Reminder: Bellevue’s B7 Vote Could be Tonight

8 Replies to “Reminder: Bellevue’s B7 Vote Could be Tonight”

1. Grrrrrr…. I’ll be driving the 550 so I won’t be there until about 7:30. Hopefully the fireworks won’t really start until 8 but I suspect I’ll miss most of it.

2. I emailed the Bellevue City council. My company has an office in Bellevue although I live in Seattle.

3. I will attend. And I emailed the councilmembers.

4. Besides cutting out the South Bellevue P&R (which people use), the proposed B7 siting of a station at the present site of the Wilburton P&R defies comprehension: the City of Bellevue cannot mitigate current traffic problems on 118th Ave SE, much less if there were a station constructed at the Wilburton P&R. There’s nothing there – it’s a freakish 1.5 mile hike uphill to Bellevue Square! It would also be too far away from we 118th Ave SE area residents to give us easy access to transit. In short, because there’s nothing there it’s a station that anyone wanting to use would have to drive to. Bellevue Way (the B3 route), in contrast, already terminates at the I-90 ramps. From a financial point of view I don’t understand why the taxpayer should foot the bill for repurposing an intersection (118th Ave SE and SE 8th St) yet again when it was just rebuilt in 2009.

   Not only would this proposed station be perched out in the middle of nowhere, far and way from the downtown and any pedestrian traffic, it would also be immediately beside the 405 – a major (unwalkable) multi lane highway. Check out “Rule #1: Don’t Put a Light Rail Station Next to a Freeway by Dan Bertolet” on Publicola (http://www.publicola.net/2010/01/25/rule-1-dont-put-a-light-rail-station-next-to-a-freeway/).

   Besides being a transit failure, there’s the deleterious environmental impacts. The fish ladder located where Kelsey Creek flows into the slough (the corner of 118th Ave SE and SE 8th St) needs to be left alone. On the west side of 118th and on the north side of Greenbaum Furniture (the proposed new parking lot for a Wilburton station) you’ll see a small blue sign marking the fish ladder. According to the City of Bellevue’s own Web site (http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/peamouth.htm) that ladder transports peamouth minnow from Kelsey Creek to Mercer Slough and beyond where they are a major food source of juvenile salmon. That office park at the Mercer Slough headwaters should have never been built in the 1970’s, and that land needs to revert back to the Bellefields Nature Park as was originally envisaged.

   Why is this route that avoids the downtown CBD even being reconsidered by the new majority on the Bellevue City Council when there is a better alternative (B3), which of Sound Transit’s original alignments has the least construction costs, most ridership (i.e. greatest revenue) and the lowest environmental impacts? That’s a rhetorical question (if it wasn’t obvious).

   1. Because the City of Bellevue does not want adverse effects on AUTO traffic caused by light rail. I call alternative B7 and C14 the next Tukwila Freeway Alignment – Part Deux (another mistake, missing Southcenter Mall and no stops along that portion either)

      1. I’m actually kinda surprised Tukwilla hasent been screaming about not running down Int’l blvd yet. Of course its all auto orentated strip devlopement (not unlike the majority of the eastside, however dtwn bellevue is fairly walkable).

         Of course i wonder if they will leave enough of the BNSF ROW intact for future passenger rail operations (double deck or side-by-side prehaps).

5. http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/bellevue_tv.htm streaming live

   1. Discussion on light rail is now over. I did get to watch about 15 minutes of it.

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