As Sound Transit notes in its news release, that bid was almost $21 million lower than its engineers estimated.

Bids for Capitol Hill light rail tunneling come in below estimate

Apparent low bid is $20.7 million below engineer’s estimate

Sound Transit opened bids today for work that will get underway next year to bore light rail tunnels connecting Capitol Hill and the existing Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.

The apparent low bid was submitted by JCM U-Link Joint Venture, formed by Jay Dee Contractors of Livonia, Mich.; Frank Collucio Construction Company of Seattle; and Michaels Corporation of Brownsville, Wis. Its bid of $153,556,000 came in 12 percent, or $20.7 million, below the Sound Transit engineer’s estimate of $174,304,700.

=> Read more!

It had all the hallmarks of a typical political Robocall.

The phone rings and instead of a live person it is the recorded voice of someone well known. They tell you about one of the candidates running and urge you to vote for them.

In this case it was former Seattle Mayor Charley Royer who endorsed candidate Jordan Royer, who happens to be his son.

The effectiveness of Robocalls has been debated and debated but they are cheap and if the potential voter isn't home and the answering machines picks up they just might think the famous person actually called (I've received many breathless calls in the days leading up to big elections from voters telling me they are so disappointed because they weren't home when Alan Alda or Barbara Bush and Colin Powell or Hillary Clinton called).

But such calls are never effective in circumstances like this: the call came to my brother Denny who lives in the North End of Tacoma, far from any precincts where Jordan Royer – candidate for Seattle City Council – will appear on the ballot.

Really, the 253 area code should have given it away.

At least it didn't cost Royer votes like the 2002 Norm Dicks Robocalls. Imagine picking up the phone and hearing the booming voice of the congressman urging you to give him your vote – at 6 in the morning! The vendor, apparently, didn't get the whole different time zones thing.

Son–of–Everett Pete Jackson has identified the secret for projecting winners in both the Seattle mayor election and the King County executive election: Everett roots.

Find his piece here.

You'll note that 1,300 riders had to take a bus shuttle to get all the way to the airport because that final segment won't be open until December.

Here is a link to the Washington Policy Center's take on ridership. (It also appears in the comment section).

The center's points are well taken. The 12,000 "riders" probably is only 6,600 different "people." But I'm not going to get bent out of shape by that. I don't think Sound Transit was deliberately distorting the numbers. Rather, the agency was just writing in a language the average person could understand.

Strong ridership during first week of Link light rail service
Link proves popular option for special events

During its first week of regular service Central Link light rail carried an estimated average of 12,000 riders each weekday. Another estimated 16,900 riders took Link on Saturday and 15,100 on Sunday.

“We're encouraged by the large numbers of people who boarded light rail on opening weekend and have started using it every day," said Sound Transit Board Chair and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. "This is a new way to think about getting around our region and we know ridership will continue to increase as more people try the system and we expand the line to more communities."

Nationally, ridership on new light rail systems ramps up over time as more and more people find out about the service and give it a try. Weekday ridership during the first week was already more than halfway to the level Sound Transit projections show for the end of 2009.

=> Read more!

The tunnel boring machine pictured below was built by Herrenknecht AG (which has an office in Tacoma), for a tunneling job in Madrid, Spain. Below the picture are links to three companies that are in the business of building these huge machines (they're about 55-60 feet in diameter) and which are likely to be interested in getting the job to build a "drill bit" for the 1.7-mile deep-bore tunnel under First Avenue in Seattle to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Here is a link to Herrenknecht AG. This is a German firm with an office in Tacoma.

Here is a link to RobbinsTBM in Kent. Company HQ is in Ohio.

Here is a link to NFM Technologies. This is a French firm that recently was sold, to Mitsubishi, I think.

Actually, that's not right.

Seattle making a run at attracting/stealing Russell Investments may be making enemies south the King-Pierce border, but it is part of a long tradition.

In fact Tacoma has gotten the best of the competition recently, carting off three big shipping clients and several smaller ones. And just seven years ago Tacoma launched a campaign to place billboards and advertisements throughout Seattle urging business to consider defecting.

The picture below was taken in May of 2002 by Peter Haley and depicts Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma unveiling one of those billboards near Safeco Field.

So while there are lots of reasons for Russell to stay in Tacoma, the place where it was born and raised, it seems a bit odd to say Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is breaking some "gentlemen's agreement" when he made a bid for the company.

I write about all this Sunday.

Not just disappointed. But tremendously disappointed. Oh yes.

The Pierce County legislative delegation sent a letter to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to express their collective "tremendous disappointment" over those tax breaks that Seattle if offering Tacoma's anchor tenant.

I'll bet Nickels won't get a wink of sleep after he reads the letter. (Yes, that was sarcasm. The problem with the Pierce County delegation is that Nickels already knows, from his days presiding over the Sound Transit board, that Pierce County officials are just so doggone happy to be sitting at the same table as the Seattle-King County big boys. Just look how little Pierce County got out of the 2nd round of Sound Transit projects.)

Here's the letter. It will make you tremble in your boots.

On Sunday I take a look at one of Tacoma's first public relations efforts to entice people and business from Seattle.

