Last week, we published some excerpts of our interview with People’s Waterfront Coalition founder Cary Moon, who’s working for the campaign against Ref. 1, the deep-bore tunnel referendum. Today, here’s some of what Ivar’s owner and viaduct replacement stakeholder group member Bob Donegan, speaking for the pro-tunnel campaign, had to say when he sat down with PubliCola last week. (A “yes” vote on Ref. 1, which is technically about the process the council will take to proceed on the project in the future, is a proxy vote for the tunnel; a “no” vote is a proxy vote against it).
• What do you think the outcome of the vote will be? We’ve been predicting a strong “No.” “It’s confusing, and when people don’t understand stuff, they vote no. This isn’t a clear vote on the tunnel, [but] it’s being made into a clear vote on the tunnel [by the anti-tunnel campaign.] This is going to be a 45 to 55 percent vote either way. But when something’s difficult to understand, people vote no.
• What will it mean if Seattle voters reject the referendum? Will that represent a vote for the surface/transit/I-5 alternative? It depends on what the vote is, first of all. Second, none of the 73 solutions that the state came up with, nor the 11 that we as stakeholders looked at, had a majority of support. None of them. If we’re looking for a solution that’s got more than 50 percent of the vote, that’s not going to happen. The reason the stakeholders recommended the tunnel-plus-transit solution was that it was the least offensive.
• You keep calling it the “tunnel-plus-transit solution,” but it doesn’t actually include any ongoing funding for transit—just $30 million for mitigation during construction. That’s not true. It includes King County’s contribution of $190 million for transit—capital money for new buses. That’s a 25 percent increase in service in downtown Seattle.
• And you’re confident that Metro will be able to come up with that money, given that they’re currently cutting service, not adding it? Yes. They’ve said they will.
• What about the other outstanding money, including the $300 million the Port has said they’ll contribute? They were supposed to say where that money would come from by the end of 2010. Are you worried that they haven’t done so yet? Absolutely not. When I talked to the commissioners, all five of the commissioners, it was in their long-range capital thinking. The port will have excess financing capacity in 2014. The port’s contribution doesn’t have to come in until 2015.
• Tunnel opponents say tolling the tunnel at a high rate, like $5, would produce so much traffic diversion that the project wouldn’t produce the $400 million in tolling revenues it’s relying on. The project team hired outside experts and they evaluated low-, medium-, and high-cost tolling scenarios, and in every case, the conclusion was, yes, indeed, we can raise $400 million.
• But the final EIS includes a report showing that 40,000 cars would divert from the tunnel onto city streets. That was the Nelson Nygaard study, which was commissioned by the mayor. It was not reviewed by the technical experts or the project team. The EIS says it gives an incomplete and inaccurate picture fo the project’s history.
• Address the issue of cost overruns. The state has said they won’t pay a penny more than $2.4 billion, the city says it isn’t on the hook for overruns, and the contractor isn’t likely to want to pick up the bill. Why aren’t you more concerned about the possibility of overruns? There is $1.3 billion in the tunnel project. Against that, there is a $200 million contingency left. Let’s say WSDOT goes five times over [a two percent overrun, the highest percentage of any WSDOT overrun since it instituted a new cost-estimating process under former director Doug MacDonald]. There is still an excess contingency of $70 million. And if there are overruns, where do we go when there’s an overrun in the sate? We go to the head of the house transportation committee [Judy Clibborn], who says the state will pay for cost overruns.
• You have two weeks until ballots go out. What’s your strategy for getting people to vote for this referendum? I think the [polling] shows that a strong plurality of people support the tunnel, slightly less strongly oppose the tunnel, and a dozen to 15 percent are confused. The question is, do you work very hard to educate that 10 to 15 percent? That’s one aspect of a strategy. Another aspect of a strategy is clearly to ask the mayor, OK, what is it if it’s not the tunnel plus transit solution? He has no plan. … This election doesn’t present an alternative. All it does is delay the process. I think the more we talk about those issues, for that dozen percent that are undecided, maybe we convince them and maybe we don’t. It’s not a rational issue. It’s an emotional issue.
