Joint Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee & Sound Transit Meeting 2/1/19

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to a special meeting of the City of Seattle Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I'm chair of this committee.

This is a special meeting that we're convening to talk about the West Seattle Ballard Linking section, and we are the elected leaders group for that.

Today is Friday, February 1st, 2019. It's about 9.35 a.m.

And I'm going to hand it off to my co-chair of the Elected Leaders Group, Joe McDermott.

Good morning.

Thank you, Mike.

I want to welcome everyone to the fifth Elected Leaders Group meeting for Sound Transit's Westfield and Ballard Link light rail extensions.

This group includes a select group of Sound Transit board members, Seattle City Council members, Port of Seattle.

and happens to be a special meeting, as Council Member O'Brien has pointed out, of the City Council's Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

I'm Joe McDermott with the King County Council, co-chairing with Mike O'Brien.

And for over a year, it doesn't seem like over a year already, but for over a year, we have been meeting to develop recommendations to the Sound Transit Board regarding alignment alternatives with the most promise, community support, and feasibility.

We kicked off the process with early scoping at the beginning of last year, where Sound Transit collected several ideas from agencies, communities, and individuals about what they would like to see Sound Transit study for the coming phases of the project.

Throughout the process, input from engaged parties has informed what the engineers and planners have studied and evaluated during the alternative development process.

We are getting closer to making those recommendations on what to study further in the environmental impact statement or EIS phase, which starts later this year.

A lot more work has gone into getting us to this point.

but there is even more work to do as we prepare for scoping, which is a critical period for public comment.

When Sound Transit gets approval from the federal government, this project will enter a scoping period, perhaps as early as this month, and it is vital that the community members weigh in during that 30-day period, even if you have already provided comments before.

Sound Transit will gather all of the comments, which will then help us make our final recommendation.

We will not be making any recommendations or formal decisions today.

This meeting is an opportunity for us to hear directly from you, the public, and learn about recent and upcoming community engagement activities, and also more information and review about the level three alternatives, and review the further analysis that Sound Transit staff has been conducting.

I'm eager to dig into the details with all of you, but first I'll turn it over for more introduction from Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you, Councilmember McDermott.

I want to take a minute just to reiterate this critical phase we're entering.

It's a really important time in the phasing of this project as we enter the scoping period to gather additional input on the work that's been done thus far.

And so as Councilmember McDermott said, it's really important.

for organizations, people, the public to be putting their comments into that scoping period to help shape what happens next.

There'll be many ways to engage in that period.

We're going to have open houses, community workshops, an online open house.

We can do it through emails and through phone messages, but we want to hear from folks during this period.

As we continue to gather input from communities and agencies, we will continue to weigh the opportunities and challenges of the alternatives and make recommendations on what to carry forward through the environmental impact statement.

I want to thank all the folks who have gotten involved so far.

It's been reassuring to see so many communities engaged deeply in these decisions that are going to have a long-lasting impact on our city and our region.

I want to thank the members of the Stakeholder Advisory Group who have spent many hours with Sound Transit staff and out in communities asking tough questions and helping shape this project and the work we do here as the elected leadership group.

I also want to highlight the important work that the city and Sound Transit have done together through the Racial Equity Toolkit.

I'm a big supporter of Racial Equity Toolkits on projects like this and the outcomes that we're moving towards, such as enhancing mobility and access for communities of color and low-income populations, creating opportunities for equitable development that benefit communities of color.

avoiding disproportionate impacts on communities of color and low-income populations, and meaningfully involving communities of color and low-income populations in this project.

There's a lot more work to be done.

I'm proud of where we are today, and I look forward to the continuing work on that racial equity toolkit as we move forward.

Now I'd like to hand it over to Don Billen, who's the Director of Sound Transit Planning, Environment, and Project Development, for a few more words.

Don.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And on behalf of Peter Rogoff, I'd just like to welcome this esteemed group of elected officials and thank you for your efforts to help Sound Transit fulfill its mission, which is to connect more people to more places.

Your engagement has been key to narrowing alternatives and maximizing alternatives based on your values and community input.

Sound Transit is very thankful of the time and energy that you've put into this process to truly understand the cost, benefits, and trade-offs of the alternatives that we are evaluating.

Working collaboratively with leadership on the ground helps us identify and address issues early heading off any future delays, and making it possible to meet the schedule approved in ST3.

Many thanks for your time and great thinking on connecting more people to more places.

Thank you, Don.

The next item on the agenda is public comment.

I have eight folks signed up, so I'll call you in batches, and you come on up to the mic.

You'll have up to two minutes to make public comment.

Alex Zimmerman, you're going to be first, followed by Mark Knudson, and then Dennis Noland.

See you, hi, my lovely, lovely, lovely, very lovely, dirty Fuhrer.

A Nazi garbage rat, tax sucker, criminal, and bandito.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

Why are you talking about this minority?

It's a fascism.

It's a very interesting kind of fascism.

You mention minority, but $100 billion in sound transit is going to corporations and FedCat and you.

You're not mentioning this.

What are you talking about, minority?

You're talking about five percentage people who will drive?

sound transit, train, or 95% of people who drive a car.

It's a very interesting kind of crook that I've seen for many years.

And right now I speak to everybody who listens to me.

We need to clean this dirty chamber from these banditas, from these criminals, because they represent what I call a Nazi social democratic mafia.

No one from them against sound transit, never.

When I hear one voice, everybody, everybody under agenda, what is called this Nazi social democratic mafia.

They are Nazi.

He represent only small group of people.

It's exactly what has happened.

It is exactly what I speak right now.

So please, Everybody in exactly the 700,000 emerald degenerate idiots who live in Seattle cannot understand it will cost us $100 billion.

When we need 250,000 apartments for low income, when 50% of people are in low income right now, we pay for everything.

There's 50% too.

No 5% pay for this.

So right now I speak to everybody.

Stand up, America.

Stand up, Seattle.

Clean this dirty chamber from this Nazi.

Thank you.

Mark Knudson's next.

You have our attention, Mark.

Good morning.

Thanks.

I'm Mark Knudson, representing SSA Marine, one of the major terminal operating companies.

We're headquartered in Harbor Island.

And we're in the unique position where the north alignment goes through a container terminal that we operate, and the south alignment goes through our headquarters.

But it was important, I think, as we look at this.

It's hard for us to give you an advised position right now with the lack of information and as a design evolves.

But it's very important to us to make sure that the container terminal efficiency and transportation flows to the terminal stay intact.

It's critical to the access to the gateway.

Congestion at our terminals leads to cargo moving to other locations.

We've been fortunate with the Northwest Seaport Alliance to rebuild cargoes in Seattle, and you followed the news as that has happened.

So it's critically important for us that that As the alignment, if it's the north alignment that you choose, that we work on designs that make that be effective for us and improve the transportation flows.

But it's critically important that as you look at your alignment choice, you pay attention to the container activities.

The two container terminals in Seattle, the Terminal 5 and Terminal 18 that are impacted by this, are both around 200 acre terminals.

That's the size we need for terminals for the ships that we have in today's environment.

Those are not replaceable.

Those are critical pieces of infrastructure that we have in Seattle.

So I just urge you to really look at the transportation impacts.

We'd like to see an opportunity where both the mass transit improvement is made for all the various reasons that that's logical, and also improvements to our transportation infrastructure.

Maritime office related buildings like our headquarters, they can be moved.

We're happy where we are, but they can be moved and relocated.

They don't need to be water dependent.

Container terminals are, and we urge you to pay a lot of attention to our container terminal transportation flow as you do your analysis.

There you are.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

I really appreciate your engaging in this process.

Look forward to scoping comments.

And obviously we're going to learn a lot more as we go through the EIS.

We'll want to make sure that we're having those conversations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dennis Dennis Nolan's gonna be followed by Marguerite Richard and then Kathleen Johnson Good morning, thanks for having me Dennis Nolan and Sound Transit is planning track routing in a Delridge light rail station that will directly impact many of 90-plus homes located in two square blocks of Youngstown.

What's particularly disappointing is that this planning has progressed along as far as it has without, until very recently, direct impact from residents of this neighborhood.

This community of homes is an outstanding example of what Seattle professes at once, diversity of incomes, ethnicities, ages, lifestyles, families with young children, retirees, and multi-generational households, mixed and affordable housing, easy access to the city core, increasing density, proximity to transit.

It's craziness, in my opinion, that this neighborhood's heart and soul and profound sense of community will be wiped out.

We are more than a line on a map.

These are real people.

This neighborhood is a neighborhood that light rail was designed to serve.

Before decisions are made, please reconsider every option.

Get creative.

Find ways to minimize the impacts of light rail construction on this neighborhood.

The question is, how can we preserve this neighborhood and accommodate the needs of light rail?

To answer this, we need feet on the ground, and we need your feet on the ground.

Council members McDermott and Herbold have walked the neighborhood with me and met neighbors.

Executive Konstantinos agreed to walk the neighborhood.

I invite all of you to walk the neighborhood with me.

I'll reach out to schedule.

The Youngstown neighborhood, what I speak is between Southwest Dakota and Southwest Genesee streets between Delridge and 26th Southwest as a point of reference.

Delridge Playfield is located at the south end on Genesee and the DSHS office building is at the north.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dennis.

I appreciate your engagement and your working directly with folks and really highlighting some important values that we share.

So we'll continue to be processing that.

Thanks.

Marguerite?

Yes.

Good day, everyone.

Welcome to February 1st, Black History Month.

I want to speak a little bit about this race and social justice toolkit in regards to the systematic oppression, repression, depression, and suppression and how you monitor this room and people that use free speech.

Just take myself, for instance, can't go into City Hall and the Municipal Tower because of Bruce Harrell.

I don't know if you call it insanity, borderline insanity that would do such a thing to a black person that's sitting up here making history right now just because I'm allowed to speak.

It's very important that we get an opportunity to speak, speak the truth.

You know, like they say, truth and justice in the American way.

So I'm having a problem with people talking about training bias as a way to coddle us, to make us think that you're going to do something, you're going to make a change, and you don't do it.

And I'm very much concerned about that because I keep repeating myself.

And that's not a good thing.

You don't want to keep repeating yourself and doing the same thing like Olympus getting ready to celebrate 100 years.

So 100 years ago, we were talking about race.

And we're still there talking about race.

And so I think that you need to separate yourself from our race, get yourself out of our business, and stop putting people on Sound Transit and other buses to take away our rights and our liberties.

And don't tell me I didn't see it because I saw it the other day, this man that's running after, I guess he looked like a homeless man that couldn't pay his fare.

Why do you have a police state on a bus to harm the people, huh?

Have you figured that out yet?

Thank you, Marguerite.

Kathleen?

Kathleen, you're going to be followed by Taylor Huerta and Eugene Wasserman.

Thank you.

I'm Kathleen Johnson, and I am the Executive Director at Historic South Downtown.

I'm here representing the people and the businesses in Chinatown International District and Pioneer Square.

Like many of the thousands of people who live and work in the neighborhoods around this building, I took light rail to work this morning, and we know and we appreciate the complexity and the importance of your work.

I am here to ask if the council would consider, the elected leaderships group would consider recommending an extension of the scoping period.

I had previously conversed with some of you about delaying it, but I think we're changing that request now to extending it.

to last through April.

Many of you have participated in providing funding sources for our community to build up our capacity so that we can gather information and be as effective as possible in the scoping conversation.

We deeply appreciate that.

Thank you for your leadership, Council Member O'Brien.

And we want to take maximum effect of that money by having a little bit more time in the scoping period.

We believe we'll be able to do that.

So again, we are asking for an extension of the scoping period to last through the month of April.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kathleen.

