In a miracle-short 30 years, Bellevue has carefully planned and cultivated one of the most healthy business and family environments in the region. Now, with no sense of investment or ownership in Bellevue, Sound Transit has managed to bully its way into our very consciousness to the point where even City Council deliberations are being rendered ineffective pontification and meaningless argument.
I am watching local planning policy being trampled by checkbook, healthy downtown business deemed dispensable, and quality residential life, including community cultural facilities, trumped by regional mobility … and there is no meaningful ransom to offer or consider.
This isn’t the Bellevue in which I have invested my confidence and heart for the past 40 years. We are talking about serious ravaging of our quality of life. We can and must do better.
If we can all agree that Eastlink is a 100-year regional infrastructure project – like the Lake Washington bridges – it should be an easy next step to recognize that siting Eastlink within Bellevue is the most impactful planning issue since the zoning of a downtown. And in spite of the regionality of the project and Sound Transit’s super-jurisdictional position, I hold the Bellevue City Council responsible for planning and permitting this land use in our city.
Council and staff have negotiated a workable siting of the train in the Downtown, but have fallen miserably short in advocating for an equitable Southwest Bellevue alignment. Sure, I don’t want a regional access train running down the boulevard across the street from my home and historic single-family neighborhood, or the likely trampling of both our neighborhood and regional parks. And I also don’t want a local nationally registered historical site and a mile of local heritage shoreline perimeter compromised beyond recognition. But, this is not a Southwest Bellevue NYMBY issue.
A practicable alternative may be available. Two interstate freeways and a railroad have long established regional transportation corridors in our city. These should be exhausted as first choice to accommodate a regional transportation project, before considering others such as Sound Transit’s current choice of Bellevue Way SE and 112th Avenue SE all the way to Main Street.
If Bellevue’s long-term policy set forth in the comprehensive plan, land use code and best practices documentation is allowed to reveal the appropriate alignment for this 100-year regional infrastructure project – NOT the political expedience of the day – Bellevue should in all haste:
● Conduct (and fund, if Sound Transit won’t) preliminary engineering for the Burlington Northern (B7) route to allow it’s equitable competition in the EIS with Sound Transit’s current chosen route.
● Negotiate design of a Downtown tunnel entrance that leaves the Surrey Downs residential neighborhood whole.
● Conduct an empirical analysis of Sound Transit’s current chosen route in relation to Bellevue’s Best Practices. Document that information.
● Proactively advocate and negotiate with Sound Transit, a discrete list of design and mitigation measures that address that route’s intrusion into the ecological and residential quality of life of that area, and
● Request and lobby for a finite extension of the Eastlink timeline so that completion of the above work and best choice siting can occur in a timely manner.
These actions are only prudent in response to Sound Transit’s failure to honor Bellevue’s alignment preference and the implied disregard of Bellevue’s Best Practices.
While the recession’s compromise of expected financing resources cannot be argued, the timeline that is promoting the cost of the project to the driving role of siting can be addressed. To slow this 100-year project by a few months will not compromise the system’s future, but enhance its credibility and ultimate success.
L. Lee Maxwell, Bellevue
