Yes, it must be true, it was in the paper. You know how everything you read in the “News” is true? Well, the Bellevue Reporter ran a story about how Sound Transit will be installing a light rail “Link” to the Eastside via the I-90 bridge. So it must be time to camp out and watch the construction.
It’s a done deal: last month the Bellevue City Council approved amendments to the Comprehensive Plan recommended in a June report by a council appointed Best Practices Committee. Sound Transit is expected to release a draft environmental impact statement by the end of the year. Expectations of Sound Transit include themes such as collaboration, public communications and involvement, and sensitivity to Bellevue’s natural and built environments.
Still awake? After reading that I fell asleep for a week.
Worse yet, that paragraph is a synopsis of a half page story and I don’t drink coffee any more so it was really hard to wade thru.
Anyway, the big plan is to lay tracks on the I-90 Floating Bridge and then find a route across Mercer Island into South Bellevue. At that point the rail will branch off and head to Newcastle and Redmond. It’ll take almost 2% of the traffic off the freeway so we might as well start it right now.
By 2050 when the first trains finally begin to work their way over the lake Mercer Island will probably have sunk so we need to consider an alternative.
I like some of the proposals for the other floating bridge. Folks on the Seattle side of the lake are not interested in seeing a bridge at all. They want a tunnel. Since Bellevue folks want a bridge one proposal has a bridge going half way and then submerging into a 10 lane tunnel with a light rail upper deck. The Montlake interchange would be under water. No annoying bridge to look at.
Rising up on the Seattle side would be about five different outlets. One goes to the underground parking garage at the UW Stadium. In addition to the bridge toll you get to pay again at the parking garage gate.
Another would come up just outside the Arboretum for all those people who want Broadmoor and Madison.
Another would pop up on I-5 near Greenlake for the northbound folks and another on I-5 near Mercer Street for southbound folks.
The fifth exit will be in downtown Seattle. Light rail would have five different places. The material removed would bury Maple Valley.
Now let’s talk about budget. Naw, let’s not.
The surface interchange proposal for the Montlake area is even worse. It wipes out the Museum of History and Industry. It’s been on the move for a number of years so we don’t expect it to be there if the interchange is built.
The State Highway people have been visiting with departments that already have bridge-tunnel experience, such as Virginia and Denmark. The Danes built one across the Baltic to Sweden a few years ago. I think it was an episode of “Modern Marvels” on the cement channel.
The issue is they’re responsible to the public so they have to take every proposal seriously. That means they have also reviewed a soaring suspension bridge across the lake. Because they have to. It gets rejected every time.
What we need to know is whether this whole idea has been evaluated by enough committees. Each eastside community has its own committee. So do Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, Metro Transit, and Amtrak. They have meetings with the commuter rail committee from the State DOT.
These meetings are always separate because we don’t really need everyone hearing the same information. Then we have ad-hoc committees formed by citizen groups that think they have better solutions. Mainly these are people didn’t get the meeting notices for the other committees.
The news media only report on a few of these because they hardly ever get invited. And we certainly don’t want reporters out there looking for information. They should stay indoors reviewing their “press packets.” It would be a real shame if the “public” was actually informed about all these meetings. We only want results.
Anyway, there are about a thousand people involved in trying to figure out how to get commuter rail on the eastside. None of the committees’ plans coordinate with each other. And just for fun there’s another transportation proposal coming up for public vote. It’s asking for funding to actually build something. They know it will take funding but they don’t know what the plan is yet. Whatever it is won’t agree with the committee plans, but it’ll be fun to watch. I just hope we get some really enormous retaining walls. They have some great ones on Coal Creek Parkway.
Al
No comments:
Post a Comment