There was website at http://www.thevisionline.org but now it returns a 404 Not Found Error. Talk about a public communications failure.

I think you have an externality problem. Users are saving maybe a couple of minutes. It’s the surrounding community that avoids adverse impacts with a tunnel, which I guess brings us back around to the surrounding community chipping in.

Well, the new mayor has been talking about having a vote. We’ll see how much enthusiasm there is when he proposes how he’s going to raise the money. Spending is always more popular to talk about than taxing. I read over on Publicola that the City Council voted to repeal the $25 head tax which went to transit. And that that was a position McGinn and Obrian both supported. I also think Seattle would be going it alone if they did that. The city wouldn’t get back any of the ST revenue. I think it might even be a hard sell to get KC Metro to pick up the operating costs. Once burned twice shy. But the price being floated ($400 million) is still less than the tunnel upgrade in a City many times larger.

It isn’t just Mayor McGinn talking about rail to West Seattle, Fremont, and Ballard. Richard Conlin who is likely to remain Council President has been talking about doing a Seattle funded plan as well. I’d expect that at the very least Mike O’Brien and Sally Clark would be generally in favor as well.

Seattle isn’t particularly tax adverse either. Transit proposals tend to pass with overwhelming majorities in Seattle. Actually with the exception of the bag tax and the “latte tax” I can’t think of a single tax measure put before the voters in Seattle that was defeated.

If we can get HOT revenue to go towards East Link I can guarantee you that STB will get silly with pleasure. Unfortunately I think it would be more symbolic than anything. I don’t have the numbers for the 167 demonstration project but I’m guessing only a couple thousand cars a day choose to pay the toll to drive a SOV in the diamond lanes. Maybe it’s more but at that rate and if you were able to divert a two bits to transit it only amounts to a couple hundred dollars a day :-(
Looking at the ferry district I think there’s 2 cents worth per $1,000 of assessed value left to work with. From a quick scan of a few articles it think that only comes to around $7 million a year. So over the next ten years you only come up with $70 million; well short of what’s needed to start construction. If you put it all on Bellevue you’d have to increase property taxes by an amount equal to the amount currently raise by local school levies for eight years to make it feasible. Nobody on the Bellevue Council would get re-elected if they proposed that even if they were promised the finest South African marble!

I don’t know if subarea equity applies to fare revenue or not. I suspect not.

I don’t know either. I suspect you’re right but I wouldn’t know how to find out. As far as I recall though it applied only to taxes collected. Fares “go directly” to offsetting operational costs in the budget reports and not toward the sub-area equity accounts. It would be a bit of bookkeeping shinanigans to move a surcharge from fares into the Eastside subarea equity capital account. Especially since operations aren’t even close to the break even point. Maybe it could be worked out a subarea loan. But it still wouldn’t come close to raising the $200+ million needed in ten years to stick to ST’s 50% pay as you go rule. More like a tenth of what’s needed. It’s a much thornier problem than paying of the debt after it’s built.

Seattle is seriously talking about city funds to build Link out to West Seattle.

Well, the new mayor has been talking about having a vote. We’ll see how much enthusiasm there is when he proposes how he’s going to raise the money. Spending is always more popular to talk about than taxing. I read over on Publicola that the City Council voted to repeal the $25 head tax which went to transit. And that that was a position McGinn and Obrian both supported. I also think Seattle would be going it alone if they did that. The city wouldn’t get back any of the ST revenue. I think it might even be a hard sell to get KC Metro to pick up the operating costs. Once burned twice shy. But the price being floated ($400 million) is still less than the tunnel upgrade in a City many times larger.

This is getting to be an interesting discussion. With fare increases you have to be careful about reducing ridership, which makes the calculation hairy. Furthermore, I don’t know if subarea equity applies to fare revenue or not. I suspect not.

If we can get HOT revenue to go towards East Link I can guarantee you that STB will get silly with pleasure.

As we’ve been covering, Seattle is seriously talking about city funds to build Link out to West Seattle. That’s one of the potential ST3 corridors.

It’s an exaggeration to say it’d be heard from “miles around.” The noise argument always gets reduced to “you’re in the city, get over it” vs. “it’s so loud.” It really comes down to whether you think rail is a valuable amenity or not.

And Seattle is seriously kicking around the idea of using local revenue streams to accelerate ST3.

Why is taking ROW on 108/110th a must not?

I don’t know what plans Seattle has for accelerating ST3 since there is no ST3 proposal. I know they want to accelerate the First Hill SC but that’s less than a quarter of the price tag, spread over a city that 5 times bigger and it’s really just a loan. Seattle not only get the money back but the extra years of service by building it sooner.

The 108/110th surface alignment is bad for Bellevue for a number of reasons. First the trains are noisy. We know that now and all the pretending is over. Horns and bells 18 hours a day seven days a week would be horrible not just for downtown but would be heard for miles around. Second the traffic flow through the city, the other 90% of the people not using transit would be severely impacted. Unlike 2nd and 4th in Seattle there is no through street at 109th that serves as a way to back track. Bellevue has very limited arterial options. Most traffic is east/west. Trains would change signal priority to north/south. Good or bad that’s the way it is and can’t be changed now. Finally the construct impact would be terrible for retail and push a number of business either out of Bellevue or out of business entirely.

