There is only one consensus for routing East Link through downtown Bellevue – almost everyone wants a tunnel. Unfortunately, few agree about which one. Only two of the many alternatives (PDF) came out of the public comment process with strong support – C3T (PDF), a bored tunnel running under 108th St and turning east on 12th, and C2T (PDF), a cut-and-cover tunnel running west on Main, up 106th, and east on 6th. Both tunnels surface as soon as they turn east. Also note that B3 and B7 are the big contenders for segment B, so the south edge of both C options look approximately the same.
It’s that surfacing where the trouble starts. C3T would require the demolition of a few houses, much like Capitol Hill station, and potentially displace a small office building next to I-405. C2T would close (and remove) the relatively new Bellevue Transit Center, relegating buses to various reroutes during construction. It would also permanently result in one-way, one-lane access to Meydenbauer Center, which I believe is Bellevue’s largest convention space. Meydenbauer’s front door would face an embankment and elevated light rail. The list of impacts continues – the plaza cut from the Galleria, temporary loss of the pedestrian walkway that replaces part of NE 6th… essentially, every pedestrian and transit amenity in downtown Bellevue would be torn up for the C2T option.
Thanks in part to all your phone calls and email, Representative Simpson’s first amendment (PDF) to the budget bill passed will almost definitely pass Monday! This amendment will strike Representative Clibborn’s requirement that the joint transportation committee assess the value of the I-90 express lanes before WSDOT can sign off on an EIS. Please check out the amendment and be sure to thank your reps – there’s a list of those who signed on at the top.
He’s followed it up with a second amendment we also like, which will also move Monday. Jarrett’s senate amendment would have required an asset assessment as well, but it was an unfunded mandate – he included no money. This new Simpson amendment funds an assessment, and ensures it’s conducted by ST and WSDOT, not the joint transportation committee. He also makes sure Sound Transit’s CEO has a say in who the consultant will be, and specifically calls out that it must account for the previous agreements made regarding I-90.
The best part? It has to be done by December 1st, meaning none of this mess would affect the East Link schedule. It essentially ties up all the loose ends that the Clibborn and Jarrett amendments created.
The next part makes me cautiously optimistic. All this attention may have made an impact across the board. There’s another amendment from Judy Clibborn, and it seems pretty simple – it adds $10.6 million to the R8A project in this biennium. She’s been saying this in constituent email for a couple of days, but I wanted to hold off on writing anything about it until I had a reference. The catch (notice how there’s always a catch?) is that it’s specifically restricted to funding preliminary engineering. I don’t know whether that meshes with Sound Transit’s funding for the project, or if there’s even $10 million of preliminary engineering to be done, so we’ll see whether this is entirely positive – but it is a small step in the right direction.
I’m not sure if either of these new amendments have had a vote yet, and as they’re both House-only, we’ll have to follow up with our legislators to ensure that they make it through the conference committee into the final bill.
So, to round up on the three big Sound Transit-related legislative issues:
R8A funding appears to be partly replaced. This is good, the Clibborn amendment is similar to what the Governor requested in her budget, and there’s a good chance this will remain.
This asset assessment thing isn’t dead, but the big danger of halting negotiation between WSDOT and ST seems to be averted. Clibborn has still said the valuation of the center lanes could be between “$0 and $2.8 billion” – and while she’s told constituents she expects it to be at the lower end of that range, I’ll be following up with some information about what might help determine that.
Regional Mobility Grants are still okay in the Senate at $40 million, but gutted in the House. These are awarded competitively, and Sound Transit does very well. These could help with R8A, with Sounder to Lakewood, and with bus purchases. The House version shuts Sound Transit out entirely and overrides the competitive process. What concerns me here is that Clibborn could easily say she’s only willing to take her R8A amendment or the regional mobility grant language from the Senate. I don’t know that we’ll be able to get any information about this process before it’s over, but we’re trying.
Overall, there’s been some great progress here! If you have time, I urge you to take a moment to thank Representative Simpson for pulling transit out of the fire here, and your own legislators if they helped him out.
Whoops: The amendments are going to a vote on Monday, the first one hasn’t actually passed yet – but it has enough cosigners to do so. It looks like both of Simpson’s amendments strike Clibborn’s section 17, so the first one will probably be replaced with the new one.
Publicola reports that Geoff Simpson, (D-47th), is stepping up to the plate! He’s got an amendment with over thirty signatures to counter Clibborn’s attack.
