Canceling Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel Would Cripple Seattle
From The Seattle P-I:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/434462_viaduct31.html
Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bradshaw predicts a major disaster in Seattle if the Alaskan Way Viaduct bored tunnel isn’t built. Her concern focuses primairly on the surface alternative; building a surface-level street along the waterfront.
I know this has been floated many times as the best answer, but again, the viaduct carries too much traffic and goes too far to make a surface street reasonable. Where viaducts have been converted to surface streets, for example, the Embarcadero in San Francisco, the viaducts never connected to anything.
Ben