The viaduct decision: Stars align for decision about Seattle's front door

Scene — December 2006: Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels breathlessly promotes an expensive cut-and-cover tunnel to replace the dangerous Alaskan Way Viaduct. Gov. Christine Gregoire says she favors a new elevated roadway but will let voters pick between a tunnel and elevated. Our leaders couldn't agree. Mini-war breaks out. My figures beat your figures. Your plan isn't wide enough. Blah blah blah. Asked their opinion, voters say no way, no thanks, to heck with all of you.

Scene — January 2009: The same governor, the same mayor, King County Executive Ron Sims and Port Director Tay Yoshitani present a plan for a similarly expensive, yet different kind of tunnel — a deep-bored tunnel and parklike promenade along the Seattle waterfront. Surface and transit improvements aplenty. Less disruption to businesses and motorists. Sufficient capacity. Lots of greenery and connection to the city's proverbial front door.

The process nerds have to be high-fiving. This time at least public officials got the process right. They held a bajillion meetings and let almost everybody opine. They learned from last time that the only way to sell something this complicated is for politicians to present a unified front. You cannot offer a confused mess and expect the public to be impressed.

This once-in-50-years kind of decision requires a lot more than good process. It calls for the stars to align — and a lot of money in a region growing more expensive by the day. The convergence of a recession, a need for a large construction project that creates jobs, a dollop of federal stimulus funds and all-around embarrassment over the last botched process combined to bring the latest deal forward.

I was in favor of the elevated roadway last time, mostly for practical reasons of capacity and cost. But I am taken with the momentum of the new plan. Yes, of course, it is still too expensive and nobody knows the real price. At this point, prices are mere suggestions. But it is time to get moving. It would be nice to see something before we all go to the grave.

Momentum builds from several directions. A plan that creates jobs sounds better in dire economic times. Federal economic stimulus provides some funding that wasn't there before, maybe about $100 million for so-called shovel-ready work at the south end of the viaduct.

And very importantly, the recession teaches everyone not to be cavalier about disruption to existing business. The earlier tunnel would have disrupted downtown for five or six years. This supposedly disrupts businesses less severely and for about half the time.

Last time, the political shadow of House Speaker Frank Chopp, who favored the elevated roadway, loomed large. (Chopp, a political powerhouse, never looms small.)

But the dastardly condition of the state budget — a deficit as high as $6 billion or more — is expected to distract Chopp from his favorite viaduct solution, a complicated multilevel project with retail and office development and a highway tucked into the structure.

Chopp is asking questions but is not expected to fight this one. That's huge.

Seattle is an oddly shaped burg — with a narrow waist downtown. The skinny shape has always nettled downtown pooh-bahs who have long sought additional north-south capacity. In the 1980s, they found it in the bus tunnel, an underground passage for buses and light rail.

The construction and disruption of that project still lingers. Businesses along Third Avenue suffered greatly.

Not only is the coming together of politicians key, there had to be something in it for everybody.

And there is.

Executive Sims looks like he will get state authority to create a new car-tab tax that will finance the county bus share of the project — and have some left over to boost Metro operations. Gregoire gets to save the day and look decisive on a tough challenge.

Nickels, up for re-election this year and sitting on scary low approval ratings, bounds out of the doldrums of the snowstorm to a Sound Transit project opening in July and a wink, wink win because a tunnel is a tunnel and he wanted one all along.

The project is very expensive and hits taxpayers hard in Seattle and King County, a region becoming more expensive to reside in all the time. But this is a once-in-50-years decision. The forces have aligned. I get the feeling this time it's a go.

Joni Balter's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is jbalter@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera