Tag: East Link

For those of you who will be available this evening, this is a friendly reminder that Sound Transit is having their second Downtown Bellevue open house tonight from 4pm to 7pm (the presentation will begin at 5pm).  The open house is expected to be considerably similar to the one held last November, when the original DEIS alternatives were being discussed.  Today’s meeting will take public input on the four newer alternatives recently studied in a joint analysis (PDF) by ST and Bellevue, two of which look hot, the other two not so much.  It will be held on the first-floor concourse of the Bellevue City Hall on the corner of NE 4th St and 112th Ave NE.

Expect the main battlefront to be situated around those for Wallace’s C14E alignment, and those against.  There will also likely still be straggling B7 supporters, who are now finally facing mounting opposition from neighborhood residents in Mercer Slough and Enatai.  We’ve editorialized multiple times against numerous disadvantages that the freeway alternative has across a number of levels.  Below are links to our “recent” East Link coverage:

• Last year’s recap of the South Bellevue open house, and the downtown recap.
• Kevin Wallace introduces his ‘Vision Line’ proposal and his response to your initial concerns.
• Our four editorials against C14E, regarding siting, placement, TOD, and accessibility.
• Bellevue City Council considers a study of B7 modified, a line that would cut across Mercer Slough.
• The results of the joint analysis that studied C9A, C9T, C11A, and C14E.  And our open letter following the analysis.
• Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson’s questionable comments on East Link and tunnel equity between Seattle and Bellevue.
• Conrad Lee’s comments about the Vision Line, East Link, and PRT.

The joint East Link workshop begins at 1:30 pm. Readers can watch a live stream online.

Last night we sent the attendees of the workshop, the Bellevue City Council and the Sound Transit Board, a letter expressing what we think would be the best alignments going forward. The same study that inspired our letter will be the topic of the joint workshop.

Update 4 pm: Publicola has coverage of the workshop. No massive news has come out of the talk.

In advance of the Sound Transit Board and Bellevue City Council workshop this afternoon, we decided to weigh in on which options would be best for East Link’s alignment through Bellevue. What follows is an open letter we sent to the Bellevue City Council and all ST Board members last night. The letter is a frank assessment of the options that came out of recent work from both the city and Sound Transit, and represents the collective views of Seattle Transit Blog.

***

February 10, 2010

To:
Mayor Don Davidson
Executive Aaron Reardon, Sound Transit Board Chair

Dear Mayor Davidson and Executive Reardon:

When regional voters overwhelmingly approved Sound Transit 2 in 2008, they put trust in elected leaders to select the best light rail alignment. Though the alignment selection process for East Link has gone longer than some had initially hoped, we welcome extended discussion on a decision that will affect generations to come. Our children and the city’s future residents are worth the additional time to do this right. A recent Downtown Bellevue concept design report conducted jointly by Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue has brought forward some novel alignments for segment C, an encouraging sign that progress is being made.

East Link’s segment C will determine how Downtown Bellevue interacts with regional light rail. It is vital that the Bellevue City Council considers what’s best for Downtown residents, employees, and customers. The Sound Transit Board should combine regional and local concerns if they choose to change their preferred alignment. Earlier segment C options proved unsatisfactory, so we’re most interested by the recent report which brought three new options to the table: C9T, C11A, and C14E. We think the best alignment for Downtown Bellevue is C11A. If a grade-separated option is preferred for regional accessibility, C9T is the best proposed alignment. C14E is a novel and constructive attempt to save taxpayer money, but it does so at the cost of serving a major urban center; a regional investment like East Link shouldn’t cut corners.

The letter continues after the jump…

Continue reading “An Open Letter on East Link”

Publicola reports that Kevin Wallace, the man behind East Link’s C14E alignment that poorly serves downtown Bellevue, has hired some local insiders to promote his plan:

Kevin Wallace, the freshman Bellevue City Council member who has proposed a Bellevue light-rail alignment along I-405, avoiding downtown Bellevue, has hired consultant Rollin Fatland and former Seattle mayor Charley Royer to help him promote his preferred alignment, which Wallace has dubbed the “Vision Line.”

Fatland said Wallace is paying him and Royer out of his own pocket; he would not say how much he is being paid.

The full Publicola report notes that Wallace would likely be prohibited from voting on his preferred alignment if he were a Seattle city councilmember due to that city’s more zealous ethics laws, but Bellevue has more lax requirements. Wallace’s company owns some property near the C14E alignment that would probably have to be purchased if his alignment were selected. (For what it’s worth, I doubt Wallace’s motivation is to get his property purchased at market-rate since he could probably accomplish that more quickly and with much less scrutiny without having Sound Transit be the purchaser.)

