Ben has a good piece in Slog about the deep bore tunnel and the Protect Seattle Now movement.

I think Ben’s right to go back to first principles for why the tunnel is a terrible policy choice. Too much of the tunnel debate has spiraled into spurious arguments about the “will of the people” or “jobs” or “safety” or micro debates about process.

The fact is that of the three alternatives, the DBT is the most expensive (for both state and city) and gets you both the most highway and the least transit. The City’s massive commitments to the waterfront will soak up the financial capacity to do anything great from the Transit Master Plan. All for a waterfront park that the City is bound to mess up.

I wonder about the ballot measure, though; will it accomplish anything besides embarrassing tunnel supporters? That’d be fine, as tunnel supporters deserve to be embarrassed, but I’d be more excited about a measure with a concrete path to a better alternative.

84 Replies to “Schiendelman in Slog”

  1. Your complaint has a complex response.

    First, remember many of Eyman’s initiatives are thrown out because they have more than one purpose. Stopping the council and pushing another option in the same measure could easily be seen by a hostile judiciary as illegal.

    Second, a pure surface transit option probably wouldn’t pass. Voters aren’t informed about induced demand, largely because it’s counterintuitive, and they’re afraid of congestion, just like in every other city that’s removed a highway. And they are fatigued already, thanks to the state trying to force this for so long. The only way to get to the good policy choice here is to kill the bad ones.

  2. I find the entire Viaduct fight extremely amusing. It’s not just this region’s marked incompetence to do major projects well* that amuses me, it’s the fact that we’re so full of ourselves as we argue about how we’re making Seattle into a world-class city.

    *E.g., the 520 exits to nowhere near the cArboretum, the I-90 bridge deck that we dropped in the lake, the train tracks in the downtown tunnel that never saw a train…I could go on.

    1. The 520 exits to nowhere aren’t really a failure. They’re a success story for serious activism. That was for a planned highway along the east side of the city – stopping it was a huge success.

      1. I agree that it’s good that the 520 doesn’t run through the Arb. In fact, I’d be happy to move the southbound exit (traveling west) further to the west, and get it out of the Arb. I’d even go so far as to cut Arboretum Drive in half such that cars can’t go from Montlake to Madison.

        But it’s hard to deny the very existence of highway exits that go nowhere says “fail”. The failure isn’t the activism stopping the highway. The failure is that we never should have built the exits in the first place. Now they stand with the missing I-90 span as a testament to this city’s hubris.

      3. AP, that’s like complaining about the new 520 bridge being built with the capacity for light rail, and then we decide it makes more sense to route around the north end of the lake instead.

        Sometimes economics and political winds make it practical to build in anticipation of future construction.

      4. The Thompson Expressway would have gone south to Renton and north to U-Village to meet the proposed N 50th freeway.

        The freeways were initially presented as a national necessity that trumped any local concerns. By the late 1960s as people began to see the impact of freeways on cities, there were freeway revolts across the US including Los Angeles, which resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of proposed freeways nationwide. The list is amazing; I don’t think hardly anybody nowadays would argue that all of them together were necessary. I read elsewhere that only some 12% of the total freeways were built, which is almost incomprehensible now. Robert Moses wanted to put several freeways in east Portland, for instance.

        So the Thompson Expressway was part of a much larger national trend, not a unique failure of Seattle per se.

      5. Regardless of the reason, it’s hard to argue with the existence of “exits to nowhere”. I don’t care if aliens came down and stopped construction. They still scream “fail”.

      6. @Mike Orr: Interesting, thanks for the link. One slight change: the Thompson Expressway was part of a much larger national failure :)

      1. And what is the compelling reason to put in tracks for a technology that hadn’t been invented? Apparently, whatever the plan was, it failed, because the tracks never saw a train.

      2. The tracks weren’t for a technology that hadn’t been invented, they were for an old technology, the high-floor LRV, which was the prevalent type of LRV at the time the tunnel was built.

        And it wasn’t a plan, it was one city councilman, George Benson, who was trying to get people to see beyond their own noses and install tracks ahead of time for what he figured would be the inevitable switch to trains. The best laid plans… I hope everything you do in life is perfect, because you sure act like it. Here’s to hoping you never meet failure.

      4. Zed,

        If nothing else, the ‘failure’ of the original rails in the tunnel allowed the tunnel to be built for future use. If rails had not been put in originally, I doubt that the tunnel would have been retrofitted for today’s rails. People would have screamed about the expense of turning the bus tunnel into a rail tunnel and instead we’d most likely have LINK on 3rd or 4th Avenue. So, in a way, the so-called ‘failure’ of the 1980’s helped bring on the ‘success’ of today.

      5. The tracks in the DSTT had to be dug up and reinstalled because they weren’t properly insulated with the ‘rubber jacket’ that was standard then and now to keep the electricity from ‘straying’. The station platform could have been raised less expensively. It was a total screw-up that had nothing to do with low-floor vehicles.

  3. At this point I would be happy to see the DBT stopped and the viaduct torn down. I don’t care at this point if we have an alternative plan. Doing nothing will have some negative consequences, but I sincerely doubt that they’ll be anywhere near the magnitude predicted by the DBT supporters. Traffic will find a way through, and we can fix problems with an incremental rather than mega-project approach.

    2. I find this argument amusing coming from light rail supporters: “Traffic will find a way through,”

      If we don’t build the U-Link, or East Link or any other light rail, “traffic will find a way through.”

      Won’t it?

      3. Norman, you’ve had literally hundreds of comments deleted for being off-topic, you’re once again bringing light rail into a thread that has nothing to do with light rail, and you dare criticize someone else for not addressing the “actual subject at hand”? Your baseless hubris knows no bounds, and your utter lack of self-awareness boggles the sane mind.

      4. Jason: Ben did not comment on any topic at all — he merely took a childish little shot at me. But Ben’s comment was not “off-topic”, right?

      5. Light rail isn’t really off-topic at all in the DBT debate. The boosters claim that critics have no plan to replace the viaduct’s trip capacity. But critics have spent over a generation replacing that trip capacity with improved bus service, Sounder, and light rail.

        Nevertheless, the viaduct remained, and beckoned drivers to use any space created by trip shift. And so, more trips downtown were enabled and induced.

        Boosters pretend that North Link construction and RapidRide don’t exist, for purposes of additional trip replacement.

        The absurdity of the capacity debate is that the $3.3 billion figure for Surface + Transit was the sum of small and medium fixes to get to capacity for replacement of 110,000 trips. But the tunnel is projected to only replace 30-40,000 trips, and use up its whole $4 billion just doing that.

  4. A concrete path to a better alternative might be more comprehensible and appealing to voters if it had some grooved rail in the concrete and some catenary overhead. And some bus lanes more intensive than a paint stripe twelve feet from the curb. Has anybody got even a preliminary plan showing how a “surface and transit option” could really work- especially for transit?

    Mark Dublin

    1. Yes, the WSDOT planning included funding for Central Streetcar and increased bus service to West Seattle and Ballard (and a few other places). The surface/transit plan is just as planned as the tunnel is, they just don’t want you to realize that. :)

      1. The central streetcar needs a modest amount of planning, but the bus needs very little, they could start that whenever they wanted to if the funds were there.

        This issue has more obvious urgency in light of the recent earthquakes; we need to tear the viaduct down as soon as possible and in the mean time we should run more buses.

      3. West Seattle, Ballard and Aurora just happen to be the areas slated for… ta da!… RapidRide. Surface/Transit would have beefed up these corridors considerably more than RR is doing, which would have led to more frequent service and perhaps all-day limited-stop service (like Swift).

  5. Personally, I think the best way to actually stop the tunnel construction is to sue the state. The law that funds the tunnel construction is almost certainly illegal, and anyone who lives in the Seattle area has standing to sue based on the language of the law.

    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.

    I don’t know why no one is interested in doing this, I guess Seattle liberals feel a bit squeamish when it comes to law suits.

    Either way, I still think Protect Seattle Now’s doing the right thing, even if it doesn’t guarantee the surface option.

    1. If I lived in Seattle and could prove I do not benefit from this project…

      …why should I make it easier for someone from Normandy Park to get to Shoreline?…

      …would I be able to get a rebate or an exemption?

      P.S. Renters pay property taxes of their landlords via rent charged. Property tax goes up, rent goes up.

    2. My suspicion is that you need to show damages before you can sue – so the city would have to wait until the state billed them. Much too late.

