Unbelievably, We Still Don't Know What Broke the Tunneling Machine—But We Do Know Who's Responsible
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/who-to-blame-for-bertha/Content?oid=19894105
By Dominic Holden, June 18, 2014
Jan SooHoo on Facebook, June 18, 2014: Note the comments about cost overruns and diversion of traffic due to
toll avoidance. Most responsible officials would see Seattle's
experience as a huge red flag -- but not Metro! They continue to pursue
this nightmare.
FEARLESS LEADERS Downtown Seattle Association's Kate Joncas, city council member Tom Rasmussen, Mayor Ed Murray, and a guy playing golf.
Four years ago, politicians told us that
building a $4.2 billion underground freeway would be no problem. Even
though this freeway would require digging the widest deep-bore tunnel in
the world (58 feet), elected leaders said not to worry about it. Even
though 90 percent of transportation megaprojects run over budget—tunnels
by an average of 34 percent, according to research from Oxford
University—the politicians involved insisted
this project would never run over budget.
This project would not be delayed.
This project was the exception.
Ha-ha-ha.
Bertha, the $80 million drill, broke down
underneath downtown Seattle in December 2013. The seals are broken and a
central bearing is busted, and the state still doesn't know exactly
why. Contractors are planning to attach 86 tons of steel ribs to
reinforce Bertha's structure, but a construction official told the
Seattle Times
this week that they actually "don't know" what problem those ribs will
fix. This underscores that the tunnel constitutes an untested,
unprecedented technical challenge—Bertha is the widest tunneling machine
ever built, and it is attempting to penetrate an infamously complicated
mix of waterfront soil, rocks, and seawater. Contractors say they won't
have Bertha running again until March 2015, or possibly later: "It is
too soon to know if they will meet this milestone," says a state
spokesperson. Another spokesperson says he is "skeptical" of that
timeline. The tunnel was supposed to open in late 2015, but now the new
estimate is November 2016. But who knows.
Costs are racking up. The contractor is now asking for an additional
$188 million to cover unexpected expenses, much of which the state
refuses to pay, so it looks increasingly likely that the contractor
could sue the state—or, if costs rise too much, possibly abandon the
project.
Really.
Washington State transportation secretary Lynn Peterson recently
acknowledged in a radio interview that there is now a "small
possibility" the tunnel will never be finished. Prominent Seattle
attorney John Ahlers, who specializes in construction disputes, agrees.
"It is entirely likely that, at the end of the day, forces will align
and the once touted project to improve Seattle's waterfront never
becomes a reality," he wrote in a blog post last month.
It's fair to say this may become the biggest debacle in Seattle's transportation history. It's already the most expensive.
Of course, when the tunnel was up for debate four years ago, critics warned of this
exact scenario. But the tunnel backers promised they would be accountable. So now that we're here, who is taking responsibility?
Nobody.
The people behind this project—the ones who sponsored legislation to
build it, sold it to voters in a glitzy campaign, and told us to trust
them—now refuse to take responsibility. So who are they? And what do
they say when asked to take responsibility?
Mayor Ed Murray
The primary sponsor
Nobody is more responsible for the deep-bore tunnel than Ed Murray.
As a state senator, he was the primary sponsor of a 2009 law to build
the tunnel. That law requires charging drivers who use the tunnel a
toll. A fee of $1 to $1.25 would cover $200 million of the expenses,
according to a tolling commission's recommendations in March. But
there's a catch: In order to pay for the toll collection, maintenance,
and financing, users must actually pay $1 billion in tolls over three
decades. Those tolling rates will also cause an estimated 48,000
vehicles to divert from the tunnel onto downtown streets during daytime
hours (not even counting nighttime traffic). That's about half the
viaduct's current traffic spilling onto the streets. The toll revenue,
if approved next year, could cover a small amount of transit, but the
committee warns it won't be nearly enough to solve the problem. The city
and state will need more money for "transportation system improvements"
on the street grid to mitigate those 48,000 extra cars a day.
Does Murray take responsibility for the troubled megaproject he
sponsored? Does he have a plan to mitigate traffic when it's done? Money
to do it? Has he met with a single transportation official about these
problems since taking office? I asked Murray all these questions.
Murray's spokesman said the mayor would "decline" to answer them.
Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen
The yes-man
Tom Rasmussen is chair of the Seattle City Council's transportation
committee, and he fought hard to pass city legislation to build the
tunnel, even though it meant he would be responsible for eventually
figuring out how to deal with the tunnel's traffic fallout. At the time,
Rasmussen ridiculed tunnel critics who cautioned that the project might
have cost overruns, fall behind schedule, or get stuck during
construction. For instance, Rasmussen said former mayor Mike McGinn was
trying to "create doubt" by bringing up those issues and scolded, "I
don't think he is representing the city very well because of his
obsessive obsession with this project." Rasmussen is the opposite of
obsessed. Asked if he takes any responsibility, has a budget or plan to
mitigate traffic, or has even met with a single transportation official
this year to develop a plan, Rasmussen ducked the questions. "We are all
working to meet our obligations and are committed to the successful
completion of the project," he said robotically.
