City Manager Noel Treat sent a letter to Sound Transit in January asking the agency to reaffirm its commitment to provide at least $6.3 million for dedicated Mercer Island commuter parking.
According to the letter, there has been a “long-standing agreement” between the city and Sound Transit to provide parking in exchange for loss of mobility and losing access to I-90’s center lanes to make way for light rail.
Recently, Sound Transit expressed that it was not obligated to provide funding for parking unless the city supports its proposed bus intercept project, Treat wrote.
The bus intercept would involve buses from the Eastside turning around on Mercer Island instead of continuing across the bridge and turning around in Seattle.
“In light of our discussion, I am writing to strongly re-emphasize that the City intends to hold firm to the parties’ long standing agreement — sufficient funds must be contributed by Sound Transit towards new parking capacity as mitigation for the city’s loss of mobility,” Treat wrote. “A bus intercept has never been and cannot now be a condition of this mitigation.”
Sound Transit was studying a site by the Mercer Island Community and Event Center for about 200 commuter parking spaces that would be available to all during the construction of the South Bellevue Park and Ride, then only to Mercer Island residents after three years. That proposal was met with public criticism from the Friends of Luther Burbank Park and the recently formed Save our Suburbs (SOS) group.
The city hired a consultant to study other parking sites by the future light rail station and in Town Center, and identified the Twenty Four Eleven or Freshy’s site and the proposed Hines projects as candidates, but hasn’t taken any action since then.
“The city is expeditiously undertaking additional analyses to identify viable sites for the new parking,” Treat wrote. “The city wants East Link to work for Mercer Islanders and that will only be the case, and Islanders will only be able to recoup their loss of mobility, if they can park their cars and have the ability to utilize light rail.”
