If you went to work today, drove to the store, picked the kids up after school and took them to an activity, you know all about transportation. We all live with it.

It’s a complicated issue and one that we at the Bellevue Reporter and our sister Reporter Newspapers have wanted to tackle.

Today you get to see the results of our efforts.

A 40-page special section surrounds the Bellevue Reporter today. It’s there instead of inside the regular paper because we think the topic is important.

There’s lots to read – and learn.

We take you back a number of years to see how we got to this mess we’re into today. We look at the agencies involved in transportation decisions. Who’s to blame, who should get credit for trying to solve the problem. As with most things, there isn’t any pat answer.

The section also looks at a number of projects and efforts now going on or soon to go from the drawing board to the ground to see what, if anything, they will do and how soon we can expect some relief.

We also introduce you to some of the key players in the transportation effort, from Joni Earl, CEO of Sound Transit who is credited with getting that agency back on track, to Paula Hammond, who leads the Washington State Department of Transportation. We talk to Patty Murray, too. As the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, she holds sway over millions of federal dollars that go to everything from light rail to highways.

For good measure, we have some contrarian views, one from Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman, who has long been involved in the transportation issue and who has some interesting ideas for making things better.

We also look at the coming of tolls on the 520 bridge, HOT lanes, which are souped up HOV lanes that allow single-occupancy vehicles to use them – for a cost. And we look at Metro, still the backbone of the system with its bus fleet, as it struggles with declining revenue while still trying to get the bulk of mass transit passengers from place A to B.

We’ll also take you on a trip on the Link light rail system in Seattle to show you what you can expect and what the system provides for riders.

As an intriguing twist, we also talk to a respected pollster and a futurist to see what the people think about all this and where we might be headed in the future.

We hope you like the section and spend some time reading and digesting the articles. This won’t be the end of the transportation discussion by the Bellevue Reporter. It’s just the start.

– Craig Groshart, Editor, Bellevue Reporter