It makes little sense to pick the most expensive option that is also the most limited. As the state faces a $2B deficit, with a revenue gap widening daily, this option looks wrong to me.

For all their mouthing and posturing, the city council ordinance endorsed paying cost overruns in their Agreement with the state. And while all you outside Seattle city limits aren’t worried about the cost overruns - yet - Mayor McGinn’s on the case now. We’re happy to share.

It took 25 years to get the Viaduct in the first place. The Nisqually quake shifted the existing span in two places, and those haven’t subsequently moved. What’s the hurry with a tunnel?

If Seattle citizens held an initiative and dedicated the Alaska Way Viaduct right of way to a park (”Gregoire Waterfront Park” will fit the 1.7 mile space on a map), then the support for a tunnel would decline substantially. Seriously, what would happen if downtown interests, individuals, and entities were forbidden from profiting from the undergrounding? Most of those property owners would choose to not tax themselves extra.

The whole point of TDM is to avoid building something, like the tunnel. Before UPass E1 and just about every other parking lot was bursting at the seams. Now E1 hardly fills up half way and multiple surface parking lots have been converted into buildings. More info below.

http://www.toolsofchange.com/en/case-studies/detail/123
http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/utsp/tdm/prj62e.htm

Also, Seattle did vote on two replacement freeways and both failed. Don’t you remember that? It was just a few years ago.

This could go on and on but its not really productive anymore.

For me the biggest take away is my disappointment that the DJC is entertaining armchair and knee-jerk editorials. It lessens the credibility of the entire paper.

I think one or two million locals would dispute your “only for trucks” figure. Do a poll and I bet even Seattle alone would favor a replacement highway of some kind…to say nothing of the near north and south suburbs.

Your 4.5 billion figure forgets the billions we’d spend with any other alternative, including surface.

The tunnel doesn’t address outward sprawl so it’s confusing why you’d bring that up. It addresses the city as it is, while also freeing up Downtown to grow, have room for buses, be hospitable to pedestrians, etc.

I don’t get why you bring up UW. The UW is one of the best examples of demand management and illustrates perfectly how SOV demand is extremely elastic when parking is priced and good transit service is provided, i.e. downtown Seattle.

@mhays and Patrick

I think you and Patrick are confusing mobility and accessibility. Mobility is simply the ability to move around freely, accessibility is the ability to get to markets, services, etc that you need.

So yes moving outwards away from the city increases your mobility in general but it will also reduce your accessibility to the very things that brought you to the city in the first place. These are different problem.

Also you’re confusing commercial travel with private travel. Commercial travel really can’t change modes so ensuring this traffic can get where it needs to efficiency is important (i.e. tolls). Not so with private travel, which can change modes, time of day, and destination. The majority of trips are private (only about 3,000 truck trips will be in the tunnel in 2030) which do not need a tunnel for accessibility.

To me this shows the real question, the one that business people like you make but phrased in a different way. Should we be spending ~4.5 Billion on a tunnel solution that is really only needed meet the mobility needs of trucks? As a community are we willing to spend that much money to benefit a small group of constituents?

You can say yes or no but this is a fundamentally different problem and might be better addressed in the way that Matt the engineer spoke about above.

If driving does drop in Seattle (despite our near-constant population growth), I’d like to put more surface streets on road diets…the opposite of what your plan does.

The surface-transit-I-5 alternative involved expanding the N-S throughput capacity not only of surface streets but — much more significantly — Interstate 5. The alternative would have invested on the order of $500 million to provide an additional lane in each direction on I-5 through downtown Seattle (in part by closing some downtown exits and on-ramps). The alternative also would have installed individual variable message boards on I-5 allowing speeds to be optimized for each lane to increase throughput.

Gas prices will rise as usage grows with the economy, and demand will fall long-term in response. However, much of this will be fuel efficient cars, not different modes or closer workplaces. Those will be factors, but not on even remotely the scale of 99. I suspect that reduced miles will simply offset our population gain.

Andrew, I suspect you mean 2,900 buses for $3 billion, assuming a little over a million each. We should dramatically expand bus service in Seattle through a Seattle-only measure. In general, buses work if Downtown streets aren’t dominated by traffic headed from Tukwila to Green Lake.