Bellevue Light Rail/East Link thread

[BellevueBoy]

Let's start a new thread to keep all the topics regarding Sound Transit's East Link Light Rail line.

[BellevueBoy]

I'll start things off with this article about the epic fail that would be a 405 station that Kemper's drones are proposing:
http://www.publicola.net/2010/02/05/...-data-edition/

[rathersmart]

please build it faster than central link!

[BellevueGuy]

Light-rail 'vision' elevated track would run along I-405
Rookie Bellevue City Councilman Kevin Wallace is proposing an elevated light-rail track along Interstate 405 rather than a tunnel or surface track into downtown Bellevue.

Trains on downtown Bellevue streets would delay cars. A tunnel costs more and requires ripping up streets during construction.

Rookie Bellevue City Councilman Kevin Wallace believes he can solve both problems.

Wallace proposes the "Vision Line," an elevated track that would run alongside Interstate 405, with a stop not in the heart of downtown but on its east fringe, near Meydenbauer Center.

But the council's first choice is a tunnel, something it officially endorsed last year, Mayor Don Davidson said. The underground option would run through the epicenter of downtown, stopping at Bellevue's bus center before the tracks elevate toward the hospital district, east of the freeway. Other options include surface routes that turn from Main Street north into the office district.

"The interest in the Vision Line is more of a fallback, if it [a tunnel] doesn't work out," said Bellevue Councilwoman Claudia Balducci, newly appointed to the Sound Transit governing board.

It's not a fallback for Wallace, who joined the council after its endorsement of a tunnel.

"From my perspective, the goal is to provide good light-rail service, but in a way that protects Bellevue businesses from construction impacts, as well as its roads," Wallace said from his office near the freeway.

Wallace, 38, is the son of longtime Bellevue businessman Robert Wallace, who owns an office near the proposed I-405 station, as well as property in Bellevue, Seattle and other cities. The councilman is president of Wallace Properties, the family business, which owns property where the proposed trackway entering the station would sit.

Sound Transit and Bellevue leaders will meet Thursday to discuss light-rail route issues. Voters in 2008 approved the $2.8 billion route from Seattle's International District to Mercer Island, Bellevue and Overlake, as part of a three-line regional system. Service to Bellevue is scheduled to begin in 2020.

The upside to Wallace's Vision Line is an estimated savings of $430 million compared with a tunnel, says a study to be published Monday by Sound Transit.

The downside is a likely loss of ridership.

The freeway station would cut the predicted 2030 Eastside ridership by 2,500 — there would be 51,000 daily boardings with a tunnel, and only 48,500 with the Vision Line, the Sound Transit study says.

That's mostly because fewer workers and condos would be within a five- to 10-minute walk of the station.

A surface or tunnel route does the best job of reaching downtowners but would be a slightly longer ride for regional commuters, the study says.

A surface or tunnel option would collect and drop off light-rail riders next door to the Bellevue Transit Center. But a walk from the proposed Vision Line station to the west end of the transit center is four blocks, or about 460 steps. The distance is similar to the passageway from Sound Transit's SeaTac / Airport Station to the terminal, but it's up a hill that gains 60 feet of elevation.

So the station would need a moving walkway to downtown, Wallace said.

Councilman Grant Degginger said he's concerned that a thick, 70-foot-high trackway called for in the Vision Line plan would look like the Alaskan Way Viaduct. "Is that the look we want for the gateway to downtown?"

Changing his mind

When voters approved the $18 billion regional plan for light rail, cost estimates in Bellevue were based on elevated tracks through downtown. Bellevue officials immediately denounced that idea, but Sound Transit staff warned that a tunnel could require $500 million extra. Microsoft endorsed a cheaper surface route — to conserve money and improve the odds that construction will continue to Redmond.

Just last summer, Wallace was pro-tunnel, insisting money could be saved or found. Now he says: "The fact is Bellevue already has a $100 million deficit in the capital budget," so city funding for rail would drain money from roads and other public works. And the recession has eroded Sound Transit's sales-tax forecasts.

Equally important, he seeks to keep tracks and a tunnel entrance away from the residential Surrey Downs area south of downtown, which supported his campaign last fall.

Instead of a Main Street station that would uproot businesses next to Surrey Downs, he favors a second freeway station where Southeast Eighth Street meets I-405, with an expanded park-and-ride facility.

Wallace Properties owns office buildings and parking lots in the Vision Line route. Because Sound Transit would condemn that area, he says, other alignments actually are better for the family business. Taxpayers would reimburse property owners, including the Wallaces, at market value, as determined by appraisals, negotiations or by the courts.
Looking in

Wallace says transit should promote or serve redevelopment. Some Seattleites raised the same point to justify the South Lake Union streetcar, to locate Rainier Valley light-rail stops, and to propose shifting the future First Hill Streetcar east to 12th Avenue in central Seattle.

In Bellevue's case, the Auto Row just east of I-405 has been designated for mixed-use retail and dense housing. A footbridge across the freeway would reach those areas, he said.

This amounts to drifting a few blocks from Bellevue's proven transit market to chase a prospective transit market. Wallace replies the redevelopment is likely to come sooner than the trains do. Sound Transit's study did not include a footbridge over I-405, which would add cost. It likely wouldn't affect the ridership stats much because the east-of-405 users would gravitate to the Hospital Station anyway, said East Link project director Don Billen.

Several bus riders interviewed at the transit center Friday were unaware of the political debate over a four-block difference.

"They're going to bring light rail here? Cool!" said Qin Xiaochuan, awaiting the 550 bus to Seattle. "Walking is very healthy, as long as it doesn't take half an hour or more."

Some people laughed at questions about where they'd prefer a station that's a full decade away.

Next to freeway

Wallace's concept has taken a pounding in pro-transit blogs. Dan Bertolet at Publicola.net argues that a freeway station is unwise because I-405 prevents development and access from the east.

Balducci says the new Sound Transit study reinforced to her that to reach the most downtown employees, "it's far better for a station next to the transit center, than for a station along I-405."

Bellevue Square developer Kemper Freeman, a longtime rail opponent, supports Wallace's concept. Freeman is part of a group suing to block Sound Transit from putting trains on I-90. Bruce Nurse, a vice president of Kemper Development, said that nonetheless, the firm realizes voters backed light rail. So Freeman now is looking to the Vision Line as a way to avoid tracks or construction that would block downtown roads and businesses.

Sound Transit's study says that Bellevue traffic will be so congested anyway by 2030 that, if traffic signals are timed for trains, a surface line would slow east-west travel by less than one minute.

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I like this Times piece... very detailed... given how much I dislike Wallace, I think it's great that some of the conflict of interest are raised by the article to the general public.

I especially like how Wallace reasoned his properties will be "condemned" by the new line he proposes lol.

[CrazyAboutCities]

I hope they will build it though downtown Bellevue not along I-405. I fail to see how it will boost the ridership if they built station next to I-405 even Bellevue Square, The Bravern, and numerous of high rises that hold thousands of workers and residents are far away from them. Downtown Bellevue city blocks are around three times big than downtown Seattle city block. I don't think many people are willing to walk that far.

[alexjonlin]

I hope Bellevue will suck it up and pay the $185m needed for the tunnel! In the long-term we'll need the capacity for extra lines (405, 520, etc) and in the short-term, the couple minutes time savings does count, as does the lack of any possibility of accidents.

[8ball]

It's clear Bellevue (aka Kemper) doesn't want light rail. I think West Seattle should get it first. Maybe when Eastside residents get sick of sitting on I90/520 in traffic they'll vote in a decent city council.

The story of the Freeman's and how they got all that land in Bellevue is an eye opener if you haven't heard it.

http://eatthestate.org/02-22/SelfMadeBigot.htm

That same year, Freeman began to take an interest in Japanese- American relations; i.e., Americans should understand that Japanese "yellow" clashed with red, white, and blue. Until his death in 1955, Miller Freeman avidly pursued his anti-Japanese obsession, and his Eastside real estate business grew as a direct result.

Freeman owned several newspapers, including the Bellevue American and Town Crier, and used them as vehicles for his racist blather. "Japanese population and power in the western Unites States is increasing at a sure, accumulative rate," he once said, "which will inevitably give the white man his choice between subjugation and retreat." As the president of the Anti-Japanese League of Washington, and as a Washington state legislator, he led a campaign that culminated in the passage of the Alien Land Law of 1921, which forbade people of Japanese descent from owning land-- or even leasing it. Shortly thereafter, Freeman began buying up cheap land on the Eastside, formerly home to thousands of successful Japanese farmers. In 1925 he bought land in Medina; three years later he moved his family into a new mansion there.

After Pearl Harbor, Miller Freeman saw another opportunity to screw over Japanese Americans, and make a profit, too. He went to Washington, D.C, to urge the Tolan Committee to lock up people of Japanese descent. And he kept up his racist rantings in his newspapers, calling the Japanese an "insoluble race" bent on "infiltration."

With Japanese Americans tucked away in internment camps, Freeman was able to reap the full benefits of the new Mercer Island Floating Bridge (which he had lobbied to have built, and which opened in 1940). The Eastside, cleansed of its Asian-American population, was now safe for white businessmen, largely due to the efforts of Miller Freeman. His son, the first Kemper Freeman, built the original Bellevue Square, after convincing his father to buy a piece of land along 104th Avenue Northeast.