We appreciate the request and share the outcome of wanting to give you as much time to get the kind of thoughtful feedback we want this scoping period.

And we'll continue to work with you and the agency to negotiate and navigate that in the coming weeks.

Thanks.

Taylor.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you guys.

I'll keep my story quick and personal.

I live on Southwest Dakota Street and 25th in the neighborhood that Dennis spoke to you guys about.

My wife and I have lived in Seattle for 15 plus years renting in various neighborhoods across the city and finally achieved our dream of home ownership in January of 2016. Ecstatic to be able to own a home in the city of Seattle in the current market climates.

close to downtown, close to our jobs.

Owning that house provided the stability that we needed to start our family.

We got more than we bargained for in July when we had twins, so we now have six-month-old twins at home, so stretched pretty thin ourselves.

But the current plan being considered by Sound Transit would essentially throw that stability into question, potentially destroying the neighborhood that we live in and the home that we love.

We only found out about this around Christmas time when Dennis came and knocked on our door.

So I know you guys have been talking about it for a year and a half, but a large percentage of our neighbors had no idea that this was happening.

Which is concerning?

So these plans would essentially Effectively displace us from the city of Seattle because we won't be able to purchase a comparable home in a comparable area In the current market we're gonna have to be pushed far outside of Seattle away from our jobs away from our relationships It's gonna disrupt our child care which obviously is a huge issue for us with two twin infants So I guess urging you guys to reconsider options that would not destroy our neighborhood I know there were options on the table prior to this stage We've done tunnels in other areas and Beacon Hill.

We've proposed tunnels in Avalon.

There's tunnels here in downtown Why not a tunnel through Pigeon Hill?

Just looking at us and the cost to lives and families not just financial costs and not just lines on a map Thank You Taylor appreciate your comment Eugene

Eugene, you're going to be followed by Katie Garrow and then Jordan Royer.

Hi, I'm Eugene Wasserman.

I'm here today for the North Seattle Industrial Association.

We represent the maritime and industrial sector along the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Salmon Bay, and Anna Bay.

We have spent a lot of time in the last three or four years working on routes and alignments.

First of all, I want to thank Sound Transit staff.

They've been a great team that have worked with us.

They've been very responsive in getting us information, and we applaud their responsiveness to us.

We don't always see that from government programs like this, so I want to make that clear.

They've really gone out of their way.

But we spent a lot of time on this, and it's our conclusion, as well as the Battle Alliance, That is the only alignment we want to go forward as the preferred alignment in the EIS.

And that's with a tunnel under the ship canal.

Anything else would be destructive of the maritime industry.

And the city comprehensive plan is pretty clear about where the city stands on that.

So we expect port and city representatives to back us up on that.

The high level bridge.

would be incredibly destructive as well as the, you know, the drawbridge, which will never get built because we will make sure the Coast Guard does not allow it, and they probably wouldn't.

One of the things that Sound Transit learned from us is the people that control the waterways are not the state, the city, or the county.

The Coast Guard and the Coast Guard specific rules that we know and fortunately sound trans is starting to learn them, putting the representative.

or the elevated forward would mean that some businesses would not do development because they'll never know what's going to happen.

You can't hold business hostage to an EIS process for three years when you're never going to build them.

Moving the representative project just as an academic exercise, we consider a threat to the maritime industry.

Thank you.

Thanks, Eugene.

Katie?

Good morning, elected leaders.

My name is Katie Garrow.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

I'm the Deputy Director at MLK Labor, representing more than 100,000 unionized workers here in King County.

I have provided all of the feedback I'm about to share with you via my role on the Stakeholder Advisory Group, and thank you for the opportunity to serve on that group.

I'm here today to express the Labor Council's support for the proposed east-west routes that are located south of Spokane Street for the ST3 expansion to West Seattle.

Workers who unload cargo down at Terminal 18 and the ones who wait in long lines of traffic to pick up their containers tell us that an ST3 line that crosses north of the Spokane Street would have detrimental impacts during construction to their ability to get a container out from the dock and onto the roads.

Containers trying to leave T5, which I understand is soon to announce a tenant, would encounter the same problem.

I wanted to testify today on this particular issue because it's personally important to me.

One of the reasons that I work in the labor movement and I'm so committed to this work is because I grew up in a place where the economy was garbage and where dignified work was pretty rare.

But we had a port and young men aspired to be longshoremen.

The port withstood the fall of the timber industry in Grace Harbor County.

and it's mattered for families like mine.

Economies shift and change, but even in Aberdeen, a place that boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, and has for most of my life, has a working port, and that's made a difference.

It's kept Aberdeen from being a ghost town.

I'm not trying to say that it was great, but we all knew it could be worse.

Sometimes it feels like tech, aerospace, and all the cranes will be here forever, but they won't.

And we will always need industries like shipping and trade.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

Jordan?

Jordan's the last one to sign up, so this will be our last public comment.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Jordan Royer and I represent the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.

We represent marine terminal operators and shipping lines that call the West Coast.

Many of you probably know that the past few years the gateway here of Tacoma and Seattle has lost market share to other ports around the country.

We used to be the number three gateway.

We're now the number four gateway.

Part of what we're trying to win back here to this gateway has been, we've been fairly successful in winning some of that cargo back lately, and the Northwest Seaport Alliance has been a big part of that.

I must admit, when I first saw the map of the alignment, I had a little shock.

You just see the line going right through the terminals.

I have been talking to a number of people, and we think there may be some way to make that work.

I just urge you all to really think about how easy it is for a shipping line to say, well, I'm trying to get to Chicago.

I can get there even faster going through Canada, through Prince Rupert or through the Port of Vancouver than coming down here or going to LA.

Most of the container traffic that the Port of Seattle gets is that discretionary cargo that can find all kinds of different ways to get to Chicago.

I just urge you to think about that, work with SSA and the port to look at what these options can really work out, because we're in a big fight now.

If we don't make this work, we could be in a bigger fight later.

And we support transit.

It helps get cars off the road.

It makes it easier for freight to move.

So we're not anti-transit, but we just think that if there's a way to make this work, it's really important that everybody get together and figure out how to do that.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Meyer.

We are going to move on to the next agenda item, folks.

Honorable Michael Fuller, did you want to provide public comment?

Yes.

All right.

You have two minutes.

We'll take one more public comment.

First and foremost, I thank my God for being here.

Black History Month.

This is the worstest slavery in United States history against Black Lives Matter.

This is not the changes or the dream Black Lives Matter can believe in.

Our own forces, females and males, that fought to make this country safe, free, and secure Openly violating Title 8 U.S.C. 1324 A.

Inferences 1. Inferences A. Inferences IV.

Inferences B. Inferences 3. I.

Inferences I.N.A. 274 A.

A. Inferences 1. Inferences A. Inferences Title 8 U.S.C. 1325 Improper Entry Alien.

We're spending $338.3 billion a year on illegal and unauthorized aliens.

But then our veterans sleeping on the street, right downtown Seattle.

Where's Jenny Durkin?

This is Sydney.

What is going on here?

Incompetent say, mullomans say, meaning evil and wicked, 42.52020, meaning activities incompatible with public duty, 98.36080, malicious harassment, and 49.68030, freedom from discrimination in Black Lives Matter community.

Thank you, Mr. Fuller.

So now we're going to move on to the next agenda item, which is a discussion from Lida on community engagement and collaboration.

Good morning elected leadership group.

Thank you all for your continued commitment to this process.

It's nice to see you again here in 2019. We have an informative discussion, informative presentation by Cahill today, and I'm sure you all have some questions and we're looking forward to that discussion.

If I could quickly just review the agenda before we turn it over to Lita.

Lita will provide the community engagement and collaboration update on work that's been going on the last month.

And then we'll turn it over to Cahill.

He's got a fairly substantive presentation.

Some of this information you've seen before, but I think to refresh us on this process, he'll review the level three screening process.

go through the level three alternatives, and then spend the bulk of the presentation on the level three evaluation results and discussion of potential mix and match opportunities.

So that's kind of where we're going today.

It's a lot of information going out to you.

Again, I think as Mr. Billin said, there's no, or Mr. O'Brien said, there's no ask of you today in terms of recommendations.

So this is a real opportunity to take in more information and have some discussion around that.

So with that, Lita?

Great.

Thank you, Diane.

Okay.

So you've all seen this chart before, but we'll start here.

This is our community engagement and collaboration process chart.

This chart really serves to show us how we engage the community at the start, how that feedback filters up to the stakeholder advisory group, and how we engage you, the elected leadership group, and the Sound Transit Board in the screening process and in the process of identifying preferred alternatives.

So since we last met, we've had a few stakeholder advisory group meetings in November and in January, and we're now at our February 1st elected leadership group meeting.

A snapshot of the engagement we've had since we last met, so this is from November of 2018 through January 24th.

We don't have all of January information yet, but we'll get you that.

You should have received outreach reports as well that details more about what we heard through these various venues, comments and questions, our email updates that engage many subscribers.

We do tabling events as well as community briefings.

So here's a snapshot of the November and December briefings and tabling events.

I just want to highlight these are all sorts of different types of engagement that we do that go beyond the meetings that we set up proactively.

This is our way of trying to meet the community where they might be and as they request engagement with us and also as we try to learn more information about how people are feeling across the corridor.

So whether we're in West Seattle at the Delridge Community Center, or down in White Center, White Center CDA, or across Harbor Island, we've been engaging with a lot of different businesses on Harbor Island.

The Soto community as well, and the Chinatown International District with various conversations with the historic South Downtown folks.

And then additionally, you know, moving north through South Lake Union, and out to Ballard.

So there's a lot of different types of meetings on here.

We do tabling events, briefings, one-on-one, big group meetings.

So this is January.

I'll just give you a moment with that.

And then what we've heard, I'll spend just a little bit of time here talking about what we've heard through November and December.

We'll have again that January report for you soon.

There's a lot of consistency in what we've heard in January as well.

So questions about the timeline and process for property acquisition, we've heard that a lot throughout the corridor.

And so what we've done in response to that is to try to incorporate more upfront and proactively in our briefings about the timeline and the process for how that moves forward.

We're always available to brief community members or to meet one-on-one with individuals to talk about that process and their personal situation.

Request to locate design stations with accessibility and safety in mind.

A lot of comments about the different station locations all across the alignment, how you would be able to access them, thinking about topography, lighting, you know, how accessible will these stations be.

We do have a station planning team that's definitely taking those things and keeping those things in mind as we move forward.

Request to be able to mix and match elements from level three alternatives is another piece and of course that will be part of your presentation today and it's helped us in terms of thinking about how to structure the conversation to be most helpful.

Request to design and build new extensions faster, this is something we've heard.

Through the planning process and now people would like to see these projects open up as quickly as possible.

This process is a key part of that.

So working with the community up front in this engagement to help highlight issues earlier in the process is a key way that we do that.

Request for a frequent bus service to stations for improved access.

So you know there are the stations and the walk shed area but there's other ways and modes in which you connect to those stations and we have been working very closely with King County Metro and will continue to do so to look at how we can integrate.

Request for additional visualizations of proposed routes.

These will be available when we do start our scoping period.

We'll have visualizations of the elevated alignments updated from level 2. And then questions and comments about freight mobility and industrial land effects.

This is a little bit across the corridor, more concentrated in the north and across Harper Island, but we've been meeting with folks to try to understand those concerns.

Councilmember Herbold has a question.

Yes, thank you.

A question about the visualizations.

Back in September I also made a request and you mentioned that it will be available for the scoping period.

So you mean it will be available for the public to see and be a tool to them so that they can make comments on the scoping period, is that correct?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you for that clarification.

Councilmember Johnson.

