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All right, good morning.

The January 15th, 2026 meeting of the Transportation Waterfront and Seattle Center Committee will come to order.

My oh my, that is a long and somewhat confusing name for a committee.

It steps.

It is 9.34 a.m.

I am Rob Saka, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council member Foster.

Here.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Lin.

Here.

Council Member Rink.

Present.

Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five 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.

Thank you, colleagues, members of the public for joining us today.

Very important meeting.

Before we start today's agenda, I would like to extend a special welcome to Councilmembers Foster and Lynn.

Welcome, really excited to have you, and in fact, we're lucky to have you on this committee.

I really do look forward to partnering closely with you and your offices to advance our shared work together in this critical forum to better serve those who live in, work in, and visit our fine city.

I also want to welcome our department partners, members of the public, and those watching at home to the inaugural meeting of the Safety, Transportation, Engineering Projects, Sports and Experiences Committee, or simply put, STEPS.

We chose that name intentionally because how Seattle moves forward happens one step at a time.

And because safety has to come first, every single time.

I want to start by grounding us in how we got here.

Because STEPS is not a departure from our past work, it is the next necessary evolution of it.

In 2024, when I became chair of the former Transportation Committee, our focus was foundational.

We were setting direction and securing the tools needed to deliver.

That year, we passed the Seattle Transportation Plan, establishing a 20-year vision centered on safety, equity and reliability.

And importantly, later that year, we backed that vision with vital resources and real investment by passing a $1.55 billion transportation levy renewal package that was later approved by voters.

Ms. Chair, I pushed hard to ensure that that levy included the largest investment in Vision Zero upgrades in Seattle's history, along with historic funding to protect our most vulnerable road users.

That meant expanding and upgrading bike lanes and building new sidewalks in neighborhoods that have been left behind for too long.

In 2025, that work matured.

The focus shifted from authorization to accountability, implementation and innovation.

We worked to ensure a strong start to the levy.

We elevated transit safety and security.

And we passed the first in the nation e-cargo bike legislation while launching a brand new district project fund, giving council members new tools to respond more quickly to neighborhood level safety needs.

Safety has always been at the heart of what we do in this committee.

And STEPS does not replace that prior work.

It builds upon it.

That said, what STEPS does do differently is recognize that the challenges we face today are more interconnected than ever.

Seattle is growing.

We are delivering complex capital projects.

We're also preparing to host major global events that will put unprecedented demands, pressures, and strains on our broader transportation system and public spaces.

STEPS is designed to meet this moment by bringing together safety, transportation, engineering delivery, civic projects, and major experiences into a single coordinated framework.

It positions us not just to plan well, but to execute well.

In addition, STEPS modernizes the Council's transportation oversight by uniting a safety first mobility policy with major civic projects, sports and cultural experiences.

Those things are not separate constructs.

They intersect.

Literally, quite literally, in our streets, our sidewalks, our transit systems, and in our public spaces.

Before we go further, I want to share why this work matters to me personally.

In 2014, my friend and mentor and work colleague, Sher Kung, was killed while riding her bike to work downtown along 2nd Avenue.

Sher was a mother, a wife, and so much more.

She was also a fellow alum of my law school and a legendary lawyer at my old law firm.

Sher was thoughtful, generous, and deeply committed to this city.

She did everything right, and she should still be here.

Her death was not inevitable.

It was entirely preventable.

and that reality has shaped how I approach this work every day.

When we talk about Vision Zero, we're not talking about a slogan or a spreadsheet or even a slide deck.

We're talking about people whose lives should not have ended on our streets.

We're talking about people like Cher.

We're also talking about people like Steve Holzman, one of my constituents who tragically lost his life on her roads in West Seattle in December of 2023. People whose absence still ripple through families, workplaces and communities.

There are far too many tribute rides, ghost bikes and makeshift memorials honoring the people, our neighbors, who lost their lives on our city streets.

That is why Traffic Safety and Vision Zero is agenda item number one at our very first inaugural meeting today.

That's also why we are starting steps with an honest assessment of progress and barriers to success.

And that is why safety remains the foundation of everything this committee will do.

At the same time, Seattle is stepping into a larger stage and taking our rightful place as a leading world-class city.

We are preparing for FIFA World Cup, finalizing our plans for that, advancing the redevelopment of Memorial Stadium and continuing major investments in the Seattle Center and the waterfront.

These moments bring opportunity and pride.

but they also demand reliability, coordination, and a relentless focus on safety.

STEPS is built to deliver on all three.

By aligning SDOT, the Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects and Seattle Center, this committee reflects how the city actually functions when things are working well, together, not in silos.

This committee is about forging partnerships and strengthening collaboration with the executive, with regional agencies, with advocates and communities and with each other.

The urgency in this work is clear.

Lives are quite literally at stake and there is accountability.

The public expects results.

My commitment as chair is to honor the foundation we have built while leading this next chapter with seriousness, transparency and collaboration.

With that, I want to thank SDOT and Interim Director Brady for being here today.

It means a lot.

Next, I would like to briefly touch upon the state's Revive I-5 project.

The Washington State Department of Transportation, WSDOT, is rehabilitating the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle.

Recall colleagues, Well, I guess Councilmember Kettle and Vice Chair Rink were the ones that were on the committee last year, last spring when we had a briefing to talk exactly about this, because that's when the original work kicked off.

But this past weekend, there was a full closure of northbound I-5 from I-90 to Northeast 45th Street.

Two lanes of northbound I-5 will remain closed for multiple months as crews conduct bridge preservation work.

The next phase of the project is scheduled to last until the end of 26, but we'll pause during the World Cup.

Members of the public are encouraged to take this into account when they plan to travel northbound on I-5 through downtown.

Takeaway is plan ahead.

All right, moving on to today's agenda.

We'll have a presentation from SDOT regarding the traffic status update, traffic safety status update, the overall state, progress against vision zero goals and implementation barriers to success.

We'll also have a briefing and discussion and possible vote on two SDOT projects.

Thank you again and welcome to STEPS.

We will now open the 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?

Chair, we currently have two speakers, one in person and one remote.

All right, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with in speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

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

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 has 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 will begin with the first speaker on the list.

All right, first speaker is Clara Cantor.

Welcome, Clara.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Clara Cantor and I'm a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

I'm really grateful that this committee is starting off with a presentation on Vision Zero, the goal to end traffic deaths and serious injuries in the next four years.

We don't have official numbers from 2025, but I'd like to share my count of just those crashes that have made it to the media.

Since this body last heard a report on Vision Zero, a minimum of 24 people have been killed in car crashes on our streets, including 15 who were not in cars.

And since committing to Vision Zero in 2015, at least 281 people have been killed and 2,000 people have been left with life-altering injuries.

and traffic violence, like so much else in our city, is disproportionately killing low-income and unhoused people, disabled people, elders, people of color, and each of those numbers is a person and each death has rippling effects on their family, their friends, and their community.

I get around the city by bike and by bus with my two young kids and we live just off of Vernier Avenue in District 2. I am very keenly aware of how vulnerable and unprotected I am on our streets every single day, and that the next number could be me.

Our goal isn't to stop all crashes because people make mistakes.

It's just to make sure that when crashes do happen, they aren't severe enough to kill people.

And the smart people at SDOT that we have here today know what to do.

We just need the political will to make it happen.

So as you're listening to this morning's presentation, I would like to issue each of you a challenge to just think of just one big safety street redesign project that you know would save lives, something in your district or something that come up in this presentation like this one year after year after year after year, and just to do everything in your power to champion that project and make sure that it happens and it happens in a way that's gonna save lives.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Clara.

Our remote speaker's name is David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

You know, it would be great if council made a rule that if business wants to do business in Seattle with a public-private partnership on fixing the roads or the Ship Canal Bridge, that they bring two full shifts so that they can focus on getting the project done.

because there seems to be a continued abuse of the working class where they're not being paid enough and then they have to work the pay plan being overworked so they slow down.

And now we are totally inconvenienced with all these projects that are paying an exorbitant sum of money to people who are not working on the project but are oppressing and exploiting workers.

And let's face it, America has a real problem with car-centric infrastructure.

and it's completely evident all throughout Seattle where you have these inconsiderate road rage drivers who think they can get away with treating a pedestrian or a cyclist like hell and they can get away with it and it's outrageous but you know when you keep trying to create new neighborhoods and you're constantly accommodating the road and letting like the trash truck come right up to the residential unit.

You have to reimagine the neighborhood and the community without the accommodation of the laziness of the modern wheel.

You ever notice some strip malls where people think they have to drive as close as they can get to the front door and their bumper is hanging over the sidewalk intruding on people who are pedestrians.

We need a pedestrian-centric, resident-friendly infrastructure and neighborhood.

The comprehensive plan does not address it like it's supposed to.

Y'all want to put everybody on the transit-oriented side of the highway because a bunch of landlords on the city council want to be abusive towards the renters and sell out the working class.

But we need double shifts on all of these transportation projects.

It would expedite getting...

Thank you, David.

All right, they're just confirming there are no additional registered speakers?

Correct.

All right, great, thank you.

We will now move on to our first item of business, agenda item number one.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, traffic status update, overall state progress against Vision Zero goals and impediments to success.

Thank you, and looks like our presenters are joining us at the table.

Thank you, welcome.

Please start sharing your presentations.

Once ready, first introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

Before we do that, while you guys are settling in, pulling up the resources to share out, just wanna acknowledge and say thank you, the widow of Steve Holzman, who I mentioned earlier, one of my constituents, and someone who has become a champion of traffic safety and Vision Zero investments at the local level, someone who has pushed me in a kind and respectful way to do better, pushed our city, there's never just one person, pushed our city to do better.

So I wanna thank Ms. Holzman, Rita, and in addition to all those things, She's also a friend, and I appreciate her.

Thank you for being here.

All right, SDOT, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I am Angela Brady.

I have been at this table many, many times over my 21 years here at the city, but this is my first time sitting here as the interim SDOT director.

So very honored to have been selected to play this role and really happy to be sitting in front of you today to talk about such an important topic as safety.

and thank you Councilmember Saka for inviting us to present on this topic today.

You'll notice in our vision, value, and goals slide, shown on the next slide here, that safety is embedded in everything we do, across divisions and with all staff at SDOT, from providing wheelchair accessible curb ramps, to reorganizing the way a street operates, to managing traffic operations on city streets during major events like Revive I-5, Safety is a top priority for me and the entire department.

Today the committee will receive a refresher on the Vision Zero program.

We'll talk about where we are with serious and fatal traffic collisions.

We'll give an overview of 2025 data and where we are going in 2026. While this presentation is not a holistic look at every single one of our safety investments, it does provide a really great snapshot of our efforts and the results.

This will no doubt lead to good questions and discussions, and I look forward to more briefings on safety as this year proceeds.

And with that, I'd like to turn things over to the city's transportation engineer and chief safety officer, Vinu Namani.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Brady.

Thank you, Director Brady.

Thank you, Mr. Namani.

Before you begin, we have another presenter at the table, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves.

And then colleagues, I'll just ask that we hold our questions to the very end.

Thank you.

And I'm Bill Laborde.

I'm SDOT's council liaison and government relations manager.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Vinyan Imani.

I'm the Chief Transportation Safety Officer and City Traffic Engineer with S-TOT.

And thank you, Chair Saka, Vice Chair Rink, and Council Member Kettle.

Nice to see you in this committee here.

I welcome Council Member Foster and Council Member Lynn to the committee.

I'm looking forward to working with all of you guys.

Before I get started, let me ground all of us in the STAT's vision, values and goals.

Our vision is that Seattle is an equitable, vibrant and diverse city where moving around is safe, fair and sustainable.

All people and businesses can access their daily needs and feel connected to their community.

Our values are safety, equity, sustainability, mobility, and economic vitality, livability, maintenance and modernization, and excellence.

Before we begin, let's take a quick moment to acknowledge the lives that are lost and lives that have been impacted by traffic violence on our city streets.

Together, we hold the space for everybody who's been impacted.

These people are our community members, our family members, our friends, and we collectively acknowledge their loss and recommit to continued action on safety.

In today's presentation, I'd go over the Vision Zero and Safe Systems approach and Safe Systems elements, and then get into the key Vision Zero trends in Seattle, what Vision Zero program has accomplished in 2025, and how we are going to go about within the Vision Zero program in 2026. Like Director Brady said, this is purely about the activities of the Vision Zero program, but not a holistic a review of all the safety efforts that are happening within the department.

Safety continues to be a common thread that motivates and inspires us all across the department to pursue and improve safety for all road users.

Vision Zero is a goal that the city has committed to in 2015 to end fatalities and serious injuries on our city streets by 2030. Historically, safety has been approached from the perspective of the three E's, engineering, education, and enforcement, and later on several other E's such as emergency management or encouragement and evaluation were added to the safety approach.

But more recently, we have adopted a different approach called the Safe Systems approach to broaden our focus and address safety from multiple angles.

In 2022, US Department of Transportation adopted the Safe Systems approach that was based on the Vision Zero principles as a new paradigm to approach safety from multiple angles.

The goal of this new approach is to reduce the likelihood of crashes, and if they do occur, reduce the likelihood of harm when such crashes happen.

The Safe Systems approach is based on the Vision Zero principles that have been adopted across Europe and later widely across the country, and we have seen a lot of success adopting this approach.

Now, the Safe Systems approach has six guiding principles, as you can see on the outside of this schematic.

The six guiding principles are that death and serious injuries are unacceptable, humans are vulnerable, and humans do make mistakes.

And responsibility is shared from people who maintain, operate, plan, and design the system to the end users who use the transportation system for their daily needs.

That safety is proactive, and that redundancy is crucial.

The Safe Systems approach has five specific elements as part of its approach.

Safer roads and safer speeds all are about engineering design and trying to manage the operation and safety characteristics of the street system.

And safer people, post-crash care, and safer vehicles are other elements that talk about the human behavior and other aspects of the vehicle design and the emergency response aspects of the safe systems approach.

Now, WASHDOT has recently included an additional six system called safer land use to be incorporated because land use and traffic have a very deep connection and impact one another.

Now, since the beginning of the Vision Zero efforts, we have published several action plans, and our most recent action plan was based on a top-to-bottom review of our Vision Zero approach within a start.

and we published this action plan in spring of 2024, setting out a three-year action plan that identifies 20 broad strategies and 80 specific actions, not just for the Vision Zero program, but for our various programs across the department and for various teams that work on safety and safety-related projects.

Switching to a little bit about what we are seeing on our streets and across the country, this is a graph that you might be familiar from last year's presentation.

We updated this graph with two additional years of data that we have both available in the city and for the various peer cities across our country.

Now, Seattle, seems to be doing relatively better when it comes to the life's loss per capita when compared to some of the peer studies.

But we know that our work will not stop until that green bar goes all the way down to zero.

We have a lot more work to do to get to our Vision Zero goals.

So here's how what the fatalities that we are seeing on our city streets since embarking on this Vision Zero effort.

Now, we have included preliminary data from 2025, what we have seen in terms of the number of lives lost on our streets.

But know that this is still preliminary data.

We generally get to finalize all of our crash data right around the end of Q1 and in a given year.

So this is an early view into what happened in 2025. We saw about 25 people who lost their lives on our streets last year.

And for people driving and people on motorcycles, we have seen fewer fatalities compared to previous years, especially for people driving.

We have seen far fewer than we have seen at any time before.

Unfortunately, we did have one bicycle fatality late last December.

Ali Rodriguez was killed at Beacon and Stevens in District 1, and that was the first bike fatality for almost two years that we had.

Now, one thing that is concerning for us is that after seeing several years of fewer pedestrian fatalities, last year a number of pedestrian fatalities have gone up.

Just to visualize the same data in a slightly different way, you can see the height of each color of those bars represents the various types of fatalities that we have seen on our streets.

And we definitely are concerned about the height of the purple bar that represents people who have lost their lives while walking.

and after seeing several years of reduction of fewer pedestrian fatalities, this does concern us and we are going to take a deeper look into understanding pedestrian fatality and pedestrian collisions and pedestrian safety across the city and formulate what our next steps should be to address those trends and concerns.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend lines for the serious injuries that we have been seeing.

We did not include the serious injury data for 2025 because the last two months of data is still outstanding that we are not able to finalize for this presentation.

But as by the end of October of last year, we have seen 190 total serious injuries for 2025. It seems to be trending very similar to what the experience that we have seen in 2024, as you can see in this chart.

Now, where are these crashes happening?

You can see that most of these clashes are indeed happening in South Seattle in District 1 and District 2 compared to other districts across the city.

Now, we here, kind of like in Vision Zero, developed something called a high injury network, basically to identify which arterial segments, which roadway segments are experiencing the most number of crashes and collisions and traffic harm on our city streets.

This high injury network is based on an index or a score that we calculate that takes into account fatal and serious injury collisions for about 50% of the weight and all other collisions except for sideswipes, parked cars, and rear end collisions.

And we use that score to apply for what we are seeing in terms of collisions on various city streets and develop that score to normalize that score and to identify our priorities.

Now, previously, we used to identify top five tiers in the high injury network, but what we have seen is that the lower tiers, four and five, are not as significant as compared to the other tiers.

So we have modified this to just the top three tiers, which we are calling the high priority, medium priority, and lower priority segments for across the city.

In this particular slide, You can see what those segments are in North Seattle.

As we have seen in the years past, Aurora Avenue seems to be a constant concern from a safety perspective.

So is the North Gateway as it crosses Aurora Avenue.

We do see Lake City Way, a small portion of North 50th Street as segments of highest concern in the North Seattle.

Next slide.

Coming into the central part of our city, we do have several segments that we are concerned, especially in the downtown area, the Pike-Pine corridors, James Street, Spring Street, and the likes, where we are seeing a lot more collisions.

I know we just finished a huge project on pipeline corridors, so we need to see what the impact of those changes and improvements are over time, but it gives us a snapshot of what areas do we want to focus, especially in the central part of the city.

South Jackson is another corridor that has a really high priority that we need to take a closer look at.

Coming into the South Seattle, as in the years before this, Soto and Rainier Ave are the two areas where we are seeing a lot more collisions.

First Ave and Fourth Ave, again, are very characteristic of multi-lanes, high-volume, high-speed roadways, and Rainier Ave continues to pose challenge to our department and to our program in terms of the crashes that we are seeing on these corridors.

Now, all our efforts in the Vision Zero program, we organized it under three prongs of programmatic investments.

In the first prong, we look at what we call it as a responsive approach to safety.

This is based on police-reported collision data that we analyze and identify not only our high-injury network segments but also our high-collision segments, and it's very reactive looking at the crash experience and coming up with safety countermeasures to deal with some of those collision trends.

Now, that is a very traditional approach to safety.

But in addition to that, we are also investing on what we call a proactive approach to safety.

We know that there are several proven safety countermeasures, like leading pedestrian intervals, like speed management, or enhanced crossings that have proven safety records.

So our program and systematically to spread these countermeasures at as many locations across the city as possible.

And the third approach, or the third prong, we have the capital project partnerships.

So these are existing projects that are already underway or being planned to be underway within the department that gives us an amazing opportunity to get in right at the planning stage and incorporate that safety thinking and safety contributions and safety design right at the outset before the project gets into the design phase and ultimately the construction phase.

Now, just a little overview on what pro and safety contributions are we trying to systematically expand across the city.

These include leading pedestrian controls, or what we call the pedestrian head start signals, Dedicated left-turn facing that eliminates the conflict between turning vehicles and pedestrians who are crossing at intersections.

Putting out more enhanced crossings are basically crosswalks with appropriate crossing treatments and making them more frequent and more accessible.

Improving corridor lighting so that We can deal with a trend of night time collisions that we are seeing across the city.

North and reds to better protect people when they're crossing at intersections.

Intersection daylighting that improves the visibility of people who are crossing by stopping cars farther away from the intersection.

road reconfigurations, thinking about our roadway design and looking at our multillion arterials and looking at how we can redesign those roadways while providing mobility but also improving safety and access for vulnerable road users.

And the last two are the arterial traffic calming, where we know that there's a very deep connection between speed and safety outcomes.

So we are embarking on a systemic approach to use tools such as speed cushions, narrower lanes, radar speed feedback signs, and most importantly, the safety cameras that you guys have passed a local legislation on last year to use all those toolboxes to deal with arterial traffic calming and promote safer speeds, safer operating speeds on our streets.

Now, thanks so much to all the Seattleites and your support for the Levy last year.

Our program, Vision Zero program, is on deck to receive $70 million over the next eight years to invest in safety projects and improve safety outcomes across the city.

Now, in the Levy, we have four very specific deliverables.

Implement safety redesigns on up to 12 corridors on the high injury network, implement traffic calming on more than 50 corridors across the city, invest in high collision locations at more than 40 locations across the city, and implement our leading pedestrian intervals at up to 280 intersections across the city.

These are some of the core things that our Vision Zero team is pursuing as part of our yearly activities in the department.

Now, looking at 2024 and how we did relative to those deliverables and some of the Vision Zero priorities that we have, in 2024, 25, we did start to hit the ground running.

We have completed a safety redesign project on North 130th Street between Stone and First Tab.

And 130th is a medium priority corridor that is in the North Seattle.

And actually, it connects not only the Ingram High School, but the future light rail station that's going to be coming here.

So it's a very important corridor, both from a crash history perspective and from the future connectivity perspective.

So this is only kind of like phase one of our investments on this corridor.

We have other parts of the North 130th Street that we are working on a design to implement that improve safety outcomes.

In the South Seattle, we have completed design and begun to construct safety improvements on South Henderson Street that is going to benefit not only access to the light rail station, but the South Shore School and the Rainier Beach High School that are there on this corridor.

So, when it comes to arterial traffic calming, we have completed arterial traffic calming interventions or speed cushions on three corridors, 14th Avenue South, Furman Avenue East, and 62nd and 64th Avenue in South Seattle.

Now, I'd like to point out that All these three projects were community-generated, community-identified, that also had the prioritization from a data perspective.

Councilmember Saka, you remember the conversations that we had with the South Park community last year on 14th Avenue South, and we were able to quickly implement speed cushions on that corridor in South Park to manage the speeds on this corridor.

We are going to be coming back with additional safety improvements on those corridors, but this is just a beginning on what we have invested in that corridor.

Now, in addition to these three, we have four additional corridors that are going to be going into construction very soon as it comes to arterial traffic calming.

When it comes to leading pedestrian roles, this has been the most mature and the longest safety investment that we have made in the department consistently over the last few years.

The map that you see represents all the intersections where we have a leading pedestrian signal and pedestrian head start included into the signal timing.

We completed this intervention at 46 intersections last year.

That brings the total number of intersections that have this countermeasure to 815 overall.

That represents about 87% of the total number of intersections where we can quite easily implement this intervention.

Now, there are a few other intersections which will need to be rebuilt and much more substantial investments need to be made before we can implement this, but I'm confident that within the next two years that we should be able to finish implementing leading pedestrian intervals at all the remaining 140 intersections that we have identified at the outset of our levy deliverables.

We continue to invest in the high-collision locations.

Every year, our team identifies these high-collision locations and starts to look at what interventions that we could implement.

We have completed investments on seven different locations, high-collision locations last year, with five additional projects that are going to be coming out very soon.

Now, not only this, that we continue to invest in other interventions, too.

Like I said, Notan and Red is something that we are proactively installing at several intersections.

We have completed installing them at 100 different intersections across the city last year.

Going clockwise, we have implemented enhanced crossings at four additional intersections last year.

The one that you see here is on Northeast 45th Street.

Now, this four locations where we have marked and signed crosswalks are just the locations that are pursued by the Vision Zero program.

We have an entire pedestrian master plan team who has a dedicated objective of investing in crosswalks and crossing locations across the city.

This intervention or this accomplishment is on top of everything that program is doing.

We also have implemented safety investments in 22 additional projects.

These represent anywhere from enhanced crossings to spot safety improvements that we have identified on major corridors that need safety interventions.

and circling back to the bottom left, as part of our intersection daylighting strategy, we have invested in improving sightlines and improving visibility of people crossing at nine different locations last year.

Now, in addition to this, as you all know, we have received a $25.5 million safety grant in terms of safe streets and roads for all from Federal Highway Administration.

Now, we had a few challenges trying to obligate those funds and get started, but I'm glad to report that we have been able to obligate the design funding phase of that project and have initiated design on improvements at a number of locations across the city.

As Director Brady mentioned, safety continues to be a common thread in pretty much all the activities that we do across the department.

And that common understanding and common goal needs constant care and understanding and nurturing of that mindset and that inspiration.

So last year we have started what we call a Vision Zero community of practice within the department to not only inspire everybody but to encourage people to think safety in everything that they do from the projects that they work on to the policies that they are working on.

We have also initiated a partnership with Seattle City Light as they were looking to look at the types of luminaires that they could use on city arterials for lighting.

We have jointly worked with them to look at our lighting guidelines.

We know that there are a lot more crashes that we see during the hours of 8 p.m.

in the night to 6 a.m.

in the morning as compared to during the day.

And one of the key proven safety countermeasures for that is to improve lighting.

So we are working with Seattle City Light to look at our lighting standards and issue new guidance on how better we can light our arterials so that we can get ahead of the trends that we are seeing for nighttime collisions.

One of the things that we also did from a policy perspective last year was to update our enhanced crossing policy.

This basically directs how and where we should be marking crosswalks at various intersections across the city.

The update that we did last year was related to the crosswalk spacing.

Often for engineers it becomes the idea of like I can't mark a crosswalk there because there are not too many people crossing.

Oh, people are not crossing there because there's not an appropriate crossing treatment along with the crosswalk at that location.

It becomes that chicken and egg situation.

To counter that and make it easier for the staff and department to mark and improve more crossing locations, we have updated this policy to include purely a spacing-based guideline where you can look at the location of the potential crossing to the nearest crossing and based on the type of street and the spacing that we think is more appropriate, use that as a justification to mark additional crosswalks.

We believe that this will make it a lot more easier for us as a department to install more crosswalks and the appropriate crossing treatments going forward.

Now looking ahead into 2026, we do have a lot more projects that are going to start construction and advance on design.

For the two safety redesign corridors, our next construction activity will be on Renton Avenue South and Spring Street Safety Corridors in downtown.

We also have additional improvements on high-collision locations, and we'll continue to start construction on 10 different arterial traffic calming corridors this year.

And as it comes to design, we are going to be advancing two projects, one on Highland Park, way southwest, Most importantly on Rainier Ave, here is another really good example of collaborating with the community and identifying improvements.

We are excited to pursue more improvements on Rainier, especially in the southern part of the corridor towards the city limits.

We are again looking to invest in at least 51 new leading pedestrian intervals and also invest in high collision intersections on corridors such as the Aurora Avenue, Leary Way and Dexter Avenue this year.

Now, as part of the third prong of our strategy, which is a capital project partnership, we have recently completed partnering with two AAC projects on our streets, the first one being 15th Ave West slash Northwest in Ballard.

where we have changed the way the motorists view and experience that corridor by incorporating a new median along 15th hour and also installed a new traffic signal at 15th hour and 51st to facilitate better crossing opportunities.

We have also pursued additional improvements on the Denny Way AAC project that has recently completed incorporating new curb bulbs, additional no-turn and ride restrictions, and some signal improvements along the corridor.

The upcoming partnerships, the opportunities that we see are on Roosevelt and Pinehurst Way, a safety and paving project, and on East Marginal Way, and District 1, and we are working with both of those project teams to incorporate safety improvements into those project designs.

Quick note on automated safety cameras.

Thank you so much for passing that local legislation last year.

We are diligently working on expanding the school zone safety camera program.

Now, I do acknowledge that this is running a little bit behind schedule.

we have completed installing constructing cameras at 13 different locations with 10 more in construction very soon and 14 more right behind after that.

We will be finishing constructing all these safety cameras in Q2 of this year.

This was kind of like a little longer than the original timeline that we have envisioned, and we were faced with several engineering challenges trying to finish construction and activate these cameras, and we are working diligently to catch up and finish this very important project for us.

We also have two additional items that we're going to be completing very soon.

One is to publish the ATSC implementation guidance.

In addition to the regulatory activity that we have seen both at the state level and in the local audience, this particular guide is going to give and the interdepartment effort very systematically to manage safety cameras.

This will include how we identify future locations where we install safety cameras, what data-driven approach can we take to identify these locations, and what data do we need to consider when we are looking at proposing new locations or trying to rethink existing locations and see if those existing locations can be relocated or removed entirely.

We are in the final stages of reviewing that guidance and we will be able to, once we get through all the entire review process, both within the department and the mayor's office, should be able to publish that very soon.

We also looked at proposing full-time speed cameras at various, at least 10 different locations across the city in our presentation last year.

Now, full-time speed cameras are an entirely new tool that we are going to be implementing are looking to implement very soon.

And for that, the new state law requires us to complete what we call safety and equity analysis that identifies the potential location, the underlying need, and access to document.

So we are pretty much finishing that safety and equity analysis and most likely published both that implementation guidance and that safety equity analysis, identifying where our first full-time speed cameras are going to be going very soon.

Now, thanks to the actions by the state legislature on Shared Streets, now Shared Streets is implementing Shared Streets where not only traffic and people can commingle within the same right of way is a new thing here in our state.

and possibly the first state that has implemented a state law to give local authorities and various authorities the ability to implement them on our city streets.

These shared streets are shared environments.

The new law allows us the ability to implement a 10 mile an hour speed limit on them and we're working to develop and corresponding local legislation to be able to use this new and exciting tool within our highly urban and city context at various locations.

Now, we will put forward legislation to advance these shared streets definitely by Q2 of 2026. And simultaneously, our engineers and planners are working on developing the design guidance on identifying and implementing these shared streets across the city.

Now, just a quick pivot on is those elements of safe systems approach that we here in SDOT don't have direct influence on or have limited influence on.

So I want to point out some challenges in these other aspects of the safe systems elements, particularly when it comes to safer vehicles, as you have read about, the design of our vehicles has changed a lot significantly over the last decade.

Private vehicles are getting to become bigger, and there is research out there that correlates the safety outcomes to the design and size of these new vehicles.

Here is an opportunity worth considering as we get into this year.

Our peers at City of Spokane are working with state legislature to develop and build to stop exempting vehicles, particularly private vehicles, that have a gross vehicle weight between 6,000 and 10,000 pounds from paying the vehicle license fee.

they are considering a bill to prompt these vehicles to pay the license fee and use that additional fees towards safety related projects and that is something an opportunity that I'd ask all of you to consider and consider supporting as we move forward.

Now, when it comes to safer people, we continue to see in our data that distracted driving and driving under the influence are huge, significant contributors to safety outcomes on our streets.

Now, this is problematic and it does need that that approach of responsibility for safety is everyone's, not only the people who design and operate the street, but the people who use the street, right?

So there is kind of like another opportunity that's coming our way in the state legislature where there are efforts to lower the blood alcohol content, the legal limits for the blood alcohol content while driving.

So again, kind of like I'd urge all of you to reflect on those efforts in Olympia and considering supporting lowering those limits.

Safer People is not only about behavioral change and asking people or working on the behavioral aspects of driving, but it is also a reminder that we who design, plan, design, maintain, and operate to consider a people-centric design when we approach our projects that the opportunity that presents there is to invest and continue to invest in countermeasures and scale-proven countermeasures and bring more tools for us to use from an engineering perspective while considering the needs of all road users.

Now, when it comes to post-crash care, a challenge that we often have is balancing the need for emergency response, a timely emergency response, to the victims of traffic collision with the overall design of our roadways.

We have seen that multi-lane high-volume, high-speed roadways are all represented in our Hindjiri network, right?

But that does not mean that we and our partners in the emergency departments like SFD or SPD can work more collaboratively and productively with each other.

One of the ways to make that happen is to utilize technology to improve emergency vehicle response times, that we could track these emergency vehicles on a cloud-based system time, connect that cloud-based system to our existing signal network so that our signals can recognize these emergency vehicles and prioritize as they move through our network.

So this way, we can continue to support the emergency response times and the thresholds that are there for our partner departments but also pursue the roadway designs that we think are going to affect better safety outcomes.

And those two need not be mutually exclusive goals.

We can work together to promote that.

So these are some kind of opportunities and challenges that I want to shed light on that typically does not fall under the other two categories of safer streets and safer speeds, where our engineering design has a lot more influence on the safety outcomes.

So with that, thank you so much for this opportunity to come in front of you, and I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.

All right, thank you, Mr. Damani.

Appreciate the presentation here and about the current state of affairs, the progress against our goals, how we compare a little bit to other jurisdictions and some, my sense is that is a sampling only, a non-exclusive, non-exhaustive list of challenges.

to our city achieving success.

And I think we'll probably talk more about that in a moment.

But colleagues, I welcome your questions, comments, if any.

Starting first with, I'll start with Vice Chair.

Frank, go ahead.

Thank you Chair Saga and thank you Interim Director Brady, Mr. Namani and Mr. Laborde for being before committee today.

And thank you Chair for putting this presentation, bringing this forward to us to really kick off the year.

I think it's relevant to speak to the fact that last night I was at a community safety meeting in District 2 in Rainier Beach, and SPD shared their survey findings from a community safety survey where it was identified that the number one community issue related to safety is traffic safety.

So traffic safety is ranking above police capacity, property crime, and homelessness as identified issues.

So that's really important to center.

There was a lot of hunger reflected at the table group that I was at on this issue as well, with folks reflecting their near misses that they've had, folks that they know who have had cars crash into their homes.

So just to reflect that point, and I know I myself have almost been hit on Rainier Avenue three separate times.

And so the issue is urgent, it is really felt in community, and of course I can't understate the impact that fatalities and injuries have had on our community.

So really timely for this discussion, and thank you again, Cher Saka, for kicking off the year with this as a topic.

Just going into a couple of questions for today.

On slide 14, on where crashes are occurring, I think it's clear to us that District 2 is leading with the number of crashes but I wanna uplift District 4 which has the least percentage of crashes.

What does SDOT understand at this time about why this is?

Is this simply because District 4 from how we've built our city from an infrastructure standpoint has a lack of major roadways or is there something related to Vision Zero projects that we've implemented in District 4 that have improved the situation there?

Thank you for that question, Vice Chair Rink.

It's probably a combination of all of those factors, right?

We know that our highest priority segments are always on multi-lane, high-speed, high-volume roadways.

we have a concentration of those kinds of streets more in the Soto and the South Seattle areas.

And that's why they represent more in terms of the fatal and serious injury crashes that we are seeing and a little less so in the District 4 area.

But you're absolutely right.

It's likely a combination of all of those factors that lead to seeing fewer serious and fatal injury collisions compared to what we are seeing in South Seattle.

That's helpful, thank you.

I think just trying to diagnose where we see, I mean, of course, the fact that we're still having these kind of incidents happening in a district is an issue, but trying to understand if there's any good lessons learned that we can help when applying to other district areas.

Taking us then to slide 24, I wanna recognize that we are highlighting the new crosswalk at East Olive Way and Harvard Ave as a success.

And I can appreciate the work that's been done here, but what's missing from some of the story here is, again, this was a crosswalk that was highlighted from community for a number of years.

And in fact, community members taking matters into their own hands to put in their own unmarked crosswalk, which was then removed by the department.

And so I'm just trying to square those things in this moment, and I want to give the department an opportunity to speak to that, because I think there was a fair amount of frustration, and I think we can I'd be glad that something has been done, a meaningful safety improvement, but I think it's important to note that there is that history behind this crosswalk.

I fully acknowledge the community's actions, and sometimes, as you can see, a lot of our projects are guided by those community conversations.

Yes, you're absolutely right that we did remove a community-installed crosswalk for various engineering and liability reasons that would would be associated if we left that in place.

But this was a location that was identified to be part of that safe streets and roads for all grant, which we are still trying to get through the design.

But this is one location that we have been able to get it out of that and take early action in implementing a crosswalk, not only just a crosswalk, but a rectangular rapid flashing beacon to go along with the crosswalk that the community was requesting there.

and also kind of like we implemented additional curve bulbs to shorten the overall crossing distance.

This is a really kind of like a response that looks at kind of like how a start has listened to the community.

Yes, we could have acted sooner, but it also kind of like is about how to develop and design an engineering project that meets kind of like various engineering standards while also considering the community needs out there.

So I'm glad that we are able to respond to the community needs and be able to implement a project here, and I fully acknowledge the community's frustration in trying to take things in their own hands.

But those kinds of actions have other kinds of implications that we need to be careful as a department, and I'm glad to see this project completed much sooner than some of the other projects that we have in the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant.

Thank you for that response, Mr. Namani.

And I think just trying to square those things, there's certainly urgency felt in community and understanding that also the department has an approach.

And so just wanted to uplift that point.

I think we're trying to be responsive to what people are seeing as urgent safety needs.

And again, I appreciate again that we can now celebrate this as a success that's hopefully making for a safer street.

Are there any current efforts for incorporating trees as a means of traffic calming, so for instance using them as traffic meetings, narrowing lanes, incorporation of more street trees, not just for supporting our climate but also makes our city quite beautiful?

Absolutely.

Medians are a proven safety countermeasure, right?

Medians that helps us put more pedestrian refuge islands where people can take refuge as they're crossing the streets.

You can see on slide 27, right?

Here's a picture of 15th Ave West.

and this is one location where previously we had these six-lane highway that's going through Ballad, right?

And when we got the opportunity, we did incorporate a median in here and specifically asked for trees in the median.

because that median and those trees change the visual perspective of how motors are approaching a particular street.

If you have a six-lane wide highway in front of you, there is no incentive for people to go slower or act more appropriately for the prevailing traffic conditions, taking into account all the vulnerable road users that are there on the street.

But here is kind of like an example that we have been able to incorporate into one of our projects and not only incorporate medians, which is a proven safety countermeasure, but also have more trees that meets kind of like or goes towards our climate goals that we have.

And we continue to look for these opportunities in other projects and do something similar at other locations.

Fabulous, thank you for that.

My last question for today is related to just shared streets.

Does SDOT have an expectation of how expansive shared streets will be geographically when we're able to initiate them?

My office shares in the excitement that we're certainly hearing from community and the public about designating these areas across the city, especially in areas of high need of outdoor space in areas that lack sidewalks and pedestrian infrastructure.

We share the same enthusiasm.

I can't tell you how excited our folks are in working on identifying these guidelines and street-to-street designation processes internally.

This gives us a brand new tool for us to implement a more people-centric design on our streets.

At this point in time, I can't point to specific street segments that we are looking to designate them as shared streets, but I'm hopeful that I'd be able to come to all of you very soon and share some of those segments that we want to designate them as shared streets and implement appropriate designs on those street segments.

Fabulous, I hope you can come to us with that soon as well.

In closing, I just want to close with actually a request related to this topic, a request to both our chair but also the department.

If we can identify opportunities with the Council District Fund or also looking at this year's transportation levy implementation plan.

If we can look at identifying all of our potential vision zero projects slated to start construction this year with a specific breakdown by district, I think that would be a really helpful communication tool also to the public about the importance of this work.

and again, also identifying if these projects are on a part of the high injury network.

A lot of, again, just to reflect, there's a lot of urgency around this and so I think by being able to demonstrate both with our levy dollars and this year's implementation plan, how and where those upcoming projects will be.

And again, if we can see what kind of areas the department may be tracking that are opportunities with the council district fund dollars to be able to make some of those improvements, that would also be great.

And with that, I will pass it back to the chair.

Thank you again, chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kittle.

Thank you, chair.

Also thank you for the opportunity to get my steps in this morning.

with our new committee.

And on that point, welcome to our new colleagues, Councilmember Lin, who's remote, and also Councilmember Foster.

Thank you and welcome, Ms. Brady, in your new role.

Obviously, a lot of interactions in your old role, which ironically enough is now, from a committee perspective, coming together.

So you can't really escape the waterfront and other areas, Seattle Center.

So welcome to you and congratulations on being interim director.

Mr. Namani, thank you again.

Obviously, I think this is my third briefing, and I really appreciate the updates, and of course, Mr. Laborde for coming in.

You know, it's interesting going through this briefing in a bigger picture way.

I know we traditionally have a focus on our streets, but one thing I've learned over this time period is that it's not just our streets, it's also our sidewalks.

You know, and I really appreciate the work by others too.

Ms. Cantor was here, you know, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

I've met with Mr. Paddleford, plus a whole lot of stakeholders, Downtown Community Council, Belltown Community Council and the like.

You know, what's happening on our sidewalks?

And this is really acute in the summertime when you have families who are renting out scooters and you see little kids who are not even taller than the handlebars scooting around on sidewalks and the like.

and I really am happy, and I've met with Lyme as well, to have that piece brought into the equation too, because it is an impact with Vision Zero as well.

I also want to recognize Ms. Cantor's point about those injured, the 2,064 to 281 that died, I also knew Ms. Shere Khan.

She worked for my wife just before when she passed.

You know, one part is I do fear what the numbers would have been if we didn't have Vision Zero.

I mean, as awful as these numbers are, because we have put a lot of work in terms of the, you know, Vision Zero with the bike lanes, which have been fantastic, to include the new ones I saw on East Marginal Way, but those that are in my district, downtown, second and fourth.

and then the connecting pieces too, very important.

Not just the main bike lanes, but those connecting aspects of the network are so important.

The signaling, which I've seen, and by the way, I wrote all this down before seeing that next slide that you had, and the signage, the no right turns, and the road diets, the curb bulbs and the like.

So what we're seeing is matching up with your five E's, the engineering, the enforcement, the education, the encouragement and the evaluation and I really believe in redundancy because we do need to have that piece because as you noted in your slide, we are human, humans make mistakes or we're distracted with our phones and the like or just life and that kind of goes to my next point about people walking in 25. We do have that issue too but my observations as well and this is where like from a public safety perspective, The scene between, I usually talk about public safety and human services, housing and homelessness.

But traffic safety, pedestrian safety, transit safety, these are really important areas too.

And we really need to work these areas.

And back to the more, what I've been talking about, the scene.

Because there's a lot of individuals who, because of their addiction or mental or behavioral health situation, are just randomly going into the streets, randomly ignoring signals, and that's constant.

And this is an area where we have to work, not just for the obvious reasons, but it shows up in things like Vision Zero, and we need to be mindful of that.

And to the point I kind of alluded to a little bit earlier, we are human and we also get frustrated and in that frustration decisions could be made to impact Vision Zero.

So I note, you know, those things like particularly with transit, you know, the interface.

And so I do note the mayor's just released her executive orders.

I saw Ms. Brady, your comment plus my colleagues.

I noted my colleagues are on the on the comment.

I don't know if I'll get to be on comments related to our new mayor, but I do want to say, even though I'm not on that notice, that we do need to improve like the Route 8, the late.

And I was aware of and I do support, you know, the work to, you know, the swap of the three and the two lanes between Queen Avenue North and Second North.

to really facilitate that coming off the hill and coming up Elliott to really move forward in that part of Denny.

And I think that would be a great first step in engaging with community for the other pieces.

But as a first step, I think that's important, that swap of the three and the two lanes to allow for that bus lane to swoop out from the hill and from the direction of Elliott.

On those pieces, too, I'll take the opportunity, since I'm talking about buses, that we need a First Avenue bus transit service.

I brought this up a number of times, and I'd like to really, in your new role, to formally, from this position here, and taking advantage of advocating with our county colleagues, we really do need to have some bus service on First Avenue.

The other thing, too, is, throughout the briefing, I appreciate the comments related to SDOT and City Light.

Previously, we had an issue where SDOT and City Light, there was a hiccup, let's just say.

And I think everything has been good.

That related to Magnolia Bridge, by the way.

I think everything is good on that front, but that is such an important partnership in terms of the lighting and here with Vision Zero.

And so SDOT, City Light relationship is really strong.

And except for that one hiccup that we had back in 24, I think we're good.

Mr. Laborde was there, so I think you have the background on that.

The other thing I wanted to note, thank you for the update on the automatic traffic safety camera, really appreciate that.

And then the last thing, well, two last things, two remaining items, shared streets.

Really excited about what's happening, particularly in my district, Bell Street.

I'm looking forward to the grand reopening of Bell Street, because that's a lot of great work.

And I also want to tie to that, in terms of partnership with parks, the Portal Park, which runs aside of the Bell Street project.

And so looking forward for that one to be a grand reopening, if you will.

So please get on my calendar, or at least get me on my calendars, because I really do want to be there.

And then tied to that is 1st Avenue West, essentially a school shared street by McClure and Queen Anne Community Center, the pool and Big How.

And last, well, two things.

Queen Avenue Boulevard Park.

I'd like to ask, now that we've done our work with a comprehensive plan related to the Queen Anne Boulevard Park, to take the next step.

And I'd like to work with Parks and SDOT to see what is possible to really improve the Queen Anne Boulevard Park, but also create opportunities for shared streets, because I know the whole loop, and I know there's opportunities for shared streets as it relates to the Queen Anne Boulevard Park, and I'd like to work in partnership with my citywide colleagues on that, because it's important to take it to the next step.

Like, we just did some work on the comp plan related to it, but we shouldn't stop there.

We shouldn't take it to the next step.

Look for the opportunities, which I know there are some related to shared streets, and I think that would be fantastic.

So I'd like to work with the department on that along with parks.

And then my last thing is just to say, as it relates to the district funds, council member, the D7 funds will be related to Vision Zero.

We have issues in uptown because of traffic pattern changes because of the viaduct down and now the tunnel, which is really changing and creating some situations in uptown.

On the top, what I was just talking about, that school, the shared street, the school street.

And then also in Thorndike, in Magnolia, we're looking to have our neighborhood village.

We do need to have some improvements there.

And we'll look for others, but the general theme for my district is gonna be vision zero as it relates to the district funds.

Sorry, there was no questions there, but that made it quicker though.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Council member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you so much to the SDOT team.

I really appreciate this presentation.

And not just the presentation, I appreciate that I've seen you and your staff out at community events.

I know we were in South Seattle right off of MLK for our vigil for people who have died from traffic violence, and I really appreciated seeing you there, so thank you for that.

I have a couple of questions that I want to go to from the slides.

You note on slide 12 the increase in deaths for pedestrians over the last several years.

You talked about that a bit in your presentation and it just brings some questions up for me about how you're taking into account planned growth and I was happy to hear my colleagues' questions about that, Councilmember Kettle, thinking about the neighborhood centers and urban villages.

But I'm very curious how you're thinking about planned growth or planned increased transit capacity, things that are going to lead to more people walking, which we want, and how we are proactively planning to keep those folks safe, particularly thinking about the Judkins Park light rail station on North Rainier, I know there is a very complicated interstate exchange there that poses several challenges.

I was pleased to see some notes in your slides about the Pinehurst station and future planning there.

So we can just hear a little bit about not just the issue, the areas that are already problem areas that the data tells us about, but how we are thinking about pedestrian safety where we're going to see more people walking, biking, taking transit.

We do that in kind of a couple of different ways, right?

One is kind of like we try to invest in more pedestrian safety and centric improvements, such as no-turn-und-reads or leading pedestrian intervals in the urban villages and urban centers that we see, where we also see a lot of growth.

But thank you so much for bringing up the Jetcon Spark light rail station.

That has been a very unique opportunity for us to work with WASHDOT.

That interchange we know at I-90 is the interchange that I'm referring to, poses unique challenges for people who will be crossing to the new light rail station when it opens hopefully later this year.

So that is kind of looking at the opportunities that are coming our way and trying to find partners not only within a start but outside of a start to implement improvements before the pedestrian demand materializes because of the changes.

We have implemented race crosswalks, we have implemented new crosswalks with rapid flashing beacons are very close to finishing that project before the light rail opens.

And we keep kind of like our eye out open on where this planned growth is happening, where a new light rail station is coming.

The improvements that we are seeing on North 130th Street are also kind of like in some part influenced by the new light rail station that's going to be coming out there.

So we want to make sure that we are ahead of these growth trends that we are seeing in our city and identify project and project opportunities to enhance the pedestrian connectivity or the vulnerable user connectivity to those opportunities and we try to do that whenever we see an opportunity that exists and and we go about finding partners not only internally within a stock but also externally and trying to build a project before some of this growth and development happens.

Yeah.

I'm going to double down on that.

Just talking about Sound Transit and the new Sound Transit 3 work that is happening to connect West Seattle to downtown, through the heart of downtown and up to Ballard.

There is a lot of planning that SDOT is working on together with Sound Transit and the community.

on future stations, future station locations, and stationary planning to support safe access to each of those new stations.

So that will be a massive effort over the next decade, working together with Sound Transit and community to get really great improvements ready to go, planned, designed, and ready to go to support those new station locations.

Thank you so much for that.

And then a question from my own understanding just about the no right turn on red.

I'm excited to see the progress that's been made there.

I just want to confirm how those new signage, that new signage is being implemented.

So is that only happening when another safety upgrade is happening at that location?

Or are you all working through a list and implementing the delivery of those signs in a different way?

My team, we find opportunities.

Definitely when we have a project there, we wrote our policy in such a way that those projects are prompted to install the no-turn and reds.

But apart from that, the Vision Zero team identifies these intersections and locations individually and goes about installing these no-turn and reds.

And the way we prioritize is all based on where we see the most pedestrian demand and most exposure.

Obviously, that comes out to be downtown, Capitol Hill, U District, or some Ballard downtown.

And these are the areas that come to mind.

And we systematically work through those locations and start going outside of those urban centers and urban villages to install these.

So it's a combination of trying to take the opportunity of an existing project, but also we independently identify locations that we want to pursue in a given year and then go about it.

And our focus is mostly on where we see the most number of pedestrians, where we see that exposure to conflicting turning traffic.

and prioritizing those locations.

Thank you for that clarification.

I appreciate that.

And then I want to turn to the data that you have on slide 11. And I just would love to hear a little bit more.

So this is the data on lives lost on Seattle streets.

I'd love to hear a little bit more about the source of this data.

and I know this has been an ongoing question and as we know there's different, you know, things that are reported to SDOT, to SPD, and so if you can speak a little bit to what's going into this slide, but just also as you're thinking about, you know, no right turn on red and other kinds of safety improvements, I will just say, you know, giving my own personal story, I've been hit as a pedestrian in a low speed accident, on Rainier, which I almost didn't report because I, at the time, more than a decade ago, didn't understand the significance of reporting that accident, given it didn't have serious injuries.

So if you can talk a little bit more about how the department is incorporating data that comes through FCD and also, you know, using that community input to understand hotspots and then make prioritization decisions.

Thank you so much for this question.

I'm so glad you asked it.

And I'm sorry to hear about your experience on Rainier Avenue.

Now, the data that you see on slide 11, 12, and 13 are purely based on police reported traffic collisions.

These collisions are actually traffic reports that we get from both SPD and WSP that have a lot of information about where a particular collision has occurred, at what time did it occur, what were the conditions at which the crash occurred, and more specifically, how the crash happened and who was involved, what were they doing, and so on and so forth.

This is the most reliable dataset that we have with a lot of parameters that helps us dig deeper and understand not only the patterns but also the contributing circumstances that are related to a particular crash.

Now, I fully understand and acknowledge that there are potentially more injury-related crashes or crashes that are never reported or people who have gone directly to emergency departments for care, right, that may not have a police report on file, right?

We are aware of those data resources, and we do take it into consideration, but our primary investment decisions are based on police-reported collision data.

The reason is that these other data sources, be it the SFD's CAD data, or the call-outs, or the emergency departments when they take their information as somebody comes to seek healthcare because of a potential collision or something, that data set is kind of like highly incomplete.

The emergency room's data set does not have locations.

It's hard for us to take action when we don't know exactly where that particular collision or the crash has happened.

And the SFD CAD data also has limitations.

It does say where the collision happened, relatively speaking, but it doesn't have any other information about when it happened, how did it happen, who did what, for us to develop a more complete understanding.

We are aware of these datasets that are available and we are trying to see how we can use them in making some of our programmatic decisions but primarily the collision trends that we track and we show here are based on police reported collisions and from that collision database where we know the most about a particular collision or crash or a pattern of collisions that we can dig deeper into and analyze.

but we are looking, thinking more progressively and trying to see how we can utilize this information.

Last year, we had two of the UW researchers that were working on e-scouter collisions come and present to our senior team at SDOT, right?

And we were able to absorb what they were seeing from just the emergency room data But again, we are trying to collaborate from them to see how we can use that in our day-to-day decisions as we think of all the modes of traffic and all types of road users on our streets.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you so much, and thank you to our SDOT partners.

And just a few topics here, just real quick on safer vehicles.

I appreciate the pointing out that, you know, as we have larger and larger vehicles, it's creating a number of different issues, including safety.

Just wanted to think about whether our parking rates should take into account vehicle size and whether we should have different parking rates for smaller vehicles.

Just real quick on district funds, you know, we'll be engaging with with district to how to use those to our district funds, but Just want to put in a plug for our citywide colleagues as we think about district funds.

I want to make sure that our citywide colleagues have equitable voice in use of our transportation dollars and whether that's having citywide funds for those colleagues or some say in our district funds.

So just putting that out there.

I do also appreciate the comment about lighting.

You know, we did lose a beloved community member on Deacon Hill in December, and I'm concerned that lighting may have played a role.

I do think the lighting in that intersection wasn't great.

I think there may have been some lights that were out.

And so I do think that's something to uplift.

In terms of, you know, we heard from a commenter about, you know, political will.

And I'm very appreciative to Chair Saka for making this the first meeting of the year.

And I do think that signals that safety is our priority and must be our priority.

And so I just want to highlight that.

I know that this is difficult work and that there can be, you know, pushback.

You know, road changes and so on can be very controversial, but public safety has to be our guiding stars.

You know, as pointed out, District 2 has some of the least safe streets.

And as the Council Member Rink mentioned, it has been the number one priority in public safety surveys, traffic safety and In that regard, I just want to talk a little bit about political will and how we think about traffic safety as it relates to public safety.

We have our public safety chair here, which I'm excited to perhaps think about how we can better collaborate.

But you know, I think partially it's shifting how we think about traffic violence and how it compares to other types of public safety issues.

And I think part of the issue is just we are so ingrained to think about, you know, traveling by vehicles as routine, that we don't stop to think about the impacts that it has on our neighbors and our climate and so on.

And one thing I wanted to ask, if you could go to slide 12, just in terms of how we think about traffic violence, you know, I see here we talk about who is impacted, but what I don't see and I'd be curious to understand is who you know, and I'm not trying to attribute blame to, you know, but oftentimes there are more than there's both the victim, but often, you know, Who else is involved?

And sometimes you might have a vehicle accident and there's nobody else involved.

Or you might have a bike accident and nobody else involved.

But I'm assuming that in many of these cases there's another party involved and it's most likely a driver.

And so could you speak to that a little bit and why we don't have that data or take a look at that?

Thank you so much for that question.

We do have the data on who's involved.

People walking, all the fatalities I can say are involved, at least another vehicle.

I know in the one particular case, very tragic case of Washington Middle School, where an unoccupied vehicle just rolled down a hill, right, and fatally injured a student.

But typically, outside of that one tragic fatality, Most of these, especially those crashes that are affecting vulnerable road users, there's always the involvement of another person in a vehicle that is contributing towards the crash.

Thank you for that.

And I just think that we need to highlight in many ways, you know, it is oftentimes that vehicle.

I mean, it's just a matter of physics.

These are, you know, a thousand pound vehicles traveling, whether it's, you know, in that case, a park vehicle.

But these are dangerous things in our communities.

And I think we need to focus on that danger.

And again, I think because it is so routine that we often forget about that danger.

And so we think about this traffic violence in a different way than other types of violence.

And one example of that, I think, is that, you know, oftentimes when there is a fatality or a serious injury, it goes unnoticed.

And so I wonder if there are better ways to uplift when there is an incident so there is more awareness.

So just for example, the bicyclist Allie who was killed on Beacon Hill, you know, in many ways it took the community having a protest to to call attention to it, to get neighboring businesses to look to see if they had video footage because it was a hit and run and we're still looking for the driver of that crime.

And so I'm wondering if there's a way that we can do better with communications after an incident to raise awareness, both for, you know, if it's a hit and run to call attention and potentially get evidence.

But, you know, there are other incidents.

There was an incident on Lake Washington Boulevard this summer where there were a lot of witnesses a driver, you know, hit a 16-year-old kid on a bike, plenty of witnesses and footage, and I just don't think it got much attention from SPD.

So maybe this is more, you know, just uplifting it for Chair Kettle on the public safety side, but I do wonder if we can do better as a city to call attention to traffic violence as it is our city.

according to surveys, traffic safety, number one public safety issue.

I also just want to call attention or ask, in terms of Vision Zero, how much is mode shift?

Just again, if vehicles are causing the damage in these incidents, how much is mode shift central to our Vision Zero goals?

And I think about some of the dialogue here, and I think about if you build it They will come.

If you build large highways, people will, you know, fill them.

If we build safe infrastructure, pedestrians will come.

And I think about sort of this, you know, oftentimes, you know, I heard some talk about looking for a safe crosswalk, but, you know, are people using it?

And, you know, if we don't have a safe crosswalk, we're going to reduce how much people are being pedestrians instead of driving.

And so, could you speak a little bit about sort of a larger, how do we have a rethink how we move, where we think about other ways of moving, and how does that fit into our larger vision as a city, into our urban planning, and how central is that to Division Zero?

Thank you again for the question.

And I think that mode shift is going to play a central role, a key role, in a number of key city initiatives, right?

Not just the vision zero.

Absolutely, as more and more people walk and bike and take transit and move away from vehicles and reducing the number of vehicles on the street, will have a direct implication on the crashes and the collision trends that we see, but we also will now have an even more commitment to improve the safety outcomes for those additional people who are walking, biking.

but that mode shift is also very key to achieving some of our climate goals, right?

So in a lot of ways, mode shift is tied to not only the kind of transportation infrastructure that we hope to pursue in the future and has an influence on our Vision Zero goals and trends but also has an impact on our climate goals that we have as a city.

So I would say kind of like mode shift plays a key and a central role in a number of initiatives, including Vision Zero in our city for the near future to come.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate you pointing that out.

And I do think there are so many benefits to that mode shift in terms of our Vision Zero, climate change, affordability.

I think there are many other ways of, you know, that we need to think about.

Public safety, you know, our rights-of-way are critical, you know, in terms of just land area, you know, our rights-of-way are, you know, probably the dominant area where people interact and are, you know, where we have say as a city, in public spaces.

And so much of this right of way, which is a public space, is dedicated to people and vehicles where there's not great interactivity, right?

We see, you know, and so, you know, this shared streets idea where people can interact.

And so I think about public safety more broadly and how we can use our rights of way.

And just one last point.

as I think about our rights of way in gun violence in District 2, when people can engage in gun violence but they can quickly leave an area because of easy access to the highway or easy roads to get in and out of there, that also creates a public safety issue.

We need to think broadly about public safety and how we're using our rights of way to achieve safety, affordability, climate change.

It's going to be a difficult transition for us in terms of that mode shift, but I think we have to act with urgency and boldly for so many different reasons.

and just getting back to, again, that original point about political will, want to do my best to partner with you and my colleagues here to imagine a better future for our city in transportation and Vision Zero are really central to that work, so thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Lin, and thank you colleagues for your very thoughtful, contributions to this conversation.

We've had a wonderful spirited conversation around what's at stake here.

And I think we surface most of the key insights and takeaways to this collective conversation so far and answered a few of you, asked some of the questions I was gonna ask.

So let me just briefly make a few comments and then I'll whittle it down to one question.

So first and foremost, moving on to slide nine, Vision Zero Action Plan.

Note that that is, as the slide depicts, it is a three-year strategy.

The next one is due.

or this current three-year planning cycle expires, I think, end of this year.

So we'll be looking to the department to report on how they're thinking about approaching that next one and what kind of lessons are learned so far, initial themes do you anticipate for that next one?

And then moving on to, let's see, slide 14. The map, the first map there, thank you for including that.

That was my request as chair, the first month I became chair is to have a slide that shows a side-by-side depiction from a council district perspective of the data in terms of what's at stake.

This year, based off the current data, looks like district two is the worst off by one, percentage point.

Last year, I think district two was the worst off by two percentage points.

In my very first year, district one was the worst off by two or three percentage points.

They sort of trade off every year, district one and district two.

And this is a race to the bottom.

I don't want any part of in my district, but as chair of our broader steps committee, which includes transportation and safety first, I'm approaching this work as well through a citywide lens and a citywide perspective.

And so I also think that why district one has some of the highest relates to its geographic scope of territory.

It is the single largest council district by territory.

More territory, more roads, more public rights away equals more opportunity for crashes, serious bodily injuries, deaths.

So in any event, I appreciate comments from all of you colleagues.

And in this case, Council Member Lynn, I know you care deeply about this issue in your council district and also from a citywide perspective.

Finally, I'll note, oh, I could go with so many areas.

Love to nerd out a little bit on some of these specific engineering safe systems approach proven countermeasures, whether it's traffic safety cameras, daylighting intersections, leading pedestrian intervals, there's so much, but we'll continue the conversation there.

Close out here on slide 28. On automatic traffic safety cameras, Well, that's just a illustrator slide, but my question pertains to just more broadly as well.

So the department is a very data-driven department, which I strongly support, full of a bunch of generally a bunch of smart engineers and experts.

And you make data, you endeavor to make data-informed decisions.

Engineering, that's why in part steps, the E in steps is engineers.

So what role does, do near miss instances, some more qualitative type data, rather than a hard number after someone has actually I do think as a general proposition we need that we focus heavily on, not exclusively, on the high injury network.

But we should also not wait for someone else to die on our roads in order for that to qualify for a safety upgrade.

So all else to say, what role do near misses play?

Thank you.

Thank you so much for that question.

Yes, absolutely.

You know, near misses are indicator of where our potential problems could be, right?

Near-misses, collecting that data is also very challenging.

Now, I'll refer to two examples that we have where we do indeed have collected that near-miss data and use that in our project-based decisions.

The smart grant phase one that we are implementing on MLK at various intersections have very specific cameras that were installed at intersections that basically look at the live video feed that comes in and identifies potential near-miss locations that we are using to develop what additional interventions can we implement along that corridor.

The second example that I'd like to refer to is that as you're very well familiar of another tragic fatality that we have seen in South Park at 14th Avenue and South Henderson Street.

Now, that particular intersection has has had a history of some fatal and serious injury collisions, but overall the number of collisions were far and few in between.

So what we had done last year was to install some additional equipment to collect data over a period of a week to see where these near misses are happening.

Yes, near misses do give us additional information on what is happening at certain locations that we are interested in, but that is kind of like a very ad hoc approach for us to look at and zoom into a particular location and try to collect that near-miss information and use that information to make some of our engineering recommendations or judgments on countermeasures.

Unlike the crash data, it's not available everywhere across the city.

We have to go collect that information at specific locations, and we do indeed collect that data when we feel that that data is needed to supplement the crash analysis of the collision history that we are seeing and the crash analysis we are performing to make engineering decisions at that location.

So yes, near misses play an important role, but we have to go out and get that data at specific locations, and we look for opportunities to do those things when we think that that data would supplement us in developing engineering recommendations.

Thank you.

And finally, I just wanna note that, and I appreciate the earlier comments on Sound Transit's role in making appropriate safety upgrades and repairs in terms of like the initial planning efforts for the West Seattle, to downtown, to future Ballard extension as well.

As the high injury network map made crystal clear, a lot of the Rainier Corridor Injuries, deaths are directly along or adjacent to sound transit light rail.

And so they too play a critical role in our city in making appropriate upgrades and repairs.

Remember, first thing I said towards the beginning was this is a shared responsibility.

and so all this to say is and I note that Abel is here from Sound Transit in the audience right now and former Seattle City Council member as well.

So appreciate that.

but later this year we'd love to invite our partners, our governing partners from Sound Transit, SDOT and others to come talk more specifically, do a deeper dive on the Rainier Avenue corridor, High Injury Network piece as well.

One quick comment, I sense someone itching to make a comment at the table, one final thing and we do have to move on.

I just wanted to highlight that you, thank you for pointing out Abel Pacheco is here in the audience.

He was just hired recently by SDOT to be our Director of Traffic Operations.

So you'll see him at this table more often than not moving forward.

Well, congratulations.

Looking forward to working with you more regularly and we'll still invite our partners at Sound Transit to come share out the collaborative progress and how we're working together on especially the Rainier safety issue.

All right.

Thank you all.

Thank you, most importantly, to Interim Director Brady for being here.

Your presence, I think, helps signals from a department perspective, the executive's perspective, how important this issue is.

And certainly there is political will on the council, on the legislative side, to do more.

So many illustrative examples there, but all is to say this is a partnership.

Appreciate you all for being here.

We will now move on to our next item of a business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 121022, an ordinance granting HST Lessee West Seattle LLC permission to continue maintaining and operating a pedestrian skybridge over and across Virginia Street.

between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue for a 15-year term, renewable for one successive 15-year term, specifying the conditions under which this permit is granted, and providing for the acceptance of the permit and conditions.

Thank you.

It is 11.30 now.

So we do have a hard stop at noon.

Looks like our presenters have already joined us at the table.

The reason why I kept this is because I know that there there are representatives from these projects that have taken time out of their busy schedule to come.

So we'll try and move through these.

SDOT colleagues, I asked you earlier to spend a little more time on kind of framing the conversation with some additional context overview.

wonder now, given the time, let's try to split the baby, if you will, instead of a more full, fulsome, robust day one context and the quick three to five minute overview that we normally do for the second item, for the second time it's heard, let's try and split the baby a little bit, especially on the second item, if we can get to it.

Please introduce yourselves first and begin.

Lish Whitson, Council Central Staff.

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Amy Gray, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Fellow Board, Seattle Department of Transportation.

So both of these items are instances where private property owners have sought to use public right-of-way.

First is a sky bridge that's been in place for a long time and it's back for a renewal of its permit.

and the second is a alley vacation, which was previously conditionally approved and is now back for its final approval ordinance.

And I'll let SDOT talk a little bit about the process and sort of context for these decisions.

Thank you, Lish.

Thank you, Chair Sacca.

We are always happy to be here, and it's very fun for us to bring things that we have completed.

We would also like to say we're really looking forward to working with the newly reconstituted steps committee, and we really welcome the new council members.

We really enjoy working with the council, and for Amy and for me, all of our items go through council reviews.

So, we're here a lot, maybe not as much as our new director, but we're here quite a bit.

So, Councilmember Saka wanted us to provide a brief overview of our two programs.

So, Amy and I worked on a PowerPoint presentation about street vacations and term permits.

and given the time and that you've just had such a serious discussion, we're just gonna zip through this, but you'll have it available and Lish is an expert on all of our work and we're always available.

So we'll just go through really zippy and not do everything, just to set some context before you look at a vote on the...

renewal of the sky bridge and the final vacation ordinance.

So the first slide that we'll look at really just defines right-of-way, and I think most of the council members are so familiar with all of this, but for our new council members, public right-of-way is dedicated for specific public purposes, and it's held in trust and the City Council acts as the trustee.

So all of us view the use and the vacation of right-of-way at a more elevated level because we're looking at protecting and serving the public whenever we make these long-term decisions that Amy works on and the vacation decisions.

I'll just point out here is an important aspect of right-of-way is that it is an easement that is on top of the adjacent property owner's property rights, so the city doesn't completely own the streets.

And so the adjacent property owner is really the only party that could acquire right-of-way.

So, as we noted, because this is special purpose property that is created by easement, as Lisch noted, the authority to address street vacation issues is granted by the state legislature to the city council, and the state has set out procedural rules, but not really criteria and guidance, and the city council has established those, and the city council has had adopted vacation policies for more than 40 years.

The most recent was done in 2018, and that sets out the criteria and the process and defines the two things that we all look at, the public benefit and the public trust.

and SDOT administers the program at the request of city council because it's a lot.

Lish wouldn't be able to do it all as you'd have to have more Lishes even though he does a lot.

So the next slide, this just shows kind of a real high level overview of the vacation process and the green reflects the points where the city council either takes an action or is briefed.

We come to the council with brand new petitions for your early review.

When we go through the review process, we come back to the city council for a public hearing as required by state law and we give you our analysis in SDOT and all the parts and pieces like the design commission review.

The city council reviews and they have the option to grant, grant as conditions, or to deny.

If the Council grants the vacation petition, the project proceeds into construction because that empowers the developer to move forward and use the site.

The City Council holds out the final ordinance until everything is done.

It's an accountability tool for City Council to make sure everything is done as they had anticipated.

and that's what we'll see in a few minutes today, the final vacation ordinance for the GID Parks Project.

So the next slide just covers what we consider as public trust, and this just is all the purposes that streets provide, so we look at all of those.

I would highlight that the Council has added stronger language around free speech and public assembly in the 2018 policies recognizing that streets are a very free, open and accessible public asset and the council wanted to make sure that that was looked at when we moved on to looking at a vacation.

So the public benefits are defined in the street vacation policies and many of them relate to things that streets provide, so we look at plazas, landscaping, arts, community connections, and it's always intended to be beyond our obligations, and it's intended to be long-term.

The City Council has also looked at ways that we can add more community engagement or looking at off-site public benefits if it's a way to create amenities in underserved communities, and those were also really highlighted in the 2018 policies.

So the two things, public trust, street purposes, public benefit, because it's an important public asset.

So those are our two elements.

And then the next, we wanted to show a project that the council approved, well, the final vacation ordinance last year, and the orange shows the alley that was vacated and the development on either side.

And then the next slide.

And the reason that I wanted to show this is there is a public plaza in front of the town hall but the plaza was created by the developers of the housing.

But the way it's situated and the way it's used, I think people believe it belongs to City Hall.

So I think that shows it's a good public benefit because the public just goes there.

And every time I'm at Town Hall, it's full of people with tickets to events and it has a very public feel.

So that I think is a good example.

This slide I always like to include.

It's one of my favorites.

The orange hatch marks are where vacations have occurred, and I think it shows the power of the vacation process to change the scale and location of our most intense development for office towers and major institutions.

So that's the mini version of street vacations, and then Amy's gonna finish with the mini version of significant term permits.

Thank you for this opportunity.

So significant structure term permits are for structures that will have a long duration in the right-of-way, impede the city or the public's use of that space, or are necessary for the functions of the adjacent property.

So these things include pedestrian tunnels at hospitals, pipelines, private utilities between communications like Facebook, Google, there's a number of those down there.

plazas and others.

And throughout my part of the presentation, the pictures show different types of term permit suite.

This is a transformer at Alki that allows the wastewater treatment facility to not overflow into Puget Sound.

That's a good thing.

A special type of term permit are skybridges, and they have their own section of the code.

And it's the city's policy and stated in the code that we discourage strictly private skybridges, but we've generally allowed skybridges for public or semi-public uses.

And so when we consider public or semi-public, public would be like the skybridges around the UW campus that cross 15th Avenue Northeast, Montlake Boulevard, Northeast Pacific Street.

Those are truly public.

We encourage them to get students to the different parts of campus on some very busy streets.

And semi-public are the ones you see at hospitals.

Hospitals are big facilities and we have a very built out environment and there's not large parcels for them to expand.

So they need to go across streets to expand their functions and they require usually a pedestrian tunnel and or skybridge.

And SDOT leads the review.

These are approved by City Council, but we do an interdepartmental review.

Sometimes public benefit is required for accurate structures depending on the impact, but public benefit is always required for skybridges.

There's two steps of the approval process for new permits.

So when a new project comes to us, we work with them through their design till it's about 60% done so that we can bring a project to you that's feasible, that has been vetted and is likely to move forward and give you something to look at that will be substantially the same at the final step, which is the ordinance passage.

Next slide.

Skybridges are also involved Seattle Design Commission Review.

They are an advisory board of the city.

They look at the impact to the public environment and the public benefit proposal.

Next slide.

And that's a short two-minute version of term permits.

Like I said, we're happy.

You'll see the China Gate was the last slide.

That's a term permit.

Nobody thinks of it as a term permit.

It's a private community.

It's a private encroachment, but it's a community asset.

So I have all sorts of things out there.

So moving on to the Westin Hotel.

So the Westin Hotel was originally permitted the Sky Bridge in 1981. And so original ordinance has reached its final expiration and they're coming back to re-permit for another 30 years.

It's across Virginia Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.

I'm going to move to the next slide.

And this is an image of the Sky Bridge.

And the ordinance lays out the terms and conditions.

So the term, the insurance requirements, a bond, inspection reports.

It's the obligation on the private party to use this in a way that's safe for the public to be on the street below.

Next slide.

So their public benefit for this, because it's an existing skybridge, it wasn't like something we would look for for a new skybridge that would be brand new to the urban environment.

And what they provided was maintenance to the giant sequoia tree in that traffic island, kind of near the old Basies building.

And this tree was dying.

It was being constrained by holiday lighting.

Its irrigation system was actually drowning it.

It needed a lot of help and urban forestry wanted to work with it, but they were struggling to get the funds to do it themselves.

So the Westin Hotel removed the holiday lighting and improved the soil conditions, replaced the irrigation system.

And now this tree has a more lengthy lifespan expected.

Urban forestry is happy with this.

They love it.

And it gets it to be able to bounce back after several years of not neglect, but in significant impacts.

Like a man in 2016 was in the tree, cut it down from the top.

It has many challenges over the years.

and these are just images of it.

It's what we call from the 80s the hamster run because it looks like a hamster run.

Next slide.

The general location in District 7 for Council Member Kettle and we're just here to provide this proposal and we are recommending that City Council approve this.

Thank you.

Thank you for this presentation.

Colleagues, I think, so we went through an overview of the permit vacation request process, discussed a bit our role responsibilities with respect to this process, kind of provided a refresher on that.

I'll just share from my perspective the hallmark or touchstone of this work on our end, on the council side, is ensuring that there is sufficient public benefit.

Sufficient public benefit.

And that should always be our lodestar as we consider these various pieces of legislation to help implement these projects.

Right now we happen to be at the ordinance stage, which is the second stage in what is typically a multi-year process, many months at a bare minimum.

So we are very free as a legislative body and branch to approve or reject if we so determine that there is not sufficient public benefit.

That said, doing that, rejecting something at the last mile stage would would result in a lot of things needing to go back to the drawing boards.

And so we need to be very cautious and judicious with exercising that authority, but it's one we should not hesitate to wield if we think it's necessary.

Instead, our primary opportunity to help influence the contours of what those purported public benefits should look like is at the resolution introduction stage.

And so that is where I would encourage all of us to consider opportunities to guiding that conversation and accordingly.

All right.

Does anyone have any questions, comments, feedback, Council Member Kettle?

I think this is your council district, so go ahead.

Yes, Chair, thank you.

And this is our second meeting on this.

So we had a fuller meeting.

We had representatives from the Weston before, and I just wanted to note the Weston and its leadership have been really good.

and this sky bridge does serve a focus, a benefit in itself in terms of those that may be disabled and you have some mobility challenges.

So there's that piece even before we talk about the giant sequoia and I have to say the giant sequoia going to that piece is so important because as have I said many times the our evergreens are what helps make our city and I've been on point on this for many times, and I think this is a fantastic, the Urban Forestry Commission just confirms it, and I think this is about doing the right thing, and it is the sight line to the West End, so it's about being a good neighbor with the other entities in that neighborhood, and so I think this is a great opportunity to have that kind of public-private partnership, but this time through the public benefit of the Skybridge.

and colleagues, I support this and I've had engagement on this with different individuals, like I said, with the Westin and others.

And so I ask for your support.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Colleagues, any other final questions, comments on this one?

Hearing, seeing none, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121022. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121022. Are there any further comments?

Hearing and seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass Council Bill 121022.

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Lin?

Yes.

Vice Chair Rink?

Yes.

Chair Saka?

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

All right, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass, Council Bill 121022 will be sent to the January 20th, 2026 City Council meeting.

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

Will the clerk please read item three into the record.

Agenda Item 3, Council Bill 121117, an ordinance vacating the alley in Block 24, heirs of Sarah A. Bell's second edition in the Denny Triangle neighborhood and accepting a property use and development agreement on the petition of GID Development Group and the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department, clerk file 313843.

Thank you.

Lo and behold, our presenters are already at the table.

I'll ask, I think we had a good overview of and contextual ground laying for a lot of the earlier discussions, so I'd like us to kind of skim over some of the other background and focus on the public benefit piece and any material changes or unique features of this project at a high level.

Thank you, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we can be really quick with this.

This is a good slide.

It does show this is in District 7. But what's a little bit different with this than a lot of vacations, that this is Parks Department and GID joint vacation petitions.

So you can see the alley there with the private developer proposing something on the North and the Parks Department, which acquired the property adjacent.

And so they came in with the alley vacation petition jointly.

And then, what's the next best?

Maybe the next best slide is page two.

Yeah, I think this is a good one just to do a real high-level overview.

So vacating the alley between the two parties allowed the all the alley functions to go away.

They're accommodated on other sides of the project for the development.

And it created a more seamless park and public plaza area for the development.

So this, I think, is a good overview.

And the photos show kind of how everything works out.

So on the park side, they were able to do a larger park and on the private developer side they were able to use the former alley for sidewalk cafes and things and they kind of really enhance each other.

I think what isn't shown on that is that I think another thing that's really interesting about this park plaza is that it has children's play equipment, and a lot of the downtown spaces are more urban spaces, and this has an old-fashioned parks purpose.

And every time I'm down there, my dentist is by there, so I go through and there's always kids on the slides enjoying it.

So slide three shows the public benefit features, and that includes the for parks, just the creation of this neighborhood and community park that's very open.

On the developer side, they set aside storage space for parks, so we have like giant chess pieces and things in there, and parks staff doesn't have to bring things in and out, and there is a lot at looking like the edges and how the private developer kind of meets and looks at the park, and so there was a lot of work done on that, and there was additional landscaping done by the developer around the site to enhance that greenery feel and make the whole thing not really park-like around the building, but additional landscaping.

That really I think covers everything because we've had a previous briefing we can look at more of the alternatives, but I think that's really the highlight And then I'll note that Council placed eight conditions on the vacation all eight conditions have been met and all the public benefits have been provided that were agreed to

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, I think that's the reason the council established the two-part approval process is to allow the development to proceed, but not the council doesn't finish its work until all of us that work on the projects can come in and say, yeah, the park's in, the fee's paid, the landscaping's done, easement, everything is recorded and completed.

And so we only come forward with a vacation ordinance when everything is done.

or if there were a lot of changes, we might come in and say, oh, we need to change the project, is that okay?

But this is really, everything is done and completed and kids are out there.

They must be, I don't know where they come from because it doesn't feel like a very kid neighborhood, but there's always kids there wherever they're from, they're enjoying the space.

Good?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're looking at me and I'm looking at you for a closing and, okay, all right.

I'm sorry, Teresaka.

I was trying to zip through and then turn it over.

No, no, all good, all good.

Really do appreciate this overview.

And yet again, another District 7 project.

Lo and behold, I have some project envy here yet again, but all good.

This strikes me as another solid project.

Tremendous public benefit.

In this case, strong nexus with our parks.

So do any of my colleagues have any questions, comments, feedback?

Council Member Kittle?

Thank you, Chair.

Just quickly to build on your project and district envy.

I just wanted to highlight that this is providing that kind of park-like space, which is really needed in the area.

The broader South Lake Union, we have three parks, but these little pieces, because what this highlights is that there's a lot of residents.

That's part of the transformation of downtown.

And we're seeing that we now have a downtown community council because we have residents and South Lake Union Community Council we have and they're they're looking for these amenities these pieces And I just had a discussion with this new school superintendent and you know in this district overall There's nothing in this area.

I have three elementary schools on Queen Anne I have a middle school on Queen Anne and there's the center school, but I don't have one of the traditional high schools and this highlights a different challenge that we'll tackle separately.

But this is a great area, I know it, as I noted the last time from that last picture, the thank you slide, you're basically over the Shake Shack and so there's a lot of great restaurants in the area, a lot of different things happening and so I do recognize the chair's project envy for this and colleagues, I ask for your support.

Awesome, thank you Councilmember Kettle.

Colleagues, any other final questions, comments?

Hearing and seeing none, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121117. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any further comments?

Hearing and seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommended recommendation to pass the bill?

Council member Foster.

Yes.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Lin.

Yes.

Vice Chair Rank.

Yes.

Chair Saka.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

Excellent.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass Council Bill 121117 will be sent to the January 20th, 2026 City Council meeting.

All right, we have reached the end.

Thank you, SDOT partners.

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

Our next meeting is on February 5th at 9.30 a.m.

This was our inaugural meeting of the new steps committee.

I invite everyone to continue to take steps forward with us and alongside us.

on these very important policy topics and do it together.

Is there any final business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing and...

Yeah, go ahead, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

I know.

I'm sorry, Councilmember Kettle.

I'll be brief in this point.

I just want to recognize that while we were here taking up the work of committee business, it seems like our new mayor is taking up some important policy matters related to transportation, particularly related to reliability with the Route 8 and moving forward with some bus lanes.

I know we've discussed that in committee.

I know it's of interest of this body, and I would state it's exciting to see some action being taken on something that is really urgent and affects many working families and folks who rely on transit.

So before we adjourned, I wanted to make sure that that was uplifted.

I'm excited to work with the department to see on its implementation and continue to take this up in committee.

Thank you, Vice Chair, and I know, yes, to your point, we have discussed this multiple times, the late eight snafu a number of times with in committee, and Vice Chair, you have led on the broader issue.

I've been able to, co-lead mostly with the department behind the scenes and some planning efforts.

And so glad to see some progress being made on this and look forward to monitoring implementation, but we do need to obviate the need in the embarrassing late eight designation.

So in any event, that is it.

Hearing no further business, anyone else?

All right, hearing no further business come before the committee.

We are adjourned.

It is 1158 AM.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.