This final article addresses the last segment of the Grand Connection: Bellevue’s Downtown Link light rail station to the future lid park over Interstate 405.

NE 6th Street between 110th Avenue NE and 112th Avenue NE

This is the location of Link light rail’s Bellevue Downtown Station. The street is at a very steep grade while the station is level with about the middle of the block. The main entrance is accessed from the west by means of a set of escalators going down to the platform.

The rendering of the future station shows a park which is either level with the upper station plaza or one level below it. This makes sense when one considers that the lid over I-405 will be also elevated at close to the height of the light rail guideway (one level below the upper station plaza).

The ideal plan would be to create a series of parks, all at the same elevation, starting from 110th Avenue NE effectively all the way to 116th Avenue NE across the freeway. City Hall already has an elevated park to boot this effort, but this doesn’t appear to be quite what the Framework Plan alternatives are.

First, if we look at Alternative Three we can indeed see provisions for a park from about 112th Avenue NE to 116th Avenue NE. But for some reason, between 110th Avenue NE and 112th Avenue NE, next to the station, the Grand Connection follows the street. One of the major problems with such a design is that it would first lead people down a steep incline towards 112th, only to ask them to go back up again towards 114th for crossing the freeway on the lid. This is unfriendly towards people in wheelchairs, on bikes and frankly any pedestrian.

Alternative Two interestingly shows a pedestrian only connection going right through the City Hall lot, similar to what we would see if the elevated park from the LMN rendering above became reality:

So what we want to see here ideally is a combination of Alternative Two and Three. Going further, we can effectively have parks on the two blocks preceding the lid, all at the same elevation and connected via elevated crossings.

112th Avenue NE to 114th Avenue NE and Lid

Last, but not least, as can be seen from the two alternatives above, the parcel between 112th Avenue NE and 114th Avenue NE and NE 6th Street and NE 4th Street is slated for redevelopment — a project known as Bellevue Straits. 

While private, this project is an extremely important piece of the public realm and the developer recognizes this in their design documents calling the site a “critical link in the Grand Connection masterplan and future I-405 Lid Park”.

Indeed the opportunity for creating three blocks of contiguous park space, as outlined in the previous point, is once in a generation and cannot be wasted.

Current state

The latest development plan for the site proposes two 400-foot towers and a narrow passage between them for the Grand Connection. Here I have overlaid the lid site plan with the Bellevue Straits site plan and a model of the towers:

This project is still in early stages, the developer is open to proposals with regards to siting and we have a real opportunity to affect it.

Suggested improvements

First, let’s understand the problems we are trying to solve.

Problem 1: the current siting and massing of the towers blocks sunlight on the lid park in an unfavorable way. Per current plans, in the Summer at 3:00pm we expect shadows on much of the plaza and grassy sitting area. Combined with other negatives inherent to the lid park (freeway noise) this could reduce its attractiveness significantly. I know what you may be thinking — “Concerns about shadows? Really?” — don’t worry, there are smart solutions to the problem coming up.

Problem 2: the area noted as “Forest & Clearing” where the plaza should have great views is severely hampered by the positioning of the South Tower. I really hope there will be some form of (small business) retail facing the plaza in the towers. Let’s imagine there is a coffee shop in the north tower, close to the area denoted by binoculars on the site plan. Let’s take a seat:

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were possible to see Mount Rainier from here — it’s just behind the South Tower?
 

Problem 3: the bulky tower designs proposed today have an imposing presence in any of the three blocks of park space. Given the developer’s recognition that this site is a “critical link”, and hiring Gensler as the new architect (which designed many iconic buildings like Shanghai Tower, for example), it’s unfortunate that the proposed designs still look as unremarkable as they do.

YIMBY Solutions

Now, I may talk about shadows, but I also recognize the importance of allowing development to proceed at the scale proposed by the market to avoid supply-driven price increases.

I spent some time wondering how to solve the problem without shrinking the project. It is possible — by shifting space from one tower to the other as they have different impacts on park shadows:

• Increase floorplates and height of the north tower
• Decrease floorplates and height of the south tower

Inspiration

To make it all visual I drew inspiration from Zaha Hadid’s marvelous Wangjing SOHO complex in Beijing:

The sculptural element of these towers also plays a key role in enhancing the public space — much more than two boring boxes ever would.

The following concept carefully situates the towers to maximize sunshine and views for users of the public spaces, while preserving the project gross floor area the same:

As mentioned, gross floor area within the project is completely preserved:

The north tower is 40 feet taller than previously which is a small variance the city should be able to approve.

The buildings face the public spaces in a form of reverse embrace and also frame the downtown skyline. So let’s see how the public realm is improved.

Benefits

Let’s see how things are different.

First, the park plaza, grassy knoll and viewing platforms are no longer covered in a shadow in the afternoon. In fact, most of the park remains shadow-free.

