Update: One can now see an archived video of the meeting online.
Right at this moment, you can watch East Link public comment and discussion at the Sound Transit board meeting.
As I wrote about yesterday (and we’ve seen in the comments), routing for East Link is a contentious issue. I hope you have a moment to click and see what people are saying to the board in person!
Anybody listen in? I guess the minutes will be out in a day or two and the video some time after that.
One thing I learned from the previous minutes is that after a preferred alternative is decided the Final EIS will still include all of the routes in the draft EIS. Why?? I can understand keeping all routes that are considered primary candidates or fall back positions in case the Final EIS turns up a show stopper but some of the routes in the Draft EIS should have never been there in the first place (Segment E).
Lots of money to study alternatives that don’t offer any solutions. On the other hand the EIS offers nothing with respect to ridership and cost of feeder service which is critical to how the system will function.
Video of April 9 meeting is now up for viewing at http://www.soundtransit.org/x4976.xml
All alternative routes for East Link have to be included and analyzed in the final EIS. It’s a matter of law under the National Environmental Policy Act. Furthermore, the draft EIS brought out some suggestion comments to analyze still other alternatives not considered, some of which ST may do for the Final EIS.
I agree with you that the bus feeder services to Link should be more completely spelled out in the EIS, but they won’t be, since that is not required. There is a high level sketch of feeder services included in the modeling of 2030 ridership.
The Final EIS for East Link is more than a year away from being done, according to Sound Transit’s schedule.
ST can’t add new alternatives, just modify existing ones.
Feeder services to Link would be Metro’s purview, for the most part.
I attending the meeting yesterday. The cities of Bellevue, Mercer Island and Redmond all gave good presentations and seem to know exactly what they want. They all offered design modifications that they believe will better serve their communities and they all offered ways of reducing the overall construction costs. From what I heard it looks like East Link has a good chance of moving ahead quite quickly if Sound Transit works closely with the city governments. They’re was quite a bit of public comment and I didn’t stay for all of it. Some of it was from the usual suspects that show up at all of the meetings claiming they know how to build a better transit system then anyone else. Other comments focused on displacement of medical buildings by the C3T alignment and commentary from the south Bellevue residents who don’t want Link anywhere near them. I think that if ST builds along the east side of Bellevue Way and 112th, like the city suggests, the residents of that area can’t have too much to complain about.
Well, the timeframe is limited by sales tax revenue. Savings would be applied to a tunnel.