Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.
My name is Mike O'Brien.
I'm chair of the committee.
It's 10.02 a.m.
on, what are we, January 29th, 2019. Joined by my colleague, Councilmember Rob Johnson.
Thanks for being here.
And staffed today by Jasmine Marwaha.
This is a special committee meeting.
We normally meet on the first and third weeks of the month.
We have a bonus fifth week, and we have a little work to get done, so we scheduled a meeting this morning.
Thank you all for being here.
There are three agenda items on today's agenda.
The first we're gonna have our first conversation with Sam Zimbabwe whose appointment to the director as director of the Seattle Department of Transportation is before us.
Today will just be a discussion and Mr. Zimbabwe will be back in committee on February 15th, I believe.
Where we'll potentially be prepared to have a voting committee on his appointment.
Then we have two other items.
One's a council bill about changing the name of a small portion of Aurora Avenue, essentially between roughly the Gates Foundation and Denny.
And the third item is an ordinance to allow below-grade utility lines across South Holgate Street for Amtrak.
Before we get into all that, we'll go ahead and take public comment.
I got nine folks signed up.
Please come to either microphone.
Barbara Finney's first, followed by Robin Randles, and then Dale Kim.
You'll all have two minutes, and you'll be able to see the clock there, so watch your time.
Welcome, Barbara.
Good morning.
Council Chair and Committee and Estat representatives, I wish to acknowledge that we're on the land of the Duwamish people and now remind you, Council Member O'Brien, about the walk we went on with Seattle Greenways and representative from Council Member Juarez's office and Estat Looking at the problems that people walking encounter on Greenwood Avenue North in what some people would say the far north of Seattle, where there's four vehicle travel lanes, frequent transit, minor freight corridor designation, and posted 35 mile an hour speed limit.
The area of concern, there's many major arterials with such pedestrian safety problems in Seattle.
Greenwood North from 112th to 137th, a 25 block stretch, includes an elementary school, a public library, several assisted living facilities, and is dense with apartment and condo complexes.
I have a letter to deliver to you and also a flyer made by our Greenwood Finney Greenways Group illustrating problems along this area that we've sort of adopted to make improvements for pedestrians, urging the government, the city government, it's going to take more than more than ESTA to improve these conditions where the right-of-way has not been protected since this area was incorporated by the city in the 1950s.
And hence, it's full of obstructions and appropriations by property owners and parking, which is just allowed, making people walk along the white line, the fog line, to get by in many places where there's no right-of-way for them.
So...
Can I ask you to wrap up, Barbara?
Pardon?
I could ask you to wrap up.
Your two minutes are up.
Oh, great.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Well, please reorganize parking and reestablish the right-of-way on arterials like this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Robin?
Hello.
My name is Robin Randles.
I'm a resident since 1986, parent of two, grandparent to one, Safe Routes to School enthusiast, and walking advocate.
Welcome, Mr. Zimbabwe.
We're happy that you've come to help us realize our vision of a city that puts people first.
As you may have noticed, we have some very exciting and grandiose projects going on at the moment.
We also have a lot of projects that may not quite attract as much press, but are extremely important to people, particularly children, who walk in sidewalkless Seattle on the way to and from school.
I'm hoping that as you make your transition to Seattle, you'll keep the sidewalkless in Seattle well in your mind.
Last year, I conducted walking audits at four schools and discovered that we have a lot more work and investment needed to make our walk zones safe enough for kids to walk to school.
It's important that kids get their physical activity for health and readiness to learn.
And parents up in Greenwood are driving their kids just two blocks to school because of unsafe walking conditions and the less than exemplary driving habits of frustrated commuters trying to save the minute promised by the Waze app.
Perhaps you are aware that many of our neighborhoods were annexed, and they don't have sidewalks.
And the timeline to get those built is like 300 to 500 years.
So we don't really have time to wait around to make it safe to get to Vision Zero in time.
So advocates, SDOT, the Transportation Committee, they've been considering ways to create walking space like lower cost alternative walkways, traffic-calmed home zones, and engineering measures that intuitively encourage slower driving speeds on the neighborhood streets.
They're all being considered.
So we're hopeful that you share in this vision and the people of sidewalkless in Seattle are eager to get to work.
Thank you and welcome.
Am I going to leave this?
Thank you, Robin.
And both you and Barbara, thank you so much for your advocacy and the walking tour you took me on.
I know that was a number of months ago, and I know progress has been slow.
I know you all have been working on this for more than months, for years.
And I really look forward to having a chance to sit down with the new director of Zimbabwe and talk about that as an example of what we see throughout the city and figure out how we can accelerate SDOT's work on making some improvements for that.
Next up is Dale.
Dale Kim and Dale's going to be followed by Brie Gincheld and then Evelina Hackman.
Hello, my name's Dale.
So I tried to find information on Samuel D. Zimbabwe, wasn't able to find any information.
And in terms of people being able to, I know you guys do a lot of things internally behind the scenes that that process doesn't really get.
brought out to the public before time, so I know a lot of the decision-making should probably happen before, and so if we're not able to kind of find out about the information about these people, at least I wasn't able to through the library, and I asked another library tenant, she wasn't able to.
So that wasn't something, yeah, it's just hard to make these type of decisions or at least be able to understand these type of things that are kind of going into place without being able to have the access to that information, as well as the other part on the third of the 1194-56 Ordinance of the Railroad Passenger Corporation Permission to Construct, Maintain, and Operate Below-Grade Utility Lines under Holgate Street, Occidental Avenue, and West of 3rd Avenue, specifying the conditions, yada, yada, yada.
I'm all for, like, upgrading and maintaining, you know, things that had to be done, whatever, in the past of, like, subpar, you know, infrastructure.
In terms of constructing, I don't know if that kind of provides an opening for just more financially motivated decisions in terms of like city building or if it's just kind of another stopgap measure to kind of maybe something else into the future, if you will.
So yeah, I just, I'm not exactly for that last part, at least in the constructing and then subpar systems because it's, for obvious reasons, and then, yeah, access to more information.
Thank you, Dale.
And I appreciate your comments about access to information.
Mr. Zimbabwe's nomination packet is posted with the agenda, and I believe there's a copy in that white binder there if you want to look through that.
As our presentation items for all the other agenda items, there is a questionnaire that the city council sent out to Mr. Zimbabwe.
that we received, I believe, yesterday.
And so that's not posted with the agenda, but it will be up within the next day.
