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posted 12/08/10 04:11 PM | updated 12/08/10 04:11 PM
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Tunnel Puts Tens of Thousands of Cars on City Streets

By Michael van Baker
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The Tunnel + [Unfunded] Transit people have sent out an email denouncing both SCAT's stop-the-tunnel initiative and the more recent Move Seattle Smarter initiative that seeks to protect Seattle taxpayers from deep-bore tunnel cost overruns. 

"The bored tunnel option is the only alternative that keeps the viaduct open during construction, linking neighborhoods and assuring that freight can move through and around this City. The opponents’ plan would put 110,000 vehicles a day on surface streets and I-5 killing business and jobs," says Dave Gering, of the Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle, in the release.

WDOT created a visualization of the waterfront boulevard that comes with the tunnel.
I've tried to help it reflect actual traffic.

Gering is quoting the high estimate for daily traffic on the Alaskan Way Viaduct currently, but he fails to mention that the tolled deep-bore tunnel is expected to handle only 47,000 daily vehicles. Some 35,000 cars are anticipated to take--that's right--city streets and I-5.

The difference between the Surface/Transit/I-5 alternative and the deep-bore tunnel is that dealing with surface street traffic is the primary goal of the former, while the tunnel plan does little to mitigate the traffic it sends to I-5 or city streets. There is $190 million recommended for transit as part of the tunnel plan, but it is unallocated, which is another way of saying that the tunnel plan contains 190 million wishes.

WDOT's SDEIS notes that of all the options the Surface/Transit/I-5 alternative is the only one that actually would help the state to reach its stated goal of reducing traffic-related greenhouse gas emissions; the tunnel would lead to increased emissions by 2030. The SDEIS also notes that by 2030, congestion from traffic using the tunnel is expected to be slightly worse than that from traffic using the Viaduct in 2015. 

A view of San Francisco's Embarcadero Boulevard as seen on Google Maps

As you review WSDOT's visualizations (Appendix E) of what the tunnel and waterfront would look like, keep in mind this actual image from San Francisco's Embarcadero Boulevard. The median is fairly broad because streetcars run up and down it. People have, in all seriousness, told me that we can't afford to have something like this on our waterfront, as pedestrians would refuse to walk across such a wide expanse. With the tunnel option, a future streetcar might run along First Avenue, rather than the waterfront.

Comments on the SDEIS are due December 13, 2010. Comments can be e-mailed to awv2010SDEIScomments@wsdot.wa.gov or mailed to Angela Freudenstein, Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project, 999 Third Ave., Suite 2424, Seattle, WA 98104-4019. In other tunnel news, tomorrow the state is expected to unveil the actual dollar bids from the two construction teams who have not dropped out yet.

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And we failed to be listed as a EPA green city
Any wonder why? Here's a hint: it's because we've been given to this massive propaganda effort from City Council's chambers warning about a "war on cars" and certain gridlock from anything that uses any of our 4,000 miles of roads more sensibly.
Comment by AJ
2 days ago
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Tunnel Plus Claiming Credit for Transit
The Chamber heavies who comprise the Tunnels Plus Transit [sic] group would have more credibility if (1) they didn't claim credit for transit projects that they had nothing to do with and are happening regardless of the tunnel; (2) their members didn't have a history of opposing any and all transit-only streets in downtown; and (3) they had actually lifted a finger to lobby for the transit funding component of the tunnel deal. Tunnels Plus Transit is just a DBA for the leading tunnel boosters.
Comment by Brent
1 day ago
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Do you not understand the logistics?
What Gering is talking about is the impact to the SoDo area in terms of a systems model. If yot take those "mere" 47,000 trips, and put them onto the surface streets with the rest of the freight traffic, you have gridlock galore. The entire point of the DBT is to mitigate dumping those cars on the SoDo surface streets even as a temporary measure, because it would be so disruptive to the movement of goods in a trade dependent economy like Seattle and Washington. Because the logistics chain/network is so flexible, all of the business can be diverted south to tacoma or even L.A. in mere months, if supply chains are wrought with bottlenecks, choke points, and grid lock.

The "Surface Transit" non-option takes a bad temporary situation-- that of dumping all of the traffic onto surface streets, and make it permanent; not to mention the time added for north-south travel between SoDo and Interbay.

Because people like the "People's" Waterfront Coalition REFUSE to address this pivotal issue, we can only assume that sending blue collar jobs to the south is what you people want, but cannot say out loud; and so you accomplish this goal via subterfuge; delaying tactics employed by the mayor, phony scare tactics PR, and even a backroom deal between homeless advocates and the mayor's office, while employing Tea party anti-tax and spend scare rhetoric. Your ultimate goal is to please the new crop of "green" real estate speculators, under the religion of New Urbanism.

I work in logistics, and I get my hands dirty for a living. Not a pundit here; I just have an emperical on-the-ground understanding of how these systems issues would actually work. Since you are not in the industry that is mostly impacted, what is your model??? Ideology?
Comment by done deal
1 day ago
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RE: Do you not understand the logistics?
Since you ask, can you point out the other 1-mi. 47,000-vehicle capacity projects that we're spending $1 billion on? Then, if a "mere" (not my word) 35,000 vehicles are being diverted to surface streets, how do you expect the 100 freight trips per day (per the SDEIS) who can't use the deep-bore tunnel because they're carrying hazardous or flammable materials to avoid choke points? You seem to miss the import of the post, which is that because the tunnel does not replace Viaduct capacity, you're going to get surface street crowded surface streets in any event--just without any extra transit capacity. The Surface/Transit/I-5 plan's addressing the far larger I-5 choke point through town has the potential to have a far greater impact than the tunnel for freight.
Comment by Michael van Baker
1 day ago
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Weighing in...
also from the logistics industry, thanks so much, though currently unemployed.
For freight purposes, the tunnel basically serves as a very limited, super-expensive, passenger-car only through-way. It won't free up enough surface capacity to affect Ports of SeaTac traffic significantly; the ports seem big to Seattlites, but compared to NY-NJ and LA-Long Beach, SeaTac is a sleepy little hamlet. We're third only by default.
As far as port and FTL/LTL/FCL/LCL surface freight goes, fuel surcharges have pushed so much of it to rail from trucks that the entire sector has simply changed in the past five years. I don't see this trend changing, nor do most industry analysts. Certainly, despite the fact that the average truck driver is over 55, there isn't a huge recruiting drive to replace retiring drivers.
Seattle has been screwed since they put I-5 right through the center of the city. Now we're just talking about the brand of condom. The tunnel is a fiasco in a cage match against a horde of bad ideas and hare-brained schemes, that we're probably going to spend the next 50 years wrangling over.
Hey, what about that monorail system that we spent the *last* 50 years voting up, down, sideways, funding, defunding, debating, et cetera? Sound familiar? I give it even odds that an earthquake will take down the Viaduct before the conscientious citizens of Seattle see ground broken on *any* replacement project, and then the entire notion will be scrapped, and we'll start all over again. Any takers?
Comment by Constance Lambson
1 day ago
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