It happened in and around the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition that opened 100 years ago this week on what is now the University of Washington's main campus. Tacoma boosters used the fair to make a pitch for Tacoma - even though the fair itself was a celebration of Seattle's dominance in the battle to dominate the Puget Sound economy.

Even though it happened 100 years ago, the competition exists today from the rivalry between the ports of Tacoma and Seattle and the attempts by Seattle to entice Russell Investments to move its headquarters.

The centerpiece was a huge illuminated sign mounted on the lakeshore in such a place that it could be seen from the fairgrounds. That's the story I try to tell in my next column.

In the meantime, here are some great links about the exposition.

A performance of the song "You'll Like Tacoma" as performed by the Cecile Farmer of the UW's Collegium Musicum.
http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=47677

An interactive map that compares the fairgrounds to the current UW campus, compliments of University Libraries.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/aypweb/

Another University Libraries map of the grounds. The lifesaving station would be in the lower left-hand corner.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/extras/images/Viewer/viewer.html

HistoryLink's suite on the exposition
http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=results.cfm&keyword=ALYuPaEx

Tacoma Library's Northwest Room postcard collection. (search for Alaska Yukon Pacific)
http://search.tacomapubliclibrary.org/postcard/

The Museum of History And Industry in Seattle. Search for Alaska Yukon Pacific).
http://www.seattlehistory.org

On the Crosscut blog this morning, David Brewster weighs in with a regional perspective on the Tacoma vs. Seattle bidding war over the Russell Investments headquarters. He makes an interesting point.

An old code of honor stipulates that Puget Sound cities don't bid against each other this way, since the goal is to keep the company here (as opposed to Tennessee, say), not to let local companies play one city off against the other. That code didn't survive the Great Recession, leaving all those vacancies in downtown Seattle.

No one seems to object, so I will. Not just on the obvious grounds of discouraging these kind of stick-ups, but also on regional planning grounds. The regional growth strategy, duly adopted and worshiped (at least verbally), is supposed to foster growth in metropolitan centers, particularly Seattle, Bellevue, Everett, and Tacoma. The point is to have several such centers, with residential growth alongside, so as to improve the job-housing balance — not to make everyone commute for 75 minutes to Seattle.

Read the whole post here.

The Regional Access Mobility Project (RAMP) will meet at 8 a.m. Wednesday to hear from some DOT folks about transportation projects that either are in the works in Pierce County or are of interest to local officials and other groups.

The Legislature approved a study on the possibility of tolling Highway 167 to help pay for the extension from Port of Tacoma to Puyallup, and also passed a law to impose tolls on the 520 bridge, probably in October 2010. Plus, there will be an update on the HOT lanes on 167 in South King County.

And there will be a quick update on the carpool lane project on I-5 through Tacoma and something about the Cross-Base Highway. The Legislature approved only about $500,000 to finish work on an intersection at the east end of that "maybe someday" cross-base project.

And they claim all that ground will be covered in only 1 hour.

DRAFT AGENDA - June 3, 2009
8:00 Welcome & Self-Introductions
Tim Farrell, Co-Chair
8:05 Update: Pierce County Priority Projects
SR 167
• Tacoma to Puyallup Extension- Troy Cowan, WSDOT
• Tolling Study- Chris Picard, WSDOT
• HOT Lanes Pilot Project- Chris Picard, WSDOT

=> Read more!

These are the first signs of the 0.5 percent sales tax increase that was approved in November by voters in King and Snohomish counties. (It barely failed in Pierce County, but we're part of the Sound Transit taxing district.)

Light rail from downtown Seattle almost to Sea-Tac Airport starts July 18.

Here are the changes most pertinent to Pierce County:

Starting June 1, the brand new ST Express Route 578 will provide early evening express bus service from downtown Seattle to Federal Way Transit Center, Auburn Station, Sumner Station and Puyallup Station, supplementing Sounder southline service and the ST Express Route 577 Federal Way-Seattle.

Also on June 1, Sounder commuter rail service will expand on the southline with the addition of one new round-trip train to the schedule. Adding these new peak-direction train trips will also introduce major schedule adjustments to southline Sounder service.

Taxes went up April 1.

=> Read more!

I guess that sends a message, doesn't it?

"The best protection against oil spills is solid prevention," said Dale Jensen, who manages Ecology's spill prevention, preparedness and response program. "Our concern extends far beyond the two gallons spilled. Washington state requires exacting care before and during marine fuel transfers. It's every vessel owner's business to know the plumbing on board, what to check, and the settings required for a tight, closed system."

Barge owner fined $16,500 over Duwamish spill

BELLEVUE – The Department of Ecology (Ecology) has fined Olympic Tug & Barge Co. (Olympic) $16,500 for failing to take measures to prevent an oil spill from a fuel barge in October, 2007 in Seattle.

A valve left open – with no procedures in place to check it – caused approximately two gallons of diesel fuel from the barge Bernie 112 to enter the East Waterway on Oct. 23, 2007. The barge was pumping fuel onto a cargo vessel at Terminal 18 on Harbor Island.

=> Read more!