Seattle Within Reach: Safer Streets for All

Hello, everybody.

Welcome and thank you for joining our conversation today.

I'm Tammy Morales, the Seattle City Council member for District 2, and this is the third in a speaker series that I'm calling Seattle Within Reach.

What do I mean by that?

We all have ideas about what we think a vibrant, healthy Seattle should look like.

When I think about it I think about great neighborhoods, with all the essential services and amenities that we could need or use in our daily life, and to have all of those within reach.

So I think we very often think about as the city grows.

how we are going to produce housing units, for example.

But I really think we should stop talking about production of housing units, and really start talking instead about how we create great neighborhoods for people neighborhoods that have housing that the average worker can afford.

that has neighborhoods that have locally owned businesses and grocery, health care, and child care, maybe even a credit union.

So this speaker series is about how we do that.

How do we intentionally create well-resourced neighborhoods that are connected to one another and that really offer the kinds of goods and services that people need without having to drive to them?

So through this series, we'll be focusing on particular topics that can help get us to a Seattle within reach.

So if you have something that you'd like to learn about or a topic that you'd like to hear about, please drop us a line and we will try to incorporate that into the series.

We have one or two a month and we'll be doing that throughout the year.

So this month, May is National Mobility Awareness Month.

It's also National Bike Month.

So we thought we would ask some folks to join us in a conversation about what that means.

With over 18 million people throughout the U.S. and Canada who are living with mobility issues, I thought we would take this opportunity to really shine a light on what some solutions are that can help people with disabilities, that can help educate our neighbors about mobility solutions.

And really, ultimately, we want to have a conversation about how we build a transportation network in Seattle that ensures that our neighbors have access to essential goods and services within reach.

So I do want to say before we begin, I want to note that we had planned to have a speaker, KL Shannon, who is a community organizer and activist here in the South End.

We were planning to have KL Shannon join us.

She is with Seattle Rainier Valley Greenways.

She was called away to facilitate a healing circle for community members in the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo two weeks ago.

So I want to acknowledge that.

And I want to acknowledge the devastating shooting of school children that happened in Texas this week.

I think it's important that today, as we are going to be talking about pedestrian safety and community safety, that we also remember the unbelievably easy access to guns in this country.

and that that should be treated as the public safety crisis that it is.

So thank you for indulging me as I take a moment to acknowledge that.

Today, we're going to be speaking with three people.

Anna Sievarts is a low vision mom and non-driver who was born with the neurological condition nystagmus.

Anna, tell me if I'm mispronouncing that.

Since launching the disability mobility initiative at disability rights Washington in 2020, Anna has worked to bring the voices of non drivers to the planning and policymaking tables in the area.

Through her organization on has built a non driver story map.

and has compiled those stories into a groundbreaking research paper, which she's presenting across the country, and has also launched Week Without Driving, which is a challenge to elected leaders like myself.

I did it last year and look forward to doing it again, so that we can understand what it's like to get around the city without driving.

So thank you for being here, Anna.

Councilor Christine Boyle is a first-term city councilor with One City Vancouver.

She's a community organizer, a climate justice activist, and an ordained United Church minister.

In her first term of office, Councilor Boyle has led Vancouver's work on addressing the climate emergency with a strong equity lens, and has also done national climate justice organizing among diverse faith communities, including at COP21 and at the Vatican.

and with faith and common good.

Welcome from all the way up in Vancouver.

Thank you for being here.

Clara Cantor is also joining us today.

Clara is a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

She advocates for safety and accessibility for people walking, rolling, biking, and accessing transit.

She believes in the power of grassroots organizing, the importance of centering those furthest from justice in transportation, and the incredible value of befriending neighbors and bringing people together.

Clara is an artist and maker, a community builder, a lifelong bike commuter, and she lives in District 2 with her wife and kiddo.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

So, so at its core, when we're talking about mobility, we are really talking about accessibility.

We're talking about the ability of people to use their community streets, their sidewalks, as a way to get around navigate their, their neighborhoods and their city, regardless of how they get there, how they do that.

I have to say here in Seattle, we don't have a great record of prioritizing or considering people who don't drive.

I think as similar to many North American cities, probably most North American cities, they really are focused and built for people who are in cars.