Just two quick follow-ups to that.

One is can you or maybe your next-door neighbor to your rights talk a little bit more about the request that we heard from folks in the public comment about scoping?

What's the timeline for the scoping process and is there a possibility of an extension of the scoping process?

And then secondarily, I know that there's been a lot of folks who've been concerned, particularly in West Seattle, about the property impacts.

Can we talk maybe a little bit more about the schedule of what we're on and how quickly the property acquisition happens at Sound Transit and maybe making sure that we have some designated teams going out and talking to people who are affected property owners so that they really understand the timing and decision making?

And then if and when something might happen, what Sound Transit's process is like?

I'll talk to the property acquisition question first of all.

We're very early in project development, as you know.

We haven't begun the EIS process yet.

Typically, as I know you understand, we do not start the property acquisition process until after the environmental process is complete.

On our current schedule, the environmental process is scheduled to be completed in mid 2022. So it would be after that, likely in between that period and when we start construction in 2025 or so, when we'd be going through the acquisition process.

So that's the timeline we're talking about.

It's about five years out before we'd be acquiring any property.

But we're engaging with property owners now, and anybody who has any concerns about potential impacts to the property, we're meeting with them at a venue that's convenient to them to help them explain the process.

And we'll continue to engage with people as we go through the environmental process.

Typically, before we publish the draft EIS, at that point we have a better understanding of what the potential effects to property owners might be.

We notify all potentially affected property owners about the potential impact to their property before the draft EIS is published.

And again, we offer to meet with them to help them understand what we understand at that point in time.

They would again have an opportunity once the draft EIS is published to offer comments and their perspectives.

And we will continue to engage them through the FEIS process as well.

So it's a long journey that we have right now until the board makes its ultimate decision in 2022. But we are engaging with people right now about that.

On the second question, I think I'll refer that to Don on the EIS scoping period.

Sure.

Thanks, Cahill.

So, as you all know, with the federal government shutdown, we've had to delay the start of our scoping period.

And frankly, we've got our fingers kind of crossed right now that in the next two weeks before the federal government potentially could shut down again, that the Region 10 staff, who've got an enormous backload, will be able to process what's called our Notice of Intent, which gets published in the Federal Register and allows the formal scoping period to start.

So we are loathe to ask them to consider a change in the formal scoping period.

However, the silver lining in all of this is that with the delay and the start, we've actually got more time to engage with the community now.

So we don't need to wait for the formal start of the scoping period to go out.

and meet with community members, and they will effectively have 60 days rather than 30 days to digest the information that you're going to get today and to start to formulate their comments.

And we're certainly happy to sit down with any and all community members immediately to talk about this information and talk about the process going forward and make sure that they've got ample opportunity to weigh in before you make your recommendations.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I had a quick question about the this what we've heard section.

So the second bullet point addresses that there were issues surface related to location and design of the stations with accessibility and safety in mind.

And something I've brought up a couple of times already in the course of these conversations are the issues related to wayfinding particularly for folks who have don't have a strong command of the English language.

Can you talk a little bit about whether that issue has come up, and if it hasn't come up, what you all are doing to be responsive to my particular concern in that space?

We have had conversations with social service providers across the corridor and one of the things they have brought up is wayfinding and also just familiarity with how to use light rail if it's coming to a neighborhood where they have not had light rail before.

So the potential challenges of how they navigate a system they're not familiar with to begin with and then in a different language.

So we've taken that feedback and we're sharing it with our team to try to understand how we, as we roll pieces forward, can incorporate that into how we think about these projects.

It is, for this project in particular, a little bit of a ways out in terms of that level of detail, I would say, right?

In terms of station design.

But it's important feedback that we're collecting as we go along.

And of course we have existing system.

Right, and I recognize that it's a ways out before we're actually going to get to the promised land of telling people which way to go on the train.

But I think if we don't continue to incorporate it in these documents and in these conversations, it will get lost in the formulation of those details.

And so I just want to reiterate my interest in ensuring that we're thinking about wayfinding Again through the through the same lens as accessibility and safety for station design and that and that we're including the realities of the rich diversity and different cultures that live within the region and and of course that includes the language diversity, and these are primarily public transit infrastructures that are being utilized by working class people who a lot of times are immigrants and refugees and who are not comfortable in part using public transit because they can't figure out how to read the language that is intended to communicate to people how to use it.

So I just really want to emphasize once again that this is a big priority for me.

Thank you.

A couple of questions following up to the conversation we're having.

Mr. Billing, the concern I heard from the historic downtown neighborhood wasn't necessarily more time on the calendar to comment, but given the resources they've recently obtained, They need more, they're asking for more time, a length of time to gather that input, use that expertise, develop that input, and provide it to us.

And we're hoping that the comment period might be not just longer with an earlier start, but actually extended to, their ask of me yesterday when I talked to them was actually June.

Is there a possibility of the comment period being extended longer, later in the calendar?

Or do we know yet?

What I'm signaling is that there is risk that if we ask for, go back to FTA to ask for an extension of the comment period, that that is going to add more time to the delay that we've already experienced.

I think there are ways, Councilmembers, to sit down with that group and talk to them about ensuring that the analysis that they are going to do reaches this body before your recommendation and before the Sound Transit Board takes action in May without necessarily having to modify the federal scoping period.

And so that's what we want to problem solve on.

With the same weight and influence as other comments formally provided during the scoping period.

Correct.

Okay.

And secondly, regarding the conversation on displacement, you know, obviously from public testimony, the displacement concern we've heard today and we as members of the EOG have heard specifically have been around Youngstown, the Delridge Station, and Councilmember Herboldt and I have made a request in writing of Sound Transit to better understand the gentrification and displacement risks that that action would take.

And then kind of flushing out some of those other impacts by service further south along the Delbridge corridor particularly to communities of color and the.

the impact and risks and benefits of equitable TOD opportunities created by a Youngstown or a Delridge station.

And so I just want to highlight that request and need both to you and to the audience.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Bakeshaw.

And just to follow up on that, I think the additional analysis is really, really important.

But as we learned from a recent meeting that we did have at Youngstown with the Delridge community, there's also a real interest in additional engagement with the community before this body makes a decision.

level three recommendations.

So looking at some sort of an engagement process similar to what you all have done in the CID, that would be really, really helpful, I think, to this community.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I want to follow up with something that Eugene Wasserman brought up during public comment and that is to the extent that we need to give further consideration like we do at Delridge.

I'm also advocating for if we don't need further consideration on something that we reduce the number of alternatives.

so that we're not spending money reviewing things that the community absolutely does not want.

As an example, around the Ballard leg, the last leg, from the beginning people have said drawbridge is impossible.

The predictability is very much in question.

even though it may be a hundred million dollars less, it is going to be unacceptable to the community.

Similarly, with the idea of having a fixed bridge, it's going to have major impact on the port property and a maritime property.

So what I would like to ask as we're going through this today, if you need to do something because you're trying to measure costs or you're trying to measure like a 4F as something that Cahill that you mentioned to me before.

I appreciate that but I think we need to signal to the community that there are certain things that are off the table because the predictability around property owners and the numbers that you just gave us is that somewhere between the mid 2022 construction 2025 that's at least you know four to six years that the maritime property owners are going to have to be holding their breath as to what decisions are going to be made.

So I really hope today as we're coming through this that we can make some decisions to take some things off the table so that both you're not spending your time and energy and money doing that and the community can have a better sense of what is it we're trying to accomplish.

And frankly from the beginning of this since I think 2014 when we first started talking to the community people have been saying we need that tunnel out there we don't need another bridge.

Councilmember Bakeshaw, thank you for those comments.

And I think as we get into kind of the details of the alignment today, we're going to start to see some things coming together.

And we'll want to talk a little bit about framing up what the opportunities of this group are.

And I just want to tee up that You know, at the end of this phase of the process, not today, but in the next few months, this group will hopefully be making a recommendation to the board on what we think the preferred alignment or preferred alignments should be.

And it's entirely possible that we choose to not include certain aspects of this.

It may be that the agency, for legal reasons, has to include some things that aren't in our preferred alignment, and maybe the board will choose something different than ours, too.

But we'll want to understand what flexibility and what our role is. moving forward and how that may differ from what ultimately happens.

So I think those points are great.

Councilmember Gonzalez?

Thank you.

I'm gonna try to make this quick because I recognize that we're on page 8 of a 95 page PowerPoint presentation.

But clearly we are very engaged and interested in these particular issues.

And I just wanted to build off of what Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember McDermott have spoken about in terms of gentrification and displacement, and I recognize that their letter is specific to the Delridge station.

And sort of in order to fulfill my citywide role, my hope is that we are engaging in that particular type of analysis for the whole line, and that we are taking into consideration both residential and commercial impacts.

I know that we have had conversations about those particular concerns and issues along the entire line and just want to reiterate my request and interest in making sure that that particular analysis is being done for all of the segments and not just one.

Thank you councilmember Gonzales, and I do just want to note so we we will be Sharing with you an another racial equity toolkit memo and that will include I think those key issues that were just mentioned by Councilmember Herbold and McDermott as well as across the entire line And then in the Chinatown ID so so you'll have that before making recommendations.

Thank you Commissioner Bowman

Great.

Just a really quick request of staff.

In terms of scoping and getting that information out to the public about how to comment, I would encourage you to be as robust as possible.

I do believe there was a little bit of a silver lining, if you could say it was, about the federal shutdown, that it's pushed back a little bit, but originally it was supposed to be February 5th.

Is that correct?

Fourth, yes.

Right.

I would guess that most of the people that are concerned about this didn't realize that scoping was going to happen next week.

And so I think it's just imperative that the agency be very, very robust in their outreach.

I don't know if it's billboards on the West Seattle Bridge or whatever it is, but it's got to be really public so people understand how to get their comments in.

Thank you.

And Lita, one more question on the scoping.

So we, there's some uncertainty about when it's going to start and we've heard requests about how we can have longer opportunity or to continue to provide feedback.

In the opening comments, we talked about open houses and community forums.

I'm guessing since we don't know when scoping is starting, those haven't been set yet, but how are those going to be established and how do we communicate with the public on that?

Sure, so our team has been sort of ready to hit send or hit go, but the uncertainty of knowing the timing of the scoping period has made that a little bit difficult.

So the second that we do get those scoping dates set, we can set those open houses and neighborhood forum dates and publicize widely.

There are a number of different ways that we publicize from a postcard that goes to properties all along the alignment within, I believe, a half mile.

to sort of a whole sort of strategy for getting ads out there, social media, et cetera, and pushing it out to all of you, too, to share with your networks and with community organizations to share with their networks.

So we will definitely be doing that.

We are hoping to get those dates soon so that we can schedule those.

And for folks that are watching or in the audience today, if they want to be notified, I assume there's a website they can go to where these will be updated and maybe an email listserv they can get on?

Yes actually if they e-mail WSB link at sound transit dot org we'll put them on the list and make sure they get updates.

And if you do look up West Salem Ballard link extensions are pages there too which will have it featured the moment they're set.

Right.

And I think that that reality we're facing with the uncertain timing around the federal government creates some uncertainty.

You know, we might get notice that it's going to start tomorrow and 30 days, you know, folks might, that might be too short a time for folks to get organized too.

And so even without the advanced lead up, it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

So Dawn, I appreciate you.

I think you understand the challenge and we want to continue to talk through what the options are there.

Shall we move on to the next agenda item?

Yeah.

Colleagues, I want to just suggest, as Councilmember Gonzalez noted, there are a few more pages in here.

There's a lot of good information, a lot of it's kind of review, and as we get to about page 77 in the documents, we're going to have an opportunity to go a little deeper on some of the alternatives, which I think is where some of the conversations folks have about pros and cons and costs.

