King County Executive Dow Constantine continued to play the role of leading tunnel proponent (or leading Mayor Mike McGinn opponent) that he formally took on when he headed up a press conference denouncing McGinn’s obstruction and challenging the mayor to defend the surface transit option last month
In an otherwise sprawling speech about transportation and the economy to the Bellevue Downtown Association this morning, Constantine accused “a small faction” in Seattle—obvious code for Mayor Mike McGinn and his fellow proponents of the surface/transit/I-5 alternative for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct—of “believ[ing] that the key to the future lies in forcing traffic gridlock so that people abandon their cars.”
Constantine predicted gridlock—”transportation gridlock, political gridlock, economic gridlock”—will be the inevitable result if the state doesn’t build a deep-bore tunnel freeway on the waterfront.
“I know that traffic congestion—even intentionally-created traffic congestion—has dreadful and unintended impacts to our economy, our quality of life—and our environment,” Constantine said. “I don’t want a 6-lane, slow-motion, surface highway along Seattle’s waterfront. And we all know that freight doesn’t take the bus.”
“If we don’t build the deep-bore tunnel in Seattle, there will be consequences,” Constantine continued. “We will get regional gridlock. Our billion dollars in state highway money will go to another county, one less urban than ours, to facilitate sprawl and move jobs elsewhere. Our cities, our economy, our quality of life, our people lose.
Constantine also argued that opposition to light rail in Bellevue could have a similar effect—that opposition to rail in Bellevue “threatens to create unnecessary delays in voter-approved and voter-funded services” to the Eastside. “If we don’t build light rail on the Eastside, we not only break our pledge to voters, but we fail future generations,” Constantine said.
Read Constantine’s whole speech here.
