Rossi Puts the Viaduct Back in Play

Gubernatorial hopeful Dino Rossi says he wants to put a tunnel replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct back on the table as part of his $15 billion transportation plan announced this week—the same tunnel, of course, that was rejected by voters last year. But Rossi wants to shell out $2.79 billion for it anyway.

Sounds crazy, right? Maybe not: We here at the Cutting Room spent hours last week watching Grey's Anatomy reruns and piecing together the shredded remnants of the first drafts of the Rossi transit package, salvaged from a garbage can outside his Sammamish Plateau home. Therein, alternative fixes to the viaduct problem emerged as follows, with projected sticker prices:

• Giving each resident of West Seattle a commuter jet ski: $789 million.

• Expanding the Duwamish river to canal proportions and taking ferries off the Bremerton route to bring Kent and Federal Way commuters into town by water: $982 million (Bremerton commuters will be given those bikes with giant floating wheels).

• Installing teleporters on either end of the current viaduct, dematerializing vehicles as they enter, and rematerializing them on the Aurora Bridge: $3.28 billion (plus Star Trek licensing costs).

• Replacing Mayor Greg Nickels with a robot and having Robot Nickels announce Seattle's secession from Washington State, making the whole thing no longer our problem: $2.31 to $4.76 billion, depending on model year of robot (wait, didn't the non-robot mayor actually suggest secession last week? Oh, right, he was just kidding).

• Unveiling "Flying Cars by 2020" plan: costs unknown (still in discussions with research staff behind documentary Back to the Future).