And so we're going to get an overview of things, and if you have some specific questions, like clarifications then, that's great.

But I would ask that we maybe hold the substantive discussion until we get towards the back end of the presentation, and there will be room for that to happen there.

Page nine, level three screening process.

So Alita mentioned the overall process, and as she noted, the scoping period has, you've seen this chart many times, the scoping period has been moved out a little bit.

The knock-on effect of that is that we would likely go to you in April to get your recommendations and then to the board in May.

That's a little bit later than we'd initially projected.

We're at Level 3, as you know, and just looking forward over the next few months, these are the steps that we see coming up.

Right now, as you can see, we're presenting the Level 3 evaluation results.

We presented them to our stakeholder advisory group on Wednesday, and we hope to get those SCOPE meetings organized in late February, March, to present all of that information to the public more formally.

We also, as you know, with the scope and period, it represents the start of the federal environmental review process.

It is a formal process under NEPA, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, and it's a 30-day period by law.

We do seek feedback from the public during that time on the range of alternatives that we should be looking at.

And there's been a lot of work over the last year to define what those alternatives could be.

But this is, again, an opportunity for the public to provide comment on what other alternatives or how those alternatives should be refined.

The second piece of input we generally look for during the scoping period is what topics we should be studying in the EIS.

So if people have specific concerns relating to displacements or traffic or whatever their concern might be in their neighborhood, this is a good opportunity to let us know about that to ensure that it's looked at in more detail during the EIS process.

And then, of course, we seek comment on the purpose and need, which you've seen many times and will see again during the scoping period, and we'll be soliciting feedback on that.

All of this information informs what the board decision should be on what it would be in the EIS.

I would also note that as this is a federal process, the Federal Transit Administration will also have input on the scope of the EIS.

As noted earlier, there will be many ways to provide comments, online, open houses, open house and neighborhood forums, emails, mails, voice message service.

We will get all of that out there as soon as we understand when the scoping period is.

Just a note, we will be adding an additional elected leadership group meeting per the request of the co-chairs.

Right now, we think that meeting will be on March 29th, and the focus of it will be on the CID station.

Then, come April, we would return to you to seek the recommendations on what should move forward from this point.

As you know, all throughout this year we've been looking at a lot of alternatives with the intent to screen down to those alternatives that we should look at in more detail in the EIS, looking for a preferred alternative in particular.

There has been a lot of interest in additional project elements, tunnels, and so on.

These elements, as you understand, would require additional funding.

So we're asking the stakeholder advisory group and the elective leadership group to identify two preferred alternatives.

Preferred alternative number one would be if third-party funding were not to be secured.

And then preferred alternative two would be in the event that third-party funding is secured.

So that will allow some additional time to look at those avenues for potential additional funding.

We continue to look at these alternatives in the IAS process while that funding situation becomes more clear.

So before you make your recommendations in April, as we've noted, you will have all of the evaluation results, you will have all of the public feedback, and you'll have all of the input from the RET process before you need to make your recommendations.

The last step, of course, is for the Sound Transit Board, first through the System Expansion Committee, and then through the full board, to consider all of the recommendations and public feedback and technical analysis, and then identify the preferred alternative and other alternatives to look at in the EIS.

And we expect that would occur in May.

So just to briefly remind you about the Level 3 alternatives, you've seen this information before, so I'll move very quickly through these slides.

We have three Level 3 alternatives.

The ST3 representative project, an alternative that we call West Seattle Elevated, CID 5th, Downtown 6th, and Ballard Elevated.

It has a couple of design options in the Chinatown ID, a cut and cover, and a mine station option.

And then a third alternative, that is the West Seattle Tunnel, CID 4th, Downtown 5th, and Ballard Tunnel.

It too has design options in the Alaska Junction area, in Chinatown ID, and in Ballard.

First of all, the representative project, you've seen it many times.

I won't spend additional time here describing it.

It's the same alternative that was included in the ST3 plan and that we've been looking at throughout this year.

The second alternative, is shown on this overview map.

I'll just refer to it as the yellow-brown alternative.

In the Alaska Junction area, how it's different...

Council Member Herbold has a question.

Thank you.

Before we get too much further, I do have a process question.

You had mentioned that the request is for this body to make two preferred alternative recommendations, one if a third party's funding is secured and one if it is not.

But help me understand, the Sound Transit Board itself will take that input of the two different preferred alternatives, but it will pick one, is that correct?

Right now, I don't want to speak for the board, but we want to present them with the option and they, at their discretion, could choose to carry both preferred alternatives through the EIS process.

I think it's important to get some early indication from the board on this because if they their preferences not to, that gives folks basically a month between April and May to have those conversations about third party funding.

So I think it would be really helpful for us to know more about what the board is thinking in that area.

Thank you, I just I know that we're not making any decisions today and so I'm gonna sit here and just listen to the information but I just wanted to once again fulfill my obligation of disclosing that I have a conflict of interest as it relates to the West Seattle aspects of the alignment conversation that we're having because one of because my property would be one of the properties impacted and in the Alaska Junction.

So I'm just disclosing that.

I'm going to continue to sit here and listen, but I won't be engaging too much in this portion of the conversation.

I think that question about intent to the board and what's going forward is a good one for us to continue to explore.

I mean, we will not be able to bind the board.

We do have four board members with us today, and Mayor Durkan is part of this group who's not able to attend today.

And so that'll be an opportunity to get some feedback, and through our other networks, we can have some conversations.

Executive Summers, would you like to comment on that at all?

From my perspective, the critical part of this that we'll need to see is, is this alternative funding real?

Is there a pathway to that because if it's not real the rest of the system can't afford some of the Enhancements that are being proposed.

So I would encourage you all to think about putting some side boards and some Flesh to what those that alternative funding is And as another individual board member, I would say we I

I see no way we would be prepared, I would be prepared to move forward with a no third party funding option and not have a third party funding option move forward into and through EIS.

But I certainly recognize and share the knowledge that it would have to be that has to be real funding, that we will not be in a position of funding the more robust, if you will, community preferred alternative from Sound Transit resources alone.

Council Member Johnson.

As a way to continue to assuage possible fears, I not only serve on this elected leadership group, but also on another elected leadership group.

I think it's suffice to say that a common theme amongst the elected leadership groups that are meeting right now to discuss various different alignment decisions, whether that's the bus rapid transit on 522, the bus rapid transit on 405, the Tacoma Hilltop extension, the Tacoma Link extension.

In every instance, I would hazard a guess that both the community and the elected officials that represent that community have eyes that are bigger than their stomachs, i.e. there is a project list that is greater than the funding that Sound Transit has available to it.

And yet, I think in each of those instances, there's a desire by both those elected leaders and their community members to have Sound Transit continue to keep those options available in the event that additional funding does come.

In some of those cases, that delta difference is smaller than ours, right?

But I do think that there's gonna be a lot of additional pressure on the board itself to think about a similar concept to what we're proposing here on a lot of other different elected leadership group discussions as those groups come to the Sound Transit Board and ask for some recommendations about what to take through the environmental process.

As Council Member McDermott said it well, our vote is just one on the Sound Transit Board, but I will certainly be making my best effort to convince the rest of my board colleagues that it is prudent for us to bring through at least two alternatives while we await the possibility of additional third party funding.

With that comment, concern, and that dialogue noted that we need to continue that conversation, is it okay if we keep going with Cahill's presentation?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So just to overview the yellow-brown alternative, the main difference with this alternative is that the orientation of the Alaska Junction station is in a north-south configuration as opposed to the east-west configuration that was identified in the representative project.

Moving into the Delridge area, the main difference here is that the Delridge station would be further south than was identified in ST3, and that's based again on community feedback that that is a more desirable location.

This particular alternative assumes a crossing on the south side of the existing West Seattle Bridge crossing the Duwamish.

And then as you get into the Soto area, this alternative would transition into the E3 busway, similar to the representative project.

However, it would be at grade along the E3 busway, not elevated, and it would include vehicle over crossings at both Lander and at Holgate.

As you get into the Chinatown ID area, this alternative assumes a board tunnel, not a cut and cover tunnel.

So it would be a board tunnel with a station on 5th Avenue.

The station location itself would be cut and cover, but the rest of the tunnel north and south of there would be board.

As you get into the Midtown area, the assumption is that the alignment right now would be on 6th Avenue, not 5th Avenue.

and on Terry Avenue as you go through Denny-Westlake area.

And then as you go through South Lake Union and Seattle, this alternative would be on Mercer.

So stations at South Lake Union on Mercer and at Seattle Center on Mercer.

As you get out into Smith Cove, the station at Smith Cove would be near Gaylor Street, essentially between Gaylor Street and Magnolia Bridge.

That's a little further north than the representative project, which assumed the station would be at Prospect in the bottom left of the screen.

As you get through Interbay, the station would be on 17th Thorndike area instead of 15th Avenue.

And then it would go into a high-level fixed bridge that would be in the 14th Avenue corridor with an elevated station in the vicinity of Market Street.

So that's the brown alternative.

The third alternative shown in overview here, I'll refer to as the blue alternative, It assumes three possible tunnel station locations in the Alaska Junction.

So we're looking at tunnel station options on 41st, 42nd, and 44th.

In Delridge, the station would be further south, and also in this configuration, it would be a bit further west than was identified in the representative project.

It assumes a north crossing of the Duwamish, so on the north side of the existing West Seattle Bridge.

And then again, as you get into Soto, it's the same as the Brown alternative.

It would get into the E3 busway, but then it would transition to being at grade with vehicle over crossings at Lander and Holgate.

As you get into the Chinatown ID, this assumes a station on 4th Avenue, not on 5th Avenue.

And again, we're looking at two possible options here, a cut and cover option, which would be a shallow station and a mine station option, which would be a deep station.

This would be on Fifth Avenue through the Midtown area.

And then on Westlake at the Denny Station area.

Through Southlake Union, the assumption is the station would be on Harrison, not Republican.

And at Seattle Center, the station would be on Republican.

As you get to Smith Cove, this assumes the station would be near Prospect Street, essentially the same location as the representative project had it.

And in the interbay area, it's the same as the Brown alternative with a station near 17th and Thorndike.

But then the alignment would transition into a tunnel, and we're looking at two possible tunnel station locations, one on 14th Avenue and one on 15th Avenue.

So those are the alternatives.

Turning to the evaluation results, all the results are based, our analysis is based on the purpose and need, which has remained constant as we've gone through this process.

We are using the same evaluation criteria in level three as we used in level one and level two, although we are getting progressively more quantitative as we go through the process.

We're using the same rating system, so lower performing is shown generally by the red color, higher performing by the green color.

We also include cost comparison information in Level 3 for these end-to-end alternatives.

I stress, and I've mentioned this before, these are comparative estimates for the end-to-end alternatives.

We are using a consistent methodology.

We're using updated 2018 cost data for construction and real estate costs.

But this is based on very limited conceptual design.

We are very early in the project development process.

It has not established a project budget.

And we would not establish a project budget typically until we get much further into final design, somewhere around the 2024 timeframe.

These are useful estimates in terms of comparing alternatives at this stage of project development though.

So in terms of the evaluation results, I will not go through this in detail.

But I just do want to give you briefly and to the public a brief orientation to how you read this table.

It's a two-part table.

On the left are listed the evaluation measures.

So we've looked at all of these evaluation measures for all of the alternatives.

The alternatives are listed across the top.

On the left is the representative project in the red-green color.

We have the brown alternative, and you'll see there are two design options there because there are design options in the Chinatown ID where you could have a shallow station or a deep station.

And in most cases, the ratings are the same for those two alternatives, except you'll see variation in a couple of instances.

