McGinn Talks Tunnel on KIRO with Dave Ross

I really hope McGinn actually does get a measure on the ballot. I can't say I am filled with confidence that he will, but I would love it if he actually does.

I call it the “Tiny Tunnel;” it's only half as large as it needs to be. This should be McGinn's main argument against it.

Traffic on the present viaduct is 5 lanes each way. The replacement tunnel will have 2 lanes each way.

In addition, there may be a slowdown for tolls, and a dogs-leg in the middle to further slow traffic.

They are already planning an additional surface road over the tunnel of 2 more lanes each way, which will almost take up the slack, but will also be slowed due to cross-streets.

I live north of the ship canal. I'm feeling more and more motivated to support a new airport at the Boeing site in Everett, rather than rely on this insufficient tunnel to get to the airport on time!

so you can vote against it?

1. the viaduct is not five lanes each way. the northbound viaduct actually decreases to two lanes @ battery.

2. your general point that the mobility benefit versus cost of this roadway is out of whack, is true. this is what happens when you build highways. they succeed and development happens, so that when you rebuild they're 100x more expensive and you don't get any boost in mobility the way you did when you built them the first time. It's called….well, it's like one of those teaser rate loans, it's a more expensive investment than you thought originally.
3. it's ridiculous to build ANY roadway without provision for its use by TRANSIT including express busses or otherwise.
4. you're supposed to get to a light rail station once they're built in north seattle and go to the airport that way.
5. rather than new airport why not build a high speed rail tunnel under downtown so the 33% of all flights that are to portland and vancouver could be via rail? those flights really emit lots of carbon, and the way things are going China will have high speed rail from Beijing to Berlin before we have even a 125 mph rail from portland to seattle.

Yeah, exactly, because I hate the idea of more convenient and accessible transit.

Where is it five lanes in each direction? Its three coming up from SODO and then you add one just passed the stadiums, but that one, and the adjacent, both exit leaving two heading through the battery street tunnel. Since the tunnel has no in city exits it maintains the same two through lanes that we have now.

And the tolls will all be automated. No booths to slow things down.

The Battery Street Tunnel is two lanes north and south bound. Smaller than the proposed tunnel because it lacks breakdown lanes. There is no ten lane section of the Viaduct I know of.

Wake me up when McGinn decides that this dead horse is not worth flogging any longer.

I sent the mayor a reminder that the city council will have its recurring meeting tomorrow at 2:30 pm, and that if he has time to talk to Dave Ross then he has one minute to speak as a citizen at the council meeting.

I'll just accept this exchange as proof that McGinn will become the problem that creates opposition to him, making anything else he wants to pass that much more difficult.

He will spend the next 3 years trying to convince people to look past him in order to fairly concider future proposals.

I think you're right. Pissing people off left and right is not exactly quality governance.

Plus he is going to have to spend a ton of political capital just to get the basic things he wants done.

It would be interesting to see the mayor argue for more lanes for cars.

That would be quite the backflip.

I just listened to both the Clibborn and McGinn interview.

Clibborn's comments on McGinn's motivations were met with name calling, rather than reasoned answers.
He's an idiot.
Here, McSandbag, the answer on Nickerson is that the same guy that agreed to the tunnel also agreed to the Nickerson road diet, Greg Nickols.
There, was that so freaking hard?

On the cost overruns, McSandbag is at best disingenuous what he says he might oppose a surface option if a similar provision for cost overruns were involved.
He failed to address the legislature, voting against a Tim Eyemenn initiative is not the same as the state saying Seattle gets 2 billion in gas tax money. Like he said, people make up all kinds of things to tell themselves.

I watched the floor debate, Clibborn was right, plenty of people were working pretty hard to stop money out of the bill and spread it around the state.
Also, the mayor should know that Seatyle is on the hook to relocate our utilities attached to the state's viaduct no matter what. On that point I think he was misleading at best, a liar at worst.

He is flailing.