I’m told that we need calls to yourrepresentatives right now to convince them to sign on, as they have until about 5pm to get on board the quickly lengthening train and join the majority of the region to support East Link!
Please take a moment and make a call to each of your two representatives – ask them to sign Simpson’s amendment to protect light rail. You can find them with this handy district finder.
On the Senate Democrats’ blog, and presumably on the Seattle Times shortly, Fred Jarrett offers an attempt to blame someone else, somewhere else, a long time ago, for the active attack on Sound Transit we’re seeing today.
It’s barely worth picking apart. He tries to build transit credentials by claiming he helped develop Sound Move. Actually, amusingly, he says Sound Move created Sound Transit in 1996 – he talks about all this ‘hard work’ he did, but missed that Sound Transit was created in 1993, and they put Sound Move on the ballot.
So, let me set the record straight. All this nonsense about RTID and Roads and Transit is a way to distract from the fact that there isn’t money in either the House or Senate budget for R8A, despite the state committing to funding it the year after Roads and Transit failed. If money in transportation is in “short supply”, where’d the increase in viaduct funding from $2.4 billion to $3.14 billion come from? How about the $1.5 billion for Tacoma HOV lanes? Nobody wants to explain why $70 million of the federal stimulus package went to I-405, but the same bill took money out of R8A – when the region voted against funding 405 expansion, and for funding light rail.
He writes: “Sound Transit and the WSDOT have a plan to resolve these issues and meet all of the East Link project milestones.” Is that so? Where is this plan? Or is saying this just a delaying tactic? And RTID would have funded $33 million? Doesn’t Sound Transit’s new increase in funding of $45 million more than cover those lost funds? I’d imagine it does. And this BRT comment from the Senator? The 1976 memorandum of agreement says ‘fixed guideway’, and that’s not BRT.
And as for the Senator’s gas tax comments? He says “How do we deal with the constitutional prohibition on using gas tax funds to construct I-90 for transit?” HOV lanes are a highway project. Stage 1, as the Senator notes, was paid for partially by the state – with gas tax money. HOV projects around the state are routinely paid for with gas taxes. This is nothing new, and the Senator should know that. Then he asks “How do we negotiate waivers with the Federal Highway Administration for the federal funds used to build an interstate for transit purposes?” The federal government funded these lanes with the requirement that they be used for transit purposes.
The state has no stake in the I-90 express lanes past R8A. They were over 90% paid for by the federal government, and there is no legal avenue that justifies the state ‘negotiating’ for any money before giving them up. There are agreements in place that govern these transactions already, as I’ve mentioned before. I’ll be following up on this specifically soon.
It’s not hard to understand these issues – but it is hard to understand how this can be so clear to Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine, and so confusing to Senator Jarrett. The voters came through with a decision and backed it up with funding, and the state thinks this is a bargaining chip. I think all of our readers can see through this op-ed.
Senator Fred Jarrett (D-Mercer Island), candidate for King County executive, has inserted the following amendment into the Senate Transportation Bill, SB 5352.
On page 36, after line 6, insert the following: “(29) The legislature is committed to the funding and construction of R8A in a timely manner, supporting the construction of Sound Transit’s East Link. The department shall complete the process of negotiating the airspace lease with Sound Transit, including appropriate and independent facility asset assessments required to accommodate the use and funding of the I-90 center roadway for East Link in support of East Link project milestones.”
EFFECT: Provides legislative commitment to constructing the R8A center lane and Sound Transit East Link project on the I-90 corridor, and directs the Department of Transportation to negotiate the airspace lease with Sound Transit to facilitate the project.
This is in direct conflict with the House’s provision to effectively block WSDOT negotiations with Sound Transit over the center roadway. Assuming the Senate version wins out over the House’s, this would remove the procedural obstacle to East Link and leave only the funding one.
My source says the vote on the amendment was approximately 29-19; when they arrive, we’ll watch with interest the Yeas and Nays on this pretty straight up-or-down vote on East Link.
Washington State Capitol Building. Picture by swishphotos.
We’ve talked about about R8A and other legislature inference plenty over the last few days. It’s time for us to take action. We need to contact leaders in Olympia and tell them what we think:
The state should fund, as promised, the two-way HOV lane project on I-90 so that light rail can be completed to the Eastside on time. East Link will be delayed for years without this funding.
