Seattle Mayoral candidate and Greenwood resident Michael McGinn is focusing his campaign on his opposition to the deep bore tunnel project, which he stresses is still not a done deal.

Speaking at the Ballard Kiwanis Club's weekly luncheon at Louie's Restaurant in Ballard July 23, McGinn said that Mayor Greg Nickels' biggest blunder is his push for the $4.2 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel, which McGinn speculates will experiences huge cost overruns while being impractical in routing traffic through downtown Seattle.

"It's too expensive," declared McGinn, a Long Island, New York native who has lived in Seattle 20 years.

"The city portion of the cost would be $930 million in taxpayer funds," he said. "The state says Seattle will have to pay for cost overruns. The city says it doesn't want to pay for overruns, so no one knows where that money would come from. We need funding for homeless housing, police hiring and purchasing more public buses."

His solution?

"If you take out a couple of exits downtown and get additional money to widen and improve I-5 for through (the city) trips, and invest in public transit to accommodate the 60 percent of trips people take (locally) to-and-from downtown, this will make I-5 work better routing people driving through the city to I-90.

"Local transit (will) work better, and make make local streets work better. This will get more people out of their cars and onto public (transportation.)

"Oil prices will continue to rise, and we have seen a decline in driving nationwide, and in or city. There has been a 20 percent transit increase use over the last couple of years. Buses move cars off the road. We just can't build enough roads to accommodate the increase in traffic."

"If we take out the viaduct and the first time there is a seven-car wreck under the Convention Center, where do you re-route cars to if (Highway) 99 no longer exists," countered Kiwanis member Andy Goodstein.

"Whether it is a viaduct, tunnel or service street, 99 serves as a critical alternate north-south thoroughfare," Goodstein added. "You're not going to stop people from moving to Seattle, and we're still going to be clinging to our cars for the next 30 or 40 years."

McGinn repeated that over time public transportation will become increasingly attractive, that with his plan I-5 and other roads will be improved, and more options will exist with the money saved on the multi-billion dollar tunnel project.

He also added that he believes the majority of Seattle residents are against the tunnel project and are entitled to be both heard and their wishes honored.

McGinn is a former partner at Seattle law firm Stokes Lawrence, and a former chair of the local chapter of the Sierra Club. His wife Peggy is a bookkeeper for Fradkin Fine Construction in Ballard.

Their three children attend Salmon Bay School.

McGinn is running against James Donaldson incumbent Greg Nickels, Joe Mallahan, Kwame Wyking Garrett, current city council member Jan Drago, Elizabeth Campbell and Norman Zadok Sigler. The primary election is Aug. 18 and the general election is Nov. 3.