    1. I definitely don’t want to turn this into a fight about the safety of the project. As Martin said, that’s not where the real discussion is. I’ve been in some of those tunnels (and on top of them), and sure, from an urbanist perspective, it was a crappy decision to do the big dig, but the price and safety issues come with any big project – even light rail – and they’re to be expected.

  7. I view the Initiative approach as little more than a sideshow and a nuisance. Basically the proponents of this path assume that passing such a thing will represent “the final word” on the DBT, and we all know that Initiatives are rarely “the final word”. Just look at the previous votes on the viaduct if you don’t believe this, or the 5 votes on the monorail.

    And the Initiative approach assumes that the Seattle City Council and the DBT proponents will be inactive in the face of such a challenge, and that is a ridiculous assumption. For example, assuming the Initiative clears all the hurdles and actually qualifies for the ballot, do you really expect the SCC to do nothing?

    No. Most likely they would put the Surface Only option on the ballot too. The DBT proponents would have an easy time painting the Surface Only option in a negative light (rightly or wrongly), and they would be joined in their “no” position by all the pro-viaduct retrofit/replace proponents. A “No” vote would be a given.

    Oddly enough, qualifying an anti-DBT Initiative for the ballot might be the worst thing that could happen to the Surface Only option.

    2. This isn’t an initiative. It’s a referendum, which is actually binding against the agreements. For an August ballot in an election year, you don’t ignore it. And you’re the last person I’d expect misleading crap about the monorail from – I avoid that kind of nonsense when supporting light rail, remember? Every monorail vote was about something very different.

      If the council put surface on the ballot, we’d get a stand-up fight, and one I think we can win. I haven’t even started publicly boiling down the simple, understandable reasons why surface works, and it’s easy to explain – I’m honing my skills there while signature gathering.

      1. It is about as binding as the state recognizes it. The road is still a state entity, no matter how much nittering about it is done here in the Emerald City.

      2. Ben,

        There is nothing materially different about a referendum that makes it any more or less binding or tamper proof than an initiative – both are subject to politics and tampering. And a local referendum most certainly does not supersede state law.

        And I think you are dead wrong on the surface option winning. It might be easy to sway someone while standing on a street corner signature gathering, but when the big political machine gets going against it there is almost no chance it will win. And even then, it is just a local vote on a state project – it has almost no validity.

        And you’re assuming the pro-DBT crowd will play fair….

    3. No matter how the vote goes, it will show whether the majority of voting residents support this tunnel project. We voted down an expensive tunnel before. The proponents say we didn’t vote down this tunnel. No, but thee natural assumption is that a vote against one expensive tunnel is a vote against any expensive tunnel, because the overwhelming factor cited by opponents was the cost, not the location. You can’t just change a project a bit and argue that a “No” vote would have been a “Yes” vote, you have to re-vote it and see what the public really thinks.

      1. I’ve always figured voter opposition to the 2007 cut/cover was due to the spurious scare-tactic claims of unacceptable construction disruption. The current cut/cover is a new version that allows the AWV to remain standing during construction. Yet nobody is making the distinction between it and previous cut/covers.

        Furthermore, the construction process for the current version is misleading. Wsdot proposes to start with a giant 6-block trench between Spring and Main, followed by 2 similarly huge trenches from the middle to the portals at Pike and King streets. What? A simpler, shorter duration construction process would start at the south end and move north in short-block segments, removing debris via completed segments which are returned to surface use.

        It appears Wsdot is rigging their studies against all cut/cover tunnels to be more disruptive, take more time and more expense to construct. Six years after the Nisqually quake, Wsdot directors and department heads favored ONLY the elevated replacement and did not want the public to be honestly informed about the cut/cover options, ie, Wsdot “rigged” that vote and still misinforms the public about the current cut/cover tunnel. Blame this fiasco on Wsdot. Mercer West is also totally bogus, for those who don’t know better. AND, the current design for the new Alaskan Way boulevard ought to go back to the drawing board before Waterfront planning goes any further. Blame SDOT too for this fiasco.

  8. Now, I’m completely ignorant as to what would benefit Seattle the most. I understand that by funding a huge park the city would have a dearth of funds necessary to introduce a public transit system on the waterfront, correct? Or is it that just by building a tunnel the City would be so in debt that they couldn’t afford more transit?

    1. The cost overrun situation aside, the State pays for the tunnel and the city pays for the waterfront improvements. Kill the tunnel and the city is still on the hook for the waterfront improvements – essentially no change.

