Nobody reads these ones

I want to begin this by saying openly that I think Mayor Greg Nickels is an ineffective legislator. He is reckless with tax dollars and oversees a city full of self-serving council people. His record on transportation is particularly hideous.

Having said that, feel free to read the following with a heapin' helpin' of salt, but keep in mind that all of the information is thoroughly researched as I am a huge nerd.

The commotion of the tunnel vs. the viaduct really got its momentum in early 2005, though it has only recently become a headline story as the debate between Nickels and Governor Gregoire is openly heated. Back in March of 2005 Nickels started pushing the tunnel project, and he planned to request $1 billion from the federal government. When Senator Patty Murray said such a funding request was impossible, Nickels replied that "The impossible just takes a little bit longer." In April of that year the Washington State legislature approved the 9 ½ cent gas tax increase, with $2 billion of the proceeds promised to the Alaskan Way project. At the time Nickels was talking about a six lane tunnel that would cost $3.6 billion. When asked whether the tunnel could be built without going over cost, Nickels' spokesperson Marianne Bichsel said, "We have had pretty good experience with overseeing large-scale projects that go according to plan."

Umm, did she not notice at the time of her statement that the commission in charge of the monorail was floundering and overspending to such a degree that every newspaper and local radio show openly criticized the project and six months later Seattle voters shut the project down? The very thought of the Seattle City Council overseeing a transportation project effectively and at cost is laughable at best, and more likely to make many homeowners (and H2 drivers- suckaaaas) very angry.

The benefits of a tunnel are not to be denied. A tunnel in place of the existing viaduct would be more aesthetically pleasing, would reduce noise on the waterfront, and potentially increase the value of many downtown properties while the elevated structure leaves noise and pollution above ground and does nothing to enhance the waterfront's beauty. Ever the frugal spender, Nickels wants not only to build a tunnel but to revamp the waterfront, including a 70-foot-wide boardwalk leading to the Pike Place Market, a truly lovely idea the Post-Intelligencer attributed to Nickels' "Blank Check Vision."

Over the months, as idealism gave way to calls for specific plans and numbers, it was revealed that a six lane tunnel would come at an astronomical cost. No problem, says Nickels, we'll just make it a four lane tunnel with room on the shoulders for cars during times of heavy congestion. Still too expensive, his planning committee decided it really wouldn't be so bad if the lanes were only eleven feet wide in the tunnel rather than the standard twelve. The price tag for this scaled-down version? $4.6 billion, dolls. Does anyone else already feel claustrophobic enough driving through an underground tunnel without the lane width decreasing? And if you get into a collision or your auto malfunctions during rush hour: sorry, there's no shoulder.

Meanwhile, there are increasing calls for expensive repairs to the 520 Bridge, the funding for which has yet to be appropriated and, as a result, County Commissioner Ron Sims opposes the more expensive tunnel option. In November he stated, "The tunnel is dead, because there is no money. If there is extra money, it should go to 520." Perhaps he ought to have told Nickels.

In October, 2006, a poll of Seattle voters showed that our city's citizens prefer a new viaduct to a tunnel by a 2 to 1 margin. Nickels still pushed the tunnel, saying that a new elevated structure was "unacceptable." Enter Governor Gregoire, who after months of nudging and making pointed suggestions to the Seattle City Council that the tunnel was really an unrealistic plan at this time, gave an ultimatum to the city. She told the City Council in January that the need to hold a vote on the issue or she will move forward with the elevated structure. Couple this with the WSDOT's very recent study of the four lane tunnel that found:

Based on our review, WSDO'T cannot recommend to you approval of [the four lane tunnel] as an acceptable viaduct replacement option because of serious safety and operational problems found during our technical review. We recommend that this proposal not be advanced for further study.

That's it:
Tunnel: $4.6 billion
Viaduct: $2.8 billion___________
Savings with Viaduct: $1.8 billion

You might be thinking, "Well, for the benefits, $1.8 billion really isn't that much more. We spend more than that every month in Iraq right now." No, we don't. We finance that much in Iraq right now. Almost none of the spending on the Iraq war is coming from the current federal budget. And $1.8 billion is an astronomical amount of money in a city that is currently debating how many of its public schools to close. At the library last year some of the high school students would come to me with complicated math questions. At first I would ask them if they had their textbooks with them so I could review the lesson in order to help them. "We don't get books," they would tell me. "There is one set that stays in the class." This shocked me, the prospect of doing math homework without a textbook. We simply cannot forsake schools in order to beautify the waterfront. Do you think if Nickels' children were still adolescents they would attend these same public schools in his home of West Seattle? There are countless other important areas where the funding could do wonders, of course, but I choose to focus on the lack of funding in schools because it's my blog and it's what I care about.

The fact is, Mayor Nickels is behaving like a very spoiled child. In recent weeks he has threatened that if a tunnel cannot be built, the viaduct will simply be torn down for safety reasons and nothing erected in its place. This kind of uncompromising legislating is reprehensible. In the media Nickels is portrayed as a rebel captain defying the sage counsel of an admiral and as usual, he does not appear to care.

A considerable majority of those who have followed this issue agree that the viaduct must be replaced, and with a new elevated structure. "But it isn't pretty," you say. This is true, and in richer times, when all of our transportation and educational and various other municipal issues were richly funded perhaps aesthetics could be the biggest concern. The fact that it is to Nickels speaks volumes of his capacity as a leader. You can be sure that Deo and I would much prefer to live in a nice Craftsman's Bungalow with a big wooden porch and a lawn than in our apartment with its concrete deck and a five-year-old aspiring track star directly upstairs. The limits of my current budget and my plans to finance further education will keep me renting apartments for some years to come, however. And luckily this apartment is very accommodating to the volumes of our stuff, much like a viaduct accommodates upwards of 120 thousand vehicles daily.