This week's Seattle Weekly broke the story that Mayor Greg Nickels' spoof video promoting his multi-billion dollar Viaduct-replacement tunnel scheme was paid for with city funds and may have violated election laws. Today's Times reports that an ethics complaint against the Mayor has already been filed.
Of course the Mayor's tunnel boondoggle is an insane idea. The (low-balled) price tag is billions more than the available funding, and it will keep a major artery out of commission for years. It's hard to understand why the Mayor is acting as if it were in any way viable. David Sucher writes that "The Retrofit is the only politically-realistic solution" While I agree that the Retrofit is the only objectively realistic solution, I've been in Seattle just long enough to see that realism only rarely contaminates the decision process of Seattle's political leadership. If I had to guess, I'd say that a political tug-of-war between competing unrealistic solutions will continue indefinitely. And it's not just me. In today's column, Joel Connelly has a wonderful prognostication about the future of the Viaduct "All roads lead to one big viaduct mess". Read the whole thing.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 02, 2006 11:05 AM | Email ThisSeattle===The Anal Canal of the Universe!
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on June 2, 2006 11:25 AMWhat would really make me happy is if a giant earthquake hit Seattle, no structural damage or loss of life, but miraculously the entire city of Seattle breaks off from the rest of the continent and drifts out to sea, eventually coming to rest on the Asian continent and becoming part of China. Maybe we can trade straight across for Taiwan, they don't want to be communists, and Seattle does, so it sounds like a win-win solution to me.
With a 25th anniversary to celebrate and offspring fresh out of the nest, visiting friends embarked on a sunset ferry ride to Bainbridge Island, ate a late supper on the waterfront and walked hand in hand up into town via the Harbor Steps.
Will they be voting absentee, with ballots sent to Joel's house?
Posted by: South County on June 2, 2006 12:14 PMGroupthink, the hallmark and unifying trait of all Seattle progressives leads them all off the cliff together.
No matter how many rational observers point out the financial or political realities of any given project, what matters most to Democrats and Progressives is that they stand united. Because it's only by the force of shear numbers and the might of political conformity that objectively flawed ideas stand a chance in the real world of economic limits, physical limits, political limits, etc.
Expect millions of your tax dollars to be blown before there is any sane conclusion to the Viaduct Madness.
Posted by: Jeff B. on June 2, 2006 12:37 PMSeattle liberals have been sitting on the roads around here for 25 years trying to get us into public transport... why do you think we get all this economic growth, and just over 0 infrastructure growth?
The situation is getting completely out of hand... voters want something done, and the libs see the chance to blow 3 1/2 billion dollars on a project that's not going to help.
Mayor Nickels: "The time has come for all Seattle residents to use public transport... see, I spent 3.5 Billion (okay probably more like 5-7 when it finally gets finished), and it didn't help our traffic woes..."
Its actually a pretty brilliant strategy.
Posted by: thecomputerguy on June 2, 2006 01:10 PMSo, I say to you computerguy, it started 40 years ago.
Posted by: swatter on June 2, 2006 01:37 PMOne wonders how much our electeds, Seattle voters and enviro-loonies have learned from that costly, self inflicted debacle.
I'm not holding my breath.
Most of the aforementioned have conveniently forgotten SMP faster than last week's American Idol winner. Nor have our daily or weekly press bothered to write up a decent, in depth postmortem analysis (what a shock) so that those who would actually bother to read it might learn something.
Joel’s scenario is all too possible.
"What we have learned from history is that we haven't learned from history." Benjamin Disraeli
How the state lost $86.9 million in Port Angeles
2006-06-02
by JIM CASEY
Planning that came too late and construction that sped ahead too fast doomed the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard, a legislative audit of the project says.
Today's report to the state Transportation Performance Audit Board also lays blame for the multimillion-dollar debacle on what it calls inadequate work by an archeological consultant and on poor communications with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
Nearly 200 pages long, the long-delayed report will be released this morning in Seattle.
The document is in two parts:
* The first, a fiscal review of the graving yard project, concludes that the state Department of Transportation was correct when it continued work at the yard even after human remains were found there in August 2003.
* The second part analyzes how the state failed to discover that its construction site lay on top of an ancient Native American cemetery.
The state lost almost $86.9 million on the Port Angeles project after the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe asked that construction cease.
The sum is broken down to $60.5 million in construction; $11.2 million to reassemble equipment, labor and supplies at new sites; and $15.2 million to choose a new graving yard location and renegotiate its agreement with contractor Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo.
$1.5 million still on site
An additional $1.5 million in materials remains at the site on the Port Angeles Harbor.
Still, if construction could have been completed in Port Angeles, the audit said the loss would have been $15 million less than the eventual cost of moving the project to other places.
The graving yard would have built 20 giant concrete anchors and 55 pontoons, plus highway decks, to replace the aging east end of the floating bridge.
The retrofit was budgeted at $275.8 million in 2003 but has climbed to $470.1 million as of last March.
About $15 million of the increase came from contract renegotiations and engineering changes.
The rest came from higher materials costs, project delays and separate construction sites.
Pontoon construction is under way at Concrete Technologies in Tacoma, while the draw span and decks will be constructed in Seattle and the anchors will be poured in Port Gamble.
Completion, originally scheduled for this year, now is set for 2010.
There have been so many times when original costs have been sand bagged and then ooooops, someone has to pay extra, it is really hard to believe that won't happen again.
One big difference between the viaducat and any other project: replacement, or tear down, are definite options. This is not just a new construction project. But evaluating these options is much more complex than just evaluating tunnel vs. aerial rebuild.
Posted by: Commentator on June 2, 2006 02:50 PMMoonbats don't need much convincing. As long as it comes from a Progressive Horse's Ass, they'll eat it up.
http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=934
http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=909
Keep voting in these Do Nothing liberals.......Suck ya dry!
Posted by: GS on June 3, 2006 03:01 AMGregoire is a Democrat and therefore by nature corrupt, but she is not politically stupid.
I agree with your analysis.