      And there never was any serious agreement to provide transit as part of the agreement. They threw Sims a little window-dressing in the form of a supposed “vote” on providing supplemental transit service as part of the agreement, but this was just CYA for him while he planned his exit from Seattle.

      On top of that, a King County wide vote on transit service as part of the viaduct replacement is not just DOA, it is stillborn. Do you really think the rest of the county, which hates Seattle, hates taxes, and generally also hates transit, is going to vote to increase their taxes for what is perceived as a Seattle-only transit improvement? Give me a break – it was dead when they put it in the agreement and it is still dead.

    2. lazarus is missing a couple of things.

      First, the city component of the surface option would likely be lower. You’re right that we’d have cost savings in not having to build a park, too.

      Second, this opens up the opportunity to fight for transit. Right now, if we leave things as is, we get zero transit. If we shoot down the tunnel, we can go fight for transit service as part of a future agreement. And we can do a lot of it between August and November, during city council campaigns.

      1. Ben is correct about these two points.
        Earlier in the chain, there was also the reference to the fact that the state’s highway dreams are beyond their highway budget; that’s why the so-called cost overrun issue could be relevant in 2016.

      2. Ben,

        I don’t think you can make a case that the surface component of the Surface Only option is somehow magically cheaper than the surface component of the DBT+Surface plan.

        In fact, I’d say that the surface component of the Surface Only option will likely be more expansive as the local road warrior types attempt to make up for the lack of the DBT by increasing the number of lanes and optimizing it for through-put.

        And you’re wrong about this being an opportunity to fight for transit, or at least you are wrong in that fighting the DBT component somehow increases the prospects of improved transit – because it most certainly doesn’t. Going head-to-head with the State in a fight we can’t win won’t improve our chances of doing anything on the transit side.

        Look at it this way: The way you’ve currently defined the argument we’d need to win both the anti-DBT argument and win the pro-transit argument in order to get more transit. A far more effective approach is to accept the DBT as a given and make a stand-alone argument for more transit.

        I think a stand-alone transit argument has a real chance of winning, but p*ss off enough of the people in power and transit will end up being nothing but Road Kill.

      3. Except that State highway 99 then runs on the surface, so the surface boulevard is no longer just any old city street.

      4. Stopping the DBT could follow the path set by Portland’s initial MAX system. The funds to fund MAX were derived from stopping the proposed Mt Hood Freeway.

        Consider a bridge across the RR tracks at Broad Street. This would certainly aid motorists during reconstruction AND thereafter. The Waterfront Streetcar Line could cross this bridge, turn north on Elliott, cross Western onto 3rd Ave W, turn east on a sidestreet to Seattle Center. It’s about 1 mile from Alaskan Way to a Warren Ave Terminus. The Waterfront Streetcar Line to Seattle Center. Wow! Instead of a streetcar line on 1st Ave, a “frequent” trolleybus shuttle between Seattle Center & King Street would work better.

    3. The city has to rebuild the seawall to prevent the first few blocks of downtown from falling into the Sound. 1st Ave was the original waterfront; that’s why it’s called 1st Ave. They attached the seawall project to the Viaduct project because it’s in the same vicinity, and to show that Seattle was ‘contributing’. But the seawall rebuild will have to be done no matter what happens to the Viaduct.

      As for the issues of parks, affordability and transit, it’s as McGinn says, “It’s the cost overrun issue, stupid.” A significant amount of the DBT opposition would disappear if the state definitively picked up the cost overruns. There’s disagreement on whether it’s enforecable, but the fact remains that it’s possible, so we have to plan for the contingency. Even if it’s not enforceable, the state could take an equivalent amount from other city’s total tax revenues by adjusting the rules on sales-tax percentage, other taxes like the car-tab tax, etc. If the city does get stuck with cost overruns, it would bankrupt the city or at least prevent other needed capital improvements like transit.

      I think the current park proposal is small, like one block. Not the entire waterfront or even half of it. So it’s not that big a deal whether the park gets built or not.

  9. Can anybody think of a good reason not to tear the viaduct down right now?

    Mark Dublin

    2. I think we’d have more support to just close it. Then if the fears about full gridlock come true, people can decide if the freeflowing traffic is worth the risk of death and potentially open the thing back up while building a tunnel. But if it’s tollerable then we can decide if a multi-billion dollar tunnel is worth building.