Second, the view from the “Forest & Clearing” area of the Bellevue Straits plaza is now much more open and it also provides a view of Mount Rainier:

Third, the experience from parks is also improved:

• There is no more a feeling of being boxed in by a tower right adjacent to the park since the two curvy towers create an opening towards downtown. Their facades are also just physically further from the park due to the curve.
• Furthermore, more of the downtown skyline is framed by the two towers rather than only a small sliver being visible.

And as already mentioned, the more sculptural architecture makes the towers an interesting fixture of the park, rather than boring boxes that make it feel smaller.

So, this is a significant departure from the existing project, but this is also an incredibly unique building site forming a gateway to downtown Bellevue.

Closing remarks

The Grand Connection is a vast project spanning over 20 regular-sized city blocks (about 10 Bellevue superblocks). And it cuts right through Bellevue’s most highly trafficked civic, recreation and retail areas. I can’t imagine another project that has more leverage on the future of the soul of the city.

There are many proposals here for which the time to act is now:

• 100th Avenue NE Meydenbauer Bay Park expansion before new development happens;
• Main Street flex zone for outdoor dining while pandemic is ongoing and need is great;
• NE 6th Street flex zones between Bellevue Way NE and 106th Avenue NE before new development prevents relocating the single parking access lane north or south;
• Three block elevated park from 112th Avenue NE to across the freeway before new development starts; and
• Maximizing the public benefit from the (expensive) Lid Park by ensure adjacent development happens, but does not impact it negatively.

As an ending note, I’d like to mention that pedestrian city centers in European cities leave a legacy for centuries and this could be no different. And for the business-minded, these are also often the highest-grossing retail areas too. So this is good for both the community and business. Let’s ensure we create this gift for generations to come.

The post Improving Bellevue’s Grand Connection: Part 3 – Downtown Link Light Rail to I-405 Lid Park first appeared on The Urbanist.

Notably, the last renewal of Bellevue’s 20-year parks levy was on the ballot during the Great Recession. This may have been a principal cause for the levy’s contraction from a property tax of 17 cents per $1,000 assessed value to just a 12 cents per $1,000 assessed value rate in the 2008 levy. Nevertheless, since Bellevue voters renewed its park levy in 2008, the City has completed:

• Sports field improvements at Newport Hills, Wilburton, and Hidden Valley;
• Lewis Creek Picnic Area;
• Trail Improvements focusing on Coal Creek;
• Bellevue Botanical Garden Visitors Center and Ravine Garden – Funded by levy and private fundraising by the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society. Visitor Center opened in 2014;
• Bellevue Youth Theatre at Crossroads Park – A new 12,000 square feet theater funded by levy funds and fundraising by the Bellevue Youth Theater Foundation. Opened in 2015;
• Bridle Trails Neighborhood Park – The first of two Bridle Trails parks completed in 2014;
• “Complete the Circle” and Inspiration Playground at Downtown Park – Work completed in 2017 added a canal, promenade, and water features, parking consolidation, landscaping, and formal connection between the park and “Old Bellevue”;
• Surrey Downs Park Development – A new park completed in 2019;
• Meydenbauer Bay Park and Marina Projects – Scope included beach house with restrooms and showers, pedestrian pier and boat launch, a natural ravine, parking, entrance improvements, walking paths, picnic areas, pedestrian promenade, and children’s play area. Completed in 2019, and more work is planned.

What’s Next for Bellevue’s Parks

The next improvement set to complete is the Downtown Park Northeast Gateway, the latest in phased improvements to Downtown Park. Expected to be ready for use by late May 2021, this improvement will be a vital pedestrian connection of the Grand Connection’s first sequence that will connect Meydenbauer Bay Park and Eastrail. Additional work will install public art in the gateway this coming August.

Remaining projects with confirmed timelines are the unnamed new Bridle Trails Neighborhood and Newport Hills Neighborhood Parks. Located next to a Bellevue Utility-owned wetland site, a new 1.65-arce Bridle Trails neighborhood park is expected to start construction in the spring or summer of 2022. Amenities will include play areas, a picnic shelter, benches, picnic tables, and loop trail that surrounds a large grass area. The Newport Hills Neighborhood Park will complete first with construction to start this summer. The preferred plan for the 13.7-acre park includes an off-leash dog area, trails, and open play area. Both parcels were acquired by the City with 2008 levy dollars.

When those projects are complete, the only levy promises left are the Bellevue Airfield Park and Lake Sammamish Neighborhood Park. While no activity has begun for the Lake Sammamish Neighborhood Park that is being projected as a post 2025 commitment, the Bellevue Airfield Park has actually had its site analysis and initial schematic design done for a while now. Airfield park work is on-hold, as it is being considered as a site for a new Aquatics Center. Bellevue has been conducting an Aquatics Feasibility Study to explore alternatives for a new facility, the latest update found that the Airfield site would have the greatest environmental remediation cost. That’s the case because the site was a landfill from 1951 to 1964, and then an airfield until 1983.

