Initiative is filed to block viaduct tunnel
On the same day Mayor Greg Nickels announced that replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel was the city and state's preferred alternative, a Magnolia woman filed an initiative to block tunnel construction.
"The city leaders have a history of unilaterally pursuing and setting in place building initiatives and projects that they and a select group of special interests want, exclusive of any public sentiment to the contrary or public desire to exercise fiscal restraint," said Elizabeth Campbell, who filed the initiative yesterday.
The initiative would prevent the city from using any public property or right of way to build a tunnel. She is hoping Seattle voters will block efforts by the city and state to tear down the earthquake-damaged viaduct for a tunnel.
The tunnel, expected to cost from $3.4 billion to $4.1 billion, would take from seven to nine years to build. Rebuilding the viaduct would cost $2.7 billion to $3.1 billion, and construction would take six to eight years.
Yesterday's announcement by state and city officials initiates an environmental-impact statement on the tunnel, with the rebuild as a backup.
The impact statement is scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2006.
"Today we are making history," said Nickels in announcing the tunnel as the preferred alternative. "The viaduct is dying. This is the decision for the next 100 years. Not since the Denny Regrade have we made such an important decision."
(The Regrade was started in 1898 to level the area from First Avenue and Pine Street to Denny Way, just north of downtown Seattle.)
State officials say there is no money to pay for the estimated $4 billion a tunnel would cost, and for that reason the state also wants to study the cheaper option, rebuilding the viaduct.
"We recognize that important questions, including funding, remain to be resolved," the Department of Transportation said. "It is prudent, therefore, to continue to study the rebuild option as a contingency in order that all of the project's environmental effects and opportunities are fully discussed."
That didn't make the city happy, and the phrasing of the announcement was debated behind the scenes last week as the city and state worked to reach agreement.
Nickels acknowledged yesterday that the city doesn't want the option to rebuild the viaduct on the table.
"We feel the future of the city is better served by the tunnel," he said.
Nickels, when told of the latest initiative, said he encouraged debate on the viaduct issue.
Opposition
While he and many civic and political leaders praised the tunnel option at a gathering along the waterfront yesterday, a smaller group of protesters held up yellow signs with the words, "Rebuild Viaduct, No Tunnel."
Gene Hoglund, with Citizens for an Elevated Solution, asserts that the tunnel would have a steep and dangerous 7 percent grade, that there would be huge cost overruns and that the tunnel would restrict trucks carrying flammable loads.
"Why would elected officials support such a dangerous tunnel that could put the public in such danger?" Hoglund asked.
While the tunnel is the state and city's preferred choice, he said his group would work to defeat any ballot measures that would ask voters to help pay for a tunnel.
Campbell, who filed the initiative as an individual, is a community activist who ran for the Seattle School Board in the 1990s. She noted that the city voted on reopening a one-block section of Pine Street in 1995.
"If we can vote on such a small matter ... , isn't the decision on which replacement option is best for the viaduct, a more than two-mile stretch of road that will cost three to four plus billion dollars of public money, an even more appropriate issue to vote on?"
Seattle voters approved by 61 percent of the vote the reopening of Pine Street to traffic, opening the door for a $400 million redevelopment plan in the downtown core. The block had been closed to traffic since it became part of Westlake Park in 1990.
Judith Pippin, the Seattle city clerk, said she's assigned Campbell's measure Initiative 84 and sent it to the city attorney to prepare a ballot title. When that is done, Campbell has six months to collect 17,228 signatures to get it on the ballot.
The City Council, which has 45 days to review the initiative after it's qualified, can either place it on the ballot, pass it into law or offer its own alternative. It isn't clear when the initiative would be placed on a ballot.
Eugene Wasserman, with Common Sense Elevated Solution, a group of organizations based in Ballard that supports rebuilding the viaduct, said he was pleased with the agreement that has the rebuild as a backup.
"I think we won," he said. "The spin is that we're going to get a tunnel, but (Nickels) has to find the money. If he doesn't, they'll rebuild the viaduct in the next two to three years."
Priorities
Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said he supports the tunnel as a replacement for the viaduct, but he warned that it may be hard to convince legislators.
"The additional costs of the project must be weighed against other priorities facing the state," Murray said. "Trying to get $700 million more from the Legislature for a tunnel is not realistic given the demands of our aging transportation system and the financial and political reality we must face in Olympia."
The state initially considered five options for replacing the viaduct, built in 1953 and damaged in the February 2001 Nisqually earthquake.
The state Department of Transportation in September announced it had narrowed the options for a new viaduct to a tunnel or rebuilding the existing structure.
Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com