And then the blue alternative, which includes the tunnels in West Seattle and Ballard, are shown on the right.

Again, we've got design options in West Seattle, in the Chinatown ID, and in Ballard, so that's why you have a number of columns there.

Generally speaking, the ratings are similar, except in a few cases.

It's a two-part page series analysis, as I said, so this is the second page of that chart.

I'd like to dive into this analysis.

Oh, sorry.

Question.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

On the second page, the section that deals with residential displacements and potential business displacements, I really appreciated getting the evaluation matrices that show a little bit more detail about how you came up with those numbers.

And for the residential displacements, for the elevated option, you identify 180 potential residential unit displacements, and for the blue line, fewer than 120. So the blue line is rating high for minimizing residential displacements as compared to the elevated line.

Similarly, for the potential business displacements.

You've given a total number of square feet.

But it would be really helpful to get that broken down by neighborhood if we could begin to do that.

Yeah.

And I should have pointed that out.

These are for the end-to-end alternatives across the entire corridor.

So yes, it kind of washes out the data.

Some areas of the corridor, there could be more displacements.

In other areas, there could be very few.

The detail matrices, and that information is available to the public, it's on our website, and people can access it, spells it out more at a segment level, what the specific areas are for all of these measures, so you can really dive into that information.

And I'll touch on some of those points as I move through the presentation as well.

So, going at this, I want to kind of work through the corridor and talk at more of a segment level about some of the key issues within, or key considerations within those segments.

So starting in West Seattle, on the right of this graphic, it shows all of the alternatives that are on the table in West Seattle right now.

The red representative project, the yellow alternative, which is elevated, and the blue alternatives, which are tunnel.

And on the left, the color of those boxes correspond to the color of the alternatives on the right side of the page.

So with the representative project, some of the key considerations, and this is some of this information you've heard before in previous levels of analysis, but initially the initial bullet there speaks to the orientation of the Alaska Junction station, which complicates a future light rail extension.

And also, there's a constrained terminal station location on Alaska Street.

It would also result in a high guideway along Genesee Street through Delridge.

It would have park effects, which may require four avoidance alternatives.

And the location of the Delridge station with the representative project is somewhat problematic because of the proximity to the freeway and to New Corps.

With the yellow alternative, which is elevated, it would result in more displacements between the Alaska Junction and Avalon stations because it would no longer be on Fauntleroy.

It would be going through a residential area.

It would have similar numbers of displacements in Delridge to the other alternatives.

It would result in the greatest disruption to the neighborhood around Alaska Junction.

It would also result in a high guideway on Genesee Street.

And similar to the representative project, it would have some effects to the West Seattle golf course.

With the blue alternative, because it's a tunnel, it would have fewer displacements at the Alaska Junction Station area.

It would have similar number of displacements in Delridge.

It would result in a lower-height Delridge station.

The tunnel facilitates a lower guideway along Genesee Street, but a tunnel, of course, as we've talked about, could increase the overall implementation schedule and would require additional funding.

It would also have impacts to the park at the port location.

Moving to the Duwamish Waterway Crossing.

Council Member Begshaw.

Thank you for that.

You and I talked about this 4F analysis.

Can you talk a little bit about how real is that?

I know that an analysis has to be done, but is it something that's going to stop the project, slow the project?

Can we swap property?

What is your view on that?

It's a standard process that you need to go through concurrent with the environmental process.

Whenever you impact park facilities or recreation areas, you need to assess what the impacts of those would be.

You need to study alternatives that would avoid those impacts, and then that becomes a decision about which alternative you should pursue.

So it's pretty typical, but it is a process we do need to go through.

Is it something that would add to either the time or the cost of doing your analysis?

It's additional technical work, but it should not affect the overall schedule.

So if you came to the conclusion that a park would be impacted, but we could, there was some other option we could pursue.

I mean, let's take the golf course, for example.

Whether or not we have to purchase some other property or figure out an alternative.

Can we do that parallel to your other decisions?

So as an example in West Seattle to say, all right, there may be some 4F impacts at Pigeon Point, but if you weigh that against some of the other options, it's something that we could deal with.

So can we do that in a timely way?

Yes, we would do that concurrent with the rest of the EIS analysis so that the analysis, the complete analysis will be available before a decision is made at the end of the EIS process.

Commissioner?

Commissioner Bowman?

Great, thank you.

I had a similar question, because I've actually pulled up the website for 4F, so I can understand it a little bit better.

And it says, if there is no feasible or prudent avoidance alternative to the use of land, and action includes all possible planning to minimize the harm to the property, et cetera, who makes that determination?

Well, this is a federal process, so the FTA would be part of that decision.

It's also informed by the local jurisdictions who have jurisdiction as well, so the City of Seattle.

solely the City of Seattle with the feds?

Both the City of Seattle and the feds.

And again I can talk to the attorneys about this later.

I just wanted to, I think we should all better understand what a prudent alternative is.

How much does cost come into that?

That's exactly what the EIS analysis or the 4F analysis is supposed to illuminate.

What are all of those issues that should be considered to help make an informed decision?

So we need to go through that process and it'd be available to you to consider.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

I asked a lot of questions about this 4F thing yesterday when I was getting briefed by staff, and I appreciate you all walking me through the particular requirements of 4F.

I just wanted to, and I appreciate, Commissioner, your line of questioning, because I think it is important for us to get a better understanding of exactly what the criteria and factors are.

I think that impacts very much.

the deliberation that we're having here about the alignments and the questions around potential impacts, et cetera.

I would also add that the state of Washington has its, or the city has its own initiative, Initiative 41, that relates to parkland as well, and a requirement for the city to to mitigate impacts to open spaces and parks.

And so I think that that's also another additional layer for us to make sure that we understand in terms of that framework as it relates to this question that we're discussing.

Thank you.

Carry on.

With the Duwamish Crossing, you can see the alignments on the right side of the screen.

The representative project and the yellow alternative, the elevated alternative there, are both the same.

They both cross to the south of the existing West Seattle Bridge.

They both have the same issues with engineering constraints in the Pigeon Point steep slope area, and that is also part of the Duwamish Greenbelt.

With the blue alternative, this would be an elevated alignment on the north side of the West Seattle Bridge.

It avoids Pigeon Point steep slope and affects Duwamish Greenbelt.

So that's a positive.

But as has been noted earlier in the meeting, it would affect freight port terminal facilities, particularly during construction.

As you get into the Soto area, the main issues with the representative project is that right now the assumption is that it would be elevated, which is more complex and costly.

It also does not facilitate track interconnections, which is the ability to move train sets from one line to the other.

It would not great separate the Lander and Holgate roadway crossings.

And it also has some infrastructure conflicts with the washed out ramps in the vicinity of I-90.

The yellow alternative and the blue alternative are both the same in this area.

They assume an accurate track alignment along the E3 busway, which reduces cost and complexity.

It also includes great separations at Landra and Holgate, which improve existing light rail and traffic operations.

In the Chinatown ID area, the representative project, as we've discussed before, assumes a cut-and-cover tunnel, as well as a cut-and-cover station along Fifth Avenue, which has construction effects in the Chinatown ID.

It also affects some washed-out ramps and has some effect to Ryerson bus space.

The Brown alternative is different.

It would have a cut-and-cover station in the Fifth Avenue area, but it's a board tunnel, so it would limit the overall construction effects along Fifth Avenue in the Chinatown ID.

There is a mine station option with this alternative as well, but that would result in less convenient access, transfers, and could also potentially extend the overall construction schedule.

This alternative, however, does impact potential area where a central base might expand into.

They're currently looking at options to expand the bus space, central bus space, and the area that we're talking about for the tunnel portal for the brown alternative would impact that area.

We are coordinating with Metro to better understand their plans and to try and coordinate our work.

With the blue alternative, this would be a 4th Avenue alternative.

It would require rebuild of the existing 4th Avenue viaduct Therefore, it has more construction complexity.

It would result in traffic diversions while we rebuild 4th Avenue.

It would have potentially delays to the overall schedule, and of course, it would require additional funding.

There's also a mine station option on 4th Avenue in addition to the shallow station option.

That would increase the overall traffic effects because to build that station, you'd have to completely shut down 4th Avenue for the duration of construction.

The station itself would have less convenient access because it's deep and it would also impact Ryerson Base completely.

You'd have to relocate Ryerson Base.

Also, the Demein station does not allow for a pocket track.

A pocket track is an area along the alignment where you store trains in the event of you needing additional trains for whatever reason, major events, or because there's a train out of service.

And one of the issues with that particular type of station is that it would not allow for that pocket track, which reduces overall service operability.

Through downtown, the representative project, as we've discussed before, would impact the SR 99 off-ramp in the South Lake Union area.

It also requires a large sewer relocation.

It has some constraints on right-of-way at the Seattle Center location on Republican.

The North Tunnel Port location would result in more acquisitions and displacements and has also infrastructure conflicts with sewer lines under Republican.

With the Brown alternative, it has limited entrance options for the Midtown Station on 6th.

It has a wider right of way, however, at Seattle Center Station, which makes it better or easier to construct.

And the North Tunnel Port location, where it is, is an area with poor soil conditions.

So that's a negative with that alternative.

The blue alternative on Fifth Avenue would, some of the main features of this alternative is that it would result in higher ridership at the South Lake Union Station on Harrison because it has better pedestrian access and better bus connections.

And I glossed over this earlier, but generally speaking, all of these alignment alternatives, all of these station locations that we're looking at are very, very similar in terms of ridership across the corridor.

This is perhaps the only location where there's some potential distinction between the station options.

The blue alternative would have a more constrained right-of-way at Seattle Center Station, and the north tunnel portal impacts the southwest Queen Anne Green Belt, and it's a landslide hazard area in that area.

Through Smith Cove and Interbay, the representative project, as has been noted before, it would affect Elliott and 15th, because it involves columns in the median of that right-of-way.

It would have some engineering constraints along the landslide hazard area, which is also the Queen Anne Green Belt.

The brown alternative avoids Elliott and 15th altogether.

It has some potential impacts to existing infrastructure.

And as we've noted elsewhere, it would have some effect to the parks, the Interbay Golf Center, it goes along the edge of it, and Interbay Athletic Complex.

So we'd need to look at 4F issues in those areas.

It's much the same issues with the Ballard tunnel option, the blue alternative, it avoids Elliott 15th.

It has some engineering constraints with the landslide hazard area.

It affects the Queen Anne Greenbelt, and it has 4F issues.

Getting close to the end, Salmon Bay Crossing, the representative project assumes a movable bridge, as we've discussed before, which could potentially interrupt service and would have more in-water effects with the columns.

It has more effects to fishermen's terminal and generally to maritime businesses and vessel navigation.

The brown elevated alternative is a fixed bridge, which reduces the in-water effects.

It avoids fishermen's terminal, but it does potentially affect other maritime businesses.

The fixed bridge crossing would also require a high level structure for navigational clearances.

So right now we assume that structure will be in the vicinity of 140 feet or so.

The blue alternative, of course, is tunnel.

So it would avoid columns in the water.

It would avoid maritime and navigational effects.

But as we know, it would add costs and require additional funding.

Finally, at the Ballard Station location, the green, the Ballard Station on 15th, is closer to the center of Ballard.

It would result in more acquisitions and displacements, however, with that elevated structure leading to the station and with the tail tracks associated with the station.

And as we discussed, the Movable Bridge has some potential service interruptions.

The brown alternative, elevated alternative, would be on 14th.

It's a wider right-of-way on 14th, so it would have less displacements, acquisitions associated with it.

It is further, however, from the center of the urban village than 15th.

