Comments on Hidden Costs

As well they should, Josh. It hardly seems a level playing field when you have a splashy press conference for the viaduct and 520 numbers and bury the others.

Once again I am going to compare your costs of your tunnel to the cost of building a rapid transit tunnel in Vancouver Canada that is almost 10 times longer than the one being proposed in Seattle, (stations included). It comes in under 2 billion. With Nickel's figures a tunnel this long would cost approximately 44 billion (10 x 4 billion using a conservative projected cost). Has anyone proposed adding rapid transit to this tunnel (since it is being built). If it is just for cars then cars should pay for it ( toll ). If rapid transit was added then someone at Pike street market could get across town in minutes. Also it would turn the south end of seattle into an area that would become developed with condos because people could just ride transit to downtown seattle when getting to work. Then the line could be expanded upon later to go to the airport and then north.
3.6 - 5.5 billion does not sound right to me for a tunnel that is only going the length of downtown Seattle. There is already a tunnel that does that (train tunnel) and I am sure there was less debate over building it when that went in.

Info on tunnel in Vancouver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Line