Brian Allen, Chas Redmond and Jeff Upthegrove are behind a new effort in West Seattle to reject Referendum 1 on the deep bore tunnel. They hope to raise money for the campaign with a house party on Friday, July 15 but are urging those opposed to the referendum and the tunnel itself to help with any size donation.

Allen writes in his inviation, "We'll have snacks & drinks, and I'll have the grill available if you want to bring your favorite foods to cook up.  

Please RSVP by replying back to this message or calling me at (206) 973-7374.
This FRIDAY July 15, 7-11pm Brian's place: 6750 35th Ave SW

You don't have to wait for the party to donate however, just visit http://protectseattlenow.org/donate to help the campaign right now (every bit counts).

If you'd like to get even more involved in the campaign as a volunteer, go to http://protectseattlenow.org/volunteer and fill out their handy volunteer form."

They share their mission statement:

Why are we opposing the tunnel?  It's pretty simple: From a fiscal perspective, this project is a black hole that will be sucking up resources we desperately need to resolve our transportation problems through the core of Seattle.  The State of Washington's own analyses show that the tunnel will create far more gridlock and impact businesses more severely than if we put that same amount of money into improving surface streets, improving I-5 and increasing transit options (all of which would produce far more jobs than the tunnel would, as well).  

It's a bad solution that doesn't even achieve its stated goals.

From a sustainability perspective, if we start to tally the climate change consequences of refusing to begin to migrate our transportation choices away from the current unsustainable system, then this project looks even worse.  We need to start putting real resources into transportation options that aren't centered around cars.

In an era where Seattle can't even keep up with the backlog of street repairs it needs to be doing already (and when our community is going begging for educational and social services funding) we need to make sure that every penny we spend is being focused on the right thing.  

The tunnel is a policy disaster in this regard.