      Even the pro-tunnel folk have no real argument against this.

      1. The same could be said for just closing the Northern SOunder line. Afterall, folks are getting through on the buses, why was money on the choo-choo train

      2. People are making that decision right now every day. Everyone who uses the viaduct has decided that it is worth the risk. I make a round trip on the viaduct 3 or 4 times every week.

        Why don’t we tear down the viaduct? We don’t shut down the viaduct because about 110,000 vehicles carrying almost 200,000 people use it every day, and those people don’t want to sit in traffic on surface streets or I-5.

        Why would you want to make trips worse for those 200,000 people per day, plus all the people who use I-5 past downtown, plus all the people — including those on buses — who take surface streets in downtown every day, and would have to share those streets with 10’s of thousands more vehicles every day, without the viaduct?

        Basically, all streets downtown, and I-5 thru downtown would have far greater traffic if the viaduct were shut down. You think that is desirable?

      3. Why is it that when some anti-rail commenters refer to trains, they refer to them as “choo-choo trains”? I mean, I understand the desire to belittle rail transit and liken it to a toy, but let’s face it: Trains are a much more serious way of moving things than automobiles are, and the only toy aspect of them is the limited extent to which we use them for transit purposes in this particular area of the country.

        Also, if it is meant to imply that we only build rail transit to satisfy some citizens’ inner child, similar innuendo are in order for cars. Talk about parallels to the inner child.

        The only reason some people don’t take trains seriously is because of the current automobile-centric paradigm. Things will change, and people who now refer to them as ‘choo-choo trains’ will appropriately feel ignorant.

      4. Or, you could answer the question: why don’t we shut down the Sounder trains? Very few people use them compared to the viaduct. And Sounder trains cost millions in operating subsidies every year, while the viaduct has very little “operating costs”, especially on a per “passenger” basis.

        If people think there would be little negative effect of closing the viaduct, what negative effect would there be from shutting down Sounder trains, and saving all that money?

      5. Why would you want to make trips worse for those 200,000 people per day, plus all the people who use I-5 past downtown, plus all the people — including those on buses — who take surface streets in downtown every day, and would have to share those streets with 10′s of thousands more vehicles every day, without the viaduct?

        The “Why would you want to make trips worse/not better for those XX,000 people per day … etc … who do/would/say they would use Y?

        That’s an argument for any project imaginable.

        Example:
        We need to build LRT to West Seattle and Ballard. Why would you want to make trips worse for those 40,000 people per day who would use Westside LRT?

        The reason is because the risk is too large for the payoff in the DBT case. It’s 1) really expensive, 2) very risky, 3) not completely paid for and 4) we have more important projects, like the 520 bridge, etc. Many are not convinced it’s necessary, and there’s only one way to find out.

        Tear it down.

      6. The reason for Sounder is quite simple: it provides a peak alternative to I-5. Yes it only carries a small percentage of traffic, but even a little bit can make a difference, especially when there’s an accident on I-5 like there was last night (northbound near Mercer). Yes, buses and vanpools and so on also provide valuable alternatives to SOV commutes and can also help, as can flexible work schedules. No one option is the complete answer.

        If SR-99 was a fully grade-separated highway it would also provide an alternative to I-5. But a relatively short tunnel (or elevated) segment under downtown doesn’t make up for the fact that most of Aurora Ave is a street with stoplights and driveways. That segment just doesn’t make sense in the overall transportation network.

        In my opinion if we really want to spend billions on a downtown highway bypass, it should be an I-5 bypass under First Hill/Capitol Hill starting at roughly Jackson St and coming out under Lakeview below St Marks. I-5 already curves around the hills.

      7. People directly voted for Sounder. The subareas that wanted it are paying for it. They’re also paying for it in the sense that it’s diverting money that could be used for other ST transit improvements in that subarea. I would argue that Sounder is the least cost-effective transit service in the region, and that its money would be better spent extending Link to Tacoma and Everett. (A system running every ten minutes is worth a dozen systems running four times a day and not at all on weekends.) But I won’t push to kill Sounder if people are riding it and want it.

    3. Do Metro buses still use the viaduct? If so, and I believe they still do, then Metro must think the viaduct is safe, right? Or, does Metro think the viaduct is dangerous and just decides to put its drivers and passengers at risk?

