After reading the wise words of Kemper Freeman—benevolent dictator of Bellevue / savant of urban design—I decided it was high time for me to experience his auto-utopia first hand. Free parking! Ample wide streets! A pair of massive malls! Bellevue, per Kemper and reputation both, is everything Seattle is not.
My expectation, before the visit:
I arrived into Bellevue by way of highway 520 followed by interstate 405. (There is, to my knowledge, no way to enter Bellevue from outside aside from freeway. There are perhaps highway-like arterials by which one might accomplish this task; these violate the spirit of the place.) The 520 bridge and 405 were blissfully free of tolls—or any sort of use-tax. Just like god intended. I began to fear the taxocrats plan to change this. Traffic was stop and go from approximately the on ramp to well beyond the off ramp—with predictably obnoxious lane-usage and merging behaviors from drivers.
Eastsiders distinguish themselves by driving with less skill and courtesy than even Seattleites, embodying the principles of the modern conservative fully in their driving: I am the most important person here. Your needs are a waste, particularly when they conflict with mine. I will step on your neck (and the neck of any other thing living or dead) to get my needs met.
To enter Bellevue, I chose the 8th Street NE exit. This entire interchange is brand-spanking new—lavishly reconstructed with Federal and State tax dollars to a massive breadth of alabaster lanes in all direction. Three lanes exit to the West. With all this capacity for cars—name one three-lane exit in Seattle—you’d figure there would be no waiting. Nope. The lanes were packed with cars slowly creeping along, with a continual spatter of foolish and incompetently-executed lane changes, while waiting to be disgorged onto 8th St NE.
And then, we’re off. Slowly. Creeping. Down 8th St, I notice the vestigial sidewalk—clear of pedestrians. Walking in Bellevue—I imagine as I wasn’t bold enough to try—strikes me as a life-threatening activity. 8th St NE is six lanes of traffic, filled with drivers attending to most anything but driving. (One gentleman was enjoying his iPad while guiding his Audi down the street.) The curbs are high and defensive, scuffed with much tire residue. Coming off I-405, the buildings here don’t seem to have entrances, just gaping maws for underground parking structures—maws already filled with car emesis squeezing in and out of the street.
The closer one approaches the the pairing of Lincoln Square and Bellevue Square, the more city-like Bellevue appears. There are now recognizable storefronts—almost exclusively chains, but still distinguishable businesses. Left turn lanes (a seventh lane to the road) extend the length of these long blocks. I join the line waiting for the one onto Bellevue Way NE. Almost immediately, one is shuffled into the left lane (another left turn) to enter the Lincoln Square garage.
The garage is huge, with snaking lines of cars waiting to enter and exit. The overall experience of underground garage parking is a bit like being entombed. One drives in nauseating circles while breathing a miasma of carbon oxides, heavy metals and assorted exhaust products that are suspected of (or demonstrated to be) carcinogens. The lighting is cheap-office fluorescent. And, of course, one waits with your many fellow drivers all clamoring for the free parking. After parking in the depths, you wait for an elevator.
My overall impression of the Bellevue free parking experience: Parking (and driving) is free only if your time and (mental and physical) health are of no value. Traffic is bad in Seattle; traffic is Biblically bad on the Eastside. We could pay to make 405 a 24 lane triple-decker freeway and traffic on the Eastside would still be horrendous. It’s just too damn inefficient to move around this number of people by way of single occupancy cars. It’s horrible as an experience. And the pay-off is questionable. The shops at Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square are indistinguishable from any other similar mall—a parade of chains.
Yes, parking in Seattle costs money. And yes, the streets are narrow, the highway exits generally single lanes. If your number one goal, your major criteria for planning your day, is the cost of parking, the Eastside is for you. Whether parking is $2.50 an hour or $4.00 an hour, if this is your way of thinking, you aren’t destined for downtown Seattle in the first place.
What Seattle offers—as compensation for being a place where the needs of drivers are balanced with other considerations—are stores and restaurants that are quite a bit more interesting. You can have your Maggianos; I’ll stick with Machiavelli. If you don’t enjoy driving, can’t drive due to disability or just plain old recognize that you aren’t very good at driving, in Seattle one can always opt to bus, bike or walk instead. Bellevue is built for one plan—sitting in a car, in traffic, sucking on exhaust and becoming gradually more and more frustrated. I’ll pass.
