I also don’t see how the East Link route will ever effectively serve the population east of the 405/I-5 interchange other than taking up stalls at south Bellevue P&R and Mercer Island. A 520 line serving the north end and an I-90 route dedicated to Mercer Island, South Bellevue, Factoria, East Gate and Issaquah would have been nicer (but way over the budget for ST2). I don’t know that there would ever be the money but planning for rail on both bridges would have been ideal. What we’ve ended up with makes a 520 line redundant since it would just duplicate East Link’s primary purpose which is to connect Redmond/Microsoft, Bellevue and downtown Seattle and Redmond is the obvious point from which to extend north.

I will say this; I-90 does make the most sense for covering as much as is practical of the eastside with a single line.

I was under the impression East Link trains were going to use the DSTT. I think that means they will have to go at least as far as UW to be reversed unless they plan on keeping a crossover operational at the north end of the tunnel. It seems there would be the same capacity through the tunnel under Capital Hill as there is in the DSTT.

But you’re not making the route match the 545. Your routing is through UW, Downtown Bellevue, and Bel-Red. This route will not have comparable times to the 545.

I come up with 13 miles for East Link from Bellevue Transit Center to where it interlines with Central Link.

I don’t think you can interline, but have to force a transfer — at least according to the Sound Transit document I’m sourcing.

I was saying go north and transfer to avoid the arguement the DSTT is at capcity.

The people are the capacity issue, not the trains.

East Link interlines with Central Link and then wanders over and through SODO on the surface before going downtown

East Link follows the I-90 bus tunnel off-ramp and goes directly to the International District after a Rainer freeway stop. It does not go through SODO.

No it doesn’t.

We may well have rail on the 520 corridor in the future but not in the next 50 years. It will be the next bridge rebuild cycle before that’s an option. It would be silly to put money toward that alignment once the current East Link route is built.

I was saying go north and transfer to avoid the arguement the DSTT is at capcity. The idea of extending the route west to Ballard also makes sense but would of course entail the expense of a new line.

Of course it depends on where you’re going but I think there’s more commute traffic that would do Capital Hill to Downtown Bellevue or Microsoft than there are trying to get to Mercer Island or South Bellevue. Likewise there’s more Bellevue and Redmond residents trying to commute to UW and Downtown than wanting to loop down to I-90 unless they’re head to a sports event at the stadiums. Even then I don’t think you’d save much if any time with the East Link route.

But this is all just fun and games because rail will never go across 520. Even if it could it wouldn’t make sense once the current East Link line is built.

That should get it pretty close.

I really don’t see how this serves Redmond better. You have to transfer. You have to go through Downtown Bellevue, to Overlake Hospital, to Bel-Red. I cannot think of a single benefit to doing this routing — besides avoiding stops in South Bellevue and on Mercer Island, thus providing service to less people. The time-savings benefit you’d get with that routing would likely be eaten by the forced transfer and the crush loads at Husky stadium.

I’m pretty sure that “retrofitting” would be way more than $400M to put rail on 520. The only way it could realistically be accomplished would be to build a new bridge along the current alignment (the new 520 will be north of the existing ROW). No connections have been thought out with U-Link, even for buses, which would further add huge costs to any retrofit idea. I don’t know where WSDOT came up with the $400M in savings figure (maybe that was for a wider deck?) but it never did make sense to promise compatibility with rail on a six lane bridge. To bring rail across the 520 corridor right would have required a real bridge with an upper and lower deck. WSDOT wrote off any suggestion of doing anything other than rafting pontoons together decades ago.

Homer’s not in the same sorry state as 520 because it’s 26 years newer. Half that time span (or more) will pass before East Link gets to Redmond. Serious work planning the 520 replacement started back in 1999 so yes, within a decade of East Link being finished the region is going to come to the realization that it’s time again to start the replacement process for the oldest ship in the fleet. Of course we’ll be good at it by then because the half of the Hood Canal bridge that wasn’t replaced this year will be up before I-90.

I retract my “crush load” comment. Referring to the original illustration:
http://seattletransitblog.com/2008/06/19/why-link-will-cross-i-90-first/
It’s clear that it’s the addition of the two train volumes together that create the crush loads in the UW-downtown segment.

At least by ST’s definition of “crush load”

Then you give up Bellevue.

“No spurs required”

I’m sorry, Bernie. You need to map out your route. You are either missing Bellevue, you are missing Overlake, or you’re creating a spur. Unless you’re doubling back.

“building rather than retrofitting is always less costly.”

It’d make the new 520 at least $400 million more expensive according to the state. That doesn’t include the cost of a new Downtown tunnel.

“Which also raises the ugly reality that I-90 is going to be in the same dire straights as 520 a decade after it’s put into service.”

The 520 bridge was having problems in the 80′s. Homer Hadley is no where near that state.