Good morning.
The February 17, 2021 meeting of the transportation and utilities committee will come to order.
The time is 931 AM.
I'm Alex Peterson, chair of this committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Thank you.
I'd like to note that Council Member Morales is unable to attend this meeting today, and her absence is excused.
Also, Council Member Strauss is planning to join us around 10 a.m.
or so, and so his delayed arrival is also excused.
Our alternate committee member is not able to join us today, but we have a quorum with our three members who are present.
Approval of the agenda.
If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.
hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.
The chair's report, just briefly, we've got a short agenda today.
We've got two items.
We will vote on Seattle City Light's integrated resource plan progress report on which we received a presentation and held a public hearing during our last committee meeting on February 3rd.
The materials are online for the public to view if you want to find the Transportation Utilities Committee agenda and click on the presentation and the resolution.
The second item, we will vote on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District Transit Service Agreement with King County Metro.
I want to thank the, in advance, thank the representatives from both departments who are here to speak to us about these pieces of legislation.
At this time, we will open the remote general public comment period.
I'm noting that we don't have any speakers signed up, so I'll ask IT or the clerk if they're seeing the same thing, if they can confirm there are no speakers that they're seeing on their end.
Affirmative, there are no public commenters.
Okay, so then we will go ahead and close the public comment period for today.
If people do join us later and they have comments, they can always send us an email about them, because these items will be presumably going to the full city council, so there's still time to comment on the items.
They can email council at Seattle.gov, which reaches all nine council members.
All right, to the items of business.
Item 1, will the clerk please read the short title of the first agenda item into the record?
Agenda item 1. resolution 31986, a resolution relating to the city light department acknowledging and approving the 2020 integrated resource plan progress report as conforming with the public policy objectives of the city of Seattle and the requirements of the state of Washington.
For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you.
I'll have just a couple of remarks here and then we'll turn it over as usual to our central staff analyst who works with all of us on the City Council, who's an expert on these issues.
State law requires Seattle City Light to produce and update and integrated resource plan, or IRP, every two years, which is approved by the City Council and submitted to the State Department of Commerce.
In the off years, City Light submits a progress report.
The last City Light IRP was approved in 2018 for 2019 and 2020, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated stresses, City Light asked for and received from the State Department of Commerce an extension to finalize preparation of the updated integrated resources plan and also for the ability to submit this progress report and place the full plan.
We had a presentation and held a public hearing on the progress report in our last committee meeting and today we can vote on it.
I'd like to turn it over to Eric McConaghy, our City Council Central staff member who's an expert on this, and then we can hear from Seattle City Light briefly.
We will not have the formal presentation today since we had that two weeks ago.
That PowerPoint, that presentation is online right now.
We heard it last week with the public hearing.
So Eric, if there's anything you want to say to help frame this up for us before we hear from City Light and vote on it.
Thank you.
Good morning.
I'm Eric McConaghy on the Council of Central Staff.
I think the only thing that I would add is that at the public hearing two weeks ago, there were no speakers, just sort of to put that on the record for the meeting today.
Of course, the hearing was held in compliance with the state law, the laws that require the hearing to happen before.
The IRP or project report is approved, so that's an important box to check, and it was done properly, and I just thought I'd get that on the record.
Other than that, Chair Peterson, I believe that you covered all the things that, in my capacity, I would like to note.
So with that, I'll step aside.
Thank you, Eric.
So we do have Seattle City Light here with us.
Aliza Selig is here.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I would like to thank you for being here the two weeks ago as well to present this to us.
Feel free to, for the public who might not have tuned in two weeks ago, a quick overview, but not the full presentation, and then we will, and I'll probably make a motion to go ahead and recommend approval of this.
Thank you, Chair Peterson.
Just as background, integrated resource plans and progress reports are good utility progress to help the utility develop guidance and strategy about long-term resource needs and resource choices to help the utility take necessary steps to assure affordability, reliability, and environmentally responsible energy services.
As you noted, utilities submit these every two years to the Washington State Department of Commerce.
Changes are happening.
The climate crisis has increased an urgency for new state and regional energy policies coupled with advancements in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
There's major changes happening in power supply.
This progress report that we're asking for approval provides foundational information that's going to guide future resource decisions.
It's important Because this is going to set the stage for valuable public and stakeholder engagement to keep us and customers in step with one another as we plan for the future in this new energy frontier that we're entering.
So We look forward to working with you and the public on our 2022 IRP, and we appreciate the opportunity to have presented in the last meeting two weeks ago, and are available for questions as they come up about how City Light is planning for the future.
Thank you, Aliza.
We see events around the country, climate events happening around the country now, and it really reinforces how important this type of planning is.
We added questions to our summary and fiscal note to ask about climate change, about emissions, but also about adaptability, about our resiliency to we are in the midst of now, and I feel Seattle City Light already has it in its organizational DNA to be thinking about adaptation to climate change, and appreciate your presenting this report to us and this progress report.
Council members, any comments or questions?
One moment, let me go to the Let me go to the raise hand function one moment.
Anybody?
Council President Gonzalez, thank you.
Thank you, Chair Peterson.
I also wanted to extend my thanks to folks over at the Seattle City Light.
What we are currently all as a nation witnessing happening in terms of the failure of the grid in Texas is just absolutely abhorrent.
And I am so grateful that we have a publicly owned utility that is I think the city has been highly accountable, highly transparent, and has been in my years of service on the city council always very prepared in terms of their planning.
And really just grateful for our entire city that we are such a high level of confidence and I think the people of the city of Seattle should have a high level of confidence that we have plans in place to prevent a complete failure of our electrical grid here.
And I know that this is at the top of mind for many folks in our city and I would just sort of invite I'm going to ask Maura or anyone else from Seattle City Light to maybe just share with us a couple of quick sentences with your indulgence, Chair Peterson, about how the utility is positioned well to avoid that kind of a crisis here in our own city.
I think it's important for folks in the city to hear directly from the utility about how we are positioned to avoid that kind of complete breakdown in our electrical grid.
Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.
I will let Aliza take that question since that's what her group does is resource planning and ensuring that we are prepared for today as well as the future.
Well, I would say that it's a multi-step process in terms of for City Light.
It's not just the integrated resource plan process.
It's also, there's a lot of planning that goes on at the utility on the distribution planning side that gets brought into making sure that we have a solid distribution grid, as well as transmission planning to make sure that we have the necessary interconnections with other utilities And then looking at our generation power supply and how that also is secure.
So it's a multi-stage process.
The IRP brings a lot of those components together, but City Light also through its strategic planning process is looking at overall to make sure that the City Light is well positioned for the future.
And so I can assure you that this is front and center in the minds of folks at City Light.
As we see these issues coming up, it is difficult with climate change and changing weather, but we have a strong commitment to being ready for climate adaptation and people focus within the utility on that to help us bring that data that we need to help prepare for the future.
with the decision-making, it's very important to make the decisions going forward on how we should be set up with our governing body and our public.
Thank you.
Thank you for putting that point on that, Council President Gonzalez, so we could hear from them about that directly.
Council members, any other questions or comments?
Okay, council members, I'd now like to move that the committee recommend approval of resolution 31986, item one on our agenda.
Is there a second?
I'll second that.
It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of resolution 31986. Any final comments?
Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this resolution be approved for forwarding to the full city council?
Gonzalez?
Aye.
Herbold?
Yes.
Chair Peterson?
Yes.
Three in favor, none opposed.
Excellent.
The motion carries, and the committee recommendation is that the resolution be sent for approval to the February 22nd city council meeting.
Will the clerk please read the short title of the next and final agenda item into the record?
Agenda item two, council bill 119998. and ordinance authorizing the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation to execute a transit service funding agreement with King County Metro Transit in order to implement Proposition 1 as approved by Seattle voters in the 2020 general election.
For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you.
I'll make some brief remarks, and then we'll turn it over to the folks at SDOT.
Voters overwhelmingly approved funds for our Seattle Transportation Benefit District, and we're now considering the updated Transit Service Agreement with King County Metro for bus service.
The Transit Service Agreement, as we know, spells out terms of enhanced bus service throughout Seattle.
Our agreement is important as we allocate bus service hours to get more people back on buses as our economy recovers and as our regional transportation network grows with the opening of new sound transit stations including two in District 4 and of course Northgate Station in District 5. Last Thursday, our city council central staff transportation expert, Calvin Chow, circulated his two-page memo analyzing the agreement that is online with the materials today, his memo.
This same item is on the consent calendar at King County Council because it's considered The six-year agreement is essentially the boilerplate framework updating the existing servicing agreement that we have used for the past six years with some slight modifications that we'll discuss today.
Today we have several members from the Seattle Department of Transportation here.
I'll go ahead and turn it over to our SDOT director, Sam Zimbabwe, who can introduce folks.
Thank you chair Peterson and good to be with you this morning.
We've got bill aboard here.
Candida Lawrence on a and Brianna level from our transit and mobility division.
We have a brief slide presentation, which we can walk through that Shauna is starting to share now.
I'll kick it off and then I'll turn it over to.
So you can go forward.
We're going to talk about a couple of things here, and this kicks off a couple of committee meetings that will focus on STBD overall.
Today we're talking about the implementation of the voter approved initiative from November.
