With Mayor Nichols openly stumping for the tunnel option to repair the waterfront viaduct andsea wall, there has long been an alternate proposal spoken in hushed voices in the back ground. Now it hascome out in the open. 

Engineer brings plan to brace viaduct to marine coalition

Even though his idea has been roundly dismissed by the state Department of Transportation, engineer Victor Gray is not giving up his mission to fix, not replace, the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Gray, a retired structural and civil engineer, took his campaign Thursday to the Seattle Marine Business Coalition, asserting that the viaduct could be braced to withstand a 500-year earthquake at a cost of about $800 million, including replacing the Alaskan Way Seawall. That’s a fraction of the $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion the state said replacing the viaduct, or putting it in a tunnel, would cost.

"I can’t believe the state is pursuing [replacement] without considering a bracing system," Gray said.

Thursday’s coalition program, titled "The Viaduct: Rebuild, Tunnel, Or?," was billed as a chance to hear engineers’ recommendations for the future of the viaduct and to discuss issues surrounding viaduct replacement.

State officials said they studied the retrofit option, and in the 1990s that’s what they planned to do with the viaduct. But after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, officials learned the viaduct was in much worse shape than they thought, and needed to be replaced.

"We think the argument is over," said Ron Paananen, viaduct project manager with the DOT. He said a retrofitted viaduct would only increase its life 30 years, and the state now has enough money to replace it.

In disputing Gray’s figures, Paananen said the cost of fixing the viaduct would be about 80 percent of the rebuild cost. "Does that make sense?" he asked.

"Absolutely," said one audience member. "It doesn’t shut us down."

The issue of viaduct closure was chief on the minds of coalition members, worrying that projected viaduct closures of up to 3-½ years would be devastating to the marine businesses and freight companies that use the viaduct.

The state said that could be the closure time if the viaduct is replaced with a tunnel; a rebuilt viaduct would take longer to complete, but complete closures would be significantly shorter. The closure time would range from 18 months to 3-½ years, Paananen said.

The Viaduct has long been considered in need of repair, no one argues that.  It was the poster child of the gas tax supporters, even though the gas tax will not pay for it.  Every crumble and crack is shown in living color, and politicians and pundits bespeak it as a time bomb, a death trap…despite there being no cry to actually close it down.

I was in California during the Loma Priata Earthquake in 1989, when the Embarcadero freeway collapsed in Oakland.  No one needs to preach to me how fragile an elevated structure can be.

But in the interest of public good, should not all options be given fair scrutiny?  If an elevated span is so dangerous, is not the tunnel for the express lanes and I5 likewise?  The Ship Canal Bridge?  Or for that matter would not the new tunnel be worrisome as well?

The Mayor has the tunnel apparently picked as his mark on Seattle, his personal legacy, despite the negative impact on traffic flow and the crippling cost it brings.

Maybe he could just do a statue or another sports stadium.