Equally impressed with your command of the topic. Clearly you’re all over this one with the dick comment. When I’ve got nothing much to say, I usually throw in the dick comment. ‘Cause the dick thing usually makes people start nodding and agreeing with me, and it makes me feel smart. dick dick dick

Hilarious! You are so funny and clever. I am infinitely envious of your insight!

The best tunnel is the 4-lane Cut-n-cover because it maintains the critically important Western/Elliott access. The ideal replacement is indeed the Surface/I-5/Transit because it takes into account the reality of the insane amount of traffic we assume is sustainable. My defense of the 4-lane Cut-n-cover is still a compromise that creates more construction jobs, handles traffic better than the Deep-bore and may cost a few hundred million less.

Saturday, the Seattle Times finally mentioned the 4-lane cut-n-cover, but not in a favorable light, reminding everyone that it was indeed rejected by voters in March 2007. On the contrary, ‘tunnel-lite’ as it was called, was essentially a 6-lane version, its ’shoulders’ wide enough to act as 3rd lanes during rush hours.

Leading up to the vote, a 6-lane cut-n-cover was the main discussion. I suspect ‘tunnel-lite’ was thrown together shortly before the vote without a thorough vetting, even regarding construction disruption. WsDOT continued work on the 4-lane cut-n-cover and produced Scenario ‘G’ in late 2008, more clearly defining the construction process. No one outside of SDOT and WsDOT knows what the contruction process will entail. I believe it is manageable.

One of my arguments defending McGinn’s position is that he doesn’t have all the information necessary to make fully informed decisions. What Seattle does NOT need is a new mayor who will take over where Greg Nickels left off. He pissed people off just too much. Mallahan is clearly nowhere near as trustworthy as McGinn.

I agree that the Mayor can not singularly create massive change that we need. It has to be based in a desire of the people. And in a town that endorses the Discovery Institute candidate, we have some challenges…

And this is why I believe McGinn has not been the agent of change that he has led many to believe he is. The vision of bike filled streets and street cars and light rail everywhere is still a pipe dream too. Why?

Because McG isn’t really talking to the truth of the significant structural changes that Seattle would have to make nor describing how they could be achieved and how he would take us there.

Where is the frank discussion about removing parking downtown (as our idolized Copenhagen has), or stopping parking to be built for ANY housing in the urban village centers and hubs, or taxing the hell outa parking, or making everyone (that includes developers) ponying up to pay for massive local Seattle transit infrastructure (and ignoring lightrail which is a regional system), etc etc. Where is the discussion of what it would take to do these things, how to time them, how to transition our people and commerce, etc.

There’s a big gap between the truth and the fantasy, and we ain’t hearing about it from Mike.

And if he rolls over on the tunnel issue – his bellwether – how will address any of these other significant challenges.

Now if I really believed that once in power McG would take on that leadership, I would support him – as ardently as many on this blog have.

But his past track record with the green-washed GCI, his refusal to acknowledge that massive urban projects like Dearborn were BS, his role in SLU, and the reaction of his peers in Greenwood or colleagues on the parks levy lead me to conclude he is not all that he’s portrayed as.

He rolled over and it shows that he’s been blowing smoke all along.

I look forward to your future posts (as always).

I think Mike has simply stepped gently tot he side and will now permit the oncoming train of crazy that is the tunnel to rush on by and smash itself into little bits…

Even though I casted votes in the direction of Gov Gregoire, the push for the tunnel was something she had to do to save her administration. Plus, the tunnel is the cleanest play for the state, with very clear lines drawn where their responsibility begins and ends. State – tunnel, city and county – everything else. I think (if elected) Dow is walking the line on this, so if it comes to a head, he’ll step aside too and our Governor will catch this speeding train right between the numbers (mixing metaphors…) God save the Queen…