Clara, I want to start with you and maybe ask you just a really fundamental question, which is Who do you think is losing out if we don't reshape our cities, if we don't reshape our roads to better address the needs and the safety of people who choose not to drive or who really just cannot drive?

Yeah, I mean, everyone who doesn't drive is losing out there?

That's a big demographic question.

I mean, it's a lot of people who are lowest income folks, folks who don't have a car because they're unable to afford one or unable to have a place to store it, folks who are unable to drive for mobility reasons, vision like Anna or any other reason.

I mean, I bike to get around and a lot of the other folks that I know that bike to get around do it because it's the cheapest way that we know to get around.

You know, particularly the transit passes are expensive.

And if you're not driving, biking and walking is literally the cheapest option that you have.

When we're talking specifically about District 2, one thing to note also is that a lot of SOTO and the areas in our district that are zoned industrial for freight have a lot of shift workers and folks that are working not know nine to five hours where transit is really inaccessible or takes a really long time or it doesn't serve those hours well and so a lot of those people are walking and biking as well.

Yeah the expense is certainly a huge part of the challenge here and If we are going to make the kind of investments that can serve everybody, we have to be thinking about not just the infrastructure, but as you mentioned, how we do our transit passes differently, how we provide more affordable ways for people to get around who are going to access transportation services here.

So thank you for that.

Councillor Boyle, Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal are really emerging as leaders in what we might call an equitable distribution of road space in North America.

Can you talk about what you think might have caused that shift and how are these cities that are really moving toward providing access to people who bike or improving pedestrian infrastructure or bus lanes, How are those cities addressing the kind of opposition that comes up when people are asking for space to be allocated in a different kind of way?

It's such an interesting question.

So I just want to say also, because it's part of how I operate, I'm not joining you from Seattle, unfortunately, but I'm joining you from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver.

And it sort of warms my heart to hear you say that we are leading on this because here too, everything is still uh requires a fight and it feels to me in Vancouver like we're not doing nearly enough um and it takes a lot of effort still to reallocate road space.

I mostly get around by bike as well so do my kids um and you know it certainly still doesn't feel safe um I hear from my my mother-in-law's motorized scooter and there are lots of places where it's still really not um very safe for her to get around.

So I mean, I just look at the system and think like, if we were designing our transportation system in a way that made the best use of public funds, and that, you know, minimized accidents and deaths, it would look nothing like the way that either of our cities are currently planned.

So we're clearly not right now making transportation decisions based on either of those metrics and, and to Clara's points about who's being left out, like, that's really where we need to get to.

I do think in Vancouver, with huge credit to local advocacy groups here, we've been able to get some wins, we've certainly shifted more road space to, to more curb cuts, safer signalized crossings and bike routes.

And I think that community advocacy is so important.

And I say that as someone who's been on that end and now in elected office, we really need communities helping connect these dots between road safety and accessibility and public safety, connecting with schools and parents and bringing folks together to advocate on these changes because the opposition is always loud.

And I think the more that we can, and I'm so excited about this conversation for this reason, the more we can connect these issues to health, to safety, to accessibility, the more people see themselves as part of being, benefiting from these changes rather than just seeing the loss of road space with a kind of fear about what that will mean for them.

So that's where I think we have success in Vancouver to the extent that we have success and still we have so much more to do here as well.

Can you talk a little bit about the advocacy piece.

I was mentioning to all of you earlier this morning.

Last week my staff and I went to Rainier Beach High School and met with some students who are concerned about the safety of the road that their school is on.

And they are very interested in advocating.

They want to come to City Hall, they want to identify maybe some traffic calming measures that they could advocate for.

So I'm interested, Councilor, if you have experience with students advocating for things and what kind of things they might be able to do, given that they are actually in school during office hours, so that they can be energized by this idea of really, you know, trying to do what they can to support their community.

Yeah, I love that kind of work.

So I have worked with both students and often with parent advisory committees at schools on the, what we've been talking about is safe routes to schools.

So mapping out how the school population is getting there and what improvements they see that they need and often working with those parent groups or advising those parent groups around making prioritized lists of those changes and then working with city staff in our transportation and engineering department to figure out how we start to make those things possible because For a lot of our schools, there's a whole range that goes from sort of a, you know, a signalized crossing here or.

curve bulges to reducing speed limits.