Sound Transit should receive funds for the three Regional Mobility grants which it was competitively awarded. ST won these grants because the projects are among the best transportation investments in the state.
There is no need for a bureaucratic “asset assessment study” for light rail across I-90. A new study could only serve to delay building light rail across a bridge that has already been studied numerous times.
The region voted overwhelmingly to support this light rail package. The legislature shouldn’t thwart the will of the voters.
Here’s a list of important transportation legislators:
The email address for your legislators can be found on the state legislature website, or you can use this form to automatically email your legislators based on your address. You can email Governor Gregoire on her website.
After the jump is the letter we’re sending out which reflects the above talking points. Feel free to change the text as you see fit and forward it to the above legislators as well as your own — let them know you’re paying attention.
Olympia’s devil transportation budget, the one that imposes a huge delay on East Link, seems to have passed out of the House Committee, with a full house vote Friday. The Senate version is bouncing around committees still. There is still time to email your legislators and tell them you want R8A and Eastlink back in the budget.
Newcastle 411 is reporting that the Sound Transit-funded Newcastle Transit Center project’s lowest bid was $2.1 million, 22.2% under the $2.7 million estimate. A number of projects have come under estimate recently, including the longer of the two U-Link tunnels. The bad recession is causing a huge shortage in construction projects, and engineering and construction firms are competing very strongly for the projects that are available.
The FAA foresees a 9% drop in air travel in the US this year due to the bad economy.
The Seattle PI (again, and again) and the Times have today written more coverage about R8A funding controversy that has only gotten worse in the last few days.
What has begun as a matter of the state’s budget withholding $24 million necessary to build the two-way HOV lanes on the I-90 bridges needed to run light rail along that corridor, has recently escalated to what appears to be nearly outrighthostility to the light rail plan that voter’s approved last year. One move we didn’t cover, but deserves mention, is the move to disallow Sound Transit from the state’s competitive Regional Mobility Grants even — one of the few ways that the state actually gives financial support to transit.
Larry Phillips
King County Councilman Larry Phillips offered a sharp rebuke of the House budget that is the source of all of the concern. Phillips once again looks impressive on transportation is continuing to illustrate that he’d be a great county executive — a position he’s running for. I’ll quote a SeattlePI.com piece from reporter Aubrey Cohen:
“I frankly don’t understand what the House transportation folks are doing,” [Phillips] said.
Voters clearly indicated their desire to see light rail soon in Mercer Island and Bellevue, he said. “Literally hundreds of millions of dollars are in the bank, waiting to be deployed.”
The state House transportation budget thwarts the will of voters by blocking Sound Transit’s East Link light-rail plan, according to [Phillips].
“While the people of this region are eager to move forward with building light rail and leave behind the endless debating and delays of the past, legislators continue to throw up roadblocks that thwart the will of voters and delay light rail,” he said, referring to a budgetprovision that stalls construction of rail along the Interstate 90 bridge over Lake Washington.
“Thwart the will of the voters,” absolutely. Well said.
Kudos to the PI and the Times, as well Horse’s Ass and Publicola, for covering this story. And to Mr. Phillips for inserting himself into this very important issue.
Ever since Sound Transit chose Interstate 90 as the preferred alignment for East Link light rail, a concerted effort to “protect” I-90 from the project has come from a few legislators – but mostly the office of Representative Judy Clibborn (41st, Mercer Island), chair of the House Transportation Committee.
I’ve written about this a little in the past, but it seems time to lay out a framework of her sustained attack on transit. She has repeatedly spoken in favor of transit as an idea – but not any of the transit that comes to her district. For a representative whose district voted over 55% for Sound Transit 2, her opposition seems misplaced.
As much as I pay attention to all this, I’m still not sure when her opposition started actively, but the first thing I see in law is a proviso from her in the 2007 transportation budget, ESHB 1094. This proviso requires that an ‘access plan’ be created to allow Mercer Island residents to use the new HOV lanes in single occupancy vehicles after the center lanes are closed to traffic:
“Expenditure of the funds on construction is contingent upon revising the access plan for Mercer Island traffic such that Mercer Island traffic will have access to the outer roadway high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes during the period of operating of such lanes following the removal of Mercer Island traffic from the center roadway and prior to conversion of the outer roadway HOV lanes to high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. Sound transit may only have access to the center lanes when alternative R-8A is complete.