And we'll talk a little bit about the implementation timeline, the funding agreement, which is in front of you today, a little bit about our spend plan, and then some of the next steps.
You can go on to the next slide.
After today, we've got a couple other things that we're going to come back and talk to you about STBD related.
As a reminder, the STBD was established in 2010. It supports transit service improvements as well as maintenance and a broad range of transportation projects overall.
There are two funding sources that we use.
There's a sales and use tax.
which was the subject of the voter-approved initiative back in November.
There's also the vehicle license fee.
The first Proposition 1 transit measure was approved in 2014, expired at the end of last year.
And today's focus is on the 2020 voter-approved 0.15% sales tax, or 15 cents on $100 purchase, that is focused on transit service improvements.
And so I'll turn it over to Bill and then Brianna to talk some of the details of this transit service agreement and how we will end up utilizing those voter-approved resources going forward.
Bill, take it away.
Thanks, Sam.
Next slide, please.
This slide covers a lot of the same ground that's covered in the central staff memo.
The contract goes into effect, or would go into effect if approved by you today on March 20, which is the next service change for Metro, and it would expire at the end.
2027, allowing some extra time for ramp down and contract close out at the end of 2027. Under the agreement, Metro, just talking a little bit about how Metro prices a service and how that's laid out in the agreement.
Metro estimates its fully allocated cost of fixed route bus service for the year based on their adopted budget and number of service hours that the city intends to purchase.
We pay per hour service hour a fully allocated cost that reflects Metro's cost of operating fixed route services, whether that's for Metro's regular service for Sound Transit Express or for service that the city of Seattle is purchasing through the STBD.
The fully allocated cost is, I think of it as it's Metro is essentially providing the service for us at their cost.
And so that operating cost includes operator wages and benefits, fuel, bus maintenance related to the service we're purchasing.
Some overhead, including planning costs, HR support, and legal support.
Also, we get about what historically has been about a 25% discount off of that fully allocated rate, reflecting Fairbox return, Fairbox credit.
And then we also pay capitalized cost for whatever additional buses Metro might need to purchase to cover peak hour service that the city is purchasing.
That was a pretty significant issue with the last agreement.
That's less likely to be an issue, at least for the first two to three years of this agreement.
Metro invoices us on a quarterly based on the estimates of that fully allocated cost.
At the end of each year, we then reconcile what was invoiced versus the actual operating cost and level of service operated.
And these provisions are all detailed in section five of the agreement.
A couple other things to note about the basic terms of the agreement is, as in Prop 1, where we made a commitment to the voters that this service would not supplant service that Metro is already providing or would provide without STBD involvement.
The contract in Section 7 addresses supplementation and essentially says that we will not be purchasing service that supplants what Metro would otherwise provide.
We do have some new terms in that section, primarily addressing supplementation in a service cut scenario as well as a service add scenario that dominated much of the past six years.
One other provision I want to note is that there's a ramp down provision in the agreement, and that prevents the city, except potentially in an emergency, from cutting more than 100,000 hours of service at a time.
So basically, it requires us to ramp down over two service change periods down to zero at the end of this agreement, or if there's a transition to a regional County funded service plan.
Next slide, please.
The other thing I want to just mention about the agreement is several provisions in section 5.7.
that help address the kinds of cross pressures.
Some moderate ones that we saw pre-COVID, and then some ones that were elevated during the COVID response.
So during COVID, service was suddenly reduced.
Operators were, not all operators were able to make their shifts.
Trips were cut, including trips that the city was purchasing.
Yet, and there were cuts and immediate cuts and costs, including fuel that wasn't being purchased, buses that didn't need to be maintained as much because they weren't making as many trips.
But at the same time, it took several months for a lot of those cost reductions to reflect the reductions in service.
Metro has cut several operator positions, but there's definitely quite a lag.
And through the end of 2020 and into 2021 and even 2022, we're probably paying more than we would otherwise be paying without the COVID response.
And a lot, and the biggest factor there was the loss of farebox return as Metro was not collecting fares for several months of the year in 2020. So we try to address those emergency situations by requiring Metro to disclose to the city as quickly as possible when they're seeing impacts on costs that might affect the amount of service, the service quality that the city can provide.
We also have a provision in the agreement that addresses the distribution of CARES Act or other COVID relief funding that the federal government might provide.
And finally, there's a commitment by Metro to cut costs.
We were seeing costs pre-COVID going up about 5% a year, so a little bit higher than than CPI.
And both in the in a county executive's commitment to the mayor and in the agreement itself, there's a commitment by Metro to help alleviate those increases above inflation that we were seeing in the years before COVID.
And I'll hand it over to Brianna Lovell, who will talk about the service spend plan and service planning.
