Judge John Coughenour’s recent
decision rejecting the Building a Better Bellevue and Friends of Enatai suit can most "charitably" be described by the legal term “unfounded”: not founded on fact or
truth. His claim “the decision to
build rail instead of an alternative such as bus rapid transit was the result
of a long, careful, and deliberative process” is simply wrong.
The brief filed by the federal
defendants (Case 2:12-cv-01019-JCC
Document 35 filed 01/25/13) doesn’t even attempt to make that argument. Instead on page 1, lines 11-15 include
the following:
As applied to this case, where the planning efforts of
state and local transportation officials have come to focus on the problem of
extending the light rail system to serve a particular corridor, it makes little
sense in an environmental analysis to study the environmental impacts of the
bus-based options which plaintiffs say federal defendants should have also
evaluated.
The judge apparently decided to
ignore the defendants’ argument that the light rail study wasn’t needed by
concluding that Sound Transit had instead done a long, careful deliberative
process to select light rail rather than BRT. It’s not clear what “long careful deliberative process”
the judge is referring to.
Sound Transit didn’t even consider
BRT (two-way-bus only lanes on center roadway) as the “no build” alternative in the 2008 DEIS. (See 5/30/12 Post for details) The WSDOT and Sound Transit did make a similar claim to a
Kittitas judge in response to the Freeman/ETA suit.
The WSDOT/ST in the Freeman/ETA suit also
made the claim the center roadway wasn’t needed for “highway needs” once Sound
Transit had added the 4th combination Bus/HOV lane to the outer roadways. The 5/15/12 and 5/16/12 posts refute
that claim by referring to FHWA 2004 documentation showing the center roadway
was still needed for “vehicle” use with the 4th lane on the outer
roadways.
The 2/01/13 post explains why this should have been an easy case for the BBB and FOE to prevail. They didn't because the judge made his decision on a "finding" that the defense did not even mention in their filing. Sound Transit never seriously considered BRT for East Link. If they had they would have quickly concluded BRT was infinitely better than light rail in terms of capacity, accessibility and cost. (See 8/02/12 Post). This historic blunder has already resulted in hundreds of millions wasted and years of needless congestion for cross-lake commuters.
I urge the BBB and FOE to appeal because allowing East Link to proceed will result in additional billions spent, money that could be used to fund 520, SR405 and I-90 improvements, on a light rail program that will devastate parts of Bellevue, require the city to come up with $200 million for a tunnel, and inevitably lead to gridlock on the I-90 Bridge.
The 2/01/13 post explains why this should have been an easy case for the BBB and FOE to prevail. They didn't because the judge made his decision on a "finding" that the defense did not even mention in their filing. Sound Transit never seriously considered BRT for East Link. If they had they would have quickly concluded BRT was infinitely better than light rail in terms of capacity, accessibility and cost. (See 8/02/12 Post). This historic blunder has already resulted in hundreds of millions wasted and years of needless congestion for cross-lake commuters.
I urge the BBB and FOE to appeal because allowing East Link to proceed will result in additional billions spent, money that could be used to fund 520, SR405 and I-90 improvements, on a light rail program that will devastate parts of Bellevue, require the city to come up with $200 million for a tunnel, and inevitably lead to gridlock on the I-90 Bridge.
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