Candidacy Announcement to Bellevue City Council,

The lack of media response to my post announcing my candidacy for governor prompted me to use the following to do so during the Bellevue City Council’s Public comment portion of their April 11^th meeting. 

Dear Bellevue City Council,

My name is Bill Hirt and I live at 2615 170^th SE.  More than 7 years ago I first told the council that Sound Transit’s 2008 East Link DEIS was sheer fantasy.  That light rail across I-90 would never have the capacity needed to meet current peak transit demand let alone their projected 60% increase.   That Sound Transit’s decision to never consider bus rapid transit (BRT) on the I-90 Bridge center roadway for cross-lake transit had been a major blunder.   That Sound Transit had perpetuated that blunder by refusing to move non-transit HOV to their long-planned 4^th-lane additions to the bridge outer roadways.  That thousands of cross-lake commuters from both sides of the lake have endured years of increased congestion because of the 4^th lane delays.  

The council could have stopped East Link by disallowing any of the ten permits Sound Transit needed to begin construction.  Instead you simply ignored all my concerns.    As a result ST will soon begin disrupting downtown Bellevue for 4½ years creating a light rail tunnel under the city.  Next year they will permanently close the I-90 Bridge center roadway without ever demonstrating the outer roadway can accommodate all the cross-lake vehicles.   

They’ll spend the next 6 years devastating the route into Bellevue disrupting all those how live near or commute along 112^th.   All to create a light rail system that the vast majority of I-90 corridor commuters won’t even have access to.   Topping that debacle, the council apparently concurred with Sound Transit asking eastside residents pay hundreds if not thousands more each year for an ST3 proposal that will get them a light rail line between Bellevue and Issaquah in 2041. 

I’m here tonight to announce my intent to make people aware of the debacle awaiting them by filing as a candidate for governor.  You may remember it was a little girl who told the village the "King has no clothes!" in Hans Christian Anderson's fable.  My goal is to tell the whole state that, not only will East Link increase not decrease I-90 congestion, that the billions spent on Central Link Prop 1 extensions will do very little if anything to ease I-5 congestion.  That ST3 perpetuates this fraud and should be rejected.