And we'll make sure it's posted with the agenda in advance of the meeting on February 15th.
And so, and if you want to look through any of the agenda items in that white binder, they'll be there too.
And feel free to email Mike.O'Brien at Seattle.gov if you want, if you have help navigating those systems too.
Brie.
Hi, I'm Bregan Keld, and today I'm speaking on behalf of the Move All Seattle Sustainably Coalition, which you may know as MAS.
The groups that came together to form MAS came together because we share a vision, and that vision is for a world-class transportation system that connects the diverse neighborhoods in our city, creates walkable communities, eliminates traffic violence, liberates us from fossil fuels, and ensures equitable mobility for people of all ages, languages, ethnicities, genders, races, abilities, and incomes.
To achieve this vision, our transportation system must prioritize people who walk and roll at all ability levels, people biking at all experience levels, and people who use transit at all income levels, starting as soon as possible by providing more dedicated lanes and signal priority.
It must also reduce reliance on private automobiles, and it must transform freight mobility to undo the harm on community health while maintaining economic vitality.
People in our city deserve to get where they want to go safely, whether they're walking, rolling, biking, or riding transit.
And we seek to make this a present day reality rather than an aspiration for the future.
And that's why we're excited at MAS to have permanent leadership at SDOT.
Judging by his statements and his work at the DCDOT, we think Sam Zimbabwe shares our vision.
And we'd love to see him given the chance to lead and make that vision a reality.
So we ask you to confirm Sam and support him in that work.
And now, on a personal level, I also want to say that I know that there are some tremendous people at SDOT who are anxious to get to work and move this city forward.
And the mass vision isn't radical.
It's actually just echoes the city's stated goals for vision zero, carbon neutrality, and equity.
And so I encourage you not only to confirm Sam Zimbabwe, but to fully support him in showing some bold leadership and getting us on the right track.
So, thank you.
Thank you, Brie.
And I apologize for mispronouncing your last name for the 10th time.
I will get it right one of these days.
Council Member Sawant, thank you for joining us.
Evelyn, or Evelina is next, and then Matthew Curry, followed by Mike McQuaid.
Hi there, my name is Evelina Heckman and I have some very serious concerns.
A lot of it has to do with how nature has been treated in Seattle and how what Seattle and its building is not sustainable.
Part of that has to do with the intrusion of taking things in one place and putting that on another place, that including people and materials.
And then those things are being used and put somewhere else.
Now that's all affecting the spirit and the soul of the natural place.
Take Seattle for instance.
The seven natural hills that were here, what happened to them?
How they were all moved around and then how other life comes in from other places and intrudes upon them.
It doesn't sound like Mr. Zimbabwe is from North America.
and understand that there have been generations of the people that have been moved around.
Although they need to remember that where they were raised and where they were from, the land and the water, the vegetation, that's part of them and in their bones and blood and their bone marrow.
And so that's always with you.
And that thought process may not be similar to that place you're putting an intruding upon.
And those generations of shields include televisions, computers, handheld devices.
As far as changing the name of Aurora Avenue, life depends on the history.
And that history of that name should be honored.
It was named that for a reason.
Think of a bird that may come back.
to find its tree taken and missing.
Now, what is that bird supposed to do?
Thank you, Evelina.
Thank you.
Not to mention the unneeded expense.
Evelina, your time is up.
Next is going to be Matthew Curry.
Good morning, council members.
I'm here speaking today on behalf of the SLU Community Council where I am the board secretary and also the chair of our policy and planning committee.
And essentially I'm here to say thank you in advance for taking up our 7th Avenue North name change legislation.
This is a community goal that has been in the works now for over six years.
Just a few brief comments about the history of this.
This idea was initially proposed by a community booster from the Uptown and Queen Anne neighborhood named John Coney.
John was a terrific person in our community and he proposed this name in order to return the street to its historical name prior to Aurora Avenue.
I've shared a fun handout entered into the record here.
It's a 1923 zoning map that's in the city archives and it specifically shows that in 1923 the street was called 7th Avenue North.
Further, I just want to note that through community outreach with our SLU Community Council, we've received unanimous endorsement for this name change with the corridor property owners in the area between Denny and Harrison Streets, which, as you know, are part of the North Portal Street Grid Reconnection Project.
And I think in the presentation that will be shown later, you'll see that The flavor of the neighborhood, the flavor of the street has changed significantly with this new on-off ramp from existing Aurora.
And so this creates a terrific opportunity to reconnect the street grid and bring the street name back to a knitted Seattle.
Finally, the neighbors that have been involved in the process are the SLU Community Council, SLU Chamber, the Uptown Alliance, the Queen Anne Community Council, and the Denny Triangle Neighborhood Association.
So we look forward to your yes vote in moving this legislation forward.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you, Matthew.
Mike.
And Mike, you'll be followed by Alex Zimmerman and then Doug McDonald.
Council Member O'Brien, Council Member Johnson.
Councilmember Sawant, thank you for having me.
And Mr. Zimbabwe, welcome to Seattle.
You're in a very remarkable spot, and we look forward to your counsel and guidance going forward.
Very excited.
My talk today is to speak in favor of the rename of the short segment of Aurora Avenue North to 7th Avenue North.
A little bit of background, as you know, this was, from Matt's conversation, this was the previous street name prior to Aurora Avenue and SR 99 being put into place in that part of the city with the street grid reconnect and the north portal coming online.
This now becomes an important pedestrian causeway for our city.
And this essentially is a part of Aurora that now can be reconnected back to its original configuration prior to this.
So this is something that we were approached by a community member, took action on their behalf, reached out to the community, received unanimous support, and worked closely with SDOT, council, and community members to make happen.
We hope this is a good example moving forward of other good partnerships with SDOT and the council and the community.
And we look forward to your yes vote on this and reconnecting that street grid so we can walk to the Seattle Center.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mike.
Alex?
Thank you, sir.
Hi.
Say hi, my lovely Fuhrer, and Nazi garbage rats, dirty antisemite, and crook and cretina.
My name Alex Zimmerman.
I want to speak about something that is very, I think, important.
Four years ago, I sit in here, and next to me sit Calbee.
So I ask publicly, who's the schmuck who go for this position?
He had told me, I am.
He not only schmuck, he a crook too.
So this new director will be same schmuck, same crook like everybody.
But probably much deeper, I try speak with all new director right now, what is Duncan, and you approve, it's all identical, absolutely same piece of garbage, or shit, pardon for my French, exactly what is before.
