Bruce Ramsey/Times editorial columnist
A viaduct tunnel is a hole you dump money into

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The plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel is now estimated to cost between $10.4 billion and $11.9 billion. Experience tells us to use the upper estimate. Call it $12 billion. That's more than $21,500 for each man, woman and child in the city.

It is the Seattle way: When a project is launched to do A, people rush to lard it with B, C, D and E, until only an immense sugar daddy can pay for it.

This city has done to the viaduct project what it did with Interstate 90 and with light rail: It has chosen to put part of it underground to satisfy a small but vocal constituency. With I-90, the choices were two lids and a tunnel. With light rail, it was a tunnel deep under Union Bay. With the viaduct, it is a tunnel along the seawall, which was chosen to satisfy the esthetes and property owners who think the viaduct is ugly.

Well, it is ugly. Admit that. But the difference between a bigger and better viaduct and the seawall-tunnel plan is $5.5 billion.

What do the people get for the extra $5.5 billion? Not transportation. The tunnel plan would carry fewer cars and trucks than a bigger viaduct costing $5.5 billion less. As outlined by the state, the bigger-and-cheaper viaduct would have eight lanes along the waterfront. The tunnel plan would have six. The tunnel plan would add one lane to current capacity under the Denny Regrade, but along the waterfront there would be no new lanes.

No new lanes, after spending $12 billion? Asked King County Councilman Rob McKenna: "Is this really a transportation project, or is it an urban-redevelopment project?"

It is partly a fix-the-seawall plan, solving a $1-billion problem for the city by packaging it with a road project. It is partly an earthquake-safety project, which is a good thing, except that there is a political temptation to stamp "earthquake safety" on things desired for other reasons.

What other reasons? Land development. The city's plan to replace the viaduct with a tunnel would improve views from downtown and traffic flow in south Lake Union. That would raise property values and encourage rebuilding.

That may also be a public benefit, but it is obviously also a private benefit. We would be using taxpayer money to benefit Paul Allen — not that that hasn't happened before, but it is still something to think about.

Who would pay? With the I-90 project, nine-tenths of the money came from the federal government. That was free for the wasting. With light rail, $500 million is supposed to come from federal taxpayers, but it is much less than 90 percent of the cost, and the light-rail line between downtown and the University District has been postponed.

And the waterfront tunnel? If statewide voters pass the 9-cent increase in the gas tax, the state will kick in $450 million. That's only 4 percent of the amount needed. If voters pass the King-Snohomish-Pierce tax package next year, boosting sales taxes here to 9.1 percent or higher, the viaduct plan could get another $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Tolls could add another $125 million or so. That's not much, because too much of a toll will divert traffic to city streets.

Add it up: All this together is about one-fifth of the amount needed.

At a public meeting last week, officials breezed through this problem by doing two things. First, they broke the project into two phases: the waterfront tunnel and the deep tunnel under the Denny Regrade. They discussed only the waterfront part.

Then a speaker listed several sources of money: the city, the Port, the state, the feds. "Just assume everyone was good for half a billion," she said.

Port Commissioner Paige Miller was taken by surprise. "That is a very big number," she said later. "People had made jokes about that number, but nobody had been serious about it."

Neither the state, the city nor the Port has that kind of money without raising taxes. And there is the problem: An immense gap between what Seattle says it wants — for purposes of transportation, development, esthetics and earthquake safety — and what people have agreed to pay for.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com.