      Or, has Metro stopped using the viaduct? I can’t remember if I have seen buses on the viaduct recently, or not.

  10. At this point i wish the damn thing would fall down in the middle of the night when there are no cars on it so seattle will have to do something. As much as i realize everyone wants a perfect downtown and ultra fiscal responsibility at some point residents of the city and region will have to say enough is enough and get the job done. Its foolish at this point ten years after the nisqully earthquake to again go secondguessing yourselves on what you need or want. /end of rant. For the record im not a resident of the city of seattle but i frequently use the viaduct in the early hours of the morning when traffic isnt bad and when i could easily pass through downtown on 4th. If i go up to seattle during the day i tend to use the bus.

    1. Going for surface would bring down the viaduct years sooner – even if it took a couple of years to force the issue. Please keep that in mind.

    2. Ah, you forget this is Seattle, where every stakeholder must be consulted, every aggrieved minority given a hearing, and votes be held at least seven times.

      1. The Seattle “process” is a ruse designed to limit options. Wsdot doesn’t care how long planning takes because the agency is being paid for every minute, because they can cherry-pick the most expensive option, even one that also achieves the least goals, ie, highway planners frequently pick design options they know can’t be finished without going back to the public treasury for more funding. The bored tunnel is EXACTLY that and worse.
        Wsdot has crossed the line this time.

    3. I’ve always felt that Seattle is just waiting for the viaduct to come down on its own, through earthquake or whatever. Then they can beg the federal government for disaster funds to do whatever they want to do with it.

  11. Love you, Martin, but it’s wrong to suggest there’s a zero-sum game between the TMP and the waterfront, and it’s wrong to state as fact that the city is “bound to mess up” the waterfront just because there’s a chance there won’t be as much density and commercial activity as you in particular might like.

    1. The City has very limited debt capacity, and it will be very difficult to build many streetcars, much less light rail.

      Anyhow, I’ve already posted the analysis. Even if the state.massively reneges on its commitments, under the DBT plan the city spends more on non-transit purposes than it does with surface/transit/I-5. And on top of that there’s no transit in the plan. These very much are dollars that could be used for something constructive.

  12. I agree with a commenter who said that he wished the whole damn viaduct would come down when there was no one on it or under it.

    Obviously, I think that this vote is a complete waste of time and money and yet, it will probably win leaving everyone again in no man’s land because it won’t probably won’t be conclusive but divisive as these things so often are.

    I have never seen such hatred of uniform mass integrated transportation as exists on this Blog. Mass transit without a place for cars is just as stupid as the other way around. Even Los Angeles has woken up to this realization but in Seattle, everything has to be such a struggle over not a whole lot really. Now you have a mayor who validates your activism, but yet, the same STB Blog leaders were just as happy with his predecessor who was not of the same persuasion as the current one. Greg Nickels’ policies reflected a wider scope of public opinion than the current mayor’s do and the city was better led for it.

    A recall ballot for the current mayor would make better sense to me than a ballot to sabotage progress.

    1. I don’t know what “uniform mass integrated transportation” is, but it must not be a bus or train. If that’s the new euphemism for new freeway, then yes.

      Do you honestly believe there is no place for cars in Seattle if the DBT isn’t built?

      1. I could reverse this and ask if you think that there is no place for transit if the tunnel is built?

        Adding ‘uniform’ was a mistake and I don’t know what that means myself (!), but by mass integrated transit, I am referring to an efficient and comprehensive way of moving folks and freight from point A to point B and cars, rail, buses, bikes, walking and streetcars all have their say and their way in such an integrated transportation network. Buses can use the tunnel and we are also building a massive light rail network which includes expensive tunneling as part of this network. The tunnel is just a victory for the car lobby just as Light Rail is a victory for what we believe in. Each way will have its critics but in an integrated transportation path to moving folks around, each will also have its say with its way.

      2. Tim, I agree that we need places for cars, transit, bikes and pedestrians. I also empathise with the frustration about the lack of progress on this issue I sense in your post. To me, that feeling suggests a “do nothing” approach on this issue, but we know that’s not possible. The question really boils down to which do we want: a cheap viaduct, an expensive tunnel or perceived-as-scary surface/transit.

        However, in a final sense, we shouldn’t acquiesce to a sub-optimal outcome just because it’s politically convenient right now: if things go wrong, the DBT can cause problems for a very long time.

