Bellevue = Microsoft Office 2008:
Microsoft’s prosperity is enabling lots of new office construction in downtown Bellevue. There are hundreds of tech and financial tenants grabbing large chunks of office space.
The workforce in Bellevue is growing. Traffic is growing even faster. I-90, 520, and I-405 get backed up in every direction during rush hour. That lasts from around 3 am until a couple hours after midnight.
Bellevue is only a part of the growth of employment on the east side of Lake Washington. Redmond is turning into Windowsville. Yahoo! Sorry, just had to say that. Even Newcastle added a job last week. McDonalds hired an extra burger flipper.
Of course everyone who works in Seattle lives on the east side and everyone who works on the east side lives in Seattle. That means the Lake Washington bridges are full all the time. The virtual workplace is in its infancy so a great many people still trudge in and spend eight to ten hours drinking institutional grade coffee while pretending to be useful. Anyway, that’s what I used to do, so I assume that’s how everyone does it.
Christine says we need to replace the SR 520 floating bridge before it sinks. We have plans to do that and a pile of money to get it started. But wait, this is Seattle so nothing is easy. Even the prospect of hundreds of commuters sinking in the icy cold waters of Lake Washington during a minor earthquake won’t budge these people.
People on the east side are insisting they want a six lane bridge with provisions for future high capacity transit. That could mean exclusive bus lanes or light rail. “Nothing less than that could possibly work.” West side people say if it includes any more than six lanes it will spoil their view. Of what? Bellevue? Sheesh.
At issue are the pontoons. If they have no plans for growth they can use small pontoons. If they plan for growth the pontoons need to be bigger. Or they have to provide a way to add more pontoons later. The reason that’s hard is they have to be very careful about the anchor cables. But we aren’t here to explain how a floating bridge is designed.
And the environ-mentals are against it. Against what? Anything that might help people get where they’re going is what. “We’d rather have you sit in your idling cars for hours on end.”
The University of Washington Athletic Department wants their own off ramp because they think they can trick the state into building a parking garage as mitigation. So they’re fighting that battle. It’s all about football.
People who live near the UW Stadium are against it. “We’d prefer a bridge several miles away from here and we’re willing to fight for it.”
Microsoft has its own lobbyists in the battle because they think everyone living in Seattle will eventually work for them. They want an eight lane bridge and transit line from everywhere to Redmond, but they don’t want to pay for it.
And Bellevue just wants to be in charge. So they’ve enlisted Kirkland, Redmond, and several other cities and civic groups but they say it’s a team. A team whose coach is the Bellevue Square Developer.
The point is delays and stalls year after year only have two results: the cost goes up and the inevitable disaster looms ever closer. We can’t predict earthquakes or windstorms but we do know that either one could sink the 520 bridge. So you’d think everyone would get busy and get the work started, right?
Nope, the same people who confused the caucus/primary process are dragging their feet on this bridge. “We need to talk it to death” is pretty much what they say.
Here’s my suggestion: Sell the problem to Dubai. We make it contingent on them building a bridge that can carry all the traffic by 2010. $10 billion seems like a good price for them to pay. If they don’t finish on time we get a $10 million dollar monthly rebate until it finally opens. If they want to charge tolls well, that’s fine, just so long as we get a new bridge by 2010. There may be a flaw but I can’t imagine it’s as bad as waiting for the old bridge to sink.
Al
See Blog at: http://lbrtr.blogspot.com/
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