ALASKAN WAY VIADUCT

And…..Was Moses Really The Devil?
In Crosscut this morning, Knute Berger channels the spirit of famed urban planner, writer and neighborhood preservationist Jane Jacobs – and sits down with Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess to talk tunnel.
They’re mulling Seattle mayoral candidate Mike McGinn’s call for ditching the planned deep-bore tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 in downtown Seattle. Berger’s hook is two-fold. First, Seattle is having its own Jane Jacobs moment in the candidacy of tunnel opponent McGinn, who favors a “surface street” option instead. Second, there’s a new book out by Anthony Flint titled, “Wresting With Moses,” on Jacobs’ battles against the epic, 20th Century infrastructure builder of New York, Robert Moses (pictured, right).
Cast as the genius-villain writ large in Robert Caro’s landmark, 1974 Pulitzer-winning biography “The Power Broker,” Moses is just the kind of guy who like Seattle leaders in 1950 would have supported a noisy, fume-spewing, shadow-casting elevated highway such as our viaduct, and who if transported to 2009, probably would have been all for building the world’s largest diameter single-deep-bored tunnel to replace it. Or a grand bridge across Elliott Bay, instead. The stage set thusly, Berger in his interview draws some astute observations from Council Member Burgess, himself a great fan of Jacobs’ neighborhoods-first activism and scholarship.

…Burgess…says that reading the (Flint) book made him more certain that the deep-bore tunnel was the better option for the waterfront. That seems counter-intuitive, because Jacobs fought against highways. Doesn’t a multi-billion-dollar road project seem more like a Moses boondoggle? Doesn’t the surface option, which would limit vehicle traffic, sound like more like a Jacobs kind of solution?
But Burgess worries that the surface option will be destructive at the street level, especially to the businesses that rely on Highway 99 and waterfront access.

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In an op-ed in the Sunday Yakima Herald Republic, the Yakima Valley Fruit Growers-Shippers Association explains why it supports the recommendation by Governor Chris Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 with an inland deep-bored tunnel. The state senate has already passed a bill securing $2.4 billion in funding for the project, and the state house last week passed a transportation budget bill providing some of that amount for the tunnel. A house bill specific to the tunnel must still be passed and may be voted on as soon as this week. (The tunnel itself is estimated by the Washington Department of Transportation to cost between $1.2 and $2.2 Read More ›

Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims announced an historic accord to replace the seismically vulnerable Alaskan Way Viaduct on SR 99 along the downtown Seattle waterfront with an inland deep bored tunnel. (The last page of this state summary provides details on all project components and planned funding – the tunnel is expected to cost between $1.2 and $2.2 billion). State legislative approval is required. Now, Washington State Senate Majority Caucus Chair Ed Murray, State Senate Transportation Committee Chair Mary Margaret Haugen (pictured, right), the committee’s Ranking Minority Member Dan Swecker, and committee member Fred Jarrett of Mercer Island have introduced Senate Bill 5768 to get the tunnel built. Read More ›

In an interview with Ross Reynolds on KUOW-FM – MP3 audio file here – Washington Governor Chris Gregoire said it was “very likely” that tolling would be applied to the new deep bored tunnel planned to replace the seismically vulnerable Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 in Seattle. (A state rendering of the bored tunnel’s cross-section is below, right.) At the 3:02 mark, she states: It’s very likely that we will toll. Any mega-project that we do today is having to be tolled because historically we had so much federal money coming in (but) we no longer do… Reflecting a viewpoint similar to Gregoire’s, State Senator Ed Murray told the Seattle Times about the tunnel funding mix: “There has Read More ›

An editorial tonight online at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praises the smart decision by Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive to take a harder look at an inland deep bore tunnel to replace the worn out Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 in downtown Seattle. Could this be the Year of the Tunnel for Seattle? An idea that seemed buried could make a decisive comeback. After being left off a list of two final possibilities for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a waterfront tunnel survived the end of 2008. On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Gregoire, King County Executive Ron Sims and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels postponed a final decision on a long-term replacement, which they Read More ›

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire yesterday announced she’d push back by two weeks a recommendation on how to best replace the aging, earthquake-prone Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 along Seattle’s downtown waterfront. But there’s more. A top Gregoire advisor tells the Seattle Times that the deep bored tunnel proposal – energetically advanced by Viaduct Stakeholders Advisory Committee members plus our Cascadia Center and the general public – is “probably the most viable option.” Deep bore tunneling technology has advanced greatly in recent years and the method is considered highly suitable for an inland downtown tunnel away from Seattle’s waterfront. (A tunnel boring machine used for Madrid’s M30 roadway project is pictured below, right.) The Times: OLYMPIA – A proposed Read More ›

A report titled “Large Diameter Soft Ground Bored Tunnel Review” has just been released by the transportation think tank Cascadia Center and global engineering and consulting firm Arup. It strongly suggests that a new state cost estimate for a deep bored tunnel of approximately two miles to replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct could be greatly inflated. The state’s Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Committee (SAC) pegs the cost of the one-mile tunnel at $3.5 billion, but the Cascadia-Arup report surveyed deep-bored vehicle tunnels worldwide and found costs typically fall in the range of $200 million-$700 million per mile, for large diameter soft ground bored tunnels, created with assistance of a tunnel boring machine (pictured below at right). A Nov. 20 Read More ›

All over the world deep-bored vehicle tunnels are being built in major metropolitan regions. Paris. Hamburg. Zurich. Dublin. Madrid. Wuhan. Nanjing. Shanghai. Scroll down here to Cascadia Center’s chart titled “Supplemental Tunnel Project Data Examples” and you’ll see costs per mile range from $106 million to $580 million for deep-bored vehicle tunnels in these cities, typically of four to six lanes. The chart is part of a lengthier submission we made to the Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Advisory Committee (SAC). That cost range is worth noting, as SAC and state consultants work through options to replace the aging and unsafe viaduct on Seattle’s downtown waterfront. There are eight alternatives now getting a closer look, and one is a slightly curving Read More ›

State Auditor Brian Sonntag – whose office recently issued a performance audit of state and regional transportation management – is now urging the legislature to take stock after defeat of the big roads and transit ballot measure, Proposition 1. In a Tacoma News Tribune op-ed, Sonntag urges lawmakers to ensure the state re-establish congestion relief as a top transportation priority; and implement coordinated regional decision-making on transportation in Puget Sound. Sonntag writes: Clearly, Proposition 1 was not what the public wanted. The first step in moving forward should be to ask citizens about their needs and what they are willing to support……the recent performance audit on traffic congestion in the region should serve as a good starting point for any Read More ›