However, it has similar ridership and is potentially better in terms of bus integration.

The blue alternative, Ballard Tunnel alternative, is very similar to the brown alternative in many respects.

It's a wider right-of-way on 14th, so it would have less acquisition issues.

But 14th is, again, further from the center of the urban village, similar ridership, potentially better bus integration.

And we're also looking at 15th option in that area.

So I won't spend time again, but this is just a summary sheet.

So if there's one Oh, the question.

Commissioner?

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I apologize before you just go into that.

I had a quick question that just occurred to me on page 67, if you don't mind going back to that.

Thank you.

I was just curious as to why on page 66, you list that all of these three different alternatives would require the 4F avoidance alternative, but then on page 67, that's not listed.

I'm curious, are you anticipating that?

Yeah, I just noticed that this morning too.

I think that's an oversight on our part.

We would need to look at the 4F issues with Pigeon Point as well.

I should have noted that.

Thank you.

So just, I won't go on, this is just a summary page.

It essentially zeroes out all of those valuation measures that would be the same across alternatives.

So if you're looking for a one-page summary of all of the measures and you just want to let the information kind of roll over you, it's worth spending some time looking at this chart.

Again, areas in red are lower performing.

Areas in green are higher performing.

So it gives you a bit of a feel for how the alternatives compare to each other in one page.

And also there's this additional page in your summary booklet that identifies some of the key issues at a segment level, all of that information I've just gone through.

So turning to the potential mix and match opportunities, and this is just information for your consideration.

As Diane noted, we're not asking you to make any decisions today.

This is information that perhaps could help you as you think about how these alternatives could potentially be mixed and matched moving forward.

starting with the yellow-brown alternative as described.

As you look at this alternative, it's defined in a certain way right now as I've described it, but it doesn't have to be exactly this way as we move forward.

And depending on your recommendations, this alternative could be modified in certain ways to potentially improve it in one respect or another.

Some of the key areas that we would note could be looked at more closely.

include the Duwamish water crossing area, where right now it's assumed to be, as shown on the left side of the screen, on the south side of the existing West Seattle Bridge.

But it could just as easily, from a design perspective, be located on the north side.

There are issues, of course, with that differentiators, which are listed in the middle of the screen.

There are differences in terms of engineering constraints as we discussed, differences between the two sides in terms of fish and wildlife effects, differences in terms of property effects, freight movement effects, business commerce effects, and cost.

And just to give you a feel for some of those differences, and again we can go into this in detail as you look at the evaluation package in more detail, But as you look at the key differentiators again, if you're on the south side, the yellow side, you're affecting, in terms of engineering constraints, you're affecting pigeon point steep slope, whereas if you're on the north side, you avoid pigeon point steep slope.

Again, with the fish and wildlife effects, if you're on the south side, you're affecting the Duwamish green belt, whereas if you're on the north side, you avoid impacts to the Duwamish green belt.

Property effects, in terms of their magnitude, are very similar in terms of the raw numbers of properties you would affect.

But with the south side alternative, in terms of freight movement, you would lessen freight and port terminal effects.

Whereas with the blue alternative on the north side, you would affect freight port terminal, especially during construction.

And also with business and commerce effects, you could displace alternatives with business, sorry,

Council Member Bakeshaw.

Thank you.

Before you continue on this, and I appreciate the pros and cons you're looking at here, but we really need the port as a partner.

And if one is $300 million more and the port is telling us that's a really bad thing for the port, why would we continue to, besides the 4F issue, why would we continue to even spend a lot of time on it?

What are you going to do about dealing with those, the real freight issues and the economic impact?

That's totally at your discretion.

As we said, this is the analysis for you to consider, and your recommendations could be just that.

You know, why should you continue to look at it?

It's totally for you to decide as you move forward.

And so, colleagues, well, Kale, first of all, you've done an amazing job of accelerating us through a lot of information.

We're now going to have a few minutes on each of these issues to discuss it, and so I do want to invite folks to, we're not making decisions here today, but folks have both questions or opinions they want to share about this, and so we can start to get a sense where folks are thinking.

That'll be helpful for Council Member McDermott and I as we move forward, and I think also for staff to get an understanding of what options we want to go forward to.

So I appreciate you kicking that off, Council Member Bakeshaw.

Just to complete this page, and you kind of went straight to the key point, but business and commerce effects, obviously the south side could displace businesses that support trade.

That's true of the north side too.

And the north side could also potentially displace some water-dependent businesses.

And as noted, the cost right now, with the cost information, it suggests that the north side is $300 million, potentially more expensive than the south side crossing within this segment of the project.

And I think here it's important to highlight why we're in this process, and it's going to be helpful to hear from some of the experts at Sound Transit what makes sense to carry forward or not.

A few months ago when we were looking at these alternatives, the cost differential was $200 million the other direction, so roughly about a $500 million swing.

And so the process we go through with your technical experts out there doing soil samples and talking to property owners and looking at specifics around alignment actually does a lot to help us inform our decisions and hearing from other operations that are going to be impacted.

So to the extent that we get to a point where we say, we have enough information now to know that this option is suboptimal on all the metrics we care about, that's great.

And to the extent that there are things like, well, there's still a lot of uncertainty around this, and we may, as we go forward, we may learn things that make one alignment look really challenging or one better.

So having some feedback from the experts on that as, you know, not today a little bit, but in the next couple months is gonna be helpful as we kind of assemble a preferred alternative recommendation.

Colleagues, anyone else want to make any comments on these two alternatives?

Great.

Moving to the downtown area, this is another location where you could potentially modify the Brown Alternative to be more like the Blue Alternative.

As I mentioned, the Brown Alternative is on 6th Avenue through downtown and on Mercer through South Lake Union Seattle Center area, whereas the Blue Alternative would be on 5th through downtown and through the Harrison area and South Lake Union.

Some of the key differentiators, of course, it affects the location of the Midtown Station, the South Lake Union Station, Seattle Center Station, and the Tunnel Port location, as well as cost differences.

I'm looking...

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, and I appreciate your trying to wrap up the discussion on that one, but sometimes it just takes me a minute to formulate my question.

On the Duwamish Crossing, since this is in a section that we're talking about mixing and matching, I just want to Make sure I understand what you're saying here.

You're saying that we could consider a southern crossing with the blue option within the context of a mixing and matching approach?

Yes.

As you think about, as we described, identifying two preferred alternatives, one that is would not require additional funding and one that would potentially require additional funding, you can use that and other factors to inform what those two alternatives might be.

And they could be the same in certain areas if you felt there was no need to look at an alternative further.

Looking at the downtown, some of the trade-offs are the key differentiators.

With the Midtown station on 6th, there would be limited station entrance options, whereas with the location on 5th Avenue, there would be more station entrance options.

With South Lake Union, you have a higher right-of-way cost for the off-street station location with the Mercer alternative.

With the 5th and Harrison alternative, you have higher ridership potential because it has better pedestrian access and bus access.

At Seattle Center, with the Brown Alternative, a good thing about it is that there's a wider right-of-way on Mercer, which makes it easier to construct the station.

Whereas you've got a more constrained right-of-way on Republican, you'd likely have some property effects outside of the public right-of-way to build that station.

At the North Tunnel Portal, it's located in poor soil conditions for the Brown Alternative.

With the blue alternative, it affects the Queen Anne green belt.

It's in a landslide hazard area.

Again, looking at costs, this is an area where the brown alternative is approximately $400 million more expensive than the blue alternative.

So in this case, the brown alternative is more expensive.

If you wanted to reduce the cost of the brown alternative overall, you would mix and match it with the blue alternative in this area.

So, Cahill, on this one, I'm curious about, from the agency's perspective, is there a sense that it's worthwhile carrying both of these through to continue to study them?

Or if, from our position and from the community's perspective, if Fifth Avenue is more optable on all the metrics we care about and less expensive, would it make sense to narrow that down at this point?

I think from your perspective, from the ELG's perspective, you should focus on what you think is preferred, whatever you think is preferred.

There may be cases, and we've discussed 4F issues and other legal technical reasons why we might need to look at additional alternatives in the EIS.

They would not necessarily be preferred, but we'd still need to look at them.

But you don't need to concern yourself with that necessarily in terms of your recommendations that's informed by FDA or other considerations.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions on the downtown in South Lake Union?

Council Member Bakeshaw?

If I can ask, has anybody heard massive concerns from downtown businesses about whether it's fifth or sixth?

Because I have not.

And whereas I've heard lots from Ballard and lots from the areas we're talking about, about West Seattle, this has been remarkably silent.

So if you've heard something I'd like to know.

The silence continues, Council Member Bakeshaw.

I have no doubt that, you know, when we get down to, you know, which building is going to get, you know, impacted, I'm sure people have differences, but not hearing a lot so far.

In Smith Cove, as we discussed, the brown alternative on the left is currently identified to be near Gaylor Street, whereas the blue alternative was near Prospect Street.

Some of the key differentiators, obviously the station location access is different.

There are differences in terms of engineering constraints, differences in terms of impacts on parks, fish and wildlife, property effects are different, and cost.

And looking at those more closely, The brown alternative would be west of Elliott Avenue.

It would have access to Expedia via the Gaylor Street overpass, whereas the blue alternative is at Prospect Street.

It would be east of Elliott Avenue, and access to Expedia would be via the Helix Pedestrian Bridge.

In terms of engineering constraints, with the brown alternative, the station and the guideway are an area with poor soils.

It would also affect the interbay pump station and a portion of an existing bridge in that area to construct that particular alignment.

The blue alternative, the station and the guideway are in a landslide hazard area, so you'd need to stabilize that slope.

In terms of parks, fish and wildlife impacts, the brown alternative avoids the Queen Anne Greenbelt, whereas the blue alternative would affect the Greenbelt.

And in terms of property effects, they're similar.

They're different locations, but the overall magnitude of the property effects, the business placement would be similar either way, either side of the street.

And then finally, in terms of costs, the...

Commissioner?

It's okay, go ahead and finish your...

The brown alternative is approximately $100 million more than the representative project, whereas the blue alternative is approximately $200 million more.

Just a quick question.

Are there any differences in ridership between the blue and the?

No, not really.

Can you remind me what you're anticipating for ridership in this area?

Overall?

No, in this area specifically.

Oh, I'd have to look more closely.

I could get back to you on that.

I don't know.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

I'm curious, I want to follow up on that a little bit.

In my conversation with staff earlier this week, one of the drivers of ridership I think would be Expedia.

But my understanding is the access to Expedia from either the brown or the blue line is pretty comparable depending on maybe where you are within the Expedia complex over there.

One of the advantages of the Brown alignment is proximity to both the ports operations there, which may drive some additional ridership, and the potential for redevelopment at the Seattle Armory site, which would also be within a walkshed there.

But when you say that the riderships are, we're not seeing a difference, is that because the modeling doesn't anticipate future land uses, or because at this point it's all noise, or because There's other benefits from the Smith Cove location that I'm, or the Blue Line location that I'm overlooking.

There's just not enough difference in terms of land use and access for it to reflect itself in a model, so we cannot distinguish whether there's a benefit one way or the other, except in that one location that I mentioned in South Lake Union.

Councilmember Johnson.

This also feels like one of the few places in the entire system where we could also really have strong bike rail integration.

So the difference here between these two station locations does have a noticeable impact about accessibility if you're choosing to ride your bike to the station.

When you're adjacent to the regional trail on one side but you're on the other side of a pretty busy four way street slash highway it's got a very different impact.

So I'd love to understand a little bit better about that differentiation but as I read this chart the station to the west gives you better access to that regional trail and is one hundred million dollars cheaper.

Is that correct.

Correct.

Then the blue alternative.

