Hotel Basements with Light Rail

Light Rail will eventually come to Bellevue. We just don’t know where yet. But it keeps getting narrowed down.


The great and powerful of Bellevue’s business leaders (OK mostly just the one guy) filed a suit to try and stop the light rail from using the I-90 Express Lanes. That failed. When they built the highway they had that as part of a contingency plan. Using that plan Sound Transit purchased the express lanes from WSDOT during the Truman administration. So when the judge woke up during final arguments there was a great yawn. The ruling handed down went something like this: “Sound Transit already owns those lanes so there’s no issue.”

We here at Lake Boren Rapid Transit HQ applaud this ruling. But why couldn’t we get it months ago instead of going through all the motions? By the way, we applaud the ruling because it keeps the entertainment going.

Also months ago (it’s like watching a glacier) the Bellevue City Council hired a consultant to evaluate alternate routes. They don’t agree with the route Sound Transit has chosen but they’re confused about the costs and benefits of the alternatives. So “spend more money” is standard answer.

Several other powerful business leaders sent a letter to the Bellevue City Council telling them to get over their bickering and work with Sound Transit. Their point is it’s important to get the project going and all these delays just add cost and put off eventual benefits.

Sound Transit wants to hang a left off I-90 and head into Bellevue via Bellevue Way and 112th to Main Street. At Main they dive underground. Well it’s not really a dive so much as digging into the hillside. Bellevue agrees with the tunnel part, although there’s no boring money.

The problem is Bellevue doesn’t like giving up street space. The neighbors are complaining about the noise. They want to use the old BNSF corridor and somehow cut across Mercer Slough Nature Park. You need to get Google Maps to show this. MSNP (I can do it too) is a wetland full of peat and other waterlogged ground. It’s against the rules of nature to build railroads in places like this. BNSF is between 118th and I-405.

No matter which alternative gets chosen some folks will be evicted. Others will have commuter rail close to home. They assume neighbors will naturally use the light rail if it’s in the front yard. That allows them to claim 45,000 riders a day. I never learned this kind of math in school. These people must have gone to some management school where facts are what you say they are.

Ouch, that seemed a little grouchy. Let me see, where is this leading? Oh, yeah, once they’ve torn down a bunch of peoples’ houses and crossed over a protected wetland they get near Main Street. If the line is running up 112th Avenue NE they make a sharp turn and go underground right there at Main Street. However, if it’s meandering around in the Mercer Slough Nature Park there are a few things in the way before it gets there. Things like the Red Lion and Sheraton Hotels. These are large outfits.

My vision is that they just run the trains through the lobbies. There’s your riders right there. Travelers would put on a nice pin striped hotel terry robe and grab toast and coffee in the lobby café and then step on the train for a ride to the business meeting. No need for all that formal stuff, like getting dressed and waiting outside for the limo.

The study shows the numbers are not too different if you just use percentage. A little more cost here, a few more displaced citizens there, about the same to build in the peat bog as on a busy street. The main issue is the folks at Red Lion and Sheraton might get annoyed. But that’s what consultants are for. We’ll just add a footnote that says something about hotels more than 20 years old are pretty much ready for destruction anyway. Who knows, they’re the experts? Why should I solve all the problems?

Speaking of solving problems, I think the best way to deal with it is to just stay on the freeways. It’s already noisy there. Looking at the map again you can see that the line on I-90 gets right close to I-405. Just make the turn and head north on I-405. That eliminates all the noise issues along Bellevue Way and the condos along 118th which is the other noise sensitive area.

There’s a section of I-405 where the north and south lanes get separated. Use that as the tunnel entrance. Dive underground and head toward Main Street and just connect to the unfunded downtown tunnel. The only thing above ground would be parking garages.

You could have “hotel” stations where visitors in the Sheraton and Red Lion could just hop an elevator and drop down to the light rail. That would make Bellevue seem more like a big city.  Fancy underground hotel stations, each with its own Starbuck's.  But the point is we get this noisy thing below ground and that makes everyone happy. Let’s see, is there anyone out there that might get upset over this? Yeah, only those 45,000 daily riders and maybe a few taxpayers when they find out they have to pay for it. I don’t see a down side.

Al

Washing Up in the Sink

Well I’ve been suffering from writer’s cramp. Basically all my subjects are in stagnation. SR 520 Floating Bridge: tolling delayed but nothing else going on; Alaska Way Viaduct: Stupid mayor still trying to obstruct but neither side actually doing anything; Light Rail in Bellevue: City Council still squabbling and nobody has changed sides; Newcastle Library: still digging the foundation, nothing above ground yet.