Long term parks projects and funding

The next plan update to help guide Bellevue parks development is underway with the work ongoing with the Parks and Community Services 2021-2027 Capital Investment Program Plan. The Bellevue Park and Community Services Board submitted their priorities to the Mayor and City Councilmembers in 2020. Much of what the board proposed include commitments made in the 2008 levy, but it also included additional funds from the Meydenbauer Bay Park Planning and Design, property acquisition in underserved neighborhoods like BelRed, Downtown, and Eastgate, and a focus on the BelRed Subarea plan’s park components.

In 2028, Bellevue will have an opportunity to renew its park levy. As mentioned early, the last renewal shrunk the levy by nearly 30%, seemingly in reaction to the Great Recession. In 2028, the City’s leaders should try to restore or surpass pre-2008 levy property tax rates. Especially if the City wants to realize the opulence of their Grand Connection vision, a stronger levy would be needed to guarantee the timely completion of a connection that grand.

Last year, Brandon was critical of the Freeway Lid portion of the Grand Connection. Zuo was underwhelmed by the small footprint and “the two giant freeway ramps shoved through the lid’s southern end [making] more than a quarter of the lid … barely usable”. They proposed a much larger lid over I-405. This concern amplifies the need for Bellevue to embrace greater funding for its parks system to create truly great public spaces.

Bellevue embraced their “City in a Park” moniker in its latest City Council Vision. To live up to that title, the City should be expected to create and fund the spaces to bring great and sufficient greenspace to every one of its neighborhoods. Especially if you live in Bellevue, let the city government know you support the Parks and Community Services department.

The post Catch Up on Bellevue’s Park Development Spree and Incoming Parks first appeared on The Urbanist.

A Concrete Jungle

Throughout the last few months, Bellevue’s city council has been studying a new interchange in South Downtown that would add ramps between I-405 to local streets. There’re five final alternatives for the interchange on the table–including a no-build option–from which the city is set to make a final decision in the coming months.

From a driver’s perspective, it would seem that a new interchange would be a nice thing to have. I-405 through Bellevue is already among the most congested roadways in the state, and the interchanges all tout to “add new access to I-405”, “minimize traffic congestion”, and “reduce intersection delays”. But the question is really whether the new interchange would actually live up to those promises (spoiler alert: it won’t).

Strangely, instead of advertising how much time individual drivers would save, the online engagement website for the new interchanges only mentions the number of “daily person hours” that might be saved–a metric that makes absolutely no sense. Think of it this way: the first alternative for the new interchange (a southbound on-ramp from Lake Hills Connector) could save 500 daily person hours. But how much would that be per person? If 15,000 cars used the ramp each day, each individual driver would only save two minutes. That’s well within the margin of error for a freeway commute, and hardly enough time for anyone to be productive.

This isn’t even mentioning that all the interchange alternatives apart from the no-build option cost a boatload of money. The costliest choice, which includes a bridge across SE 6th Street and toll lane ramps onto I-405, comes in at a hefty $325 million (but it could save 1,400 daily person hours!)

Indeed, the transportation department seems to understand this. In two graphs tucked behind miles of paperwork from a closed-door stakeholder meeting, there’s a startling realization: even according to Bellevue’s own estimates, any of the new interchanges would reduce travel times by less than one minute per person. These time savings estimates are usually overly optimistic since they don’t account for induced demand. But in this case, that wasn’t enough to make the project look good.

This is an abomination. Bellevue already has plenty of interchanges connecting to I-405–four within a one-mile stretch–and saving one minute tops is a tiny improvement on a 20-minute trip. Any reasonable person would understand that blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on something with so little benefit is absurd. It’s perplexing as to why this interchange project is still a thing, especially considering Covid-related budget shortfalls worldwide.

What’s even weirder is that these graphs aren’t even on the same website as the one the public is given to provide feedback–the only metric people are given is misleading “daily person hours” one that makes the interchanges seem way more useful than they actually are. Corporations get sued for this. Why isn’t our own government being upfront and transparent? Could a new interchange just be a highway lobby giveaway grab funded with taxpayer money?

Induced demand dictates that if you want to reduce congestion, you build transit. You take steps to prevent congestion at its root, to stop people from driving in the first place. I don’t blame policymakers for wanting to expand roads; when I first learned about induced demand, I found the idea hard to grasp as well. The whole thing seemed counterintuitive: how could wider roads possibly make traffic worse? Alas, it wasn’t that the topic itself that was hard to grasp, but the fact that it went against my prior convictions.

The facts don’t lie: we don’t need a new interchange. It’s time for Bellevue to take a deep breath, and let it all go. Downtown Bellevue is growing rapidly and leaders claim they’re prepared for their Amazon boom, but this is not how to do it.

What could $325 million buy? Ways we can better spend the interchange’s money.

$325 million is a lot of money. Seriously. So rather than spending it on a new interchange, let’s put our funds to good use by building something the community will actually enjoy.

