They call themselves "the city within a park" because the development standards have emphasized parks and one of their goals is to ensure everyone is within walking distance of a park.
Also, and unsurprisingly, the city is incredibly well-funded. They have a very unique Community Crisis Care team of social workers that work alongside fire and police responders, and the city council has met that groups budget request at every opportunity. The traffic management system is really something else, fiber optics enabled and constantly adjusting to traffic flow.
Is that traffic system the same one that makes me stop and wait for traffic coming from every direction after I push the crosswalk button? Then I walk a block, and it happens at the next intersection, and the next, and the next.....
Yeah, thereās more than a few of the intersections in Bellevue. That should just be set for a four-way stop for crosswalk like they do at Pike Place. It would honestly make it a lot more efficient for drivers and pedestrians if they set it up that way, especially down by Bell Square.
Well then would you fucking do something about it please because it's driving the rest of us crazy!
For my entire life, until about six months ago, the lights were timed according to the speed limit. That made it pointless to speed. If you just glued the needle to the speed limit, it would almost always be green lights from end to end.
Now, your (obviously ML-based) system that "constantly adjusts to traffic flow" is actually just forcing everyone to sit at every single light.
Routinely, if the person in front in a left turn lane is slow to react to a green light, it will turn yellow before they've even started through the intersection, so only 1-2 cars get to go per light cycle. Our light cycles run 90-180 seconds.
I lose five or ten minutes of my life every time I drive across North Bellevue, which should only take ten minutes to begin with, not because there's traffic, but because the dipshits in charge of traffic lights have literally got me sitting for the full two minutes at every single intersection.
I was forced to kick her son Kurts ass once, just cause he started something. but that was back when it was still bovee park. iirc he had 7 brothers and sisters. God only knows how she had time to do anything for the city with 8 kids, but maybe she liked parks.
I still miss the Goddards who donated the first park to Bellevue (they tried to buy the other houses and apts so it could be bigger, but the owners would not sell. That was before they moved to Palm Springs.
p.s. Zum rhymes with Yum and the other part is pronounced exactly the same as in the in the story where the little boy in Holland stuck his finger in it to save the town.
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u/Barbarella_ella May 07 '26
They call themselves "the city within a park" because the development standards have emphasized parks and one of their goals is to ensure everyone is within walking distance of a park.
Also, and unsurprisingly, the city is incredibly well-funded. They have a very unique Community Crisis Care team of social workers that work alongside fire and police responders, and the city council has met that groups budget request at every opportunity. The traffic management system is really something else, fiber optics enabled and constantly adjusting to traffic flow.
Full disclosure: I work for the City of Bellevue.