And that’s about how most everything is going right now. One thing that’s changed is the price of gas: that $4 gas is about the best running stuff yet; I can’t wait to get below a quarter tank again so I can get me some more of that sweet, smooth runnin’ gas.

Therefore the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report will attempt to give advice. The benefit of giving advice in a blog is that you don’t have to listen to anyone who doesn’t want advice.

Here’s my advice: get a riding mower – those things are so cool. You don’t need a lawn, just go drive it around the local park. Wait, no, that’s not it. The advice is “get a new bathroom sink.” But you need to follow these steps to maximize the fun:

First order a sink on the internet. Its best if the sink is not the right one for your bathroom. Find a cheap sink and order it.

Second get a really expensive faucet set since the current set is not compatible with your cheap new sink. This is a crucial step. If you don’t do these first two the rest is not much of an adventure.

Third take out the old sink and make sure it leaves the premises – recycle, Goodwill, dump, whatever. Just make sure you can’t use it again.

Forth you discover the random sink you bought on the internet won’t fit the hole where the old sink was. Act annoyed for several hours.

These next steps may not have to be in any particular order since you’ve already made it past the point of no return.

Contemplate the idea of rebuilding the bathroom countertop to fit the new sink. This is because the expensive faucet set you bought has passed the 30 day return period so now you really have to use it.

Discard the idea of rebuilding the countertop. This is just wise.

Sleep on it and use the other bathroom. You do have more than one, right? If not why did you mess up your one bathroom? Call a professional.

OK, now you’ve slept on it and the result is that precious faucet set is your biggest investment in the sink project and it’s pretty critical that you use it. So how do we do that with the lowest cost? That’s now the pacing item, as we used to say at work.

Brilliant idea at 3:00 am! Buy a new cheap sink that fits both the existing countertop hole and the new platinum faucet set. What a great idea! The key here is that a new sink is still a fraction the cost of that faucet set so this plan is the lowest cost alternative. And it achieves the original goal of getting a new bathroom sink.

The next steps involve a lot of labor and cussing. We’ve all done this so I won’t bore you. The result is a great new sink with a really snazzy faucet set and the same old countertop that really looks cool with the new sink. What a great job. It only cost double the original plan not counting that expensive faucet set (that we won’t mention the cost of).

Well, another job well done. Until somebody reminds me there’s a perfectly good new sink sitting in the guest bedroom closet. Oh, right, now we have an extra sink. How does one deal with that?

Here’s an idea: we have a summer place (rich people have these too, but we’re only “acting” rich; it’s not really ours). Wow this saga is not over. What great news. I’m still under 700 words and I’m aiming for 1000.

A long time ago the actual summer place owners added a bathroom. As a gesture of goodwill (that word again) we contributed a sink. Completely different type. It has legs and a way to hook it to the wall so it didn’t need a countertop. Well, before it got to the summer place somebody dropped it and it broke. No problem, that’s what they invented epoxy for. By the time I saw the sink again it was ready to be installed but had some really ugly epoxy seems. Imagine my surprise!

Well, amazingly it still holds water and the installation went according to the form book, as Bertie Wooster used to say. So we’ve had a broken bathroom sink in that summer place for a quarter century. Brilliant idea: since we now have an extra sink at home why not replace the epoxy laden sink?

But it requires a countertop. It’s not the kind you hook to a wall and support on a couple of legs. No problem! I just get a chunk of laminate and a little plywood and build a countertop. I can do that standing on my head, as Bertie Wooster also used to say. Bertie had a lot of cool sayings.

All I need to do is visit the local Ace and pick up a few things and poof we have a new sink in the summer place. How hard can that be?

Well, it turns out that here in the glittering Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Area you can’t get a small sink top size laminate (some of us call it Formica). It comes eight feet long. What am I going to do with the other six feet of For, (sorry) laminate? Maybe I can… no that makes a small project into a major project probably consuming my whole summer. I’m a busy man; I’m retired so I don’t have a lot of free time like when I was working.

In addition we have a heater under the sink because there’s no central heating. We need to make sure the countertop is fireproof. This means I can’t just slap a laminate on plywood. More complication and costs.

After discovering all this and before actually buying any materials I decided to see if there was a faucet set that could fit somebody’s budget that would also match the wrong sink I bought several months ago. Here’s the show stopper – nothing that fits that sink can be had for less than the cost of a brick of gold. Wait, that’s how we got into this fix.

