Yesterday, the Seattle City Council’s Transportation Committee rushed through a curious document called the “MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT for the ALASKAN WAY VIADUCT AND SEAWALL REPLACEMENT PROGRAM BORED TUNNEL ALTERNATIVE.”
This Memorandum of Agreement (let’s just call it the MOA) is between the city and the state. Under this MOA, the city officially takes on responsibility for $927 million in tunnel-related projects.
Missing from the MOA is any attempt to address two rather critical issues.
First is the question of where all that money will come from.
Second is how the city will pay for the inevitable cost overruns. This is something the city agreed to earlier, almost as an afterthought. But there’s ample evidence that this project will actually cost significantly more than the $4.2 billion that city, county, and state officials are currently estimating. History shows that mega-transportation projects have a dismal track record when it comes to meeting budget estimates. An Oxford University study of 258 such projects around the world found that 90 percent were over budget, averaging 30 percent more than original estimates.
If this turns out to be an “average” project, we’ll be on the hook for at least another billion dollars.
I believe this MOA is an incredibly irresponsible bit of bureaucratic maneuvering designed to make the downtown deep-bore tunnel look a done deal, even though engineering planning has barely started and funding remains unplanned and uncertain.
Five Transportation Committee members voted for the MOA. Nick Licata abstained. (He issued a press release in which he asked why the committee was rushing to sign an agreement that “could place Seattle taxpayers at risk.”)
What I’d like to know is whose interests those five members of the Transportation Committee members think they’re serving?
It simply makes no fiscal sense to agree to fund a project of this size and scale if you don’t know how much it’s going to cost or how you’ll pay for it.
This is just another example of why the Seattle City Council desperately needs someone with the financial background and experience to understand the fiscal implications and potential economic impacts of significant city spending initiatives.
Seattle City Council also needs someone who is committed to fighting for progressive values. Today, we need to invest in transportation solutions that are designed to meet the needs of people and businesses, not cars. The deep-bore tunnel is a twentieth-century car-first solution to a problem that requires smarter use of our existing infrastructure, more light rail, more buses, and a transportation-oriented approach to land use and development.
Fortunately, the deep-bore tunnel is not a done deal. As a member of the Seattle City Council I intend to fight the tunnel. And I’ll always ask the hard questions that need to be asked so that you can be sure your interests are being served.
