Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.
It's Tuesday January 15th 2019 at 137 p.m.
We have moved our committee times up for the next three weeks in the afternoon to 130 instead of 2 o'clock to allow them to end a little earlier so folks that are here either to present or to observe can hopefully start a commute home before the afternoon rush hour while we're in this the Seattle squeeze or the one I love that was the goodbye adduct.
We have two items on today's agenda.
We were going to hear a briefing presentation on concepts for automated enforcement for block the box and transit lane violations and then we're going to get a report back on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District's year three annual report.
We'll start with public hearing.
One person signed up, Alex Zimmerman.
You'll have two minutes.
Sieg Heil, my dirty Nazi pig, a dirty anti-Semite and pure cretina.
My name Alexander.
I want to speak about three-year report, what is you have seen.
Situation with transportation so idiotic, so I cannot imagine who did this.
You guys are pure cretina, a mentally sick people.
It's nothing close what is you have before Seattle, and nothing close what is, and I live in big city, Roma, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, with dozen million people.
Bus capacity, officially 40 VY buses for capacity of 82. No one civilized business in this planet can buy something what is more than double what they can swallow.
You did this.
These big buses kill everybody.
It's not good and cost $1 million.
Yes.
Sound transistors will cost us for another few years, $100 billion plus.
$100 billion for what?
Seattle, very small city, $700,000.
Comparable to big cities, like small bug.
You know what this means?
Dirty bug.
Guys, you're real acting like an idiot and you stop in cars.
It's a fundamental principle of America.
It's a fundamental principle.
Everybody supposed to be having American horses before.
Cornell, you will cut America, bring us to condition what is half South America or Africa or China?
Come on, guys.
Who are you?
So I speak right now to everybody who listen to me.
Cleanse this dirty chamber from this cretina who kill us and suck blood and money from us.
Stand up, America.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alex.
Is there anyone else that would like to provide public comment today?
I want to just acknowledge that there's a banner in the back talking about safety on Rainier Avenue.
And I believe it says one crash per day.
And I know there's an ongoing effort to improve the safety of that corridor.
And I know there's still a long ways to go to get it to the commitment we've made to Vision Zero, and particularly in that neighborhood.
So thank you all for being here, too.
Let's jump into agenda item number one.
I'll invite presenters forward.
And I believe I can just read this one into the record.
Automated enforcement for block the box and transit lane violations.
Mark, do you want to start with introductions and let you all introduce yourself?
I'd be happy to.
Mark Banyu with Seattle Department of Transportation.
Quinn Majewski, Seattle Department of Transportation.
and Steve Herjack of Seattle Police Special Operations Bureau.
Great.
Thank you all for being here.
Are you going to start the presentation, Mark?
Yes, unless you had some introductory comments.
Why don't you jump in?
Why don't I say that I have been talking to the press a little bit about an anticipation of today's presentation, and there seems to be a lot of interest in what's happening and what's going on.
So I look forward to hearing from you all today and figure out where the next steps are.
Sure.
So thanks for having us.
We, in response to council requests last year through statement of legislative intent, had reported on the status of automated enforcement in two particular areas, block the box and bus lane or transit lane enforcement.
And you'd asked us to report back on any technological status, any legislative regulatory status, as well as any potential budgetary implications of moving forward with that plan.
I think most people understand what bus lane automated enforcement would entail, but in case anybody out there doesn't know what block the box is referring to, that is blocking an intersection if you proceed into it and don't have sufficient room to move through it on the other side.
So that's what we colloquially refer to as block the box.
So just for clarity.
Thank you.
So some background.
Why are we interested in this?
So block the box and bus lane enforcement violations.
the violations impact our street system in a couple of ways.
They can impact bicycle and pedestrian safety at intersections.
They also can affect emergency response time, particularly around fire stations and hospitals, or just general movement in and around our street grid.
They, of course, can in fact, sorry, excuse me, impede transit speed and reliability as we count on that to move a lot of people, particularly during examples right now with Seattle Squeeze, as well as just day in and day out through the year.
And then there's also just a general congestion occurrence that can come from that.
Obviously, we are timing our traffic system to move people around and buses, et cetera.
And if the intersection is not operating efficiently because it's blocked, then that's counteracting our efforts there.
So one of the things we did last year was we actually did a couple week observations around one of our intersections and street segments that we have both bus lane as well as block the box occurrences.
It's the intersection of 4th Avenue and Battery Street in the Belltown area.
And then in the upper right corner of this picture, busiest call-out fire station in the entire city, and the intersection at 4th and Battery, if it's blocked, which it frequently is, impedes the ability of fire engines sometimes to kind of leave that station.
So we did some observations, and the stats are right there in front of you on the slide, that blocked the box.
We had an average of six violations per day over the time period that we looked at, with a high of 53 violations on a single day.
With respect to transit lane on there, you'll see that the average was 361 violations per day with a high of 418. And so you can see there's quite a bit of violating going on in that stretch.
And for the observations here, did you guys put like temporary cameras out and just do counts?
Or was there an individual there with a?
It was actually with with cameras with working with a vendor that is potentially going to be having a solution to this So they kind of give them an opportunity to test out their equipment us to do an early if you will technological vetting of it just to kind of see what it looks like and maybe what we would be facing in terms of a Deployment or an implementation perspective.
So yeah, it was worth it was with cameras and looking through it that way not manual observations councilman Swan
There's a general question on things like this.
I mean, in terms of emergency response time for fire vehicles and also ambulances, do the services themselves maintain their own stats on what is the frequency of problems or response time and how much time they spend in traffic or all that stuff?
Or do we only have to conduct these kinds of studies in order to get data on this?
Why don't I let Steve Hurd speak to that from police, and then we can add on for fire.
The way our computer-aided dispatch works would be spotty with collecting that type of data.
It would depend on whether or not the dispatcher logged that, and if the driver were to actually notify dispatch that there was a block.
The actual response times are easy to measure.
We have that down to a science, but what may have impacted that is case-by-case and would require a hand search, and even that would be an unreliable statistic.
And I think it's a similar case for fire.
They track their response times, and it's actually something that they hold very dear to their ability to provide the life safety services that they do.
So they have similar to police from a dispatch and a response perspective, what led to it being longer or not.
And from a block the box perspective, they wouldn't have that, I don't believe.
The data there, the mean and the high is quite a variation.
And I'm curious if that's just, there's like a lot of variability.
I mean, it could be that there were none, and then the other five days, or 10 days, there were 53 on one day.
That averages out to six.
So I'm just curious, is it like an event, or is it like kind of constant stuff when traffic gets to a certain level?
I would say, Council Member O'Brien, for this location in particular, this is one that we see, it's not a zero.
The low end is pretty notable in this particular stretch.
of this stretch of block, the proximity of this location to getting onto Highway 9 and the north portal and the construction activities is pretty proximate.
So it can, when rain hits and when an incident happens elsewhere, of course, it can ripple back through this area pretty frequently.
Later on in the presentation, we note a few other locations that are kind of priority locations if we were to focus on doing this.
They kind of all fall into that category They have them at a notable frequency.
They then have several days over the course of weeks or a month where there's a whole bunch.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there are a lot of logistical issues with police enforcement of this.
A question I field frequently is why aren't we writing more tickets for this type of thing?
There's actually a Obviously, the physical limitation of resources we have of officers being in all these different places for prolonged periods of time.
But the more practical implication is that when an officer pulls someone over in one of these lanes, we've now blocked that lane, which is exactly the behavior we don't want in the first place.
So now we're compounding it.
And add to that, if a complication arises from that stop, we've now even lengthened it further.
So it's very difficult for us to be in the lanes without impacting traffic.
But on top of that, there's also safety implications of an officer either on a motorcycle parked on a sidewalk and then emerging into the roadway to enforce that type of infraction in the case of a bike lane or a bus lane where there's limited access in the first place due to traffic.
or merging through traffic.
Another phenomenon we may experience sometimes if we're doing a point emphasis such as the bus lane at 4th and Jackson would be the visibility of making one stop can cause erratic driving by other violators when they see the enforcement action ahead and force their way back into traffic.
So we're compounding lots of safety issues when we do this.
Ultimately, and result of enforcement there is always a temporary increase in congestion there.
So currently, the only, the advantage of a solution that's digital or automated would be that we can eliminate those factors.
But under state law, this is a moving violation.
And the RCW requires that a sworn police officer witness the infraction in order to actually make the citation.
And so they have to take enforcement.
physically and visibly right there.
So having an automated enforcement mechanism would allow us to keep officers out of that roadway.
So I assume running a red light is also a moving violation, as is speeding near school zones.
But we have those.
So how are we able to do that?
With the way the laws were written around the school zone cameras or the bus cameras or the red light cameras, a new infraction similar to a parking ticket was created where it doesn't require, it's not controlled as a moving violation where an officer has to ride it.
So it's the same as a parking ticket where an abandoned vehicle could be cited to the vehicle or to the owner of the property as opposed to the person that's actually committing the violation.
Got it.
Great.
So based on the extent of the issue that we've seen in terms of traffic disruptions, in terms of the challenges with manual enforcement that Assistant Chief Herjack outlined, we do recommend and are interested in pursuing implementation of automated enforcement cameras for block the box and transit lanes.
In the slide response, we presented a few case studies.
I've just included a few of them here that I want to highlight.
Boston had an initiative that they piloted that they partnered with WaysOn to focus on block the box and double parking, which is a major issue over on the East Coast.
that resulted in an 18% reduction in congestion and 20% reduction in travel delays.
San Francisco had a pilot of bus-only lane traffic safety cameras that resulted in a 55% reduction in violations and a 16% drop in collisions from cars moving in and out of those lanes.
And then London has long had a system of bus-only lanes, as well as, since 1997, the ability to enforce those with automated cameras.
And a 2007 study found that that system, since it was put in place, had increased the system-wide transit speed by 5%.
If we could do something relatively simple and get a 5% increase in our transit speed and reliability, That's huge.
And similarly, looking at congestion, even a 10% reduction in congestion would be, depending on how you're measuring it, make significant impact throughout the city.
That's accurate.
A 5% system-wide would be, that's a real dollars and real liability for the transit riders.
We agree.
Part of the recommendation is to work to secure the state authorization that we need in order to begin automated enforcement of block the box and transit lane violations.
We are working, our two departments are working with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to expand our existing automated enforcement authority, which includes, as you identified, railroad crossing, red light cameras and school speed zone cameras to include automated enforcement as well as block the box.
The legislation that we're working on advancing down in Olympia, it would also include and expansion of the locations that we are, as local jurisdictions, allowed to install automated enforcement cameras to include not just the intersections of arterials, but also mid-block on arterials, which is critical to the efficiency of transit-only lane cameras.
And I should note also that this is not just a priority for our departments, but also a priority for Mayor Durkan.
She mentioned it in her State of the City address, and she's actually down in Olympia today meeting with legislators to build support for this policy and this priority.
And then not as significant as the state authorization, but once that state law, that state statute is changed, we would need to change the Seattle Municipal Code as well.
This SMC is currently modeled after a state statute.
So once we have the state authorization for block the box and transit only lanes, we would also need to mirror that in the local code as well.
And so is the strategy with changing the state law and local code to do, as you mentioned earlier, of create a path where this would be a non-moving violation so it could be issued automatically, and then we can figure out the technology to make that happen?
Correct.
Correct.
Me?
Yes.
OK. with legislative approval and going forward.
We had approached this similarly.
We've done for the other automated enforcement that we have in the city, red light running and school speed zones, where we would identify through S.DOT the intersections in collaboration with Seattle Police Department of what intersections we would recommend to go do and then The way it works contractually is that the Seattle Police Department actually contracts with a vendor to provide that service because they have better oversight of the actual enforcement activity, et cetera.
So we take a similar approach once we have the authorization.
So you might be wondering what kind of intersections we'd be looking at throughout the city.
So this is some of the top intersections that we have noted through traffic observations, previous efforts we're working with Seattle Police Department on doing some enforcement emphasis.
So that's what these intersections are representing.
Fairview and Valley is in the upper right corner of the graphic.
That's where the South Lake Union streetcar goes through, and obviously approximate to the Mercer ramps in South Lake Union is a frequently congested intersection.
The next one is Dexter at Mercer.
That's a priority corridor, both north-south and east-west.
North-south is a primary bicycle facility, as well as a transit corridor.
And then, of course, we all know about Mercer and its traffic demands going east-west.
Denny Way and Westlake is down towards the bottom center.
That's, again, a primary transit corridor.
The streetcar, as well as the Route 40 and the C-Line go through there, as well as there's a whole concentration of pedestrians moving through that busy intersection.
Fourth and Battery, that's the one I mentioned earlier near Fire Station 2, that is a primary corridor for emergency response as well as the RapidRite E-Line.
And then Fourth and Jackson is in the lower right corner, that's of course at the southern periphery of the Central Business District.
And a tremendous number of buses coming northbound on Fourth Avenue through that intersection as well as the streetcar.
the light rail stations and sounder stations all right there.
So these are the ones that have kind of first cut at some of the primary locations we would be looking to go pursue.
They're not representing the only solutions we would look at, or excuse me, only intersections we would be looking at.
So we did want to talk a little bit about privacy when it comes to automated enforcement.
We understand that privacy is a significant public concern when it comes to not just automated enforcement cameras, but any sort of surveillance technology.
I'm going to talk through a few of the state statutes that provide some safeguards, some pretty significant safeguards around how we can use automated enforcement cameras and what we can do with the images that are captured, and what we would be able to do or not be able to do were we to secure authorization from the state for automated enforcement to block the box in transit lanes, and then I'll turn it over to Assistant Chief Herjack to speak to how those state statutes influence and interact with our local regulations.
So there are quite a few state regulations on how we can use automated enforcement cameras and what we can do.
And I don't want to belabor the point too much, but I want to highlight a few of the safeguards that are currently in place and would remain in place under the legislation we're discussing.
Currently, state statute prohibits the city from capturing driver or passenger's face in a photograph.
It prohibits the city from retaining any photograph longer than is necessary to enforce the violation.
So after a ticket is issued, that photograph has to be disposed of.
And then it prohibits the city from using photographs for any legal proceedings beyond the specific violation that was captured by the camera.
Yeah, the way we envision this at SPD would be right along with the current traffic enforcement cameras that we have, which have been vetted through the city law department.
And basically, we would have no record of who the people were or have any way to collate or maintain this data in a way that would violate the surveillance ordinance.
As with any technology that SPD engages with, it would be vetted through city IT and we would have the public hearing process and all of the input and clearance with any new technology to make sure we don't violate the retention standards or collection of data.
the automated safety cameras would be required to comply with these state protections.
And what is the experience in Boston and San Francisco on, I mean, I'm assuming they have similar state laws on these issues.
I would have to defer that question, Testa.
And I would have to get back to you on that, but I can certainly look and see what their privacy standards are like.
writing a follow-up action.
And just on this slide, you say a full privacy assessment would still be conducted prior to implementation.
What precisely does that mean?
Well, this is the same procedure we recently did with the automatic license plate readers where we had city town halls and allowed public input and recorded input and addressed the concerns.
So these are the new steps we put into place for surveillance and go through a privacy impact statement?
Exactly.
We follow the new surveillance ordinance.
Great.
That's what it's designed to do.
Exactly.
Okay, the last piece would be that any sort of budget implications and asks that we need to do to put this in place, we actually can't put that together yet.
And since we don't know what the legislative authorization would look like, there's obviously some things that the legislature could modify in terms of the, through the legislative process.
For example, perhaps it's just a two-year pilot and it limits us to the number of intersections or locations to do, which of course would make a difference in terms of budget.
But based on what we did for the school zone cameras and the budget issue paper back in 2014, our experience is that there's an initial upfront cost on the order of about $10,000 per camera.
typical intersection is or location is probably going to be two or three cameras depending on the complexity.
So again, depending on the number of locations we would move forward with, that'll give you a kind of a range of what we might be looking at.
With the actual, once we get into an operations, our experience to date has been at the fines through previous automated enforcement systems have covered ongoing operations and staffing costs.
We would expect to see the same experience here.
So we don't think there would be an ongoing budgetary implication sort of self-sustaining, but it's that initial upfront cost.
Tell me about what you anticipate is that relationship.
Do we essentially buy the technology from a vendor that installs it and then they just kind of hand over the technology, the software, whatever, to do it to us?
Or do they manage the system on the back end and then submit infractions to, you know, the police department to process?
When we go through these Purchasing and vendor contracts we look at them individually depending on what the vendor can offer It's been variable depending on the technology and whether or not they maintain some back-end or if they turn it over to City IT In many cases, it's a compromise or or a blend of that other potential costs could be perhaps a full-time employee for the police department to vet the citations to make sure that we don't have any of those issues that perhaps the State Department transportation had on the 520 bridge with tolling where people were getting miss cited for out-of-state plates that Corresponded with their Washington plates or things like that.
So we'd have that human factor so all of those things would be considered the reliability rates mechanisms for change mechanisms for countering or defending the citations, that type of thing.
So there's no real way to say, but it'll be negotiated out.
Well, it's good to hear just the range of things that we can expect.
And then how about the timing?
If something, if we can get some legislation passed this session, so sometime early spring, have that done, how, what does the process look like?
You know, you said we have to update the Seattle Municipal Code.
We could do that pretty swiftly here, at least try to.
And then, but an RFP and working with vendors and getting things implemented.
I would think if we knew that the bill was really on its way to that, being essentially signed off May, June, we could begin, I think, working with you on what the ordinance would need to look like, essentially in parallel, if you will.
Then there's the budgetary discussion in terms of putting that forward through either supplemental or into the 2020 budget process, so those timings.
But suffice to say, I would think that operationalizing it would probably be, I don't know, I think May 1st quarter, 2nd quarter of 2020. It's easier reason to think that it's any sooner than that.
I would be loath to put a timeline.
Based on my experience with all the RFPs, they can be really short or or extend that.
Oh, and then I was remiss to forget to mention that, of course, the privacy, working through the privacy aspect would need to be also part of that, which might need to wait till we have the, either we put that in as part of the vendor requirements and that everyone complies, but there might still be some follow-up questions.
So that could affect, of course, the timeline there.
Great.
In this last budget, there was discussion about how we use revenues from the school safety cameras and also the red light cameras.
I believe state law requires that the school speeding cameras, that revenue is dedicated back to school safety improvements.
The legislation in Olympia, do we have a vision for where, if there's revenue beyond just administration of it, where that would go?
Have you had any of those discussions or do you have any feelings you want to share with us now?
I just think that's something that obviously would be subject to I would say once we know more about what the authorizing legislation is going to look like and then an assessment of what amount of revenue is being generated by it versus the operational costs, that obviously would drive the policy decisions about where it might go.
But it strikes me that it's been part of the reasons the systems have been successful to date is because the the tie to transportation safety, both on the increasing compliance side, as well as in the use of revenues has been a pretty strong tie to why the systems, the application of automated enforcement has been successful to date.
So I would suggest that that's probably a strong policy tie, whether that's a universal tie, that's up to obviously you and the executive.
And perhaps the state, depending on what, correct, they might do in legislation.
I, you know, for me, I really think this is really important stuff to do, and I want to encourage my colleagues down in Olympia to help figure out how we can have a path to do this.
The revenue aspect that may come in is really not the intent of this.
In fact, in an ideal world, we would set these up and not collect any money because everyone was fully complying with the existing laws.
And then we would see the congestion reduction and the reliability and speed on the transit, which is what we really want.
And so something that would dedicate those towards safety programs or transit investments, whatever the kind of appropriate nexus is, would be something that I would support.
Mark, one of the other questions that I was going to ask is, you know, in my previous work on state issues in Olympia, the state also traditionally has set the fine level as well in state statute.
I presume we're sharing information with the state about how many violations we have seen and therefore what a fine might look like to make sure that we are A, collecting enough revenue to make sure that we're, at the very least, revenue neutral with the implementation of the number of systems and locations that we want in the right places, and B, that we're setting up a fine system that makes sure that we're appropriately dissuading people from the action without being disappropriately onerous, such that they are now all of a sudden calling their city council members and complaining about how high the fines are.
So, wading through that is, I think, going to be an important part about implementation You guys have covered a lot of those other issues, but I just want to put those two items under radar.
Yeah, thank you.
That is a very important points.
And, you know, I just want to echo what you said in the beginning, Council Member O'Brien, which is what seems to be like a simple technological approach, which is very cost effective, though, you know, it may take us a year to a year and a half in order to have it on the ground.
could have a very significant impact for the majority of people that are coming downtown every day, which isn't something other than driving alone.
So the more that we can do to make that choice, which, again, the majority of people are doing already, more fast and more reliable, the more people are going to continue to do so, and the better off we all are from a transportation perspective.
So I think that this is a really great idea.
I, of course, would love to have had the opportunity to have seen this come through a little bit faster.
We'll all push down Olympia and keep our fingers crossed that we can be having that conversation around implementation later on this year.
Great.
Thank you so much for this work.
And please keep us posted.
We'll be working with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, too, to understand the status of that legislation.
And it's great to hear that it appears to be a priority for both the departments.
And I'm certainly willing to put it towards the top of my list, too.
So let's see if we can get it done.
Excellent.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Agenda item number two.
This is an information item related to the Seattle Transportation Benefit District year three annual report.
Presenters, come on forward.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Candida, do you want to start introductions?
Sure.
Candida Lorenzana, SDOT Transit Mobility Division.
Nico Martinucci, SDOT Transit Mobility.
Erin Teig, Seattle Transit Advisory Board.
Welcome, everyone.
This is the third annual report, I believe.
correct.
Do you want to just jump in?
Sure, and I'll let Nico get this loaded up here, but I just wanted to start off by saying thanks to Seattle voters, we've been able to make a lot of improvements through this program.
The first and foremost is expanding the 10-minute network.
We've also seen improvements in on-time performance this year.
And 80% of Seattle Public High School students have ORCA cards in their hands.
So I think these are all really good news things that we need to be reporting on more often.
I think that is also a reflection of the hard work and commitment that the STBD team within SDOT brings to the table and also our growing partnership with Metro.
So with that, I will let Nico walk us through some of the outcomes of the report.
Great.
Thank you, Candida.
I'm going to give a quick overview of the presentation we're going to give.
I want to talk a little bit about STBD and the background of the funding measure, just to give everyone a brief reminder.
Talk a bit about our budget and the recent scope change that the council passed this past year.
Talk a little bit about our transit service investments and the performance of those.
And I will pass it back to Candida to talk about some of our low-income access to transit programs.
Pass it on to Aaron to talk a little bit about the Transit Advisory Board work from this past year.
And then hopefully we'll have time for some questions.
One thing that I'm sure we all know but we never get tired of talking about is how much ridership is continuing to increase in Seattle, which is in stark contrast to many other large metropolitan areas throughout the country.
Seattle, of course, is growing at a rate that's Not comparable in many other cities around the country, and we're continuing to see that a lot of those new people, as well as people who have lived in Seattle for a long time, are riding transit more and more.
Something we're all familiar with, the Commute Seattle mode split survey has shown that over the past 17 years, from 2000 to 2017, Transit mode share to downtown has gone from approximately 29% to 48%.
At the same time, SOV mode share has dropped from 50% down to 25%.
So we're seeing a pretty dramatic shift in how people are getting to work in downtown.
Did I hear you say that ridership, we're seeing the opposite in other cities?
That's correct.
Most major metropolitan areas are seeing either flat or declining both bus and rail ridership in their areas.
Wow, for example?
Everyone except New York, basically.
New York is consistently, their subway ridership is going up.
Their bus ridership is pretty flat.
Most of their major cities that have either bus or rail systems are seeing their ridership decline.
And in some cases, it's a pretty minor decline.
In other cases, it's pretty substantial.
OK.
Yeah.
It blows me away.
I mean, these numbers are outstanding.
And to go from 50% to 25% mode split in SOVs downtown and the corresponding increase in transit.
I mean, obviously, we're adding significant bus service.
We opened a light rail system in that time period and expanded again in that time period.
But we're not the only one making investments across the country in how we're able to get this right.
And it's not like I don't know what's going on elsewhere.
I'm glad we're here.
I mean, I would just offer one other sort of important context piece, which is when people are new to an area, it's when they're most likely to be willing to change their behavior.
So as we continue to see an increase and an influx in new folks to the region, that certainly has an impact, too.
In addition to the fact that we've got excellent employers who have been mandatorily required to offer transit passes since the early 1990s, You couple all of those things, and we create a really great nurturing environment for people to try out new options.
But to your point, Council Member Swan, I serve on the board of the Puget Sound Regional Council, where we analyze those kinds of data points from all around the country, and we are the only one in the United States, save one or two small exceptions, like maybe Phoenix, where we're seeing actual double-digit year-over-year ridership increases, and everybody else is in the single digits if they're lucky or in decline.
So to give a brief background on STBD since we haven't been here in about a year, this was a funding measure passed back in November of 2014 by Seattle voters.
It includes a $60 vehicle license fee and a 0.1% sales tax increase, which in 2018 raised about $50 million.
As initially designed, the funding measure was to improve transit availability and access for Seattle, including our low-income programs.
And as I mentioned, in April of last year, the city council passed a scope change which provided some extra flexibility in how we can spend that money, which I'll talk about in just a second.
But before then, just to highlight very high level our budget, we spend approximately $0.91 out of every dollar directly on improving transit service and access in the city.
This breaks down to about $0.86 per dollar going directly towards added trips throughout the city, and about $0.05 on every dollar for our transit equity programs.
The last $0.09 goes towards planning and analysis, and then our reserve fund balance in the event that we need to ramp down service at the sunset of the program.
So as I've mentioned, oh, yeah.
What's the accumulated dollar amount in the reserve balance is anticipated to be at the end of this year?
It is $20 million.
As I mentioned, the program underwent a material scope change in April of this last year to give some more flexibility and tools to help us improve transit service and access throughout the city.
So I'm going to talk about these three main items, the first of which was we changed the definition of Seattle routes, Seattle routes being those in King County Metro's network in which we can directly invest without any 50-50 partnership with another jurisdiction.
When initially passed, STBD defined Seattle routes as those with 80% or more of their stops within the city.
Through some racial equity analysis work that we did, we found that that was preventing us from investing in a handful of routes that provided some notable service on the southernmost and northernmost edges of the city, areas that tend to have higher proportions of historically disadvantaged populations.
So sort of as initially crafted, it was preventing us from providing the best service we could to those groups.
And so part of the scope change was changing that definition to 65% of stops, and so that brought those routes into the fold, as well as current and future rapid ride lines that provide service within the city.
A second item, funds were made available to build capital projects to help us expand our transit spot improvement program.
It's a program that today has a budget of about a million dollars, but we found has been very successful in helping improve a lot of the service that we pay for that's on the road today.
And then I would say most notably, the scope change provided funding for the Orca Opportunity Program, which was Mayor Durkin's vision for providing every Seattle Public High School student with a all expenses paid 12 month Orca cart.
which Candida will be talking about a bit later in the presentation.
A vision that's shared by a few people at this table.
Yes, most certainly.
So moving on to our transit service investments, the first thing I want to highlight is what I think is a pretty cool analysis we did this past year.
As for those of us who have seen us present here before, we tend to talk about our past, present, and future investments in terms of transit service hours, which is a handy but albeit pretty wonky metric for how much service is on the road.
It doesn't have a whole lot of meaning for somebody who rides the bus on a daily basis and is curious about what impact this funding actually has on their daily commute.
So we went back to June of 2015 and to today, and we quantified the number of actual trips that those service hours work out as.
And we found that through STBD, we've been able to add about 6,780 weekly bus trips to the transit network in Seattle.
The bulk of this is on weekdays, a little over 1,000 new trips each weekday, but some notable Saturday and Sunday investments as well.
Those 1,000 weekday trips account for capacity for over 80,000 additional daily rides.
Of course, to fully capture that, that would mean 1,000 buses packed to the gills.
But if we're talking about even 50% or 25% full buses, we're still talking about tens of thousands of additional daily rides that we can capture.
And then finally, through our investments, we've been able to improve bus service for every urban center and urban village throughout the city, which is what is symbolized on the hexagon graphic here.
And I should highlight, all of these graphics are in the annual report itself, so if you want some time to mull over those some more, there are much higher resolution versions in there.
As Candida mentioned, one of our top priorities is expansion of the 10-minute service network.
This was a goal set out in Move Seattle back in 2015, which was to provide 72% of Seattle households with a 10-minute walk to 10-minute or better transit service.
When Move Seattle was passed in 2015, we were at about a quarter of households in the city, 25%.
And over the past three years, we've been able to increase this to today about two-thirds, or 67%.
67% of households within the city are now within a 10-minute walk of 10-minute or better transit service.
Of course, this puts us within about 5% of our 2025 goals, so we're well on our way to meeting that.
The shift is amazing, and it's interesting in talking to folks in communities.
Sometimes the shift's happening so fast that I think a lot of times people don't even notice it.
And including myself, I go look at schedules.
At Greenwood and 85th, for instance, there's frequent transit north-south on the 5 and east-west on the 45. And even Sundays at 10 PM or 11 PM, there's still every 20 or 30 minute service in both directions.
And to have that kind of service reliability, I think a lot of folks, they're used to their patterns.
And then as it changes, it adds, they don't realize the kind of service access folks have, which is amazing.
I also noticed it's tapering off.
The first year, we had a big jump.
can you talk a little bit about what that looks like and what's that?
Sure.
So as you might imagine, early on in sort of our work to reach this metric, each new route that we brought on to the network, we were able to basically capture almost every, if not every single household along that pathway.
What we found is that as we've continued to add more routes to this network, we're seeing more and more overlap between which households are actually covered.
So while early on in the program, you might add a route and it would add eight to ten percent of Seattle's households now we see between 1 and 3% because our network overlaps, which from a service planning perspective is a really good thing.
What's not captured in this, since this is a pretty two-dimensional look at which households are covered, is how many households now might have access to two, three, or even more 10-minute routes.
At a very high level, we looked at downtown, which if, depending on where you live, you may have access to as many as eight 10-minute routes.
And similarly, the U District has about five that serve various parts of it.
So we're really seeing that while we have the sort of diminishing returns as we approach what was set out as that final goal in 2025, that from a service perspective, from a service quality perspective for individual riders, that that continues to improve even if the numbers aren't quite reflecting that.
And how much of a challenge has it been?
I mean, I know there's constraints at King County Metro, too, of being able to actually deploy our dollars to buy additional bus service and additional drivers.
What's that look like these days?
I think we have a very strong partnership.
When I get a little later in the presentation, we'll be talking about how many hours we're investing over the next three service changes.
Metro has been a very transparent and honest partner in this discussion, trying to figure out how we can deliver the most with our dollars that we have available in the capacity that they have available for us.
I don't think we can say it enough how great of a partner Metro has been in this.
They've gotten really creative with us with looking at where we can add service.
There are cases where there are coaches out on the road serving a trip that then we can turn around and put back into service instead of deadheading back to the base, which is a pretty marginal increase in actual cost, but is another trip on the road providing that service.
So, another priority of ours is building out the frequent transit network, which is the forward-looking vision for transit service within the city, as laid out in our transit master plan.
We have a few metrics that we use to assess our own performance.
Council Member O'Brien, as you mentioned, one of the things we've been looking at is 30-minute service as a baseline for all of these routes.
And actually today, every single route on the frequent transit network has, at a bare minimum, and I'll highlight bare minimum, 30-minute service, 18 hours per day, seven days per week.
While most of these routes have much better than that, particularly on weekdays and during peak periods, we were noticing that there were some areas, particularly, say, on a Sunday evening or Saturday morning, where routes were still operating hourly, if at all.
And so this was a big priority of ours to sort of set a foundation on which now we can really start to build out this network more fully.
Today, also 96% of urban villages within the city have at least one 15-minute route serving them.
Again, similar to the 10-minute network, many urban villages have a lot more than that.
And as we mentioned, 67% of Seattle households have access to at least one 10-minute route.
And it's sort of these three service levels at 30 and 15 and 10 that we continue to work on and grow these networks further.
As I mentioned at the top of the presentation, increased ridership is something that we as a region have been enjoying for several years now.
Here within the city, our three workhorse rapid ride lines are really contributing quite heavily to that.
The C, D, and E line have all seen double digit increases in ridership since 2015. I think of particular note is the C line, which has seen a 53% increase in ridership.
in those three years.
But I think one thing that's worth noting is that it's not unique to our rapid ride lines.
And while the C line has seen the largest increase in ridership over the past year, the next four on the list are all non-rapid ride routes that I want to highlight that they really spread across the city, and we're not just seeing this rapid-ride growth in the densest or the fastest-growing parts of the city.
So, for example, the 65 and 67 provide frequent service in northeast Seattle, the Route 60 in southeast Seattle, and the Route 40 in northwest Seattle.
And then finally, this is a graphic you may recognize from last year's report.
We work closely with Metro to measure the on-time performance of Seattle routes.
On-time performance is defined as a route arriving at a time point between one minute early and five minutes late.
So it's a bit of a window in which they can arrive and be considered on time.
And what this shows here is the hour-by-hour on-time performance of Seattle routes throughout the city.
I think of particular note, from this past year, we saw that during the p.m.
peak period, from 3 p.m.
to 7 p.m., that on-time performance went up about 2 to 3 percent, which was really encouraging to see.
This is, of course, the period in which we struggle the most with keeping buses on time, just given sort of the general busyness on the road during this time.
And with that, I'm going to pass it off to Candida, who's going to talk about our low income access to transit programs.
So the low income access to transit program is funded by $2 million of the $50 million that we collect as part of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.
I'm going to highlight a couple of the programs that we have ongoing and some of the successes we've seen since both the start of the program and in year three.
So first and foremost, we've been working closely with King County to offer preloaded ORCA cards.
Since the beginning of the program, we've been able to distribute about 9,260.
41% of those have been reloaded for continued use.
And they have generated, since 2016, about 960,000 boardings, which I think is great news that shows that folks are generally reloading them and actually using them on services to get to and from employment, education opportunities, or services.
In addition to that, our transportation equity team has been hard at work doing education and engagement throughout the city.
This has really been an opportunity to engage people in a variety of languages and in a variety of communities to help inform the transportation equity program in general.
So they've gone out to do various events, mobility surveys to understand some of the specific needs in communities.
So that's been pretty successful in developing some of the things you will see in our transportation equity program this year.
And the other piece is our vehicle license fee rebate.
That is a $20 annual rebate on the cost of a vehicle license fee for income eligible individuals.
We issued $5,186, which is saving Seattleites just over $100,000 by issuing those rebates.
The OrcaLift side of this, Seattle and King County have both been hard at work trying to up OrcaLift enrollment.
Over the past couple of years, you've seen some significant progress in Seattleites that are enrolled.
From the first year, we had about 11% of the 146,000 residents that were eligible enrolled.
And this year, we've gone up to 28%.
So that's a pretty significant increase over the two-year period.
In addition to that, Seattle residents are also accounting for a big portion, nearly 60% of total King County residents enrolled in the program.
The other item I wanna highlight, which has been less on the low income side now that we're providing to all Seattle Public High School students.
We generally across the board, these numbers are as of December 2018, most schools, anywhere between 70 to 90% of the students have their cards in hands.
And those are 12 month cards that allow them to also use transit service over the summer.
The 2,000, I just want to highlight a minor edit on this one.
There are actually 2,000 middle school students that receive 12-month ORCA cards, and that's partially through both Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Department of Transportation, but only about 500 of those are income-eligible students.
That is pretty consistent with what we were implementing the youth worker program as well in the past.
So I just wanted to make sure to correct that minor issue on this slide.
So we have a lot still to do before the program sunsets in 2020. As I talked about previously, we've been working closely with Metro on our service investments over the next year and a half.
We have three additional service investments coming up, March and September of this year and March of 2020. We've worked hard with Metro to settle on investing 100,000 hours over the course of that time.
That really allows us to both leverage our investments with Metro, but also to work within the constraints of their system by investing in 100,000 hours.
We anticipate with those investments, we're going to see further progress on our goal of 72% within the year.
We also recently made some ride-to investments out in West Seattle, and if you're not familiar with that, this is an on-demand service that is allowing folks in West Seattle to connect both to Alaska Junction, where there's a lot of transit service available to get downtown, and it's especially important during the Seattle squeeze, but also allowing them to get down to the water taxi, which has increased its service level significantly over the next several weeks to help folks get downtown from West Seattle.
The other two pieces of this are capital improvements.
So we're in the process of developing capital improvements that we would use our STP dollars to invest in.
And this includes a variety of projects.
So looking at move Seattle transit corridors and where we can make early investments in places like Rainier on the Route 40, which future Fremont RapidRide line.
We're also looking to invest in one-sitter city near-term action plan projects.
A good example of that is the 5th and 6th Avenue Transit Pathway, which STBD will be helping to fund.
The other piece of this is speed and reliability projects.
So a lot of things that come out of our spot improvement program.
So advanced signals for transit, transit lanes, and red paint treatments are all things that are on the table that we're considering.
The other part we're looking at is passenger amenities.
So things like rear door bus pads, which make it easier for folks to get off the bus and not into a patch of dirt or a tree when they exit.
And also real-time information signs, so people have some insurance of when their bus might be arriving while they're waiting.
And lastly, I just want to highlight the program does sunset in 2020. And over this year, we'll be working closely with King County related to any renewal for this measure.
Yeah, on that.
The idea that we'd somehow stop doing this would be devastating.
That would put us, I guess, in the league of all the other cities around the country that see a decline in transit.
And that metric aside, clearly, there are more and more people who rely on this every single day.
And despite the fact that we've added so much service, what I hear is the buses are still full.
So we've been doing an amazing job at service, but even then, we're struggling to keep up with demand.
You know, figuring out what that next step is, and it'd be great if there was an opportunity to do something countywide.
We had tried that a few years ago, but I imagine that folks outside Seattle would love the level of service, too, and an opportunity to figure out how to fund that would be great.
A lot of good stuff here that I imagine the Transit Advisory Board is interested in, but why don't you let us know what you think and where there's spots for improvement.
Absolutely.
I think it was good.
OK.
So it has been an eventful year.
The major headline was, of course, the material change in scope.
And we actually came here to testify on behalf of material change in scope.
So we were very excited to see it pass.
The mayor, of course, kicked that off with her Orca Opportunity Program, which we were excited to see.
We had sort of dithered around with ideas to expand the high school, but we could never figure out a way to do it.
And this was obviously a very impressive way to get it all done.
We, it was sort of the most publicized accomplishment, but it certainly wasn't the only accomplishment of the year three.
So I would like to take a couple seconds to talk about the other accomplishments.
As Candida and Nick mentioned, there are multiple, the number of households that have a 10 minute walk to 10 minute or better transit service is is up to 67%, and that's not just a line on the map.
What does that mean for a city resident?
It brings affordable transportation to swaths of the city where before living car light or car free was only for people who were very determined or very desperate.
We're also happy that SDOT continues to consider social justice analyses when making service provision decisions, and we'd like to see that analysis expanded to these new capital improvements that SDOT is doing.
In fact, part of the material change in scope was, as you mentioned, noticing that we weren't able to serve the neighborhoods to the north and south of the city where there are lower incomes and more historically disadvantaged populations because of the limits.
And so the city went ahead and changed that requirement, and so we were very happy to see that.
And it had been something we'd been looking for for several years.
There were also some non-traditional investments at actually the Transit Advisory Board suggestion.
We've expanded our investment in the Trailhead Direct Service, which is a program that brings buses to the city to sort of the Issaquah Alps and other beautiful outdoor recreation areas over on the east side.
And we're really excited that those sort of beautiful regional assets are now accessible to the whole city population and not just those people with cars who could get over there on their own.
So that's just sort of an example of the more innovative things that the city is doing to use these funds.
And I haven't had a chance to ride that, but I've been in a couple of those trails that are served by it.
And it was so amazing this summer to see how many people were out using the trails and the diversity of folks on those trails.
And reading stories of folks who are like, I had to take the bus from Bellevue into Seattle to get a seat on the bus because waiting in Bellevue, they kept passing me by, they were so full.
It's amazing how much demand there is for transit going to Trailheads.
Absolutely.
I haven't had the chance to do it either, but it does allow dogs, so I'm excited to take my dog on a hike sometime.
So we have had a couple of challenges this year as well.
As sort of these things have been changing very rapidly, SDOT hasn't had the opportunity to consult with us as early in the process as we would like.
For some of these service investments that are coming up, we've had the opportunity to sort of say, yes, this is great, but we haven't really had the opportunity to engage early enough to make suggestions for changes.
So we would like to see, especially with some of the capital improvements, to hear more about those and maybe have the opportunity to make suggestions for improvements to some of the decisions.
And again, the big thing we'd like to see is a race and social justice analysis of those proposed improvements.
Is that something that How can the council help facilitate those conversations and get folks involved from the advisory board early in those discussions?
I think part of it is just us doing our due diligence of being there a little earlier than we have in the past.
I think we frequently are thinking about RSGI in almost every single service investment we're making and what makes sense.
I think that's really reflected in the material change at 65%.
We have a lot more flexibility to serve those communities.
I feel like as long as we keep talking, I think we can solve it.
OK.
That'd be great.
great to make sure that that keeps going.
I mean, my sense is that everything is very well aligned.
I haven't heard like folks thinking that we're going in the wrong direction, but the ability to communicate earlier can make, often find some small tweaks that actually make things even better and get, you know, just do a more robust job, so.
Absolutely.
Just as like an example, part of, one of the suggested capital improvements is extending the third avenue transit only corridor.
up north a little bit to sort of make that northern portal onto 3rd Avenue for buses easier.
But as a board, we looked at it and said, well, if you went one more block, you could reach the transit-only lanes for the C line that go into Salt Lake Union, and then you'd have sort of a network connection there.
And so those are the sort of things that we'd like the opportunity to comment on earlier in the process.
We're picking at the tiniest of nits here.
It's not.
That's great.
And as Candida also mentioned, it's really critical that we start planning for the end of this particular funding method.
The city is in discussions and we encourage continued discussions with the county at multiple levels to discuss how to continue to improve the city's current service levels.
We'd just like to recognize that the city and the county don't always have the same priorities as far as service provisions.
So, for instance, the 10-minute network isn't really something that King County pursues as aggressively as the city does.
So we want to make sure that in whatever setup we have that succeeds the current levy, preserves some of those city priorities.
We'd also like to see a little bit of increased flexibility about the public transit service providers we can purchase from.
We would really love the opportunity.
Even if we can't make it work right at the beginning, we'd love to see the opportunity to purchase sound transit service as well.
So right now we can only purchase service from Metro.
And if you live in Lake City and you really want to take the 522 more often, it really is too bad that the city can't invest in those trips a little bit more directly.
I really hate to say this, but 2020 is right around the corner.
So it would be great if we could sort of get those discussions going.
So that's pretty much all I have to say.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
I appreciate you highlighting that, because that is really going to be critical.
In addition to the fact that our thing, Sunsets, the Transportation Benefit District vehicle license fee and sales tax, Sunsets, in two years, or just less than two years, there's also apparently a statewide initiative that would roll back car tabs in a way that would have a devastating impact too.
I mean imagine going to all the high school kids and saying, hey, a bunch of those orca passes we got to take back.
You can't have those anymore.
Imagine telling people you no longer have frequent service at the, you know, late in the evening because your job's a later job and now you're going to have to drive to work because there's no more bus service.
I mean, it would just be devastating on so many fronts.
So we need to be preparing for a number of things and figuring out strategies for how we can ensure that we're maintaining service.
councilmember just a couple of questions and a couple of no concepts to lobby since we're wrapping up the discussion and I want to start by saying I think that it's really great that we continue to have a reserve fund and I know that some folks may look at the fact that we have a reserve fund for STPD and question why we have it but On the off chance that for some reason we are in that doomsday scenario, Council Member O'Brien, it's even worse for us to all of a sudden tomorrow shut off all the bus service that we're paying for today.
Having and maintaining that reserve fund so that we've got some ability to draw down against that reserve near the end of 2020, I think, is going to be critical.
And so I very strongly support the maintaining of that reserve fund.
And if we're in the best case of all scenarios, which is a successful renewal of STBD, then we have a little bit of extra resources to be able to plan for.
and expand out the door, but I think that it's really important that we have that so that if we are in a scenario where we are not successful in renewing it, we don't have to immediately shut off service.
Second, I'd love to put out the plug to our friends at Metro to think about as part of their next vehicle purchases to allow for Orca readers at the rear door so that we can speed loading and unloading.
I think that that would be a really great thing for all of us who are transit riders.
who have to get on the front every time at almost all of the bus stops in the city.
That, you know, it seems like a little thing, but that extra minute that all of us take for 40 stops on the line, that adds up to an extra 40 minutes in terms of time and speed and reliability.
So if we just cut that back by a little bit, it could end up adding up to a lot in the end.
And then, just two questions, Candida, as you guys continue your work.
Obviously, there was news in this last week about Chariot, who's our contractor for Ride 2, shutting their doors.
How do we think about the continued promotion of that program?
And then, secondly, I don't know if my colleagues are hearing this as well, but I hear from a lot of folks who would love to see expansion of our Youth Orca Card to folks other than just public high school students.
I get requests from...
PTSA folks all the time, particularly in elementary schools where, you know, you've got a lot of parents who are choosing to take transit with multiple kids, and those kids all add up, right?
And I've got, I represent folks who have students at private high schools or private middle schools and elementary schools that would love to have the same sort of benefit.
So how do we think about taking the really successful model that Aaron talked about, and by the way, nice job of representing District 4, Aaron, on the stab.
How do we do a good job of expanding that model to middle schools, elementary schools, and private school kids too?
So I'll take the Chariot question first and go back to ORCA Opportunity.
For Chariot, obviously, unfortunate news.
Thankfully, it does not have much of an effect on the City of Seattle's Ride 2 investments.
Hopelink is operating in West Seattle, and we're working with Metro to identify the contractor for the Southeast Seattle lines that will be launching in April.
So we'll continue to be making those investments in Ride 2. I may have Forgotten to mention it in the latter part covering STBD upcoming activities, but the Southeast Seattle service will really be focused on serving light rail stations, primarily Mount Baker, Othello, and Columbia City.
So that'll launch this spring.
In terms of expanding ORCA opportunity to middle school students and a little bit further, I think it is something that we are definitely going to start thinking about what it means.
I think there's a lot of work to do with Seattle Public Schools to understand the effects for middle school students.
There's a transport, as we've talked about I think previously, there's some transportation standards that Seattle Public Schools has and trying to work with them to understand what those mean and what the effects are also on their yellow bus service, which I think we've seen continues to be in high demand and not always able to make it through traffic every day.
So that would be something we want to understand is the impact on yellow bus service because they do receive funds from the state as a reimbursement to do that service.
But I think there's a couple of different avenues where we can start having those conversations to see what it would look like because the middle schools would obviously add a lot more to the existing budget that we have and maybe over prescribing it.
So we have to think about how to do that in a fiscally responsible manner.
I totally appreciate that.
And I think maybe one of the best ways for us to do that is to continue to think through with the county what the general buy down would be for all youth fair in the city of Seattle.
It might get us out of that administrative bubble where we're kind of constantly running crosswise with SPS.
And as I understand it, they're now in the lookout for a new transportation director.
There's some uncertainty there is my point.
And whereas we can build off of that really great partnership and relationship that we've had with Metro, And as has been reported to this committee before, the youth pilot program that ran a couple of summers ago resulted in a tremendous increase in ridership.
So as we contemplate those kinds of strategies, we'd love for you to think about maybe we can just game the system instead of working with SPS and just make it cheaper for every kid to get on the bus regardless of where you go to school and where you live.
Absolutely.
Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox for a minute.
Councilmember Johnson especially on these topics.
So thank you all so much for the work you're doing.
I really appreciate Transit Advisory Board you guys doing amazing work both on this I know there's a lot of help towards move Seattle levy or the levy to move Seattle a lot of transit investments coming forward in that I know that's been kind of heavy lift to get the kind of reset done there.
It was a summer I'll say that.
And so, and obviously, you know, we've got some really great planning documents ready, and they've got a lot to deliver there.
Really grateful for the team at SDOT.
It's a really robust team that's really thinking through transit operations.
And the partnership, we talked a little bit about that with King County.
I'm not there with you all day to day, but my sense is it's really, it doesn't always happen where you have two government agencies that are working so well together.
And I'm sure there are some hiccups occasionally.
But such a robust partnership where we're spending tens of millions of dollars a year to buy up service, that helps all of us, including King County Metro.
That's in part why the transit service in this region is. continuing to grow at significant rates.
Well, around the country, it's not seeing that.
And so I really appreciate having the team here and to our colleagues at King County Metro who are being good partners too.
So thanks for all that.
Thank you.
We appreciate that.
Yeah.
We'll see you again soon.
Colleagues, that's all we have on the agenda today.
Thank you for the earlier start time.
And everyone have a safe commute today home.
Bye.