Here’s our decision: (This is why everyone respects us from coast to coast and border to border.) We decided that the whole project would benefit from abandonment. Give the damn sink to the Goodwill and quit trying to fit that cheap-ass sink into places that cost an arm and a leg! The sink was cheap. Getting it installed is the cost generator. So that’s the advice from the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report: If at first you run into a roadblock don’t defy the Revenuers just quit the moonshine business and do something more fun.

Al

Sound Transit Off Leash

Welcome to Lake Boren Park and Rapid Transit (Do Not Enter) 

Here in lala land, better known as the Newcastle/Bellevue area, we have a strict policy against dogs without leashes. Nominally the leash is also attached to a person. This is optional.

In order to alleviate this tethered person/dog scenario some of our parks have what’re known as “off leash” areas. Have you seen one of these? It’s interesting to see how some of these person/dog relationships are still in the stage where leadership is in question.

Newcastle has this wonderful grass covered area on the shore of Lake Boren called Lake Boren Park. Many people visit the park with a dog and a tennis ball throwing stick. The dogs are unleashed and spend quality time training their owners to throw tennis balls. There are little parking meter like stands where a person can get a little plastic bag. Dog owners know what to do with the little plastic bag.

The city council has this dream of installing an actual official “off leash” area in a Newcastle park. They finally made a decision about which park will get it. The newspaper claims they gave a “green light” to a dog park. How did they get “green light” when we’re talking about dogs and leashes? Oh, sorry, they just meant the council finally made a decision. Well I guess if you really need to save ink “green light” has fewer letters than “finally made a decision.”

There is also a group of Newcastle citizens called “Folks Loving (Etcetera) the Canine Heart” or something like that. Their nickname is F.L.E.T.C.H. They’re local vocal advocates for the off leash area. Apparently it costs about $25,000 to set up an “off leash” area. The Fletchers say they have no intention of contributing any funds to the project. Their only purpose is to make it clear they want an area where they can chase Fido with a little plastic bag without being arrested for a leash violation. For free.

Now the City Council is looking for funding. The approved (green light) plan is to put it in the undeveloped sports park down on Southeast 95th Way. Checking a map we discover its south of the May Creek Bridge. That’s right next to Renton. Renton has its own off leash area. It’s called “Renton.” So it should fit right in.

Meanwhile people in Newcastle will continue to use Lake Boren Park pretty much without concern since the police department is busy. Too much real crime, such as “failure to use a little plastic bag” to watch Fletchers learn how to throw tennis balls to loose dogs.

Meanwhile Bellevue Fletcher groups have been visiting the Bellevue City Council with a never ending stream of route proposals for light rail. The latest one involves placing the tracks in residential front yards along the west side of the street. In order to do that they would have to buy the properties. The people have stated they want to sell out. They want to live in Newcastle where light rail is at least 100 years away. And the off leash area is in Renton.

The process for advancing proposals to cities is to form some kind of Fletcher group that has a fun but official sounding name. The group has a number of meetings to formulate the proposal. I assume the membership changes rapidly until they agree on something. The key person who came up with the idea remains leader of the group and becomes the spokesperson at the council meeting. The others are the cheering squad.

The west side front yard proposal came from a Fletcher who has an interest in the businesses along the east side of the street. Across the street in those residential front yards is a much better placement. They apparently went door to door getting each owner to agree that they’d like to sell out and move. That must have been interesting. I wonder if it involved little plastic bags.

I’m going to form a group of Fletchers and propose the Bellevue route be relocated to Renton. They just split off Martin Luther King Jr. Way at the I-5 overpass on and head over the hill into Renton. Then run up from Renton along the old BNSF line to I-90. (Refer to your map to see how smart this is.) From there it’s up to which group of Fletchers Sound Transit and Bellevue decide has the best route through Bellevue. Have you seen the benefit of my idea? No need to mess with I-90.

Did you know that if you stand on the west end of I-90 in Seattle and close your eyes you can almost see all the way to Boston? That’s because standing on I-90 with your eyes closed is pretty much the last thing you’ll ever do. Some Fletcher will run over you.

Al

Sound Transit Testing Link Train in Lake Boren

The Future of High Speed Travel

Most of us earth bound humans travel someplace during our lives. There are many ways to do that. Most of us have some kind of personal vehicle or a bus pass for nearby destinations. If it’s a long way off we generally fly. There are also boats, trains, cannons (if you belong to the circus), motorcycles, bicycles, Segways, and Areocars, to name a few.


Now let’s look into the future. Time Magazine (Feb 21, 2011) has a story about a group of people who developed a theory they call “Singularity.” The definition is “the moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound; it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” Basically the time when computers are smarter than us.

