Time's up for plan on viaduct

Dear Seattle mayor, most City Council members, King County executive and speaker of the state House:

How the time flies! It seems like only moments ago I was huddled protectively over my infant daughter as the Nisqually earthquake rattled the bookcases near her crib. She's now in first grade. Turns out we've spent her entire life dreaming of, talking about and fighting over the Alaskan Way Viaduct, damaged that day by the quake.

Sure, what to do with it is a tough call. But six years?

Even now you all remain as stuck as game-day traffic. Not only among yourselves, but with the governor, who lately is speaking harshly and wielding a giant bulldozer.

That's why I am writing to you. It's past time you all came together for Seattle.

Now, most of you spent these years trying to bury the highway in a tunnel. Thank you for trying. Especially you, Mr. Mayor. Nobody dreamed the impossible dream more than you. That took guts.

But the tunnel is dead. It's too costly. You all know it's dead. It's one of those political "secrets" nobody says out loud but that nevertheless has calcified as fact in the heads of the staffers, influence peddlers and association chiefs who make up civic conventional wisdom.

The surest sign it's dead? That you're scrambling to come up with a miniaturized tunnel, just to keep the notion alive.

I know it's damn hard to give up on a dream. Or to admit you failed (see Bush re: Iraq). But you're local politicians, not Don Quixote. While you tunnel lovers tilt at windmills, others maneuver in for the spoils.

That is, they are about to ram a massive concrete monstrosity down the city's throat.

We've all pushed our pet projects long enough. The mayor with his mega-tunnel. Speaker of the House Frank Chopp with his bizarre elevated contraptions with a park on top. Even me with an Elliott Bay Bridge.

There is a way to unite. You all have two things in common.

First, not one of you wants the colossal elevated structure the state is about to build. Not the City Council. Not top transportation lawmakers such as Sen. Ed Murray. Apparently not even Chopp, who crusaded against the costly tunnel.

Like me, some of you'd be OK if we got something like what's there now. But the new one will be 50 percent wider. Barriers will be so high drivers won't see the view. It will mar the waterfront for 75 years.

So you have a common enemy. One the state is about to impose on the city by default.

Second, and more surprising, is this: All of you have the same second choice. If you don't get your way, you all favor the exact same plan B (it's actually plan A for Ron Sims).

Which is: Tear down the viaduct, put in a surface boulevard and then try a "thousand little things" to make up for the lost highway, from rebuilt arterials to busways to freight routes.

You are wise solons. As a reader said after I suggested closing the viaduct as an experiment, I am a hack. But even a hack can see there are only two options left. And the tunnel isn't one of them.

Isn't it high time you got to work on the sole plan all of you might actually support?

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.