Sound Transit Delays East Link Debut Debacle

The recent Seattle Times Traffic Lab front page article “Sound Transit light rail to the Eastside is running late” typifies the paper’s abetting Sound Transit.  The article’s claim East Link “is expected to serve 48,000 passengers” indicates they’re still unaware of the Northgate Link debut results.  That what the paper had heralded as “Transit Transformed” with 42,000 to 49,000 riders was limited to 8000.  The article also abets Sound Transits apparent failure to find a CEO to replace Peter Rogoff whose ouster they announced in a Sept. 24^th 2021 headline. 

 

The article misses the most significant result of the delay is that it postpones the demonstration that East Link should have never been built. This blog began because 3 years of attempts to persuade Bellevue City Council the 2008 DEIS Sound Transit East Link benefits were sheer fantasy. That East Link made a mockery of environmental protection law with the route into Bellevue ending its persona as the “city in the park” and the Mercer Slough’s quiet tranquility. That it violated RCW81.104.00 (2) (b) requiring planning for High Capacity Transit consider lower cost options.  Yet Sound Transit never considered 2-way bus-only routes on I-90 bridge center roadway with 10 times light rail capacity, 10 years sooner, at 1/10^th the cost.  

 

My first candidacy was for the 48^th District House, an attempt to use “Voters’ Pamphlet” to tell district residents the Bellevue City Council should disallow permits Sound Transit needed to proceed.  My Seattle Times candidate interview ended abruptly when I persisted with concerns that allowing East Link to proceed would have far greater impact on 48^thdistrict than the Mcleary school funding issue.  Since then my candidacies have been described as a “perennial loser” and haven’t merited a Seattle Times interview. 

 

In Sept 2013, Sound Transit persuaded a federal judge in the Freeman litigation that the center roadway could be used for light rail because their addition of a 4^th lane (Alternative R-8A) on the outer roadway would make the center roadway unneeded for vehicles.  Yet the document they referred to stipulated Alternative R-8A needed center roadway for vehicles.

 

And it went downhill from there. A Sound Transit January 21^st 2014 presentation to Mercer Island city council detailed their Integrated Transit System (ITS) plans to use East Link to replace I-90 bus routes.  With ITS, 40,000 of East Link’s projected 50,000 riders would come from bus routes terminated at South Bellevue and Mercer Island P&Rs.  Never mind that I-90 bridge congestion wasn’t due to too many bus routes.  Despite nearly unanimous islander resistance, the final result was the Mercer Island city council agreed to Sound Transit’s “bus intercept” plans to use Island station to terminate I-90 buses.  

 

Sound Transit responded to I-5 commuter objections to transferring to and from Northgate Link by continuing to route SR510 directly into Seattle, as did Snohomish Community Transit, and even some KCM bus routes.  I-90 commuters won’t have that option.  The Mercer Island city council is still haggling with Sound Transit and KCM with how many buses and how to accommodate them when East Link begins operation.  

 

The result will be Mercer Island inundated with transit commuters forced to transfer to and from East Link.  Islanders will have to share access to whatever East Link capacity remains as the last east side stop with those forced to transfer.  A “likely” problem during peak commute.

 

The bottom is the debut delay postpones the demonstration East Link should have never been built.  That I-90 transit riders will no longer have access to bus routes into and out of Seattle.  That current transit Central Link riders will lose have of the DSTT trains.  It will be interesting to read the Seattle Times Traffic Lab response.