[BellevueBoy]

rendering of a surface option through downtown Bellevue

'

Here's the blog entry discussing the different options being studied
http://seattletransitblog.com/2010/0...ons-look-good/

[urbanlife78]

I have a feeling Bellevue is going to go with surface over tunnel...the cost difference is going to make the tunnel a hard sell...though I think a tunnel would be better in the long run because they wouldnt be adding to the street traffic, but I can see trains running on the street working for Bellevue.

[Backstrom]

Originally Posted by 8ball

It's clear Bellevue (aka Kemper) doesn't want light rail. I think West Seattle should get it first. Maybe when Eastside residents get sick of sitting on I90/520 in traffic they'll vote in a decent city council.

The story of the Freeman's and how they got all that land in Bellevue is an eye opener if you haven't heard it.

http://eatthestate.org/02-22/SelfMadeBigot.htm

Bellevue doesn't want light rail? The numbers say so otherwise. More than 53% of voters in its two primary legislative districts, 41st and 48th, approved ST2. It would be poor taste to assume that all Bellevueites are ideologues like Kemper. That being said, I can tell you that the vast majority of Bellevue residents are against the Vision Line, let alone not even being aware of the debate.

And to say that we can build West Seattle light rail in lieu of East Link is just incorrect. Not only does that route not have a definitive plan yet, but funding for ST2 can only go towards ST2 projects. Eastside taxpayers only pay for East Link.

And lastly, the council is much more than about light rail, so to say that the election was a mandate on rail is simply wrong.

[CrazyAboutCities]

This rendering of surface option gave me better picture. I actually like it and not bad as I thought. Downtown Portland has similar system and it works very well for Portland. I hope it will work for downtown Bellevue too if we have to go with surface option.

[CityView Jim]

With the surface option, I can see the length of 108th (at least 4th to 8th) being converted to transit only (similar to 3rd in Seattle). I really dont think this would be the suicide someone mentioned. Seattle seems to manage. And to be honest, I never really noticed it to be nearly as congested as the cross streets of 4th and 8th. 8th wouldn't really be affected as it appears the Link line would depart by way of 6th before heading NE.

Then again, a little congestion is good for LINK. That's why it is being built!

[8ball]

Originally Posted by Backstrom

Bellevue doesn't want light rail? The numbers say so otherwise. More than 53% of voters in its two primary legislative districts, 41st and 48th, approved ST2. It would be poor taste to assume that all Bellevueites are ideologues like Kemper. That being said, I can tell you that the vast majority of Bellevue residents are against the Vision Line, let alone not even being aware of the debate.

My post was slightly tongue in cheek. However, are there any other cities in WA like Bellevue where developers like Kemper have sued to try and stop light rail?

[BellevueBoy]

Here's a brief interview with council member Kevin Wallace, the man behind the "Vision Line" proposal
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...yndication=rss

[CrazyAboutCities]

Interesting interview... I still don't think his vision will ever work well for Bellevue at all.

[RMacherat]

A crazy-looking thing like that for Bellevue? Our famous "ideologue" seems to be the only person left who still remembers Bellevue was built for the automobile, like it or not. You can park fifty busses in the transit mall and have trains picking off stray pedetrians wandering on the tracks if you want, but no one is going to ride the thing until they make the old man tear down his garages. Oh, and when the Lexus and and Park Place dealerships are run out of town.

Hyperbole aside, underground is the only way, and not until they can afford it. Which will probably be about the same time they actually need it.

[mhays]

Surface seems to be an ok back-up plan. Not quite as fast, a little bit in the way, but no serious flaws.

[rathersmart]

Why don't they start building on this side and then connect it with the westside so that service can start between Redmond and Bellevue?

[BellevueGuy]

Originally Posted by rathersmart

Why don't they start building on this side and then connect it with the westside so that service can start between Redmond and Bellevue?

I actually don't hate the surface conceptual rendering. Love the new transit center.

I do see the problem with "scaling up" when the Bellevue population grows... for example this design will not serve Seattle downtown well. But given how slowly population grows in US which is further inhibited by the high cost of Bellevue, this one might just be a keeper.

[BellevueGuy]

Originally Posted by 8ball

The story of the Freeman's and how they got all that land in Bellevue is an eye opener if you haven't heard it.

http://eatthestate.org/02-22/SelfMadeBigot.htm

I think majority of the people in Bellevue (myself included) appreciated what Freeman has done to Bellevue. Without his vision (saved Lincoln Square while it's foreclosed) and money and his mall, Bellevue is likely just another suburb.

Pro-transit guys like me think he is rather "stuck in the past" in his diligent opposition of public transit, but as Backstrom pointed out, transit is not the only mandate of a good city government (and of a good wealthy powerful Bellevue citizen).

For example, Freeman donated a piece of land worthy tens of millions and donated some millions more dollars for the Performing Arts Center Eastside and I think that's quite generous.