A few weeks ago, in 2008, Christine promised she would personally destroy the Alaska Way Viaduct in 2012. She even bought a giant bulldozer. Well, we need to keep that dozer greased up because the viaduct is staying in place until the tunnel is ready.
Well, almost ready anyway. The issue is we won’t have a tunnel until 2016 or later (depending on a few factors, such as high tides and blue moons, etc.). Everyone realized that losing a six lane north-south corridor through downtown Seattle would cause traffic backups all the way to Olympia. That’s where Christine lives (until the next election).
No hurry; if you still want to drive the viaduct and look out over the waterfront it’ll be there a few more years. Unless the big one hits and the whole thing lands in Elliott Bay. See, they decided the risk of losing the viaduct in an earthquake was less than the risk of Seattle traffic jams in Olympia. It’s risk management.
The transportation people are seeking bids from boring contractors to dig a tunnel. Wait; that may not have come out right. How about contractors to dig the boring tunnel. Oh well.
It turns out one of the prime potential bidders (the paper used the word “poised” but I don’t use words like that so you won’t see “poised” in this blog. I’m too poised to use those kinds of words.) is in a legal dispute in Vancouver BC.
Vancouver was doing some tunnel work and this German company was the prime contractor. Their poised, sophisticated safety expert got all emotional over some loose rock in the tunnel and halted the boring project temporarily. The city was poised for completion of the project but the contractor wasn’t poised to finish. They got fired. “You can’t fire me, I QUIT!” was the response. “Oh yeah?” cried the city and large teams of poised lawyers filed suits.
OK, maybe I’m not too proud to use a word like “poised.” Is that such a bad thing?
In any case this German company, along with some pals from Nebraska, are among the potential bidders on the Alaska Way Viaduct Tunnel project. We need a new name for this thing. First of all the new tunnel won’t follow Alaska Way. It heads toward Redmond and swings back to Lake Union via Poulsbo. Well, maybe. Anyway, we can’t name it after our current and/or recent past Mayors due to their annoying opposition. Reference to state level politicians doesn’t seem right either, given the glacial rate at which they’ve moved on this “urgent emergency.”
Which leaves only one option: The Lake Boren Tunnel. Maybe it’s not actually located at Lake Boren but once you’re underground how do you know where you are? Besides it has a nice ring to it.
Speaking of nice rings a member of the Puyallup Tribe wants to rename Mt Rainier "Ti'Swaq." In fact he wants to rename a lot of places around here to their old Indian spiritual names before the casinos made them all rich. The goal, apparently, is to make the whole area unpronounceable. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, Patty, one of our Washington delegation, wants to help the city of Bellevue with the Bel-Red Corridor proposal. Again, this is a place that could use a new name. In case you haven’t worked it out the term “Bel-Red” refers to the area’s location between Bellevue and Redmond. But it’s actually within Bellevue. They call it Bel-Red because nobody famous ever had anything to do with it. Maybe the Puyallup Tribe would like a crack at it.
The proposal for Bel-Red is very much like that “Urban Village” concept where you can live, work, and shop all within one block. That is if you only shop in a soap store and work in an espresso stand. The light rail train will go by every seven minutes.
Back to German contractors and the Viaduct project. I’ve been watching the local highways for a long time and there’s one thing they seem to have in common. Nothing ever happens quickly or cheaply. If you want a project to come in on time and under budget you need to double the time and triple the budget. Then you might hit it.
On the other hand the Great Slide on SR 410 actually closed the road and they built a bypass in record time. Really, it was fast. So I guess the way to get things moving is for the land to start the moving first. We’d like to skip that step on the Viaduct project. That could hurt people and we really don’t need any of that.
This emergency Alaska Way Viaduct project hasn’t even been bid yet and they expect to be able to remove the old structure in 2016. We’ll have flying cars by that time. But, assuming there’s no earthquake in the meantime, it’ll be pretty entertaining. I’m poised.
Al
