The dysfunctional idiocy known as the “tunnel option” for the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement costs too much, provides less traffic capacity than a new viaduct WHILE costing more, and reduces access to the downtown core - and thus both damages downtown retail and entertainment entrepreneurs, and simultaneously reduces tax revenue therefrom.

Aside from being the most expensive available option (even before the inevitable cost over-runs) at a time when our state is running a $9 billion dollar deficit with things likely to only get worse over the next three years, the tunnel option is cursed with numerous functional flaws likely to incur substantial future expense.

In a growing urban area (and despite the current economic fiasco and the cities disastrous mayor, Seattle is about the closest thing to urban growth remaining in the state), reducing the carrying capacity (three lanes each direction to two) while eliminating two exits into the downtown core borders on criminal foolishness.

Not only does the tunnel option reduce commercial, worker, and tourist access to the city core – it then, as a grim bonus, goes on to reduce emergency (medical/fire/police) access to the inevitable on-road events, all while reducing access by those same critical services to the city core by introducing a new and artificial choke-point to the equation.

This reduced access and increased congestion will inevitably damage Seattle’s already-limping retail core both in terms of delivering customers and in terms of moving goods in and out of the core.

For whatever reason, Nickels and his cronies have failed to learn the lesson of Boston’s Big Dig – and it seems unlikely that no matter how big a tantrum Nickels can toss that he can get exemptions to the laws of physics and/or economics. We live in a rainy climate; manmade structures are flawed, and below ground structures tend to leak. As yet another bonus, we get earthquakes now and again. Drowning in the dark sounds unappealing.

The tunnel option particularly hurts West Seattle by further pinching our access bottleneck. The back-ups caused by implementation of this misbegotten notion will, inevitably, push back onto the West Seattle Bridge (and possibly as far as the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock in the mornings), as folks trying that currently use Hwy 99 northbound for the morning commute are either compressed from three lanes to two, or simply cannot acces the downtown once they are on 99 – and resort to either surface streets already operating at near capacity or I-5 which already operates above capacity for six to eight hours each day.

All of this is bad enough, in itself, but when considered in light of the fact that West Seattle has *no* emergency medical facilities in on the west side of the bridge (I.e., Harborview/Swedish/etc. are as good as it gets for nearby trauma care, and to get to them one must cross a newly besieged bridge) things have the potential to get simply grim.

It is almost certain that the tunnel plan will, within a year or two of completion, generate a drive for either “tunnel No. 2” or “build another viaduct” at vastly unnecessary expense – since we can build it right the first time – with either equal or greater capacity and access to the current roadway.

As voters, we must derail this rampant idiocy whose sole positive design characteristic is creating really neat-o expensive view properties for certain elected officials developer cronies. We need to derail it now. And we need to punish public officials favoring such self-destructive mayhem at the ballot box. We need a solution that maintains (or improves) capacity and access while not creating *new* safety hazards nor predictable “supplemental” projects - a viaduct seems the only affordable and practical option.

Ray Carter is a former (Deity willing) community activist, writer, and editor now living in West Seattle. He is also available as a curmudgeon for hire.