Pundits imagine more local transit
April 6, 2009
By J.B. Wogan
The DART bus is one of three routes which serve Sammamish. Photo by Christopher Huber
Since joining the City Council in 1999, Mayor Don Gerend has lobbied for more public transit service in Sammamish. He joined the Eastside Transportation Partnership shortly thereafter, and helped establish a transit policy that prioritized east King County as a recipient of new bus service.
City Councilwoman Kathy Huckabay speaks frequently about public transit at City Council meetings, suggesting ways the city might request more bus service from King County Metro Transit or Sound Transit.
Regional pundits seem to back the idea, too. King County Councilman Larry Phillips, in a March 24 Seattle Times op-ed, cited Sammamish as a fast-growing area that needed more bus service.
And Victor Obeso, who manages service for Metro Transit, has said Sammamish has a latent demand for more bus service.
But, what will that service look like?
At present, Sammamish has three Metro Transit buses that run through the city: the 216, 269 and the 927 DART.
Those three routes, which all run along 228th Avenue, combine for about 68 trips through Sammamish each weekday.
Metro Transit recorded an average of 1,218 boardings on those three routes combined per weekday in 2008, up from 938 in 2007.
Sound Transit has commuter buses that run to and from the Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, which is roughly 1.5 miles south of Sammamish.
Microsoft, which employs about 3,000 Sammamish residents, provides its own transit service — called The Connector — to employees in the area. About 135 people take The Connector along a Sammamish Route on weekdays, according to Lynn Frosch, Puget Sound Transportation Services Manager for Microsoft.
Microsoft does not have any current plans to expand Connector service in the area, but that could change, Frosch said.
The city doesn’t really have a formal plan either.
“We just ask for more. Our response to Metro is just more. Give us more,” said Jeff Brauns the city’s senior transportation program engineer.
The closest the city has come in a written document is a general description in the transportation chapter of its Comprehen-sive Plan, which identifies 228th Avenue as the ideal placement for more bus service.
The way Gerend sees it, there should be another park & ride near the intersection of Sahalee Way and State Route 202.
People could use the park & ride for the morning and evening commutes to and from Redmond, Gerend said.
The city already has one park & ride at the south end of 228th Avenue, across the street from the Pine Lake Shopping Center. When Sound Transit officials were putting together their transit package for the November 2008 ballot, they reviewed the possibility of adding a park & ride facility at the north end of Sammamish, according to Andrea Tull, a senior planner at Sound Transit.
“It just didn’t rank as well as other projects,” Tull said.
Metro Transit has examined that option, too, according to David Hull, supervisor of service planning at Metro Transit.
Hull said Metro Transit doesn’t have the funds and hasn’t identified a property where it might build such a facility.
While the park & ride could become a reality some day, Metro Transit has no plan to build one at this time, Hull said.
Huckabay wants something else: There should be a commuter bus running from the Issaquah Highlands (in Issaquah) Park & Ride to the Bear Creek Park & Ride (in Redmond), with service every 30 minutes.
After Town Center is developed, buses should run on a loop from Town Center to East Lake Sammamish Parkway and back to 228th Avenue, Huckabay said.
Both Huckabay and Gerend said smaller buses would be preferable for Sammamish, with its narrow roads and abundance of cul de sacs.
Brauns said the city could make use of an “intra-plateau” bus route in the future, something that departed from 228th Avenue and circulated in the way Huckabay described.
“(But) that’s so far off down the road,” he added.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com. To comment on this story, visit www.SammamishReview.com.
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Council woman Huckabay and other council members keep talking about “After Town Center is developed” we will do this and that will happen, but can Council Woman Huckabay explain why she believes the current town center plan has no better than a 5% chance of accomplishing something? Can she explain why completion of zoning and design standards are postponed a third time? Can she explain how the city is going to finance 30 to 40 million dollars of infrastructure development required by the decision to put the core area of the town center off of 228th in an area where no infrastructure exists? Based on the city’s transportation analysis, putting the core area of the town center along SE 4th West of 228th will result in 18,800 cars from 228th along with future bus service circulating up SE 4th through the core town center area and back down to 228th Avenue? Good decision or not , can Council woman Huckabay explain how and when the town center core area will be built?
The town center is used to justify applications for federal stimulus money, for federal grants to design East Lake Sammamish Parkway, for grants to prepare a stormwater plan, a shoreline management plan, a town center plan , for bus service, but let me tell you the city council has publicly stated it will not invest in town center development so don’t be fooled by all the talk. What is lacking is pragmatic planning and action.
Take time to learn what is going on in our city, East Lake Sammamish Parkway, Shoreline Management Program, town center, teen center (lack of), looming financial crisis. You will discover that so much of what our civic leaders say is political spin and with a city council election looming in November, the spin is turning into a tornado.
The big problem facing Sammamish is the city’s financial condition. Who is talking about this?
Start asking questions. Why was the city told it faces a pending financial crisis? When will the city be forced to raise taxes? Why is our police force half of what a city our size needs? Why is our city staffing numbers 30% of comparable cities? Why is city hall half finished? Why do we not have a teen center? Why does our business community lack adequate office and retail space? Why does the city have a 559 million trade leakage? Why are we spending 40 million on the East Lake Sammamish Parkway? Why are city projects coming in late and over budget? How can we finance a 100 million dollars of road projects with a yearly transportation budget 1.7 million or less (post 2010)?
I would like to see the city council spending less time talking about what they do at committees outside the city and more time talking about what they do here in the city. Lets see some real discussion and debate among current city council members and whoever steps forward to challenge them. We need change.