And here in Vancouver, we have to work with the province around changes like that.

So there's, you know, it's a whole spectrum, and there's things we can quickly do, and there's longer term issues, and there's work we need to work with senior governments on.

And so my organizing hat and organizing work is often helping parents and school staff to understand where those barriers are and do that local groundwork to envision what it could and should look like in their neighborhood with them really as the experts.

They're the ones getting to school every day.

And, you know, and including too, I was meeting with a group of parents recently who were talking about all of the grandparents in their area who are responsible for drop off or pick up.

And so it's not just safe routes to school for those kids, but also for the seniors in the neighborhood who are helping with child care and and their mobility needs are have a lot of overlap, but a few differences from the kids, too.

And so really a whole picture there.

Yeah, with those kids and parents being the best local experts.

And then I see my role as helping amplify their advocacy and connect them with the tools, the decision-making moments around capital budgets or whatever else to make it possible.

Yeah, they were very surprised when I showed them the budget and how resources get allocated.

Clara and Anna, you're both organizers.

Do you want to chime in on any of that?

Yeah, this is Anna.

You know, my kid just finished a season of track at Rainier Beach High School.

He's still little, but they practice at the track field there.

And so we spent a lot of evenings coming in and out of that track field and walking to the bus stop and I know exactly what those students are talking about in some ways.

I also, you know, there's one of the things I noticed when we were doing that is that That track field and maybe this isn't the case during the school day, but in the evenings all the gates are locked and so.

The only way in and out of the school is to walk up and down this parking lot and it just made me really think about who was making that decision because.

You know, with a little kid it felt like a not a not a very comfortable space and I imagine there's probably conflicts with students as well.

i'm coming in and out of there, and just you know if you had those other gates open.

it would be so much easier to get to the transit stops more directly.

But we always center the driver in these situations and we aren't thinking about the people who are trying to access spaces in our city, not in a car.

And as we're talking about it, I mean, kids and elders are like a huge, huge, huge percent of the people that are not in cars, you know, or that are trying to get around our city outside of cars.

And like Ana said, those demographics of people are not often the ones that are making decisions about how we're planning our city out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, so I do want to talk a little bit about about a trip on that you and well the three of us took I joined you all recently with a group of other parents on your commute to childcare and I know you have a family bike.

Can you talk a little bit about how having a tool like that as a parent and as a person with low vision has changed your ability to navigate the neighborhood and maybe what a typical day was like before you got that.

Sure.

Yeah.

I'm low vision, but I have biked my whole life for transportation.

And I love biking.

It gives me a lot of joy.

I also love having the sort of resiliency of living in a city where the bike isn't my only option.

And so if it's rainy or icy or I don't feel great or whatever, I can top on the bus or the train.

And I feel incredibly fortunate to live in a city, yeah, with those options and live in a part of the city that has those options.

And I think, you know, that's one thing that we don't always talk about and is that that is really important is, you know, some days the bike isn't going to be the best option.

And so to have the option of transit, is really nice and then sometimes transit is not an option, sometimes the train breaks down and so it's great to be able to take the bus or the bus is stuck in traffic or you know there's and so having those those options and resiliency really.

I think is key for me being in a really hilly city like Seattle and having a kid to haul around.

having the privilege to be able to afford an e-bike was pretty incredible.

Um, and especially, you know, getting, yeah, getting up and down these really steep hills.

And then often I found before I had the e-bike, I would often choose the routes that were the flattest because I just couldn't imagine getting myself up a Hill.

And those routes in Seattle tend to be the routes with faster, faster traffic, more traffic, um, more, more dangerous to be walking or rolling along.

And so Uh, yeah, I feel like that e-bike has given me the opportunity to pick some really out of the way, very steep routes that I avoid a lot of that conflict on, but you know, that's, that's a real privilege to both be able to afford a new bike and then have a place to store it.

You know, I'm, I'm lucky that I have a place I can roll it in, but there's no way I could carry that bike up and downstairs.

Uh, you just think about how many people are, you know, that that's just not an option for, because you can't securely store them outside, um, you know, on the street.

Yeah, there's certainly an issue of those that are left outside getting stolen as well.

So, Clara, how about you?

How is your daily commute getting around?