Nothing change, and nothing will be changed.
And you always approve these people.
I never see, and I come to this chamber for how many years, more than 2,000 time and speak, you never Never, never take no to no one director.
Guys, I speak right now to you 700,000 Emerald degenerate idiot.
Before we don't clean this dirty chamber from these nine crooks who sit, nothing will be changed.
It's go for many years and I live in the city more than 30 years.
That's number one.
Number two, I demand that every director have a Q&A every month.
I'm talking about this for 10 years, 100 times.
everybody who work for government and who as director or boss post to behalf Q in A every month.
It's only one way for stopping this schmuck, crook, cretina, a pure fucking idiot.
It's exactly what has happened.
Stand up, America.
Stand up, Seattle.
Clean this dirty chamber from this cretina.
Thank you.
Doug, you're the final speaker who signed up today.
I'd like to say to Sam Zimbabwe, whom I've just met, he and I, it turns out, I just learned, are natives of the same place, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Welcome to Seattle, Sam.
I've been here longer than you've been here.
It's not as bad as you might think from some of the things you see.
We have public participation here, not enough of it.
And some of it, I think you probably know Al Valucci.
I grew up at that time.
And here are my prepared remarks.
Recently, I wrote a 20 page paper about the ADA issues surrounding bike share and sidewalks in Seattle.
I'm sure Sam will have read it by the end of the day.
It's very startling and I'm not going to talk about it now because I think it's going to be plenty of opportunity to explore the really very troubling things I've seen.
And just on the way up here today from the bus stop at Seneca, I've taken pictures of 10 illegally parked bikes on sidewalks.
So we'll fix that, I'm sure.
But this is what's relevant for today.
In the course of that, I've looked at cities around the country, quite a few of them, and compared them with the Seattle experience.
And in the course of that, I've had a good chance to look at what Sam Zimbabwe has been leading in Washington, D.C. It is very progressive, very welcome to innovation, very eager to explore how we put bike share and even e-scooter share on our streets in a sensible, innovative way.
And in respect of Sam's own personal contribution, it's on record that he has had a huge sensitivity in that exercise, which he has led, to the safety of pedestrians and the need to predict and protect pedestrian impacts from the kinds of innovations that we all know are coming and we welcome, but that have to be done right.
And we have a long way to go in Seattle.
We have a lot to learn from other cities.
I have other issues that I'm sure Sam and I and others will have plenty of chance to explore with the committee and the council as well.
But it's very welcome to have someone here who's built a track record in his last job and previously of strong commitment to pedestrian advocacy and the safety of people on sidewalks.
Thank you.
And Sam.
It's all going to get better.
Take it in.
Thanks, Doug.
Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to make public testimony today?
All right.
Seeing none, we'll close public comment and we'll invite presenters forward for the first agenda item, which I will read momentarily.
Appointment of Samuel D. Zimbabwe as director of the Seattle Department of Transportation for a term to January 1, 2023. And as folks get settled, we'll do a quick round of introductions.
Calvin, you want to start?
Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.
It's on.
Sam Zimbabwe, SDOT.
Shefali Ranganathan, Deputy Mayor.
Great, welcome everyone.
Calvin, did you have any opening remarks you want to say before?
No, actually, I don't.
Great.
Shefali, would you like to say a few opening remarks before I hand it over to Sam?
I would be delighted.
Thank you, Council Members O'Brien, Johnson, and Sawant.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.
I can say personally, I am very excited for this day because I know the city and the department has been waiting for this moment for a while, which is to begin the process of confirming Sam Zimbabwe as our next Seattle Department of Transportation Director.
I want to share my personal appreciation to you, Council Member O'Brien, for making this a very transparent and clear process for his appointment and appreciate your willingness to collaborate with our office.
You know, when the mayor announced her nomination of Sam about a little more than a month ago, she believes, and we all do, that Sam is the right person at this time to lead the department as we build the transportation system for the future, to make sure that people and goods can move around safely and affordably, and to build the projects that voters have so generously approved to the Move Seattle and other levies, and make sure that those projects are delivered.
I oversaw the search for Sam, and I can say, and the search committee shares this, opinion that we're deeply impressed with Sam's qualifications in this arena.
He comes to us from the District Department of Transportation, the other of Washington, where he was most recently their Chief Project Delivery Officer and brings that connection between transportation planning He oversaw transit delivery as well as traffic engineering and project delivery.
And these are really what we need here in Seattle as we undergo a period of great change in the city and to make sure that we can deliver on those projects and make sure that the department is also delivering basic and essential services.
I will say finally, and I will hand it over to Sam to speak more to his qualifications, but we are looking forward to you getting to know Sam as well as the residents of the city of Seattle in the next coming weeks and months.
And we are looking forward to an exciting time for the department under Sam's leadership.
So thank you for the opportunity.
Great.
Thank you, Shivali.
And Sam, before I hand it over to you, just what I hope to get out of today.
We'll take about 30 minutes, and myself and my colleagues will ask you a series of questions.
But we really want to get a chance to know you and understand kind of your priorities, your style of leadership.
your experience and how you plan to bring that to SDOT as we work through that.
And during that process, we may come up with other questions or more information we'll want to double back on for our next committee meeting.
And so with that, I'll let you make some opening remarks.
I'd love to hear a little bit about kind of your background and your vision.
Sounds great.
Chairman O'Brien, Council Members Johnson and Sawant, thank you for the opportunity to come before you this morning.
Thank you Deputy Mayor Ranganathan for that introduction.
And I'm truly honored to be nominated by Mayor Durkin for the role as the Director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
I'm somebody who spent my entire education and professional career working to make cities better places for people.
I've sought opportunities where I can use my skills and experience to the greatest benefit, and that's brought me to Seattle and SDOT today.
For the past seven years, I was part of the senior leadership team within the District Department of Transportation, or DDOT, in Washington, D.C., first as the Associate Director for Policy Planning and Sustainability, and then for the last two and a half years as the first Chief Project Delivery Officer for the agency.
And in that role, I brought together planning, design, and construction of capital projects, traffic engineering, traffic signal design and construction, and transit service delivery.
DDOT's a very similar agency to SDOT.
It's a full-service city transportation agency responsible for filling potholes, trimming trees, operating traffic signals, building bridges, building sidewalks.
There are differences, too, and I look forward to learning about the new organization, the new functions, sometimes the dysfunctions, as well, of the agency here.
In Washington, DC, I dealt with many of the same challenges that face us here.
