Results tagged “tunnel”

Mayoral candidate Mike McGinn is starting to mix it up with Greg Nickels over the deep-bore tunnel. (McGinn has been campaigning as anti-tunnel for a while, but Nickels has only now started to respond.) Now McGinn says that since the Seattle share of tunnel costs would nearly equal the total of every other voter-approved levy in the city, it's worth a vote.

The intern over on the Slog has put together the stats on our brutal week of murders. There have only been eleven murders in Seattle this year--which is the good news; the bad news is, a quarter of 'em happened this week.

Mike McGinn, local enviro and an increasing threat to Greg Nickels's re-election effort, is doing his damnedest to make Nickels pay for lobbying so hard for a waterfront tunnel. The Times has a report on McGinn's strategy today, while Publicola points out McGinn supporters have launched a new anti-tunnel website.

The long-running conflict over how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, theoretically settled in January when local and state leaders agreed on a controversial tunnel option, has come up in the tendentious races for mayor and city council. According to the , tunnel supporters held a press conference yesterday attacking mayoral candidate and former Sierra Club leader Mike McGinn and council candidate Mike O'Brien for "misleading voters about the project's costs and benefits." McGinn has been particularly critical, frequently pointing to a $4.2 billion price tag, which includes related projects like street and seawall improvement and replacement. Tunnel supporters counter that the tunnel is only $1.2 to $1.9 billion.

Anti-tunnel mayoral candidate Mike McGinn, who just picked up endorsements from the 37th District Ds and the Sierra Club (Nickels snagged the Washington Conservation voters' love), claims a new poll shows him winning handily if only everyone in Seattle knew he was against that $4.2-billion boondoggle tunnel. The poll his campaign commissioned shows 64 percent of Seattle voters are against building a tunnel, just like Mike "Tunnel Over My Dead Body" McGinn. The rest live in West Seattle, and just don't realize their transportation needs have already been met.

Mayor Nickels, speaking of the tunnel for which no cost overruns can be foreseen, noted that, "The design work and engineering on the 'mile in the middle,' which has been the controversial part, will go forward in about two years." Does that mean what it sounds like? Is the most controversial part really undesigned? (The Weekly's Damon Agnos has some terrific quotes from someone who looked like the Mayor speaking out strongly against a tunnel a little while ago.)

Farsighted Capitol Hill Seattle has been nosing around in Sound Transit's documentation, trying to discover if Capitol Hill residents might be in for "sandy void" surprises when the light rail tunnel passes through.

A friend of ours was at the Washington Conservation Voters auction fundraiser last night, where Mayor Greg Nickels was being applauded for his greenery. But when Nickels got to the part about the deep-bore tunnel, the response was noticeably tepid. Perhaps thinking people needed a little push, Nickels mentioned his excitement about the tunnel again, only to hear some back-of-the-hall derision. Did his staff not tell Hizzoner that real greens don't buy into tunnel-vision?

It's heartening to discover we weren't the only ones who found it possible to envision cost overruns in building Seattle's deep-bore tunnel. Sightline's Clark Williams-Derry: "It's a potentially enormous financial burden, since even the best planning process can't anticipate things that can go wrong with such a massive undertaking." The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat: "I do think it's suspicious that this same tunnel was rejected in December by a stakeholder advisory committee on account of it being way too expensive. Only to have the costs then shrink (!) by $400 million, arriving at a size that happily fits the state's pre-existing budget." Westneat does everything but call those involved bald-faced liars. Since the alternative is that they're delusional, we're not sure which option is preferable.

Sometimes we fantasize that the Capitol dome is a Reset button that just needs a really big thumb. Here's the exciting part about the viaduct bill that just passed the House: "Any costs in excess of ($2.8 billion) shall be borne by property owners in the Seattle area...." Are you at all reassured by Gov. Gregoire's spokesperson that "we don't envision any cost overruns to occur on this project"?

Taxpayers may not be the only ones seeing extra digits. King County assessor Scott Noble is being investigated for a possible DUI. The Dawgs are no longer in the doghouse with labor activists, now that UW is canceling its apparel contract with Russell. And January's earthquake shook the viaduct "harder, longer" than anyone knew. Which is whole lot more fun than a boring tunnel, right?

It's lonely at the top of Queen Anne, and, if you're a tunnel, boring. Queen Anne View recaps the bored tunnel meeting WSDOT held last night. While we're on Queen Anne, what's your bid on the Queen Anne High condos that will soon hit the auction block? My Ballard explains the tragic-yet-bizarre reason that flags at state agencies are at half-mast today. And the Daily Weekly pokes fun at native son Po Bronson for his Starbucks quote on the perils of success. Po should know. He's been on Oprah!

According to this visualization of the tunnel viaduct replacement option, downtown is about to get very, very clean.

For those of you interested in why the hell everyone thinks a tunnel is such a hot idea, Gov. Christine Gregoire will be on on KUOW 94.9 FM this afternoon at 1 p.m. She'll (hopefully) have to explain her controversial decision to spend billions on a tunnel that doesn't increase traffic capacity (and decreases for the entire period it's under construction, between 4 and 10 years) while cutting budgets across the state government even as the public need for government services increases.

• A neighborhood as incorrigibly cute as Wallingford has to have an equally cute moniker for its neighborhood blog. Enter Wallyhood, the new kid on the local blog block. Welcome, little one. Live long and prosper!
• CHS, the motherblog for Capitol Hill, turned three years old yesterday. Cap To The Hill extended congratulations, a beautiful DIY card, and a saucy invitation to the CHSers in honor of the occasion.
• Phinney Ridge: good and good for you. Knees up, ladies. Walking those hills on the regular will help you tone your patootie!

After years of debate, acrimony, and a vote or two thrown in, the is reporting that city, county, and state leaders have reached an agreement on the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement: a deep-bore tunnel. For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is what you would actually call a "tunnel," whereas the mayor's original proposal was more like a big trench with a lid on top. The proposed plan is estimated to cost $2.8 billion in state money, with the above-ground improvement costs borne by the city. The news signals a reversal on the part of Gov. Gregoire, who previously supported the voters' decision to build neither a tunnel nor a new raised structure and instead concentrate on a streets and transit solution.

For a clue as to what a Seattle sans P-I might be like, look no farther than this Seattle Times article on the ragtag group of citzens--gosh, looks like they're the entrenched power elite, actually--that has pluckily banded together to force a tunnel down Seattle's throat, vote or no. Calling the group a collection of "business leaders, neighborhood activists and environmentalists," the story doesn't name any actual activists or environmentalists. There's attorney Tayloe Washburn, from the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce; Rob Sexton, Downtown Seattle Association; and David Freiboth, King Co. Labor Council. The car-friendly folks at the Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center are in on it, too. The group reminds us of the band of merchants in Westerns who are always willing to sell out the rest of the town if it means they won't be personally inconvenienced--or might profit in some way. And of course they always have the mayor's ear. Stakeholders is exactly right. They do think they own the place.

Snapped Tuesday morning as I waited at a red light to turn left onto Lake City Way....