Building a Better Bellevue released a letter this morning that outlines why B7 and “Home Rule” should prevail in the selection of a light rail alignment through the City of Bellevue. Read the article here: http://betterbellevue.wordpress.com/

An excerpt:

“Sound Transit has made its own interpretation of its authority under the enabling Washington State legislation, RCW Chapter 81.112, which established its role and responsibilities. The Sound Transit Board believes that it has full power, under its reading of this law, to require a local jurisdiction to abide by its (Sound Transit’s) route determinations. This reading has never been tested in court, and it is fundamentally at odds with our City’s land use planning and permitting authority, granted by the state legislature under the Growth Management Act, RCW Chapter 36.70A, and Local Project Review, RCW Chapter 36.70B.“

Read the whole article at the BBB site:

“Our City of Bellevue’s Rights, Under Law, To Require Sound Transit to Fully Consider and Utilize Our City’s B7 Route Preference”.

Sound Transit officials have always claimed that light rail would be more efficient than buses. And if their ridership and cost projections were even close to being accurate, they might be right. In previous financial plans, Sound Transit calculated light rail would cost just over a dollar per boarding by 2009. In reality, during Central Link's first six months of operation, light rail's cost per boarding was a whopping $8.56. Sound Transit's buses cost $6.58 per boarding and its Sounder Commuter Rail cost $13.71 per boarding. To put this in perspective, the average operating cost for ...

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