Using fares you get back to the same issue you have with Bellevue vs all of King County. If you pushing it all on East Link riders or the even smaller subset the go through the tunnel a back of the napkin estimate would put the surcharge a $2-3 dollars each trip. $5 a day I bet most riders would rather walk the extra blocks and get some exercise (assuming 20,000 riders). If you but it up to all Link riders (guessing 120,000 you get it down to 50 cents) then it starts to look doable. Maybe you only get half the funding from riders; a 25 cent fare increase could potentially go a long way toward “selling” the tunnel.

Some how early tolling on 520 was tied to federal grants for taxes. Part of that was for bus service on 520, which makes sense but another portion was going to ferries (not Lk Washington ferries) which really seemed like a push. But maybe there’s a way to apply money from proposed HOT lanes on 405 through Bellevue toward East Link (a parallel corridor) and/or use it to bring home more pork from D.C.

But if BV takes a hard-line no-new-taxes stance we’re never going to get there.

Why is taking ROW on 108/110th a must not? You have far more people-moving capacity with Link than by filling that space with cars.

There is in fact precedent for what you describe. Seattle is paying for parts of the Viaduct replacement program. Sound Transit leases/bought the DSTT with North King (read: Seattle) money. Seattle cannot fund the Bellevue tunnel because of sub-area equity. It would be against the law.

Increased light rail fares cannot fund a tunnel — that’s a canard. And 520 riders cross the span that’s being replaced, no one rides light rail through Bellevue right now.

And you know all of this.

There is no precedent for City of Bellevue being a relevant taxing authority to construct a regional transit system. King Count is the most obvious taxing authority and we have precedent for KC Metro building a transit tunnel within one municipality using the county wide tax base. I’m paying property taxes to ferry people from Vashon to jobs in Seattle. Why shouldn’t Seattle and Vashon contribute to a “nice to have” tunnel in Bellevue if that’s what the rest of the county wants? Remember, Bellevue isn’t screaming that they have to have a tunnel. In fact the City is trying to come up with a workable surface alternative.

There’s one obvious source of revenue that hasn’t been brought up, increased fares on Link. If train riders don’t want to walk or transfer to a bus then increase Link fares to cover the increased debt of building the tunnel. Drivers on 520 are being asked to accept pre-tolling to pay for a replacement bridge. Why shouldn’t the users of the light rail system pay for convenience of a tunnel in Bellevue if that’s what they want?

Portland is a lot bigger than Bellevue and seems to get along OK with at-grade through downtown. I’d like to do better than them and go underground, but it isn’t absolutely fatal to do otherwise.

I’ve pointed out the regional interest in making sure that we have adequate capacity in central Seattle. If you built DT Seattle on the surface there would be no ability to absorb riders from the other subareas that want to get there. That simply doesn’t apply to DT Bellevue because the 5 minute headways that are possible on the surface are more than enough to absorb ridership for the foreseeable future. At any rate you’re constrained by the other surface segments to 5 minutes.

The negative regional impact of a surface alignment is in travel time. The rest of the impacts (traffic, disruption) are purely local. That doesn’t mean I have any problem with regional subsidy of the tunnel, but not at the cost of not getting to Overlake or some other top-tier goal.

The core problem here is that everyone wants a tunnel but no one has any money to pay for it. The only relevant entity that even has taxing authority is the City, which could create a TBD or LID. ST’s authority is tapped out and everyone’s general fund is bone-dry. Bellevue can make the decision that a tax increase isn’t worth the benefit of a tunnel, but it should be no surprise that I think that would be a shortsighted decision.

You’re right that there’s a cash flow problem with ST right now in meeting it’s mandate/promise. That’s largely due to the down economy but that doesn’t justify an attempt to transfer that responsibility to the City of Bellevue. Central Link was “mandated” to reach the airport and the UW but ST had to scale back the initial plans when faced with the reality of it’s cost. And they did so with no apology for spending money on expensive custom architecture for every station; again with no local tax contribution.

C9T has almost universal support. It’s a Johny com lately to the planning process so I really don’t understand those who would argue that any plan post the DEIS is a ruse to stop rail or too late for consideration. I’d be OK with KC Metro funding. After all East Link, even with a future expansion to Woodinville which is decades away is entirely within King County. KC Metro is feeling the budget crunch, that’s true. But so is the City of Bellevue. Some how there seems to be the perception that everyone in Bellevue is so stinking rich they can fund this from a tip jar. Well, Bill Gates doesn’t live in Bellevue, he lives in Medina which nobody is asking to contribute to tunnel funding. The vast majority of the Microsoft empire is in Redmond; again not being asked for a penny extra to build East Link out to their campus.