Tunnel Enough Study

[hooper1961]

Now I see Mayor McSchwin wants to study the effect of a toll and shifting traffic onto City streets and yet with no tunnel the effect would be far greater.

It’s time to get the tunnel constructed; that creates work for many.

I don’t know about others but I am getting tired of McSchwin trying to derail the project. Seattle’s economic future depends on a good transportation infrastructure

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[KBear]

I gotta agree with Hooper on this one.

Hoop, what do you think the speed limit in the tunnel ought to be?

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[JoB]

KBear…

let’s not muddy the water.

Hooper 1961 and I agree on something.

This is an event worth celebrating.

Hooper.. can i buy you a drink?

We will have to consume them different times in different places…

I had mine 20 years ago…

but still.. can i buy you a drink?

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[BigPhil]

I’m new to this city and this discussion; so far I’ve gathered that the viaduct is crumbling and something needs to replace it, whether its a tunnel or another viaduct or something else. If a tunnel is truly being considered, what are the cons? Is there any place that chronicles this issue?

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[BigPhil]

P.S. I had to look it up, because I was confused to realize that “McSchwinn” was akin to Micro$oft, rather than his actual name.. le sigh. Least I know the Mayor’s name, now..

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[hooper1961]

kbear and job – i suspect we agree on more than this item and will disagree on others.

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[KBear]

Well, I was just thinking, if they’re going to put in some sort of automated tolling system, maybe it could also have a “Hooper” feature to keep traffic moving. They could automatically send tickets to people who drive too slow!

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[hooper1961]

good idea KBear!

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[JoB]

BigPhil..

please..this can of worms has been opened and studied and re-opened and studied some more and is about to be re-opened again if the initiative signature gatherers have their way.

in the meantime.. the viaduct is coming down.

the only question is whether it gets safely demolished by the state or it comes down in some seismic event.

When that happens, West Seattle will be stuck every day in gridlock the likes of which we generally experience only during extreme events…

The tunnel was not the best available option…

but it is the only viable option still left on the table

and time is running out.

if you want to read the history of this event.. putting tunnel in the search box here will give you more than enough bedtime reading for the rest of the year.

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[charlabob]

BigPhil — we never decide anything. Once you understand that about Seattle, you’ll almost be a native. Disagree and commit isn’t part of our vocabulary. We revisit “decisions” so often that they don’t deserve to be decisions.

c

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[maplesyrup]

BigPhil, the tunnel isn’t being considered, it’s been decided upon for a couple of years now.

During the mayoral campaign, McGinn first said he wanted to stop the tunnel project. Then when that was proving unpopular with voters he relented and said he would honor the decision if elected. But since he got elected he’s been trying various end-arounds to derail the project.

The anti-tunnel contingent would probably tell you that the cons are:

– it is expensive

– the city is on the hook for any cost overruns (though I think the governor recently stepped up and said the state would help)

– it does not have an exit into the middle of downtown (like the current Seneca exit on 99)

– no project on this scale has been attempted before and we might be underestimating the complexity

– it encourages car use when we should all be walking and riding our bikes

FWIW, I don’t think the tunnel is a perfect solution but after the earthquake it took close to 10 years for the city/state to decide what to do about the viaduct. This is typical of Seattle and WA in general by the way. Welcome!

We finally got a decision and now the mayor wants to undo it.

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[Genesee Hill]

I agree 100% that the tunnel should be built! I am disappointed that the mayor tries to derail this.

