Daily Score Blog

(This post is part of a series.)

From the Seattle Times -- no surprises, really, but worth noting:

The price tag for a new, elevated structure to replace the aging Alaskan Way viaduct has grown from $2.4 billion to $2.8 billion and the cost of building a tunnel has gone from a high of $3.6 billion to an estimated $4.6 billion, according to a report released today by the state.

Meanwhile, the estimated cost of building a new 520 floating bridge has grown from an earlier estimated high of $3.1 billion to $4.4 billion, according to the state Department of Transportation report.

Plain old inflation, coupled with unusually rapid rises in the cost of steel and cement (blame post-Katrina reconstruction, the rapid runup in energy prices, and rising demand in Asia), have pushed construction costs way up. 

It's not just for highways, of course; from what I've heard and read, construction costs have risen for homes and commercial construction projects.

And that means that we can probably expect the same sorts of cost increases plaguing things like light rail, too.  Which suggests this: no matter how you slice it, mobility just isn't as cheap as it was just a decade or so ago.

UPDATE:  It looks like the figures above are the low end estimate for cost increases. The scaled-back "core" tunnel project could cost as much as $5.5 billion, and the "core" aerial highway as much as $3.3 billion. See the figure here, from the Seattle P-I, for more detail.

Unusually enough, the range of uncertainty in construction costs has escalated, rather than fallen, as time as passed.  I'd expect that cost uncertainty would narrow over time, as more of the planning is completed, and the project scope is better understood.  But in this case, commodity and construction prices have become so volatile that it's really hard to tell what things will cost in a few years -- which suggests that the public might never have an accurate cost accounting for the Viaduct or SR-520 until the projects are nearly complete.  Oi.

I'm giddy with hometown pride.

In an address to NYU's law school, the former Veep and climate protection champion par excellence singled out my neighborhood for praise:

Individual Americans of all ages are becoming a part of a movement, asking what they can do as individuals and what they can do as consumers and as citizens and voters. Many individuals and businesses have decided to take an approach known as “Zero Carbon.” They are reducing their CO2 as much as possible and then offsetting the rest with reductions elsewhere including by the planting of trees. At least one entire community - Ballard, a city of 18,000 people in Washington State - is embarking on a goal of making the entire community zero carbon.

Pretty cool. You can learn more about Ballard's somewhat quixotic community-driven initiative here. And you can learn even more over at Gristmill, where fellow Ballardian Dave Roberts geeks out on Al's speech.

I guess I should point out that Gore was mistaken about one thing: Ballard isn't actually its own city. Or at least it hasn't been since 1907, when it was brought under the oppressive yoke of the city of Seattle. Luckily for Ballard's efforts to go carbon-neutral, however, the tyrannical rule of Seattle's city hall has yield one or two big benefits: a city-owned electrical utility with zero net greenhouse-gas emissions and a city leadership committed to meeting Kyoto's standards.

Ballard is certainly not perfect, but it is inspiring to see communities rally to address what is, perhaps, the single biggest environmental challenge facing us in the twenty-first century. It helps, I imagine, that the neighborhood has a few thoughtful residents like this fellow, who has been jestingly dubbed a “freak” for his car-less ways. So I'm glad Gore shined a little limelight on my `hood.

p.s. I was kidding about the “oppressive yoke” bit. I love the rest of Seattle too.

Free Ballard!

Kidding.

With our often transient lifestyles,  it’s a question that many North Americans can’t easily answer. Alan Durning set out to answer this question for himself in the award-winning book, This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence, (free pdf), about returning with his family to the Pacific Northwest and founding Northwest Environment Watch (now Sightline). From skyscrapers in Vancouver to farms in the Palouse, Alan reflects on everything from the role that transportation plays in communities to the Northwest's love/hate relationship with its natural riches.

On the 10th anniversary of our flagship book, Sightline is offering the book free in pdf form on our website.

On one of the early rainy days of autumn, it’s a great reminder of why I love my (adopted) Northwest home:

If you have never traveled these groves, understand that they are not tidy, bare-ground woods. They are jumbled, pungent, soggy, dripping, prickly, almost impassable jungles. The standing trees approach the maximum height allowed by physics—much higher and they could not draw water up to the top. The lowest branches are often a hundred feet up, and the trunks are the sizes of Volkswagens. --This Place on Earth