    2. Tear down the viaduct, or complete it. Completion would entail walls and a roof to better contain the noise and toxic emissions. But that’s expensive, you say! Well, yes, and so was moving sewers underground.

  13. The frustrating thing about this debate is that I am so at odds with the editorial stance of this site, which I normally find almost complete common ground with, and that I don’t feel, despite asking for clarification, like I’ve ever read a compelling reason(s) to believe that surface/transit proponents would be able to pass their vision in Olympia, which has the ultimate authority over this project, not the Sierra Club, or the City of Seattle, or Seattle Transit Blog. I think Tim Whittome’s analysis is spot on.

    Since this post started with a statement of first principles, I think it a good idea to identify mine. Actually, I have two, but they’re co-equal in this instance:

    1) The Seattle Waterfront is an irreplaceable asset to the city and to the residential and working populations of downtown. Rail lines have wiggle room about where they can be cited and still be worth the fight (i.e. eliminating First Hill station didn’t mean University Link wasn’t a worthwhile investment), but a place can’t be moved, and can’t be recreated somewhere else. This certainly applies to the Waterfront. We can talk all we want about mitigation with any of the options (including the tunnel) but the bottom line is that anyone who cares about the Waterfront as a place and not just a transportation corridor has to way the risk of scrapping the current tunnel plan, which leads me to,

    2) The State of Washington is the ultimate authority deciding what gets built or not built on the Waterfront. In a perfect world, I’d love to see a less expensive, surface+increased transit option implemented. But I have yet to see a credible roadmap for how the City gets the Legislature, the Governor, and WSDOT to sign off on such a plan, meaning that if the tunnel is killed, the State would have every incentive to build a larger, more intrusive viaduct that not only increases SOV throughput through downtown (even if mitigated by including exits into the CBD), but will undoubtedly make a worse place of the Waterfront. Remember the Great Wall of Chopp? This was from a state legislature representing my district–the most densely populated one in the state. How is our politically ham-fisted mayor going to convince him, let alone suburban rural legislators already hostile to Seattle, (and let along WSDOT) that making a huge investment in transit and surface improvements is going to replace a highway? WSDOT is the last agency I want to put in charge of deciding how to replaces the Viaduct, yet killing the tunnel will do exactly that.

    Finally, to address Andrew Smith’s comment about not “acquiesc[ing] to a sub-optimal outcome just because it’s politically convenient right now,” it makes me wonder where people have been all this time. The attitude of surface/transit proponents seems to be “Our side hasn’t had a chance to fully weigh-in on this debate,” but in fact the opposite is true. The viaduct replacement has been exhaustively debated. Admittedly, the deck was stacked against the surface/transit option, but that is a reflection of the culture in Olympia, not of a desire by the Council to ignore the desire of their constituents for greater transit. The decision to go with the tunnel isn’t just a convenient “right now” decision, it’s the result of a hard-fought and fragile compromise. I’m not willing to support a plan that risks canceling the tunnel on the off chance that Mayor McGinn and Cary Moon will be able to convince Olympia to go with a surface/transit option.

    Again, where is the credible roadmap for how the City overturns a fragile tunnel agreement and gets Olympia to contribute the necessary funds for a surface/transit replacement? And when was the last time Olympia did anything of significance for transit?

    1. I think the road is long and the chances of winning are very small. But for starters, there are a lot of people that profess to be pro-transit, favor transit investment over highways, and are concerned about climate change that are in favor of this project. The first step is to change minds. The Seattle City Council, which should know better, can’t say enough good things about this project. Otherwise exceptional legislators like Joe Fitzgibbon support the tunnel. That tells me that people simply don’t understand urbanism, at all, and we have a lot of work to do.

      For the record, I’ve already written about why I think a rebuild option is superior to the DBT, so I’m not afraid of that outcome. And surface/transit/I-5 is not some concoction out of the fevered minds of TCC and The Stranger; as late as December 2008 it was one of the two state-approved options, already well through the sausage machine.

      1. A rebuild would, as I understand it, offer increased vehicle capacity over the current Viaduct and the Tunnel. The Tunnel reduces car capacity of an existing corridor. I don’t see how the Tunnel harms urbanism.

