Theodore Lane and Bill Mundy take to the Times’ op-ed page to argue in favor of routing the East Link via a new 520 bridge, rather than over the I-90 bridge. It’s an interesting thought experiment. After all, one could build the new bridge with light rail in mind, rather than retrofitting it and scraping off concrete to get the weight down, which is the current plan, I believe, for the I-90 alignment. They further argue that the real employment growth is along the 520 corridor, from UW to Redmond.
But that’s about where the interestingness ends and reality kicks in. The idea that you could save money by to Overlake directly loses weight when you consider how many fewer people you’d serve by going that route. Lane and Mundy try to account for this by advocating a “Bellevue spur.” But once you’ve built a two or three-mile spur into downtown Bellevue, you’ve removed much of the cost savings that was the basis for the route in the first place. Further, such a spur would abandon Seattle’s Central District and Mercer Island completely. Not so for the I-90 alignment.
It should be said that Ron Sims, in his now infamous op-ed, also pooh-poohed the I-90 alignment as “slow and cumbersome.” But Sims was arguing against Eastside rail altogether. And it’s hard to see how a grade-separated light rail would be any slower or more cumbersome than the expanded bus service he was advocating as an alternative.
Bottom line: if we’re going to do light rail across the lake, I-90 is still the best bet.
Comments are closed.