In February 2005 the Antwerp city aldermen were among the first to see a scale model of the viaduct. The city council immediately ordered an investigation in order to find out whether a tunnel might be a viable alternative. BAM let it be known that building a tunnel would mean they would have to raise the price to 2 billion euros, 850 million euros more than the price of a viaduct. BAM was of the opinion that, given the parameters of its business plan, they didn't have sufficient means to pay for this additional cost. BAM also argued that any changes to the project at this stage would lead to damage claims from the consortia that had been selected for the negotiations procedure in December 2004.