A vehicle tunnel from Seattle to Bainbridge? Retired civil engineer has a proposal

OLYMPIA -- Bob Ortblad has a pet idea he’d like to see buried deep, hundreds of feet below the surface of Puget Sound.

To dive into it: Ortblad, a retired civil engineer and Capitol Hill resident, sees a future in which instead of crossing on a ferry atop Puget Sound, commuters would cross underneath it, driving through a tunnel that would stretch from Seattle’s Smith Cove over to Highway 305 on Bainbridge Island.

To stretch the idea even further, a parkway could cross the island and connect to a long-discussed bridge across to the Bremerton area.

The concept would connect the Kitsap Peninsula to lucrative jobs in Seattle within a few minutes, and in turn hook Seattle to a source of (more) affordable housing. It would allow Washington State Ferries to reassign or retire six vessels on the Kingston, Bainbridge and Bremerton runs to save millions of dollars in maintenance and capital costs.

It’d cut down on pollution belched out by the vessels’ diesel engines and also eliminate the “deafening wall of sound” the ferries create for orca whales swimming through the Sound, he said.

“A tunnel emits no sound, no air pollution, frees acres of waterfront property for development and parks,” he said Tuesday, presenting his concept to the state’s Transportation Commission, a citizen board that proposes transportation policy and finance recommendations to the governor’s office and the Legislature.

Ortblad’s Tuesday presentation was purely informational and is at this point just a pie-in-the-sky concept in search of support.

“We should always be open to listening to new ideas,” said Reema Griffith, executive director of the commission. “Is it out of the box? Yeah. Is it different? For sure. We don’t ever innovate and advance if we don’t open ourselves up for new ideas.”

The concept would come with a hefty price tag, by Ortblad’s estimate: $400 million for six miles of two, two-lane tubes crossing Puget Sound. He’d double the cost to $800 million to be safe, he said, adding that the state could finance the project, or tolls could pay for the crossing or some sort of public-private partnership could make it work.

In Ortblad’s mind: Other countries use tunnels that dip under bodies of water, why not do the same here? Examples include the Hvalfjörður Tunnel in Iceland, which cuts under an inlet in a 3-mile crossing; the 33-mile Seikan Tunnel in Japan, which sends rail traffic deep under the Tsugaru Strait, connecting Hokkaido to Honshu; and the Severn Tunnel, a 4-mile rail tunnel that connects Wales with western England.

The economic life of a ferry is short, (WSF plans for its vessels to last about 60 years) whereas a tunnel could last for “centuries,” Ortblad said.

“Skeptics will laugh at a Puget Sound tunnel,” he said, “but 20 years from now electric buses and cars will be crossing under Puget Sound."