Letter to the Editor: Downtown Bellevue Tunnel and Transit Center Would be Obsolete in 30 Years

At Monday's Bellevue City Council meeting, Building A Better Bellevue raised an important new question regarding the utility of the proposed downtown Bellevue tunnel, and its linkage to the present Bellevue Bus Transit Center. This new information shows that the growth capacity of the Transit Center is seriously limited, while demand for increased use of the Center will increase dramatically over the next three decades.

Prior to our presentation this evening no public body has fully understood the facts identified by these data, nor analyzed their implications for downtown Bellevue mobility gridlock caused solely by increased transit demand for access to our downtown.

Because of this dramatic in transit demand, the present Transit Center's capacity will rapidly be totally subsumed, and soon result in massive downtown congestion, congestion that will also reach into the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown Bellevue.

This congestion will likely be so dramatic that the City of Bellevue will be forced to weigh abandonment of the Transit Center. Meanwhile, having already built a very expensive downtown tunnel that can only work with the present Transit Center, our City will be faced with having to acknowledge that a huge mistake was made in not better understanding the expected growth in transit use now.

BBB presented data, drawn from our region's primary public research entity charged with assessing regional transportation needs, the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC). These data show that total transit demand for access to our Bellevue Downtown will grow to a five-fold level by 2040 from present transit use levels. There is no way that the present Transit Center can accommodate such a volume of bus access.

BBB believes that the only intermodal transit interchange solution that will work for our City at that point must recognize the eastward growth of our downtown, take advantage of every available access and egress point to and from I-405, link to an elevated light rail line that runs adjacent to I-405, and that also provides for gaining the use of the airspace over I-405. Such a facility would also argue strongly for running the light rail line along the west side of I-405, all the way from I-90, as this would provide the most efficient access route from all east/west light rail facilities along I-90 that reach to Seattle and, in the future, also to Issaquah and beyond.

BBB called on the Bellevue City Council to refuse to proceed with further consideration of adoption of the MOU until our City fully understands the implications of this expected growth in transit demand into our downtown.

We also believe that this analysis will lead to recognition that investing now in a $300 Million Eastlink tunnel link to the present Transit Center will quickly become an immense sunk cost, whose investment value will be significantly wasted as our City has no choice but to look to a new intermodal transit interchange solution for our downtown and its nearby communities.

We believe that anything less that a full understanding of these issues now is not in keeping with sound planning for a so called "100 year light rail transit plan" for our City.

A copy of BBB's presentation to the Council on this issue is provided here for your consideration.

Joe Rosmann
for Building A Better Bellevue

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