I don’t have a reference at hand, but I’m pretty sure the Sound Transit board has said they won’t pay the cost difference between at-grade or elevated alignments for segment C and tunnel alignments. Bellevue is going to have to come up with the funding if they want a tunnel.

Again this is an issue where the money simply isn’t there. East Link doesn’t make sense and won’t get Federal funding if it doesn’t make it to Overlake Transit Center. Sound Transit can do that within the expected funding if the route through downtown Bellevue is at-grade or elevated.

Now it is entirely possible that when all is said and done Sound Transit might be able to get enough federal funding to cover a majority of the additional costs of a downtown Bellevue tunnel and connecting to downtown Redmond. But until that picture is a bit clearer I wouldn’t count on it.

Your community and the entire region approved the project. The I-90 alignment was the most certain part of the entire East Link plan. Voters approved the I-90 alignment.

I sincerely apologize that voters see the issues differently than you, but let’s not sit here and have the same conversation that I’ve been having for the last few years. The conversation ended last November. It’s over. We’re building light rail, and the state blocking it for trivial or bureaucratic reasons is not how you develop good policy nor transportation. Charging taxpayers $1bn for a project they already own is absurd. These facts shouldn’t change just because one wants BRT or BNSF or more roads. This is not good government — it’s obstructionism.

This is why this is so political, it’s play along or get screwed, basically. Too bad Mass Transit Now! doesn’t have funds enough to run ads on the Eastside saying “Olympia has decided that the Light Rail plan you voted for is invalid. They’ve doomed you to congestion. While the I-5 corridor expands and grows, the Eastside will be left in the exhaust.”

Or pool cash to send Joni Earl to Washington D.C. with Sen. Murray and say “this is why states should not get so much sway over transit funding, when you re-do SAFETEA-LU, make sure clauses allow regional authorities and individual cities the right to use this money without state permission.”

Read through what was actually on the ballot, note how many times the phrase “generally described” appears; more ominously, “the Board in its discretion shall determine to be appropriate”.

Nice how the ballot measure put buses first in all the statements. Amazing how WSDOT who is at the mercy of funding from the Legislature is portrayed as a villain on this blog and ST with it’s deep pocket construction and development supporters is the champion of the common man and saving the planet. Yet who does ST turn to for engineering and construction management? Yep, WSDOT.

Most of the principles on this blog express a desire for more buses yet ignore the fact every dollar spent frivolously on light rail decreases money for buses (or is in denial that one red cent of ST spending is frivolous).

There are ways of raising money outside the usual suspects as well.

Really what it takes is the right person who is willing to fight for it.

Saying an incumbent can’t be defeated gives incumbency more power than it really deserves.

Sound Transit has made it clear they aren’t going to pay for a tunnel alignment in Bellevue. The cost difference will need to be covered by the City.

We still don’t know what Sound Transit will select as its preferred alignment though I suspect the preferences of the City of Bellevue and Redmond will carry some weight.

I don’t have the DEIS numbers in front of me but I have a hard time believing the difference between D2A and D5 would cover the cost of E2, particularly the 3 station option. I don’t believe D3 is likely to be selected given the cost and that it gains nothing over the D2 alignments.

It just takes the right canidate and people willing to support them.

Now I should not have expected an easy time with East LINK. I-90 was built from Factoria east to the State Line by the end of the 1960s but the portion west of Factoria was not finished until 1994, and the biggest stumbling blocks were Mt. Baker(remember this was when obliterate rather than accommodate was the way we built things) and Mercer Island.

http://www.allaboardwashington.org/cms/images/uploads/What_a_Mess_12.pdf

There is no way heavy rail equipment could be used on the East Link the track and structures aren’t built to take it, the clearances are completely different, not to mention issues like curves.

The maintenance facility isn’t part of the ST2 budget for East link. Yes one is planned … but it isn’t part of the initial construction just like segment E isn’t.