Hard to believe today, but just a few years ago, it looked as if we had a solution for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The state and the city had agreed to build a tunnel, the Legislature promised to help fund the project, more dollars were pledged by the state's congressional delegation, and the plan was blessed by Seattle's daily newspapers.

The crumbling viaduct seemed doomed, but progress was being made on a corridor that each day carried 100,000 cars, a quarter of Seattle's north-south traffic.

Then things went catawampus.

Estimated costs for a six-lane tunnel soared to $4.6 billion. Funding ran short. The coalition of supporters unraveled. Some joined a camp that favored building a new elevated highway, while others favored putting money into improved streets and transit. In March, Seattle voters will be given a yes/no choice on a compromise four-lane tunnel and a yes/no choice on a rebuilt elevated highway. Conceivably, voters could support both, either or neither - raising doubts about whether the vote will decide anything.

The viaduct replacement project went from a showcase for regional cooperation to another chapter in our seemingly dysfunctional system for conceiving and building transportation projects. Other chapters could be written about the tortured turns of the Monorail, the State Route 520 floating bridge, the North Spokane Corridor and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Nobody's in charge. Everybody's in charge. And little gets done, or so it seems to commuters.

In central Puget Sound, 128 local and regional agencies have a say in what goes forward - or doesn't. Not to put the blame on any agency, but the list of many would include the Washington State Department of Transportation, Puget Sound Regional Council, the Regional Transportation Investment District, Metro Transit, and on and on. Little of this is new.

You can go back 44 years to the opening of SR 520, then called the Evergreen Point Bridge, and find Gov. Albert Rosellini expressing unhappiness with the pace and result of the transportation process. He wanted a bridge with six lanes, not four. As he cut the ribbon to open the bridge, he announced it was time to start working on a third structure across Lake Washington. He never got that third bridge.

The only certainties about our transportation planning are that traffic gets worse and costs rise. In 2006, estimates for 13 highway projects for central Puget Sound rose 31 percent, from $12.2 billion to $16 billion.

Why does it take so long for anything to get done?

"I get asked that question all the time," says David Dye, Urban Corridors administrator for the state Department of Transportation. He oversees work on the viaduct and 520. "People say it's obvious you should do X. The problem is, there are about 30 different things you could do inside that parameter."

It's not just a matter of doing all the engineering, environmental and community processes, which take four to 10 years or longer. A large multi-billion-dollar project also triggers a debate about a city's future. What do we want the city to look like? How do all the elements - cars and trucks, buses and trains and more - work together?

Our present system does a lousy job of answering those questions, simply because no one is asked to do it. That void in part gave rise to the People's Waterfront Coalition, which pushed for street and transit improvements as an alternative to either building a waterfront tunnel or rebuilding the viaduct. City officials initially dismissed that idea as unworkable, but later embraced it as a backup if the tunnel proved infeasible.