Since 2002, Seattle Times reporter and West Seattle resident Mike Lindblom has been dedicated to the transportation beat. These days, that means a lot of his attention is focused on the Highway 99 tunnel, and Lindblom shared his perspective on the massive project with the West Seattle Rotary Club on Sept. 6.

Lindblom opened with a reminder that the majority of the viaduct will be closed from Oct. 21 to Oct. 31 (more details on that closure here)

“Good to see all you happy folks, because we need to get that in now before Oct. 21 when the closures and detours get started,” he said. “And then after that’s over there will be a four year detour.”

As for the daily delays for the next four years, Lindblom said, “I think it’s going to add about 10 minutes to the existing commute (in addition to existing delays such as the West Seattle bridge lane constriction)."

“Bicycling is already the quickest way to work for me but I often don’t do it because I’m picking up kids or meeting my wife somewhere,” Lindblom added. “Bicycling is looking to be the most efficient way, but you can’t really organize society around just the people who can bike eight miles in 25 minutes – that’s not sustainable.”

After laying out the basics, Lindblom opened the floor to transportation questions from Rotary members. The hands shot up and the questions came with pace – including and beyond the tunnel:

Q: I’m really curious about the boring machine they will use to dig out the tunnel. Will there be a chance to see it?

A: “It’s being assembled in Osaka, Japan and will be brought over … in large components. They are going to assemble it on location in SoDo … if you are bicycling or if you want to take a long walk from Pioneer Square in the area you would probably have a chance to see it. I just don’t know yet if they are going to do public tours.”

Q: We know the viaduct is going to be bad, but it seems like they keep mitigating the reality of how bad it’s going to be. It’s not nine minutes, when you take a look at what it’s done to West Seattle and the freeway already, it’s backed up in Delridge sometimes a quarter of a mile back from the West Seattle Bridge.

A: “Nine minutes was an average figure that WashDOT put out a week or two after they shrunk the lanes. I take the viaduct most days, I either drive it or take it on a bus, as an average, ya, it could range anywhere from five minutes extra to a half an hour extra … Once it comes all the way back to the Delridge onramp then you basically have road rage and folks jockeying for position. You can’t really merge unless you do things like cut corners and cut too early or cut too late.”

Q: What are they going to do with all the dirt from the tunnel?

A: “It’s going to go out by barge. The conveyor belts from the tunnel are going to stretch all the way to Pier 48 and then a barge … is going to collect the spoils and go up to an abandoned quarry that is near Port Townsend. That will be a good thing because there will be less truck traffic than usual in the streets down there.”

Q: What was the fatal flaw for the monorail project?

A: “ The fatal flaw for the monorail plan was that they forecasted wrong on the amount of car tab tax coming in. They were so far off that to finance the project was going to require 50 years of bond debt and repayments and that was if car tab income increased by six percent each year, which totally didn’t happen with the recession we just had.”

Q: It seems to me Seattle has a very vibrant downtown core, but we are seeing a lot of changes in laning, parking rates and other changes that I think really damage the downtown core as far as a place for people to come and spend money.

A: “On street parking is maybe a sixth at the most of parking spots available there. The parking meter increases are largely symbolic … the big change in downtown is it is catering to people who work downtown. Downtown is growing as an employment center, all the transit lines converge there, 40 percent of the workers or more are using transit … it’s different from the 20th century pattern. “

“Downtown is becoming a more set-in-place sort of area and less of a place you are going to drive in. There is a huge change taking effect, there are winners and losers, some people are being invited more by government policies to come downtown and others are going to be deterred.”

Q: Why do I see Metro buses driving around town nearly empty? Can’t they use smaller buses at times?

A: “Your main West Seattle routes, the 54, 120, 21, 55, those are running full in the commuter hours. When you see the empty buses on good routes like you do in West Seattle what’s happening most of the time is … they have finished serving the big commute and now they are going empty back to the base, or they are going back out to West Seattle empty after they took a full load into downtown. That is something that Metro does much more than other cities. Other cities will run the buses less frequently and have a more consistent schedule all day while Metro really loads up on part time drivers during the peak hours so you see these empty buses.”

Q: Can we get more police help in coordinating traffic?

A: “That’s something you need to push with Tom Rasmussen. If you suggestion is really to put more money into police helping the flow of traffic that is something to push with the City Council. “

Q: How well is the City prepared to coordinate traffic in the event of another earthquake?

A: “We have written quite a bit about the City’s lack of preparation. With the Nisqually earthquake they just didn’t have a reasonable plan. They have a plan now but it mostly consists of who notifies who and who takes charge and where the operations center is going to be. I don’t have a clear sense that they would actually be able to handle an earthquake and keep traffic moving – I suspect that is too much to ask of the governments here.”

Q: Why don’t we have park-and-ride lots in West Seattle?

A: “The City's not going to do anything like that for a few reasons. One is that there is a City policy to discourage or even ban park-and-ride facilities because they don’t want the local traffic to converge on a park-and-ride garage. The other reason is there is a huge cost to these. They can be anywhere from $30,000 to $110,000 a space to build park-and-rides, so the park-and-rides you see being built are way out in the suburbs where Metro can get cheap flat land …”