Watch live: Council hearing on Viaduct/Tunnel agreements

| Alaskan Way Viaduct | Transportation | West Seattle news

(5:11 pm note – The hearing’s over; when we get code for the archived video, we’ll swap it out)

2:51 PM REPORT: Hit the “play” button to watch live – despite the slate you see, it IS in progress now. This meeting of the City Council’s Alaskan Way Viaduct Committee is the third of three events that we mentioned this morning. City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw just said about sixty people have signed up to speak in the public comment section, which has just begun, before the council discusses the proposed resolution announced this morning – which would say, the city intends to sign the tunnel agreements, but wants to see the bids (this fall) first. Here’s a photo sent by council staff via Twitter, showing the SRO crowd:

4:27 PM: The public hearing ended after about an hour and a half – primarily pro-tunnel – and has moved on into the councilmembers talking with a state team headed by Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, who said, “Delay is not our friend” and insists that risk management is her team’s job. Meantime, Mayor McGinn’s reaction to the council’s “we’re passing a resolution but not signing yet” plan has finally come in – read on:

The mayor’s statement in its entirety:

“It appears that Council is doing everything possible to prevent a public vote. Yet they still have not dealt with the underlying issue – who will pay for overruns given the $2.4 billion cap in state law. Until the state law is changed, Seattle remains at risk of paying cost overruns.”

He has a media availability at 11 tomorrow morning. If a feed’s made available, we’ll stream it here too.

Blue Collar Enviro July 26, 2010 (5:56 pm)

The hearing was mostly a lineup of labor leaders saying they need jobs.

The oft-repeated themes included safety and freight mobility.

“Safety”, as we know, is a red herring. The governor promised to bring down the viaduct by 2012, and then changed her mind. Current traffic flow took priority over safety, at the governor’s option.

“Freight mobility”, as applied to this project, is a fantasy. Will trucks really take a long way around along Mercer to the tunnel entrance at Aurora, when they could just head straight along the waterfront?

They will if trucks are barred from the waterfront boulevard. But wouldn’t that make a mockery of the claim that the tunnel’s purpose is to move freight faster?

So, I have to ponder aloud, is it too late to redirect the tunnel back toward Western, so that it can actually move freight, rather than simply compete with North Link for passengers?

I have to thank Council Member Rasmussen for calling the governor out on her veto of transit revenue options. The tunnel agreement called for $190 in investments in transit infrastructure downtown by the county. But since the governor vetoed the county’s ability to make that investment, it seems like the city is within its rights to consider the agreement null and void.

Nevertheless, we finally have an answer to the question on everyone’s mind: “Who will pay the cost overruns.”

The answer, as everyone including Attorney General McKenna now agree is … We don’t know.

I thank the city council for trying to contain costs on this project. Unfortunately, it was the wrong project from the outset. A freight-only tunnel to Interbay might have been a good investment. This tunnel makes no sense.

M. July 26, 2010 (10:55 pm)

I agree.
Here are my concerns.
This proposed tunnel will be the largest ever of this type. Such a boring machine currently does not exist.
A tunnel, through many difficult types of material, under many buildings, near the sea, well under the water-table, with less capacity, with a machine that will be the first of the type, for what amount to be primarily aesthetics.
Wouldn’t an elevated roadway be a quicker as well as less costly to build? And have a higher capacity?
I really hope this is not a case of ‘too late to stop now’. I really hope the Mayor’s Advisor’s report gets a sincere review. There are so many engineering problems with this project, as well as the funding issues.
It is not too late to redirect efforts and money towards a more realistic roadway.

Sorry, comment time is over.