Sound Transit insists on going ahead with the new East Link light rail route. We just don’t know where it’s going yet.
Bellevue City Council sent in a proposed preferred route and now the Sound Transit Capital Committee has another proposed route. It’s called B2M. These routes have code names. Not real sure what they stand for. It’s alphabet soup.
B2M is slightly different from B3M because it stays on 112th rather than looping around the Bellevue Club. Hence you can subtract the Bellevue Club and end up with a 2 instead of a 3. New Math. That one little number is expected to save $50 to $100 million. Wow, that’s some little difference.
Part of the savings comes from not having to run the line through the Red Lion. Dang, that would have been something to see. Get a room at the Red Lion and your USA Today would be delivered outside your door by light rail. These people take the fun out of staying at a motel.
There are other numbers as well. C9T includes a tunnel under 110th Ave which is what the Bellevue City Council wants. Then there’s the C11A alternative that runs on the surface of 108th Ave. I like my R7Al proposal that requires a cable stay bridge over I-405 at the I-90 interchange. We need a soaring bridge icon to distract people from the demolition of the ancient Bellevue Trestle.
In the mean time I-90 is getting some changes in preparation for light rail. They recently added an HOV left lane from Bellevue to the middle of Mercer Island. This is to ease the sting of the eventual loss of the express lanes. Next they’ll add an HOV lane east bound from Mercer Island to Bellevue.
They expect this to wrap up in 2012 and people will have to get used to it. In 2014 they begin the light rail line installation on the Express lanes. Unless the lawsuit puts a stop to it. I haven’t heard much about that one lately. Was it thrown out? Don’t know. If you recall the suit claimed you can’t put light rail on a highway that was built with gas tax funds because the law says those funds can only be used for roads.
The next step in this long march to 2050 is to install those HOT lanes everywhere. That’s where you get a Good-To-Go pass and you can pay a toll to drive alone on the HOV lanes. Unless you’re hauling a car load of illegals then you don’t have to pay.
The Good-To-Go pass will work on any toll facility that’s part of the same network. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge and soon the SR 520 Bridge will be in that network. But I don’t know how far it extends. Can I use my pass in Chicago?
Chicago has the I-Pass and the EZPass. EZPass is mostly on the Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Mass, etc toll roads (some are called turnpikes or Thruways). There are also numerous bridges and toll roads from Maine to Virginia. Check it out: https://ezpassmaineturnpike.com/EZPass/info/facilities.jsp Will the Good-To-Go pass work on their system? Will EZPass work here? These are examples of questions.
Will my fake pass work anywhere? Now that the world is controlled by photo surveillance I imagine any cheating like that would result in a costly fine. This makes my fake pass a collectors’ item. Now I can charge more. Hooray!
Well we still don’t know what route light rail will take in downtown Bellevue. After they finally realize they can’t use I-90 and switch all the effort to SR 520 we’re looking at a line being built in about 40 years. By that time everyone will be driving electric cars and they’ll be controlled digitally. After you leave your house and pick up the carpool you pull out on the ramp and let go of the steering wheel. You take control again when you reach the off ramp distribution point at your destination. Drop off your carpool riders and deflate the car and fold it into your briefcase.
Who needs public transit? Why waste all that steel making old fashion rails? Get those smelly old busses into museums and give us our inflatable electric cars.
Al
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