Rapidly growing population, the stresses that puts on both communities and infrastructure.
Multimodal capital projects, large and small, face challenges from interagency coordination to schedule and budget control to building community consensus.
The need for safety improvements in the furtherance of Vision Zero.
Prior to joining DDOT, I had over 10 years of experience working first in the private sector for planning, design, and architecture firms.
and then a national nonprofit organization, Reconnecting America, that was dedicated to using transportation investments, particularly through public transportation, to support equitable community and economic development.
My experience enables me to see issues from multiple perspectives, to weave together policy, programs, people, and projects.
I have a large task in front of me as SDOT director in the second day on the job.
In addition to needing to get to know Seattle and Seattleites, there are the day-to-day service delivery requirements, the operational challenges of the period of maximum constraint, and the need to keep the whole city moving.
I have been impressed with the work undertaken by Mayor Durkin, by SDOT's interim directors, and agency staff to implement changes over the past year that address the department's organization and processes.
The comprehensive work on the Move Seattle commitments, the Center City Streetcar, and other aspects of what the agency does put the agency in the position to deliver, and it will now be up to me to follow through.
We also have regional challenges as we continue to build on the improvements to public transportation that make this region the envy of the country.
I look forward to working with you all on the council, with the modal boards, with residents, with businesses throughout the city.
You will find that I have an open and collaborative working style.
Still, again, very new to the position, but as I've met and spoken with staff from up and down the organization, I've been impressed by the knowledge and the passion for public service that I've seen.
I've also heard concerns about staff morale and look forward to providing the stability to the agency to make sure people throughout the department have the equipment, training, and management structure to succeed.
With that brief introduction, I'll reiterate my excitement about the challenges that lie ahead.
I know you have some specific questions, and I'm happy to answer them at this point.
We've been joined by Council Member Bagshaw.
Thank you for joining us.
So colleagues, I'm gonna, I'll start by asking a question and we can just kind of round robin it and feel free if you have follow-ups to jump in.
We have about a half hour to get as much information out of you as we can today and then we'll be back in a few weeks.
Sam, one of the things I want to touch on is, we came up in public comment a little bit is about safety.
There's a question in the questionnaire about Vision Zero, and you've collected some data on Seattle and talked about some experiences in Washington, D.C. I'd love to hear how we kind of accelerate that work, what you've, you know, build on what you've learned in your previous job and how you want to bring that to us.
And I'll tell you, One of the things we did a couple years ago was reduce our speeds in the city of Seattle.
Essentially, on any unnamed arterials, it automatically became 25, and unnamed non-arterials, 20. But there's a lot, I shouldn't say unnamed, unmarked.
But there's a lot of marked arterials, and we still have a lot of speeds that are higher than that, and maybe some will stay forever for a variety of reasons.
But there's a lot of folks that have been frustrated, myself included, at the pace at which we're lowering speeds throughout the city, and we continue to see some of the impacts of that.
That's one example, but I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about Vision Zero.
I know that DDOT has committed to that, and what we can do to really accelerate our work here in the city of Seattle.
Sure, so first of all, I think it's the front and center of what we do as transportation professionals is keeping the traveling public safe and trying to address safety issues as they come up.
Multi-modal, regardless of where in the city they're coming up.
What we found in DC, and I'll be open that we struggled often with achieving Vision Zero.
We have been successful in the district of bringing fatalities down.
substantially and then the last few years have been going up and that's mirroring the national trend but it's disturbing to us and that's led us to redouble efforts in the district to try to see where we could accelerate things.
Part of that for us was piloting solutions and then rapidly deploying them.
So it used to take us a lot of time and analysis to implement a single leading pedestrian interval, giving pedestrians a couple seconds of head start before turning vehicles start to come in.
It would take We had to count the number of pedestrians.
We had to really get into the details of how that would work.
As we rolled out a citywide traffic signal optimization program that was aimed at improving pedestrian safety and improving transit throughput, we started to deploy leading pedestrian intervals on a much more rapid basis.
And we've, in the first phase of that, This past year, we deployed a third of the signals, got leading pedestrian intervals just as part of that process.
So for me, a lot of it's testing individual solutions, becoming comfortable and making sure we're doing it in the right way, and then rapidly bringing those to scale.
Speed management is a huge issue as it relates to safety.
That is, from my experience, that speed and impairment are the two leading causes of fatalities and serious injuries.
And figuring out a way to manage speeds, both through engineering, through education, through enforcement, all those lead to speed reductions that can improve safety.
Can I follow on to that?
Yeah, please do.
Thanks.
So one of the other, I think, challenges that we mirror each other in terms of the district and the city of Seattle is about, you know, access to the right-of-way, Sam.
So, you know, I could bore you with statistics about, you know, how much of the city is paved over for roadway access, but I want to just pick on downtown for a quick minute.
We got 75% of folks that are coming downtown that are using something other than driving alone, and only 25% of those folks coming downtown every day, which is our most congested part of the region, are driving alone.
Yet when you look at our city streets, one quarter of those city streets are actually for transit only.
We basically have four transit only pathways in downtown.
So if we were to follow the general rule of thumb, we would be giving three times as much right away to those folks that are using other modes than driving alone to be able to get them easily into and out of downtown.
Yeah, we struggle with that because prioritization for things like transit.
is expensive, it's complicated, and sometimes it's politically unpopular.
So talk to me about how you work within those circumstances to make sure that we're meeting our collective goals of safety, climate change, and mobility when the public isn't always as far ahead of the data as someone like you might be.
Sure, that's a great question.
So I think that those right-of-way challenges and those right-of-way trade-offs are really the crux of where, you know, where challenges come in terms of reallocating the right-of-way.
And, you know, I'm still a little bit new to talk about specifics here, but Sometimes it's providing some of those solutions and then being ready as an agency, being ready as a department to modify and tweak those to make sure we're allocating those right.
I think what my experience has been in DC is sometimes when those improvements have not been done in a fully comprehensive way, We've created problems that then poison the well a little bit for some future investments.
And my approach is to try to get things as right as possible going into a project, as far as the network goes, as far as the overall city context goes, and then being ready to adjust as needed.
Going in just to show that we're making some progress, if it's going to create challenges down the line, gives me pause.
And so trying to make sure we know as much as possible going in and be ready to do things in a right and sustainable way.
Sustainable over time, not just sustainable in terms of climate change goals.
Council members, one.
Thank you, Chair Bryan, and thanks for all your responses so far.