I think its Moore’s Law that says the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on a circuit board doubles every two years. As we develop faster and faster processors and smaller memory chips the pace of change is also getting faster.

What the singularity guys are saying is that at some point not too far away (they mention 2045) computing power will surpass that of all human brains. At my house that was around 1994. OK, my wife is still much smarter than computers, but not me.

Another near magical development in the fabric of development (see, I told you I wasn’t very smart) is telecommuting. Sort of a high tech way to phone it in. This also is evolving. As internet speeds increase and more data can travel over the networks we can get more and more realistic as a fake presence. Right now we can sit in front of a computer in any location (with fast broadband) and talk to another person as if you’re in the same room. That person’s image is on your screen and your image is on their screen. You both speak in normal tones and you may forget you’re 3000 miles apart.

Companies are making portable robots whose function is to go to meetings for you. One is from a company called vgo Communications. It has a camera and a monitor on top and wheels, battery, and other works on the floor. It can move around. If you and another person each have one of those you just sit in front of it and have a discussion. Try to comb that mop before you make the connection.

Since it wheels around it can attend meetings almost like a person. Better, actually, because it’ll be on time. It can roll down the hall to another room, ride the elevator, take a lunch break, or several can gather in the broom closet and plot against the humans.

The name for this modern meeting attendance is “telepresence.” The robot carries on in meetings just as if you are there in person. For added fun you can make a video of yourself looking interested and then just play it in a loop so the folks in the meeting can’t see you making funny faces. If the people in the meeting don’t want the person 3000 miles away to see a stupid pie chart they just throw a towel over the robot.

Telepresence technology is a substitute to travel. As I said there are several companies making telepresence devices. They’re working very hard to simulate actually being there. They have conference rooms that are duplicated in all the locations with people who work together. The room has a round table that’s actually only half a table. The other half is a segmented video screen. When the meeting is going on people at the tables in many locations have the visual illusion they are all at the same table.

OK, now combine this telepresence technology and its evolution with the idea if Singularity and what have you got? That’s right! Nobody goes anywhere. We all have a camera mounted on a harness that hovers a few feet in front of our faces and someplace below that we have a screen. Since everyone has this we can virtually visit anyone at any time. There may be a few issues with the concept. If computers are so smart let them work out the issues. Why should I waste energy thinking when pretty soon that can be done for me?

The next step is even more illogical: humans become robots. The theory is that as artificial intelligence and computing power reach that Singularity thing we humans won’t be any smarter or better looking than we are today. In fact some of us may even look a little older. But if you want to continue living beyond the capability of your human body you just merge with a robot. Your body is no longer the vessel that carries you around. That Segway you bought becomes obsolete because your new robot body is even cooler.

Besides robots don’t eat anything, don’t need air or water, and would have a programmable sleep mode. All kinds of benefits. Here’s one to think about: space travel. First you get a bunch of people who have major curiosity about space. You convince them it would be a good idea to merge with robots and abandon those bodies that take so much maintenance. Load the robot/humans on a space ship and tell them to have a good rest. A few hundred light years away they arrive at a different planet that’s still inhabited by dinosaurs.

Or maybe we’ve been visited by robot beings from another planet and don’t even know it. Maybe they reached the Singularity point millions of years ago and their whole population eventually merged with robots until there weren’t any live beings left. Then their super brains figured out that their planet was on its last legs and they lit out in all directions to find new places to live. Sound familiar? Anyone have Kryptonite?

They wouldn’t need to carry food, water, air, or anything else but an propulsion energy source. Maybe some of those robots landed here. Think about it. Maybe you have a better explanation for the pyramids. (Hint; they weren’t built by Hebrew slaves)

One of the more timely benefits of the evolving computing power and telepresence is a reduction in our need to make arduous journeys. Lots of us still want to go on vacations and visit relatives and have fun. That’s just fine, go and have a good time. But who wants to fly overnight to Chicago for a 7 AM business meeting and fly back to the office for a 1 PM meeting with some dweeb who doesn’t show up because he’s flying to Dallas for a meeting that you should also attend? Everyone gets a good night’s sleep and then connects via telepresence and takes care of business.

Who needs high speed rail when we can have light speed virtual images? Just think, in 1910 cities had a spider web of streetcar tracks. 100 years later we’re spending billions to replace those tracks that we spent so much tearing up. I think 100 years from now we’ll again be without rails in our cities. Write this in your calendar and check on it in 100 years. Your robot will be amazed that I was right.

Oh, and just in case: keep your electrical outlets covered.

Al

How do You Make Water Bright?

Are you like me? Do you like sewage? Neither do I. Well our close personal friends over at King County (Motto: “Send us your money, please”) are helping to fix the problem. Apparently the problem they want to fix is too many of us flushing in the North King and South Snohomish county area. Please wait until 2012.


The fix is to construct a giant sewage treatment plant. Somebody decided “Brightwater” is a good name for it. “Brownwater” got fewer votes, along with “Dirtywater,” “Lifelesswater,” and “Smellywater.” The suggestions were many and the voting was lively. http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/wtd/Construction/North/Brightwater.aspx

Check the link if you think I’m kidding about the project. I have no idea how they really chose that name. Maybe they think once the water’s cleaned it’ll brighten up Puget Sound. Who knows?

Anyway, the project will be complete long before either the SR 520 Bridge replacement or the Alaska Way Viaduct replacement. That’s because this is a King County project and nobody messes with the King. Those other two are urgent and critical but then what’s more urgent than finally getting to flush?

Here’s the plan in a nutshell in case you don’t have time to read all the double talk on the web page. They take 114 acres that used to be auto wrecking yards and build a giant sewage treatment plant – a long way from Puget Sound. The actual plant only takes about 43 acres and the rest is PC area. Wetlands, habitats, trails, woods, etc. In other words don’t offend anyone. But it used to be auto wrecking yards so how much mitigation do we need?

Another large part of the project is what we call “tunnels.” People don’t normally like their sewage in open canals and they don’t even like big pipes on the surface. So put that stuff underground in very secure pipes.

They hired this tunnel boring machine and hollowed out several miles of dirt. These are lined with concrete to keep dirt from falling back into the tunnel. See in this area we had glaciers many years ago that left large quantities of gravel and loose rock and only a little actual dirt. So don’t look for the material being removed from these tunnels to go into your gardens. Maybe somebody in Maple Valley will wash the rocks and sell them for landscaping. Hang on a sec, I want to make a quick phone call.

OK, I’m back now. No, I can’t make a fortune washing rocks in Maple Valley.

Inside the tunnels they’re building pipelines that will bring the bad water into the plant and then send the bright water out to Puget Sound. Two way tunnels, what a great idea. Basically what they do is de-color the water so the fish won’t be offended. Maybe there’s more to it than that. It’s not my job to understand what goes on in those places. I just don’t know.

What I do understand is that running these pipes inside concrete lined tunnels provides good access. That way if they ever get a leak or somebody wants to add a connection they won’t have to spend all kinds of money digging up the pipes. They just walk into the tunnel, turn a few valves, and take care of the issue. Maybe a couple of hours tops.

Now we have these tunnels done. The boring machine has been hauled out and it’s just sitting there by I-405 not doing anything. What could we do with it? I know! We can move it to Bellevue and dig tunnels for the light rail. Start somewhere on Mercer Island and just keep going down in a general east and north direction. Add a few surface stations along the way so people can lower themselves to the trains. As long as it gets under all the utilities and waterways we should be OK.

Next make sure it gets under downtown Bellevue so that any foundation cracks in those high rise towers can be blamed on Sound Transit. The rest is simple. This eliminates the argument about where to lay the tracks from I-90 to downtown Bellevue.

Even better: Maybe we could start the tunnel over in Seattle. We could have waterproof tubes running about 100 feet below the surface of Lake Washington. The salmon would love it.

That would remove the issue about using the I-90 express lanes too. I don’t know how much I’ll get for this brilliant idea, but it should be a fortune. Don’t worry, I’ll share.

Wait, I got off the subject back there somewhere. Let me see…….. Oh, yeah!

We currently have two other sewage treatment plants operating in King County. One is on the shore of Puget Sound not too far north of downtown Seattle. That gives it direct access to send the “bright” water way out into the sound. The other one is located in Renton. That’s right, Renton. No surprise there. It dumps into the Green River which becomes the Duwamish right about the same place. What a coincidence.

The Duwamish River meanders through mostly industrial area on its way to Elliott Bay and then into Puget Sound. It gets mixed with the salt water.

Once Brightwater is on line it’ll also be releasing into Puget Sound. We have pods of killer whales out there and if the water isn’t bright enough they’ll be annoyed. They’re not called “killer whales” because of their cheerful smiles. The state runs ferry boats full of tasty people back and forth across Puget Sound. We don’t want the killer whales annoyed so rest assured these three plants will only let clean bright water out there. What could possibly go wrong? I wonder if we could get a cable stay bridge out if this somehow.

Al