The Seattle Times ran an article this weekend about the downtown “building boom.” Although having 15 projects underway in Downtown Bellevue, there have been very few complaints to the city due to noise.
An interesting fact to note from the article is that the city in the past has only received less than 20 calls a year about construction impacts, which includes noise and traffic (The city has even won awards for the way it has managed the roads throughout the construction).
Construction in Bellevue is limited to 7am – 6pm on weekdays, and 9pm – 6pm on weekends.
For me the worst part is having the sidewalks closed for up to a year? With our superblock configuration it makes it worse. If I was in charge no one could close a sidewalk for more then a few weeks.
Sidewalks and Semipermanent lane closures are the biggest problems that I’ve really run into, noise seems an acceptable trade off for progress.
The worst noise I’ve had was because the city installed handicapped accessible crosswalk indicators that beep a particular tone and frequency when no one is using them. It was quite annoying at 3am when I couldn’t sleep. Luckily I was able to talk to the right city department and found that it was simply a misadjusted volume, and the contractor was able to set it to be significantly quieter during low traffic periods.
The other thing I wish would happen is for the city to pick at least two streets north and south for one way traffic, and two streets east and west for the same. If NE4th went east and NE8th went west from the freeway to the mall with synchronized lighting I believe that traffic would be improved significantly. Match that with Bellevue Way going south and 106th going north and it would reduce the pedestrian impact on traffic tremendously.
The other thing that I’d love to see tested to reduce pedestrian impact on traffic is introduction of scramble walks at several key intersections. (All the walk signs happen at the same time, and pedestrians can walk diagonally through the intersections) The most important intersection I’d think this would currently improve is NE8th and Bellevue way.
Bellevue doesn’t own a lot of the sidewalks so they really cannot restrict a builder from closing them. It was all part of a deal a long time ago to reduce the amount of city owned property (er, maximize the amount of privately owned property) to enhance the tax base. Plus, when it was all farms 50 years ago nobody needed sidewalks.
Oh, can anyone get the Yuen Lui folks to put a real sidewalk on the east side of their building? (Tearing down the eyesore would be better, but I got a feeling they aren’t moving.)
Will’s comments about scramble zones is a good one. I’d vote to have 108th & NE 4th converted immediately.