When you’re digging yourself into a hole, the saying goes, the first rule is to stop digging. Fortunately, regarding the downtown tunnel, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has taken this aphorism to heart. Unfortunately, it’s only partial and temporary.
Excavation on the centerpiece of the $4.2 billion project — the “big bore” tunnel from south of Pioneer Square to north of Pike Place Market — began with much local media fanfare on July 20. But even the preparation for the boring machine has been plagued with exactly the sort of technical problems critics feared when they opposed the tunnel project in the first place — and there have been plenty of other, less inevitable problems, as well.
On June 24, contractors for the Seattle Tunnel Project (STP), the consortium of state contractors managing the construction project, hit a Seattle City Light electrical vault while working on retaining walls at the north end of the project. The following day, workers struck a Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) sewer line.
WSDOT promptly put a temporary stop work order on the tunnel project, allowing work to continue on the walls only in those limited areas where there are no utility lines. All this became public knowledge only in mid-July.
Ten days later, Seattle Public Utilities sent a scathing e-mail to the mayor’s office (which oversees SPU), later reported by Publicola, titled “A Brief History of Bored-Tunnel Construction Impacts to SPU Facilities.” It enumerated damage to SPU facilities dating back to 2012 that included “excessive settlement from dewatering”; “red-alert level” water main “leaking”; “failure to notify SPU of illicit discharge...into Elliott Bay”; “unusual readings in overflow monitoring system,” resulting in a “third discharge violation”; and “knock[ing] the top off of a combined sewer maintenance hole and fail[ure] to notify SPU, causing a dry-weather overflow.”
The e-mail also listed a number of cases in which STP refused SPU requests to take proactive measures to prevent potential damage and restorative measures to replace infrastructure already damaged.
It concludes with an account of the June 25 sewer-line collision and includes additional details about what Publicola calls “near-misses with electrical conductors, sewer backups and reporting that ‘workers are exposed to sewerage [sic] and require medical treatment.’”
Another Civic Seattle moment
Four years ago, Mike McGinn became a credible mayoral candidate largely due to his opposition to the tunnel. Beyond the price tag and environmental insanity of the idea, critics also charged that the technical complexity (using new technology on a project literally adjacent to coastline) and size of the project virtually guaranteed delays and cost overruns.
Late in his campaign, McGinn pivoted to supporting the project and pledging strict oversight instead — a pivot that won the election. He then pivoted again as mayor to dragging his feet in a squabble over who’d pay for cost overruns, and then pivoted again, withdrawing support for an anti-tunnel initiative effort and going along with the program.
It now appears that the McGinn, who feared the project’s likely complications, was right, and the McGinn who pledged to ride herd on them hasn’t done a very good job.
But the issue goes far beyond McGinn. He stood out precisely because he was the only local official who wasn’t squarely behind the project, even though an earlier public advisory vote showed Seattleites nearly evenly divided among options for a tunnel, rebuilding the viaduct or an at-grade replacement.
Civic Seattle was, as always, seduced by the development possibilities and sick of the interminable viaduct debate. To backers, even the $4.2 billion price tag was no barrier — indeed, it fit perfectly into civic Seattle’s longstanding infatuation with big-ticket projects that do more for civic pride and real estate prices than for moving people or goods.
Meanwhile, Seattle can’t adequately fix potholes, let alone build sidewalks or address the decade-long backlog of bridge and road maintenance.
In Olympia, we can’t get Seattle’s buses funded, but a tunnel? No worries.
All about real estate
Those are transportation projects; boondoggles like the tunnel and the latest Mercer Way beautification are all about real estate. The commission charged with setting tolls for the tunnel can’t figure out a price low enough to keep motorists from avoiding the new tunnel in favor of downtown streets, and it isn’t even being designed to accommodate public transit. The main beneficiaries will be the owners of prime, newly accessible downtown waterfront property.
If the early track record is any indication, the chances that the downtown tunnel will be completed on time or for anything close to its projected price aren’t very good. But then, the folks benefiting from the tunnel won’t pick up the extra tab. City and state taxpayers, stuck in downtown traffic, will.
GEOV PARRISH reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM.
To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
[[In-content Ad]]