Q&A with Paula Hammond: Is the Viaduct replacement a done deal? Early tolling and more.

Today’s Q&A is with head of the Washington Department of Transportation, Paula Hammond. She talked with us about whether the tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct is a done deal, federal stimulus, early tolling and the biggest road construction summer in history.

Q. What are the biggest challenges for your department?
A. Well, challenges first of all are not always a bad thing in my mind because a very good challenge we have is an opportunity to deliver the biggest highway construction program that our state has ever seen. So its us delivering projects that provide benefits not only to communities but the statewide transportation system. But it’s a challenge in that its something that’s pretty high volume, for us its the delivery of cost effective projects. And for travelers I’m hearing more and more, Can there possibly be more cones and barrels out on the road?
It’s not only stimulus money, which we’re going great guns on, this highest construction season ever because of 2003 and 2005 gas packages. We’re getting a lot of people who are just wishing that the barrels will go away.
One way of thinking about it is our normal biennial construction capital budget pre-2003 hovered somewhere in the $2 billion range. This biennium, we’re at $4.5 billion for capital investments. So more than double. The good news is that a lot of those projects — the 391 that the Legislature hand selected with the revenue packages — are on the way to being delivered. Of the 391, we have completed 195. Another 82 are under construction, and another 22 will go to construction in the next six months. So of 391 projects, 297 are either in construction, going to construction or done. We’ve got some of the biggest still coming – 520 corridor, replacement of floating bridge and replacing the Viaduct with the tunnel.

Q. What are your goals over the next year?

A. My main mission is to deliver the projects successfully, to make sure that we are accountable and transparent in how we do that. One of the things that we have learned and gotten pretty good at is talking about where we are with every project. So we have really worked on that – people can click on our web site to find projects and it tells them just about everything you need to know. That’s something we really pride ourselves on is telling people what ’s happening, and when things don’t work out as planned, we’re honest about that, too.
We really saturate them with information, which is why when the stimulus came, we had an easier time. The feds are finally catching on to this accountability and reporting, which is fine with us because we’ve been doing it since 2001. We’ve been able to easily adapt. The rest of the nation is not quite so ready. So we’ve found ourselves with many of our peer states, showing them what we’ve done.  We have been able to share a lot of what we’ve done in Washington with some other states.
It’s kind of a fun position to be in that we’re a little ahead of the curve on this reporting and accountability.
Aside from the obvious, the other challenge is to make sure that we’re thinking about the future. It doesn’t do any good for me to look at just this biennium – we’re at a place of kind of transforming how we think about our transportation system, how we invest in it, and how people pay for the use of it. It’s my job to talk about that. Cities and counties have their own issue of not being able to maintain and preserve their roads.

Q. Is tolling the answer?

A. Tolling is emerging. We have climate change laws now in our state and nationally that’s become, after health care is solved … the national conversation about how do we best use our transportation system, how do we create vehicles that emit less, is coming. It’s a very interesting conversation. And then what do we do about the number of miles that people drive every year? Would we ever consider constricting people’s mobility? I think that’s a problem for people to have to hear that, and I don’t think it’s the approach. I think we have to think about how best to get the train and other alternatives – figure out how to have vehicles that emit less and provide options for people – so you don’t have to drive your car to work every day because there will be choices. Just have to have that conversation with the public — that’s what we’re about is trying to have a sane conversation about it.

The unfortunate reality is we have these competing goals where we have been dependent on gas tax revenues as the way to sustain the investment in transportation. The gas tax is what we’ve been so reliant on. But when gas taxes go up, people drive less. Cars are going to use less gas. And we’re finding ourselves watching a declining revenue source that is actually shrinking now. We can’t depend on it being able to maintain and preserve the transportation system. And don’t forget we have a ferry system that’s considered a marine highway.

So we want people to be able to drive less if they have a choice for travel. But if we do that, we don’t get their gas tax. The Legislature already is having the conversation with us and with others about what are we going to do next. Bridge funding sounds funny — as a way to make that transition on very high cost projects which are more than gas tax can support. And in the areas where regional taxing was the concept — especially in Puget Sound — where the state would contribute this much and the region would tax itself this much, sometimes the regional money doesn’t come through. So the state money is there, we’re going very well along 405 – now we’re going to have gaps in the system because the regional money didn’t come. So when that failed, the conversation turned to what do you do? This user-fee notion or direct user fee, which is tolling, means users can directly pay for the project.
We’ve seen it work in places like the Narrows Bridge. Cash collection, which everybody knows works, and the electronic toll collection — so that we knew then when we replicated that for 167 HOT lane, we could test whether people would make a market decision. So you start testing users attitudes and approaches. Nobody wants to pay more, but the fact is that we as a society don’t pay to drive our cars what it costs to maintain, preserve and operate the roads. So a lot of folks kind of like the way its been with just the gas tax, but if we want a transportation system that functions, then we’ve got to figure out a way.
Tolling, at least on key corridors, can make it work. If you have light rail, commuter rail, bus and other options — when they have a choice, and they say I just can’t afford to get tolled — then they’ll be able to have some flexibility and mobility in how they go to work every day.