Upon returning to Capitol Hill, I (nearly) kissed the ground of my neighborhood—where I can walk to a bank, grocery store, interesting non-chain bars and restaurants, movie theaters, live theater and a library. Downtown and the waterfront are a 15 minute bike ride away, with relatively safe routes back and forth. Kemper can have his vision if he lets me have mine.
Brilliant.
I wish you Stranger writers would stop equating Capitol Hill as “Seattle.” It’s a little bit of a bigger city than you think.
@2: hey! They include Ballard and the U-District (the latter grudgingly, since it make up a large swath of their core readership) on occasion as well. All the spaces between Ballard, Capitol Hill and the U rarely show up on Strangermaps, apparently. And anything south of the International District is officially not part of the city, boundaries be damned.
I am 26 years old and have never operated a car. I grew up down in Milton. If I wanted to attend driver’s edu my dad said I had to pay for it. Also I would have to have a job sans auto to pay fur insurance if I were to start driving. So I never did either in high school.
I commuted for two years from Tacoma to the UW before I finally got my first job at age 20. I worked for one summer down in Fife (I biked to and from) and used all the money I earned to move to Seattle.
As it is my employment has been very unstable for the past year. If I owned a car I prolly would have had to cancel my insurance rendering me a non-driver. I live in a house with 4 people, only one of them owns a car and it hasn’t moved in 2 years. I have quite a few friends here in Seattle who also have never had a license. One of them failed the drive test in high school 3 times; they took it as a sign that they’re not a good driver and shouldn’t be behind the wheel.
“The 520 bridge and 405 were blissfully free of tolls—or any sort of use-tax. Just like god intended. I began to fear the taxocrats plan to change this.”
Uh, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Tolling/520tolli…
I don’t think I quite grasp the purpose of your “folly.” You don’t like cars, you probably don’t like bikes either or the fact that Bellevue is not Seattle.
I hereby, as a Stranger contributor, duly recognize the existence of, and awesomeness herein, of the following Seattle neighborhoods: Queen Anne. Fremont. Wallingford. West Seattle. Columbia City. Georgetown. First Hill. Ballard. Kirkland (downtown) receives an honorary inclusion in the parade.
@6: Yes, there are things you are not grasping.
I will consider pleas for Greenlake, Ravenna and the U district. More or less any neighborhood where there are impressive things (and mundane things) within walking distance of where people live.
Jonathan, no argument about Kemper Freeman being an inflamed asshole (I have to look at the anti-light rail signs every day as I commute to work in the Mercer Slough area south of downtown), but you throw a lot of assumptions around in your piece about those of us living on the Eastside of Lake Washington. Sure, 8th St. is a Hellhole, but take a look at the public transit survey that Cienna posted this week and notice what the #2 city is on the list:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…
A *lot* of people are busing to and from work in Bellevue every day, despite Sound Transit and Metro not making it easy (by cutting routes between Eastside cities to the bone).
I’ve lived on Capitol Hill and I’ve lived on the Eastside, and there are some good places to eat and good things to do on either side of the Lake. Also, no drivers on the Eastside are as bad as the people driving the I-5 corridor.
@9: Agreed. There are some awesome places on the Eastside that I’ve been to, and means of using transit to get around.
It’s one of the painful things for me. The best Indian / Korean / Cantonese / Thai / etc food is to be found in the Northern, Southern and Eastern suburbs. It makes me wish retail rental lates were cheaper in Seattle.
Bellevue Square is essentially a duplicate of both Southcenter and Northgate (Macy’s, Penney’s, Nordstrom, plus smaller chain crap) Downtown Seattle has a huge Nordstrom and Macy’s store, connected by the bus tunnel to Westlake Mall, and by skybridge to Pacific Place, but no Penney’s.
Basically, it’s all the same. Sure, parking is free at Bellevue Square, Southcenter, and Northgate, but it’s a hassle to get to them if you live in the city (and particularly if you live near LINK) so why bother?
Kemper Freeman’s publicly stated that he wants the Bell Square/Lincoln Whatever to be as generically universal as possible– that you could stand on Bellevue Way and be in Bellevue, Kansas City, or L. A. It makes some people apparently feel safer (I’m not sure why, but okay). FWIW, Bellevue has a transit center at NE 6th and something or other behind the building that used to have a movie theater and Hooter’s. I commuted via bus to and from Bellevue for a year and while it’s not great, it is quite do-able (except for the part where after 10pm, in order to get to Issaquah, I had to bus to Mercer Island first).