Thanks, Bill.
So this slide shows the overall process.
Brianna, excuse me, Brianna.
We're having trouble hearing you, your audio.
That's not working either.
Can you hear me?
Not very well.
You sound very far away.
It worked OK in testing.
I'm still not hearing you.
Maybe without the headset.
Your neighbors can't hear you.
I might turn off my camera, because this is going to have to get through this.
That works.
All right.
Sorry about that.
Good work.
So this slide shows the process that we use to coordinate with Metro.
We've used this process since 2016, but the new contract sort of clarifies the timing.
So the process really starts six months in advance of the service change.
Metro has two annual service changes, one in September and one in March.
So six months In advance of that date, we let Metro know what our initial service proposal is.
They review what we've proposed and then they bring that information together with their own service plans to review for operational feasibility and to make sure that everything will be able to work cohesively.
And then by four months in the planning process, we have essentially a finalized service package which allows Metro to move into scheduling and arranging operational staffing.
But I will note that in reality, there's a huge amount of collaboration that occurs throughout the process, even well in advance of that month one and all throughout the process up until the date of the service change and continuing our really great relationships with Metro.
We've been able to solve a lot of problems that come up in this process at the staff level.
Next slide.
So this slide shows the overall transit service investments that are planned for the measure.
There's a total of $238.6 million in transit service purchases over the seven years.
Noting that the 2021 revenue collection begins in April, so the first quarter of expenditures for this year are covered as part of the prior STBD measure.
Regular transit service purchases are shown in dark blue on this slide.
The light blue is showing service purchases that are part of the emerging needs bucket, which is focused on transit service supporting West Seattle during the bridge closure and also on transit recovery post COVID.
This slide doesn't include the expenditures for our programmatic investments in ORCA opportunity, low income access to transit, the essential workers program, and also transit capital.
But it does show service ramping up over the life of the measure with a planned ramp down or transition period in 2027. And with that, I'll pass it back to Sam.
Great.
Thanks, Brianna.
Just to wrap up and then turn it over for happy to answer questions.
But again, this is part of a couple months of very STBD intensive work with the committee.
Today, we're focused on the ordinance authorizing the transit service funding agreement in March.
We'll be bringing forward a standalone budget legislation for one-time $60 vehicle license fee.
These are some of the reserves and balances that were left over at the end of the previous ballot initiative and that were held in reserve in case of an unsuccessful challenge to initiative 976. In March 20th, mid-March, the new transit service funding agreement will be in effect as Metro goes into their next service change, assuming successful process here.
And then in April, we'll be proposing a new spending plan for a new $20.
vehicle license fee that was approved as part of the budget that will go into effect July 1st.
So these are all, there's a lot of moving pieces.
This puzzle piece diagram is getting a workout within SDOT, but wanted to make sure that we talked about this in the context of some of these larger pieces that are coming forward and while remaining focused right now on the implementation of Proposition 1 from November.
So with that, we're all happy to answer any questions you might have.
Thank you, Director Zimbabwe, and thanks to your team for their presentation and for providing that additional context.
Today's the easy part.
Today's the Transit Service Agreement, which is over at King County Council on their consent calendar.
You know, we have open lines of communication with General Manager Terry White, who's terrific to work with, Council Member King County Council Member Rod Dombowski, who chairs their Mobility Committee.
But we have a strong transit team within SDOT to make sure that these investments are made wisely and to benefit the most people and have great confidence in them to keep their eye on things for us and make sure the transit service agreement is implemented appropriately.
And this is something that we visit on an annual basis as well when we look at investments in transit.
So, you know, as the light rail stations open up, for example, and there need to be tweaks, those can be made later.
We have a great relationship with Metro, but this agreement is even better than the good agreement we already had in place with them.
There was a lot learned during the COVID pandemic.
when we were trying to get information during an extraordinary event.
So this transit service agreement increases transparency and accountability during extraordinary events.
We also look forward to not only, you know, working with King County Metro within this framework, but, you know, potentially four years from now looking at another regional measure where we could, because this is really a regional system that we're trying to work within.
Calvin Chow, our city council central staff expert on transportation, wrote the two-page memo, which is online, which validates the benefits of this agreement.
Calvin's here, so Calvin, do you want to say a few words before we open it up to council members for questions?
Council members, I don't think I have too much else to add, except just to remind you that you did pass the budget for 2021 in the last budget.
And as you say, the future spending decisions will come to you again with the annual budgeting process.
So this agreement sets the vehicle for making those purchases, but the policy decisions about how much service and sort of the spending plans, those will come to you again as part of future budget deliberations.
Thank you, Calvin, and I always appreciate the pun, vehicle, which is appropriate here.