The same year, she moved some R8A funding out from the 2007-2009 budget, as mentioned previously on the blog, to 2017 and beyond. Remember that this was early in the year before Roads and Transit came in November – this was almost a pre-emptive strike in case R&T passed.
Clibborn also pushed for an “Independent Review Team” to (hopefully) bolster her claim that light rail over I-90 was like the “Big Dig”. When that IRT released their report, essentially giving light rail a thumbs up from an engineering perspective, she told attendees of the hearing that they should be ready to hear about a “show-stopper.” Sounds like that was wishful thinking.
With light rail seeing support that just won’t quit, and that likely to be bolstered by Link opening this year, she’s exercising a ‘nuclear option’ now. Not only has she defunded R8A, it sounds like the state plans to hold light rail over I-90 hostage. Today’s transportation plan halts negotiations for the I-90 express lanes between WSDOT and ST, pending yet another review from a panel that House Transportation appoints. Oh, goody.
Frank Chopp, D-Capitol Hill, Wallingford
What’s worse, sources tell me that Speaker Frank Chopp (43rd, my district, went over 80% for ST2, also note he appointed Clibborn) wants Sound Transit to fund $1 billion, yes, that’s $1,000,000,000, of SR-520 replacement as payment for the I-90 lanes. Apparently that’s what those express lanes are worth to him, even though they were over 90% federally funded (yes, really!) – and the federal government (the GAO) says that states can’t use the proceeds from air rights sales on interstate highways (PDF, page 5). Here’s the excerpt:
“The statute states simply that any federal share in the net proceeds, which a state receives as a result of the sale, use, lease or lease renewal of such property, is to be applied to other eligible title 23 projects. Logically, the use of the term “federal share” indicates that the federal share retains its character as federal funds. Furthermore, by providing in § 156(a) that states must dispose of real property at fair market value, unless the Secretary grants an exception for a social, environmental, or economic purpose, the statutory text evidences a strong and on-going federal interest in any revenues generated from such disposal. In our view, this is a clear indication that the federal share of these proceeds should continue to be treated as federal rather than state funds.”
Don’t these people realize we’re paying attention now? Sound Transit is not your personal ATM, Mr. Speaker.
(17) The department shall not sign the final environmental impact
statement for the east link project or negotiate an airspace lease with
sound transit for the use of the Interstate 90 center roadway for
exclusive use by light rail until completion of an independent facility
asset assessment by the joint transportation committee.
You may remember that the last study requested by the state confirmed that the I-90 bridge can handle light rail. Much of our state government remains opposed to building light rail across the water despite overwhelming support from the voters. Perhaps these representatives are under the illusion that if they keep requesting new studies, one will eventually tell them what they want to hear.
Unfortunately there isn’t much time left to influence this budget. There’s a public hearing today at 3:30pm (stream), with an executive session closely following tomorrow at the same time. Full agenda here.
We’ll have more information on all this later tonight.
Today at 12:30, the state Senate Transportation Committee released their 2009-2011 budget proposed project list (see LEAP Transportation Document 2009-1, Highway Projects).
R8A, the I-90 HOV lane project that MUST be complete for East Link to be built, is completely missing. This blocks a $4.5 billion investment that we’ve already funded.
On the other hand, there’s plenty of money for I-405 widening, a project regional voters voted against in the 2007 Roads & Transit measure.
If no change is made here immediately, this decision will delay East Link, as well as up the price tag by hundreds of millions for every year of delay.
Update: Senate Transportation includes Senator Fred Jarrett, who has thrown his hat in the ring for King County Executive. I want to point out that his district voted for Proposition 1 by a fair margin (although I think this map has the preliminary results, not the final counts, but it’s close enough). King County as a whole went over 60% for Prop 1 – a 20 point margin. Now, Senator Jarrett supported Proposition 1 during the campaign and he was one of very few legislators to do so. This is his chance to show that support — he could be a hero for the Eastside come November. What’re you going to do, Fred?
Update 2: I used to live on the very edge of Senator Ken Jacobsen‘s district. He’s also on Senate Transportation, and I sent him an email just now asking to help make this right. If you live in the 46th, you can too!
Martin had a fantastic post this morning about the I-90 Two Way Transit and HOV project, also known as Alternative R-8A, or just R8A. I want to add to this some history, and exactly why this is a key issue for transit.