Yes.

Go on.

With the blue alternative, again, you could do the same mix and match exercise that I just described with the brown alternative.

But some other additional things to think about.

Right now the blue alternative assumes tunnel stations in West Seattle.

You could instead adopt an elevated station option.

So it's essentially swapping the brown for the blue in that area.

Some of the key differentiators would be the station location obviously would vary.

Property effects would be different.

The guideway height in Delridge would be different depending on what you do here.

And cost would be different.

Looking at that more closely, as you look at the station locations, with an elevated station location with the yellow alternative here on 41st, it would be further away from bus routes on California Avenue.

The same is true of a tunnel on 41st, whereas 42nd and 44th would be closer to the bus routes on California.

Property effects with the elevated alternative.

You'll see it's broken down into residential and business displacements because you have both in this area.

An elevated alternative would have more residential effects than the representative project.

It would have fewer business effects because it's avoiding Fauntleroy Avenue.

Whereas the tunnel options are generally better in terms of avoiding residential and business effects across the board, regardless of which tunnel station location.

In terms of the guideway height in Delridge, obviously the yellow alternative would result in a higher guideway height through Delridge, whereas the tunnel alternatives would all result in a lower guideway height.

In terms of cost, the tunnel alternatives are generally fairly comparable.

They're all about $700 million more than the cost of the representative project through this area.

So Cahill, just so I understand the cost analysis and how these other impacts fall into that.

So additional residential displacements, if we're doing an elevated through that residential neighborhood, there's obviously cost impacts to that.

And then so if we're doing a tunnel, we would have some savings because we wouldn't be acquiring those properties.

Is that incorporated into the $700 million difference?

Yes.

So the tunnel would cost more than $700 million, but we'd have some savings from fewer property acquisitions?

Yes.

And so the net is $700 million?

Yes, so this addresses both the savings and the costs, so the net effect is $700 million more.

Councilmember Herbold?

I'm good.

Councilmember Johnson?

Okay.

One more question I have.

The blue alignment has three different station alternatives.

Is the thinking at this point that we would study all three in an EIS or are you hoping that this group would prefer one over the other or that the board would prefer one over the other?

it's your choice, but as Council Member Baggio noted, if there's consensus about which is the preferred station location, that's all the better, that we can just get to that point earlier.

Great, thank you.

Looking in the Solo and Chinatown ID area, this is an area where currently the blue alternative assumes a station on 4th Avenue, and as we described, we're looking at two options there, a shallow cut-and-cover option, or a deep-mined station option.

But you could change the blue alternative to instead have the Chinatown ID station on 5th Avenue.

Again, there's a deep and shallow option there.

Some of the key differentiators are the ease of access to the station and passenger transfers, the construction effects in the Chinatown ID, property effects, construction schedule, and cost.

And looking at those more closely, in terms of ease of station access, with a brown 5th Avenue board cut and cover option on 5th Avenue, it's higher performing because the station would be shallower.

It's easier to access if it's a shallower station.

With the 5th Avenue board mined option, it would be a deeper station, so it would perform less well in terms of station access and transfers.

4th Avenue, cut and cover, it's a shallow station again, so it's easier to access, whereas the 4th Board, mined option, is a deeper station, again, harder to access, so it's lower performing.

In terms of construction effects in the Chinatown ID, the board cut-and-cover option would be on Fifth Avenue.

Now, it's not as impactful as the representative project, which is a cut-and-cover tunnel and station, but nevertheless, this would still involve a cut-and-cover station in Fifth Avenue, essentially in the area between Jackson Street and Weller Street, right out here beside us.

So, oh, sorry.

Council Member Bankshaw.

This comes back to a question about why would we keep something on the table and the deep board mine either fourth or fifth strikes me as something that we ought to reject both because of the cost and operating it afterwards so that if you had to take an elevator down with what we anticipate are going to be thousands of riders regularly doesn't strike me as something we would want to carry forward.

So I'd love to hear about Why, if it's going to be 500 million more, would we do that?

And what I'm hearing from the community is a real desire to connect Union Street Station and the King Street Station with whatever station we end up building here, whether it's 4th or 5th.

So those are the two areas that I'm continuing hearing concern about.

I wonder if you could just address them briefly.

Yes, I think part of the desire to look at different depths of station was driven in part, as you described, by overall connections in the community.

And we will be doing a workshop with the Chinatown IQD community during the scoping period where we try and describe some of the trade-offs with all these alternatives, not just in terms of light rail operations, but in terms of connections to the community, impacts to the community, the overall vision for the community.

And as we have our next ELG meeting that's entirely focused on the Chinatown ID station, we'll be able to elaborate on some of those, what we learned in terms of our analysis and what we learned in terms of community feedback about that to hopefully inform your thinking before you need to make your recommendations.

In terms of construction effects, I was just describing the construction effects in the Chinatown ID.

With the 5th Avenue board mined option, it would have less construction effects because the mine station, you would not have as much impact on the surface.

At the 4th Avenue, cut and cover.

This is the option that would require rebuild of the 4th Avenue viaduct.

So there would be major construction effects and there would be major traffic effects.

A lot of the traffic that's on 4th Avenue would need to be diverted during construction.

So it's different because the construction effects are not proximate or as proximate to the community, but there would be traffic diversions that would affect the communities around this area.

And that's true of the fourth board-mined option as well.

With the fourth board-mined option, as I've described before, this would require full closure of 4th Avenue during the construction period, which would be, we estimate, somewhere in the region of five years or so.

Property effects.

With the brown option board cut and cover, it would have property effects in Soto at the tunnel portal and along 5th Avenue.

and would affect future central base expansion.

It does not affect the current central base, but an area that they're proposing to expand into.

With the 5th Avenue board mined option, again, you have those property effects at the tunnel portal in Soto, and again, it affects future central base expansion.

With the blue 4th Avenue cut and cover option, you'd have property effects on 4th Avenue, and you'd also have some effect to Ryerson Base.

Finally, with the fourth board mind option, again, you'd have property effects on 4th Avenue.

But with this alternative, you would completely relocate Ryerson Base.

You would affect that completely.

In terms of construction schedule, the board, 5th Avenue board kind of cover option, the brown alternative on the left does meet the ST3 schedule.

With the other alternatives, you have schedule risk, potential schedule delay with those alternatives.

And then finally, in terms of cost, the alternative on the left would actually result in some cost savings over the representative project in the vicinity of $200 million.

The second brown alternative would be similar cost, whereas the alternatives on 4th Avenue in blue would be plus $300 million if you do a cut and cover station, potentially up to $500 million additional if you do a mine station option.

Councilmember Johnson.

Thanks.

Obviously, we're going to dig into these in a lot more detail when we get together at the end of March.

But I want to sort of offer that it's going to take some pretty compelling detail at that meeting for me to want to consider that Fourth Avenue board mine station, given the transfer challenges, the scheduled delay challenges and the cost increases that just seems to be one of those ones that's not worth continuing.

I'm going to reserve the right to change my mind based on what we see in those couple of hours at the end of March.

But right now, at first blush, that one doesn't look like it's worth continuing.

Commissioner?

Thank you.

I don't need to know this now, but I'd like to understand, maybe just in an email, really the magnitude between the higher performing and lower performing.

You know, by magnitude of what?

And I always use the Beacon Hill Tunnel as my way of trying to understand the depth of a tunnel and an elevator going down.

And maybe you could provide some comparisons to that moving forward.

How does the Beacon Hill Station compare to maybe how these would compare?

Because it is fairly deep.

I can speak quickly, but we can provide you more detail.

Certainly, Beacon Hill is, I want to say, about 160 feet, 160 feet deep, whereas this particular option would be about 200 feet deep.

So it'd be deeper than Beacon Hill for the mined options.

And that's true of fourth or fifth.

But we can give you more examples of other stations and the depth of those stations, too, to help you understand relatively.

It quickly follow up, where is the water table on 4th Avenue?

I mean, we're always dealing with that question.

Yeah.

I don't know off the top of my head, but it's not very deep.

I know that.

What?

Will be below the water.

Will be below the water.

With a mine station, yes.

So.

So colleagues, I want just to reiterate, we're going to have a dedicated meeting to discuss a lot of the complex issues around Chinatown International Districts at the end of March.

We'll have a couple hours together.

But frankly, the work that needs to go into that and for us to make a decision and reach consensus.

Again, we won't necessarily be making a decision at the end of March, but we'll be just a month away from making a recommendation according to the schedule.

And so there's a lot of work that needs to happen between now and then, including all of us, making sure that we're checking in with folks we're accountable to to have those conversations and understand where they are and what we heard today in public comment, not just about the scoping process, but in general about making sure that the community has the capacity and the resources to do their analysis and understand what the impacts will be are going to be important to me to hear.

And there's a natural, I mean, there's a tension here A couple tensions, I mean one is cost that I think folks talked about and other impacts on things like Ryerson base which are important to figure out.

There's a schedule impact, both on how much time do we take to analyze this.

You know, we've heard requests today that folks feel like they're being rushed and to really vet this.

And so we'll work through that and hopefully there's a resolution that can be consistent with the schedule.

And there's also pressure, we heard at the very beginning, that folks want to see these projects delivered sooner than our current timeline.

And so those are going to push on each other.

And our desire to recognize the particular vulnerability and also the strengths of this Chinatown international community and the really direct impacts that these will have on some players in there.

And frankly, it was great to hear from SSA Marine earlier, I think the recognition that You know, our business office doesn't have to be water-located.

We like where it is, but it can be moved.

And that's a large operation that has probably been through this elsewhere in their operations and has attorneys on staff to navigate that process, and they're comfortable that somehow they'll come out of that fine.

That's a different perspective than it may have as an immigrant-owned small restaurant in Chinatown International District.

where a move could be devastating and how we would analyze that.

And so I really want to turn to staff both at Sound Transit and at the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and SDOT in our ongoing work to get as much engagement and support of those community members so that when we come back on the 29th that we can have a robust conversation.

And we'll be talking about who's going to be sitting around this table.

My expectation is we would have a few community leaders be part of those conversations, too, to help us navigate some of the decisions and the tradeoffs we'll be considering.

But again, ask folks that are here today to engage directly with folks in the next six weeks, eight weeks, and I'll be providing some resources too through that time period to make sure you know that there's, whether they're comment letters or conversations or private meetings to take to understand what some of those concerns are so that we can be as informed as possible with whatever information we get to March 29th.

Can I just do a time check here?

It's 11, about 1125. Can we have your permission to take 15 more minutes because we need to get through Salmon Bay Crossing and Ballard as well?

Diane, as I mentioned yesterday, my next appointment is 4 o'clock.

Lunch is coming in.

Okay.

So an early dinner too.

Thank you.

Moving to the Salmon Bay and Ballard Station.

Obviously, the blue alternative right now assumes tunnel station options, and we're looking at two options on 14th and 15th.

This could be mixed and matched, if you like, with a elevated, the brown elevated alternative, which is the high-level fixed bridging.

Some of the key differentiators, of course, there's different station locations, different effects on water resources, different effects on business and commerce, different property effects and cost.

And just to walk through some of those at a high level, In terms of the station location, the fixed bridge crossing, the elevated station at 14, the brown alternative, would straddle Market Street.

It would have similar ridership, but potentially better in terms of bus integration.

The tunnel crossing, tunnel station at 14, so the middle column in blue, also would straddle Market Street, so it's also similar in terms of ridership and potentially better bus integration.

On the right, the blue alternative, which is a tunnel station at 15th, would be south of Market Street.

It would have similar ridership, and because it's on 15th, it's closer to the center of the urban village.

In terms of water resources, the fixed bridge obviously has potential in-water effects, whereas the tunnel alternatives in blue avoid in-water effects.

