Sound Tran­sit’s East Link project has just moved one major step clos­er to becom­ing a real­i­ty. After many months of dis­cus­sion and nego­ti­a­tion, Belle­vue’s City Coun­cil has vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to autho­rize the city to enter into a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with Sound Tran­sit regard­ing the project, one of sev­er­al major expan­sions of the Link light rail sys­tem approved by vot­ers in 2008.

When East Link is com­plet­ed, it will be pos­si­ble to trav­el by train from Seat­tle through Mer­cer Island and Belle­vue to NPI’s home­town of Red­mond — or vice versa.

In a state­ment, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, who also serves on Sound Tran­sit’s board of direc­tors, praised the coun­cil for its unan­i­mous vote.

“I applaud the Belle­vue City Coun­cil for their action tonight to move for­ward as planned with East Link,” Con­stan­tine said. “Belle­vue vot­ers have con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed the expan­sion of light rail as a way to link busi­ness­es, res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods, and cities through­out our region”

“Tonight’s vote reflects the nego­ti­at­ed out­come between Belle­vue and Sound Tran­sit that brings us one step clos­er to con­struc­tion. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our work togeth­er for a stronger econ­o­my and region­al mobility.”

Sound Tran­sit’s board has already autho­rized Sound Tran­sit’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer, Joni Earl, to sign the agree­ment on ST’s behalf. Tonight’s vote was the last hur­dle to mak­ing the Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing formal.

The MOU, which runs twen­ty-four pages, is a detailed, legal­ly-bind­ing agree­ment which stip­u­lates how Belle­vue and Sound Tran­sit will go about financ­ing and con­struct­ing East Link’s align­ment with­in the city limits.

Cru­cial­ly, the agree­ment has set­tled the dis­pute over East Link’s align­ment through down­town Belle­vue. Under the terms of the MOU, Sound Tran­sit and the city have agreed that East Link will go under­ground through down­town, with the city help­ing to cov­er the added expense of con­struct­ing a tun­nel. The city has agreed to make a con­tri­bu­tion of up to $160 mil­lion to the cost of the project.

In East Link plan­ning doc­u­ments, the pro­posed tun­nel align­ment is referred to as Alter­na­tive C9T. Here is how it is described in the East Link Sup­ple­men­tal Draft Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (DEIS for short — what a mouthful):

Pre­ferred Alter­na­tive C9T begins on the east side of 112th Avenue SE and then tran­si­tions to the west side of 112th Avenue SE at SE 6th Street. Pre­ferred Alter­na­tive C9T then trav­els at-grade on the west side of 112th Avenue SE before turn­ing west at Main Street to enter the tun­nel por­tal. The tun­nel con­tin­ues on the south side of Main Street before turn­ing north under 110th Avenue NE.

To main­tain access to the Sur­rey Downs neigh­bor­hood, this alter­na­tive includes realign­ing SE 4th Street through Sur­rey Downs Park to con­nect to 112th Avenue SE fur­ther south, form­ing a four-way, sig­nal­ized inter­sec­tion at SE 6th Street.

Pre­ferred Alter­na­tive C9T includes the Belle­vue Tran­sit Cen­ter Sta­tion at 110th Avenue NE, with a sta­tion entrance at NE 2nd Place and south of NE 6th Street and an option­al entrance on the south­west cor­ner of NE 6th Street and 110th Avenue NE. From this sta­tion, Pre­ferred Alter­na­tive C9T con­tin­ues north to NE 6th Street, where it turns east, exits the tun­nel, and tran­si­tions to an ele­vat­ed pro­file in the cen­ter of NE 6th Street, and then swings to the north side of NE 6th Street to cross 112th Avenue NE, I‑405, and 116th Avenue NE.

Pre­ferred Alter­na­tive C9T then turns north along the BNSF Rail­way right-of-way to cross NE 8th Street and reach the ele­vat­ed Hos­pi­tal Station.

While build­ing a tun­nel does increase the cost of build­ing East Link, we agree with Belle­vue and Sound Tran­sit that it’s a good invest­ment. Hav­ing a tun­nel align­ment through down­town reduces trav­el time and elim­i­nates the prob­lem of pedes­tri­ans, bicy­clists, or motorists turn­ing into the path of a train. A tun­nel align­ment also makes it eas­i­er for Link to oper­ate through down­town in bad weather.

Build­ing a tun­nel will require years of street work in down­town Belle­vue, which some busi­ness­es and res­i­dents are already dreading.

How­ev­er, Sound Tran­sit has pledged to work with the com­mu­ni­ty to mit­i­gate con­struc­tion impacts. The agency has learned a great deal from build­ing Cen­tral Link, and Belle­vue will ben­e­fit immense­ly from that insti­tu­tion­al knowledge.

Sound Tran­sit still does not have the mon­ey to get East Link all the way out to down­town Red­mond. At present, fund­ing only exists to get the line to Over­lake, which is home to Microsoft­’s main cam­pus. We con­sid­er the exten­sion to down­town Red­mond to be extreme­ly impor­tant, as do Microsoft and the city of Red­mond, and we hope the mon­ey can be found to build it.

This unfund­ed sec­tion of East Link is known as Seg­ment E in plan­ning doc­u­ments, but as Sound Tran­sit works on get­ting it fund­ed, it might eas­i­ly become known as Red­mond Link, just as the last seg­ment of Cen­tral Link (which opened in Decem­ber 2009) became known as Air­port Link.

Tonight’s vote also rep­re­sents anoth­er vic­to­ry for pro­gres­sives on the East­side over Belle­vue Col­lec­tion own­er and Tim Eyman bene­fac­tor Kem­per Free­man, Jr. Free­man, who fierce­ly oppos­es East Link, has gone to extreme lengths to block the project.

In 2008, he spent thou­sands of dol­lars try­ing to defeat Sound Tran­sit 2 (and lost). Then, he tried to con­vince the Supreme Court to bar the state from trans­fer­ring I‑90’s tran­sit lanes over to Sound Tran­sit so tracks can be installed on them.

When that did­n’t work, he bankrolled Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 (which includ­ed a pro­vi­sion intend­ed to pre­vent light rail from ever cross­ing Lake Wash­ing­ton) and tried to install more can­di­dates sym­pa­thet­ic to his views on the Belle­vue City Coun­cil. Hap­pi­ly, I‑1125 is fail­ing and all three of the can­di­dates Free­man backed in con­test­ed city coun­cil races are losing.

NPI has been fight­ing for near­ly a decade to stop Free­man, Eyman, and their road war­rior friends from inter­fer­ing with the con­struc­tion of Link light rail. It’s been a long, long jour­ney, and it’s not over yet. But, as with today’s vote, we con­tin­ue to sur­mount the obsta­cles they’ve put in front of us. Our region des­per­ate­ly needs light rail, and we remain com­mit­ted to help­ing Sound Tran­sit ensure that it deliv­ers on its promise to build the sys­tem the vot­ers approved.