        Here’s my problem with the blanket claim that Tunnel supporters “do not understanding urbanism”: transit connections are only 1 part of the equation for urbanism. The choices one has to go from Point A to Point B are more efficient and convenient in cities well-served by transit. Understandable enough. But another part of the equation, the quality of place, is just as important. Is it worth me traveling from Point A to Point B? Do I want to live an work in these places? Are they walkable and convenient? On this axis, I don’t see how a rebuilt Viaduct could be considered an acceptable outcome supporting the quality of place, its walkability, or desirability as a place to live and work. This is especially true for a unique, irreplaceable place like the waterfront. Unlike you, I fear greatly that outcome, and it’s not something I’d be willing to risk by supporting a surface option.

        This blog is dedicated to Seattle transit, but it has highlighted on occasion the quality of places served by transit. I wonder, though, if STB doesn’t have a blind spot regarding the quality of place in urbanism? Listing a few restaurants within walking distance of Link stops in the Rainier Valley is great, but I think it’s a real stretch to consider the areas around the stops to be great urban neighborhoods. They are not walkable and they have sparse retail and employment options, especially compared to denser neighborhoods. I believe by any definition of urbanism, the Rainier Valley is not a great urban space, yet, despite it having the region’s only high capacity rail line thus far. As a place, the only special thing about the RV is that it’s a semi-blank slate that people will be able to respond to, to build-up around (assuming John Fox’s efforts don’t prevent it), and that someday, a generation or more from now, the transit line and the neighborhood will fully utilize each other to create a great urban neighborhood.

        Like the RV, I believe the Waterfront has the potential to a much greater asset than it is today. Putting a new Viaduct on the Waterfront precludes the city from developing to anywhere close to its fullest potential the downtown core and Pioneer Square for residential use, and it would be a blight to the rest of the city’s residents who work and visit downtown. Even conceding that the ROW required by the Tunnel will preclude new housing directly on top of the tunnel footprint, the blocks to the east will be the beneficiaries of much greater open space opportunities provided by tearing down the Viaduct.

  14. There is something wrong here with the notion that the state has the last word and can ram anything they want down our throats without us being able to do anything about it. The only moral case that could be made for the state’s right to dictate the layout of a road through a city is on grounds that the letting the city decide would be unfair to drivers passing through from other areas without stopping.

    However, nobody passing through from Portland to Bellingham without stopping in Seattle is ever going to use SR-99. They will use I-5 instead. SR-99, especially the segment through downtown is, for all practical purposes, a road that is built for trips within Seattle. So, it is only fair that the city of Seattle should get to decide the configuration of the roadway, within available funding constraints. It is reasonable for the state to offer funding, or even offer funding conditionally based on certain configurations, but in the end, the city should have the fundamental right to say no to either a deep bore tunnel or another viaduct, and if the law says otherwise, the law needs to be changed.

    1. Well, that rule is a double-edged sword. It’s great that SoundTransit has the ultimate authority to site East Link where the Board believes it best suits the public interest, irrespective of Kevin Wallace’s attempts to kill a downtown alignment. It sucks in the case of the Viaduct replacement, but the Viaduct is a state route. The real failure of the City of Seattle, going back at least to Nickels, perhaps earlier, has been the failure to unify our large state congressional delegation behind a pro-urban agenda, and to change the culture of WSDOT when it comes to mobility projects in large urban areas.

    2. The viaduct was of course a US highway before it was a state highway. When I-5 was built, most of 99 was decomissioned and given to the states, and parts of it were broken up to make way for new roads and housing developments. South Tacoma Way looks so much like 99 that I assume it was part of it, although of course Pacific Street has a more similar name (Pacific Highway).

      If you go to the bus-border checkpoint at Blaine, there are pictures of the old “Pacific Highway” in the early 1900s, when Queen Victoria made her state visit. And I-5 changes to 99 at the border because they’ve retained the number.

      I-90, FWIW, was built on top of US highway 10. In that case there is no legacy road because there was only one way across the mountains, following an old Indian trail.

      1. viaduct was of course a US highway before it was a state highway.

        Not really. The US numbering scheme was only a method to provide some continuity in naming of routes that previously used a confusing mix of numbers and names as they crossed State lines. The ownership and responsibility for building and maintaining remained with the State. This is a very different model than what became the “Interstate” highway system.

      2. Interstates are still technically maintained by the states. They were not unlike federally-funded transit projects in their funding schemes.

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