When I was first asked to participate on the Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Advisory Committee, my first reaction was: "Why would I ever want to be involved with such a hopeless, controversial project?" Thirteen months later, after countless meetings, I feel that we are on the verge of a major breakthrough, one that veteran reporter David Brewster has called a peace treaty for the viaduct wars. Stakeholders representing many different interests are aligning to support a previously overlooked option to replace the aging and dangerous viaduct: a bored tunnel, and our leaders are listening. This technology is very different from the cut-and-cover tunnel proposed (and rejected) in 2006, which had been negatively compared to the "Big Dig" project in Boston.

You could call the old cut-and-cover plan the equivalent of massive Dr. Welby surgery, while the bored tunnel option is like an arthroscopic procedure that solves the problem with a minimum of invasive surgery. Most significantly, a bored tunnel can be built while the existing viaduct is kept in place and still maintaining our critical SR 99 capacity. This is a major advantage when you consider the impacts of building another elevated structure, which would shut down SR 99 (bearing 25% of Seattle's north-south capacity) for 3 to 4 years, a potential disaster for the entire region. A study by well-known local economist Jim Hebert indicates that our region could face over $3.4 billion in losses and over 32,000 jobs for every year SR 99 is shut down. At this critical time, these losses to our region would be devastating.

Seattle is no stranger to bored tunnels. The best known are the two I-90 tunnels, but a new bored tunnel has been quietly under construction under Beacon Hill for the new Sound Transit Light Rail line. The fact that it is near completion without much public knowledge is testimony to the unobtrusive nature of this type of construction. It requires a staging area at one end (in the case of SR 99 that would be in the SODO industrial area), a portal at the other end, and two venting structures. The rest of the work is done deep underground and has no surface impact of any kind. We have local boring expertise in Seattle with Robbins Company, which is involved in buildings tunnels across the globe, but there are many other contractors capable of doing such a project. Some critics have said that a tunnel of this kind is too technologically complex, but consider that the Great Northern Tunnel, which still carries trains under downtown Seattle, was completed in 1904, dug with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. It is 30 feet wide, a mile long, and was built at a rate of 12-18 feet per day. The tunnel being proposed over a century later would be roughly twice those specifications: 42-54 feet wide, two miles long, and built at a rate of 30 feet per day. Surely this cannot be considered any kind of great technological feat.

I realize that many people in West Seattle would like to see another elevated solution that maintains the drive with the best views in the region, but I think that we all recognize that the most important thing is to maintain our ability to get around. The bored tunnel offers us two things: first the potential to retain the existing viaduct during construction, which is not possible with a rebuild; and secondly (but perhaps most importantly) a political alliance that allows the Viaduct issue to finally get settled. If we do not consider the interests of everybody in the political equation, then it is very possible that we will be left with the surface option, which to me is not an option at all. We need to maintain the transportation capacity of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, for passenger vehicles, freight and transit. The bored tunnel, although more costly than a rebuild, is a good investment.

Vlad Oustimovitch is a West Seattle Architect with over twenty years of urban design experience. He is a former chair of the Southwest District Council and of the transportation committee of the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce.