So, planners there are car-hostile but are still spending billions to deliver as many total lanes as currently exist, counting both the tunnel and the surface street?

If that's the definition we're using, then I'd like someone to show hostility to an interest of mine by spending billions on it.

The comment I replied to was suggesting a second tunnel may need to be constructed to handle increasing traffic volume. My comment was pointing out that this is difficult for a number of reasons including the geographic reality of Seattle. The comment also assumed a car-first approach where roads have to meet increasing demand which is also not a priority in Seattle in 2017.

When the project is complete capacity will be the same or slightly larger than the capacity of a roadway built in the 1940s. Seattle has doubled in population since then. The current viaduct barely serves our needs and the new tunnel and surface street combo will not solve the transportation problems alone. We need fewer single occupant vehicles.

Cars are not given top priority in project planning. Just because one tunnel and one road are being put in place does not change that. There are transit corridors downtown that do not allow cars. Most downtown streets are a maze of one ways that make navigation difficult. Parking requirements for new construction are continually relaxed, reducing available parking across the city. Car tabs are expensive to fund for transit and discourage driving. Seattle has a lot of anti-car policies.

Planners here would like to spend more on building out our light rail and increasing bus/bicycle ridership than they would on adding subterranean exit ramps to a bypass tunnel.

e: Seattle's public transit system is largely bus-based so new road construction tends to take that into consideration with reserved lanes and stops and little attempt to serve the volume of cars.

Also, I don't think anyone claimed the tunnel project was supposed to solve traffic problems. The issue is that the viaduct itself is old and unstable. The tunnel is a combination of a safety improvement to a state highway and a subsidy for Olympia's favorite construction companies.

> Seattle is very limited with the amount of land available.

Tunnels don't use land.

The ramps to get in and out of them do though. Also tunnels do occupy space. Seattle already has a bus tunnel and a rail tunnel to avoid. On top of being built on Jell-O.

This is an important point, and one you can see in practice in downtown Boston walking above the I-93 tunnel - lots of land is still used for off-ramps and on-ramps, which tends to have high-speed traffic, whose presence is dangerous and discourages walking, which is the lifeblood of the city.

The exits, entrances, and ops building uses surface land.

There is limited subterranean land as well.