In 1976, a Memorandum of Agreement was reached to build I-90. There are some gems in here, but I think the key is that I-90 was originally intended to be converted to rail:
2. The I-90 facility shall be designed and constructed so that conversion of all or part of the transit roadway to fixed guideway is possible.
In 2004, the same stakeholders partnered with Sound Transit to amend the 1976 Memorandum of Agreement. This amendment (and it’s really worth a read, it’s pretty short) established that:
“…all parties agree that the ultimate configuration for I-90 between Bellevue, Mercer Island and Seattle should be defined as High Capacity Transit in the center roadway and HOV lanes in the outer roadways; and further agree that High Capacity Transit for this purpose is defined as a transit system operating in dedicated right-of-way such as light rail, monorail, or a substantially equivalent system;”
Furthermore, they liked one particular alternative for reaching this configuration:
“…all parties agree that building HOV lanes on the outer roadways as identified as Alternative R-8A as set forth in the May 21, 2004 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) prepared for the project, is an essential first step toward achieving the ultimate configuration;”
The final resolution was crystal clear, we need to put HOV lanes on the outer roadway ASAP:
1. Alternative R-8A with High Capacity Transit deployed in the center lanes is the ultimate configuration for I-90 in this segment;
2. Construction of R-8A should occur as soon as possible as a first step to the ultimate configuration;
3. Upon completion of R-8A, move as quickly as possible to construct High Capacity Transit in the center lanes;
4. Commit to the earliest possible conversion of center roadway to two-way High Capacity Transit operation based on outcome of studies and funding approvals.
WSDOT has a fantastic project page where you can see the details of R8A and the schedule WSDOT committed to – with construction ending in 2014. Martin noted that Sound Transit needs this to happen before they can build East Link – so anything the state does to alter this schedule will directly impact our ability to build light rail to the eastside.
So why am I writing this? Because the response we’ve gotten demands some scrutiny. Last time I wrote about this project, it was to point out that Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1978 (PDF), the bill to distribute transportation stimulus funds, reduced funding for R8A Stage 1 (page 42). When I pointed out that Representative Judy Clibborn’s amendment removed money for R8A, Representative Eddy commented with (in part):
I am advised that the language in question reflects an accounting change. “We revised the amount for the I-90 two-way transit stage 1 project down by $2.8 M in the 2009 supplemental budget. This is due to project savings in stage 1. These savings are being transferred to the budget item for stages 2 & 3 of the project. Unfortunately the proviso does not mention this other budget item.”
She goes on to report that the total budget for stages 2 & 3 is being increased by $3.27 M, beyonjd the $2.8 reduction in ‘09 to recognize increased inflation.
A commenter named Allison emailed Clibborn and got this response:
The I-90 two-way transit project is a three-stage project. The first stage was completed $2.8 million under budget, so the savings on stage one have been transferred to stages two and three. – Judy Clibborn
In fact, ESHB 1978 did mention R8A stages 2 and 3 – it didn’t move money from stage 1 to them, it removed another $1.8 million from them (page 47).
A staffer in Olympia tells me the Senate Transportation Committee plans to release their 2009-2011 budget tomorrow at 12:30 pm. Do keep in mind that this is just Senate Transportation, not the House, but it will give us a good idea as to whether these promises will be kept. Tomorrow I’ll look at what’s in the budget, and we’ll figure out what’s next. See you then.
The most disappointing thing about the PSRC stimulus list is the failure to include any funds for the completion of the I-90 two-way HOV project. Under current state budget plans, the last tranche of funding ($24m) is programmed for the 2017-2019 biennium. Since it will take approximately 5 years from the completion of this to opening day of the Seattle-Bellevue segment, this could potentially delay its opening from 2020 to 2024.
The project consists of three stages:
Stage 1 extended the westbound HOV lane from Bellevue to mid-Mercer Island and was completed last October.
Stage 2 would upgrade the same stretch in the eastbound direction, and it’s here that the state’s contribution of $24m is required.
Stage 3 is to complete the HOV lane into Seattle in both directions, and was fully funded by Proposition 1 last year.
Of the $188m total cost for all three stages, the state and ST agreed that the split would be $51m and $138m, respectively. Until 2007, the last chunk of state funding was scheduled for 2009 (pdf, page 20), so that Stage 2 could be complete by 2012. In early 2007, however, ESHB 1094, implemented a “LEAP” plan that pushed back the $24m (pdf, page 15) to beyond 2017.
