I was just informed by the Coalition of Eastside Neighborhoods for Sensible Energy (CENSE) that city of Bellevue planners dropped alternative 2B from the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). While I am not a rabid person trying to stand in the way of needed progress, I like to think I am a rational thinker able to weigh the pros and cons of corporate/governmental entity initiatives, cull out bluster and non-data backed assertions and arguments and make an intelligent decision based on facts. My background managing large operations analysis and system engineering efforts for 20 years in the corporate world (after having been a flyer and program manager for engineering and test for a major weapons system in the Air Force for 25 years) will allow me to do nothing else.

I find that two of the most major engineering efforts affecting the Eastside — light rail across the lake and Puget Sound Energy’s desire to “meet the demands of the future” — are devoid of even the semblance of any system engineering where requirements are scientifically established and design is driven by, and tracked to, the validated requirements.

I remember Sound Transit being told this by the International Council on System Engineering (INCOSE) well over 10 years ago during a presentation at the Bellevue Library. Had they heeded the message at that time, its subsequent design would be different than it is now and many of the problems patched over would have been unnecessary. And its system would be more targeted and cost-effective. And we wouldn’t be worried about, “How is light rail going to cross Lake Washington and stay on the tracks in the presence of winds?” or, “Where should we route this line to service peopleand do they even need it for its cost?”

PSE is, in the same respect, in deep doo-doo. It wants to accomplish a corporate-driven initiative in the old-fashioned way of, “Get out of our way and don’t bother us … we’ll tell you what we are going to do when we want with as little detail as we want to give you because we are a big utility with the power of right-of-way and the city councils are in our pocket. (And this has nothing to do with our desire to sell electricity to Canada and please our Australian owners.)”

In short, PSE wants to build it’s system without any system engineering with no requirements being considered that are external to the company, such as the requirements of the people who have to live (and/or die possibly) along the route PSE chooses. And the citizenry gets to pay for these TLAR (That Looks About Right) projects, and just live with consequences and the cost overruns.

Is that the kind of behavior to which Bellevue subscribes? It appears so, because the city’s planners don’t even extend the courtesy of giving the citizenry the rationale for its decision for dropping CENSE’s alternative from the EIS. And it just tells me the City Council is preparing to pull out its rubber stamp to gloss over shortcomings in its responsibilities in the area of due diligence, fairness and impartiality. At least make the ink for the stamp red, so it will stand out. And maybe, to please Mr. Constantine (King County executive), we should offer to run PSE’s future power grid lines down the middle of I-405 and SR 520 since we won’t need them anymore, because we’ll all be “rapidly transiting” to places where growth and progress are fully accounted for in long-term city, county and state planning as opposed to “flavor-of-the-month” knee-jerk responses.

Dale Gunnoe

Bellevue