Water quality in Lake Boren has been stable over the past decade, according to the Newcastle News. Yea! Glen, the Lake Boren Carp, has been doing an excellent job.
A few neighbors are complaining that the city is using the lake as a catch basin. OK, how is the city supposed to keep water from running downhill? This will be interesting.
The issue is that sometimes in winter rains the lake turns brown. Glen says a nice mud bath once in awhile is good for the skin. Nobody is interested in testing the lake during winter rains. The tests are only done when the water is clean and clear in summer.
Meanwhile the City Council, ignoring the whiney Lake Boren Neighbors, has quietly updated the zoning code to allow a new stand-alone King County Library branch to be built.
Previously the requirements were that the building includes a city hall, car wash, deli, scrap yard, and 80 low income apartments. And no parking because we want people to use the strange new “Transit Center” being built right in front of the site.
On an inspection tour last Sunday I was trying to see how Sound Transit was going to get busses out of the traffic lanes to pick up passengers. From the plans on the internet (Newcastle web page link) and visual inspection I don’t think the street is any wider. The sidewalks and planting strips are wider but the street looks about the same.
This interim temporary Transit Center could take up the slack until they get around to building the new 21st Century multi mode Transportation Station on the shores of Lake Boren. Apparently one of the holdups is the question of water quality in the lake. Just call it “Lake Mocha Mucho Grande” on those rare occasions when it turns brown.
But it shouldn’t matter because commuters can walk to the new library and get a good book. Maybe a book on hydraulic engineering. Or city planning.
The SR 520 Floating Bridge is in very real danger of sinking sometime before the year 2000. We really need to replace it. It’s urgent. 2030 seems about right.
However, the State Highway Tong (WAHSDOT) may have to build it in Tacoma. That’s because nobody on either side of Lake Washington can agree on anything relative to the new configuration. Some want six lanes, some only four, many want no bridge at all, and some want a double deck tunnel with entry and exit ports at special locations, such as Husky Stadium.
One of the candidates for King County Executive has said that the East Link Light Rail should be built into the SR 520 plan. Her point is that designing the bridge with light rail and roadway and then constructing it that way would be much better than reconfiguration of the existing I-90 floating bridge. The current plan is to run the light rail on the Reversible HOV lanes of the I-90 Bridge.
There are lots of arguments from lots of folks about this. Commuters need to be able to get to work. The favorite mode right now is to get in the Prius and drive by yourself. Transit planners think that’s kind of annoying. They prefer you stand in the rain and wait for a bus.
WASHDOT is also annoyed because Prius drivers pay a lot less gas tax. That’s a primary source of road construction money. We’re going to get tolls everywhere. That’s another subject, so we’ll drop that for today.
Another issue is that millions of people living in Seattle actually work in Bellevue and Redmond. People living in these two cities work in Seattle. So there’s a lot of waving as these two masses of commuters very slowly cross over the floating bridges.
A characteristic of the area is that we live on one city and work in another. So all our freeways are crowded in both directions. Then guess what happens? Management announces that the whole organization is moving to yet another city on the other side of another body of water and thousands of folks have to teach their Prius a new route. What’s the plural of Prius?
The rail transit planning solution is to eliminate the I-90 Reversible HOV lanes by installing light rail on them. And this causes a lot of angst. As we know from the past it takes a massive road closure to make any changes to existing roads. People are worried that construction of the rails will block a lot more than the HOV lanes. And even if they don’t use the bridge right now the manager could make that announcement at any time.
From that point of view construction of a simple library in Newcastle seems like it should be pretty easy. But that might require demolition of the brand new wider sidewalk and closures on Newcastle Way. And more truck loads of dirt to and from Maple Valley.
By the way: a message to the blog police – this is not a political lobbying blog. So don’t taze me bro!
Al
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