WASHINGTON — If you were driving along the Seattle waterfront Sunday morning, you may have passed a man with a white goatee eyeing the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Don't worry if you don't remember him, but pray he remembers you. That was Rep. Don Young of Alaska, and he could steer millions of dollars to the viaduct's replacement.

But the powerful chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has some words of warning: Congress may cough up a few bucks for a rebuild, but if Seattle wants a tunnel, it probably should look somewhere besides D.C.

In an interview this week, Young also suggested that even though the viaduct is a nonpartisan issue, Republican leaders would not mind seeing the project championed by one of their own, someone like Dave Reichert, the freshman GOP congressman from Auburn.

Why was Young, a Republican with 32 years in Congress, surveying the viaduct?

"I wanted to see what everybody was talking about," he said. So, while his wife, Lula, shopped, "I walked four miles of the waterfront," Young said.

He concluded that the viaduct — damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake — may not be ready to collapse, but another earthquake could be devastating.

"The answer, very frankly, is to build a new one," he said.

"I looked out at the traffic, and out on [Interstate] 5, and my God almighty, you guys would be paralyzed" if the roadway collapsed or was closed, he said. "You wouldn't have room to take a sip of water from a straw."

But he is not sold on a tunnel, and neither is most of Congress.

"Back here, 'tunnel' raises eyebrows fast," he said. It reminds politicians of Boston's Big Dig, the disastrously over-budget cross-city tunnel.

Mayor Greg Nickels and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce favor a tunnel, but that could cost at least $1 billion more than replacing the elevated roadway. A rebuild is estimated at $3.1 billion. The state Legislature passed a new gasoline tax in April that direct about $2.2 billion to the project, and Nickels has said he wants $1 billion from federal taxpayers for a tunnel.

The state's willingness to help pay for the viaduct replacement is critical to getting federal support. But there is an impasse between the Senate and House conferees on the long-term transportation funding bill being negotiated in Congress.

Senate members want to cut the House's proposed $6 billion fund for megatransportation projects, such as the viaduct, by half.

"Will the end result do the job for the viaduct? I'm not sure," Young said. "If your two senators get in there and fight, and bite and gouge, they should get some of that money."

In response, Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said, "I hope there are enough Band-Aids in the first-aid kits, because the viaduct is worth fighting for."

Patty Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass said the Democrat would not comment because the final cost of the transportation bill has not been decided. Glass said, though, that Murray continues to pitch for federal support for the project.

The Mayor's Office did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, Young may help Reichert in the viaduct cause. Young visited Seattle last weekend for a Reichert fund-raiser and to play golf with the congressman.

Politically, it could be smart for Reichert to embrace the viaduct as an issue, and Reichert said he wants the chance.

He is a member of Young's transportation committee and is one of the conferees in the Senate-House negotiations for the long-term transportation bill.

"I've been working on Don, and have talked viaduct," Reichert said. "You don't bulldog people in Congress, so I just sidle up to him and smile."

Young is encouraging Reichert to push the issue, which may present him with a chance to bring home some viaduct money and help his re-election next year.

Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Bellingham, who also has worked for the viaduct, said through spokeswoman Abbey Levenshus that he talked with Young yesterday, and Young expressed his support for a replacement.

But apparently not with a tunnel.

"I'm not knocking the mayor," Young said. "I've had a good conversation with him.

"But the chances of a tunnel back here just are not very good, because they just don't like the idea." He added that Boston's Big Dig "started at $3 billion and now it's 17."

As for the new gas tax, he said, "Anybody who thinks of repealing that gas tax is not thinking." Critics of the tax are collecting signatures in an attempt to place an initiative on the November ballot to overturn the tax.

"Your problem won't go away just by wishing it away," Young said. "It's going [to] cost and you're going to have to pay for it."

Rep. Ed Murray, chairman of the state House Transportation Committee, said "the tunnel issue needs to be worked out."

"If the city finds additional sources, then I'm totally supportive," said the Seattle Democrat. But he added, "We need a timeline. If there is not money for a tunnel, at what point do we stop asking or pushing and start the rebuild?"

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com