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[metrognome]

BigPhil — brief history of this issue: the viaduct is shot and needs to be replaced. There are 4 options: 1) repair it (not really an option but still pushed by some as the cheapest); 2) replace it with another viaduct; 3) replace it with a ‘cut and cover’ tunnel; 4) replace it with a ‘deep bore’ tunnel. The involved gov’t agencies have gone thru the federally required eval process and chosen #4 as the ‘preferred alternative’. It has two big advantages: the vast majority of it can be done with the current viaduct still in use, and with the viaduct torn down, we can reclaim the waterfront. It is the most expensive option (if you don’t factor in the gridlock that will occur for 4-5 yrs for options 1-3) and includes some technical challenges because of the soils, etc. It will also not include the mid-downtown off-ramp the current viaduct has, which will increase travel time for some and reduce it for others. There are a lot of related road projects going on to help redistribute traffic in the downtown/SODO area that are needed by all alternatives but required by #4. Tolls may be implemented, which I think would apply to #2-4 but has been discussed mainly for #4.

Good websites for info:

WSDOT’s project website: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/

Waterfront revitalization: http://blog.seattlepi.com/transportation/archives/229951.asp

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[hooper1961]

metrognome – good synopsis; lets move forward with the tunnel and let McScwinn know that enough is enough.

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[BigPhil]

yea that’s a pretty solid synopsis.. so far I’ve only used 99 for seneca and .. columbia? coming the other way and it seems like it’d be pretty inconvenient to not be able to exit there, but I also saw over thanksgiving how it goes to shit when 99 gets backed up.. I can’t even imagine what would happen if it was gone for a few years to build something else.. i’m not sure I understand the argument that we “should” be bicycling, etc., since you can’t really bicycle on 99 either. the first time i got on in my car on columbia I nearly shit myself with the short merge lane..

guess I’m tenatively in the “deep bore” camp now..

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[BigPhil]

though when we first got here I thought the viaduct was cool, because I’d never driven on one and i’ve driven in plenty of tunnels.. it’s definitely got something going for it as uniqueness goes..

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[metrognome]

BigPhil- Wait until you try to use the Seneca off-ramp when the Mariners are playing … southbound First and Second become gridlocked by all the cars on the viaduct trying to fit into the one or two open car lengths left by drivers blocking the intersections and fans on foot crossing whenever they want. The Columbia St on-ramp doesn’t move because of the cars exiting the viaduct at Royal Brougham and SB cars already on the viaduct get bottlenecked. Add the chaos when ferries come and go at Colman Dock and nothing moves for hours.

The thing I didn’t mention before is Seattle’s unique geology; downtown is constrained by water to the west (although considerable land was added when the Denny Regrade hill was sluiced into Elliott Bay) and hills to the east. There is no room to add any at-grade capacity, so it is go up or go under (i.e. the Metro bus tunnel and the railroad tunnel). To complicate matters, our founding ma’s and pa’s violated basic planning rules and oriented the majority of the downtown streets to the waterfront rather than to north/south and east/west … except the town drunk, Doc Yesler, who platted his property, now known as Pioneer Square, correctly. That causes huge bottlenecks at the north end of PS where the two plats meet.

Also, the viaduct and most of the downtown/SODO street capacity, including the WS Bridge and the Harbor Island/Duwamish industrial area, is based on 1950’s thinking about future road needs. Many of the related improvement project in the SODO area are designed to move traffic, incl. the huge amount of commercial cargo traffic, more directly to I-5 and to redistribute capacity and demand to a broader number of streets. Estimates are that the tunnel MAY increase travel times for some people, but once all the work is done and more alternatives are available, my guess is that things will even out.

The deep bore tunnel wouldn’t be the ‘preferred alternate’ in an ideal world, but this ain’t Kansas and we have to make a choice based on reality.

Denny Regrade project: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=708

p.s. on a political note, environmentalist McGinn was running against ‘evil’ businessman Malahan after the sitting Mayor, Greg Nickels, was defeated in the primary. Neither had government experience. McGinn, a Sierra Club member (staff, board??) had opposed the deep bore tunnel until he stated during the campaign that he would not oppose it if he was elected. Also, the city held an advisory vote on whether the public preferred the new viaduct or the ‘cut-and-cover’ tunnel option; as I recall, neither received a majority. However, it is important to note that the deep bore option was not conceived until after that vote and is very different than the c&c tunnel in significant ways (doesn’t require tearing down the viaduct first and reorients the tunnel path east away from the waterfront ‘liquifaction zone’ (in the event of a large enough quake, this fill land will liquify and everything will crumble) into the more solid land near First.)

tafn.

