Replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel makes perfect sense - in a perfect world. It would open up a prime stretch of waterfront and leave a lasting legacy for generations to come.
But it's not a perfect world, and we feel that Seattle, with its popular tunnel scheme, is trying to live champagne dreams on a beer budget .
No matter that Gov. Christine Gregoire has said no to using state money for a tunnel, even the late-breaking and cheaper four-lane version. No matter that the optimistic, but unvetted, $3.4-billion price tag falls in the midrange of cost estimates, and no matter that no provisions have been made for inevitable cost overruns.
The mayor's office, the majority of the city council and anxious development interests are still plowing ahead as if the subterranean transportation fix is perfectly reasonable.
We don't feel a tunnel is either reasonable or even realistic; it would simply cost too much. While it's true the majority of Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt, as is the federal government, that doesn't mean Seattle can't buck the trend and act financially prudent for a change.
Sure, the tunnel is a glorious vision, but judging from other recent Seattle transportation plans (remember the monorail?), chances look good the tunnel is a boondoggle in the making.
That leaves two options on the table: building a new viaduct or using slower surface streets. To be sure, using surface streets would open up the waterfront, and Seattleites have been assured that improved mass transit can take up the slack for surface streets' admitted lack of capacity to handle the 110,000 vehicles using the viaduct every day.
However, a mass-transit fix smacks of social engineering, an inexact science that is questionable at best and totally unrealistic at worst. Furthermore, it would cost an estimated $500 million to bury all the utilities currently attached to the existing viaduct, according to the city, which hasn't announced how long that work would take.
For all these reasons, we're calling on the city and the state to rebuild the viaduct. True, there are those with a wag-the-dog mentality who vow to fight a new viaduct, but that will take time and money for court challenges that will inevitably delay the project and make it more expensive almost by the day.
It may not be pretty - highways rarely are - but a new viaduct would do the job. And isn't that what's really important?
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