One thing we could do is build a lid over I-405 and connect both sides of the freeway with a welcoming, pedestrian-oriented space. Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park, a massive 5.2-acre lid over the city’s Woodall Rodgers Freeway, has become a centerpiece of the Downtown community and features beautiful lawns, landscaping, and live events. Its cost? A mere $109 million. We could do the same thing in Bellevue.

In fact, Bellevue’s own Grand Connection plans could call for a lid park over I-405, something that could greatly rehab Bellevue’s lackluster walkability and turn its downtown into a center for pedestrian activity. Pumping interchange funds into the Grand Connection could greatly accelerate its realization.

Or how about some much-needed public housing? Affordable housing units, while not cheap, cost pennies compared to an interchange, and would be infinitely more beneficial. The last thing we should spend money on is yet another interchange.

The City is Bellevue is currently looking for public input on the interchange alternatives. You can give feedback here. The survey closes at 5pm on Friday, February 19th.

The post Bellevue’s New I-405 Interchange Won’t Reduce Congestion first appeared on The Urbanist.

A new “half interchange” was included in the current I-405 Master Plan in 2002, and Bellevue is now seeking a preferred alternative to provide certainty for property owners along both sides of I-405, to support transit-oriented development around both East Main and Wilburton future East Link stations.

It is early enough in the process that a new or expanded interchange is not a fait accompli, so while I-405 will presumably not go away, we can work to reduce its impact on one of our most important urban centers outside of Seattle.   

The study is constrained by the explicit goal of reducing congestion, but there is enough here for urbanists to be optimistic. Naturally, concerns of induced demand abound whenever a new interchange is introduced, but the study is clear that the goal is improved access to I-405, not necessarily more access to I-405. It should be possible to improve the circulation of vehicles on and off I-405 in a way that improves safety and resiliency for vehicles while also improving bike and pedestrian mobility. This study may achieve that balance by proposing new I-405 access points while also rebuilding some of the natural street grid.

Additionally, it is important to evaluate further investment in I-405 in the context of Bellevue’s Grand Connection. One of the primary goals of the Grand Connection is to stitch together Downtown Bellevue and create a continuous urban space from Lake Washington to Eastrail and onwards to Redmond. In a recent post on the The Urbanist, Hyra Zhang highlighted the expansive footprint of the NE 8th Street interchange and how it could be reduced via the Grand Connection Lid, arguing for the relocation of existing ramps to reprioritize precious downtown urban space in Bellevue.

This study should have the same goal of improving mobility within Bellevue, not simply improved access in and out of Bellevue. Thankfully, options 2 through 6 appears to do well in increasing east-west mobility while having no or minimal expansion of the freeway envelope. While the NE 8th is outside of the study area, public feedback could encourage decision makers to be more bold and consider reducing the impact of the existing NE 8th interchange alongside improving I-405 access south of NE 4th.

Option 1 is the original car-centric vision included in the 2002 master plan and doesn’t offer anything for those walking or rolling and does nothing to bridge the I-405 divide.

Option 2 removes an existing left-hand turn access point on 4th Street SE, replacing it with a right-hand exit off Lake Hills Connector. Not only is a right-hand exit generally safer for both cars and pedestrians, this option may pull the traffic queuing onto I-405 away from the urban core.

Option 3 provides no new ramps at all. Creating another crossing of I-405 at NE 2nd Street provides many of the same walking and rolling mobility benefits as the Grand Connection will a few blocks further north, albeit without the new public space or reduction in noise pollution of a proper lid. More specificity on how a new bridge would improve walking and biking facilities, not just vehicle circulation, which would be helpful.

Options 5 and 6 create a new crossing at SE 6th Street. While perhaps too far from Downtown Bellevue to be as useful as Options 2 and 3, continuing to rebuild the street grid punctured by I-405 is good outcome. However, these options may have negative impacts on the emerging East Main TOD district.

And finally, there is a no build option. If the above options do not meaningfully improve walking, biking, or transit mobility within Bellevue, we are better off sticking with the existing infrastructure in the medium term.

I encourage you all the weigh in on the survey which is open through August 21st.

The featured image is a Creative Commons photo by CommunistSquared.

The post Bellevue Weighing Options for New I-405 Interchange in South Downtown first appeared on The Urbanist.

A dozen cars idle before a stoplight; a dozen others rush through the intersection in front of them. The sidewalks are empty today like usual; cars are the only populace on the streets. The light turns green and the cars rush forward in different directions.

I’m standing at the intersection of NE 8th Street and 11th Avenue NE in Downtown Bellevue. To my left and right are brand-new skyscrapers—the gleaming manifestation of Bellevue’s immense growth over the last twenty years—and before me is a freeway interchange connecting 8th Street with I-405. Nowhere else is the stark contrast between the 20th and 21st centuries more apparent: floors of dense development and acres of empty, car-centric land smacked right next to each other.