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[JanS]

BigPhil, you made me laugh. I don’t drive downtown often, as I live AND work here on the peninsula, and I freak every time I take that Columbia on ramp to the viaduct south. I hate the shortness, the cars zipping up so fast form the right and wanting to get off on first avenue. You just have to maintain, and hope they let you merge..so yes, extra clothing is needed at times – lolol…

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[WSMom]

It drives me insane every time one of the signature gatherers in front of Target ask me to sign a petition to vote on the whether or not we want a tunnel. How many times do I need to say yes to this thing??? I’m still mad that we don’t have the monorail which would be in place right now that I voted for at least three times!!!

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[Ken]

I don’t know about the rest of ya, but I voted for McGinn based on my determination that he could get fewer of his crazy ideas turned into public policy than the other crazy guy.

His tunnel shtick is annoying but was predictable as well as his effectiveness.

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[metrognome]

actually, MSMom, the monorail would not be in place yet, even assuming that none of the numerous predicted construction problems (like adding the Monorail on the WS Bridge) had happened. And the monorail would have done little to nothing to affect Viaduct traffic volumes as it would mostly have taken riders off Metro and not out of cars. WS simply does not have the population density or the destination demand (no huge employers or shopping malls or stadiums) needed to support high capacity transit (i.e. monorail or light rail.) Plus, you can’t haul freight on the Monorail; business traffic is a large percentage of our traffic volume.

At best, once you took a bus to a monorail station (unless you lived within walking distance), you would be able to speed over those stuck in traffic until you got to a downtown station and had to take another bus to your destination (unless it was within walking distance.) Pretty expensive project to allow a few people a faster commute.

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[hooper1961]

and think we cannot even drive to beacon hill to use the light rail because there is no parking.

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[redblack]

here’s where i and everyone else in west seattle part ways:

screw the tunnel.

lousy idea. pipe dream. too expensive. too uncertain. no mention of mass transit on alaskan way. like the majority, i voted against it.

oh, wait! you didn’t stipulate which kind of tunnel…

(or is it a stadium i voted against? i’m getting confused.)

mcginn is spot on. please stop twisting his words. he said he won’t stop the tunnel, and he won’t. but he promises not to let seattle pick up the cost overruns. it’s about time someone in this town stood up on his hind legs against big bidness.

if the deep-bore tunnel gets dug, i won’t use it. have fun, CHUD. i’d sooner get from ballard to west seattle via beacon hill. or southworth.

if we get nothing out of tearing AWV down but a new seawall, so be it. we’ll get over it.

or through it. or around it.

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[WSB]

FYI on the factual side of the matter …

We do have an Alaskan Way Viaduct coverage archive – seven pages worth, more than 200 stories short and long, so if anyone needs to catch up on what’s been going on over the past 4+ years (even before we did news, we opined re: AWV on occasion), scroll through

https://westseattleblog.com/category/alaskan-way-viaduct

(Coverage category archive links are toward the bottom of the sidebar.)

Looking toward the end of that archive, I had to find a new link for the classic campaign video from 2006 – the ‘Committee to Save Big Ugly Things’ mockumercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqjbzUxlyI

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[JoB]

metrognome…

if we had the monorail right now

or if they had replaced the monorail with light rail

we could link to the light rail

which already goes south

and is working it’s way north

and that would encourage more light rails

who knows where it could end

You have to start somewhere…

and starting somewhere where there is limited access like West Seattle makes a lot of sense…

i’m waiting for the direct connection between West Seattle, Magnolia and Ballard.

A mosquito fleet connecting to transit terminals could work.

of course.. that would require an actual plan with transit terminals…

which i am sure someone would object to because they don’t link to enough and why would you spend that much money to service so few people :(

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