The old complaint that nothing ever gets decided anymore in process-strangled cities may have been answered at last. What cut the Gordian knot on the problem of Seattle's famous waterfront--presently blighted by a sixty year old, unsafe elevated freeway (State Route 99, the Alaska Way Viaduct)--was the discovery of new technologies in deep bore tunneling. These technologies now make a tunnel, the most attractive option, one of the most affordable, too. Following that discovery, a remarkably successful coalition of business and labor, community leaders and environmentalists was convened, with close interaction among previously skeptical political leaders at municipal, county and state levels. The outcome of a remarkable planning and advocacy effort was ratified, in effect, by the Washington State Legislature this week (the final vote came late yesterday) and now goes to Gov. Christine Gregoire for her signature. Some $2.5 billion is involved. So , too, are the economic viability, transportation efficiency and livability of one of America's great urban hubs.
This story is of national significance because of how it happened and what it portends for the "intelligent design" (I couldn't resist that phrase) of America's transportation systems in urban areas. It also shows the value of think tanks--in this case, the Cascadia Center at Discovery Institute--as outside, independent voices for research and advocacy. Without Cascadia, as Friday's article from The Daily Journal of Commerce shows below, it wouldn't have been possible for tunneling experts to be assembled last fall to question the pessimistic numbers presented by the Department of Transportation that made a tunnel option seem unfeasible. Sometimes, it takes an outsider with only relatively modest resources to cause the insiders to think again.
We would not have had those resources and the ability to persevere for years beforehand if it had not been for the visionary decision of the Gates Foundation five years ago to back the Cascadia Project. (I should note that philanthropist Bruce McCaw's prior support had kept the program going before that.) The lesson for philanthropy has to do with leverage. Hands on programs are great, but so are public policy ideas. These ideas are not expensive, but they are not free, either.
And good will among political and community leaders?
Priceless.
From the Daily Journal of Commerce
April 24, 2009
Seattle tunnel would be the world's widest
By MARGIE SLOVAN
Journal Staff Reporter
The state House of Representatives has approved replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a bored tunnel so Senate Bill 5768 is now back in the Senate, which will have to decide whether it accepts amendments to the bill that were added by the House.

The Senate is likely to make a decision today because it is planning to pass a transportation budget, a Senate staffer said.
One amendment, proposed by state Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, would require downtown Seattle property owners to foot the bill for any cost overruns on the $2.8 billion project.
The other amendment adopted by the state House on Wednesday would take out a provision that makes state funding for the Spokane Street viaduct contingent on the city of Seattle making street improvements. That amendment was proposed by Representative Sharon Nelson, D-West Seattle.
As recently as last December, the bored tunnel was dismissed as too expensive by the viaduct project team. But then the Washington State Department of Transportation realized it could build a tunnel with a single bore instead of a double bore, and the cost estimate fell by almost $900 million.
"It's less labor, less materials, one machine versus two," said John White, viaduct program director for WSDOT.
Tunnel boring machines are getting bigger, and it is now possible to build one that is 54 feet in diameter, big enough to hold a tunnel with two 12-foot traffic lanes in each direction, with a 4-foot shoulder on the left and an 8-foot shoulder on the right. The lanes would be stacked inside the tunnel.
To construct a twin-bored tunnel, WSDOT would have had to drill two 40-foot-diameter tunnels as well as cross passages to link them.
"And you have to mine those (cross passages) pretty much by hand," said John Reilly, a Massachusetts-based consultant who is working on the viaduct project.
The single tunnel will be 54 feet in diameter, wider than any other such tunnel in the world.
Last year two 51-foot diameter tunnels were built in Shanghai, China, according to a report by Arup that was commissioned by the Cascadia Center, which is part of the Discovery Institute. A forceful advocate for the bored tunnel, Cascadia paid Arup $35,000 for that report, according to Cascadia's policy director, Bruce Agnew.
In early December, while the viaduct project team was eliminating the bored tunnel from its list of possibilities to replace the viaduct, Cascadia brought together a group of tunneling experts who wrote a letter to WSDOT saying its cost estimates for the bored tunnel were too high.
The group wrote to WSDOT Deputy Secretary David Dye and said a bored tunnel could be "completed in the 60 months period with a price of $2 billion or less." That letter was authored by Richard Prust of Arup, Vladimir Khazak of HNTB, Dick Robbins of the Robbins Co., independent consultant Kern Jacobson and Gerhard Sauer of the Sauer Corp.
WSDOT now is taking soil samples along the viaduct alignment on First Avenue in Pioneer Square. It is estimating the tunnel will be 100 feet to 200 feet deep, but it is hoping to make it shallower.
"The deeper you go, the greater the water pressure, the greater the danger to workers," said principal Peter Chamley of Arup's New York office, who spoke at a forum in March that was organized by the Downtown Seattle Association. Chamley is working on a new Second Avenue subway in Manhattan.

Margie Slovan can be reached by email
