In order to start down the monorail project trail (or should I say "rail") properly, this first advisory vote should have no cost estimates whatsoever.

"Do you like the tunnel idea?" Yes or No.

It would be WAY too confusing to voters to put cost estimates in. That would mean listing all the different scenerios for the viaduct (tunnel, replace, retrofit, surface + transit, etc.), and guessing about what amounts of tolls and taxes would be needed for each that Seattle residents would need to pay IN ADDITION TO RTID and ST2 taxes and tolls. Of course, the city council would have to guess as to what the taxes and tolls for RTID and ST2 would be for the Seattle voters as well.

Like I say, best not to put any cost figures in this advisory measure . . . way too confusing to voters.

No info on cost? Sounds like someone is trying pushing the tunnel to me. Of course cost estimates (from the EIS, which is the most authoritative/official source) should be included. Seattle voters ought to be informed that there is a significantly higher price for a tunnel, and that they're on the hook for the difference.

And I hate to break it to ya, folks, but the State can roll right over the City on this one if it so chooses - in exactly the same way King County rolled over Snohomish County and Woodinville to force the Brightwater sewage treatment plant down their throats.

Mr. X.
The City doesn't want to confuse us with how much we will have to pay.

Mr. X wrote: "Seattle voters ought to be informed that there is a significantly higher price for a tunnel,"

Not exactly. The construction cost might be higher, but the tax cost that an individual would have to pay might not change at all. It depends on who gets taxed, and who gets tolled.

Here is just one scenerio for you to chew on. Tunnel is selected. The number of other projects RTID undertakes is reduced by a lot. No "Seattle only" taxes would be needed, and the RTID taxes Seattle taxpayers pay is not increased because the tunnel is selected.

It's all interconnected.

Okay, assuming that there's going to be some ballot measure... I truly believe the only chance for the rebuild to be defeated is for the City Council to craft the right ballot measure.

And I think the right ballot measure has to be something that's subversive of Gregoire's directive. What I mean is, if they put it just the way Gregoire says she wants them to put it, the rebuild is a done deal. But they also can't craft something that completely flouts and flies in the face of what she demands. It has to be something in between that amounts to a bit of a "land grab."

Really, how do you make the tunnel choice on the ballot the make-no-mistake-about-it environmentalist's option while at the same time keeping it the tunnel option? I can think of two ways:

• Make it a four-lane tunnel instead of a six-lane tunnel. What WSDOT doesn't want to mention is that the six-lane options it's insisting on are not about preserving capacity; they're about expanding capacity. That's on account of the shoulders and the wider lanes. Perhaps we should even change the terms of the discourse by talking in terms of literal width in feet instead of # of lanes.
• Stick with what the City Council stated already: make the no-build the backup if the money's not there for a tunnel.

Now do these variations legally meet Gregoire's mandate? Who knows? Ultimately, this is not a legal issue; it's a political issue. If a smaller tunnel (with no-build backup) can defeat an expanded, elevated structure in a referendum, the state's going to have to treat that vote the way a vampire treats somebody with garlic and a cross.

P.S. I'm still curious whether the question Gregoire wants asked is even legal itself? I mean, we're talking an A or B choice, not a YES or NO choice on A and only A.

Sticking with the surface option would be the City Council going its own way, without the support of the Governor, the Mayor, or Seattle voters.

Following up on what I just wrote: "Perhaps we should even change the terms of the discourse by talking in terms of literal width in feet instead of # of lanes."

Does anyone happen to know how wide in feet/meters the viaduct is now in each direction? Does anyone happen to know how wide in feet/meters WSDOT wants to make it, whether the the tunnel or the aerial?

Sean: Sticking with the surface option would be the City Council going its own way, without the support of the Governor, the Mayor, or Seattle voters.

This is very much what I meant when I wrote: But they also can't craft something that completely flouts and flies in the face of what she demands.

Practically speaking, though, there's no chance of this happening since, aside from Steinbrueck, the City Council has never come out with the no-build as its #1 choice. And even Steinbrueck (I believe, I hope) is not about to be the divider here.

Now actually putting the surface on the ballot as the #2 "or else" choice? That's another story.

Cressona,
The Viaduct is wide-enough to be Retrofitted.
That's all that is relevant now.

