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Tunneling our way to recovery

While reading about Obama’s plans to pull the economy out of a nose dive, I happened upon this quote from John Maynard Keynes:

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.”

How long will it be before local officials start touting the tunnel option as a way of boosting the local economy by creating jobs?  The trouble with Obama’s infrastructure plan is that it seems to significantly rely on projects like replacing the viaduct that we don’t need and shouldn’t build.

Now is the time for us to lean into the fact that automakers are facing a downturn in demand for their product.  Why would we keep building infrastructure for single occupancy vehicles?

So my half-serious proposal is we go forward with the tunnel option to replace the viaduct.  Once we’ve dug out the tunnel, we bury bottles with $100 bills, cover it back up and sell the rights to dig them up.  That way, we get the benefits without the downside of more infrastructure for something we are trying to discourage.  So grab a shovel, and let’s start digging!

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This entry was posted by Roger Valdez on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Engineering, Government, Planning, Politics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Westie

    A tunnel wouldn’t create many jobs, but it may well save over 32,000 jobs that are anticipated to be lost if the viaduct isn’t replaced in some form. That, and $3.4 billion per year for down time in the through capacity of the viaduct (25% of N-S trips in Seattle). Roger you should read the study by Hebert Research, the well respected PNW economics firm, before engaging in karaoke commentary.

  • Roger

    Look at me, picking up the microphone again. When will I learn.

    I will take another look at the Herbert study. I realize this is a huge issue for West Seattle and the industrial community but its my guess that the Hebert study was done based on data collected before the recession.

    I doubt very much that those assumptions–or any assumptions–about job creation are going to be the same today when we are at the beginning of what might be the biggest economic shift in 75 years. I suggest you take a look at it again wearing those glasses.

    My next song: Folsom Prison Blues.

  • Matt the Engineer

    A tunnel would be far from shovel-ready, and any spending would come too late for our current crisis. What is shovel-ready and could save West Seattlites and Ballardians alike? The green line. Shovels were in-hand, ready to dig when we canceled the Monorail.

  • michael

    The analyses done for the stakeholder group showed that all options studied were sufficient to people and vehicles, including the surface/transit/1-5 option. So that 32,000 job loss sort of sounds like industry claims that clean air laws would destroy jobs, or the minimum wage would destroy jobs.

    The more important question is what is the best way to spend $3 billion dollars to create jobs? Unless we are digging that tunnel by hand, my guess is that there are lots of better ways to protect and create jobs. Which might also have the benefit of helping reduce global warming, instead of making it worse.

  • AJ

    The tunnel, as planned, does not serve Ballard, Queen Anne or Crown Hill as previously suggested, cutting them away from the Bypass.

    It does, however, serve the Gates Foundation and South Lake Union! Hmmm…

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