Just to follow up on the Vision Zero question, because it's so critical for most people, I mean, just the way it impacts most people's lives.
Can you, first of all, can maybe say a sentence or two about the national trends that you were saying?
Unfortunately, they're going in maybe the wrong direction, but just like how bad is it, and also what is it indicating for other metropolitan areas?
And then if you could maybe touch on what specifically the department did in Washington D.C.
in terms of addressing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Obviously this is an issue that's near and dear to virtually everybody's heart because I can't imagine anybody who's not touched by it.
And so, just specifically, what did the department do there and what, like, do you already, I mean, I know you're new to this city, but do you already see something that could be addressed in a specific way?
And then the other question I'll just throw out there and you can answer as convenient is, In terms of the employees of the department, you did mention morale and of course there are various aspects to it, but I was also wondering if you could touch on the discussions you might have already had about the RSGI principles that the city has agreed to and just what your view is on that and just what's reflected in your conversation so far with the employees there.
Yes, those are both great questions.
Let me start with the second and then go back to the first.
So the RSGI framework is something that I'm very excited about learning more about.
I'm new to that.
You know, we have dealt with similar issues in Washington, D.C., but I think that the framework provides a good way to approach sort of lasting change in the agency how we work with the public.
Actually, later today, the SDOT change team is having a retreat, and I'll be stopping in there after I leave here just to introduce myself and show my commitment and really start to learn alongside members of the department.
So I really feel like that's a key part of what has attracted me to public service here in Seattle.
In terms of Vision Zero and national trends, other cities, the national trends have been going in the wrong direction.
A lot of that is unfortunately in bicycle and pedestrian fatalities as well, I think.
And a lot of those in both urban and inner suburban communities that often lack infrastructure or have real physical challenges.
A lot of those, I think, the increases in fatalities do tie to speed, distraction, And intoxication, quite often, those are the three biggest indicators of where we've been going as a country.
In DC, our approach to Vision Zero, when Mayor Bowser, who's been in office, just Started her second term when she came into office in 2015. She really embraced Vision zero asked us as the Department of Transportation to lead 25 agencies across the city in forming an action plan Because it's not something that's solely the responsibility of the Department of Transportation.
There's a there's everything from first responders to to public works who do it does parking enforcement there and And so we developed a set of strategies that were around engineering, around different enforcement approaches, around how we communicate to the public that we've put into place.
And some of those I touched on, the leading pedestrian intervals, those types of engineering changes.
really tried to target where parking enforcement was being done so that it was trying to address bike lane blockages or crosswalk blockages for pedestrians.
The district has a pretty long history of automated traffic enforcement.
We've worked to make that more safety, make sure that safety nexus was much more clear to the public so that it was clear that the automated enforcement was about safety.
We found very good, correlation between automated enforcement and crash reduction for both red light and speed enforcement.
But we also heard a lot of challenges about how automated enforcement was happening.
So the last few years, we haven't seen the downward trend that we were seeing for a few years, and we've actually gone back up a little bit from a low in about 2012. And then the last few years, we've seen a slight but steady increase, which is really disturbing.
And then that led us, over the last year, to really double down on some of the engineering side of things and try some new things.
So some of the work that New York City has done around left-turn traffic calming to reduce the speed that people are making left turns, they did citywide research, found that that was a leading cause of pedestrian crashes.
In very specific cases, they've made some very aggressive moves to slow down left turns.
We adopted that same strategy and have now been deploying it.
We've worked to remove all double turn conflicts with pedestrian right of way so that sometimes we were eliminating the second turn lane, sometimes we were adding a left turn or right turn signal.
because that was a contributing factor to a number of pedestrian crashes in Washington, D.C. So it's really been rooted in data and also the experience that other cities have had to try to find engineering solutions and make changes that address things.
I will say, and this is one of the things I think that's very difficult from a public sector and sometimes a challenge for agency morale, You know, everybody at a transportation agency wants there to be zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
It also depends on the public, on the traveling public, in terms of respecting each other, respecting other travelers.
I know folks here don't necessarily see that, but I actually see a much better relationship between people traveling out there than I do in Washington, D.C. We get very aggressive on all sides.
It's a little bit nicer here.
The agency, staff that work for an agency take tremendous responsibility and pride in keeping people safe and get the same kind of frustration that you all as elected leaders get when we're not making that kind of progress.
So I think, you know, making sure that we can continue to make the types of improvements that SDOT has made.
Accelerating those, enhancing those, making sure that we're addressing the places where there are crashes.
That's really something that I bring in terms of supporting the agency and then making sure that we're communicating why we're doing certain things.
Council Member Bakeshaw.
Thank you.
Sam, good to see you.
Welcome to Seattle.
I represent D7, which is downtown.
Welcome to D7.
You're here right now.
A couple of items that we've talked about a little bit right now is, you know, downtown at its most congested point is only nine blocks wide.
and we're always competing for real estate.
My goal is recognizing that we're going to have to prioritize streets, like we've done that with Third Avenue with buses.
I'm, like others at this table, use my bike.
I've had an e-bike for five years and am a major advocate as part of moving people.
But it's got to be safe and it's got to be connected.
So we have developed over the years plans for bike network, and we're doing it in like little chunks.
And I'm wondering if there is a way that SDOT, and I see many of my friends here, and I want to say thank you for all the work that SDOT has been doing over the years on this.
But at some juncture, we've got to follow the Jeanette Sadekhan model, which is we're going to move this.
We're going to try it.
We're going to connect it, and You know, I think one of the things she used to say about Bloomberg is that, in God we trust, all others bring data.
We got the data.
We know that if these networks actually exist, that people will ride their bikes if the sidewalks are wider and greener and there's age-friendly benches, a point I will come back to in a moment.
People will use those.
They will walk.
They will ride their bike.
Can you talk to me a little bit about your experience in Washington, D.C., what you know about our bike network plans right now and how you would propose moving forward?
Sure.
You know, my experience in Washington, D.C.
was I felt overall successful in terms of integrating protected facilities, mostly pretty well connected into the downtown and throughout the city.
We faced real challenges at the ends of those facilities in making sure that they were safely connected.
And I think the public would often get very frustrated that we would do Most of it, and then there would be the really hard thing, and we were sort of like, well, we'll come back to that.
And so we really had tried to move away from just getting things in because it was convenient and easy and trying to make sure that we were making all of the difficult connections as part of facility installation.