In terms of business and commerce, the brown alternative has potential maritime and freight business effects, as we've described, whereas the tunnel alternatives in blue would avoid those maritime business effects.

In terms of property effects, the brown alternative has greater property effects south of Salmon Bay as you rise up to that bridge location.

It's an elevated guideway, it's outside of the public right-of-way, it is affecting some businesses.

Whereas the tunnel alternatives have fewer property effects, particularly in Ballard, with the cut-and-cover station on 14th, because that would be within the 14th Avenue right-of-way.

The tunnel station on 15th, however, would have greater property effects in Ballard because it would be a cut-and-cover station outside of the public right-of-way.

It would not be within any public right-of-way.

It would be adjacent to 15th Avenue.

Cost differences overall, the fixed bridge in Brown would be approximately $100 million more than the representative project, and the tunnel alternatives would both be in the vicinity of $350 million more.

Council Member Berkshire.

Thank you.

I've already spoken about this earlier, how important the tunnel is to maritime businesses and to the port.

But I have a question that you said maybe about a half an hour ago that you're asking this group to forward to the Full Sound Transit Board our recommendation, one being what is that you wouldn't have to ask for additional money and one that you would.

The only option that is on the table that doesn't cost additional money is the bridge, the Bastille Bridge.

And that's an absolutely unacceptable option to everyone that has weighed in on this.

So how do we get around that?

And maybe I'm asking my colleagues that the notion of just having a Bastille Bridge where things are raising and lowering, you're dealing with freight, you're dealing with unpredictability of schedules then just to be able to say that that is just one we don't want to be considering.

And I know well and good that that was the representational alignment but that was never what people in Ballard or people in Magnolia that came to those public hearings before the vote ever agreed to.

So I'm looking to you to say how do we make this work.

So we're looking at options that are going to be really supported by the community.

To speak to that briefly, we're looking to present an alternative to the Sound Transit Board that from an end-to-end cost perspective is comparable to the representative project.

So it could be more expensive in certain areas but have savings in other areas and overall potentially similar in scope to the representative project.

It's essentially an optimized representative project based on public feedback and all the community enhancements and suggestions that have been made throughout this process.

If it can be cost compatible with the representative project, then it presents an alternative to the Sound Transit Board that perhaps has elements, like you say, that are different than the representative project.

Council Member Johnson.

I think that brings me in a very perfect segue, Cahill, to a question, and I'd ask you to go back, if you could, to slide 74. So slide 74, while Cahill goes backwards, is the slide that kind of shows all the evaluation measures associated with the three different alternatives that have been put in front of us so far.

The ST3 representative project, if you look at the summary of differentiators, is remarkably lower than most of the other alternatives.

So what I would love to see staff continue to analyze is, what can we really do to get that brown option to be as close to the cost and schedule without changing the scope of that evaluation of that option so that we can eliminate the representative project from consideration.

When I look at these three options, what I would love in a perfect world is to be able to see analysis move forward that is comparable in cost and schedule to the representative project, but that performs better than the representative project.

And then a project that may cost a little bit more than that, but does even better in terms of all the other things that we care about.

So as we continue to ask you to mix and match here, Cahill, I'd love to have your team come back to us with ideally an option that is not the representative project, but represents the same sort of cost and schedule as the representative project, so we feel like this evolution is taking us to a better place.

So colleagues, as we start to wrap up here, there's a couple places that stood out to me when I look at here that seems like there's a lower cost alternative that also meets all of our other priorities, however we choose to rank those.

And that would be the crossing of Harbor Island on the south side of the Spokane Street bridge as opposed to the north And also through downtown on and South Lake Union on 5th Avenue and Harrison as opposed to on 6th Avenue and Mercer Again, we're not making any decisions today, but it seems like those are two opportunities where there's lower costs and meets or exceeds the needs elsewhere to be considering.

The Salmon Bay crossing I think is a similar place where I think a lot of our needs are met with a tunnel and what we've heard today.

But the cost differential is still more.

And so I think we'll have to consider how we package that or if we need to carry both those through.

I think there's also a question of are there any requirements that we need to do or maybe that's beyond the scope of this group and that's really to you and your lawyers of is there a requirement that the representative alignment needs to be part of the EIS to meet other requirements.

But I think what you're hearing from a lot of us today is it seems like we've done enough refinements on that representative alignment that there's really not a lot of reason to build anything on that representative alignment.

The good parts of the representative alignment have been carried through to the other two, and the bad parts we've kind of aren't interested in going back on.

And then there's obviously some other places where there's some larger costs as the challenges around Chinatown International District that we're going to spend a lot of time on and I think that'll be really informative.

And then in West Seattle we know that both in Delridge and up in the junction there are some options there and I imagine we're probably going to carry a couple options through both of those to be looking at too.

Councilmember Harrell.

Thank you.

I hope at least we are demonstrating to the public that we are trying to do this very thoughtfully.

And the concerns from industry and the maritime and businesses and residences are certainly resonating with us.

And as we look at the alternatives and even a mix-and-match approach, that we take all that into consideration.

And again, I press upon the public that we hear their testimony.

I guess I do have one And that's why I didn't want to take anything off the table, even like it's very seductive to take the fourth board tunnel, the mind.

The deep mine off the table, because I think a $400 million cost differential, but at this stage, particularly we're looking at a mix and match approach, is still all part of the discussion.

I have one sort of process question, and that is, of all the testimony I heard, one that really resonated was anyone whose home was about to be taken through the process of the eminent domain process.

And I don't know if it's through the EIS process or this scoping process or on the sound transit board, but when we start looking at, we're not going to get out of this without having to claim some property, a particular residence.

I don't see a way out of that.

So when we look at a relocation package or assistance for that person, a postage is a flat-out, dry, eminent domain process.

On the south end, you may recall we had come up with a mitigation fund, about a $50 million mitigation fund, and we looked at both businesses and residents and the impact.

When is the discussion on what that may look like?

particularly for a person that bought a house at a time and the house is appreciated and pretty rooted in the community, just a flat-out taking, at least in my mind, is not effective, or even just for that matter.

So what that whole relocation package may look like, when do those discussions in the process occur?

And should they occur now?

I'm not really certain.

Well, we are, as I mentioned earlier, already meeting with property owners who think they could potentially be affected.

And to be clear, we are obliged to help people find comparable property.

in the area in the event that they need to be displaced.

So they would not necessarily be relocated far out of their communities.

And we are required to reimburse them in a fair market value of their property.

But at this point in time, we do not know exactly what those property effects, who exactly we'd be displacing.

We have some lines on the map, but no decisions have been made.

We will continue to converse with property owners throughout this process and help them understand what their rights are and what the process is and how to engage in it.

So Kayle, I understand that and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but to just buy someone's property and market value to me is still not.

and an adequate response and I think that's a traditional taking.

There's incredible costs to still move whether it's expenses on the loaders and the trucks and relocating your kids to another school.

So I'm wondering and I think we should be a little more creative as we had to be on the south end of Seattle when we had a mitigation fund for businesses primarily that were relocated.

So in this situation, again, I'm hoping that in the discussions at some point, and again, I'm not sure if it's here and it's a little food for thought, that we do more than just simply here's a check for the market value of your house.

Because again, in a multi-billion dollar project, While $40,000 or $50,000 is not a big impact on this, it is a huge impact to the benefit of a person that has just said, hey, you didn't know this was on the radar 5 years ago, 7 years ago when you rooted in this community, but now you have to go.

So there could be a stronger mitigation package than just a flat-out taking.

And I think, you know, we heard in public comment today and we've heard in other comments through this process, you know, my hope is that the agency, and I believe you are, is really deeply engaging with folks.

And I, you know, the uncertainty around it, is also part of the challenge.

There may be someone that's ready to relocate right now, but when they go to sell their property, they're gonna have to disclose that this property may be taken in a few years and it may suppress the current value because no one wants to move into the neighborhood with the risk of living through a construction site.

So how do we address that?

Someone may want to be preparing to remodel their basement to add another unit, but should they spend $50,000, will they get that back if Sound Transit comes through in a couple years and says, hey, we actually need to take your property.

And so I know there's a lot of limits through state law that we can and can't do, but I hope that the agency is both being as transparent as we can, and if there are issues that say this is unfortunate, to bring them back to this group, whether it's in this format or some other format, so that we can consider the policies and see if there's other ways that we can address some of the real concerns.

I think as one of the gentlemen said today in public comment, you know, we're bringing light rail to the exact community we want to serve, you know, and at the same time we may displace most of them in the process.

And so, you know, that's part of the reality when you do a multi-billion dollar project.

You can't do that without touching anything.

And we want to be extra sensitive to that.

Similarly with the Chinatown International District.

This is a community that could really benefit from the transit investments and yet if we don't do it right, they won't be around to benefit from the transit investments.

Thank you everyone.

Cahill, do you need to close up on any part of the presentation?

I think there's just one more slide and it's just a recap essentially of what are the next steps.

But just to show you that slide.

Just a reminder that we will be doing EIS scoping in February and March.

We'll come back to you March 29th for an ALG meeting focused on Chinatown ID.

And then in April, you would make your recommendations.

We'll firm up those dates as soon as we can and let everyone know through every meeting we can what those dates are.

And finally, the board decision on what we should move forward with in May.

A quick question, Cahill, as we wrap up.

Is there going to be more kind of technical or engineering analysis done between now and the end of March, or is that largely done at this point, and it's just more about community engagement?

The latter.

The work is, for the most part, done, except to the extent that we need to continue the conversation with community members and keep refining based on what they provide us.

Great.

I also want to flag and thank Executive Summers.

None of these properties touch any of your constituents, but I appreciate your time to be here.

And I think part of that is what others have mentioned.

We do not just have a responsibility to Flex in Seattle, we have a responsibility to the whole region in this project.

And we are not the only elected leadership group that will be going through this process.

So we are also, I think there's an expectation that we do the best for the direct communities that are impacted.

but also model the behavior that we expect communities throughout the region to be thinking of these trade-offs.

And so they're hard decisions we're going to have to make, and I appreciate you spending as much time as you are with Seattle on this.

That's really helpful.

The last thing I want to just flag before I hand it off to my colleague, Council Member McDermott, I'm interested in us having a discussion as we go forward about how this group continues to stay engaged beyond the end of kind of our April or May decisions.

There will still be many decisions that will be getting made in the years to come and I don't know if An elected leadership group needs to continue on.

It's largely a city council, so maybe it comes back to the Seattle City Council.

But that'll be different in different jurisdictions.

And of course, the port and the county have interest here too.

And so I want to just flag that we should think about a discussion about, is there a formal arrangement that we carry on through the EIS process and other decisions that get made?

Or is there another format that we do?

I want to acknowledge as I did at the beginning that we've been at this for over a year already, and for as hard as that is to fathom, we've all invested a lot.

both in our work, but also in work and meetings and conversation with the community.

And in many ways, in the next two, three months, we do far more work than we have done over the last year.

We have been setting ourselves up to narrow alternatives and gather information, and it is in the coming months that to do our job well we have some really difficult decisions that need to be very well informed by conversation with everybody in the room and more people out in the community.

And I look I expect that to be hard work and challenging in many ways at many times but also that the intensity of our work in the amount of our work I think will match if not far exceed what we've already invested over the last year.

And I want to set that expectation and also tell you that how much I look forward to working with everyone in doing that to have the very best recommendations we can to the board and then to the EIS and going forward because we all know why we're doing this work to provide the best transit we possibly can from Ballard to West Seattle and connecting the region.

With that, The Sustainability and Transportation Committee of the Seattle City Council will now be adjourned.