It’s quite a scary experience to walk (or bike) across I-405 on NE 8th Street. Traffic speeds by at highway speeds on the street’s six wide lanes while pedestrians are confined to a narrow sidewalk. Cars taking the freeway entrance seem to have no regard for any speed limit whatsoever. I’ve often found myself trekking across I-405 on other streets since 8th Street is really that daunting—pedestrians and bicyclists need to traverse no less than six treacherous crosswalks just to get from one side of the freeway to the other.

The fact that the interchange still exists is a testament to Bellevue’s unequivocal love for autopia. Downtown streets are huge—twice as wide as their Seattle counterparts—blocks are long, and sidewalks are afterthoughts. No matter what the tall buildings may entail, Bellevue is still a car-dependent suburb at heart. 

Picking up the pieces

Bellevue blossomed at a time when criss-crossing cities with highways was the hallmark of urban planning. Six-lane avenues, ten-lane freeways—the more lanes the better. It was a time when automobile ownership was booming and when global warming wasn’t really a thing.

But those dreamy days of Pax Americana remain only a distant memory of our turbulent present day. Global warming is now threatening the basis of our very livelihoods, not least because of the unsustainable lifestyles of days gone by. We’re starting to feel the squeeze of those car-oriented policies in other places too: driving is deepening structural inequalities, many cities are seldom walkable, and public transit is lacking. The dangerous health effects of driving puts communities within one-thousand feet of freeways at high risk for fatal diseases like asthma and respiratory illness.

As we build our cities for tomorrow, we must not surrender ourselves to the playbooks of yesteryear. Do we really need to preserve the 15 lanes of freeway rammed through Downtown Bellevue? Can we do without the enormous interchanges that prevent our cities from developing sustainably?

Bellevue is taking steps to become more friendly to our friends on foot, such as building pedestrian malls, widening sidewalks, and even lidding a portion of I-405. But these efforts are still pretty car-oriented, to say the least. A larger freeway lid, as I’ll describe later in this piece, would take a bigger step in the right direction.

Induced Demand: More Lanes, More Traffic

Rather than attacking the root cause of the issue—freeways themselves—many urban planning projects try to work around them without really questioning whether they need to be there in the first place. Projects shouldn’t be dinged for reducing traffic speeds or capacity, since in many cases such reductions are beneficial.

More lanes doesn’t equate to less traffic, in fact just the opposite. Induced demand dictates that while road widening will decrease congestion in the short-term (since there’s more lanes handling the same number of cars), it won’t speed up travel times in the long-term. That’s because as traffic thins, people will take notice and use the road more and more until it becomes just as congested as before. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t drive from Seattle to the Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip after work—the mall would be closed before you even arrived! But if the traffic wasn’t as bad, you might have made the journey. Commuters might also stop taking the bus or carpooling when they see that the HOV lanes aren’t much faster than the regular ones.

Texas learned this the hard way after spending $2.8 billion to expand its Katy Freeway to a whopping 26 lanes in Houston. After the expansion, rush hour travel times increased by 51%. More cars simply filled the extra capacity the road provided. With this in mind, it’s important to be open to change when discussing how we shape our roads and cities. Downsizing roadways isn’t always a bad thing.

Though this isn’t to say that we should just get rid of all roads—there needs to be a balance. I-405, being an important regional connection without nearby alternatives, should definitely exist so Eastside residents can still get around. That being said, there are certainly parts of the freeway that can be slimmed down, particularly the 8th Street interchange.

The monstrous interchange consumes more than 25 acres of land that’s close to hospitals, malls, and transit. And being a freeway, I-405 naturally acts as a giant growth barrier for Downtown. Highrises loom to the west, and strip malls line the avenues to the east. While being no more than a few hundred feet apart, the different sides of the freeway are two very different worlds.

Bellevue’s Lid and Freeway Plans

The City of Bellevue has an ambitious plan to bridge this gap by lidding a portion of I-405 from NE 6th Street to NE 4th Street. It’ll improve pedestrian access across the freeway with a multi-use trail along the light rail guideway and provide green space with a landscaped park atop the freeway’s right-of-way. The Bellevue City Council selected a preferred lid alternative in 2018, but hasn’t yet identified or allocated funding. The City study projects the lid will cost between $116 million and $130 million.

But there are flaws. The two giant freeway ramps shoved through the lid’s southern end mean that more than a quarter of the lid is barely usable. The trees hiding those ramps then take up another chunk of land, and the whole lid has awkward hills to conform to the 6th Street ramps. Plus, with only three connections to the outside world, the park itself is extremely isolated.

If anything, this lid wasn’t built to satisfy pedestrians but rather developers. Without good integration into the rest of Downtown, it’ll be unlikely that the lid will attract much use, and without changes to the nearby road network people will still be discouraged from walking.

Could the lid just be another attempt to greenwash highway expansion? The Washington State Department of Transportation is adding two toll lanes on I-405 from Bellevue to Renton and the City is planning to build yet another freeway interchange downtown.

Both projects masquerade themselves as congestion-reducing improvements, but these “Lexus Lanes” and “concrete dragons” will do anything but. Expanding I-405 will only create more traffic and more pollution—hardly a good idea in the midst of a climate crisis—and building new interchanges always hinders walkability.