“…the buildings here don’t seem to have entrances, just gaping maws for underground parking structures…”
Reallly good point. I notice this every day I’m in Bellevue. It’s extremely off-putting and speaks to the anti-pedestrian design of this horrible, horrible place.
You should have stopped by the Bellevue Regional Library. It’s a lovely place.
This is fun to read, but a little thumbsuckier than I’d hoped.
Jesus Fucking Christ. Who recorded that Autopia footage, Michael J. Fox?
Yes, Greenlake does deserve some love from the Stranger staff. I know we’re not “glorious-nothing-else-matters” Capitol Hill, but still. We are part of the city. Deal with it.
I hate the Eastside. We had to sign the papers for our house in Greenlake over in Bellevue back in 2007. I felt completely out of place and wanted to get out of there as quick as possible. Doesn’t help that I grew up in South King County, so I’ve always hated the Eastside and everything it stands for.
I honestly kind of have to laugh at people who think Seattle is a horrible city to drive in. I suppose that’s because I grew up (and learned to drive) in Houston. By freeways it can take two hours to drive across Houston. There is laughable public transportation. Everything seems to take 45 minutes to get to. If the endless heat and humidity don’t keep you off a bike, the size of Houston and hostility to people not driving cars will. The air is also filled with diesel particulates and other wonderful combustion byproducts, and that’s not even taking into account the byproducts from petrochemical production.
I can count on 1 hand how many times I’ve been to the East Side in the past few years. I don’t really see the appeal because I grew up in generic chain sprawl. Some people like it; it just makes me want to leave as quickly as possible. I’m guessing Kemper Freeman hates the idea of across-the-water light rail because it would mean that people living in Bellevue could more easily get to downtown Seattle (or elsewhere), and that’s not good for Freeman’s brutalist chain-store citadels.
Ah, more whining from the 206 Mafia. How thoroughly Stranger.
Thousands of jobs are in Bellevue/Redmond/Kirkland because companies can lease office space at a higher grade but at a lower price.
I carpool to work everyday to Bellevue. It drives me crazy to see the anti-rail signs on Bellevue Way and 112th while I’m sitting in 30 minutes of congestion to get on I-90.
A co-worker from San Francisco made a great observation once: Bellevue is a giant strip mall.
One bone to pick: it’s hard to get to Bellevue except by highway from Seattle, yes, but that’s because you need a bridge and the bridges are highways. The main arterials through Bellevue can all be used to access neighboring areas, though, including Redmond, Kirkland, Renton, etc.
At some point we’re going to have to sue them under the Clean Air Act.
@ 19.
Ah, more content-free whining from an anonymous Slog commenter. How thoroughly courageous and insightful.
Bellevue has some really cool stuff in it though. Crossroads is a way more interesting mall than Lincoln Square, and there are all kinds of ethnic stores and restaurants around. There are cool Persian, Japanese, and Russian grocery stores I know of and undoubtedly many more — it’s quite a diverse place. You’re right that it’s not very walkable but it’s not just a sea of chains and mediocrity.
There are terrific parks/forests that are used constantly, that’s where a lot of people do their walking.
On a different note, I was recently in downtown San Francisco and their sidewalks were twice as wide as Seattle’s. That place was set up for walking.
-BenY
Wow. What a fucking snob.
Jonathan: I feel the need to advocate for the Central District. I lived there for a year without a car (I don’t even know how to drive) and never had a problem. There are grocery stores, wonderful Ethiopian restaurants, there’s Ezell’s Chicken, and it’s also a short bike ride or shorter bus ride to Capitol Hill, the ID, and downtown.
I’ve only been to Bellevue twice. It seemed okay, but my inability to drive means it’s not really on my radar for anything. What exactly is the opposition to light rail in Bellevue, anyway? Wouldn’t they want to bring in more visitors?
No one ever mentions Magnolia, which has the best park in the entire city: Discovery.
It’s only a quick uphill walk from the Locks or either of two bus routes away. One bus from downtown literally dumps you inside the park at it’s end, the #33.