So council member and vice chair, Dan Strauss is here with us now as well.
He's already very familiar with this transit services agreement in place already and the new one before us, but council members just wanted to open it up for any questions or comments on this before we take a vote.
Chair Peterson.
Yes, council member Strauss.
Thank you all.
My apologies for being late.
The Fremont Chamber of Commerce had a nine to 10 a.m.
meeting where we discussed some of your programs.
I was just wondering, and thank you for the briefing ahead of this meeting.
I don't know if Bill or Brianna, you can speak on slide four.
Could we briefly go back?
My apologies, colleagues.
And if you have already answered this for the committee, the questions that I will ask, please feel free to just say we already covered this.
We probably have not.
So it's OK.
So slide four, the ramp down, I had my questions answered about that.
Supplementation.
Oh, the intended volume of services.
My question that I talked to Bill about was, does this include the routes like the 5X, the 17X, 18X, 15X?
How does this, as people begin to work downtown again, how will we ensure that some of these routes that have fallen off due to ridership levels, how will we ensure that they come back?
I'll let Brianna answer that since she's the one who leads the service purchase decisions, each service change period.
Sure.
Yeah, thanks, Bill.
So we are working really closely with Metro to understand what they're planning in terms of service restoration.
And right now, what we're really focused on is the September 2021 service change.
And we're still in the process of identifying what investments STBD will make and also understanding Metro's process for bringing back service that has been suspended during COVID.
So there's a little bit of interplay there.
And Metro really is the entity that's running the vast majority of the system, but we will be trying to be very strategic with our investments from the STVD standpoint to support COVID recovery, but also making sure to maintain the investments in the frequent service network that have been sort of the bulk of our focus in the previous measure and continue to be our focus going forward.
One thing I'll add to that is that it, I think what Brianna has described in the service planning process that we go through twice a year with metros, it really is an iterative process with metro staff.
We're trying to understand what service they're putting on the road and where we can most effectively fill in gaps or enhance service based on on demand, on maintaining our frequent transit network, on equity, as we'll really dig into that question time for the September service change through our racial equity toolkit work that is already underway.
And so we really try to bring our values as well as understanding what Metro is already providing in the service we're purchasing.
And if I could add also that we also know that transit use, continued use of transit during the pandemic has been different depending on different routes across the city.
So as things come back, we expect that to kind of fluctuate as well.
And that's part of the service planning process is to figure out how best to allocate those resources as we go up.
But this ensures that the funding ensures that we have some resources with which to fill gaps.
Great, thank you.
That answers that question.
Chair, may I?
I've got questions on three slides.
Yes, please.
Excellent.
So the next questions are on slide five, then seven, and then eight.
Great.
So on slide five, I know that when we had conversations ahead of this meeting, there was a discussion about purchasing of new coaches.
I just wanted to clarify, is the city purchasing coaches?
Are we leasing the coaches from Metro?
How are we better able to expand the level of service that we receive here in the city with the actual purchasing of capital of the coaches themselves?
So I'll try to start with an answer to that question.
The purchase of coaches, it really becomes an issue with peak hour service.
Otherwise, Metro's existing fleet is adequate and And for peak hours, probably for the next couple of years, their existing fleet will adequately cover peak hours as well.
In the previous six years, pre-COVID, Metro wouldn't have been able to provide additional peak hour service if we hadn't been able to fund the purchase of coaches.
And the way that worked is we essentially paid a capitalized rate, or it must work like a lease rate where we were paying for the use of those coaches on a quarterly basis during the time following their purchase.
And we would only pay more if we're causing Metro to buy more coaches.
Great, thanks.
What I'm hearing is that it's really the peak hours that that are our level of service issues.
So I guess my question is understanding that and my question comes from an understanding of pre pandemic where we had the number of cars on the road that caused a lot of traffic.
If we were able to create a connected network of bus only lanes through the city, would that reduce our need to purchase coaches?
Would it reduce any costs?
And would it increase the level of service that we experience for the same or fewer dollars than we're spending?
It would definitely, by and large, it would definitely improve the quality of service and that rider experience and sense of reliability.
It would probably temper costs, alleviate costs increases.
I couldn't say there would be massive wholesale cuts in costs, but it would certainly push things in a good direction in terms of costs.
to have a reliable bus only network of routes.
I would just add to that that it really depends on the efficacy of the transit lane network because you don't start to see a real cost savings until Metro can actually take a whole trip out of the schedule.
So the time savings has to really roll up into a a meaningful increment.
But if it does, then there's certainly a potential to be able to basically buy more service with the same resources if we're able to speed up the service.
