A few years years ago, I was applauding Seattle for its decision to tear down the Alaska Way Viaduct, an elevated freeway that runs along the city's waterfront. It was a brilliant move that would bring it in line with cities like New York, San Francisco and Portland that have demolished these concrete monoliths of the urban renewal movement and reconnected citizens to a new, improved waterfront.

Unfortunately, unlike the cities I've mentioned, Seattle made this decision on the condition that a two-mile highway tunnel beneath downtown would be built to replace it.

Well, according to a recent Grist article, that project appears to have become a total "fustercluck."* Seattle citizens are on the hook for major cost-overuns, the tunnel-boring machine got stuck last year, the city is not prepared to deal with this scenario (it's still stuck), and… the ground just caved in.

An area of cracking and sinking on South King Street, adjacent to the Alaskan Way Viaduct (Photo: Joshua Trujillo).

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Last month, project engineers discovered that 30 or more buildings in the city's historic Pioneer Square district had "unexpectedly settled" (i.e. sunk), possibly because of water pumping related to the project.

"A whole block just went down an inch," said Todd Trepanier, the administrator of the project for the State Department of Transportation, at Monday's City Council hearing. "We don't like an inch."

In addition to this sinking feeling, tunnelling for the freeway actually stopped a year ago when tunnel-boring machine, the world's biggest in diameter - oddly named "Bertha"- became clogged with grit after digging only about 10 percent of the tunnel.

Big Bertha is still stuck (Photo: Washington Department of Transportation)

Even the New York Times has caught whiff of this disaster:

Ancient Egypt endured plagues of locusts. Seattle has its tunnel, which over the last year has featured a series of setbacks and fiascos that, depending on one's outlook, can be the setup for a punch line, or an eye-rolling narrative of put-upon endurance.

The sad part is, all of these scenarios were foretold in 2010, when the city's local news and culture zine, The Stranger, made of a list of things that might go wrong with the project ( the article's author, Dominic Holden, summed it up in six words: "You're about to get f**ked, Seattle)."

All tunnelling problems aside, the saddest thing about this project is that Seattle citizens couldn't fathom removing a freeway without replacing it. In its current state, the Alaska Way Viaduct completely cuts off the city's downtown core from its waterfront, allowing it to become a dark dingy area for parking lots and sad, empty piers. Without it, the city could have a lively extension of parks, seawalls, markets - there are so many possibilities. 

Rendering of the ground-level street that will replace the viaduct, opening up access between the waterfront and downtown (Photo: City of Seattle).

Ultimately, Seattle is a classic victim of business interests and traffic fears, which are the cause of most highway projects that have been destroying cities across North America since the invention of the automobile. According to The Grist:

No matter how many examples to the contrary accumulate, people instinctively think that tearing down a highway means that all the same traffic will just spill onto side streets.

So, an unholy alliance — downtown business groups, large companies like Boeing (whose interest in Seattle transportation begins and ends with getting commuters through it quickly), the antediluvian WSDOT, craven Seattle City Council members, craven state legislators like Ed Murray (who sponsored the tunnel bill and is now mayor), and head cheerleader Gregoire — bullied the tunnel back onto the agenda, and Seattle voters, sick to f'ing death of arguing about it, finally voted in 2011 to allow it to go forward.

Every time I am in Seattle, a city I love to visit, I am always reminded of what prevents it from being a great city: it's obsession with its cars and freeways. I remember being with my husband on one of our many weekend getaways there and laughing like smug Vancouverites at all of the people trying to take in a sunset at one of the parks while the sound of cars roaring over the viaduct interfered with their view - and what could have been a beautiful moment.

Even Seattleites appear to "over" using the viaduct. Recent highway traffic figures revealed that from 2009 to 2012 traffic on the Alaskan Way Viaduct had dropped by 44%, from about 110,000 vehicles per day to about 62,000. In anticipation of the viaduct being removed, traffic was already finding alternative routes.

So maybe a multi-billion dollar tunnel isn't needed after all. Give it up, Seattle, and get on with building a gorgeous waterfront.

*the polite word for clusterf**k