Great Neighborhoods - Crossroads

It all looks great to me. I think the most important thing is focusing on making crossroads a place to go and interact with the community instead of just a place to do your shopping and then leave. That means making sure people feel comfortable on the street and in public areas and that there are safe and easy ways to get to those places

I'm most excited about S-CX-25, because that will open up so many opportunities to travel short distances without driving. It's maddening to be within walking/bicycling distance to several business/gathering hubs, yet being forced to drive because there are no ways/safe ways to do so.

Additionally, I would like to know what the plan is to deal with the reality of drivers treating every street as a freeway. People keep driving fast through Bellevue, regardless of whatever the speed limit says. Can we please get physical infrastructure that will actually force drivers to slow down. It seems absurd that we provide infrastructure to protect 4,000lb metal boxes, but not for people walking and riding bicycles.

I like a lot of these - affordable housing, support for small local businesses, preservation of tree canopy, inclusive signage, improvements to pedestrian access (!!), and support for cultural art. I was surprised to see so much focus on mobility and access, this is something that makes me really excited because I have a hard time getting to the Crossroads mall without getting in my car. Even when I go, I struggle to find parking and I would enjoy having realistic and safe alternatives to get there. For example, it's not safe for me to bike there due to lack of protected bike lanes, but even if it were safe for me to bike there, there are very few places for me to park a bike!

I'd like to see what the city wants to specifically propose for S-CX-22.

S-CX-28 is the only item that looks questionable to me. Are chargers that hard to find? I would prefer a focus on safer streets, such as with S-CX-23 to S-CX-25. I believe the most effective way to reduce dangerous traffic and congestion is to modify roads and traffic signals to both enhance road safety and incentivize more active travel modes.

"S-CX-25: Support the creation of pedestrian connections
within superblocks" is great!

Suggestions:
Explicitly prioritize pedestrian-first street design (e.g., wider sidewalks, pedestrian plazas, curb extensions) in high-traffic areas like NE 8th St.
Push for higher-frequency bus service (e.g., 10-minute headways) in the area, not just better stops.
Explicitly upzone areas near transit (e.g., allow 6+ story buildings with affordable housing mandates).
Add nighttime activation policies (e.g., outdoor markets, lighting) to support evening foot traffic.
Prioritize ground-floor retail in new developments to avoid dead zones.
Improve walking/biking links to Bel-Red, on 8th st, Redmond (e.g., a protected bike highway).

Removed by moderator.

Sorry, the last part should read: Almost all Crossroads streets are wide straight arterials and most of those who drive on them, quite carelessly, are simply passing by, yet we here are stuck with noise and pollution, and this cannot be solved with just landscaping. There should be explicit policies preventing that. Remove the lanes and on-street parking and plant trees instead.

All those policies sound really nice and as a resident of Crossroads I would certainly be happy if they were actually implemented. I especially welcome all the mobility and access and environment policies. But I do think that the list of policies should be expanded, for example, electric car chargers are mentioned explicitly but there's nothing about bike and scooter share stations. Even bike racks are not mentioned! Most of the rack near the park and the mall are tiny and often located inconveniently both for people walking on the sidewalk and people trying to run errands or working (we have plenty of food delivery people on bikes). In addition, there should be policies actively discouraging people from speeding through the neighborhood. Almost all Crossroads streets are wide straight arterials and most of those who drive on them, quite carelessly, are simply passing by, yet we here are stuck with noise and pollution, and this cannot be solved There should be explicit policies preventing that.

Please drop S-CX-28 (Support efforts to provide electric vehicle charging
infrastructure) from plans. Electric cars have range of 300+ miles per charge, cost $45+K and are luxury items which people can charge at home. It is nice to have, but this is so far down the list of problems - people are loosing health and dying on streets, can't afford live in Bellevue, local businesses are closing. Please, focus on those instead of chargers for Teslas.

I support all of the goals in this plan. It's balanced and makes me excited that the Crossroads area is my home.

I would ask for specific targeting of policy to maintain and even increase tree canopy both in residential and commercial areas.
I would also ask for the establishment of some policy to preserve the smaller starter homes in our neighborhood. I think we need both of these sorts of policies to balance the intense commercial pressure of the Mc Mansion industry.

We are an urban forest area. That's rare and precious and something that will greatly increase in value in the future. I would like to see the preservation of that quality emphasized more through both goal setting and explicit policies.

Great work! One refinement I'd like to S-CX-30 is to specifically increase Evergreens relative to deciduous trees.

I appreciate the intent behind preserving affordable housing in our community, especially at a time when housing costs are rising across the board. Ensuring that working families, seniors, and others can remain in our neighborhood is critically important.

That said, I do have some concerns about the idea of making all subsidized and naturally occurring affordable housing permanently income-restricted. While this may sound like a safeguard, it could unintentionally limit flexibility in how our neighborhood grows and evolves.

For example, locking in income restrictions permanently might make it harder to attract the kinds of investment needed to keep older buildings in good shape. Private owners might hesitate to maintain or upgrade their properties if they can't recoup the costs due to profit limitations. Over time, this could reduce the quality of housing available—not just its affordability.

I also wonder whether this approach could lead to more rigid economic segregation, where we unintentionally end up with housing "buckets" that don’t reflect the range of people who live and work here.

I’d love to see a policy that balances long-term affordability with flexibility—perhaps using rolling affordability periods or incentives that encourage preservation without making it permanent in all cases. This could allow our neighborhood to adapt over time while still supporting those who need affordable housing today.

I hope we can continue this conversation with openness to the nuances and trade-offs involved.

I am heartened to see this: "Support efforts to maintain both subsidized and naturally occurring affordable housing and work to
preserve it as permanent income-restricted housing." Too many more-affordable smaller homes are being bought by developers, demolished, & giant single-family homes being built. Bellevue needs more clear policies about such homes that very few families can afford & should focus on multi-family homes (duplexes; fourplexes, etc.) These homes create less privacy in our yards & homes. Developers should not be allowed to build without much higher standards around affordability.

Overall, I'm really excited by the plan and think it is great. You've done well to capture what makes Crossroads a great place to live and have plans to enhance it. My only addition would be to specify "protected bike lanes" not just space on the side of busy roads, especially along routes that feed into Light Rail stations and that go to parks in the area. Crossroads is a great place and I spend most of my time here, but I still like to go into Seattle proper on occasion, and having a safe, efficient means of doing that would be wonderful.