The whole debacle bears a striking resemblance to the proposed Rose Quarter Freeway “lids” down in Portland which many have also accused to be an attempt to greenwash widening I-5. Like our I-405 lid, Portland’s lids don’t add much useful park space nor do they substantially benefit the community.

Both the I-405 lid and Portland’s lids are simply too reactionary. By trying to marry an urban park with a freeway expansion, they end up not serving the needs of anyone very well. The money spent to expand the freeway could be invested in transit to reduce commute times and there’s certainly better ways to build quality urban spaces residents will actually enjoy.

Think about it: how much cheaper would the I-405 lid have been if it didn’t have to constrain itself to fit around the existing freeway ramps? Why is it so tiny and have so few outside connections? And wouldn’t the enormous cloverleaf just to the north kind of blow the whole point of having it in the first place?

Upward mobility

We must not be afraid to change the status quo. Reducing road capacity is not only beneficial to the environment but it opens up opportunities for urban revitalization that would have been unheard of otherwise. It’s time for us to reclaim the land that freeways stole from us, and Bellevue has tons.

Removing the 8th Street interchange is a great place to start. It’s loud, pollutive, and treacherous for pedestrians. It’s the antithesis of what a modern, walkable city should be; a relic from ancient times that must go.

We’ll keep the 8th Street alignment over I-405 but remove the ramps connecting the two. While we’ll be reducing the overall capacity of the freeway, drivers can still get where they need to by using the ramps at NE 4th and NE 10th Streets (more on this later). It’s questionable that Downtown Bellevue has the number of interchanges it has in the first place—Seattle doesn’t even have as many ramps in this short of a stretch—so downsizing won’t cause a carmageddon. What’s more, the “cloverleaf” design of the 8th Street interchange is unsafe and outdated, causing higher risks for collisions between cars and pedestrians alike.

With the ramps gone, pedestrians will enjoy quicker, safer access between the east and west of I-405. There’ll likely be less cars driving around with the reduced capacity, meaning fewer emissions. But it’s only good, not great; the freeway itself will continue to divide its two sides and stifle development nearby.

The Vision Realized

Many cities across the country have built lids upon freeways and created quality urban space atop them. Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park atop a freeway has become a popular community gathering place and a prime location for events, and Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway buried a massive viaduct and replaced it with miles of trees and green space. And let’s not forget the many lids we have right here at home: Aubrey Davis Park, Sam Smith Park, the 520 lids, among others—it’s hard to imagine what the landscape would look like without them.

The City of Bellevue was on the right track with its I-405 lid but tried too hard to design it around existing road infrastructure. Little quality space was created, and much of the lid space was unusable. Lid parks needn’t be overdesigned; people shouldn’t have to navigate an obstacle course to get from one side to the other. A large lawn to relax upon, benches to read on, and trees keep things cool are all people really need. The occasional plaza and nicer landscaping are always appreciated, but the basics always come first.

These distinguishing features are what make Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park and Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway so much more enjoyable than our Freeway Park. The former are easily accessible and are spaces we’ll actually enjoy while the latter is neither.

If Bellevue’s I-405 lid wants to fall in line with the former, it’ll need to be a lot larger and much more open. It’s possible—as long as the nearby ramps are removed.

The new lid would stretch from NE 4th Street to NE 10th Street and cover most of I-405’s downtown portion. Local streets would be reconfigured, with the entrance to northbound I-405 and exit from southbound I-405 being moved north to 10th Street, and the entrance to southbound I-405 and northbound exit from I-405 being moved to 4th Street. The HOT exits at 6th Street would also be relocated to 10th and 4th Streets to join their mainline counterparts.

Two new avenues will each run on an edge of the lid and act as frontage roads of sorts, and they’ll include a bus lane to accommodate buses and BRT. These avenues provide other benefits, too; they create a clear zone between private buildings and the lid, making the park feel more public (setting a building right on the edge of the park fosters a sense of ambiguity between those living in the building and outsiders).

As for the lid itself, things should be kept simple enough to be enjoyable while also featuring adequate landscaping to be appealing. Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park is very good at this so let’s use it as our blueprint. Remember, we’re not reinventing the wheel here–sticking with the tried and true is the way to go.

At about 2,000 feet long and 300 feet wide, our lid has 14 acres for large grass lawns, tree-lined trails, children’s playgrounds, and a dog park. Perhaps a pavilion could be added near the center to host events, or a volleyball pit could find a home near the southern end. There’s so much potential for this new space–I bet the community and you, dear reader, have great ideas for what it can become!

Lids themselves have inherent benefits to the community, too. In a 2018 study, the American Journal of Public Study found that lids offer health benefits to residents nearby thanks to access to green space, exercise opportunities, and reduced noise and pollution.