ESHB 1094 was sponsored in the House by Rep. Judy Clibborn* (D-Mercer Island), Rep. Fred Jarrett (D-Mercer Island), and Rep. Al O’Brien (D-Bothell). O’Brien was probably interested in an interchange in Bothell, but it’s clear what the big impact in Clibborn and Jarrett’s district was.
It seems ridiculous to hold up a $4 billion project for want of $24 million, so one has to hope that the relevant parties will find a way. It may be that this delay is an opening bid by the state, since there’s a pending negotiation over whether or not WSDOT will charge Sound Transit rent for the express lanes.
On the other hand, that assumes good faith on the part of both parties. If the legislature wants to, it can certainly create enough obstacles to prevent Sound Transit from ever using the I-90 right of way.
As the Sound Transit Citizen Oversight Panel put it in their report:
Very significant schedule and budget risks continue for the I-90 Two-Way Transit Stages 2 and 3 projects. Sound Transit has funded its share of the projects as well as the entire current estimate for Stage 3, contingent on WSDOT’s commitment to work collaboratively to manage scope. But WSDOT’s $24 million contribution to Stage 2 is currently budgeted for the 2017-2019 biennium. Funding authorization by the state is urgently needed to be moved to the current biennium as these projects are on the critical path for East Link over the I-90 bridge and they are essential to provide needed capacity during the 520 bridge reconstruction. Also, we want to highlight that WSDOT and Sound Transit must work earnestly and cooperatively over the next year to resolve the terms of the agreement for the conversion of the I-90 center roadway for use by East Link to avoid further significant risks to the I-90 Stage 2 and 3 projects and East Link light rail.
*UPDATE: A source in Olympia points out to me via email that as Transportation Chair, it’s customary for Rep. Clibborn to sponsor the transportation budget. That isn’t to say that she was unaware, opposed, or somehow not responsible for the fate of a project in her district.
Mislabeled bridge over the Columbia, Photo by Willem Van Bergen
The Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council has recommended a 12-lane bridge for I-5 over the Columbia between Vancouver Washington and Portland. The current I-5 bridge over the Columbia is three lanes in each direction, this plan would double that and add a bike lane and space for a future light rail extension from Portland to Vancouver. The Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council is made up of leaders both in Oregon and Washington including leaders of Vancouver, Portland, TriMet (Portland’s transit agency) and Oregon DOT and Washington DOT.
Twelve lanes seems excessive to me, even with the severe commute-time congestion over the bridge. Still, I am very happy that light rail was included in the bridge’s design, especially since Max’s Yellow line basically reaches the river already and a connection across the river would be relatively easy. If you compare the Columbia Crossing to the 520 bridge replacement, it doesn’t look like our leaders in this area are being very forward-thinking. Sure 520 isn’t the right route for East Link right now, but the decision to have no light rail capabilities on the 520 bridge replacement is going to be a huge mistake down the road. Even if it takes a very long time for transit expansion to work toward a second Lake Washington Light Rail crossing, the 520 bridge replacement is going to last a very long time, at least 75 years.
Clarification: The funds for R8A have been taken out of the 2009 budget and moved into a far future budget. Ben in this post is discussing the removal of the funds from the 2009 budget.
R8A still does not have enough funding to be completed. This state project is necessary for light rail on the Eastside to open on schedule. Adding two-way HOV across I-90 will also immediately boost the speed of buses during rush hour. We implore Representatives Eddy and Clibborn to move money for I-90 Two-Way HOV Stages 2 and 3 back to the original funding time line.
Looks like it passed, great, that means money for all sorts of projects…
Wait just a minute. What’s that amendment (PDF)? It’s from Representative Judy Clibborn (D-Mercer Island), whose constituents voted for light rail over the I-90 bridge?
Oh, I see, it screws over light rail across I-90. Again. From section 304:
11 (3) Within the amounts provided in this section, (($1,895,000))
12 $11,363 of the transportation partnership account–state appropriation,
13 (($2,147,000)) $505,099 of the motor vehicle account–federal
14 appropriation, and (($10,331,000)) $11,031,179 of the transportation
15 2003 account (nickel account)–state appropriation are for project
16 109040T as identified in the LEAP transportation document referenced in
17 subsection (1) of this section: I-90/Two Way Transit-Transit and HOV
18 Improvements – Stage 1.
She doesn’t miss a beat. Apparently, for her, the interests of a few rich folks who have whispered in her ear overwhelms the interests of the majority of her district. That’s right, $2,825,359 suddenly gone from I-90 Two Way Transit and HOV improvements, or “R8A” – the one state project we’re dependent on to build East Link.
