When Does the Viaduct Close? How Much is the tunnel toll? Your Guide to Seattle’s Highway 99 Project

The following article references Discovery Institute’s own Bruce Agnew. Check it out at The Seattle Times. … Seattle’s waterfront Alaskan Way Viaduct, in service since 1953, will be replaced this winter by a four-lane Highway 99 tunnel between Sodo and South Lake Union.

If you’re new around here, perhaps you don’t know about the 18 years of citizen forums, design studies, arguments, advisory ballot measures, mechanical breakdowns and digging by the massive tunnel-boring machine Bertha, to finally arrive at a completed tunnel.

Or maybe you just wonder how people will travel when the tunnel makes some trips more direct, and other trips more circuitous.

Traffic Lab has received questions from nearly 600 readers about the tunnel project. They range from the cost of tolls and how much traffic will use the tunnel to who decided to build it, anyway?

Here is our first installment of answers, starting with the basics. We’ll be answering more questions in the weeks ahead.