In response to last week’s PubliCola-sponsored debate on the deep-bore tunnel, Seattle Transit Blog’s Martin Duke lays out what he considers the worst arguments for and against the tunnel.
Martin’s anti-tunnel whoppers includes one of my particular pet peeves: Mayor Mike McGinn’s recent favorite sound bite that while the tunnel is more expensive than tht tunnel, “It carries fewer cars than the Ballard Bridge.” Duke notes: “For one thing, the tunnel is four times longer than the bridge. Secondly, an underground solution is more expensive than an elevated solution, as with light rail, for similar reasons and with similar benefits.”
To which I would add: Comparing the cost of the Ballard Bridge (built in 1917) to the cost of building a similar tunnel today requires more than a simple inflation adjustment; it requires adding the costs of insurance, seismic requirements, engineering, environmental review, and union labor costs, among other factors.
On the pro-tunnel side, Martin shoots down the argument that the tunnel will create necessary jobs, noting that “there are plenty of clearly useful ways to create jobs for the same or less money.” The state’s own environmental impact statements estimates that only around 480 jobs will be created by tunnel construction.