In fact, we’re ending up with almost $700,000 less than we had before the federal stimulus money.
Thanks, Judy! We appreciate that you’ve been bought and paid for by a few rich constituents – using the express lanes as single occupancy Mercedes lanes into the city is a great use of our infrastructure. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were replaced with a legislator who actually represented the district you’re supposed to represent, instead of taking money away from projects that help your constitutents? I wonder what, say, the Bellevue Downtown Association thinks of this?
And people blame Seattle for not being able to get anything done. Whenever we do, the state kneecaps us.
All forms of transportation can be characterized in two dimensions. The first, accessibility is a measure how easily it is to join and leave that particular facility. The second dimension is speed of travel on that facility. These two dimensions are inversely related. As accessibility increases speed decreases and vice versa. Streets are a perfect everyday examples. Local streets are slow but offer very high accessibility, while freeways have very low accessibility but very high speed.
So how accessible is LINK for pedestrians compared to other mass transit systems in the Northwest? Well, not very, especially compared to Portland. Station spacing is an important measure of how dense of a network a transit system has. The ideal station spacing for pedestrian access and continuous linear TOD is roughly two times what an average pedestrian would walk, so roughly ~.5 mile to ~1 mile. Now look again. Magically MAX and Skytrain fall into that range. Both the Expo and Millenium lines hover perfectly in the range, while MAX jumps around a bit more because of variation in land use patterns and geography. So, coincidence or planning?
Northwest Mass Transit Spacing
So what happened to LINK, why is it so off the mark? Well for starters we have weird geography which has forced our growth pattern into a long and narrow shape. This necessitates a long central line of ~55 miles, Everett to Tacoma. This length forces planners to reduce accessibility to increase speed to a competitive level. In comparison the 2nd longest line is MAX’s Blue line at 33 miles. Another double whammy is money. Sound Transit is a three county regional transit provider who’s mission is to build a regional transit system. Subarea equity has forced Sound Transit to build out rather than fill in Seattle proper with highly accessible mass transit. Yet another reason is that we are late to the game. MAX and Skytrain were built to influence growth patters. They were design to maximize accessibility, area coverage, and TOD opportunities. Now LINK is trying to follow growth not shape it.
So before I close I do want to point out one jem in the ruff, East LINK. After removing the distance inured by Lake Washington, East LINK looks like it will be the poster child of the entire system when it comes to walkable, TOD communities. It is hovering just above the walkable range, and because of the S shape of the probable alignment these distances are actually much shorter. In addition to that the City of Bellevue has made Seattle’s zoning department look childish in its attempt to up-zone station areas.
Below the fold is another graph showing how LINK, Skytrain and MAX stacks up against mass transit systems around the world. Continue reading “LINK Station Spacing”
Original Post: The Times is reporting that the Bellevue City Council has choosen the Bellevue Way alignment as their preference for East Link through South Bellevue (back story here). The Sound Transit board has the final say, though I have a hunch they will go along with Bellevue Way, which seems obviously better than the I-405 alignment to me. The council also picked a prefered route through Downtown Bellevue and Bel-Red.
It looks like the preferred route through South Bellevue is a modified B3, and the preferred route through downtown Bellevue is C2T. The modifed route was not studied as part of the East Link draft Environmental Impact Statement, and there’s no word on whether Sound Transit would build that route. Their prefered Bel-Red route is the D route, and was decided last week. C2T may be Bellevue’s prefered route, but they are going to have to pay for the tunnel themselves: there’s no money in the East Link plan currently for a tunnel alignment there, and the tunnel is about $700 million more than a surface alternative.
In a story that should surprise no one, some residents in South Bellevue are fighting to push East Link from the Bellevue Way alignment to the I-405 alignment. You can see the two alignments here. What is surprising is just how hard they are fighting: the Surrey Downs Community Club has had an East Link comittee for two years, and every East Link open house or Bellevue city council meeting on Eastlink is full of those folks.