Seattle Tunneling Partners
The contractors who funded the pro-tunnel camp are golfing!
Two of the top donors to the campaign to approve the tunnel were
also—wait for it—THE TWO COMPANIES WITH A CONTRACT TO BUILD THE TUNNEL.
Funding a campaign to pay yourself to build your own project is the
political equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. How did they do it?
Seattle Tunneling Partners (STP), which got a $1.1 billion contract for
the project, is made up of two corporations, Tutor Perini and Dragados
USA. They each gave $25,000 to the Let's Move Forward campaign, election
records show.
STP didn't answer questions about whether the company was taking
responsibility for the mess, if its campaign tactics pass the smell
test, if it would sue the state to collect $188 million that it claims
the state owes them for additional costs, or if it would abandon the
project. A spokeswoman said on their behalf: "STP will not be providing
answers at this time."
Maybe they were too busy playing golf.
As KIRO Radio reported on May 30, several of STP's top project
supervisors have been visiting the Interbay Golf Center three to four
times a week, after driving there in company vehicles. STP officials
told KIRO that we should excuse the midday golfing trips because the
supervisors "work extremely hard and serve STP and the tunnel project
well."
Kate Joncas
CEO of the business group that donated most to the tunnel campaign
For the past two decades, Kate Joncas has been CEO of the Downtown
Seattle Association, a business- and real-estate-oriented group with 550
corporate members. Under Joncas, the organization was the number-one
funder of the tunnel campaign, with $32,775 in reported donations. Does
she take responsibility for the project she backed but that is now in
peril? "I can no longer respond on behalf of DSA," Joncas said in an
e-mail. Why not? Because this week Joncas took a $170,000-a-year job as
deputy mayor for Ed Murray, who is responsible for the project but,
again, also refuses to take responsibility. Nobody else from DSA
answered questions about the tunnel, either.
Former governor
Chris Gregoire
Cheerleader in chief
Way back in 2008, Governor Chris Gregoire insisted the decrepit
viaduct, which has a 9-out-of-100 safety rating in places, was too
dangerous for drivers. "It's coming down in 2012. I'm taking it down,"
Gregoire said. "That's the timeline. I'm not going to fudge on it." But
the next year, Gregoire brokered a deal to build the tunnel, which kept
the viaduct up at least four years longer (maybe more—we'll see). Was
Gregoire worried about what could go wrong during construction? Not
really. At a forum held in January 2010, she dismissed tunnel critics
who specifically warned the project could experience technical
complication and run behind schedule, thereby driving up costs and
leading to disputes over who would pay the bills. "There is no
indication that we are going to be over budget," Gregoire said.
HA-HA-HA.
Christian Sinderman and Dan Nolte
The guys who ran the pro-tunnel campaign
Christian Sinderman was the consultant on the Let's Move Forward
campaign, which used its $500,000 budget to sell the tunnel to voters as
the fastest way to replace the viaduct (it wasn't) and a way to provide
more bus service (it hasn't). As for the claim the tunnel project
funded buses, Seattle Transit Blog ran a watchdog piece called "That's a
Lie." Does Sinderman take responsibility? No. "I cannot take credit for
the good things smart people do following passage of a measure any more
than I should be held culpable for delays on highly complex projects,"
he says. Dan Nolte was the campaign manger. Does he take responsibility?
He did not respond to a request for comment.
While holding it in your head that these
are the people most responsible for the tunnel, keep in mind that they
are responsible for that even bigger impending problem mentioned above.
The biggest problem with this tunnel isn't what happens when the
drilling machine breaks. The biggest problem will be what happens when
the tunnel is finished and working
exactly as planned.
The state predicted in 2011 that the tunnel would cause roughly as
much traffic congestion on city streets as simply tearing down the
viaduct and doing nothing. Here's why: Roughly half of the 110,000
vehicles a day that have been driving along Highway 99 using the
elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct won't use the tunnel. That's according to
the state's own environmental impact study on the project. Drivers will
avoid the tunnel because toll fees will incentivize using other routes,
thereby diverting drivers onto downtown streets, and because the tunnel
has zero exits downtown. So the tunnel will be useless for people going
downtown.
You remember the downtown traffic clusterfuck last week, the one that
was caused by an accident that shut down the viaduct? Prepare for more
scenarios like that if we tear down the viaduct, half its traffic gets
pushed onto downtown streets, and the street grid isn't revamped to help
move traffic around.
Responsible people would never let that happen, right?
When city officials agreed to build this tunnel, they knew full well
they needed a plan to mitigate all that diverted traffic—that's part of
their responsibility. The city must remake key arterials and provide
transit to prevent downtown from getting clogged. Those changes will
cost at least tens of millions of dollars and require years of work. But
four years later and two years before the tunnel opens, there is still
no clear plan to deal with this problem.