have used the 500 year event.

So the question should be answered (without the vague hand-waving by Kieth) why the AWV retrofit is supposed to cost so much more than the Spokane Street Viaduct?

Another point is that there are many ways to answer any design problem and it's possible that since WSDOT had no incentive to find a retrofit solution, it didn't look very hard to find one.

et tu afreeman. Your links don't work either way.

Just a gentle correction, "initiative" versus "referendum". This article about the vote in August used the word "initiative" throughout it. It is a "referendum" however that is really being talked about.

Knute, you are hardly alone in conflating the two, I see it constantly in the media. The thing to remember - is one, what are they really - as in officially they are called out correctly in the venue that is generating the story - court, city clerk, city council, etc.

Then remember, a referendum addresses law that is already made, whereas an initiative seeks to create law.

I hope this will be remembered also - the initiative vote in the tunnel matter will be in November - so the referendum vote will not be the last vote.

I understand how it can get confusing, just requires a gentle reminder, and that is what this is.

To Kieth.

You speak with certainty that "The work would stop all use of the Viaduct during the construction period..."

I'd like to remind you that that was NOT the case with the Spokane Street Viaduct. Obviously, without question, it is possible to do major construction while such a structure is being used. Is there a cost? Is there annoyance? Of course but it clearly made sense on the SSV.

I could challenge every one of your very vague and undocumented assertions. But I won't because, alas, i don't believe that facts are at issue. You think it is worth some vast and unknown amount of money and environmental impact to take down the Viaduct. I have a different set of values and priorities focussing on the sort of civic interventions illustrated (literally) by my book City Comforts.

Oh great, we get hacks touting their books in the comments now. This is getting unreadable. Buh bye!

Buh bye Andy.

http://publicola.com/2011/06/06/dont-sleep-through-this-tunnel-vote/

Ah yes...another re-write of AWV history from the proponents of the least viable option of them all...the surface option.

How does this one go? First, knock down the viaduct. Then, when responding to comments about the resulting gridlock, just say, "What gridlock?"