The mean spirited part of me almost wants the alignment to be on Bellevue Way just to spite them, but even warming that part of my cold heart, it’s difficult to argue that the Bellevue way alignment isn’t the right one. The South Bellevue park-and-ride already a has 519 stall park-and-ride facility with bike racks and bike lockers, and has good connections with buses travelling on I-90. As the Times article points out, the I-405 alignment would put a station on 118th St, which is a two-lane street. Not just that, but the daily ridership of Eastlink with the 405 alignment would get 1,000 riders fewer a day than East Link with the Bellevue Way alignment. It’d be a shame if the NIMBYs got their way on this one.
Now that the Stimulus Bill has finally passed, we move next to spending the money. In the Central Puget Sound, area the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) is going to have a huge role in deciding how the transportation money gets spent; they’ll choose how to spend most of the $200 million or so for transit our state will get, and another $50 million or so in roads money. If you’re wondering what the PSRC is, and how they got that power, read on.
First a history lesson. In the early 20th century, interurban railways and later the automobile enabled American cities to grow past their political boundaries and bleed into each other. Sprawl became a major issue in transportation planning and some metropolitan areas struggled to coordinate that planning across the political boundaries. In 1962, Congress required any urban area with more than 50,000 people to have a “Metropolitan Planning Organization“, to plan transportation and to allocate federal funding for local transportation projects. You can read more about the history of MPOs here.
In our area, the PSRC has evolved from the “Puget Sound Regional Planning Conference” which was created by King, Pierce, Kitsap and Snohomish counties in 1956. The PSRC predecessor released regional transportation studies every decade, and worked on coordinating land-use and growth patterns. It took on the duties of being our area’s MPO in 1973, and in 1991, the PSRC was empowered by the state to enforce the Growth Management Act. That same year, the Federal Government passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which gave MPOs more power over decision making and better funding.
In terms of organization, the PSRC looks a lot like other transgovernmental agencies like Sound Transit or the now-defunct RTID. The PSRC has a 32-member executive board consisting of elected officials from local governments in the four counties, plus a staff of about 70 planners and administrators. Their funding comes from member fees of the communities in the area, a small amount of state support, and large federal contribution. Each year, the PSRC distributes $160 million in federal dollars for transportation projects in our area, you can see the list of projects funded by the PSRC here. Here’s a link to their TOD studies, here’s one to their transportation study, and here’s one for population and employment trends.
Now with the added stimulus cash, the PSRC is going to get a little more than a typical year’s worth of funding to distribute, with some tougher requirements than normal. In addition to the PSRC’s normal project funding requirements, the stimulus cash needs to be pushed toward projects that create a lot of jobs, and half of the funding needs to be spent within 180 days. Here’s the list of all projects (PDF) the PSRC is considering for stimulus cash. The list is $3.815 billion worth of projects, and there’s going to be something like $180 million in cash all told for roads, transit and ferries. Here’s the list pared down to just transit, there’s $1 billion worth of projects, and likely just $120 million or so in cash. So only a fraction of the projects will get any funding, and the big ticket items like North Link acceleration or the Central Streetcar are unlikely to get anything.
The rest of the $500 million or so in roads money is going to be decided by WSDOT, and here’s their list if you want to get depressed. WSDOT recently pushed the work of fully building the two-way HOV lanes on I-90 out to 2017-2019. The two-way HOV project is a prerequisite for building across I-90, and if the project is pushed off that far, East Link will either open late, or will not connect to Seattle when it first opens. An Eastside-only light rail line would have less than half the ridership of a rail line connected to Seattle, and the lower ridership would hurt any federal funding request for the project. WSDOT has asked for just $9 million for the HOV lane project, and is expecting Sound Transit’s stimulus request to cover the rest. I-90 two-way HOV lanes also increased the overall car-carrying capacity of I-90, and it’s shameful that WSDOT expects transit dollars to pay for most of the whole project.
I’ll post again as soon as I know anything about which projects have been short listed. I hope this post helps you understand a bit better how the stimulus projects are going to be award.
There is only one consensus for routing East Link through downtown Bellevue – almost everyone wants a tunnel. Unfortunately, few agree about which one. Only two of the many alternatives (PDF) came out of the public comment process with strong support – C3T (PDF), a bored tunnel running under 108th St and turning east on 12th, and C2T (PDF), a cut-and-cover tunnel running west on Main, up 106th, and east on 6th. Both tunnels surface as soon as they turn east. Also note that B3 and B7 are the big contenders for segment B, so the south edge of both C options look approximately the same.
