Kirkland has a nice downtown and Sand Point is a huge park + Burke Gilman Trail connections. I can see some potential.

The biggest headache for 520 design is the west landing. There are so many factors like the Arboretum, Montlake neighborhood and drawbridge, ship canal, Husky Stadium, UW Medical Center, etc. I could see a transit line heading up from the stadium to 45th and Ballard but the transition from bridge to land is going to be an engineering challenge. Not to mention quasimodal’s excellent points about Eastside ridership.

On extending MAX to Vancouver, I am all for it.

Ahh… you just reminded me of the Purple People Bridge in Newport/Cincinnati. I used to live in that area and one of its few redeeming features was the Purple People Bridge, a nice pedestrian bridge across the Ohio River. It was nice to be able to cross without the smell and noise of autos…

Although to be truly recreational it needs good anchors on either end. The Newport Southbank Bridge connects a major entertainment/shopping center and park.

But still, the same question arises – what would all of the extra cost buy you? Very expensive solutions ought to result in some added value, but I can’t see what that added value would be. I think bridges can be very nice – especially if they’re devoted to transit and bikes.

The main advantage of a tunnel is its minimal impact on neighborhoods nearby and minimal interference with traffic. In the middle of the lake where neither og these are concernts. what would the extra billions it would cost to tunnel buy you?

Wouldn’t this be cheaper to maintain in the long term? Plus a tunnel wouldn’t need a lock mechanism and/or underpass to allow ships to pass.

(The authoritative Wikipedia also defines sarcasm as the “Inversion of meaning or truth”.)

The 520 corridor has other problems. Where does rail go on either side of the lake? On the Seattle side, where would you go after coming to land near Husky stadium? On the Eastside, the 520 corridor is a transit wasteland until around Overlake – that’s many miles without any passenger interchanges, and no high density destinations along the way.

Perhaps a better approach would be to cross from Sand Point to Kirkland. A line from Ballard, Fremont and Wallingford could run through the U District in the 45th St. corridor (shown in ST’s long range plan map), serving the U District, University Village, Children’s Hospital and new development at Sand Point. Sand Point Way is very wide, and the crossing to Kirkland is about half as long as the 520 crossing. And Kirkland is a real place; Medina will not generate transit riders. From Kirkland one could enter the BNSF corridor and continue to either Bellevue or Overlake. This sort of line would allow transit to serve neighborhoods that are hard to get between in a car, making it very competitive and creating accessibility that doesn’t exist today.

I’m not saying that’s the best thing to do or even a priority – but if you’re going to think about spending an extra billion to make the 520 bridge rail-accessible, you ought to at least consider whether it’s the best place to put it in the long run.