Seattle’s hills suggest transit should be oriented as much east/west as north/south. A ‘grid’ transit pattern that requires transfers between N/S and E/W bus lines would simplify E/W routes and allow them to run more frequently between the waterfront (or 1st Ave) and First Hill, Capitol Hill and South Lake Union.

Such a grid transit system would encourage walking as well as discourage E/W vehicle traffic. Who enjoys a trudge up those damn hills?

McGinn seems to understand this aspect of transportation planning best. The Deep-bore tunnel isn’t the best option. That honor goes to WsDOT’s Scenario ‘G’, the “4-lane” Cut-n-Cover because it maintains the Elliott/Western access ramps, costs hundreds of million less, and has less disruption to the Waterfront District and normal SR-99 traffic than the “6-lane” version rejected by voters in March 2007. The 4-lane version allows the AWV to remain in place for most of the tunnel construction.

I’ll bet McGinn will put the 4-lane Cut-n-Cover tunnel option back on the table if he’s elected. One more thing a tunnel does better than a gridlocked Alaskan Way surface boulevard: there’s less runoff water polluted with vehicle emissions ending up in Puget Sound. Vote for McGinn – He’s the non-establishment candidate.

The take-or-leave-it approach is what got us two stadiums along with the loss of the Sonics. If you assigned a committee to the project (or anyone with any common sense) they would conclude that what would have made the most sense is a Stadium for both baseball and football (and soccer) along with improvements to Key Arena (where the Sonics would still be paying). Instead, we paid way more money and still lost a team.

I would like it if someone would ask Mallahan if he would be willing to reject the committee’s recommendation. Mallahan (unlike Nickels) implies he is a consensus builder and listens to the experts on his team. Is that really the case? Would he, like Nickels, be willing to reject a committee’s recommendations in favor of his own idea? People are addressing this issue as if no one has studied it, or worse, that the results of the study was to recommend a tunnel. It is exactly the opposite.

Sadly, it is not just a simple majority of the people that would be required to allow gas tax to be spent on a light rail on the corridor. The restriction that says that gas tax can be spent for “highway purposes” only is imbedded in the 18th Amendment to the state constitution. That amendment was passed by the legislature and people during WWII as part of a public revolt against expenditure of gas tax for general government uses. At the time, virtually all public investment in transportation was on the highway side, so the amendment was also limited to highways. Public funding of transit was just not part of public consciousness at that time, so the exclusion was incidental.

Because the highway purposes restriction is a constitutional amendment, it can only be changed with a 2/3 vote in each chamber of the legislature and then passed by the voters with a simple majority vote. I don’t see any problem getting a majority of voters to approve such an amendment. But the 2/3 vote at this point would be virtually impossible. The state legislature and WSDOT are only interested in building highways and think it’s fine to leave transit as a local responsibility (just as Dino Rossi said it should be).

Dan’s right. It’s stupid that there’s a good chance the legislature would likely take its money and go home if the city used its powers to kill the tunnel deal. But the legislature hates Seattle. Hell, even many of Seattle’s own reps hate Seattle. And, in the climate context, I’m not sure this tunnel is as bad as some of the other projects the legislature would love to spend the money on. Remember, this tunnel is 4-lanes, replacing six on the viaduct now. It will likely be tolled. And there is no widening of I-5.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the tunnel is a waste of money, but I think the seemingly inevitable cost overruns are more likely to kill the project in a way that allows Seattle (and the climate) to come out a winner than Seattle telling an already hostile state legislature to go fuck itself.

In the “Travel model results presentation”, page 18: “Currently 63% of traffic on SR 99 is through traffic.” (i.e., 37% uses downtown and so would not be served by the tunnel).

On tolls, the WSDOT Tolling Analysis website is full of graphs of different effects of pricing and so on (the 2002 SR-99 report’s “Demand Effects” starts on page 37–note that at that time they were talking about maybe $90m from tolling, not $400m!) The estimate is about 20% traffic reduction, which combined as I said makes most trips that currently use the viaduct “disappear.” No $1.9b tunnel needed. :)

I also have misgivings about McGinn’s commitment to transit, but honestly at this point I’m more willing to give him a chance than Nickels.

It worries me when he talks about ditching the streetcar as part of this effort saying that streetcar and light rail expansion in the city are undesirable until “we improve transportation financing regionally and statewide.” How is he going to accomplish this as mayor? Why not build the streetcar now if we can? Streetcars have been shown to have a transformative effect on the way people move about cities: more people ride them than do equivalent bus routes, and they are cheaper to operate in the long term.

I don’t think there’s any change of doing nothing with the money. There are plenty of other state highway projects even within Seattle (HOV lanes for example).