When did Erica Barnett rejoin the Stranger Staff?
Yesterday I drove down from Vancouver, BC on the I5 because I wanted to see a jcrew in real life. I decided on “seattle premium outlets” because it’s closest to the border.
Holy crap people! First, the outlet mall obviously sucked, but I really should have known better. The traffic, on the other hand, was ridiculous. There were several times when I yelled out in shock that someone could think it was a good idea to drive that way. It wasn’t only middle aged men in SUV’s either (One of whom I saw FISHTAIL behind a semi in the middle lane)- I saw little old ladies in Toyota corollas swerve across 3 lanes of freeway.
FYI people- if you cut in front of a person, you are still stuck behind the car they were following at a respectful distance. Also, there was congestion at the weirdest times. Like, you’re in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden there’s this huge line of cars to get….where? I have no idea! And people were constantly changing lanes where it was illegal to do so.
I too kissed the ground once I made it back to Canada (mercifully) alive.
OTOH @29, I’ve never seen an American driver STOP at the freeway end of an on-ramp when there was plenty of room to merge into traffic; that’s happened in front of me on three separate visits to Vancouver and one of the reasons I never drive up there anymore.
The classic Eastside driving move is short stopping when an exit/turn is missed or accidentally taken instead of going forward and turning around at the next interchange. When traffic is actually moving on a freeway or arterial, some moron will realize they are missing their exit, fully stop in a lane to the left and wait for an opening to cross over to the exit.
What’s a chain bar? I’m not in Seattle, but I’ve never seen one. I know there are a lot of chain restaurants with bars in them, but I had no idea that stand alone chain bars existed. Can someone point out a couple nation wide examples? I need to visit one of these places to fulfill my mass culture voyeurism fetish.
Bellevue does have something in common with Seattle: the same confusing manner of naming streets. Running E-W are streets (NE, SW, etc. before the number); running N-S are avenues (NE, SW, etc. comes after the number). So it’s NE 8th Street, not 8th Street NE.
I grew up a block from 8th in the Crossroads area when it was a 2-lane road without sidewalks. What it’s become in downtown Bellevue is a disaster.
Bellevue Square has the world’s lamest Pagliacci Pizza.
30, i have. but then, in the three months i’ve spent as a delivery driver i’ve seen every horrific, dumbfounding trick of bad/incompetent driving possible.
@30
Driving on the 101 just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, I once saw a car with Missouri plates driving on the first on-ramp after your cross the bridge. As he neared the top, he slammed on the brakes and came to a stop. Immediately after this the person in the car behind, obviously not expecting such a dip-shit move, plowed at 20mph into the Missouri car, which then rocketed into traffic and nearly cause a huge accident.
I’ve seen it while driving in Missouri, too, so in Missouri they must enter freeways like Canadians.
I think we need to send a Stranger investigative reporter to find real street parking in downtown Bellevue. The city was clearly designed to force people into these privately owned parking garages. Some are free, most are not.
Well, you went there and found what you expected.
I have worked and played in Bellevue over the course of many years, and found it a fun, exciting and pleasant “city”.
The Barnes and Noble and the Library — both within “walking distance” are superb.
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/scienc…
This article pretty much nailed it. I have friends that have moved to the Eastside from Seattle and their lives are 100% auto-oriented now. Price of gas, traffic, car payments/insurance, stress, etc. None of them have disposable income and none of them travel over to Seattle for any reason anymore. But they love talking about how big their apartments are. They finance big screen teevees and such from Best Buy and spend hours staring at them. Fuck the Eastside.
I thought this was funny and made a couple of points, but you lost lots of cred when 1) you were too “afraid” to walk around in Bellevue? 2) Cap Hill.
I love Cap Hill, but seriously guys. Geez.
Golob, stick to science. This is the worst piece of melodrama I’ve read. It’s like a hipster wrote something to prove a point but in no way believed it, so it became ironic. It almost seems like you’re being hyperbolic in order to say you’re not being genuine and you’re actually against the parking fee hike. Irony.
WARNING: Long comment alert.
As someone who passionately supports greater transit and density, I have the same reaction to Jonathan Golob’s writing in support of transit and density as I do to Erica C. Barnett’s writing in support of transit and density. It really pisses me off. And only at the author.