So like when I would see four or five 40 buses stuck on West Lake, that would be a place that we might not, we could reduce a trip because the trips are, they're all getting jammed together.
as the system was operating before.
Is that a correct understanding?
We can reduce costs as long as we can reduce the number of trips required by increasing frequency.
fare is just hard to quantify a little bit, as Brianna said.
And I think we, I think on that front, we and Metro have shared interest in making our transit investments efficient, reliable, and speedy.
So, and really that goes back to the rider experience that attracts people to transit, but it also gets the most out of our shared investments in transit service.
I think this also brings up that same issue of how is the economy going to recover?
What do transit patterns look like going forward?
Do they go back to the same peak dependent traffic patterns and transit patterns or is it something different?
Metro currently has the capital capacity to handle sort of this lower level of, you know, the level of service that we anticipate for the near future, it's really an open question about what that looks like five, 10 years further down the line.
Council Member Strauss, we might have other questions about this slide, which is jam-packed with info.
Are we able to see if we have other questions about this before we go back to your other questions?
Yeah, this is all my questions for slide five.
Okay.
Council members, any questions for this slide?
Council President Gonzalez.
Thank you, Chair Peterson.
On this particular slide, there is a joint there's the line talking about joint efforts to reduce cost escalation drivers and then it talks about how Metro agrees with city support to alleviate drivers of cost escalation in non-emergency years.
Can you can you talk a little bit more about the Intent of this language in the, in the new in the new agreement.
Yeah, probably the best way of looking at that is that so we're buying.
Heading into this new six-year period, we're going to be buying around 4% of Metro's service.
Sound Transit's buying about 8% of their service that Metro provides, bus service that Metro provides for Sound Transit Express.
and the rest is Metro's own service.
That fully allocated hourly cost is essentially what Metro is paying regardless of who's using the service, whether it's Metro itself or Sound Transit or the city is purchasing.
The drivers and I don't, I don't mean bus drivers, the drivers of those costs are, you know, a lot of its labor costs, some of its fair policy.
Some of its, you know, just the fact that we were, we started off with a solid 25%.
Fairbox return early in the last six year period, and that's inched down a little bit more, a little bit lower than 25% as Metro has not increased fares for a few years.
They were scheduled, I think, to increase fares this year, in fact, either this year or maybe early next year, and that's they're not going to raise fares because of COVID.
So, you know, those are measures that increase costs to the city for the service we buy.
Metro's under tremendous pressure in its own right to alleviate costs by their council, and they're feeling that pressure from Seattle and Sound Transit as well.
And so, Metro's really trying to trying to sort of scrub all of those factors that go into costs and trying to figure out where they can cut costs through increased efficiencies as we return to recovery.
And a lot of that's reflected in the new county budget that's now in effect.
Got it.
I appreciate the clarification.
I, with my labor standards brain, was reading that a little differently.
So I think the structure of the sentence made me feel like we were talking about drivers.
And so I appreciate the clarification that you're talking about sort of effectively just factors that can result in escalated cost.
That's helpful.
In this agreement, are there any provisions in this agreement that address or deal with sort of workforce, actual bus driver issues?
There really isn't.
That's completely within Metro's domain and not something that we asked for Metro to cede any authority to us, nor something I think that Metro would be willing or even could legally cede to the city.
Yeah and I guess I'm not asking, thanks I appreciate that.
I didn't mean to imply that I believe that Metro should cede labor authority to us.
We are a large purchaser of services which relies on people and their ability to fulfill the service levels we're purchasing from them inherently touches on issues related to their labor and their workforce.
And because we are a large purchaser of services, I suppose I'm not, I was wondering if there was anything in the agreement that sort of talks about the city's expectations around as a purchaser of those services, sort of our expectations around, um, you know, working conditions or, or, or just, or, or how the County is, um, addressing, um, concerns from their, uh, workforce in the spirit of continuing to be, um, a city that, that is a high road employer and, and wants to have, uh, partnerships and engagement with, um, with regional partners who have the same values and are willing to sort of commit to those values publicly.
Yeah.
You know, beyond some very general language that honestly isn't that specific towards labor in the recitals at the beginning of the agreement, there really isn't.
I think partly just because the amount of service we're purchasing is such a small share.
of what Metro provides.
And I think, too, also just that, you know, that we know that Metro and county government is very committed to high labor standards and and working with a represented workforce.
So I think we felt like it wasn't something that Seattle necessarily needed to provide leverage on or came up in the discussions.
I can also say, you know, I think there's agreement which governs and binds us on certain things.
And then there's the work that we do in partnership with Metro outside of the agreement.
And I think there are, as you mentioned, Council President, there's shared values that we see in our work with Metro as well.
And even if those aren't articulated in the to be able to deliver high-quality service.
