Letters keep coming in to Building a Better Bellevue from neighbors regarding the East Link alignment, B2M, and its likely adverse impacts (our emphasis).
Subject: Input from Affected Resident for Proposed B3 Route – Please Read
Today
Dear Sound Transit Council,
I am writing to you one more time to plead our case for not putting light rail down Bellevue Way, before your route through south Bellevue decision
during your upcoming meeting this Thursday the 28th. I am sure you are tired of this decision process taking so long and holding up the progress
of the design, building and usage of a better public transportation system in our region. You should know, however, that the neighbors along the
proposed routes into Bellevue and the Bellevue city council members are twice as tired of asking for the decision to be rethought again and again
until we can all get to a win-win solution.
You may see from my home address that I am a NIMBY. I, my husband and most of my neighbors who will be in sightline of the train or who have to
use Bellevue Way as their only access to and from their homes, would say that they literally do not want a train in the backyard. We are all
NIMBY’s. And in truth, we don’t want the train to be in anybody’s backyard, in this city or along any of the routes.
The neighborhood communities affected by these proposed routes voted for Sound Transit. We use the buses which do exist for the Eastside. We
carpool. And yes, we do use our individual cars, some of which are even gas efficient. We are not anti-environment or anti-public transit, as some
prominent conservation groups have interpreted our reactions to Sound Transit’s proposed routes through south Bellevue. We have more trees here
in Enatai than most of the surrounding developed areas. We care extremely that hundreds of them will be removed for the portion of light rail
proposed to be built down 112th Avenue (part of the B3 to the B2 route).
When we are asked to reduce our water consumption because of seasonal drought conditions, we comply and do more. When the public utility company asks residents to pay more for green energy sources, we do. And though we all have our individual passions, you will not see residents of Bellevue
out picketing or demonstrating for issues on our streets. This is our home and we like it to be peaceful and relaxing. We take care of our homes and yards and help out our neighbors.
We enjoy sharing community events like the Bellevue 4th of July and the upcoming annual Bellevue Arts Fair (my favorite usage of Bellevue Square), to which we invite all to come and participate, wherever they are from. And speaking of Bellevue Square, did you know that they are in the process of
putting in a whole row of charging stations in the garage, for electric cars? Not bad for a bunch of anti-environmentalists.
So, when you see us at all the community meetings over the past months and years, asking the same questions and giving you the same responses to the Sound Transit propositions, because we still don’t have satisfactory answers, you should know that this is our way of demonstrating. You see us spilling out of the city council chambers, meeting after meeting, trying to hear what is going on with light rail transport through Bellevue.
We write letter after letter to all the councils and groups who may be involved. We WANT good public transportation. We feel just as strongly and
passionately about the right answer for our neighborhood and our homes, as people do in Seattle or Tacoma or Everett. Residents live here for an average of 25 years, which is a sign of how much we like our local neighborhoods. We have a friendly, garden and tree-centric, people-oriented set of communities
along the B3/B2 proposed routes and do not understand why a train surrounding our neighborhoods, for some of us the only way out, is going to make our lives any better.
We do not think it will. What it will do is give us worse congestion and noise and more pollution and danger crossing the street. It will disconnect our
human communities and worsen the habitat for our wildlife in the slough.
ARUP Engineering was commissioned by the City of Bellevue to do an independent analysis of the East Link Light Rail B7/C9T to NE 2nd Portal
(B7 – Revised) Alternative and during the June 29th presentation to the Bellevue community, they had 2 points I would like to emphasize here.
The prevailing view of the usage of Bellevue Way and the reasoning that the firm got as a start to their analysis, was that the people of
Bellevue treasure their Bellevue Way access through Bellevue to I405. This is not correct. The people who do not live in these neighborhoods treasure their
access down Bellevue Way. The people who live in these neighborhoods treasure their communities without all the vehicles using 112th and
Bellevue Way.
But the firm’s presenter did get it right when he said, “We wouldn’t be so callous as to come before you with a design and say guess what, this is what you’re going to get.” He said they believed in engaging and getting input from the community to the plan and especially from those who would live closest to the proposed rail line and station. He said that the people who live there know best how they will be impacted and which mitigations
will work as implemented.
When he talked about valuing our input, I realized that we as the affected citizens had never been approached that way. I realized that what Sound Transit says and what it does, are two different things. They came in with their ideas and their proposals and said here is how it is going to work:
‘You may give us your input when we ask you to and we will answer as many questions as you have with what we know. But, we will determine the plan.
We will consider some mitigations to the plan. These are what they will be. I’m sorry you don’t like those mitigations. I’m sorry you don’t like the
original plan or the options. And now, we have listened to you long enough and we are going ahead with our choice.’
I realize that this is a simplistic synopsis of the actual process, but in a nutshell, that is our perception and our experience.
It appears that Sound Transit chose their preferred route a long time ago, before all the community input was gathered. All the design documents
that have been made public and the Environmental Impact Statements mailed out on the preferred routes only, have looked like the decision was done and
over. Any resistance displayed from anyone in Bellevue has been considered to be coming from a flawed perspective, such as being anti-transit oriented or
from a purely selfish attitude, and not in the interest of the public good.
We understand that this is not a life or death decision. If light rail goes down Bellevue Way, we will live with the frustration and hassle
during the building of it, and put up with the increased noise and ugliness of the train, or we will move away from our longtime neighborhoods, accepting
the lowered value of our properties. It will be a quiet giving in and giving up. But the fact will still remain: this was our neighborhood and in the
name of the greater public good, it was degraded, despite our best efforts to abide by the democratic process and let the decision makers, whose
cause and salaries we paid for, know what our lives were like here and what they would be like with the wrong decision. Railroaded at all levels.
Is this the legacy and outcome Sound Transit had intended? I would like to think not and if you are in agreement, please vote to NOT send light
rail down Bellevue Way. Truly, a better top down plan has been needed from the start and definitely a better community input process.
Please keep our hopes alive that enlightened discovery and civil discourse is still the best way to solve the world’s problems.
Thank you for reading this letter and your attention to our plight,
Anne Kroeker (and Richard Leeds in absentia, who has also written to
Sound Transit and Bellevue City Council several times before on the same subject and in the same vein)