Asking for Directions

Regional transportation is the issue du jour after the surprising defeat this month of statewide Initiative 912 and the not-so-surprising thumbs-down city voters gave the Seattle Monorail Project. But instead of clarifying the route from here to less congestion, voter decisiveness has complicated pavement politics:

• One thing is clear. The state Department of Transportation, led by Secretary Doug MacDonald, will continue moving on $12.5 billion worth of road projects statewide. About $8.5 billion of that was approved by the Legislature last spring and affirmed by voters this month when they defeated I-912, and lawmakers passed $4 billion worth in 2003. But that money provides only partial funding for replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct along the Seattle waterfront and the aging Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington, and for improvements to Interstate 405 through the Eastside suburbs.
• Gov. Christine Gregoire and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels are discussing how to replace the viaduct, which is old and vulnerable to earthquakes. The city wants to replace the elevated freeway with a tunnel. Both sides agree a tunnel would be best, but the state will provide only enough money to build a cheaper elevated or surface replacement. The city says it can find the money to fund the difference. The state doesn't want a search for that money to delay the project.
• Many local officials, like King County Council member Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, think 2006 would be a good time to put another multibillion-dollar transportation-funding package before voters in the metropolitan area. Sound Transit wants money to extend light rail from the University of Washington to Northgate, and the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) wants more money for roads.
• State Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, thinks voters need a break. He would rather see the state concentrate for now on the projects already funded and, in the meantime, reorganize the transportation bureaucracy in metropolitan Puget Sound.
• Some Seattle-area politicians and activists, advocating full speed ahead, think such a reorganization could coincide with transportation-funding ballot measures in 2006.

While voters were clear, leaders in the transportation sector now have to sort through a tangle of overlapping projects and priorities.

Along The Waterfront

On Nov. 23, Gregoire, Nickels, MacDonald, and Seattle Department of Transportation Director Grace Crunican did lunch—they ate takeout at City Hall from Tat's Delicatessen—but they aren't talking in any detail about what was discussed. MacDonald says the meeting focused on how the Alaskan Way Viaduct project will move forward. Gregoire and Nickels have differed over the mayor's insistence that a viaduct replacement be a tunnel. (See "State to City: Forget Tunnel," Aug. 24.) "Nobody made any decisions," MacDonald says of last week's lunch, "but it was an excellent discussion." MacDonald says the intense debate over how to proceed on regional transportation in general did not come up.

In August, state officials, including Gregoire, and local ones, including Nickels, were pretty feisty about their differences. The governor urged a $3.4 billion aboveground rebuild of the viaduct, while the mayor insisted on a $4.4 billion tunnel along the waterfront. Now the two are talking, and MacDonald says future meetings are planned. He emphasizes that while the tunnel has been designated as the preferred alternative, the state has not made a commitment to that more expensive option. Marty Brown, Gregoire's legislative director, says the governor is not planning to give the mayor a firm deadline on a tunnel decision anytime soon. He says the governor hasn't even had a formal presentation as to how the city would finance the $4.4 billion cost of a tunnel. Currently, the federal, state, and local governments have pledged around $2.6 billion to replace the viaduct. The project can be trimmed back significantly, but regional voters would still need to approve around $1 billion for viaduct funding. Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis says that if state officials do not agree to a 2006 Seattle-area ballot measure, it will hold up the decision on how to replace the viaduct. "If we are held past 2006, that pushes off our deadline on the Alaskan Way Viaduct," Ceis says.

Murray, the House transportation chair, counters that work can begin on a viaduct replacement "regardless of whether a decision has been made on a tunnel or a ballot measure. "We can do a lot before we decide on an elevated structure or a tunnel."

MacDonald says construction won't begin on the viaduct replacement until 2007 at the earliest. Many of the 270 projects statewide, funded by the Legislature last spring, will be well under way by then. He believes that many King County voters might think that by helping defeat I-912, they solved the funding problems associated with the viaduct and the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington. "There's an expectation that both those projects will materialize before your eyes, if not by the end of the year, certainly by spring," MacDonald says wryly. "We are going to get busy on the other 268 projects. We have to communicate with people about what is going on."

Put It to a Vote . . . 

In the wake of the defeat of I-912, local officials, including Nickels, are pushing hard to go to the ballot with a multibillion-dollar regional transportation package in November 2006, for roads and transit. State officials, led by Murray, are leery of going to voters again so soon. Gregoire has not taken a position, although, says legislative director Brown, "A lot of people are in transportation burnout right now. We are focused on delivery."