On Thursday April 26th from 4pm to 7pm at Bellevue City Hall, Bellevue and Sound Transit will be co-hosting an open house to get feedback on the latests design and cost saving ideas. Press release below:
The City of Bellevue and Sound Transit will host a joint open house to share the latest design options and cost-saving ideas for the East Link light rail project, and to get feedback from the public.
The open house takes place from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, April 26, at City Hall, 450 110th Ave. N.E. Sound Transit, which is building East Link, and Bellevue, earlier this year launched a unique collaborative design process intended to reduce the city’s financial contribution for a downtown light rail tunnel, and lower overall project costs.
Attendees can learn about concepts for the portion of the project in Bellevue. The goal is to review the merits of the ideas and learn from the public what other considerations need to be addressed as the concepts are developed. There will also be information about cost-saving ideas that were considered and rejected, the status of the project, and the latest schedule.
In November 2011, the city council signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sound Transit. The agreement provides details about the project’s scope, schedule and budget, evaluation of cost-saving ideas for the six miles of light rail line in Bellevue, city contributions for a tunnel and design modifications to minimize impacts on neighborhoods.
For the past three months, Bellevue and Sound Transit have been involved in the collaborative design process, aiming toward final design of the light rail line and the six stations located inside the city’s boundary. East Link will run from Seattle, across Lake Washington on Interstate 90, through Bellevue to the Overlake Transit Center in Redmond.
After the public weighs in, the cost-saving concepts will undergo further design work based on recommendations from Bellevue and Sound Transit. The ideas potentially could be incorporated into the final design phase of the project.
Bellevue will continue to work closely with Sound Transit and there will be additional opportunities for public input as the project progresses. Before construction begins in 2015, Sound Transit must finalize the route design, stations, art installations, construction methods and mitigation. East Link is projected to begin service in 2023.
When is the board going to approve a budget for East Link? The ST2 estimate was $4.6B (YOE). Forget the addition of the tunnel in Bellevue . . . now that opening has been delayed three years that will really increase the capital costs over what was estimated before the ST2 vote.
Where did you come up with that number? I don’t recall ST making cost projections in anything other than 2007 dollars until partial design points had been reached. The original projection for East Link in ST2 was $2.4B. Inflating that to $4.6B over 16 years is a pretty big stretch but if we do see that level of increase revenue will also rise because it’s tied to a percentage of sales.
That estimate is in the ST2 ordinance, in Appendix A. The voters approved it, Bernie.
Do you need the page number? I could probably find it for you. Sheesh . . ..
Short Answer: You’re both right
East Link FEIS shows the range of costs (2007$) from 2.56 to 3.08B
Inflate 3.08B at 2% for 16 years is 4.23B
2030 station boardings are 24,000 weekday, or about what Link is doing today, so maybe 15-20k per day to start with in 2023.
Looking at 2012 SIP Rt.550 boardings by stop, should contribute about 3,500 of those daily boardings each weekday to the 24,000.