Sean,
It's not so clear to me that Team Nickels isn't open to the surface option. Yes, their big priority is the tunnel, but with the "not feaisble" tag they may have to reconsider or have back up when the tunnel goes down.

Meanwhile, the council would have the support of KC Excec Ron Sims, Speaker Chopp, and soon-to-be co-vice chair of the state Senate transpo committee, Ed Murray. All (key Seattle area leaders) have expressed interest in developing the surface option.

Remember: The city council ordinance called for "developing" the transit option—which hasn't been done. The council should get serious about that.

Taking the first step like that could have a snowball effect, especially with politicians like Sims, Chopp, and Murray ready to move, but a bit tentative.

Josh, studying the surface option is all well and good, but how does that relate to a ballot measure? If there's anything we should have learned from the monorail disaster, it's that you don't want to give the appearance of dragging things out or of fearing the voters.

Granted, Josh's agenda appears to be a bit different from mine. Mine is "anything but a rebuild." Josh's appears to be "surface or nothin'."

The problem is that, even if my agenda were "surface or nothing," long ago I would have realized that the best way to accomplish that goal is almost certainly not to mount a "surface or nothing" campaign.

I'm reminded of Tom Friedman's column regarding the Middle East in today's New York Times. Friedman asks: "Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?" Correct answer: no. The best route to a PWC option is probably not to earnestly insist on the PWC option.

Cressona,

You're right that my push to study the surface/transit option currently exists outside the ballot initiative ... but again, the council is in control, and I think, by putting an emphasis on getting that option developed and back on the table they can make it a relevant factor in whatever goes to the ballot.

Re: "Surface or nuthin'" ... don't be so sure.

Why not have IRV - where we can vote for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices, with the losers votes being transferable to their 2nd choice?

That said, the underwater tunnel is dead dead dead. Good riddance.

@2 - Mr. X is right, the city has no choice in the matter, and trying to put up blocking legislation will just get the state madder and they'll still get their way.

It's how laws work.

Gregoire does not suggest how the costly mega projects be financed. How about another gas tax increase?

Sims suggested more study of the surface option for the SR-99 AWV replacement.

Could Seattle place before its voters the choice between the six-lane elevated option and a four-lane tunnel option at about the same cost?

First task: impose dynamic systemwide tolling on AWV, SR-520, I-5, I-90, and I-405.

Ok, if costs are included in the ballot, so should numbers of cars moved per day. For example:

Tunnel- 5.0 bn, 100,000 cars
Viaduct replacement, 3.5 bn, 100,000 cars
Viaduct repair 3.0 bn 90,000 cars
Street option: 2.0bn 50,000 cars

The numbers are all fake- and that's exactly my point. Any financial numbers we talk now are in ranges. Traffic numbers however probably can be guessed more accurately but are equally fake.

As for surrendering local control, I'm all for it. Let's surrender what we call local control now to a metropolitan agency that works on both roads and cars. Make it an elected board that runs the thing, and have some real coordination.

EddieW @15 - systemwide tolling? We Fremontsters laugh in your general direction! Ain't gonna happan on the Viaduct rebuild (or the Surface Plus Transit) no way jose!

My question is how is the council going to develop the "transit option" when in fact they control very little of transit in the first place? You have Metro, Sound Transit... none of which the Council can directly control. Is the city going to exercise its police power over taxis? Will they take over the school district and have yellow buses shuttle people in between dropping off and picking up kindergardners?

Our try at pseudo municipal control (monorail) was a failure. Expecting the City Council to now pick up the ball on the "transit" part of the street option is a farce. I'm willing to wager if the street option goes through is a massive passing of the buck once tons of people can't get around. It certainly won't be Drago or Licata's fault- they will have claimed to have done their bit.

Will in Seattle: EddieW @15 - systemwide tolling? We Fremontsters laugh in your general direction! Ain't gonna happan on the Viaduct rebuild (or the Surface Plus Transit) no way jose!

WIll, I hate to break the news to you, but I imagine you speak for Fremont residents about as much as you speak for transit advocates.

But hey, if you feel your arguments are so unconvincing that you continually have to fabricate a "we" to back them up, please keep it up.

