The State of the Viaduct
Ever since Mayor Greg Nickels sent out a letter back in mid-February about Viaduct replacement financing, everyone who pays attention has been trying to figure out the math. We're all used to spin from City Hall, but there was a huge, crucial problem. In the letter, Nickels claimed that, "Today, with $3.2 billion already committed to the project, we have the resources needed to start building the tunnel."
That was an interesting claim, because as Seattle Weekly noted in the March 1 issue, "It is simply not true, however, that $3.2 billion has been committed to the project." Indeed, as Seattle Weekly notes and the Washington State Department of Transportation confirms, only $2.4 billion has been secured. In fact, Nickels states as much in his letter: he notes that he legislature approved $2 billion in funding (largely through last year's gas tax hike), the Port is providing $200 million, and the US government is kicking in another $231 million, which totals $2.431 billion, or roughly the same figure as WSDOT claims. That leaves another $600 million unaccounted for, which Nickels writes off in the letter as "additional local commitments."
Questions about funding were the subject of a hearing before the city council on Monday, March 13. The council is getting a bit antsy these days--the state legislature got sick of Nickels stalling to look for more cash, so they passed the buck (so to speak) to the city council, who now has responsibility for putting replacement options to a city-wide vote this November. And they're all increasingly skeptical of the tunnel project's viability, which is why they prepared a several page list of questions grilling transportation officials about timelines, funding and cost-overrun issues.
As for the missing half-billion, Cary Moon of the People's Waterfront Coalition helped us with some answers. For starters, $300 million of the cost of any replacement project has to be spent on utility replacement. See, there's some 50-year-old water pipes, electric cables and God-knows-what-else down there that has to be moved and brought up to code. And who does the mayor expect to pay that $300 million? Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, of course. Now, we're not accountants, but we doubt they're sitting on that much cash, which pretty much guarantees that in the end everyone's going to be paying for it in the form of higher utility rates.
Then there's another $200 million plus the mayor expects the Seattle Department of Transportation to come up with. And how will SDOT find that money? Higher MVETs! So don't look forward to car registration getting any cheaper--in addition to all that, District 43 Representative Ed Murray stuck a provision in the state transportation bill back in February to allow someone to keep collecting the 1.5 percent MVET that currently funds the now defunct Seattle Monorail Project. The money would go to fund another of Murray's pet projects, the "Regional Transportation Investment District," a sort of umbrella organization meant to end the seemingly endless turf wars between disparate local transit authorities. And what are the RTID's two top priorities? The 520 bridge and the Viaduct. [Ed. Note: It has come to our attention that although Rep. Ed Murray proposed such a provision, it was not included in the final version of the bill passed by the legislature.]
So, as expected, everyone here in Seattle can expect to pay in about a dozen ways for the mayor's tunnel, and word is getting out that he still needs more. On top of that, people are starting to ask questions about why we're not doing anything about the Viaduct now; it has, after all, sunk almost five inches since the earthquake. Back on March 2, three UW professors wrote an op-ed in The Seattle Times stating: "It has been five years since the 2001 Nisqually earthquake left the Alaskan Way Viaduct in immediate need of replacement. Today, everyone in Seattle is still exposed to the risk of this critically weakened roadway failing. Our elected officials have not taken the simplest step to reduce Seattle's risk of disaster: Close the viaduct."
In response, City Hall rushed to damage control. On March 22, WSDOT released a report claiming that the Viaduct remained safe for drivers according to an article in the P-I. The weekend before, the mayor's office led a walking tour of the damaged Viaduct both to demonstrate the need for replacement and as a subtle suggestion that it remained safe.
But what's really galling is that we still don't even know what the mayor's "tunnel" will look like. Cary Moon recently managed to get some drawings of the potential tunnel via a public records request. Turns out, the mayor's billion dollars in savings to "get the project started" comes in the form of not actually making it a tunnel.
See, the replacement is less a tunnel than a big trench dug into the ground and covered with a lid (which also means that nothing can be built atop it). Well, what better way to save money than to just not cover it all. Belltown will be able to see the bay now, but it will be even harder to get to it; causeways are expensive, too. As for Pioneer Square, the tunnel will be dumping up to 13 lanes of traffic out by King St. Station. And to top it off, the city is now considering only repairing parts of the collapsing seawall, rather than replacing it entirely, to save more money. The $250 million seawall replacement was, after all, one of the original justifications for building a tunnel.
All of which is good news to Cary Moon and the People's Waterfront Coalition. They're working overtime now to draft a proposal for the city council to consider putting on the ballot, and chances are they'll make it. Peter Steinbrueck is officially on board. In a letter his office has made public, he writes:
We cannot let the central waterfront be totally devastated by a monstrous aerial replacement structure that would be 50% larger than the existing viaduct. This would be repeating the mistake of the past with something worse than we have today. And the tunnel option is not a feasible option, since it is under-funded by as much as one billion dollars, a conservative estimate at best. More importantly, both these options wrongly put auto capacity over mobility. Neither promotes trip reduction, nor provides a genuine transit alternative to the automobile for commuters and others using the corridor. The tunnel option would suck up all available transportation dollars for the foreseeable at great cost of other transportation needs.
In total, four councilmembers, including Steinbrueck, Nick Licata and Richard Conlin, support including some sort of "no highway" alternative on the ballot this fall to let the voters decide. Moon anticipates moving immediately from the proposal stage to full-on campaigning, and as the mayor's plan falls apart, his job is getting easier.
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