If Wallace’s proposed alignment is so good, why are we seeing a self-funded PR blitz promoting it? Well, while Wallace has brought forward a cheaper plan in a constructive manner, I think many would conclude just isn’t worth the trade-offs in accessibility, transit-oriented development, and ridership. No amount of lobbying is going to change those fundamentals.

We reported this morning on a report covering new light rail options for East Link’s downtown Bellevue alignment and later showed that a 405 station is less accessible than other alternatives. We’ve editorialized in the past that Sound Transit should put the downtown Bellevue light rail stations in the right place, with that place not next to a freeway. Readers should know by now that we’re no fans of a 405 station.

Neither is Dan Bertolet, the former HugeAssCity blogger who now posts at Publicola. Last Friday, he provided some data about the development potential of a station build next to 405 versus one that serves Bellevue Transit Center. Some arguing for a 405 station have incredulously claimed that a stop along the highway would have more transit-oriented development (TOD) potential, but according to Bertolet’s data, there’s much more developable land near the transit center. That land has the potential to hold many more jobs and residents:

Most of us know what greenwashing is; it’s when an otherwise terrible thing for the environment is promoted as green — such as advertisements in the bus tunnel proudly proclaiming that a local car dealership is carbon neutral. We’re seeing that cynical mindset spread to a new area in the Seattle region as transit options become more politically popular. Now we have transitwashing. Promoting ideas that seriously, adversely damage public transit’s usefulness being sold as something transit-friendly.

Claiming a freeway stop has development potential because there are a bunch of low-density lots across a large interstate is transitwashing, and Bertolet proves it.

As a follow up to Ben’s post this morning, here’s a nice walkshed graphic from Sound Transit that shows the accessibility for the various light rail alignments that the report covered:

That C14E alignment, Kevin Wallace’s 405 station, performs the poorest for good reason. We shouldn’t build a station right next to a freeway and we should instead put the line downtown. According to the report, the other alignments serve nearly all of the 79,000 jobs downtown expected by 2030; Wallace’s proposal leaves fully one-fifth of downtown workers unable to walk to work from a station within a reasonable time. More than half of downtown residents by 2030 will be unable to walk to a light rail station within ten minutes. The high capture walkshed, 5 or less minutes, for Wallace’s alignment is pitiful with just 27% and 7% of jobs and households, respectively.

If Wallace’s proposal to site a station on an interstate highway isn’t good for Bellevue’s downtown workers, downtown businesses, or downtown residents, then who is it good for?

For discussion on the other alignments in the above graphics, read Ben’s post covering the report on new East Link options.

Update from Ben: I just noticed one more thing about these maps, and I doubt it’s a coincidence. We know 10 minutes is pretty much the outside of what people are willing to walk from a station. The largest block in the downtown square, on the left edge in the middle, is Bellevue Square. C14E is the only option that puts Bellevue Square distinctly outside that 10 minute walk. Kemper Development spokesman Bruce Nurse called me “presumptuous” for suggesting that Kemper doesn’t want transit users to go to Bellevue Square. Apparently “presumptuous” means “absolutely correct!”

Sound Transit and the City of Bellevue have just released their joint analysis (PDF) of the East Link options for downtown Bellevue. East Link project manager Don Billen briefed me (and happily answered all of my questions) by phone on Saturday morning.

Four options were studied, and two come out as rock stars – C11A, a surface option with two stations, providing great walking distance coverage to almost all of downtown Bellevue’s jobs and homes, and C9T, a more expensive tunnel option that provides decent walking coverage of downtown, plus reduced travel times that attract more riders from the east. Both of these alternatives get the segment 8,000 weekday riders in 2030.

The two not-so-good options are losers for clear reasons. C9A, a surface version of the tunnel option, has the same downtown travel time as C11A, but doesn’t compete with C11A in walking coverage, especially as downtown grows. The City’s walkshed maps are similar to what Adam did for our First Hill Streetcar piece, using the actual walking times from the platforms to different destinations via the network of sidewalks and paths, rather than just drawing a circle at a particular distance. As a result, they give a much more accurate view of what’s accessible from a station.

C14E is the other loser – the I-405 alignment that Kevin Wallace has proposed. Analysis found that a circulator bus would offer no significant benefit. It would attract only 6,000 riders, completely failing to serve western downtown.

The real comparison here will be between the better two: what I’ll call the tunnel (C9T) and surface alignment (C11A).

More after the jump Continue reading “New Data: Two East Link Options Look Good”