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The state legislature has approved a deep bored tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and Cascadia Center was instrumental in educating decision-makers. This recent article highlights our role.

.....As recently as last December, the bored tunnel was dismissed as too expensive by the viaduct project team. But then the Washington State Department of Transportation realized it could build a tunnel with a single bore instead of a double bore, and the cost estimate fell by almost $900 million. “It's less labor, less materials, one machine versus two,” said John White, viaduct program director for WSDOT.

...Last year two 51-foot diameter tunnels were built in Shanghai, China, according to a report by Arup that was commissioned by the Cascadia Center, which is part of the Discovery Institute. A forceful advocate for the bored tunnel, Cascadia paid Arup $35,000 for that report, according to Cascadia's policy director, Bruce Agnew. In early December, while the viaduct project team was eliminating the bored tunnel from its list of possibilities to replace the viaduct, Cascadia brought together a group of tunneling experts who wrote a letter to WSDOT saying its cost estimates for the bored tunnel were too high. The group wrote to WSDOT Deputy Secretary David Dye and said a bored tunnel could be “completed in the 60 months period with a price of $2 billion or less.” That letter was authored by Richard Prust of Arup, Vladimir Khazak of HNTB, Dick Robbins of the Robbins Co., independent consultant Kern Jacobson and Gerhard Sauer of the Sauer Corp.

(Full article)

More info.:

Cascadia's Bruce Agnew Discusses Tunnel Approval, & Cost Issues, KIRO-FM 97.3, Dave Ross Show, 4/28/09

Cascadia's Bruce Agnew Interviewed On Tunnel Decision, KOMO 1000 AM, Seattle, 4/23/09

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Please click here to access an audio clip of the interview. John’s introduction begins around the 19-minute mark.

This article, published by Seattle PI, mentions Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center: You can also learn more about high-speed rail and the Northwest at the Cascadia Project. The rest of the article can be found here.

This article, published by Seattle PI, quotes Discovery Institute Fellow Bruce Agnew: Bruce Agnew, Director of the Cascadia Center said that, in order to secure federal stimulus funding: “Washington and Oregon’s legislature should continue their strategic investments on the Cascade corridor and demonstrate that rail is regional priority.” The rest of the article can be found here.

With its roots ostensibly in seasonal farming routines, the Jewish ritual of counting the Omer between Passover and Shavuot doesn’t at first seem ripe with contemporary significance. But I often remember Rabbi David Lapin’s comment that he is surprised at how previous generations found as much meaning in Jewish observances as they did, when the real importance of some of Read More ›