It’s the kind of writing that only preaches to the converted, and only to that portion of the converted that shares the author’s own biases and insecurities, while simultaneously only serving to alienate the unconverted. If the aim is to draw page views, terrific. If the aim is to persuade, well, you’ve come to the wrong place.
The problem is that the writing is so inextricably intertwined with tribalism and identity politics and the desire to find some “other” to look down upon. Take the needless generalization of Eastside residents:
Obviously, Golob didn’t seriously mean that all Eastsiders are the embodiment of failed conservative values. And yet, if I am someone who lives on the Eastside and who does not share those values, I’m not sure I’d be too thrilled that he just couldn’t resist slipping in a dig. And let’s keep in mind that 2008’s Proposition 1 to expand light rail won a majority of votes on the Eastside, so to equate Kemper Freeman values with Eastside residents is a bit like equating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rhetoric with Muslims.
Also, remember that Sightline report that came out last week that shows that a higher percentage of Bellevue residents than Portland residents commute via public transit. Imagine Golob making such sweeping condemnations of Portland, which is supposed to be this transit paradise that we Seattle-area barbarians can only dream of emulating. I’m not so sure the difference is that Portland has a more highly developed transit system as it is that Portland is cooler and hipper and more bohemian while Bellevue is so uncool and bland and mercenary.
And this comes back to my sense that for Golob it really isn’t so much about transit and density after all, that it really is about identity and “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” I recall Golob writing a post on this blog about how the Amtrak Cascades line to Portland was just too inconvenient or unreliable for him. For someone who purports to be a transit supporter to say he can’t be bothered to take what could well be the best passenger-train route in America, Acela included–a route whose travel time is not far off driving–well, that strikes me as the kind of person who is Richard Conlin’s target constituent: someone who sincerely views himself or herself as green, but only to distinguish oneself from people who live in suburban ZIP codes, not to make any more than token lifestyle changes, even where the real changes would actually be an improvement.
The shame in all this reflexive Bellevue-bashing is that, despite its wide streets and the deep gash that is I-405, downtown Bellevue has just about the best potential for transit-oriented development of any place in our region. Heck, as a pedestrian, I’ll take Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square any day over Northgate or Southcenter. And just wait until downtown Bellevue gets light rail. If we want to transform the greater central Puget Sound region into a place where traveling sans car is not such an exception and not such a pain, then downtown Bellevue is a natural and necessary beachhead. But hey, maybe some of us are perfectly satisfied to see Seattle remain an island of superiority, however hypocritically.
P.S. Golob writes: If your number one goal, your major criteria for planning your day, is the cost of parking, the Eastside is for you. The word is “criterion.” “Criteria” is plural.
@25: Yeah, what a snob, thinking people should be able to exist without owning a car! Wait, what?
@43: Don’t doubt that there are those who will discriminate based only on zip code. This reminds me of when my partner and I, both Bellevue residents, wanted to volunteer for a GLBT group in Seattle. One of the leaders, Heidi “Jezbian” Herman, scoffed that she wasn’t interested in help from people who “don’t live in the real city”. Found out later her father, who lives in Bellevue, financially supports her 40-something self.
@43 Awesome. Way to take Golob down a peg or two.
Wow.I stopped reading the SLOG for a few months(for real news organizations like komo, king, the PI, The times, etc) and man am I glad i did.
You guys are the worse fucking form of group think I have ever read.
O hey I have a great liberal-i love bikes idea.
O hey what a great idea. You are so smart and cultured.
We here at the SLOG are the smartest bestest most bicyclely group of hipsters around.
Guys…..go and read some other fucking news sites and pull your heads out of your asses. It is bad enough all of you live on the fucking hill….but to perpetuate such hipsterdum by all reading the same thing and then talking to one another about it is just sad.
cressona @43, that’s marvelously well done.
@43
Wow, did Golob really dis Amtrak Cascades like that? Pathetic*. Awesome comment.
I have always felt that hell must be like trying to turn left in downtown Bellevue.
And thanks @27. We’ve raised three kids in Magnolia. They ride their bikes, scooters or skateboards or walk to school, playgrounds, parks, church, the library, community center, soccer, baseball, the local book store, coffee shops and restaurants. And they take the bus to Seattle Center or downtown, and from there to wherever, including the Airport or the stadiums by light rail now. Most folks commute to downtown by bus and some of us by bike.