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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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So where is the money supposed to come from when Gridlock Gregs Big Dig runs out of money by a billion or two?
At least with Seattle's big dig eating up all the state funds there will be no cash left over to waste on a pork for NASCAR track in Kitsap.
And Jeremy walks away with the most-data-points-per-line post of the week!
*applause*
Oh yeah, that's a tough award to win around here.
"...nor provides a genuine transit alternative to the automobile for commuters and others using the corridor."
neither does the PWC. i've yet to hear them offer up the commuting options available once a major highway is removed from the city. just telling people that they should be carless is not productive. people will sit in gridlock if there's no other way to get to their destination.
at this point, i'm beginning to think that the people advocating for highway removal still believe the monorail is going to be built. as much as they (and i) wish it were so, being realistic about the situation might be a good first step.
"neither does the PWC. i've yet to hear them offer up the commuting options available once a major highway is removed from the city."
Actually their point is that you do not need the viaduct. San Francisco never built a viaduct and they made out OK.
Read their website
"We can transfer trips now made on the Viaduct to other arterials (and clear traffic for all of us) with a few strategic, lower-cost investments."
If we do build a tunnel, there will be no viaduct for years. Will the city grind to a halt? Probably not. People will simply sit in traffic longer.
Traffic in this city has gotten progressively worse, and that ain't going to change, no matter how many tunnels we build. After 60 years of highway building, it's an accepted fact that when you build more highway capacity, more people drive, which means more traffic on city streets.
Highways cause traffic, not reduce it.
I suspect that this is what Cary Moon and his ilk believe, and I wish they'd just come out and say it.
To piggyback on Seth's comment, I was laughing this morning reading a letter to the editor in the P-I, where some guy was saying we should just close the Viaduct for a month and that would shut up all the no-rebuild talk -- apparently unaware that the Viaduct will be closed for years, and that WSDOT's plan is (wait for it) to mitigate impact with revamped surface-street traffic and transit.
Building unlimited highways is a symptom of the slow Californization of Seattle. When it gets too bad folks can just hop a train down to Portland and live car free.
P.S. Cary Moon is a very nice lady in her early 30s.
to respond in full to the above:
1) san francisco didn't need a viaduct (maybe seattle shouldn't have built the one it had in the way it did but that's not your argument). if you're talking about the embarcadero, that was already a highway to nowhere which nobody used. the comparison isn't valid. 99 is a major artery and you can't reasonably expect 110,000 cars to easily transfer to city streets or to an already-overcrowded I-5. unlike other major cities, we don't have the public transit options to get people to stop driving.
2) i'm getting sick of this stupid straw-man argument along the lines of 'it has to shut down for x amount of years, anyway, and people will deal with that (albeit unhappily), so permanently doing it is a great idea!'. yes, in the short term, we will have to close the viaduct and nobody will be happy. this does not mean that it makes sense for the long-term health of our city.
3) yes, traffic is getting worse. no, building the tunnel is not helping feed that problem. it will not measurably increase capacity; it will help maintain the little consistent traffic flow we've already got.
all i'm getting from people advocating from the no-highway option is that they hate cars & think that anyone who drives one is a selfish asshole. thus, with their smug righteousness, they will attempt to remove people's ability to drive anywhere without encountering gridlock... or they'll learn to bike or walk and be happy about it!
yeah, that last part was a bit of hyperbole, but the PWC is just as glib with their plans. their number-crunching is shoddy, and their "proof" is solely based on their own assertions. if you're going to cite a study, link to it. they want to base our city's transportation future on the state's short-term emergency plan. even if well-intentioned, i don't think anyone who is a part of that group is looking at the problem realistically.
The article claims I put the monorail MVET into the new Regional Transporation Com. This is simply not true. I did suggest Seattle by a vote of the people be allowed to use the monorail MVET for non-monorai transit. This suggestion was not included in the final package.
It helps to get the facts correct.
Rep. Murray has brought up a good point regarding this article. As it turns out, I erred in claiming that the monorail MVET was included in the final transportation bill passed by the legislature. This claim was based on the Seattle P-I article linked to at this point in the above story. However, I did write to Rep. Murray's office regarding this story last week and received no response. Not that I don't understand his discomfort at continuing to be associated with this claim--monorail supporters remain active in local politics and are unlikely to support issues like the tunnel project, which rejects investing scarce dollars in mass transit and seeks instead to add more highway lanes for commuters to be stuck in during high volume traffic. If I were in his shoes, I'd want to distance myself from such a move as well. That said, I regret the error and hope that in the future I can get input from Rep. Murray's office in a timely fashion, since he does seem rather interested in what we have to say here at Seattlest.
"all i'm getting from people advocating from the no-highway option is that they hate cars & think that anyone who drives one is a selfish asshole."
This may be true of most people who advocate the no-highway option, but I'm not one of them. In fact, I commute on the Viaduct every day.
When it closes down, it will be a major pain in my ass.
But, I know that REDUCING highway capacity is the only way to force the drastic improvements we really need--which may include tolls on bridges, massive investments in mass transit, and bigger buildings downtown so the business district is concentrated.
I-5 is bad, but it's not that bad. It's not L.A. bad. It can take more capacity.
But--people--traffic is going to get worse no matter what, so why build a big ass expensive tunnel?
Imagine the improvements that could be made on the overall grid if the billions would be spent elsewhere. Heck if the same accounting guy that tore apart the Monorail would look at the financing for this dig they'd find its cost to be a lot more.
Not to mention its supposed to be 50% bigger. So is it going to touch the buildings next to it or just create a huge shadow over the waterfront?
Just tear it down. If they really think they need some sort of expressway then build a trench below ground level. Put the road there with no exits in Seattle. Stick toll booths on both sides to pay for it and let the people who want to use the Viaduct pay for it.
If it is going to be built no matter what then at least get creative with it. We don't need a Golden Gate Bridge but do something more than a long pile of cement.
If you want to see all other projects in Seattle grind to a halt for the next decade then build a tunnel. Otherwise stay as far away from that one as possible.
"But, I know that REDUCING highway capacity is the only way to force the drastic improvements we really need--which may include tolls on bridges, massive investments in mass transit, and bigger buildings downtown so the business district is concentrated."
i'd agree with tearing down the viaduct & not replacing it if i thought this was an actual possibility. right now it's just wishful thinking. light rail will move people through seattle, but does little for the residents of the city. the monorail is dead. when mass transit is taken seriously, then by all means remove a major highway. forcing change by making people miserable might work, but i'm not willing to bet on it.
First, I think I should apologize--I don't know how that "his" got in the article at the end--Cary Moon is a very nice woman, and I apologize to her for the error. Second, she and the PWC are very adamant that highways do contribute to traffic congestion. The PWC's plan really isn't just about the Viaduct--it's about the future of the city and choices we're making that affect our daily life for the next generation. This is a huge amount of money and we have a lot of needs. Eliminating the Viaduct does have consequences, but from beginning to end, the tunnel is too expensive to be viable. By and large, it's becoming clear they will never get the money to build it, and the question is, what do we want in its place? A new highway? The PWC's plan is primarily based on improvements the city needs to do while the Viaduct is unusable during replacement. That is, the PWC's plan will be done either way--the question is, if we can live with it for up to five years, why not just live with it for decades and use those now spare billions to fix our bridges, build some mass transit, and fill in some potholes? Is that really such a bad deal?
Its not a bad deal at all.
It would take much longer to pay off the tunnel than it ever would have for the monorail. The reality is that its cost completely out weigh any benefit. Its a lot of money for the city to spend on a project thats main purpose is to get people through the city without stopping.