I appreciated reading John Odland’s opinions and thoughts about the deep-bore tunnel in Crosscut this morning. I’d like to address a few of the inaccuracies in his article and point readers to supporting documents so they can judge for themselves what the facts are.

In paragraph one, Mr. Odland states that my preferred alternative was rejected by the stakeholder committee. This is not true. In fact, the proposal I support – which includes improvements to I-5, significant investments in transit, and funding for surface street maintenance – was one of two alternatives recommended by the stakeholder committee.

The committee studied and rejected twin deep-bore tunnels because of the cost and risk. The single deep-bore tunnel option was proposed by the Discovery Institute and never studied by the committee, so Mr. Odland’s statement in paragraph 11 that the deep-bore tunnel was “put forward by the stakeholders” is also false. 

Safety and the critical need to tear down the viaduct is a major issue. As members of the stakeholder committee, we all agreed on a set of guiding principles that included public safety as an essential priority. Governor Gregoire repeatedly insisted that the viaduct must come down by 2012 for safety reasons. In January of 2008, she was quoted as saying, “It’s coming down in 2012. I’m taking it down. . . . That is the timeline. I am not going to fudge on it.”

Now Mr. Odland and other tunnel supporters are suggesting that we keep the elevated structure standing for another three to five years, in the blind hope that “Mother Nature cooperates.” He also fails to mention that the deep-bore tunnel requires that we live with the viaduct years longer than if we implement the recommended I-5 and transit improvements. This is neither smart nor safe.

In paragraph six, Mr. Odland claims that “Most viaduct traffic [will be] absorbed by the tunnel.” This is also false. The state’s own traffic study shows that almost 60 percent of existing traffic uses the viaduct to access downtown. With no onramps or exits, the tunnel does not serve downtown at all, so only 40 percent of the vehicles that use the viaduct today will be likely to use the tunnel.

In the final paragraph, I do find a statement I can agree with: “Design challenges remain with the deep bore option and some of them are daunting.”

Deep-bore tunnel boosters seem to be falling back on a strategy often used by proponents of a major project that lacks public support and clear financing mechanisms—they make misleading statements, line up a few powerful interests to nod their heads in agreement, and then act as if the decision has already been made. What they are really hoping is that the public doesn’t ask any questions.

I saw this two years ago when many of the same people told us that if we wanted to invest in mass transit, the quid pro quo was that we’d have to spend billions of dollars to expand our highways. Together we defeated that package. Now we’re expanding our mass transit system without sinking billions of dollars into new highways.

We can do something similar today. There is an alternative that has already been reviewed and put forward as a recommendation. This recommended approach will save the taxpayers a billion dollars and protect them from the risk of massive cost overruns. It will enable us to tear down the dangerous viaduct in 2012 as promised. And it invests twice as much in the public transit infrastructure that we all know we need as we head into the future.

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