And those difficult things were actually very difficult and really involved trade-offs and sometimes required adjustments and tweaks to make them work.
I don't know enough about the overall network and how the how the city works to be able to answer those specific questions.
What I've seen of facility design generally has been very good and sort of meets everything that I've seen has worked well that has been installed.
And so I think you're sort of asking about the things that haven't been installed.
And I think those are places where I look forward to working with the engineering and planning teams at SDOT to make sure that we are moving, you know, putting forth designs and projects that address those things and really can do end to end.
I think one of the things that I've seen as I've been walking around downtown is just You know, we talk about the period of maximum constraint and all the things that are going into it.
A level of construction and a level of disruption around is substantial and making sure that we can communicate to all of the traveling public exactly what their safe routes are and that they are connected and end to end for their trips.
Well, thank you for that, and I would just like to say thanks and congratulations to everybody at SDOT and WSDOT for these last three weeks.
You know, the via doom that I think people were prepared for, because we were prepared, people have survived.
So I want to acknowledge and say thank you to everybody who's been working on that.
Can I ask one more question on just downtown?
I think Council Member Johnson wanted a quick follow-up on that.
Yeah, we'll come back.
Just to follow on your question, Council Member Backshot, because I think you bring up a really interesting point that you touched on, Sam, which is sometimes that last little bit is the most complicated.
And the council, several years ago, asked a consultant to do some analysis of the major capital project management at the city.
And you've got a lot of good ideas in your responses to us about how you might reform some of our capital project delivery.
However, one of the things that was left out there, and sometimes is a contributing factor to that last mile is politics.
And so I wonder if you might talk about how you navigate something that is politically contentious in the face of capital project management development, because one of the things that our consultants that council consultants found was that SDOT's responses had suggested some of the technical solutions that you provided, but they also suggested that some of the challenge here is really about political fisticuffs, if you will, to getting to a solution.
So what experience do you have in D.C.
at navigating those complicated political environments?
We may have differences of opinion.
Sure, so in the District of Columbia, we had a system called Advisory Neighborhood Councils, which are elected local officials that are at the volunteer sub-council district level that provide the agencies with great weight on things that affect their communities.
So when we had a project, we would work with the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in the development process.
Use that as both a venue for public input, but also our own agency-led processes.
Sometimes we would get to a point with them where they wouldn't agree fully with what we were proposing, and working with council members and the ANCs, sometimes we might have to sort of navigate those waters, but that was something that I'm very used to, and that came through dialogue, openness, transparency about what the trade-offs were, so that, there could be clarity about where the decisions were.
As I look forward to getting to know the city, I also look to all of you representing districts to help me with that.
And I'm happy to engage in getting to know your districts as well.
Sam, I want to pivot a bit for a second to climate change issues.
And so I think we're all aware that Transportation is a big component of climate change.
I think right now, not just in Seattle and Washington State, but across the country, transportation is now the biggest sector of carbon emissions.
Simultaneously, we have the International Panel on Climate Change from the United Nations a few months ago telling us we have less than 12 years now to radically reform if we want to prevent the irreversible and catastrophic impacts of climate change.
So that alone says, wow, we have to do a lot on transportation in a really short time.
There's a sense of urgency there.
And as you're sure aware, Seattle thinks of ourselves as leaders on this, but we have a long ways to go.
When I think about how we're going to radically reform our transportation system, and I'm locked in kind of the current dynamic of even just, you know, we have sidewalks and roads and bikes somewhere fit in there, and how long we've been fighting and how little change we've made.
I mean, I'm proud of what we've done, but we have a long ways to go.
I can get hopeless.
But then I started looking at some of the new technology and new systems and you know, innovation that's happening in transportation, and it starts to give me hope.
And so you heard today from folks talking about bike-share bikes, scooter shares.
Those are the couple that are obvious right now, and those have just come forward in the last year or two.
What's going to come forward in the next couple years?
And I feel that that helps with the urgency, and at the same time, I really fear that the burden of these new technologies will disadvantage the most vulnerable road users already.
And we heard someone comment today about being a pedestrian and pedestrian interference.
How you dealt with this a little bit in D.C., you know, the mayor and the council are struggling with this too about how fast do we deploy these new technologies that we needed yesterday, but do it in a way that doesn't reduce mobility options for other people.
So that's a great question and something that I have struggled with over the last few years as new mobility options have come into Washington, D.C. I think you're framing it, I think rightly so, as part of this larger urgency around climate change and about what we do in response.
And capital projects and major construction is going to be slow and steady, which has the potential to really shift things on some levels.
And then there's these smaller level changes that can also really affect how people get around.
I think addressing Addressing how we get around, which is really ultimately how we deal with climate change, is about making sure that people have safe and reliable options.
So that when there is a shift, when people give up cars or drive less, there are safe options and people don't feel stranded.
And that some people will need to continue to drive and that they have that ability while we are making safe, accessible, reliable options for everybody.
So one thing that I think has been a challenge in terms of shared mobility development, is that there's real great potential out there for dockless bikes, scooters, to provide access in ways that they haven't been able to provide before.
But there are also all those real trade-offs.
We started a little bit slower than Seattle did in Washington.
Now there's a lot of scooter operators, so we start slower on the bike side, partly because we had a publicly run program that was and still is very successful.
We've gone a little bit quicker on the scooter side, but seen some of the same challenges that that I think folks here are worried about.
And so my goal in helping to bring that knowledge here is really sharing what we learned about the ability for the companies to manage their equipment, the ability of, you know, how all these decentralized users who have to follow rules that they might not even understand and might not even know they're not following.
how that plays into the experience that everybody has.
So I think there is great potential.
There also are these drawbacks and you need to mitigate the impacts while also getting some of those benefits out of systems.
Colleagues, we have time for a couple more questions.
Council Member Bates.
Can I just throw in age-friendly?
So the City of Seattle became the 104th age-friendly city that is AARP and World Health Organization, something I've been very interested in because if we can make our city and our infrastructure safe enough for somebody who is 80 but also a parent who is pushing a a stroller or a child who's learning to ride a scooter, if we can do all of that, everybody benefits.
So I'm an advocate of that.
We have an age-friendly action plan that was published last year.
I'm wondering, first of all, if you've had a chance to look at it, and secondly, what and how can we work together to implement some of those recommendations?
I have seen it.
I have not had a chance to delve into it.
It's in that big binder of things that I'm going to take home and put, you know.
