Through an interlocal agreement in the early 1990’s, the cities of Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond (BKR) in Washington joined forces and developed the BKR Model to help carry out various planning activities. Since then, the model has undergone many rounds of minor to moderate updates, but the model construct and vehicle oriented nature remain unchanged. The BKR model supports the following multimodal planning and scenario analysis:
The cities of Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond are located in the east side of the Puget Sound region, as shown in Figure 1. This sub-area of the Puget Sound region is located just across Lake Washington from Seattle. Two east-west bridges connect Seattle to the City of Bellevue, the I-90 Express and Route 520. The three cities, combined, span 70 square miles, and have a population of 278,000, and 260,000 jobs. The ratio of population to employment means there are more jobs than residential workers, thus resulting in an influx of workers from outside the sub-area region into the region every workday. Thirty percent of the employment in the sub-area region is in the high-tech sector. This high level of high-tech employment is partially driven by the location of Microsoft Corporation headquarters in the City of Redmond, which attracts 50,000 employees per day.
