More Wooden Nickels

The transportation debacle in Seattle will never end, at least as long as Mayor Greg Nickels is in charge. If Mayor Nickels isn't ducking the media, or dodging the tough questions, he's doing a great impression of Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons. Drunk on power, and bothered by his constituents, Mayor Nickels has decided that Seattle is going to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with an underground tunnel.

That's great, though I think he's strongarming the public by asserting that he'll push that project through when it has become very clear that the public doesn't want an underground tunnel. The bigger problem is that the project is underfunded by roughly a billion dollars or so. Guess who is on the hook for that money? Yeah, the taxpayers. And he'll keep soaking Seattle for every dime that he can move from the public to the private industries that pay for the juicy contracts that I'm sure he'll give away when that tunnel project comes up. And if somehow the tunnel isn't built? Well, then the Viaduct will go away, and there won't be any repair. Which means that over 100,000 cars will sit on the roads, going nowhere.

All of this would go away if the people of Seattle would stand up to him, and say enough is enough. But they won't, and he'll get elected again and again. And Seattle will only have itself to blame.