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A six-lane replacement bridge for Highway 520 looks increasingly hard to afford, based on recently made known cost estimates Thursday by the state Department of Transportation.

The new numbers ostensibly favor the cheapest of three leading options for every departure to the University of Washington: a larger Montlake alternation plus a second Montlake Boulevard drawbridge, to allow for other thing traffic and high-occupancy lanes going north and south.

But after more than 10 years of civil arguments over bridge design, it’sitting foolish to assume anything.

All three options, each with pair car-pool lanes, be superior to the $3.9 billion target set by Gov. Christine Gregoire. In January, the governor and state DOT leaders asserted that by accelerating pontoon rendering and simplifying design, they could hold costs from the top to the bottom of.

That’s no longer the case.

New features and spikes in material prices boosted costs, aforesaid David Dye, envoy DOT director. Some structures, including noise walls, need more concrete and steel than expected.

The design controversies point of concentration on how to design the bridge on the Seattle shoreline. Those choices would consequence in the following require to be paid for the whole 520 passage, to Interstate 405:

• The Montlake give and take mutually option, $4.6 billion.

• A high exit build a bridge over over Union Bay to Husky Stadium, $5.1 billion.

• A tunneled exit underneath Montlake Cut, $6.6 billion.

A 34-person mediation dispose split Thursday over which plan is best.

Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin blasted the cheaper Montlake interchange version. “It will be very perplexing for the Seattle City Council to come out in favor of an choice that offloads freeway traffic onto our neighborhood streets,” he said.

The state hopes to open a new bridge by 2016.

The return side looks bleak. A total $1.9 billion has been earmarked from recite gas taxes, federal bridge grants and other known sources. Only by tolling both the Highway 520 and I-90 floating bridges (which requires lifting a prohibition in state law) could the state raise more than $2 billion and arrive close to affording the least expensive option.

The state will study all three, look for savings, and consider other funding, said Ron Judd, higher monitor to Gregoire. “Do we do it as an entire proposal, or do we achieve it in phases, and how do we pay for that?”