George Andrews Wrote:
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> I have been advocating a solution for the Seattle
> Viaduct mess that doesn't involve dumping Billions
> of Taxpayer Dollars into a hole in the ground.
> Just tear down The Viaduct and replace it with a
> broad, 6 or 8 lane boulevard in a cut & cover
> trench.

Yes, that makes too much sense.

I seriously can't figure out the mindset of WSDOT. Why go to the trouble of slowly (and expensively) "worming" a tunnel under the bedrock when you can accomplish the same setup with a simple cut and cover?

I think the mindset was that a cut-and-cover would first require removing the current viaduct as well as all street level infrastructure, whereas a tunnel bored under the whole shebang would allow the viaduct to remain in place until the tunnel was officially opened. However, I had heard from some folks that a cut-and-cover could have been 90% completed before a single viaduct pillar needed to be removed, just by simply digging between the pillars, or maybe adding temporary supports cantilevered from the edges of the ROW. The biggest loser via cut-and-cover would have been the surface stuff beneath the viaduct, but IMHO that was a temporary loss of infrastructure that could easily be ameliorated.

The bottom line - a cut and cover probably would have been completed by now. End of story.