Planned Replacement
On January 12, 2009, the state of Washington, King County, the city of Seattle, and the Port of Seattle revealed that they had agreed to replace the viaduct with a four-lane, 2-mile (3.2 km) long underground tunnel. The tunnel would have a south portal in SoDo, near CenturyLink Field, and a north portal near Thomas Street, north of the Battery Street Tunnel.
The project is estimated to cost US$4.25 billion, with the state, city, and county promising funding well short of the estimate. The state will fund boring of the tunnels, while the city and county will fund surface street improvements and repairs to the Alaskan Way Seawall, which itself was damaged in the Nisqually earthquake. There is at present no publicly-known timetable for the construction and opening of the tunnel. Construction of the tunnel is scheduled to begin in early 2011 and end in late 2015, with the potential length of the project being 6 years.
The announcement did little to quell the long and heated debate over the viaduct's replacement, with several factions expressing their criticism over the tunnel decision.
Read more about this topic: Alaskan Way Viaduct
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