Transportation Committee 9/2/2025

All right.

Good morning.

The September 2nd, 2025 meeting of the Transportation Committee will come to order.

It is 10.01 AM.

I am Rob Saka, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Council member Rank.

Present.

Councilmember Strauss?

Here.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth?

Excuse.

Chair Saka?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

All right.

Thank you.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

So thank you all for attending today's meeting of the Transportation Committee.

I hope you had a restful recess the past few weeks.

First and foremost, happy belated Labor Day.

On that note, I want to especially call out our transportation crews on the front line who are out on our sidewalks, streets, bridges, and more.

doing the needed repairs and building our transportation infrastructure to keep our city moving safely and efficiently.

This is hard work.

Our SDOT crews do incredible work and I've been fortunate to witness their efforts in action firsthand on multiple occasions.

So as we celebrated Labor Day yesterday, let us also celebrate the achievements and contributions to a safe and efficient transportation infrastructure network that our laborers do toil every day on our behalf.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This city would not be what it is without all of your hard work efforts and in some cases sacrifices.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We all rely on your hard work and we couldn't be more grateful.

On another note, colleagues, I should note that this is one of our final committee meetings before we enter our big annual budget cycle.

However, we still have a number of important policies to get through before then.

To that end, we have a full packed agenda today as always.

Our first two items on the agenda will focus on the District Project Fund.

This is an important legislation that myself and Council Member Strauss led the charge on to creating a funding mechanism to respond to acute transportation challenges in our various communities across our council districts.

I wanna thank SDOT, and our own central staff, especially Cal Chow for the work on this important policy for this committee and our respective communities.

Our second set of agenda items is on SDOT sidewalk program, looking at sidewalk repair, new sidewalk construction.

And I look forward to hearing from the department on their work to address our missing sidewalk network.

All major priorities for me and this committee, my office.

Lastly, we will be hearing an executive generated legislation related to an e-cargo bike permit program.

So looking forward to hearing more on that shortly.

That said, we'll now move on to our hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have three in-person speakers and two remote.

All right, excellent.

Each speaker will have approximately two minutes.

We'll start with the in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list, Bradley Hopkins.

Hello, Council.

My name is Bradley Hawkins, and I live in Seattle's Africatown neighborhood.

In Seattle, we now enjoy three limited-access north-south expressways, I-5, State Route 99, and Lake Washington Boulevard.

Mapping technology has reinterpreted Lake Washington Boulevard as a major arterial to avoid Rainier Avenue, and drivers are happy to exploit this tech hack.

Lake Washington Boulevard has recently enjoyed a re-striping, a glow-up, if you will, with wide fog lines, painted speed bumps, and yellow striping in the middle.

These changes have made it much easier for drivers to comprehend the apex of each corner, allowing greater comfort to take the road at a higher speed.

In my personal experience, auto speeds have greatly increased since that re-striping has occurred.

The fog lines vary in distance from the park grass, sometimes leaving as much as a foot between paint and grass, and sometimes leaving nothing.

In my personal experience, drivers are much more assertive in directing we cyclists to get in the bike lane.

There is no bike lane on Lake Washington Boulevard.

It is a park, and it's a park with no stop signs from Seward Park to Madrona Drive.

On August 13th, I was the victim of a hit-and-run collision on Lake Washington Boulevard between Genesee Park and Lake Park Drive at approximately Lake Washington Boulevard and Holden.

This is a section of Lake Washington Boulevard that was slated for a multi-use path with a tall divider protecting families from expressway traffic.

These plans were scuttled by the City Council due to political pressure from wealthy homeowners.

I'm a casualty of that decision.

Though I escaped with minor injuries and can speak before you today, Others have not been so lucky.

My story was also featured in a recent article in the Seattle Bike Blog.

Others will not be so fortunate as I.

I'm afraid that the recent painting of Lake Washington Boulevard represents two steps backwards in the mayor's and the council's messaging around Vision Zero.

This and memory holding of the original plan undercuts that messaging.

Please institute the original safety plan and make Lake Washington Boulevard a park again, safe for families.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir.

Next up is Nick Saddle.

Is this one on?

Hello.

This one's on too, right?

Hello.

Yeah, it is.

Oh.

Hello, council.

My name's Nick.

I am a frequent rider of my favorite bus, Route 8, which is the only east-west bus between downtown and the Ship Canal.

It's the least reliable bus in King County Metro's system, with only 40% of buses on time.

That's far short of Metro's 80% on-time goal.

It also has the most riders per service hour, so it's one of the busiest buses in the city.

You may have noticed us in our race we did two months ago, where we challenged riders to do the slowest thing they could do and still beat the bus.

People juggled, jumped rope, three-legged raced, and frequently beat the bus that always goes one and a half miles per hour across South Lake Union.

For two years now, SDOT has been studying the route, and now they've finished their analysis.

They agree that bus lanes are needed, but their flawed traffic analysis assume that drivers would willingly wait 34 minutes to clog up South Lake Union traffic to get to Capitol Hill.

They don't do any analysis on the alternate routes to get there.

They don't even factor in the bus that's going to take five minutes instead of 25 minutes to get from South Lake Union up to Capitol Hill.

The city has so many goals around mode shift, climate, livability.

We know that busy buses are safer buses.

We know that delayed buses are wasteful buses.

And we've done nothing to achieve that.

If the Department of Transportation can't make the bus faster than jumping rope, what exactly are we doing?

I challenge all of you to please tell SDA to reverse their decision, reanalyze this traffic, and prioritize transit along this corridor.

It is so desperately needed and so urgent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last in-person speaker is Jason Lee.

Good morning, council, and welcome back from recess.

My name is Jason Lee, and I co-laid the Pixelate campaign with Nick, and I'm here today to speak in favor of bus lanes on Denny Way.

I'd like to start by thanking Chair Saka, Vice Chair Hollingsworth, and Council Member Kettle, whose offices we have either already met with or will be meeting with soon.

Route 8 is the slowest and least reliable bus in Seattle, and we proved that in July by racing it.

Like Nick mentioned, we show that it is not only slower than walking, but also slower than cha-cha sliding, hopscotching, jumping rope, leapfrogging over one another's heads, balancing La Croix on our heads.

The list goes on.

Unfortunately, SDOT seems wholly unconcerned by this and announced last Thursday that no bus lanes are coming to Denny Way in the area where we raced the bus.

Instead, they will be trying to resolve congestion, but with, quote, alternate routing and improved wayfinding and encouraging transit use.

SDOT has already poured $12 million into the Denny Way Intelligent Transportation System, which did not work.

And I'm not sure how a few signs are going to help.

They're wasting valuable time and money on a strategy that we all know isn't going to do anything.

Instead, let's look at what has worked in Seattle.

As a two-lane arterial vital to both local and I-5 traffic, Madison Street is incredibly similar to Denny Way.

And just like Denny was before, Madison used to be chronically congested and with a languishing bus.

However, SDOT has replaced one of those two lanes with a bus lane, and the result has been nothing short of incredible.

Thousands of drivers have started taking the bus and leaving the cars at home, along with all the pollution and traffic that comes along with them.

Now people have an option for commuting that is way faster than it was before.

Let's start doing that in any way and really start putting effort into reaching our climate and transportation goals.

Because in the last year alone, within Seattle city limits, our population grew by 19,000 people.

If we don't start expanding viable alternatives to driving urgently, then we risk finding ourselves in a traffic and climate catastrophe as all our new neighbors decide to drive to work instead of taking better choices.

Thank you.

We'll now go to our two remote speakers.

First up is Franklin Jones.

Franklin, when you're permitted to speak, please hit the star six.

Good morning, council.

This is Franklin Jones, founder and CEO of Beeline Urban Delivery down in Portland, Oregon.

and I am calling in today to offer my support for the e-cargo bike, commercial e-cargo bike program.

I have owned and operated Beeline Urban Delivery for the past 15 years, providing last mile delivery throughout the Central Core of Portland.

And I want to acknowledge the strong leadership from SDOT and the Climate Office on bringing this program to Council.

Cargo bikes represent a very viable alternative to our traditional van-based deliveries without service level decreases.

I want to offer my full support of the proposed program in pursuit of a more livable community and continued efficient delivery of goods.

Thank you for your time.

Okay.

Last up, David Haynes, remember to hit star six.

Hi, thank you, David Ains.

Public transportation is unsafe.

We need a more forthright, diligent effort.

I was at the 148th Street South Shoreline a few days ago, and this one guy took over the park bench at the bus stop at the ground level when he come off the platform, and he's smoking a cigarette, and this other group was passing around a vaporizer right at the bus stop.

So I asked him, hey, can you be considerate and take that elsewhere?

You know, you're not that cool and all that.

and they started getting belligerent and they got to the point where I threatened to smash the vaporizer and I ripped the cigarette out of the dude's mouth and eventually there was like seven individuals who like some of them seemed to go wanting to fight and so I got really loud to let them know that they're not going to come near me and so after yelling the transit security guard comes down from the platform and she's walking past and I say Excuse me, can you address these individuals who think that it's okay for them to smoke at the bus stop?

And she says something like, they're allowed to do that.

And I was like, what do you mean?

She's like, this isn't my responsibility.

They can do whatever they want.

I only patrol the second floor at the platform.

And she says, I tell people not to smoke up there all the time.

I was like, do you ever ticket them?

I was like, no.

I was like, well, can you go let those people know that they're not allowed to do that here?

And she said, I don't listen to people who aren't paying me.

And I was like, well, the taxpayers pay you.

Why can't you just do your job?

And she's like, this isn't part of my responsibility.

And so I'm wondering like exactly what private security interpretation of the rules of law allow for some untrustworthy, lazy transit security who doesn't do their job between sound link-like rail and the transfer to the King County Metro that makes it impossible and untenable to even rely- Thank you, David.

Chair, that is the conclusion of all our polling commenters.

All right.

Thank you.

We will now move on to our first two items of business.

They are related.

So will the clerk please read items one and two into the record?

Agenda item one, resolution 32179, a resolution regarding the operation of a council district fund slash district project fund as provided in the 2025 adopted budget and 2025 through 2030 capital improvement program through council budget action S.003A1.

Agenda item two, council bill 121058, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Department of Transportation, amending Ordinance 127156, which adopted the 2025 budget, including the 2025 through 2030 Capital Improvement Program, renaming the Council District Fund CIP Project to the District Project Fund CIP Project and lifting a proviso.

Thank you.

And looks like our presenters have already joined us at the table.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourselves and then when ready, begin your presentations.

Thank you.

Bill Laporte, SDOT.

Simon Blensky, Senior Transportation Planner with SDOT in our Project Development Division.

Good morning.

Jim Curtin, Project Development Division Director.

SDOT and Calvin Shelton, Council Central Staff.

And I'd like to just make a few just contextual remarks before turning it over to SDOT, just to remind you all that the concept that's in front of us today was originally proposed as part of the transportation levy proposal, but did not make it through to the levy that was approved by voters.

and that the Council established the proposal in last year's budget, funding it for two years, $7 million in 2025 and in 2026. We also imposed a spending proviso that the money could not be spent until it was further authorized by the Council.

So what we have in front of you today is a resolution that sort of acknowledges the policies and procedures for operationalizing this program, and that will be what the presentation will focus on.

And then we have a second piece of legislation that lifts the proviso, changes the name to the proviso of the program, and gives them the authority to actually move forward and spend money.

So with that, I'll turn it over to SDOT.

Thanks, Cal, and thanks for having us here this morning, council members.

You've been working with SDOT leadership, Bill, Megan, and Megan, and Cal, and the rest of the council team to develop the parameters for this program, and we're here today to share the results of that work as we take what you've developed and turn it into a program.

I want to note this program will be living in SDOT's project development division.

which is home to many of SDOT's most beloved programs, I would like to say, including safe routes to school, accelerated sidewalks, bike facilities, neighborhood greenways.

We have our freight program, ADA program, and many, many more.

I oversee the project development team, and Simon's a real key player in this group, and Simon's gonna be overseeing this program for SDOT.

Simon has a super long history of developing projects of all scopes and sizes and has extensive experience leading community-oriented programs for SDOT.

He's currently developing the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program, the NISB, which is one of our new levy programs.

and he previously oversaw the Neighborhood Street Fund.

So lots of experience working within the community to develop projects and get those things built.

So you're in really good hands.

And I think with that, we're excited to work with you on this program and I think we can jump into the discussion here.

So as Cal noted, the 2025 budget set up the parameters for this program, which included neighborhood scale, funding neighborhood-scale traffic safety improvements and priorities at the direction of the City Council.

There is $7 million in 2025 and another $7 million in 2026 to fund this work.

These are capital dollars, so any unspent funds will be rolled over into future years.

And do want to note that there is no secured funding for 2027 beyond.

So today we will share the proposed operational procedures, including project selection process, selection consideration, and implementation schedule and considerations.

And with that, Simon.

So yeah, we wanted to start off by showing you the proposed annual program schedule for the district project fund, outlining how council will work with SDOT to get projects selected and then constructed.

So this schedule is informed by SDOT's typical project delivery process, as well as some typical specific dates and milestones included in the council bill.

So the first key date is March 1st.

In the council bill, this is the date where council members should strive to submit projects to SDOT for review.

But ahead of that, including information we'll share with you today, we'll share a number of resources with you to help with that idea generation and submittal to SDOT.

We'll talk more about those resources in a moment.

After you submit projects on March 1st, SDOT will take time to review those project ideas, look at the feasibility, and develop cost estimates for those projects.

And we'll report back to you by May 1st.

And then you'll have about a month to consider that review, the cost estimates, and make a final decision of which projects you'd like to fund by June 1st.

After that, we will kind of embark on our typical SDOT delivery process with project development, design, and then construction within about one to two years of project selection.

Did want to note that this one to two year time frame is for typical project delivery and that simple projects actually may be able to be delivered more quickly.

More complex projects may be closer to that two year mark.

So next we'll go into some more detail for how you can submit project candidates to SDOT.

So per the legislation, first of all, just going through some of the basic criteria, projects should be neighborhood-scale traffic safety projects that address emerging safety concerns and requests from community.

Projects must adhere to city and federal standards, guidelines, and best practices.

and projects should have a maximum annual cost of $1 million per district.

And this could be one larger project that costs $1 million or potentially multiple smaller improvements that total $1 million.

So to consistently collect the project ideas from you across all districts, we will be providing you with a simple form to submit your ideas.

This includes basic information like the project location, the project goals, a description of any existing issues, and also some potential design solutions that either you, your offices, or the community have already considered or proposed.

We'd also appreciate background and any prior engagement or outreach that's been done with the community and just general community considerations as they relate to the proposals.

Our form will allow you to submit multiple project ideas and we actually highly encourage this in the event that potentially maybe the top priority is not feasible as proposed or potentially it's higher cost.

Having multiple projects really we think would provide some flexibility during this review process.

So to help identify potential project ideas, we are developing a few resources to help you.

The first one is something we're calling the Project Idea Toolbox.

So this will be a list of common improvements that address frequent requests to SDOT addressing common safety issues, such as crossing improvements or traffic calming.

The toolbox will include a categorized list of improvements, short descriptions, as well as a range of typical cost estimates for these improvements to really give you a ballpark idea of how much these types of projects could cost so you can kind of work with that million dollar budget.

Did want to note though that these are conceptual cost estimates, so it's really to get you started, but during that review process we'll develop a more detailed cost estimate based on the specifics.

scope that's proposed as well as the location that's proposed.

The other resource that we will share with you is a list of unfunded community requests that have previously been submitted to SDOT but have not been constructed yet.

These come from other community-focused programs, such as the Neighborhood Street Fund, Your Voice, Your Choice, as well as our Safe Routes to School program.

So we're in the process of compiling those ideas, and it looks like we'll have about seven to 10 ideas per district that we can share with you in the event that you're interested in seeing those.

So moving on, we'll talk through how SDOT will review the project candidates that you submit.

Again, we'll look at the feasibility of project ideas based on our own standards, federal standards, guidelines, and best practices.

We may need to collect new data such as the speed of vehicles or pedestrian and bike counts for that location.

We'll identify any potential risks as well as any opportunities.

For example, if there's a nearby overlapping project that we can leverage or partner with, we'll definitely identify that.

and then of course we'll develop more specific cost estimates based on the proposal and the location.

We'll report back to you on all that by May 1st and then you'll have another month to consider that review and then make a final decision for which projects you'd like to fund by June 1st.

We did want to just note that many factors do go into determining project feasibility and cost.

So some things like the street characteristics, is it an arterial or residential street, is it a designated emergency response route, existing conditions such as how many people are using the street, how much space we have to work with, how much right-of-way we have to work with.

Mentioned earlier, we'll be using our local and federal standards and guidelines.

This will particularly come into play if we're looking at crossing improvements.

Just wanted to note that.

Additional work may be required.

So for example, if we're working on one corner, we may need to actually upgrade the curb ramps to be ADA compliant, or we may need to relocate some drainage infrastructure.

These are all important improvements, but may increase the cost of the project.

And then SDOT, most of these improvements will probably be under the purview of SDOT, but we may need to work with other departments or agencies such as King County Metro or Seattle City Light, depending on the scope.

And then lastly, during this process, we just wanted to say that we really want to support you and your districts and have this be a collaborative process.

Because if a project candidate is determined to not be feasible or higher than anticipated costs, we'll definitely want to work with you to find an alternative solution.

So that could potentially be looking at a different design, maybe reducing the scope, looking at different materials.

We'll definitely try and work with you to meet the original project goals.

So after projects are selected for funding, Estat will start designing on those selected projects, and then construction would occur within one to two years of project selection.

Again, wanted to note that simple projects, such as small signing and striping projects, more maintenance-focused improvements, may actually be able to be completed sooner.

But on the other hand, more complex projects may take longer, closer to that two-year mark.

and we'll do our best during that project review process to flag any potential schedule issues.

Maybe this project is feasible, but it would be closer to that two-year mark for delivery.

And then, of course, we will provide ongoing updates to you and community as appropriate.

We're proposing to provide regular quarterly updates on the progress of selected projects.

And we will also provide an annual program update by September 30th.

This is something that's included in the legislation just on accomplishments, but also expenditures of the program.

And then lastly, we'll have ongoing communication with you just as we get closer to construction, providing timely updates to you and community.

So before you today, you are considering council action on Resolution 32179 and Council Bill 121058, which will help guide the program and lift the budget proviso.

Assuming that moves forward, we would share all those resources I mentioned earlier, including the project idea toolbox, the list of unfunded community requests, and then, of course, the project request form.

And then, yeah, the next big milestone then would be submitting project ideas for our review by March 1st of next year.

That concludes our presentation, but we're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Excellent, thank you so much for this very insightful presentation.

I welcome any questions or comments from my colleagues, but first and foremost, let me share a real world example of how a program like this is so Sorely needed, now more than ever.

So as the department aptly noted, there are a number of terrific programs within the department to fund any number of ongoing safety challenges, make any number of neighborhood scale safety upgrades and improvements.

Those range from Let's see, the Safe Routes to School, the Legacy Neighborhood Street Fund, the New Neighborhood Initiated Safety Program, the Legacy Your Voice, Your Choice, et cetera, et cetera.

The list goes on and on.

There's a number of terrific programs that the department leverages to build these important safety investments.

And the department is also looking at evaluating these based off the criteria, in many cases based off the evaluation criteria that we approved in the Seattle Transportation Plan last year, in terms of prioritization, depending on the scope of the project and scale of the project.

But they're also, again, looking at these from a citywide perspective, 84 square miles of land across the city.

And then the public right away constitutes what 26, 27% or so of that.

So they have a lot of area to cover from a citywide perspective.

And so we work hard to make sure the department is well resourced and well funded.

Everyone relies heavily on transportation infrastructure.

but that said, these programs are not uncapped in terms of dollar amount investment.

So there have been a number of times when in my year and a half plus now being in office where we reached out to the department, elevated a concern or request from a community on a particular project and we learned that, well, it's on our radar, just no near term funding path.

And so that's what this is intended to be a solution to address.

Well, okay, that's great.

Now there's another option to do something and it might not be the full scale whatever the constituent or resident wants in terms of safety, addressing the safety needs in that specific area.

But the idea is that we can do something and to bump it up, elevate and escalate the project in the queue, so to speak.

So one example in my district I'll share is, it was already on the department's radar, looking to build a new sidewalk.

There are a lot of constituent concerns and like a new sidewalk between 26 and Delridge along Hudson, right across from the disabled American veterans.

and a lot of school children use that area to transit to school.

It's a safe routes to transit investment.

And so working with the department, it secured a commitment.

I think planning design for that new sidewalk, two blocks of new sidewalk is underway right now, permitting, and you guys are gonna construct that next year.

project been in place or this program been in place, you know, back in January or February last year, when I started, maybe, maybe we would have bumped it up in, in, in the queue.

Who knows?

But the idea is to provide another mechanism to add new project ideas from community, uh, to address small micro neighborhood scale safety investments and upgrades.

So, all right.

That is my two cents from the cheap seats.

I will now turn it over to my colleagues.

Looks like the first hand is Council Member Kettle.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Saka.

Thank you.

Mr. Curtin, Mr. Blensky for joining Mr. Laborde our frequent visitor here to chambers and of course our own central staff Mr. Child welcome this morning welcome as we start to head into fall and head into the budget season which this is all tied in I also appreciate by the way the public comments I do recognize I saw an article from the Urbanist talking about the 8, so I know there's a lot of different pieces there that are tied to that, and of course in the southern part of the city too, as you were noting.

These are important topics to raise and discuss, so thank you for the public comment.

I used to be, 10 years ago, I used to be one of those people that used to come visit or come meet with us, like Your Voice, Your Choice, the small sparks and all these things.

And we used it to great leverage for our community, for our neighborhood, in this case, the Queen Anne neighborhood.

and I think it's a good model.

And I recognize that sometimes the loudest voices, you have that challenge, get the squeaky wheel, gets the grease kind of concept.

And so I recognize the need for an equitable, to push around the city.

And I think we've done that.

I think we've done that with parks.

I can tell you from park upgrades, that's happened.

And now the reverse is somewhat the case, whereas the neighborhoods like Queen Anne don't necessarily have the upgraded parks.

So that's important.

But I think what's important here is the connection to community.

And I think this is important for SDOT as well as from the council perspective.

And we've kind of lost that, because those engagement options have been lost.

And I think this is an opportunity to kind of show the community that, hey, this is something that you care about from your own voice.

And guess what?

SDOT's going to do it, obviously through the council.

and I think that's an important link because Estat's been doing great work but I talk to a lot of people and there's still a lot of frustrations with Estat and this is a way to kind of garner that kind of communication, that connection, build a relationship with the various neighborhoods.

and so I'm in favor of this as obviously I've spoke to Chair Saka long before this became official and I supported this using that experience.

And I also think, going back to my equitable piece, is that this is the way to help build that kind of civic community too.

In District 7, we're well organized in that respect The Queen Anne Community Council, Magnolia Community Council, Uptown Alliance, which is like a version of Community Council, Southlake Union Community Council, those guys are very organized and strong.

Belltown has Belltown United and the Belltown Community Council, and now we have a brand new Downtown Community Council.

And these folks are, you know, come together quite well to advocate for themselves.

But a program like this could help those other areas of the city kind of draw out you know, that community to come together and then speak their voice on whatever issue is of interest to them.

In this case, you know, safety upgrades specifically for other neighborhoods.

And I think that could be a catalyst to kind of help build that civic community and other areas of the city that may not be as robust as in District 7. And I think that's an important piece and I think this program can help in that.

And so those are some of the reasons that I support this and also acknowledge why Sometimes we have to move away from it in terms of ensuring all parts of the city are covered.

But I think we're in a good place.

And this is, as I always talk about, pendulum theory.

This is the pendulum coming back a little bit.

But I think we're in a good place where we can have this with the community, but also ensure that all areas of the city are covered.

And so I'm excited about this.

I recognize there's work to this and we don't want to increase overhead.

So from my point of view, Chair, that I will be leveraging the expertise, what may be on the shelf, working with community, really prioritize schools, all types of schools, parks, like access.

I'm thinking more young people getting to parks, young people getting to various types of schools.

We do that in so many different ways as an investment in our city.

to the young people all the way through community college here in our city.

So those would be kind of the approach that I will take to this.

And I will also be working and collaborating with our two city-wides as well, because I recognize that this has a bit of a strong district feel to it.

And I've noted, by the way, I mentioned the urbanists earlier, that a certain reporter is kind of highlighting this piece.

that balance between the city-wide approach and then the district approach.

And again, I think we can find a good balance to that.

And so gentlemen, I'm looking forward to working with you.

I don't really have any questions, but I think it's important to lay down the background and the approach.

And I just look forward, my team, my district director, will be on point with this, working with, we do have our District 7 Neighborhood Council, our Council of Councils, if you will, working with them to get down into the neighborhoods to get some ideas and then bouncing them off what Estat, what transportation has, and being smart about it because these are not big funds.

And if you spend a lot of time doing a lot of planning, doing a lot of this and that, then all of a sudden those dollars are eaten up pretty quick.

We want to be smart and effective with this, too.

So I will partner with SDOT, Mr. Laborde, you know, definitely in terms of if we start going a little too cute by half, you know, that increases the cost.

Like, hey, nope.

Let's focus this back in terms of how can we be most effective.

So with that, Chair, I thank you very much again.

And again, thank you for everyone who's come today.

I think there's some folks from the department.

to include one that I saw over a break when I was taking my daughter to soccer practice.

Oh, she just waved and gave herself away.

All right, thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Ring.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for today's presentation.

You know, I'm always going to be supportive of increasing our investments in these important projects, and as one of our citywide representatives, you know, I'm familiar with a number of projects in every district, projects that community would like to see happen that support street safety and improve our connections around the city.

and I know Council Member Kettle kind of alluded to this point about the Citywide's role in this particular project and I just want to hone in on this point and see if we can clarify for today, how does SDOT see the role of the Citywide representatives in this program?

Council member, if I could just speak to the legislation in front of you that establishes the principles, it does speak to the expectation that the district elected council member is speaking for the district, and it really tries to encourage citywide council members to work through those district council members to identify what the priorities for that district are.

But along those lines of trying to follow direction from the city council, This is district focused with the expectation that the money will be split evenly among all seven districts.

Thank you for that clarification, Cal.

So I'm really excited to see us move forward, particularly so we can see what's on the unfunded community requests list and the other projects that have been identified by the department.

A quick point of curiosity, for the unfunded community requests, how are you all working with other departments to better inform that?

I'm thinking about Department of Neighborhoods and other programs within separate departments that also have an ear to the ground in terms of what community may be looking for.

Yeah, for the unfunded list, our current scope includes just SDOT programs at this time, which includes previously submitted projects from the Neighborhood Street Fund, Your Voice, Your Choice, and our Safe Routes to School program.

Yeah, if there's interest in, you know, exploring, working with other departments, we're definitely open to that.

Or if you have heard other ideas as well, we're definitely open to expanding that scope too.

And I also want to clarify that we will be sharing the information about those past district requests for all districts with you and the other city-wide council member.

I also wanted to add that this type of program has been around for for quite some time in different variations and sometimes has worked through an apartment in neighborhoods, sometimes has been a bit separate.

So there is some of that built-in sort of coordination.

I think if the projects get more complicated so that it's more interdisciplinary and goes beyond just the transportation side of it, I think that leads to the complexity problem.

And so the issue is this isn't very much money.

The more complex the project gets, the more we start spending down dollars on design and conceptual analysis.

It may be that that is a critical priority for a district and then it may make sense, but I think we should be cautious about this not necessarily being a huge pot of money to be able to do a lot of that.

Thank you all for highlighting that.

Chair, I don't have any additional questions for today, but looking forward to working with each one of the district-specific councilmembers and seeing this program to fruition.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank, and appreciate your feedback here.

And my commitment to you and our citywide colleagues is that I think This unique program is a creature of our district, our fairly new, like about 10 years or so, district-based system that we live in and city government here.

But my commitment to you and our citywide colleagues is let's work together.

I'm happy to make sure your feedback is ultimately included.

If you have strong feelings on one thing or the other, but ultimately this is about responding to community needs.

This is about making sure we keep our neighborhoods safe.

This is about expanding access through our transportation infrastructure.

So this is at its core, it's about collaboration as well.

And to that end, I wanna thank the department and the mayor's office for their close collaboration in drafting this proposed legislation.

We really worked hand in hand to develop this, co-create this together.

and it's reflected by the fact that the mayor's signature is signing preemptively the current form of the proposed legislation on this resolution.

And it's best when the executive and the legislative branches are aligned on launching a new effort as important and consequential as this.

And so to that end, again, wanna thank the department for their close collaboration and making sure that we're aligned on approach, on vision and goals.

And I think where we landed, does a great job of that.

Also mindful of, I heard Council Member Kettle mentioned this earlier, also mindful of some of the overhead that might be imposed as a result of this.

And so to that end, I'll note that as Cal noted, this is essentially a variation of other things that have been tried in the past.

And so wanna make sure that we're working with the department.

Turning to slide five, where the intake process, essentially the ideation and intake process.

How I think this is gonna work best is a collaboration.

So we collaborated closely to get to this point in terms of putting the terms and conditions of the proposed legislation together before us.

but as we actually implement and operationalize this, we're going to need to continue to rely on that close collaboration, kind of how I view this, as we're both co-owners of everything here, the legislative branch and the executive branch.

The primary owners, from a project location perspective, from a project goals perspective, and a project or in a description of existing issues perspective on that slide, I think is gonna be the individual council member and surfacing their ideas and concerns and feedback that they're hearing from their respective communities and districts.

And then everything on that, at least at this stage, the primary owner will be the council member.

But as you have to go through, as we talked about, the feasibility studying and you like to determine, and some of the proposals might trigger other upgrades and might essentially, for lack of better terms, muck up something and move it far beyond the original intended scope.

And so in terms of final design solutions, the primary owner there is the department.

I have my own great ideas that I elevate on behalf of my constituents, but at the end of the day, I'm not a traffic engineer.

So you all are, you all are the experts.

So you all are the primary owners of the final designs and solutions and then implementing those in a timely manner.

So I wanna thank the department again for their work on this.

would have ideally, anyway.

We will be voting on this at our next committee meeting.

So thank you again.

Does anyone have any final questions, comments on this item for the good of the order?

Nope.

All right.

Thank you again.

We will now move on to our third item of business.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three, S-Duff sidewalk program repair and new construction.

All right.

Thank you.

Will our newest presenters please join us at the table and share your presentations?

Once ready, do introduce yourselves and start your presentations.

And while We're making this transition and before someone steps out of the room, I want to note that Mr. Blensky, thank you very much.

Your colleagues hyped you up here.

at the table today and then in various prep meetings and briefings and co-creations of this proposed legislation that I've had with the department leadership, they've also hyped you up a lot, which is a great sign.

So based off what I heard, I'm confident in your ability to help execute.

It's not just one person, it's an entire team.

Looking at you, Mr. Curtin.

And so thank you in advance for all your hard work to get to this point and look forward to working closely with you to help execute and operationalize this great idea.

So, awesome, thank you.

Welcome.

Hello, my name is Jenny Green, SDOT Sidewalk Program.

Hi, I'm Elsa Tibbetts.

I'm the Pavement Engineering Manager for SDOT.

Good morning, my name is Darren Morgan.

I'm the division director at SDOT's Right of Way Maintenance and Urban Forestry Division.

I'm here to help support the presenters today.

This program lives in the Paving Signs and Markings Division, and I turn it back to Ginny to get us started.

Okay, thank you for the opportunity to present the sidewalk repair program.

Absolutely.

First and foremost, thank you so much for joining us today.

Colleagues, I just want to kind of level set quickly here.

So last year, during the transportation levy conversations, we invited the department.

They gave a great presentation on our sidewalk program, All Up, with more of a focus emphasis on the missing sidewalk network, the opportunity for new sidewalk construction and the like.

And so this year I invited them back to still get that all up focus, but this time highlighting more the opportunity we have with respect to the sidewalk repair program and opportunity to make better repairs.

Cause I know both are important for this council and you all individually in your respective offices.

So we're gonna learn more about the opportunity across the city for sidewalks in general, but focusing this time a little more on the sidewalk repair.

So thank you, sorry, go ahead.

Thank you.

In today's agenda, we'll be going over a really brief overview of the new sidewalks program, but the bulk of the presentation will be on the sidewalk safety repair program, and then closing remarks about sidewalk maintenance, urban forestry, and also future of the sidewalk safety repair program.

And Bill will present the new sidewalk slides.

Yeah, and as Councilmember Saka said, we had a pretty comprehensive presentation last March 19th, if folks want to look it up, March 19th, 2024, on the new sidewalk program as it fed into the Seattle Transportation Plan and development of the levy.

You passed a levy ordinance that was approved by voters that provided $111 million over eight years for new sidewalks, 320 blocks of new sidewalks, with 250 of those to be delivered in the first four years of the levy.

and we started that work this year with, I'll get to some of the deliverables in a moment, but one of the first elements of figuring out, working with communities to figure out where the priorities for new sidewalks would exist is we started a series of eight, earlier this year, eight neighborhood walk shops that have been held so far and those are listed here on the slide.

and then we have two more planned for this coming fall in Cedar Park and Arbor Heights.

We also had several sidewalks that were already in some level of planning or design that could be delivered this year.

and we expect to deliver 40 to 50 block faces of new sidewalk by the end of 2025. And then those sidewalk walks that I mentioned that we did with community, those are leading to, you'll be seeing several reports coming from those walk shops over the next couple weeks and that will provide the basis for the sidewalks that we'll start delivering in 2026. and that'll include 70 blocks in design for construction next year.

And then I'll hand it over to Jeannie and my other colleagues here to talk about the repair program.

Okay, thank you.

So the sidewalk safety repair program, we often refer to as SSRP.

So if I mentioned those acronyms, that's what that refers to.

Basically, this program oversees the maintenance of the city's existing sidewalk network.

The goal of the program is to make sidewalks safe and accessible, and it's funded to repair sidewalks that are damaged by S-dot street trees or are adjacent to city-owned property.

We perform full sidewalk replacement, mostly in concrete, sometimes in asphalt, and we also include the preventative maintenance.

That includes the shims and bevels, which is the grinding work.

So Seattle's sidewalk network includes over 34,000 blocks of sidewalk, and that measures to be about 2,300 miles.

In 2017, there was a large data collection effort along all the known sidewalks in Seattle.

SDOT hired interns in one summer to collect observation data, and these things included uplifts where there are measurable vertical differences between sidewalk surfaces, surface conditions, those are things like cracking, and obstructions like vegetation overgrowth that blocks part of the sidewalk, or steep cross slopes.

The primary goal of the sidewalk assessment was to collect these observations to help inform our maintenance and repair needs.

And based on this collected information, we established a standard condition rating system for sidewalks.

That means each sidewalk would be rated as excellent, good, fair, poor, or very poor.

and so our program uses this condition rating for project selection and prioritizing repairs.

The map on the right of this slide shows condition rating of the sidewalks with good sidewalks showing up in green, fair in yellow and poor in red.

It's kind of hard to see all the different colors but it kind of gives you an idea of what the sidewalk conditions look like throughout the city.

In 2021, there was an audit conducted on the sidewalk program to better understand how SDOT manages its sidewalk repair.

It also followed up on a report for policy recommendations for sidewalk repair in 2020, which was conducted by the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.

From that audit came six key recommendations, and those are streamlined enforcement methods, exploring the use of a buy-sell repair ordinance, implementing a sidewalk repair financing program, instituting an income-based cost-sharing program, implementing a five-year sidewalk shim and bevel plan and then simplifying the permitting process for property owners.

The first four recommendations here are currently in development with a task force set up to assess strategies to improve the existing sidewalk network and so those things involve changes in the RCW, the Seattle Municipal Code, and then implementing these other cost sharing programs.

The last two recommendations have been implemented by means of a proactive beveling and request-based shimming program.

And the simplified sidewalk repair permitting process includes an updated sidewalk maintenance and repair guide webpage with continued improvements in customer service through virtual coaching and in-person support at the customer information desk at the Seattle Municipal Tower.

The sidewalk repair program is supported by three full-time staff for the program.

We are also assisted by six concrete crews, two asphalt crews, four street maintenance crews who perform the shims, our beveling contractor, and then of course our partners in capital projects and other large project groups within S-STOP.

Property owner responsibilities.

So property owners have responsibilities as well to keep our sidewalks in good and safe condition.

Those duties include clearing snow and ice from sidewalks or clearing leaves and vegetation and then making repairs to sidewalks that they're responsible for.

And our enforcement method to remind the property owners of these responsibilities comes in the form of notice letters.

The city receives many requests to make sidewalk repair, and a large portion of sidewalk repair requests are actually private property owner responsibilities, but many are not actually aware of that.

So part of SDOT's role is to help educate the public about maintenance responsibilities, and that involves sending notice letters to the property owners and then directing them to some of the resources that we have in place like the sidewalk accessibility guide and public facing maps like the sidewalk research guide.

This information helps residents and property owners understand their role.

It's actually a shared role in keeping our sidewalks in good condition and then it also helps them to guide them through the permitting process.

Okay, I'd like to highlight an ongoing sidewalk repair project that's on Beacon Avenue.

It's a project that proposes improvements along both sides of Beacon Avenue between South Juneau Street and South Morgan Street, where mature trees have uplifted and damaged the sidewalks.

There are challenges when there are city policies in place that sometimes have competing goals.

things like the city's goal to increase the tree canopy coverage while at the same time achieving ADA accessible sidewalks.

However, there are methods and sometimes new and innovative solutions that Estat uses to achieve both of these goals.

So in the example shown here at Beacon Avenue near South Graham Street, we were able to narrow the sidewalk and widen the tree pit to accommodate the larger roots of the tree, while the sidewalk itself was slightly raised to ramp up over the tree roots.

So the tree was retained and the sidewalk became more accessible.

Here's another example showing a sidewalk near South Juneau Street.

The wide planting strips on this side allowed for the sidewalk to be narrowed, slightly raised, giving more room to the root zone of the tree.

And then here's an example of a newer design solution that we recently piloted on Beacon Avenue.

It is an aluminum plate that bridges over the large tree roots, replacing a standard concrete sidewalk.

Standard sidewalks are three and a half inches thick, which can require extensive root pruning that could negatively impact the health of a tree.

So the slim metal plate, which is about a quarter inch thick, allows us to keep the larger roots intact, allowing us to save the tree and extend its life.

So our program utilizes various factors to prioritize repairs and select our projects.

So one of those inputs is the prioritization model.

So I mentioned earlier that there was a sidewalk condition assessment in 2017. So from that data that was collected, we also developed a prioritization model where each sidewalk was rated on the categories of safety, mobility impairment, cost, and usage.

And usage is the proximity of the sidewalk to important destinations like schools, government services, transit and hospitals.

So this is a tool that our program uses in project planning.

We also leverage opportunities with a lot of our ADA curb ramp projects and then some of our larger paving projects like the AAC, protected bike lane projects, Vision Zero and Transit.

geographic and social justice distribution.

So we use GIS data and geographic and social justice distribution as one of those criteria for selecting projects.

And we often use the race and social equity index map which has information on race, ethnicity, related demographics on data with data on socioeconomic and health disadvantages to identify where priority populations make up relatively large proportions of neighborhood residents.

And then there are also emergent repair needs or high complaint locations on a case-by-case basis.

So sometimes we might need to pivot and address an emergent repair need.

For example, earlier this year in February, there was a windstorm event that caused numerous trees in Seattle to fall over.

So we were able to include these unexpected locations for repair, shifting priorities.

and our paving crews schedules to accommodate these.

So proactive bevels.

Since 2020, our program has included a proactive beveling program where we implemented a grid type of approach.

So grids are planned in high pedestrian areas, areas like around transit facilities.

And because this type of work does not actually depend on our crew availability, we're able to perform more beveling work using our contractor throughout the year.

And although this type of work is smaller in scope, it brings a lot of value because it helps to reduce the risk of trip and fall claims and lawsuits that are brought against the city.

The Seattle Transportation Levy.

So our levy goal is to achieve 34,000 spot repairs over eight years.

And the target per year is 4,250 sidewalk spot repairs per year with bevels and shims.

the backlog.

There's estimated up to $1.3 billion needed to fully repair all sidewalks and remove obstacles.

So this is what SDOT estimates as the amount needed to repair all of the identified observations on all the Seattle sidewalks, including those adjacent to private properties.

and bringing them up to ADA compliance.

The total replacement value of all the Seattle sidewalks is about $5.9 billion.

And this year, to date, we've been able to shim and bevel 11,543 locations and also repair 21.7 block equivalents of sidewalk with $8 million budget.

and I'll turn it over to Elsa.

So the future of the program, we're going to continue to use our forces to educate the public about their responsibilities and duties to help us repair the sidewalks.

What some property owners don't realize is that they are responsible for maintaining part of the public right-of-way next to the property, including the sidewalks and planter strip or the road shoulder if unapproved.

Property owners are also responsible for maintaining unpaved alleys next to their property.

We also have a task force in develop, as Jenny mentioned earlier.

The Seattle Transportation Levy included the funding to support the task force that would advise on options for funding and policies that may improve the department's work long-term and scope related to sidewalk repair policies.

It was introduced in Resolution 32145. with the larger budget this year and under the new levy we are able to complete larger paving projects for sidewalks such as the beacon project whereas we in prior years would be more spot driven we can now move through a neighborhood and make repairs like six blocks at a time as opposed to just one location so that's been really great Let's see, we're gonna continue with the shim and beveling efforts as these programs work to continue to remove the uplifts and reduce claims.

And we also understand that we know that innovation solutions are the key.

So we're gonna keep using our minds and come up with strategies that seem to solve these problems out in the field.

And we have goals to incorporate like the plate that Ginny mentioned into our standard plans once we pilot that a little bit further.

and I'll turn it over to Darren.

Thank you, Elsa.

I appreciate the opportunity to highlight a few ways in which we collaborate across divisions within our department.

The right-of-way maintenance and urban forestry division delivers some of those reactive shims that we were talking about earlier to address some of those uplifts and mitigate risk.

That's the same team that performs a lot of pothole repair throughout the city, so they are available throughout the city to perform that function through the guidance of the SSRP program.

As we talked about earlier with the conflict and the efforts to resolve infrastructure conflict between trees and sidewalks.

We have landscape architects and arborists on staff to provide technical support on tree management overall, looking at overall canopy cover and impacts to trees during root pruning projects as we perform construction around these assets.

And also, we have a vegetation management team within right-of-way maintenance that performs vegetation cutback, particularly around landscapes that the city is responsible to maintain to ensure the pedestrian experience is optimized through these areas as shown in this photo here.

So just really proud of the collaboration and coordination that occurs between our divisions, the mutual support and the cross-trade and technical expertise that we rely on every day to deliver complex projects to optimize the resources of this program.

So thank you.

All right, thank you, Esta.

I really appreciate the presentation here.

I will turn it over to my colleagues to see if there are any questions, comments, feedback.

I see Council Member Kettle.

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you, Chair Saka.

Actually, if you don't mind, I note that Council Member Rink has her hand up and you spoke first last time.

I wanna give her the right of first refusal.

My hand's not up, but it's all hers.

To speak first this time.

You can yield your time back if you like, but wanna be inclusive in this process as much as possible.

Thank you for your inclusivity, Chair.

I appreciate it, mixing it up.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for this presentation.

I know from a lot of community discussions, there's just a high desire to make sure that we are expanding our sidewalk network.

It's an urgent need.

I know our timeline for being able to meet the full need has some challenges, but I know we have a robust program here and we have some new investments into sidewalk infrastructure coming our way.

So thank you for this presentation.

I wanted to bring up something that came to light to this body last week.

It was a letter sent by our Green New Deal Oversight Board highlighting technology that is new technology from my understanding, but low carbon concrete technology.

They sent along this letter to us, highlighting support for it and also highlighting that the MLK Labor Council has also passed a resolution in support of this technology.

This technology would generate thousands of new jobs for our region and it's been highlighted by the C40 City's report that the construction sector currently accounts for 23% of our greenhouse gas emissions.

with concrete production being a significant contributor.

So I'm bringing these points up as a point of curiosity.

Are there opportunities in our sidewalk program to be able to innovate or implement this new technology?

I can take that.

Thank you for that question.

The city has been pretty innovative by leading efforts for green concrete already.

We do have in our standards, in our concrete specs, green carbon options already embedded into the concrete that we use.

we are currently aware of that letter that was sent to you and we are looking with and working with some vendors to see if there are other innovative things that are out there that we hadn't reviewed yet.

So we're looking at it for sure.

Yeah, and we're also working closely with and always do work closely with SPU's materials lab as they are responsible for approving the use of certain materials.

And one other note that I've learned in the last few weeks is that we also, for a lot of our new sidewalks, we use a lot of recycled concrete, which is another way that we try to reduce the carbon footprint of our sidewalk program.

Fabulous, great to hear you all are already on it.

Would love to hear any updates as you continue on that path.

And appreciate all the collaboration you all have been doing in terms of identification of projects.

I'm curious if you all have had opportunities to work with the Disability Commission.

I know many of our sidewalk projects have an eye towards ADA accessibility, but want to understand if we've been engaging that commission on this as well.

Yeah, before I hand it over to the other folks, We have an ADA program lead in the department who works for in project development under Jim Curtin, who was here earlier.

And he has a advisory council of people from the people with disabilities community.

There's some overlap with the Disability Rights Commission or the Disability Commission, but it's not necessarily the same people.

It's a lot of people who are very focused on both people with vision impairments as well as physical impairments who really rely on sidewalks to be a good repair and to be obstruction-free.

We're currently working closely with the ADA group to incorporate some of additional sidewalk repair.

That's part of the overall ADA transition plan.

So we're in the early phases of discussing and developing how we can better partner with some of these to leverage the crews and how we can incorporate both goals.

create projects where we can impact the community in a way where minimizing the construction impacts but having an overall beneficial impact to the neighborhoods.

Fabulous.

Thank you all for your work.

Those are all my questions for today, Chair.

Thank you for the time.

Excellent.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

Councilmember Kettle.

Okay, thank you Chair Saka.

I really want to welcome and thank you for your presentation Ms. Green and Ms. Tibbetts and Mr. Morgan.

Really appreciate you coming here because it highlights a number of things and I get this on a regular basis.

For example, in social media, I see within the Queen Anne context, people are going around taking pictures of sidewalk where vegetation, you got the three-square segment of the sidewalk where the vegetations come in one-third, two-thirds, or in some case, nearly the whole sidewalk.

And so they're raising their awareness out of, I think, their walker frustration as they walk around, and I understand that.

and so I think this is a good opportunity for us to leverage multiple levels sidewalks and what we're doing with them and so thank you for that and I'll get into that a little bit more.

First though, I appreciate the presentation and As you see with the assessment, District 7, I have three regional centers with all the new construction.

You have all the sidewalks that are done as part of that new construction.

South Lake Union is a brand new city.

West Lake, East Lake, parts of East Lake.

So District 7 in large part is well covered.

You know, Queen Anne, Magnolia, obviously we have Inner Bay which is the Maritime Industrial.

There's no sidewalks there except for the Dravis part.

So District 7 is pretty well covered in terms of having sidewalks.

And I wanted to note, and I said this last year as part of the plan and then the levy, that I support having a focus on new sidewalks for districts like one, two, and five, for example.

And that's really important for the equity piece in terms of massive areas that don't have sidewalks at all, which is a pedestrian safety piece.

and so I recognize that and I definitely support as a District 7 representative focusing on those other districts that are in deep need for having sidewalks at all and so I just wanted to make that point.

I will say and I understand that in those other areas of the city there's repair requirements.

We have some I do know in District 3 having a lot of repair requirements.

That said, You mentioned sidewalks or litigation.

How is that factored in?

I won't go into the exact case, but it was in District 7, an executive session.

We're hearing from the city attorney, yep, we're going to have to go because we're going to lose.

This is going to be the expected so and so forth, or likely.

I should say likely.

We're at risk of losing.

That's probably an even better way of saying it.

and that is a major issue.

And so that could eat up our sidewalk if our sidewalks are causing litigation that goes into millions of dollars of award damages.

And so how is that factored in in terms of calculating the need for the repairs?

Because I can tell you, as I said during that meeting, executive session, I'm like, well, every other block is a threat for having some type of award action.

Can you speak to that part in terms of coordination, in terms of legal risk, and how you're trying to anticipate those kinds of issues?

Yeah, we find that the beveling and shimming work really has more of an immediate impact when it comes to mitigating those risks.

So we're continuing to try to be more responsive when it comes to the requests that we receive.

So they go directly to our crews.

and occasionally we do get a location where someone may have tripped and fell on an uplift.

So we have regular meetings with our SDOT claims group and so we kind of look at those locations where it might be occurring more often or just spots where we really want to prioritize those.

So we highlight those by actually making sure they get done within that week, whether it's a shim, whether it's a repair, or notifying the property owner.

So we try to be pretty quick about how we're mitigating that.

But overall, the beveling effort I feel is also a way that we're trying to get ahead of it before somebody trips.

And so we're trying to hopefully get to as much of the city as possible that has sidewalks with the beveling work.

So right now we're focusing on South Lake Union right now with upcoming FIFA work, just knowing that there's going to be a lot of pedestrian traffic.

So we're really focusing on that.

And so hopefully that proactive work is going to prevent some of those from happening.

But as they happen, we're working closely with the legal team and the claims group to try to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Thank you.

I raise that because, again, I believe on the new sidewalks, but as it relates to repairs, I think we have to have another look angle on that, and that piece has got to be there.

When you do that, and thank you for that, and trust me, between Magnolia and Queen Anne and Lower Queen Anne, parts of Uptown, there's definitely a lot of work in that area for shims and bevels.

When you go around and see this, this kind of goes to the tree question.

Sometimes people on their own initiative plant trees that they think would be great at this location, and it turns out they're not, and they grow like crazy, and the root structure is crazy, and the disruption to the sidewalks, to continue the use of the word crazy, and that really creates a legal and just pedestrian safety challenge.

When people are planting trees that should not be planted in the strip, What kind of action does the city, what does the department take in terms of that?

I get the tree questions.

So yes, with Urban Forestry, we have a team that works diligently to communicate back to property owners their responsibilities for maintenance, particularly when it comes to trees.

And we have a permit process that we ask people to run through so that we have an opportunity to educate them on the appropriate tree selection for the conditions that are out there.

We have minimum planting strip widths and we have a variety of trees that we recommend for small constrained places and then larger maturing trees for areas where we have more space.

Not everyone follows that guidance as you well known and are aware of and sometimes that does cause challenges you know for the adjacent sidewalk and so what we do is we work through you know an education first approach but also that can lead to some enforcement if sidewalks need to be repaired adjacent to trees that were not planted by the city and so those can be some challenging conversations and we're there to provide expertise on policy as well as what is the health and likelihood of survival of that tree should construction get underway.

case-by-case scenario there, but as you said, some trees were planted maybe without a permit.

We're not necessarily going to grant removal in all of those cases, but we will provide technical expertise and look at our existing policies as well as the condition of the sidewalk when we're faced with that situation.

Thank you, and I think that's something, by the way, I'm probably, Chair, I'm probably gonna go through this myself.

I'll be, you know, I'll learn by doing, because I do have a tree in the strip that I think needs some work, and just to work through, which highlights another issue, like, yes, I can work with the city, with SDOT, in my personal capacity.

It will be educational, no doubt.

But I could see the costs of dealing with the trees that are in the strip, particularly in areas like Queen Anne Magnolia, where the trees are massive and they're large, and the costs to some company would be, to use the word again, crazy, very high and beyond the means of that property owner.

How do we deal with those kinds of trees?

In some areas it's taken care of because of bus lines, and they come through, they're cleaning up the power lines for the buses and the like, and some other things like that.

But is there a way to assist in these, what could be a dangerous situation, but is such a project that it's beyond the ability of that homeowner to really take care of?

Well, currently we don't have a policy or a system in place that addresses that specifically.

I think what I would say is, again, we work really closely with property owners to educate them on opportunities, and options that exist, and in some cases, the sidewalk repair and or tree maintenance adjacent to, or tree maintenance can be a significant expense, especially for some larger mature trees.

And as our city gets older and older, and some of our right-of-way trees are well over 80 years old.

They introduce some significant maintenance challenges, but we're here to support.

We have a number of registered tree service providers on our website, and we encourage people to get several different opinions on the best approach.

Thank you, and it also comes into play whether you're in a residential street or you're in arterial, because the arterial would require most likely shutting down that street and flag personnel and so forth, which just adds to the cost, I would think.

Correct.

So I just raise this because I think it's something that we need to address, and then I myself will be addressing in my own personal context.

So I think it's important to kind of walk through these a little bit.

And I also appreciate the flyer that we have here, particularly as somebody who, in the shoes at least, is like 6'3". You don't know how many times I've banged my head. You know, the eight-foot requirement, for example. That would be helpful a number of times. I would like to get this out to, as I mentioned earlier for the other briefing, our district seven neighborhood council and really get it out to, this is the property owner responsibility slide, that flyer that you have there and get it out to the community in different ways via our newsletter, get it out to the community councils, get it out maybe in social media somehow, because I think it's really important because if people do these pieces early, you know preventative maintenance is always a good thing that we may forestall or push to the right you know any challenging situation either shim or bevel or something more you know higher requirement kind of work. So I would love to work with the team, Bill, Mr. Laborde in terms of getting that and then getting it out to the community because I think we need to be proactive and I think that would be very helpful.

Yeah, we'd be happy to share that information with you and other council members for your newsletters.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

to include our city wines, by the way.

All right.

Thank you, chair.

All right.

Thank you, council member Kettle and council member Rink as well with a very bare minimum quorum here on this important topic.

It proves that given the lively discussion improves that this is a very important topic.

and so I want to thank the department again for sharing your insights and expertise with us and hearing and taking our feedback and I look forward to continuing to partner together to make better progress on the state of our sidewalk repair opportunity as well as our broader missing sidewalk network as well and and I see Mr. Maxey in the audience here.

Welcome.

He is the SDOT executive that oversees the execution of the frontline crews that are actually doing this work.

So really important stuff.

Thank you again.

Looking forward to continuing the partnership on this.

Thank you Council Member Rink for calling out the Seattle Disability Commission.

I met with them this summer sometime, July-ish, and I met earlier this year in the spring sometime with folks from the broader disability community, leaders in the broader disability community, including some folks from Disability Rights Washington and others.

And this opportunity to address our missing sidewalk network and also address our sidewalks came up of course and I know it is a priority for our city and we've heard members from the various disability and accessibility communities come tell us at this committee, at our regular full council, how important it is that we better close our missing sidewalk network, how important it is that we more quickly address the broken sidewalk gap in opportunity that we have here, so you all are doing the work.

Appreciate your continued partnership on this.

The final thing I'll note is on your slide, I don't know, three, no slide numbers, but two or three, the new sidewalk program where you call it the various neighborhoods.

Proud to have been able to join on about half of those in Del Ridge, Highland Park, South Park, so far this year.

And looking forward to joining at least one more, the Arbor Heights, which is in my district.

So, and I'm looking right now at Mr. Bill Laborde, please work with my office to make sure and optimize that for my attendance because I would love to go.

All right.

Any final comments, questions?

Hearing, seeing none, let's move this along.

We'll now move on to our fourth item of business.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

Agenda Item 4, Council Bill 121058, an ordinance relating to new vehicle types and curb allowances for an e-cargo bicycle delivery, establishing a new vehicle type for e-cargo bikes, establishing rules for operations, parking, and loading for e-cargo bicycle delivery, clarifying new curb allowances for e-cargo bike delivery, and adding new sections 11.23.430 and 11.44.30, to an amending sections 11.14.055, 23.120, 11.31.121, and 11.76.015 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Great.

Nice to meet you all.

My name's Katherine Rice.

I lead our electrification program under the levy at SDOT, and I also lead our cargo bike work.

And Mike Esti, I'm the acting director of the Transit Mobility Division at SDOT.

So if it's okay, we'll go ahead.

I just have a couple of introductory remarks.

Catherine's doing the bulk of the presentation here.

I wanted to thank you all council members for the chance to talk about this program.

We've been working on it for a couple of years now.

As Catherine referenced, it has been mentioned in the mayor's 2022 and 2025 executive orders related to climate in terms of using e-cargo bikes as a potential urban goods delivery method.

We've been working over the past couple of years with a lot of different stakeholders, operators such as Beeline, who you heard from earlier in the public comments section, companies that either are already or thinking about using e-cargo bikes for urban goods delivery.

It's exciting to see this work getting close to coming to fruition.

And so with that, I'm going to let Catherine give the bulk of this presentation.

Great, thank you.

Excited to brief our council members today on this exciting topic.

Just an overview of our agenda here.

I'll give a brief connection to our citywide goals that Mike alluded to, and we'll dive pretty quickly into the draft legislation and permit overview to show you what we're suggesting within the ordinance, and then highlight some partnership opportunities that we're excited to uplift through this network as well.

So first off, the main point of this legislation really is to support our growing climate agenda within the city of Seattle.

As Mike mentioned, it was mentioned as a priority in both the 2022 and 2025 climate executive orders.

Council Member Rink mentioned C40 Cities.

We received two C40 Cities grants for this work, which is really fantastic to make sure that we were really paying attention to which program typologies were supported throughout the United States and abroad to make sure that we could best fit a program for Seattle within this sector as well.

Transportation emissions in Seattle makes up exactly 58% of our total emissions, which is a pretty hefty chunk.

And the dirtiest of that sector comes from freight, and so we want to make sure that we're creating programs that uplift this work as we move forward.

I'll also mention that the cargo bikes were mentioned in the SDOT climate change response framework strategy and also as a tool in our low pollution neighborhoods work.

So a little bit deeper dive into why cargo bikes.

Of course, we've mentioned the emissions benefits and enabling growth in zero emission freight modes, making sure that we're creating pathways for businesses to transition their fleets to zero emission options.

There's also a benefit from decreasing congestion and commercial vehicles circling and traffic on our streets.

Supporting modes of smaller vehicles opens up space at the curb for our larger trucks and limits instances of double parking in areas where trucks might be parking where there's not space for them at those curb areas.

We also have an opportunity to create safer streets and support our Vision Zero goals through this work.

A lot of times when there's not space for trucks, those smaller vehicles can park in spaces that don't limit visibility for other people that are walking, biking, and rolling on our streets as well.

And then lastly and most importantly, it's an opportunity to build partnerships with our Seattle business community.

We're hearing from the business community that they're interested in these new creative options, and we want to continue to hear those requests and make sure that we're creating safe pathways in the city of Seattle to support them.

So what will this program address?

Delivery activity continues to grow in the city of Seattle.

We know this.

We've seen this trend continue throughout COVID.

This picture here on the left is actually a snapshot of one day of delivery activity throughout the city.

And each dot is 20 vehicles.

So you can quickly see the depth that delivery activity takes within the city.

We want to make sure that businesses and freight partners are supported in this next pathway.

And we're hearing from them that they're interested in these programs as well.

e-cargo bikes offer efficiency and cost benefits for operating businesses.

They're cheaper from an operating and maintenance perspective and also offer efficiency benefits when we see congested times throughout the city as well.

And then lastly, with this legislation, it provides a legal framework to guide and encourage interested delivery operators.

We want to make sure that we're setting clear standards in the city of Seattle of what types of vehicles we'd like to see functioning on our city streets and creating safe standards in order for them to launch here in the city in the future.

So diving into the legislation, our proposed legislation takes three actions to help catalyze the city's commercial e-cargo bike ecosystem.

The first being establishing a legal vehicle definition within our city code supporting commercial electric cargo bikes.

We're opening up our curbside access to make sure that these new vehicles have ample space to park and load safely within our streets, and then creating a formal permit structure, which will provide guidance for delivery operators and allow us to collect some data as well as these bikes operate on our streets.

So first off, we're focusing on establishing some very clear bike form factors.

We actually worked on this legislation with peer cities throughout the United States and abroad to make sure that we're aligning with standards that we're seeing both from manufacturers and also from cities where these are already functioning.

We've learned from programs that have launched before us and been able to take note of where we might be able to adjust the standards to be more safe for the city of Seattle, and also worked with our community groups to inform this legislation as well.

So first off, we're going to be allowing bikes to have two, three, or four wheels within the program.

We're really hearing from those large freight operators that they're moving towards these quads, so opening up a critical pathway for that to safely operate on our streets is really critical through this legislation.

They'll have a maximum bike width of 48 inches, which is quickly becoming a standard in the United States.

It's the standard pallet size that we see for freight deliveries and is also approved by our Seattle bike team and transportation operations to safely operate within our protected bike lane network as well.

The powertrain aligns with federal standards for battery safety, making sure that we are having a maximum power output of 750 watts and continuing to support electric-assisted drive.

And then lastly, we worked with the Seattle Bike Advisory Board to inform the speed limits that we're setting for cargo bikes.

So we're requiring a maximum speed of 15 miles per hour, which is lower than personal electric bikes, which can travel 20 miles per hour within our bike lane network.

These are just some examples of what we see today for electric cargo bikes operating in other peer cities.

Really quick on the left, at the top you'll see a bike that operates in London for laundry delivery.

On the right are two examples in New York City that we see operating today.

And at the bottom is actually in London for window washing services.

The second piece in the legislation is curb access.

So the biggest benefit that comes from cargo bike delivery is getting as close as possible to your final destination.

And so as much as possible, we wanted to make sure that we were allowing bikes to park safely at the curb close to their final destination.

So the intent with this legislation is that on any given block when a cargo bike is out making a delivery, they might have at least one space where they could safely pull over and make a quick delivery on our streets.

We're opening up zones in both our business and residential areas, including our time limited and most of our load zones, our paid parking areas, our restricted parking zones, and then also our unrestricted parking zones.

And then lastly, we want to make sure that this permit program is streamlined for businesses that are interested in participating.

So the permits will be available through SDOT's traffic permit counter.

In order to get a permit, the applicant must have a valid Seattle business license.

They'll place the permit plate that we're developing with our Acela team on the back of the bike or trailer, which will display their unique permit number, and also their company name.

We're working with Seattle Parking Enforcement to make sure that we're developing clear standards with their staff so that they feel supported when going out for enforcement with these new vehicles as well.

We will be requiring that each bike pays a fee of $100.

Starting after six months, we are proposing waiving the fee for the first six months to inspire participation in the program, mostly from our small to medium business community.

It is a financial investment to take a chance on this program, and so we want to make sure that we're opening up that pathway to support them as well early on in the program adoption.

I mentioned early on that we're looking to collect some data from participating businesses, really to make sure that we are informing how the program can grow in the future.

So we'll be collecting information on how many packages delivered by cargo bikes per quarter, how many vehicle miles traveled by cargo bikes so that we can inform those emissions goals I mentioned earlier, and then also collecting information on zip code specific operation areas.

This is to make sure that we're being supportive of our business districts, and checking in with them periodically to make sure that the bikes are not negatively impacting their operations and hearing from businesses as well how they're interacting with this new vehicle type.

So lastly, I just want to highlight some exciting opportunities that are coming out of this work.

We've done about four years of engagement and outreach around this work, which has really taught us a lot about which partners might be interested in exploring Seattle as their next launch city.

We're working at home with our SDOT safety team to develop a cargo bike program for incident response.

In emergency situations, cargo bikes can access areas of the city that vehicles might not be able to, and so it opens up pathways for us to do some planning there.

We're uplifting our local ambassadors and early adopters.

So we actually already do see cargo bike delivery within the city of Seattle.

Pagliacci Pizza is the most famous for it here.

And then looking to lift up other small businesses that want to adopt these as well.

We've heard from large freight partners like Amazon and DHL that they're interested in having Seattle be their next launch city for their operations.

and then supporting logistics companies as well.

You heard earlier from Beeline Cargo Bike Logistics, which is highlighted in that bottom right-hand picture.

They've been operating cargo bike logistics in Portland for over a decade and would like to have Seattle be their next launch city as they have businesses here that they also work with in Portland as well.

And then lastly, we want to continue reducing adoption barriers for small to medium sized businesses.

This is really important to us and is really unique for our Seattle program compared to other peer cities.

We'll be exploring how we can provide cargo bikes on a pay per use basis through a lending library for businesses that might be interested in adopting the vehicles but need a little bit of time to see if they actually fit their fleet operations.

And so we're pursuing those concepts right now alongside our other climate projects within SDOT.

So just a snapshot of what's next for us today.

Of course, we're here briefing you on the legislation.

We're already working with our Acela team to develop that permit process that I mentioned earlier and plan to continue our outreach and engagement through the fall and Q4 of this year to confirm participating businesses and also make sure that they have support from us.

from the jump, making sure that they understand the standards and also that they can have a successful launch within the city, and then hope to launch the program by Q4 or Q1 of next year, which would allow us to meet the 2025 climate executive order deadline.

So that's our presentation.

Thank you so much for the opportunity today, and we can take any questions from council members.

Excellent.

Thank you, Ms. Rice, Mr. Etsy, Mr. Laborde for your presentation today.

I'm gonna open it up to my colleagues, see if they have any comments, questions.

I know that there are a number of champions of freight and cargo mobility on this committee and indeed at this very dais right now.

So I know I can expect a number of questions and comments, but I will turn it over.

There's so much chivalry going on at this dais right now with council members Rink and Kettle.

Maybe Mitchell or board can pick who goes first.

Eeny, meeny, miny.

You went first last time.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, council member Kettle.

Okay.

Well, thank you, Mr. Esty and Ms. Rice for being here.

Mr. Chow for coming back.

Thank you.

Of course, Mr. Laborde.

Are you with the freight program?

I work very closely with Chris Eves in the freight program.

So I am a lead of our new levy electrification program, actually sits within curbside management.

But I work very closely with our freight program and also our climate office within policy and planning.

So you have the lead, your office has the lead, but the freight program is obviously...

Very closely linked, yes.

All of these were reviewed by Chris Eve's freight team.

And then we've actually been working with him to, you know, plan future components of the program as well to make sure they're in line with the freight program as well.

I'm sure my colleague, Councilmember Rink, is big on freight too.

But head of last year's transportation plan and the levy, the chair and I were...

pushing strongly on freight for a number of different good reasons.

So I just wanted to ensure that freight program was actively engaged.

I figured as much, but it's important to ask the question.

I get a lot from constituents in terms of, and this is like another version of e-mobility.

and for the record I am fully supportive of our bike lanes and everything along those lines and we need to expand and get connected and really build that out but we also need our e-mobility type scooters and the various bikes to use those lanes, use the dedicated lanes or the different types of lanes and so forth and we need them to follow the rules of road not be screaming down our sidewalks because I hear from countless constituents regarding that pedestrian safety threat that exists.

And it's real.

I've seen it myself countless many times.

And so this is kind of like going into a new area in a way in terms of e-mobility, but this time for commercial reasons, for cargo, for logistics.

And so that's my tee up is that, you know, will these entities be operating more like motorcycles or motor vehicles, cars and rules of the road and not be jumping up on sidewalks?

I mean, so are they designed, is the whole idea is for them to basically be a trike and be registered and licensed all along those lanes.

Yeah, and the reason that we're bringing this program forward before we see a lot of the activity in Seattle is, like you said, to create those safe standards here first.

In a lot of cities where we saw programs launch before the cities that had standards in place, we would see the sidewalk conflicts, and so that's why we've intentionally opened up space at the curb for these larger vehicles to park and limit pedestrian sidewalk concerns.

That was the first and foremost desire of the program to make sure that these were operating more like vehicles that are permitted through our systems that can be cited by our parking enforcement staff and follow those rules of the road like any other vehicle that's operating in those spaces.

Thank you.

That's very important.

How do you define cargo?

That's a great question.

It's a leading question, but it's a question, yes.

Yeah, for the purpose of this program, we've been defining it as the delivery of goods and services.

And so we want to open it up for parcel delivery, food delivery, service delivery.

The Downtown Seattle Association actually already operates cargo bikes to clean up our streets throughout the city using those bikes downtown.

And so for the purpose of this program, it's limited to those smaller packages, those smaller goods that we see delivered through the city.

There will naturally be goods and cargo that cannot be delivered by bike just because it's not suitable for the use case.

But for this, we're considering parcel, food, and services as the main three.

I ask because, again, this is another area.

that I get a lot from constituents, particularly because I have District 7, and so I have most of downtown, not all of it, and importantly, not the stadiums, for example.

And this is the tie-in, is I go to a Mariners game, throw out the first pitch, cross the plate, no bounce, strike.

It was a strike.

And then when I left, I had my father-in-law with me in order to get back to our vehicle.

and so we took a bike taxi and I had my daughter with me so it was just the three of us that was an e-ticket theme park ride yes I mean we're flying up on the street come back the whole time Frank Sinatra's flying I won't go to this thing in and out and all the above and we were cargo human cargo but we were cargo.

Are e-taxis part of this legislation?

As I understand it, I think those would be considered pedicabs and that there's a different sort of regulatory regime from pedicabs.

Well, there's pedicabs.

This guy was not using his, he was not pedaling.

He had a battery pack.

Trust me, the speeds that we were going.

I mean, it was seriously an e-ticket ride.

Our intent is that that would be covered elsewhere.

We would not consider under the e-cargo bike definitions what you just described.

I mean, I think that would be handled elsewhere.

I think it's fair for us to save space to talk with others in SDOT and other parts of the city like FAS about what regulation of the types of devices you're describing looks like versus what we're thinking about just in terms of urban goods delivery.

Well, can I plant a suggestion, Mr. Laborde, that you know, the department, the administration, and really us, should consider a parallel piece of legislation to cover this area.

I recognize it's different, but it is very a challenge, like on the waterfront.

and, you know, so this is something that, you know, these are not like our mid ambassadors that go very slow from one point to the other, picking up trash.

I'm not kidding.

It was an e-ticket.

My daughter loved it.

And, you know, we were bouncing around, you know, cutting through that new street as you come away from T-Mobile Park that used to be, you know, used to be a street street.

You know, you have the entrance for the tunnel, the support building.

I mean, flying through there, cutting.

And it is something that needs to be addressed.

And I think, now these bikes, the ped bikes, have been here for a long time.

And they went slower, human powered.

But we're in a new world now.

So this kind of goes to your example, Ms. Rice, about what came first.

Well, in this case, the motorized, the battery packed, taxis, personnel taxis, are out there already.

So this would be a catch-up.

But I think this is something that we really seriously should be considering a parallel piece of legislation to cover this area because it is a huge, not just pedestrian safety, but traffic safety because we were bouncing out, coming in, bouncing out into the streets.

And I just think it's something that we should be looking at.

And At the end of the day though, I love this because it goes to how can we be better, faster, quicker?

And what we cannot do as a city is have our logistics thrown completely onto the streets.

And that happens so many times because it's going to create so many transportation challenges.

And that was the reason why I've always been pushing the design review holiday for downtown, pulling out the loading docks.

because we have to ensure that our buildings, our logistical system, commercial residential is good because then we're not forcing it onto the street.

And I see it so often.

So I see this program as a way to ameliorate that a bit by taking the bigger trucks off and having some of those things taken care of this way.

So I thank you for coming and presenting on this.

And Mr. Laborde, again, your chance to be your hero to address the motorized ped bike issue.

Yeah, I'd reiterate what Mike said about involving FAS because of their existing role in regulating rideshare and taxi service since there's a crossover there.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Great feedback here.

Great points and opportunity potentially for parallel legislation to address the pedestrian aspects of this or the human cargo aspect of this, if you will.

Also a potential opportunity for amending the originally proposed legislation, if you so choose.

But in any event, points well taken.

In cooperation.

Nothing coming out of the board.

But excellent points made.

And Council Member Rink, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm glad Council Member Kettle went first so I could get my head around exactly what we're talking about here.

This is really exciting and interesting and I'm also excited to see us be a bit more on the proactive side in terms of really figuring out what kind of role will these e-cargo bikes play and how will our existing laws and just managing curb access and so on, how we're really gonna deal with that.

So I wanna commend the department for being a bit proactive on this matter.

and I have a couple of very short questions just for today.

One is just a point of alignment.

Earlier this year, we passed our transportation electrification strategic investment plan, which is very exciting.

So just as a point of clarification, I know in that plan, and I did a double check, we don't have any mention of e-cargo bikes listed in that plan, but I want to ensure that there's alignment.

I imagine the department has been making sure there is alignment, but I wanted to and ask if we have in our current plans for scaling our charging network, is there anything to be concerned about or any misalignment between this effort and that plan?

No concerns.

We've been coordinating very closely with Seattle City Light on this work and it actually fits into a broader freight electrification strategy that we're hoping to move forward over the next couple years.

Really where cargo bikes start to make a big impact is when we can integrate them into the larger fleets as well with our freight network.

So exploring some concepts with City Light with cargo bikes where we can co-locate charging infrastructure for both bikes and vehicles coming into the city.

and creating what they're calling in New York City micro-hub concepts, where we can have those co-located resources.

So that might be a future design within the program, but definitely coordinating closely with our team to uplift this work and make sure it fits in the broader strategy.

Fabulous, love to hear that.

And on this point just also about usage of the street, I know this proposed legislation sets a width maximum at 48 inches with no max length.

I think that's on slide.

Oh no, they're not numbered.

There we are, thank you.

And I'm wondering, because from the pictures that were shown, there's a few different iterations of this, and it looks like they're definitely smaller models.

I imagine the vast majority of these wouldn't fit in our bike lanes, but there might be some that could.

How has the department been thinking about that kind of interplay?

Yeah, so actually all of the bikes that are included here in this slide would be able to fit within our protected bike lane network.

They fit that 48 inch width requirement.

We've been working very closely with our bike team network where we are expanding our protected bike lanes to make sure that they fit those with requirements.

That way we can support this with other cities as well.

And also making sure that, you know, all of those are approved within our transportation operations division.

and then you'll see, you know, there's different parking structures within cities that have launched these programs.

We chose not to set a length requirement here because we don't set length requirements for other vehicles in the city of Seattle.

Where New York City has set that length requirement, they actually do back-end angle parking and so it was a concern of the vehicles actually jetting out into the road.

We're looking at mostly parallel parking for the areas that we're allowing these bikes to park in within the city of Seattle.

Awesome, I'm just thinking through that.

I'm curious to hear that we do expect them to fit through most bike lanes.

I'm just thinking about some of our bike lanes downtown that are particularly the two-way ones, where it would just, I would imagine we need to take up the entirety of one.

So I'm just curious about that point, but hearing that, at least for the vast majority of them, they should be able to fit.

Yeah, I was just asking about the minimum.

I think the minimum lane width for most bicycle facilities is a five-foot lane, directional lane, so the two-way cycle tracks that you see on 2nd or 4th Avenue, I think they're typically about 10 feet wide, sometimes wider.

Okay, got it.

They just feel small when you're writing on it sometimes.

Okay, understood, thank you.

And as a following point from that, I know you mentioned peer cities a number of times.

Could you just share with us what those peer cities are?

Yes, yeah, we worked closest with Boston, New York City, and Washington DC.

New York City already has standards in place for cargo bikes.

Boston, Washington DC, and Seattle are hoping to launch standards together in the next year.

We also collaborated very closely with London, Montreal, Toronto, and a couple other cities in Europe They've had cargo bike programs active for five to 10 years now, and so we've learned a lot from those spaces.

A lot of those connections being facilitated by C40 cities, so big thank you to their team as well.

But it's been really critical for our team to learn where their programs have done really well, but also where they've run into issues.

That way we can inform our program to make sure that we don't hit those same roadblocks in the future.

and my last question for today is on slide 10 where we lay out the requirements for permittees.

I'm wondering how we landed on the fee of $100 and is that to be considered an annual fee or kind of an entrance fee and how is the department considered a flat fee versus something a bit more progressive or keeping towards the mind of who the business that is applying for the permit might be?

How do we land on a flat fee structure?

Yeah, great question.

So this is an annual fee of $100 per bicycle that's permitted within the program.

We looked at our existing commercial vehicle load zone program, and within that we charge $250 annually.

And so to support our climate goals and the larger vision for this work, we wanted to make sure that there was incentive for companies to consider using bikes instead of a larger style truck.

So that was the reasoning behind the discount there.

The fee itself will allow us to recoup some of the work and maintenance fees for issuing permits, the work on the SDOT side, while also keeping it as low as possible for participating businesses.

It's an interesting thought to think about the types of businesses applying for these, and I think that's something that we could consider in the future.

I think in terms of the permit volume that we expect to see, at least in the first couple years, we expect it to be relatively low, supporting those businesses that are ready to be early adopters.

Should we hit a point in the future where we're seeing a lot of large freight companies take this up with many permits, I think that's something that we consider as an amendment.

Fabulous.

And that concludes my questions.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you all for your time.

Excellent, thank you so much.

Really appreciate the department again for sharing this presentation, the proposed legislation before us today, more details about the proposed legislation before us today.

I'm a huge supporter of the program more broadly, looking forward to diving more deeply into the weeds and exploring each aspect of the proposal.

but I think directionally we are on the right track and this is great.

This is something that can help support last mile connections and delivery and which is very, very important and the definition to the earlier question about the definition of cargo, I think this I think you're spot on in terms of interpreting that to include the delivery of goods and services.

I would actually pick up as part of the services piece, human cargo.

That's a service someone is providing to provide.

We can get an esoteric discussions about the difference between goods and services and law school.

I got many of those, but in any event, the broader point is that this is a very exciting program.

Very innovative, super cool as well.

Love geeking out about this kind of stuff because it's a form of micro-mobility as was noted.

It also helps facilitate commerce and making sure that we expand the number of people participating and benefiting from economic activity to contribute to a broader economic vitality for all across our city.

So super cool all around.

Love this, love this, love this.

Two questions.

that I'll add from my perspective.

So as was noted, we're not recreating the wheel here.

We are essentially building upon existing programs and efforts across the country and indeed across the world, in Canada and parts of Europe, London, et cetera.

and so two questions.

You noted that as part of the collaboration and understanding what works and what has worked and in some cases what has not worked or as you put it, where these other jurisdictions have run into issues, would love to just better understand at a high level what some of those issues are with a little more specificity.

And then two, a corollary of that would be, how do we design the Seattle-specific implementation of this program to address some of those learnings from other jurisdictions?

Yeah, great question.

So I think two pieces come to mind to me initially in terms of issues that we noted.

The first one being that it's really critical to provide as much space as possible for these vehicles to be able to access the curb.

We heard from other cities that they would create designated zones just for cargo bikes in certain areas of the city or where that business might be operating, which becomes limiting when you think about last mile and all of the places of the city that they might be able to reach.

That's why with this program we actually decided to open up multiple types of curb zones.

That way in any piece of the city they might be able to have a space to park rather than just putting in designated cargo bike zones for parking.

So that's one of the first ones.

And then I think when we think about the form factors, this is a really rapidly developing market.

And so we've been able to learn from manufacturers and logistics companies how it's changed over the last five to ten years.

cities and states that adopted legislation early on have had to adjust it because the vehicles are changing so rapidly.

And so where we could with this form factor legislation, we allowed space for innovation.

We didn't want to be too restrictive within our confines of what is a cargo bike.

Being broad with what we consider goods and services, being broad with the types of bikes that we allow with the two, three, and four wheels, it gives us space to change that in the future if we decide that it is going in one direction.

but also doesn't limit companies from coming to the city of Seattle.

So we wanted to keep it open for that innovation as well.

Awesome.

Well, thank you very much again for this presentation here.

Look forward to learning more and we'll take this up in our next committee again.

Colleagues, any final questions, comments for the good of the order?

Hearing and seeing none, thank you again.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Our next meeting is anticipated to be on September 16th at 9.30, Tuesday.

One last call for final questions, comments for the good of the order.

Hearing, seeing none.

We are adjourned, it's 12.05 p.m.