Eddiew: Could Seattle place before its voters the choice between the six-lane elevated option and a four-lane tunnel option at about the same cost?

Y'know, there's a transit planner, Jack Whisner, who has been championing this four-lane concept (at least independently) for a while now. I've always thought this was a better idea than the six-lane tunnel, but I think we've reached the point now where it's not just a good idea, it's a political necessity. And the sooner and more forthrightly Nickels and City Council acknowledge that, the better chance we have of defeating the rebuild.

Just think about it. If a tunnel in some form has to be on the ballot, then well, I just don't see how you could word the ballot where the six-lane tunnel, standing by itself, wins out. The four-lane tunnel, on the other hand, has two huge political pluses over the six-lane:

• It effectively preserves capacity rather than expanding capacity. (Again, I wish we could talk in terms of the actual widths of the thoroughfares being proposed, rather than apples-to-oranges lane counts.) And one-third fewer lanes makes the environmentalists feel better (maybe not good, but better) about building a highway.
• It obviously saves money over the six-lane.

Now how much money? I'm a bit in line with Dave Coffman on this. As in, who knows? Looking at this strictly as a layman, I have trouble swallowing Eddiew's presumption that it would save enough money to get the price down to rebuild territory. I'm sure we could have a better idea how much a four-lane would cost if WSDOT had not arbitrarily dismissed it on account of their fake "preserving capacity" mandate and since it would involve one lane merging into two others. As if we live in a society where sparing motorists from a lane merge should be the highest priority of our society above everything else! Maybe we should widen the Ballard and Aurora bridges too while we're at it to spare motorists that horror.

BTW, as I suggested above, I think the winning ballot also needs to account for the surface option too. Heck, maybe we could throw the retrofit in there too under some circumstance. (And I'm only being half-facetious with that suggestion.)

I hate to break it to you Cressona, but I don't think the City gets to put a project on the ballot that the State has no intention of building (which is a pity, in my view, because that also precludes a vote on retrofit).

BTW - shoulders don't increase capacity, they keep capacity from being reduced temporarily by accidents and mechanical breakdowns.

Of course, when RTID fails, WSDOT will suddenly discover that retrofitting the AWV makes a whole lot of sense after all...

Mr. X: BTW - shoulders don't increase capacity, they keep capacity from being reduced temporarily by accidents and mechanical breakdowns.

Mr. X, you crack you me up. I'm sure some highway planners would get a good laugh out of that one too.

And to think this is coming from the same great mind who was throwing around the classic "A little knowledge can be dangerous..."

Not only should a four-lane tunnel be looked at, but we should look at Western Avenue as well. WSDOT dismisses Western as an alternative, but they initially looked at it with a six-lane tunnel.

Build a four-lane tunnel for pass through traffic and borrow some of the surface option ideas to get traffic going downtown off the viaduct before the tunnel. Most of us West Seattle folks get off at Seneca (30%) to go to work downtown. If we got off at an interchange by the stadiums you wouldn't need such a big tunnel.

One of the big advantages of Western would be that you could keep the viaduct open for most of construction until you needed to link it at the ends. And you would be able to build a cut and cover tunnel there a few blocks at a time like we did with the bus tunnel.

The viaduct is a crucial link for the small businesses of Seattle. Look around next time you are up there and you will see delivery guys, plumbers, and home repair businesses. The people most hurt by the surface option would be those small businesses with an office in Ballard or SODO that take calls all over the city. A four-lane tolled tunnel would serve them well.

Cressona,

Unless you're talking about shoulders wide enough to allow future restriping of an entire roadway to add an additional lane (like, say, the Pacific Street Interchange/6-Lane 520 options that seem to be gaining traction), my understanding is that the overall rated capacity of the new elevated structure remains essentially the same.

You should also keep in mind that parts of the existing merge lanes that widen the AWV to four lanes per direction in some sections are slated for removal under the current rebuild option (though the Rebuild does at least retain the Spring/Seneca ramps, which preserves midtown access from the AWV where the proposed tunnel eliminates it).

And most of the remaining Fremont residents who've been there for more than 5 years absolutely loathe developers, too. So there.

Re #20: The problem is a four lane tunnel isn't that much cheaper than a six-lane tunnel. Most of the expense is in building the walls.