A good success form this Legislative session is that they picked a long-term ferry plan. It’s a hard decision – do you buy ferry fuel or do you pave a project in Wenatchee? The Legislature picked a long range plan which helped determine what size boats to build next. So we’re in the middle of building one 64 car boat and we’ve advertised for up to 3 more. We are finishing the design of a 144 car boat. So we’ll be moving the system to a two-size vessel system in the future. And that kind of certainty really helps us – although the revenue isn’t there right now. We haven’t built new boats in our state for at least 10 years.

Q. What effect does the state budget have on your goals?
A. One of the things — and it was really not a great situation to be in to watch all the rest of the cuts go on — is that the General Fund is separate from Transportation, which is part of what saved us. But to see what’s happening in the country and the state with the General Fund, it’s really disheartening to see how that all fits together.
What people generally agree on is that investment in capital infrastructure provides good family wage jobs, assists your state and the nation in being able to move goods, strengthens the economy, and when you think back to the Depression, its those big capital investments that really gets the country back on their feet.
It’s something that we’re able to keep going on – thank goodness the Legislature made those decisions in the tough time of 2003 and 2005. That wasn’t easy and they had the foresight to know that we hadn’t invested in our transportation with new revenue since 1092. Really, the size of the program that we have now is the envy of the nation. States say, How did you do that? What is the secret?
Q. And what do you say?

A. I think it was a number of things – the commitment we had made to accountability – more trust that we’d spend the money in the way it was directed. A big part is the Legislature said we are committing to build or get through the design phase 391 projects and the money will only be spent on that. When you wrap that certainty around it, when people know it will be built, I think that that helped. Our state generally is supportive of good infrastructure and always has been. So people in general appreciate that we don’t have big potholes.

It all lined up to a point where it was a good thing to do and the Legislature took a tough vote and I don’t think anyone lost their jobs because of it. Unfortunately, there’s so many more projects to do. Cities and counties are really hurting on the preservation of their own streets.
That’s where the Legislature is trying to decide and talk more – if gas tax isn’t going to be our future and tolling may not be the answer, the what do you do? And how do you look to the future? How do you first fill in the choke points and bottlenecks? How do you operate the roads to their peak efficiency? Are we operating well, getting the most throughput of vehicles — accidents are a huge problem. Then, are we trying to manage demand and offer choices in the transportation system so that people are able to make the choice to use vanpool, take the bus, etc. Then: You have to find the revenue source that supports your ability to go after that kind of a model.

I have to say that we did receive a $22 million reduction and a cut for efficiencies for administration and overhead. So we, too, are looking and have been for a while for cuts. We’ve also seen what the economy has done with our gas tax – we’ve been looking hard at reducing our own overhead and realigning our own agency. So that’s been a big part of what we’re doing for over a year already.

Q. Let’s talk about the Viaduct. One of the mayoral candidates in Seattle (Mike McGinn) is against the deep-bore tunnel. Is the deep bore model a done deal?
A. I don’t want to speculate on who’s going to win. It’s not over til its over. But any candidate certainly has the right to run and say whatever they want about whatever their belief system is. The issue for us is that we have worked on this for 10 years. We have an agreement that this is the path that we’re going to take – We did not find that the surface option provided the best mobility for downtown business and people and I-5. Remember we’re talking about  a state corridor — both Interstate 5 and Highway 99 — the geography so constrains us in the Seattle area.
I don’t know all about his belief system and where or how he arrives at the conclusion he did. But I know that by the time we got to the decision in January, we had a huge public outreach, we had a stakeholder group that almost unanimously arrived at the tunnel as the right option. So if we we’re going to have a mayor come in and say in January that that is the wrong option, I’m not sure.
We are finalizing the environmental impact statement, we’re advertising for builders, and we are building the first part – the south end where we’re moving the electrical transmission lines off now and we’ll go to contract for the replacement of the south end this fall. And the tunnel construction would start in 2011. The tunnel would be open in 2015, which is when we’d take down the Viaduct, rebuild the city streets, then the city has a stand-alone set of projects to replace the sidewall and a few other things.
We’ve never, that I can think of, built a project in a city where the city doesn’t want us, so if truly that’s where we found ourselves next year and if there was a new mayor, we’d be sitting down early to talk to him about which solution is the right one. And we think the city has decided they want us there.

Q. Anything else you want to talk about?

A. The governor has been really good to support us. What I think is interesting and I tease her about this is that this is the “education Governor.” And little did she know that she’d become the champion for transportation. Her support has been important.

Also, we have an opportunity to go after the high speed rail grant. There’s $8 billion available nationally and we’ve already made our pre-application – its’ our Amtrak Cascades. We have for 10 years operated the Cascades with Amtrak. We’ve bought some train sets. Oregon, Washington and British Columbia have this Eugene to Vancouver, B.C. trip. Now, we’re starting a second round trip and there are four round-trips between Seattle and Portland now. So the goal is to incrementally increase the number of round trips and the speed of the train. We’re going after a little over $1 billion for the $8 billion and we’re asking for money to increase the capital projects and buy more train sets.
We’ll probably know something in mid-September about the first round of selections. And in the next six months we’ll know more. It’s an exciting way for us to provide another option of travel for folks on an inter-city basis.

Tags: Paula Hammond, Q&A, transportation