Sound Transit releases final impact statement for East Link

Sound Transit has released its final impact statement for East Link light-rail, giving the board the ability to make its ultimate decision on where tracks will go. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) analyzes multiple alternatives for each segment of the train, which will travel from downtown Seattle to Mercer Island, through Bellevue into Redmond.

Sound Transit has released its final impact statement for East Link light-rail, giving the board the ability to make its ultimate decision on where tracks will go.

The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) analyzes multiple alternatives for each segment of the train, which will travel from downtown Seattle to Mercer Island, through Bellevue into Redmond.

“The years of work summarized in this document position us to turn our region’s vision of fast and reliable mass transit into real tracks, trains and stations. We are now poised to move forward,” said Sound Transit Board and Bellevue City Council Member Claudia Balducci. “The time we’ve spent on detailed analysis and involving the public gives Sound Transit and the city of Bellevue the information needed to cooperatively identify the route and mitigation options in Bellevue that will deliver the best results.”

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The upcoming meetings of the Sound Transit Board and the Board’s Capital Projects and Executive Committees will include review of the FEIS, which includes more detailed analysis of the preferred alternatives the Board identified last year, as well as all of the other alternatives studied in the Draft and Supplemental Draft EIS documents. The Sound Transit board is expected to make its final call at the July 28 meeting.

After crossing Lake Washington and Mercer Island in the center lanes of I-90, the preferred alternative (B2M) moves north along Bellevue Way and 112th Avenue.

The Bellevue City Council prefers a route that crosses the Mercer Slough and hugs Interstate 405 into downtown. The council recently wrapped up a study to optimize their preferred alignment. The study showed that a new South Bellevue park-and-ride station would increase ridership to the level of Sound Transit’s alternative, but the route could cost as much as $140 million more. This new route was not analyzed in the Executive Summary of the FEIS.

In downtown Bellevue, the Board identified two preferred alternatives: a surface alignment that is consistent with the funding voters approved in November 2008, as well as a tunnel advocated by the city of Bellevue. The preferred tunnel alternative exceeds the East Link finance plan by approximately $310 million (2010 dollars); therefore the City of Bellevue must assist in the funding for this alternative to be selected. The City signed a term sheet last year for providing $150 million in financial support for a potential tunnel alongside approximately $150 million in additional support from Sound Transit, but no final agreement has been reached to date. Beyond downtown Bellevue, the preferred alternative follows the Bel-Red corridor and SR 520 to Redmond’s Overlake Transit Center.

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