SEATTLE — When Mayor Greg Nickels uses the phrase "the Big Ugly," he is referring to the 2.2-mile-long Alaskan Way Viaduct, the aging, earthquake-vulnerable elevated expressway that separates much of downtown Seattle from Elliott Bay, one of the city's iconic natural features.
But the Big Ugly also is an apt characterization of the political debacle unfolding here over whether -- and how -- the 54-year-old concrete roadway should be replaced.
On an all-mail advisory ballot that many voters here complain is confusing -- not to mention "a sham and a fiasco," as City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck puts it, or "meaningless," in the view of state House Speaker Frank Chopp -- Seattleites are supposed to weigh in with a yes or no on two separate measures.
One would replace the viaduct with a tunnel. It would be a visionary reclamation of Seattle's somewhat neglected waterfront, according to proponents, and a Boston Big Dig-style construction nightmare, according to opponents. The other measure would replace the viaduct with a new elevated expressway.
Nickels, backed by former governors, mayors and business leaders, is campaigning hard for a "yes" vote on the tunnel.
"Tear down this wall," he said of the raised expressway recently, perhaps a touch dramatically, as he was echoing the famous Reagan-to-Gorbachev challenge about the Berlin Wall.
Nickels has been pushing the tunnel idea even though state transportation planners last month rejected the design as both unsafe and far more expensive than its $3.4-billion price tag.
Some local leaders are pressing for the new expressway. Others favor a cheaper retrofit of the existing structure.
And still others are pushing the so-called "no-no" option (or "no and hell no," in the words of the Stranger, an alternative weekly here), a sort of "if you don't build it, they won't come" approach to traffic.
Ballots went out two weeks ago and must be postmarked by March 13 to be counted.
No one truly expects voters to have the final word on the subject, and many leaders seem dug in to their position regardless of how the vote comes out -- raising the prospect of years of litigation and prompting Joni Balter, a Seattle Times editorial columnist, to label the whole mess "Dysfunction Junction."
