As more details emerge from Sound Transit as to its plans for an upcoming ballot measure this November, some Kirkland city officials are considering possible support for light rail on the Cross Kirkland Corridor.

At its Jan. 5 meeting, the City Council discussed the latest information to come from Sound Transit based on a December workshop examining candidate projects for their ballot measure, three of which would involve placing some form of rapid transit on the Eastside Rail Corridor (ERC), which runs through the city of Kirkland along with other municipalities on the Eastside. Kirkland city officials also met with the public at a meeting Monday night at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology to provide an update on where things stand, as well as solicit further feedback from residents before sending a letter to Sound Transit stating their recommendations for projects.

During the Jan. 5 meeting, city of Kirkland Public Works Director Kathy Brown said that one of the revelations to come from the December workshop is that Sound Transit is looking at longer financing term, which she said could make light rail affordable and, in their mind, doable on the CKC in the ST3 package. Because of this, she said, city officials could see supporting light rail “as long as its recast in a way we could consider either mode in the future knowing that nothing is going to be built right away.”

“We have years to really work with the community and figure out what works best,” she said.

“If a larger/longer ballot measure is proposed, Kirkland staff are recommending that the ST3 measure includes full funding for light rail from Totem Lake to Bellevue, but that there be sufficient flexibility in the language to allow for BRT on that segment if the Kirkland community concludes BRT is a better fit,” a city memo reads.

However, councilmembers like Dave Asher expressed reservations about light rail, though stated a need to work with Sound Transit.

Although there are several candidate projects that would have Sound Transit in Kirkland, many city officials like Mayor Amy Walen believe some of them will not adequately meet the needs of the city for the future.

“A bus stop on 85th Street is completely unacceptable,” she said. “We must insist on service for Kirkland in 25 years.”

The future of the CKC, and the possibility of rapid transit being placed on it, has produced a strong response from the community, many of whom are resistant to the idea of motorized transit of any kind in the corridor and are opposed to the city’s stated intent to lobby Sound Transit to include a proposed project for bus rapid transit (BRT) in the ERC. At the same time, organizations such as Save Our Trail has urged both the city and Sound Transit to put BRT on Interstate 405 instead, which they believe would be much cheaper to build and operate, as well as support more riders and move them faster than if placed on the trail. So far it has garnered 1,500 signatures for its online petition.

Kirkland residents opposed to the plans fear that transit will ruin the feel of the CKC and is an inappropriate location for transit while the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes remain relatively free for buses.

One man who spoke during the public comment section of the city’s Jan. 5 meeting against transit on the corridor told the council that “we are very organized and we are ready to take this fight to the next level.”

“We are asking you, we’re directing you, as the electorate, when the city of Kirkland makes their recommendations to Sound Transit, that it be crystal clear that the people of Kirkland do not want buses on that trail. What we want is buses on 405, where they belong,” he said.

Other residents who spoke in opposition to BRT on the CKC said that it would lead to traffic congestion within the city at intersections between the roads and the corridor. As envisioned by the city, a BRT system would have buses arriving at designated stations every five minutes.

However, consultants hired by the city to study Sound Transit projects from a Kirkland perspective claimed later during the meeting that other cities, such as Cambridgeshire, U.K. has a similar BRT system without traffic problems.

“In Europe, people are used to this,” one of the consultants said. “It’s very common.”

The consultants also said that the CKC would offer a bypass route for those trying to get to Seattle, whereas those on I-405 get caught up in the traffic particularly where it meets state Route 520.

At a meeting in November, residents wearing green in protest packed the Kirkland Performance Center for an open meeting with the city after they announced their plans to lobby Sound Transit. Earlier this year the council approved a $250,000 study of the corridor for the purpose of using it to influence Sound Transit to not only go with BRT but do so in a way that would mitigate impacts on the CKC.

Resident fears were articulated in a recent city memo, which described “an overarching concern from community members, even those with different viewpoints about HCT (High Capacity Transit) on the CKC that Sound Transit may not construct the corridor in a way that takes Kirkland’s interests into account.”

“Some of those who have said they oppose HCT on the CKC have said that they would support it if there were a ‘legally binding’ way to obtain assurance that the CKC would be built out according to the Master Plan vision,” the memo reads further.

The greatest complication in the discussion by far has been the different types of ownership of the corridor. While King County owns around 15 miles of the ERC including the section through Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond own the sections within their jurisdiction. However, Sound Transit has a 30-foot easement throughout the entire corridor for the purpose of placing high capacity transit there.

During the Jan. 5 meeting, Walen noted that “this conversation would have been totally different if Kirkland hadn’t purchased the corridor.”

“Everything we have done is to improve the corridor and we will not allow it to be ruined,” she said.

Regardless of what project makes the ballot measure or whether voters even approve it in November, nothing is expected to be placed on the corridor any time soon. King County recently held a ceremonial removal of railroad spikes along with the ERC at the 108th Avenue Northeast crossing between the Bellevue-Kirkland border to signal its own plans to develop a trail there in 2017 similar to the CKC, which Kirkland officially opened in 2015.

According to Kirkland city officials, the soonest anything would go on the corridor would be roughly 8-15 years for bus rapid transit and nearly twice as long for light rail.