Sometimes I'll sleep on it, sometimes I'll read it until I fall asleep, but I will get through it.
But just, we were an age-friendly city in Washington, too, and took some of those, exactly what you're saying is the approach that we took.
So I imagine the plans are pretty well aligned in terms of how we make a city more accessible and friendly for people of all ages and abilities.
And something that I truly does, that's where I come from in terms of making sure that people feel like they can get around and don't feel isolated, regardless of age and ability.
And how we make that, that's really a pedestrian-forward, pedestrian-friendly way to think about how we build a city.
As you were talking about scooters, I think about a phrase that I learned in Copenhagen a number of years ago, which is prioritizing soft over hard.
And that means soft, the pedestrian has priorities over the scooter, that has priorities over the car, and the bike is in there somewhere in the middle.
But if we have this connected bicycle network that can be used by bikes, by scooters, great.
Get them off the pedestrians.
Figure out what you're going to do with skateboarders.
But if that, just that whole city consciousness is that we're out here together, we have to figure out a way to respect the spaces.
But if we have those spaces designated to, people use them.
more or less, and more is better, obviously.
If you know that as a bike rider, I'm going to be on 4th Avenue, And there is a painted lane right there, but then you get to spring and it goes away, and then it's the good luck school of bicycle riding for about the next eight blocks.
That I don't think is a good thing.
So that's what I'm asking you as our new SDOT leader, to help with your staff to say, let's get these priorities and let's really move forward faster and try them.
If we're wrong, we can fix them, but let's not keep waiting for that perfect moment.
Just one final one, and I know we'll have another chance again in February, Sam.
So, you know, one of the things you talked a little bit about in your opening remarks was about staff morale.
And I'd like to think about myself as somebody who's a defender of the bureaucracy.
You know, we're one of the first cities to adopt the NACDO street design guidelines.
You know, we are thought of, you know, amongst the most progressive transportation departments in the country.
all DOTs struggle with those morale issues, particularly for our DOT that has been so ably led for the last 14 months by a series of interim directors.
I wonder what are some of the strategies that you're going to bring forward in your first couple of months to really get folks aligned on a clear and coherent vision, and how do we build back some of that morale and some of that trust and faith in the bureaucracy?
Yes, that's a great question and I feel like some of the hard work that has been done over the agency really over the last year, 14 months has really positioned the agency and me to be successful in that regard.
I think that the organization structure, the The evaluation, the sort of honest evaluation internally of some of the programs that were challenging has put everybody in a position to work collaboratively with each other within the agency.
I've got experience at DDOT of bringing together people that used to sort of always be in conflict around how projects and programs were delivered.
We managed that primarily by talking to each other and making sure that there weren't these sort of internal divisions that kept folks apart from then being able to go out in one voice and engage with the community around projects.
From what I've seen that's already happening within SDOT, I think it's really providing the space and the leadership direction to be able to have that continue.
Right now I'm in full learning mode, so I'm trying to get briefed up as quickly as I possibly can on things.
And I think even that process of, I know SDOT now feels like they've brought on several leaders over the last year or so, but just the process of explaining to somebody who's new what you're doing.
requires people to talk to each other as they, and as we've been doing these introductory briefings, it's not just each program telling me what they do individually.
The whole senior team is invited to those and is sitting in and sort of learning from each other as they're also bringing me up to speed.
So, you know, I think as I move forward, I'm sure I'll find those things that really need some help.
I think making sure that the openness and transparency that I like to bring to the public is also happening within the agency is important as well.
Sam, thank you for taking the time with us today.
I really appreciate what I've heard from you in our kind of private conversations and I think a lot things that came out today.
We're going to take a couple more weeks and make sure the public has a chance to see the questions and answers.
And there may be some back and forth between now and then.
And then we'll probably have what may be a slightly shorter version of this with some follow-up questions in a couple weeks when we have you back here.
But I really appreciate your openness.
your both experience but willingness to come in and learn what things are working in Seattle and bring that experience to it and to kind of both fit in and also radically transform our transportation system at the same time.
Sounds good.
Thank you very much.
Thank you both.
We'll move on to agenda item number two.
And I'll invite presenters forward on the renaming of the street.
Jasmine, you want to read that in?
Council Bill 119455, an ordinance relating to city streets, changing the name of Portion of Aurora Avenue North between Denny Way and Harrison Street to 7th Avenue North, and changing the name of the Portion of Aurora Avenue between Battery Street and Denny Way to Morales Avenue, and superseding prior ordinances to the existing inconsistent.
Start with introductions.
Good morning, Matt Beaulieu from the Washington, sorry, Seattle Department of Transportation.
Aaron Harris from Seattle Department of Transportation.
Welcome both of you.
We've been talking about a number of changes along this short little corridor for a number of years.
So why don't you give us an update of where we are and what you're asking us to do today.
So today we're here to talk about a section of roadway that was, well, and that the reason for my faux pas in my agency identification is the Washington State Department of Transportation thinks of this as Highway 99. It's a section of roadway that was historically 7th Avenue North and then was renamed as part of the process when the State Highway went through.
So it has kind of a dual nature today.
We're in the midst of a process where we're going to open a new tunnel here in Seattle.
And part of the process at the north portal is redefining this section of roadway as more of a community street, no longer the managed access facility that we tend to associate with Highway 99 or Aurora.
So to give just a little bit of background, this was originally plotted as 7th Avenue North.
I'm going to mostly talk about that.
What you'll see here in the blue at the bottom or for those of you who don't pull out colors exactly the same, in a slightly different tone to the bottom half, is north of Denny, between Denny and Harrison Street, is the 7th Avenue north section that we're proposing.
To the south of that, we end up with what is currently Aurora Avenue.
but there's already a 7th Avenue adjacent to it.
So that left a little bit of an orphan segment that we did not want to leave Aurora because we were concerned that that would provide confusion or the potential for additional delay with emergency services.
We've selected Borealis for that as a bit of a head nod to the name that's out there currently, but also something that provides a unique name within the grid that will allow our first responders to get there without any confusion.
So this is a little different than the annual or semi-annual visits I've had with you recently to talk about renaming street names that were kind of a cleanup of data issues within our system.
This was brought forward by the community to us.
It's been about six years worth of process.
I've been involved for the last two.
And it was brought forward as a request to kind of return to that 7th Avenue North name that was part of this historically.
And that's a little different than some of the other ones where we've discovered a conflict between the different ordinances that I'm normally here for.
This is fun to be kind of proactive, huh?
