Gregoire says viaduct will go to Seattle vote

OLYMPIA – To the dismay of some Seattle residents, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Friday that state taxpayers can’t afford an expensive underground highway to replace Seattle’s crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Instead, Gregoire told reporters at the state Capitol that she wants to simply replace the existing elevated highway, which runs along Seattle’s waterfront. That would cost roughly $2.8 billion, instead of the $4.6 billion for a tunnel.

“The state is only going to pay to replace current capacity,” she said. “Nothing more.”

But there’s an unusual twist: Gregoire also wants Seattle to vote on the issue, with voters told about the extra $1.8 billion – much of it likely from local taxes or tolls – that the tunnel would cost. Gregoire said she saw the vote as the only way to break a political stalemate between state lawmakers and the city over what to build.

If Seattle residents vote for the tunnel – and if the city will guarantee to find the money to make up the difference – Gregoire said she’d support construction of a tunnel. State taxpayers, she said, will contribute only the $2.2 billion they would have spent on a simple replacement highway.

“It’s up to the city of Seattle,” she said. “If the city wants a tunnel, it needs to come up with the funding to achieve that.”

The project is one of the two most expensive “megaprojects” that state budget writers are wrestling with.

Built from 1955 to 1958, the viaduct was the first double-decker bridge structure in the state. Built on fill flushed toward Elliott Bay by early developers wielding water cannons, it’s slowly settling and is thought to be in danger of collapsing when the region’s next major earthquake hits. It was expected to carry about 60,000 vehicles a day, but it’s actually used by about twice that many.

The state rates its bridge structures for “structural sufficiency,” with a new, modern bridge getting a score of 100. By that measure, the viaduct scores between 9 and 12 – one of the lowest ratings of any of the state’s 3,100 bridges.

“I want the viaduct taken down,” Gregoire said.

Tunnel boosters, led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, argue that simply replacing the 50-year-old concrete elevated highway with a similar eyesore on Seattle’s waterfront would be repeating a historic mistake that would haunt the city for decades.

The tunnel would actually be a massive trench in which workers would build a highway. Then it would be covered up. Result: a “cut and cover” tunnel that doesn’t obstruct the aesthetics of the waterfront and downtown.

Nickels and other proponents hope to get hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, tolls, and the Port of Seattle. But Gregoire said she can’t be certain that that money will actually show up.

“If we had all the money in the world, I’d go with the tunnel,” Gregoire said. “But we don’t.”

Mayor Nickels said the city will work with the state to find the additional dollars.

“We will sharpen our pencils with the state,” he said. And he again made it clear that he thinks the tunnel is the way to go. Replacing the elevated highway with the same thing, he said, would be “much wider and uglier.”

“This decision is going to affect us for the next 75 to 100 years,” Nickels said. “We need to do it right … There really is, I think, no city in the world that would choose the elevated structure.”

State Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Bellingham, said the governor simply “punted.” If the matter goes to a vote, he said, it should go to statewide vote. He’s skeptical that the state’s share of a tunnel project would really be limited to the cost of the cheaper option.

“It’s not the city of Seattle’s decision,” he said. “The people of Seattle don’t look at the entire system. They look at their own waterfront.”