Most importantly, our lid will help reconnect Downtown Bellevue to Wilburton and spur redevelopment of the area’s strip malls. Guided by light rail, they can become walkable transit-oriented development, potentially providing over 20,000 housing units–and many of those can be affordable. But only by creating a pedestrian-friendly crossing of the freeway will the city feel cohesive enough to be livable. The crossings right now are not nearly enough.

The Nitty Gritty

Of course, a megaproject like this comes at a price. A conservative estimate puts the cost to build a lid at $22 million per acre, putting the cost of our lid at about $308 million. Reworking the existing ramps might tack on an extra $50-100 million (though this is just a ballpark estimate), so our grand total is about $400 million.

Though it seems eye-watering at first, the price isn’t out of reach. Freeing up the land being used by freeway ramps could immediately generate some $450 million, fully funding the lid. And it’s all smooth sailing from there–with increased land values from the lid, developers will be enthusiastic to pitch in. About 48% of Dallas’ lid was funded by private donations and we could seek to follow in those footsteps. We could even mandate inclusionary zoning as a contingency for developing near the lid and create thousands of affordable housing units. And the lid could even play a part in recovering from the current recession; highway and park projects create some 20 jobs per million dollars invested, making the lid an excellent candidate for government stimulus funding. With all the investment generated, a larger I-405 lid could improve the City’s long-term finances while simultaneously bettering people’s lives.

As icing on the cake, 8th Street can be redesigned too since it’s been liberated from freeway duty. The main roadway can be narrowed, bike lanes added, and sidewalks expanded to promote biking and walking. We’ll add room for on-street dining and benches, and street trees can get more space to grow taller and provide more shade, making street life more pleasant.

Alas, there are so many things we’ll need to do to build a walkable, bikeable Bellevue. So many projects that need to be built, so many roads that need to be redesigned. And with these changes come discomfort: we’ll have to change the places we go to and how we get there. It’s daunting, to say the least.

But Bellevue is proof that big dreams still can come true. In less than a century, Bellevue has transformed from a sleepy town to a burgeoning crossroad of life. There seems to be a new skyscraper topping out every time I look up and the foundation for another one being dug every time when my eyes come back down.

I’m taking little steps to cross I-405 on 8th Street; cars rush by me towards the looming Downtown just ahead. Instead of slogging across a speedway atop a freeway traffic jam, maybe one day I’ll be able to take my little steps on a lid teeming with life—what Jane Jacobs called the intricate sidewalk ballet—but for now it’s all just a dream. But it’s a powerful vision nonetheless; let’s take our steps in that direction.

Check out the Downtown For People website for more on the efforts to block the expansion of I-405 interchanges in Downtown Bellevue.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared under the pseudonym byline Hyra Zhang. Brandon Zuo is the same author.

The post Downtown Bellevue Needs a Bigger Freeway Lid first appeared on The Urbanist.

One lingering question is whether by focusing our growth near freeways we are jeopardizing the health of the future residents of these shiny new transit-rich neighborhoods. Luckily, we can mitigate the roadway pollution health risks with freeway lids or removing freeway sections entirely. Such a strategy would allow us to make regional growth centers abutting freeway attractive and healthy places to live. Freeway removal tackles the problem at its source, while lids dampen the dispersal of freeway pollutants and the trees and greenery they add can absorb some of the pollution that does escape.

Momentum is starting to build for freeway lids. The advocacy group Lid I-5 won a $48,000 grant to start community outreach and a further $1.5 million from the Washington State Convention Center public benefits package. Tonight, Lid I-5 Collaborative is hosting a design presentation at Optimism Brewing to review early work from seven different teams for freeway lids in Downtown Seattle. Last fall, Lid I-5 also hosted a charrette on I-5 lid designs to reconnect the University District and Wallingford.

Both Downtown and the University District are densely populated near the freeway, meaning lids there would improve the health of tens of thousands of local residents. Moreover, lids (or highway removal) can make room for people to live in the improved neighborhoods using land recovered from freeway infrastructure.

Breathing Freeway Pollution

A recent UCLA study found the pollution spew radius of freeway was at least twice as large as previously thought–1,000 feet rather than 500 feet–and pollution can even travel one mile downwind. The implications of roadway pollution are dire. People living near freeways higher rates of asthma, other chronic respiratory illnesses, heart disease, sudden cardiac deaths, and strokes, as numerous studies have shown. The Los Angeles Times confirmed rates of particulate pollution spikes near freeways in their own analysis and created a map illustrating the impact.

Los Angeles prohibits siting public schools within 500 feet of freeways and Measure S proposed doing the same for housing but extending the prohibition to within 1,000 feet of freeways. Alas, freeways are so prevalent that such a prohibition would affect a significant portion of the city, hindering an already severely constrained city’s ability to grow. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration estimated the 1,000-foot rule would cover “more than 10% of land currently zoned for residential construction in the city, from Westwood to Boyle Heights and San Pedro to Sherman Oaks.” Measure S failed.