In the binding part of the agreement, there is certainly partnership in how to deliver high-quality service for all of our riders.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilmember Strauss, I know you have a couple more questions.
Please continue.
Are we able to fund the foot ferry service?
Maybe you already answered this.
I can go ahead and jump in there.
So we're still working to kind of finalize our planned investments for West Seattle and particularly looking at the next September service change in our coordination with Metro and then working with our Reconnecting West Seattle team within SDOT.
We have looked at the water taxi service that Metro operates.
And I think at this point, we're really looking to focus STPD investment on the fixed route service network.
And like I said, kind of in line with the overall principles for the program, trying to bolster the frequent service network as much as possible.
It is fairly expensive to add water taxi service.
And I think that's an area where we'd like to continue conversations with Metro about what they might be looking at from their own perspective in terms of supporting mobility in West Seattle.
Well, I won't necessarily advocate for more service to West Seattle unless I hear from some of the West Seattle electeds, but I just noticed that making that connection to the downtown corridor.
It's a direct connection to the transit spine that is Sound Transit and many of our bus lines.
But I don't want to advocate for something that I see Councilmember Herbold often needs.
I don't want to jump ahead of her on this one.
And I think Councilmember, you know, the funding proposition allows that type of spending.
So that is something that could be explored if the demand and need for it arises.
This funding agreement is very specific to the bus transit service.
So there's other work that would need to be done to kind of figure out how and if that made sense.
Great, which leads me to my next question, which is, what is this, the percentage of Metro's overall budget?
This level of service purchase amounts to about 3 or 4% of Metro's overall system.
So it is less than in the prior measure where in recent years we've gotten up to as high as 10% of Metro's system.
But I think it is really important to keep in mind that at the end of the day, Metro is still the entity providing the vast majority of transit service.
And how does that compare to the last agreement?
You said it was up as high as 10% and now it's down to 3%.
Did I hear that correctly?
It was up to about 8% in the last agreement.
And part of that was because we had reached sort of a funding peak that was higher than sort of a sustainable year over year funding level in the last couple of years of the previous measure.
And so, yes, our current investment is closer to 3 or 4%.
Great.
Thank you, Brianna.
And, Chair, those are all my questions for slide 7.
Thank you.
Council Member Herbold, did you have any questions?
Thank you.
Go ahead.
I do.
I do want to go back to slide 7 and specifically as it relates to the emerging need for West Seattle bump in the graphic there.
Just interested to understand a little bit about some of the assumptions that that graphic seems to convey as far as the the message it's sending.
It looks like we're only looking at boy, a bump of, I don't know, maybe a million dollars for 2021, but upwards of five million for 2022. Can you talk a little bit about the assumptions underlying the allocation for those two years, assumptions around ridership, assumptions around social distancing, people returning to work, people who continue to have concerns about riding transit in a time when hopefully we will be, more of us will be vaccinated, but there may be still some concerns about transit ridership.
Sure, I can speak to that.
So part of that is the somewhat sort of lumpy nature of the service change process, as we talked about a little bit, with only two service changes a year and a sort of six-month planning horizon.
You know, it takes us a little while to coordinate with Metro and to be able to actually get service out on the road.
So that's why for 2021, our options were really limited to the September service change, which we are working on and looking at, but it just doesn't mean that there will be that many months of service purchase in 2021. So we're currently looking at a bigger purchase in 2022, which is when we expect these things will sort of all align a little bit more with increasing transit ridership post-COVID as well as the bridge repair work and continued bridge closure.
There's a lot of uncertainty, I think, as you highlighted around what transit recovery will look like and exactly when we will start to see higher ridership, as well as from the public health perspective, when Metro might be considering changes to their capacity restrictions.
It is difficult to exactly anticipate the amount of service that will be needed, but we're working right now with Metro to understand what their service plans are and trying to, I think, make sure that we are able to provide enough service to support a robust recovery and to give us the flexibility in case the capacity limits last maybe longer than we might have expected.
So I think there's still a lot that's unknown, but we're doing our best to plan for a pretty robust service operations in 2022.
I'm just a follow-up on that.
My recollection is that the emerging needs category to address, these are goals we have for additional Metro service capacity to encourage more people to take the bus in light of the West Seattle Bridge closure as people are returning to work.
And our mode shift goals are pretty significant.
I seem to remember that there were trying to move about 30% more people onto transit.
That is not only buses, it's also water taxi.
But remind me, the allocation that we have in the Transportation Benefit District measure for those emerging needs associated with trying to move people onto transit is about, was it 9 million a year?
up to $9 million is allowed.
All the up tos combined together is more than the funding available, but up to $9 million is allowed per year.
Okay, thank you.
