The Bellevue City Council met with the Sound Transit Board to express views on the downtown part of the Bellevue route. There are several opposing viewpoints.
One says they need to go underground and build a cave station right under the center of the business core. Then people can ride the coal gondolas into Bellevue and take an elevator up to street level. They will be issued one of those coal miner hard hats with the light on it. It’ll be easy; just get off and check the canary (if it’s flat on its back in the bottom of the cage don’t breath) and head for the surface.
Another says they should keep the rails above ground. Run them along streets and add several fancy stations with some of that odd “artwork” we see along Martin Luther King Way in Seattle. However opponents are fearful it will get in the way of traffic. Or something like that.
Then we have the folks who think they should avoid downtown Bellevue. A tunnel is too expensive, street rail is too disruptive, and we don’t want any Seattle people having easy access to our ritzy shopping center. By the way that last one is why I always try to look shabby when I go shopping. “Always annoy snobs” is my motto.
Never mind. It’ll never be allowed to get that far. First we have the law suit claiming it must be illegal to use I-90 for rail since it was allegedly built with gas tax funds. In our state you can’t use gas tax funds for anything but roads.
Also, there’s the big hassle over the segment from I-90 to the south edge of downtown. Surrey Downs and condo residents don’t want the rail near their homes. So an alternative plan says they shoot a diagonal line across the Bellefields Wetland. Wow, talk about waking up a dozen or so sleeping dragons. There is some doubt that will ever get approved due to all the environmental agencies and organizations.
This also means it would be hard to plan either a tunnel or a street route because they don’t yet know where the connecting line would end up. We also have only conceptual artsy schemes for what happens once the line heads east toward Redmond. The Overlake area has been designated as more or less “Urban Village” type of development. I hope they get around to telling the folks who already occupy that area.
The Urban Village concept (in simple terms) calls for residential, retail, and professional office all packed into low rise buildings. One main feature is to discourage cars. They want people to walk or use transit. The dream is the people who work there also live nearby and shop across the street. The problem is that to survive retail businesses need a lot more customers than just the people who live upstairs. That’s why they want some light rail stations in the midst of it. Get all those carless Seattle people shopping in the wilds of Bellevue.
OK, at this point we don’t know if the rail will be allowed to use the I-90 bridge across Lake Washington. We don’t know if there will be an acceptable route from I-90 to downtown Bellevue. We don’t know the mode or route through downtown Bellevue. We don’t know how it will leave the core and cross I-405 into the Urban Village dreamscape. So I’d say the plans are coming along just fine and dandy.
Construction begins in 2011. In Renton, probably.
Al
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