The ban-the-housing approach gets it backwards: to protect the public we should seek to eliminate the health hazard rather than the victim. In other words, either we should make freeways less harmful or remove them from our urban areas. That said, we should simultaneously rezone neighborhood interiors to allow dense multifamily housing away from freeway corridors. To do otherwise would be create a deeply inequitable city with lower-income tenants breathing in freeway pollution–unless we mitigate it–while wealthier detached single-family zones are considered off-limits. The added density will allow more frequent transit to serve these formerly exclusively single family areas.

Electric Cars Will Not Save Us

Switching to electric cars may improve our roadway pollution situation but is not a solution in itself. Here’s why:

• Brake pollution or “tire dust” would remain a major source of pollutants.
• Noise pollution will continue negatively impacting humans and wildlife alike.
• Embodied carbon from cars will continue choking the air with greenhouse gases and acidifying the oceans.

Electric cars still require brakes, which are a major source of air pollution. Disintegration of tires, brake pads, and the roadway surface end up dispersing toxic particles into the air. In Pacific Northwest, “tire dust” has also been implicated in coho salmon kills as they end up in area streams and ultimately Puget Sound. Since electric cars are typically heavier than comparable conventional cars because of their large batteries, they require stronger brakes. The benefits of switching away from high-polluting diesel fuel may be outweighed by “wear-particles” from heavier vehicles braking, The Guardian reported:

Increasing amounts of wear-particles have been found in new research from King’s College London. Scientists tracked air pollution alongside 65 roads for ten years. The researchers found some roads where the air pollution benefits from improvements in diesel exhausts were outweighed by increases in particles that come from the wear of tyres, brakes and the road.

So, even though we can hope the Puget Sound region’s fleet of cars and trucks will convert to electric within a few decades, we cannot expect the problem to go away. Autonomous vehicles will not fix wear-particle issue either since robot cars do not dispense with the needs for brakes; even with electric autonomous vehicles, noise pollution will continue to be an unmitigated negative externality of freeways. Plus, whatever fuel they’re consuming, cars represent embodied carbon since their manufacture and distribution puts tons of carbon into the air. The Guardian even suggested the embodied carbon of a car may exceed its total tailpipe emissions. Switching to electric can address the tailpipe emissions problem but not the embodied carbon problem. If private vehicles continue to be our transportation model, we will have a very hard time reducing carbon pollution and mitigating climate change.

Neighborhoods near freeways will continue to be highly polluted unless we do something about it. Removing the freeway, like I’ve proposed for Downtown Seattle is one option. Another is to build freeway lids in highly polluted areas to improve health and quality of life. We should be doing everything we can to encourage mass transit use and remove incentives for private vehicle use. ST2 and ST3 ballot measures showed the region supports going that direction–although some politicians remain convinced cutting the ST3 budget to lower car tab fees is a priority. Adding more high quality transit lines (like the Magenta Line) and implementing a carbon tax and congestion pricing to make motorists pay more of the social cost they are externalizing on the population writ-large and on the planet’s deteriorating ecosystems.

Wilburton and Downtown Bellevue

Bellevue is mulling an rezone proposal for the Wilburton neighborhood, which will have a light rail station when East Link opens in 2023, with comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) open until March 19th.

Alternative 2 is especially ambitious with 450-foot towers permitted west of the station and 250-foot buildings east of it. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the rezoned land is within 1,000 feet of I-405. Luckily, the DEIS does explore a small lid over I-405 to increase connectivity. A larger lid would have the benefit of dampening more noise and particulate pollution.

The DEIS studies how the alternatives will combine with “Grand Connections,” an effort to increase Wilburton’s connectivity. Grand Connection Option C includes a proposal for a lid over I-405 which would tie together Wilburton to Downtown Bellevue south of NE 6th St.

Bellevue projects that Alternative 1 would result in 13.1 million square feet of total development by 2035 while Alternative 2 would result in 16.3 million square feet. The no-action alternative would result in 4.2 million square feet. Alternative 1 tops out with building heights of 250 feet rather than Alternative 2’s 450 feet.

Comments on the Wilburton DEIS can be emailed to bcalvert@bellevuewa.gov with the subject line “Wilburton Draft Environmental Impact Statement.” I’d encourage people to support the more ambitious Alternative 2 and ask Bellevue to pair it with the Grand Connection Option C to create an I-405 lid to make the healthiest and most welcoming neighborhood. We should also be studying if it’d be feasible to build a bigger lid considering how much the health of future Bellevue residents is at stake.

Other places that have upzoned, or are in the midst of upzoning near freeways or major highways as light rail or bus rapid transit goes in include:

• Seattle’s Northgate
• Shoreline South (147th St Station)
• Shoreline North (185th St Station)
• Lynnwood City Center
• Downtown Bellevue
• Bellevue’s Spring District
• Redmond’s Marymoor District
• Downtown Redmond
• Kirkland’s Totem Lake
• Kenmore and Bothell along SR-522 BRT.

More Support For Removing I-5 Downtown

The post Pollution Impacts Heighten the Need for Lids or Freeway Removal first appeared on The Urbanist.