I have this vision, that next week we'll see a page one headline something like: "Gregoire reverses self again on viaduct," with a quote from the governor something along the lines of, "Oh! I thought they meant a tunnel to the center of the Earth!"

Really. It's gotten just that dumb.

Regardless, the ballots in the all-vote-by-mail (grrr...) special election are now out, due to be mailed back by March 13, and the first point of order in this confusing mess is that yes, your vote counts, and yes, you should cast it. When Gregoire or other state leaders proclaim, on odd-numbered days, that there's only one choice and Seattle's vote doesn't count, they are lying. They are also explicitly trying to get you to disenfranchise yourself, because if city voters reject an Alaskan Way Viaduct rebuild, it will be easier to build it anyway if turnout is low. That's the game they're playing. Don't let them get away with it.

If Seattle voters prefer to tax ourselves to build a tunnel, it's almost impossible for the state to jump in and force a new viaduct down our throats on the grounds that it's cheaper (the state's contribution is fixed). If, as is more likely, voters reject both the tunnel and the new viaduct, we make it hard for the state not to take the time to consider other options--for example, a smaller tunnel or a waterfront boulevard with no freeway at all. Either way, anything we do with a decent turnout helps take the decision away from the bumbling idiots who have brought us to the current impasse (and, not incidentally, distracted us for over a year from the far more regionally important question of what to do with the SR 520 bridge).

So how does ETS! recommend you vote? Well, let's start with the easy one. Vote no on the viaduct rebuild. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. First and foremost, because it is the only "choice" being given us by Gregoire, Frank Chopp, and the other Democrat (sic) Party Olympia hoohahs, and since they forced this vote in the first place, they don't deserve to win it. But beyond that, this is perhaps the first vote since George Bush's reelection (or your average Tim Eyman initiative) where a decision can be made on purely aesthetic grounds.

To put it gently, the viaduct is just plain butt ugly, and, as banners overhanging Rainier Ave. S. last week pithily proclaimed, the new one would be "even bigger, even uglier." In the course of my life I'm fairly sure I've been to every one of the 500 largest cities in the U.S. (save Anchorage - arggh!), and I cannot think of a single one of them, even in the decaying post-industrial Rust Belt, that has treated its downtown waterfront as a greater eyesore than Seattle. (Maybe the steel mills in Gary IN. Maybe. But they're not downtown.) Taking this opportunity to bury a shoreline two-level elevated freeway (literally or figuratively) isn't just a matter of catering to developers, as Greg Nickels would have himself believe. For an example of what's possible, look at the slice of the new Olympic Sculpture Park, still under construction, that has been restored into a sheltered little beachfront. It's designed as salmon habitat, is good for fish and other living creatures, and is good for us humans, too. That's the amazing civic resource currently being pissed away on rickety ticky-tack piers, carbon monoxide fumes, and the rumble of overhead trucks.

A new viaduct ("Even bigger"), built to realistic seismic standards, would be that much worse. The current viaduct is a relic of '50s urban planning, when money for freeways was plentiful, the car ruled all, and nothing was thought of sacrificing whole neighborhoods at its altar. It's now the 21st Century, a century in which the entire planet is in danger of being sacrificed at that altar, and maybe Gregoire and Chopp don't know any better. But Seattle voters do.

The question of whether to vote for a tunnel option is a bit more complex. There are reasons to believe the tunnel isn't such a bad idea, even if Greg Nickels has been its clumsy, bullying champion (and even if the compromise notion of a cheaper, four-lane tunnel could have been offered months ago rather than at the last possible moment). It does the best job of unifying downtown with our forgotten waterfront, putting the current SR 99 traffic (and fumes) underground rather than at street level on Alaskan Way, I-5, and other arterials. The opportunity for waterfront ecological restoration is greater, because buried in the overall cost is another essential infrastructure project Seattle needs to pay for: a new seawall. The current one is both decaying rapidly and not expandable to cope with future decades' rising sea levels. Finally, with the death of the Seattle Monorail Project, there's no decent public transit even planned for the West Seattle and Ballard corridors, and removing a major transportation link serving those neighborhoods (as in a "no build" option) is problematic.

But that, again, means building a freeway in an era of greenhouse gases. And oh, the cost. That's only two of the reasons why the consensus of most of the ETS! kitchen crew is to also vote no on the tunnel option. While comparisons with Boston's Big Dig are fatuous--the Big Dig literally runs under a bay for miles and is far trickier geologically--it's a project that has still already proven itself prone to cost escalations, and even at $3.4 billion (or whatever) it would take money from essential social service projects in future Seattle bonds and budgets. And don't forget that we'll be asked to approve two more big ticket transportation measures in next fall's election. We can only afford so much. A waterfront boulevard would cost far less.

Neither has been seriously considered by the state. Yet. The state insists it's "too late in the game" to open the process up to other, better ideas, but whose fault is that? The transportation planners wed to a 1960s conception of urban "planning"? Dithering, bickering politicians who've spent the last year and more literally passing the buck? One thing's for sure: it's not the voters' fault this is such a mess. Now that someone's finally bothering to ask us our opinion, we should give it to them with both barrels. A pox on both their houses!