I would support the broadband effort, I doubt he will be able to get there anytime soon. Another evil Nickels effort.

yup, because of his position on the tunnel, the council will surely take any other idea he has, no matter how sound and wise it is and reject it out of spite.

That's the way it oughta be, too, damn him, when will he learn to play the etiquette game?!?

Giffy, the point Louis XVI's courtiers hyperbolic statement misses is that the opposition McSandbag creates to himself stays with him, making everything he does weighted against him.
If anybody is undecided about a subject he has found a way to tip the scales against himself.

When common goals are made in spite of him, rather than because of him, he is less likely to get as much done.

There are a couple items where I agree with him, they look less likely everytime he opens his mouth.

Mr. Baker has beat me to it, but its not simply the tunnel. He is hostile, doesn't work with others, and has a smug arrogance about him.

1275 days left and counting.

Erica, you seem to miss McGinn's masterful strategy to use the overrun issue to garner support from tea party nut jobs to add to his existing base of lefty nut jobs. The only people he is excluding from his coalition are those dastardly sane folks at the middle of the political spectrum, and they rightfully deserve to be marginalized for their naive idea that there should be balance and compromise in our society.

The existing viaduct is 5 lanes each way??? Not in an place that I can think of, and the existing roadway gets funneled through the Battery Street tunnel which has two undersized lanes. The new tunnel will have two big lanes with shoulders, will be shorter and have less twists in it than the existing SR99. The bored tunnel may have its faults, but that isn't one of them.

One of the funny things here is that, if McGinn could stop the tunnel, Seattle would still have to pay about $1.9 billion, while the rest of the state would be happy to take the $2 billion from the tunnel and spend it elsewhere. In Belfair we have a bypass project for Route 3 that has been planned for about a decade and might be completed in another 12 years- we'd be happy to speed that up, and $22 million would do it.

McGinn told his supporters he would save them $4 billion by not building the tunnel, but $2 billion of that is stuff like the seawall, rebuilding utility lines, rebuilding streets, etc, that the city needs to do and needs to pay for regardless of whether the tunnel is built. The other $2 billion is highway money for the tunnel, of which Seattleites will pay their share, regardless of where it is spent.

It's interesting that McGinn has just never picked up the reins of leadership. I'm pretty sure the people of Seattle want, and deserve, better.

New airport in Everett!? We'll fight all the rest of you like hell to not create new regional infrastructure that would make the rest of your lives easier and more efficient! We'll vote on it, vote on it again and again and again until the measure is dead. We'll only build it if light rail is there first, then we'll create the Boeing Freeway diet plan to add buffered bike lanes on it. And who is going to pay for the cost overruns, we won't sign any agreement until the state agrees to pay for the whole thing!

You don't need to fly to vegas! Walk, Bike, Ride. My new bike share plan will reduce flights around the country and save our environment.

N8 for Snohomish County Executive cause I will not allow for any commercial flights out of Paine Field!

The AWV has 4 lanes northbound between the rise south of the stadiums and Seneca Street, and is 3 lanes southbound for most of the length through the CBD. Southbound traffic coming from west of SR 99 has an offramp by Art Institute, and northbound traffic going the same direction gets off at Western, so the size of the Battery Street Tunnel is not entirely germane to the discussion of existing capacity vs. proposed replacement capacity.

I like number 5 the best. Would be nice to have high speed rail from Everett to Portland with stops only in Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia.

Oops, “onramp” by AI…

Mr. Baker, your comments are always a service to our community. Thanks!

McGinn has to stop promising a light rail vote next year. He has no plan, no design, no cost estimates, no state legislative enabling legislation–in short, no clue.

The monorail folks already did huge damage with poor planning and vision without details. McGinn is going down the same path again.

Hey light rail fan, where do you say the light rail should go?

Over the Ballard Bridge? Can that be done? Over the West Seattle Bridge? Can that be done? Oh wait we'd need two new bridges, right?
Where would this new light rail go downtown, would it take over first avenue? Tunnel?