Tunnel rage, now with facts!

Remember that post I made yesterday about how we’re gonna replace the viaduct with a tunnel? And how stupid the idea is, and how it makes my blood run black with white-hot rage? (Look it up, by the way. This happens all the time in the big city when effete liberals get P.O.’d: our blood actually turns black, and we become untrifleable-with.)

Anyway, today I’m happy to provide a link to HugeAssCity, one of my favorite blogs, where Dan Bertolet calms me down by asking a few questions like, “How likely is this to actually happen?” Answer: it’s far from a done deal.  Take a look. Dan has black blood syndrome, too, but actually knows what he’s talking about, unlike Uncle Vinny.

Still furious about the viaduct replacement

Have I written about this already? Who cares! I’m still furious at Frank Chopp, Jamie Pederson, Ed Murray and Christine Gregoire for pushing this horrible tunnel option on us. It’s gonna cost billions. It won’t give buses priority over cars, and it won’t move light rail at all. It will tear up downtown for years. It spits on the grave of a perfectly sane surface-street option. And the money we burn on it could be used on hundreds of useful projects.

Chopp, Pederson, Murray, Gregoire: You are all to blame for this (Chopp more than others, as I understand it). You should all be yelling nonstop about reversing this horrible decision before you waste time on any mere million dollar problem we have in this state. You’ve blown a colossal hole in our budget on a shitty idea. The sooner you start yelling, the happier I’ll be. And when you actually undo it you’ll be back on my good side. Until then, stop sending me mail (ahem, Gregoire) asking for money.

Oh, and Greg Nickels? Jan Drago? I blame you, too. McGinn is the only mayoral candidate I’ve heard loud and clear on this. He might be a little sketchy on other his campaign priorities (um, citywide wireless, tell me you’re kidding) but he understands how much the fucking tunnel will warp other projects for the next decade.

Ultra-sexy viaduct blogging!

One of my Vanadu buddies sent me a link to this really neat site that lets you visually compare the 8 major Viaduct rebuild scenarios. I am embarrassed to say that I really haven’t been following this much. My instinct says “assume people are going to be driving less”, and “get freeways out of the city” and “people want to see the water”.

Go take a look!