And glad you're back on, Calvin.
Did I hear you say that the emerging needs category is only for buses?
Because I thought water taxi was eligible.
No, the spending could be on water taxi as well.
My point is that the agreement that's in front of you is authorizing the bus spending services with Metro.
And so to fund additional service on water taxi would likely require a different agreement.
Okay.
And I guess that's, I think, part of the question I have, I'm just wondering, how do we get a little bit of a preview of what is going to be likely to be recommended in the upcoming service edition recommendations, you know, prior to them coming to us in a subsequent conversation sort of after their you know, all cooked.
How do we learn more?
How does the public get involved before those recommendations are being made?
So I think maybe some of those things are things that we can come back to the committee with some broader updates on the West Seattle Bridge program, likely in March.
And I think those are some topics that we can bring forward at that point.
The, the service investments that we make will be made under the umbrella of this.
This agreement, and so we can get into more specifics and details there.
I think your point about people's.
when and how to have people ride transit in greater numbers again is right on.
I recently took the bus.
I was really impressed with both my fellow bus riders masking up and also all the safety precautions that Metro and really collectively as a whole, all of the transit providers in this region have put into place and the diligence with which they've done that.
It was the first time in a little while that I'd taken the bus.
I felt very comfortable and safe in doing so.
But recognize that there is a capacity constraint in how to achieve the mode shift that we will need to have from West Seattle to have sustainable transportation back and forth.
One thing I could add about your question about our proposals for September and future service changes is we do have created in the wake of the first Prop 1, we do have a transit advisory board and we meet with them monthly and do run our service change proposals by them.
Uh, in advance and at the same time.
Uh, we've at least through the last measure we had in, I assume this will continue.
We met on a monthly basis with council staff just to brief them on.
the same kind of information we're providing to the transit advisory board.
And so that's certainly one way that that information can come to you in advance of us finalizing the service purchase decisions.
And just one additional question, if I could.
Of course.
Thank you.
I'm just a little bit confused.
I may have missed an explanation here.
When I asked the question about the the modest bump for 2021 for emerging needs for West Seattle as compared to 2022. I thought what I heard was the reason is because there aren't going to be service additions until September, but I thought that we'd do service additions in March and September.
So what did I miss?
I'm sorry.
So go ahead, go ahead.
That's absolutely correct.
There will be a service change this March.
I think the the crux of the issue is really it's kind of the information on the slide after this one.
I think around the service planning process, which requires quite a bit of lead time.
And because of a couple of different things that were pretty unique to this year, including the November election to determine whether there would be continued STPD funding as well as uncertainty around I-976.
We weren't really in a position when we were beginning planning for this March service change to have Metro run full steam ahead with a major service ad in West Seattle.
So we will still certainly be making some service investments and trying to maintain some of the investments that we already have had in West Seattle.
It's just mostly that we aren't able to shift a lot of new resources over in time for this March service change.
The bar on that same slide for transit service that goes from zero to upwards of $20 million represents the new transit service under the the transportation benefit district.
Is that correct?
So you're adding service for the rest of the city under the transportation benefit district.
Much of that is service that was being purchased under the old measure.
So a lot of that is continuation of service we have in purchasing.
We don't have as much money as we did have, so we are seeing reductions in general.
And some of that does serve West Seattle.
I just want to be clear.
That's citywide service that is sustaining the level of service.
And part of the reason why the blue bar is a little bit lower than the others, as a reminder, the STBD prop will only collect three quarters of a year of revenue during the first year of, during 2021, because the sales tax won't go into effect until April 1st.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you, colleagues, for all those questions about the Transit Service Agreement.
I want to take a step back and thank the voters for approving the funding and making this possible.
King County Council will be voting on this as well this week or next.
And I want to thank the strong transit team we have within SDOT to help craft the enhancements to the agreement we already had from the previous measure.
And thank Calvin for his memo explaining these updates and appreciate all the questions from everybody to flesh things out for the public record.
I really believe this is a strong agreement.
It's even better than the good one we had in place, and I look forward to supporting it.
Any final questions?
Okay, council members.
Will the clerk, well, let me make a motion to recommend approval of Council Bill 119998, item two on our agenda.
Is there a second?
Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill.
Any final comments?
Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that Council Bill 119998 be approved for forwarding to the full city council?
Gonzalez?
Aye.
Herbold?
Yes.
Strauss?
Yes.
Chair Peterson?
Yes.
Four in favor, none opposed.
Excellent.
The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the bill be sent for approval to the February 22nd City Council meeting.
Council members, if there's nothing else, this concludes the February 17, 2021 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.
This committee plans to meet again on March 3rd.
Thank you everybody for attending.
We are adjourned.
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