It is.
And then one of the things that we want to note here is this affects five different parcels.
And normally we would mail out to those parcels ahead of time notice of this meeting.
In this case, we had a chance to talk with either the representatives or the owners through some of our early outreach over the last two years.
But we've not done that mailing out.
So we appreciate you guys getting us in in a timely manner on today's meeting.
But we'll actually be following up this meeting with those mailings instead of leading the meeting with them.
For them, they have big issues.
They have to change their address and everything that they have to touch from a business standpoint.
Other than that, is there a difficulty?
From a functional standpoint, what we're looking at is basically I've got to change my letterhead, I've got to change where my items are sent, I've got to let know of everyone that corresponds with me.
And in this area, we're actually looking at a fair amount of current development, and that's one of the things that we wanted to push forward with this in a timely manner is so that when those developments open, they don't have to have a change in their address as people are trying to move in.
Good.
Have you had any pushback from them?
We've had support from them.
We've had some questions as we've received through the process here as far as can it all be named seventh.
And that kind of pulled into that question of south of Denny, we don't want to have two 7th Avenues.
That can create confusion and we don't want to have people going to the wrong intersection if I need help from a medical emergency or other emergency response.
On the Borealis stretch, are there any actually addresses there?
I believe that the existing elephant car wash is addressed off of that.
I'm not sure which side of the block they were addressed on.
And I'd need to verify, but I believe there's the one parcel there that's off of Borealis.
Okay.
So then, as we kind of step through, just wanted to point out that one of the big reasons that this makes sense in the reconnecting the grid is we're redeveloping what is currently Aurora Avenue North between Denny and Harrison as a surface street.
It's no longer going to be the highway that you drive on today.
It's going to be under construction for a fairly significant amount of time as our partners go through and rebuild that and redefine it as what's going to look and feel more like a traditional city street.
So that's kind of a reconnecting the grid from an infrastructure standpoint, and this is the naming portion of that.
So then just to kind of follow up, we've got two different names that we're putting forward.
We want to combine those together and keep that together so we don't end up with an orphan block of Aurora and create confusion.
So north of Denny Way, we'd like to change Aurora Avenue North to 7th Avenue, which is the historic name.
from Denny to Harrison, and then south of Denny create the new and unique Borealis Avenue.
Borealis Avenue.
So I've got it on this map that we have here.
Maybe you could go back to the previous slide.
So I'm looking at from Denny Denny up to what is the new 99, that remains 7th?
So from Denny to the new ramps to SR 99, that will become 7th Avenue North.
So you can see on the left side of your image, 6th Avenue North will then have a 7th Avenue North parallel to that.
How many blocks in is that?
Borealis is one?
So we have a three block section of 7th Avenue North and a single block of Borealis Avenue.
I'm happy to take those.
Our next steps would be, should you choose to pass this to full counsel and pass it through counsel, we would be installing signs if the
at your convenience.
Colleagues, I'm prepared to go ahead and move this today.
I think it's something that's been discussed for a while in public comment.
One of the commenters mentioned John Coney.
And Council Member Johnson and I, probably a dozen years ago, spent about a year of our life on a committee with Mr. Coney.
And he was a really great activist from his neighborhood.
And it's exciting.
to do this, not because of John, but it's exciting because it's the thing that the community supports and it's something that he had been talking about for a while too.
So I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119455. Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Thanks for your work on this.
This will be at the full Council on Monday.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And our last agenda item.
Council Bill 119456, an ordinance granting National Railroad Passenger Corporation permission to construct, maintain, and operate below-grade utility lines under and across South Holgate Street, east of Occidental Avenue South, and west of 3rd Avenue South.
Welcome.
As we get the presentation queued up, we'll start with introductions.
I'm Amy Gray with the Seattle Department of Transportation.
And Rob Eaton, Governor of Amtrak.
Welcome, everyone.
Tell us what we got in front of us today.
Well, today we're here for the second step in a two-step approval process for term permits.
And last September, City Council conceptually approved the utility lines going under South Holgate Street, and now all the reviews, technical reviews, have all been completed, and we are ready for Council to decide on the permit.
I'm gonna go, yeah.
So...
Amtrak is seeking a new permit for private utility lines under South Holgate Street between Occidental Avenue South and west of 3rd Avenue South.
These utility lines will treat industrial waste on the north and south properties that they own before it's discharged into the city sewage system.
They'll separate sewer service from stormwaterless system, and they will connect locomotives to shore power, which allows them to power off and reduce idling times.
If it's approved the annual fee will be in 2019 $1,044 and the city has an ordinance bond that if Amtrak walks away from the permit and we need to remove the utility lines we can do so and have our costs covered and that's about $150,000.
And then here is the map showing the lines.
And construction, as Rob will tell you, has been all on private property and stopped immediately at the right of way line.
So they're ready to get moving.
They have some time schedules that they have to meet.
But through the method of construction will be directorial boring So there will not be impacts to traffic on South Holgate Street nor will it impact the construction work happening at South Lander for the great separation and next map just shows the general location in Soto and as we noted council provided conceptual approval in September and We are here asking recommending approval for this ordinance
We certainly support clean stormwater and we certainly support the concept of being able to use our clean electricity as opposed to diesel engines when possible.
So that's all great.
Amy, I assume in the review there was no major conflicts that couldn't be resolved and that's why you're here today?
Yes, as part of the permit review for the actual construction of it, the permit reviewers connect with any affected department.
So, SPU, if there was SDCI coordination that needed to happen, they all weigh in.
They share the plans and weigh in with any concerns before SDOT gets to the position of having the construction permit for the right-of-way ready to be issued.
Great.
Well, happy to partner with Amtrak to make this happen.
Anything else you want to say?
We're excited to move forward.
The facility looks fantastic.
We are responding to the plans of WSDOT with the state support and service.
We also do the maintenance of sound transit trains.
So this locomotive shop is going to be the next step in our facility here to provide a more efficient and cleaner use of utilities.
So we appreciate it.
That sounds great.
Colleagues, do you have any questions or concerns on this?
Great.
I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119456. Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Thanks for your work on this.
This will be at full council week from yesterday.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to thank SDOT and the team.
They've moved it forward, and they were great partners to work on it.
So thank you very much.
We appreciate it.
Good to know.
Great.
Thanks for your work, Amy.
Colleagues, that's all we have for today.
Thanks for your work.
We'll see you again in a week, next Tuesday.
Thanks.
We're adjourned.