Seattle Transit Blog's Sherwin Lee has done yeoman's work analyzing the two disputed alternative routes for light rail to Bellevue, identifying how many parcels of land are in the "walkshed" of each route. (A walkshed, in this case, is defined as the area that's accessible within a five-to-ten-minute walk).

The route preferred by Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman---along with a spare four-person majority of the seven-member Bellevue City Council---would run through the Mercer Slough nature preserve and along I-405, bypassing the South Bellevue Park and Ride and requiring the construction of a $170 million-$210 million new park and ride in Bellevue's Enatai neighborhood. The route preferred by Sound Transit would stop at the existing park-and-ride and would travel north along Bellevue Way SE, carrying more riders (and costing less) than the council alternative.

Lee's conclusion:

Initial reaction from the maps indicate that the walkshed areas don’t look drastically different, but a deeper look at the differences between the two are pretty telling.  Within a 5-minute walk, 45 parcels are accessible from South Bellevue, whereas only 25 are accessible from A-2, indicating 80% more coverage in the former.  That narrows to 29% for a 10-minute walk with 251 parcels served by South Bellevue, and 194 served by A-2.  Graphically, the A-2 Station parcel walkshed looks inflated because several long parcels (waterfront homes) south of I-90 stretch the ostensible coverage area.

The council's preferred alternative, in other words, would serve fewer on-foot transit riders than Sound Transit's. Although it's unclear how many people would decide to drive to the new park and ride, Lee points out that, qualitatively, it's better (from an environmental and traffic standpoint) for people to walk or take transit to rail stations rather than driving there in their cars. "In my opinion, 1000 riders who walk or bike to the station would be preferable to 2000 riders who drove there."