I'm very similarly to Ana actually I was sort of chuckling as she's talking about the e-bike because I I'm still pedal powered and.

My kids getting bigger and heavier I run into a lot of those challenges, you know huffing and puffing up and down the hills trying to get around because I.

you know, don't want to bike on Rainier Avenue, which is the flat direct route that I could be taking to avoid all those hills.

But which doesn't have a bike protected bike lane and is the most dangerous street in the city.

So, yeah.

I think your point, the point you made on about the redundancy being so important right like you know we do need all of these there is this isn't really a question of pick something from the menu it's the redundancy of options is a feature not above, right, like we need to be able to have.

transit and buses and protected bike lanes and sidewalks that aren't crumbling.

And, and in order to create the sort of layers of accessibility and protection.

Yeah.

Councilor, you mentioned that you also ride your bike.

Do you want to chime in on the family bike conversation?

Well, just that we also got an e-bike, an e-cargo bike, just before the pandemic.

It took me a little while to convince my partner that this was worthwhile, and it ended up being amazing timing and we, to the extent that we go anywhere, we ride it everywhere.

And actually it timed out really well for us.

I have a seven year old and a teenage stepdaughter and she didn't have her license yet.

And for the first year of the pandemic would put another teenager on the back, which was like slightly over the recommended weight limit.

And they would cruise all over and that to see The freedom that they had on this vehicle to go wherever they wanted to in the city was a really incredible reminder of what that provides for people.

And I was just taking notes about the conversation.

Your comment about redundancy as a feature, not a bug, also resonates so strongly.

for me, that we actually need lots of choices so that people can be making the choice that makes the most sense for them every day.

I have a sort of question for Anna, which I'm sure is something you've thought about even more than me in your work, but I always think about and wrestle with this, like, certainly in Vancouver, how people think of bikes and e-bikes as a privilege, but somehow cars as not.

Even though owning a car is much more expensive, but to the storage question, certainly we make it a lot easier to store cars than we do bikes.

So I always wrestle with kind of how we frame those choices in terms of like, what is a privilege and a luxury and what is sort of a regular people thing.

I'm just interested to learn from you on how we talk about that.

Yeah, I think that's that is so key.

Yeah, and in recognizing that bikes are for many people, more affordable, I think of in New York City, that deliveries does organizing work that's happening with delivery food workers there and like that as a real model.

And I wish, I mean, that like the work we do with Disability Rights Washington and Disability Mobility Initiative specifically is trying to create space and give people who don't normally feel like their voices count in these processes around transportation decisions and funding and all that, finding those people.

And it takes a lot more work to go out and try to connect with people who aren't connected into these sort of advocacy systems already but like I think that is that is so key because it.

You know, those are the voices, those are the people who have the least choices who need need to have a system work for them better and so yeah that's.

Well, and I want to be clear like we aren't just talking about bike lanes either right or people who bike.

I was also last week with my staff, we went to, there's an organization in my district called lighthouse for the blind.

They provide employment services and some training for folks who are blind who are deaf blind.

And when we're talking about transit and transit access, and even just safe sidewalks, you know, these are some of the challenges that they were talking about too.

So it's, you know, are the tactile crosswalks in good order?

Can somebody who's using a cane actually determine where those boundaries are and what the right direction is to go.

There's a lot of construction happening in the area around their facility, and so they were talking about the importance of not blocking the sidewalks with a construction project or making sure that the fencing that is keeping people out of the construction pit hasn't fallen over.

There are a lot of other ways that we need to also think about what it means for people who might have a vision impairment or some other mobility issue to be able to get around their neighborhood safely and certainly lots of work for us to do in that regard.

Clara, I do want to ask you, about this question of how we can do better as a city.

In Seattle, we have about 3,500 miles of roadway.

Something like 25% of our residents live on a street that doesn't have a sidewalk, particularly in the north end of Seattle and in the south end of Seattle.

And we know that less than 1% of road space mostly downtown and near the University of Washington, less than 1% has safe bicycle infrastructure that can accommodate people of different abilities and different ages.

So do you have some thoughts about what the city can do to better accommodate and encourage a safe mix of, you know, for folks who are walking or riding or rolling, and even transit use so that we can figure out how to accommodate everybody's needs?

Yes, I do.

Lots of thoughts.

I mean, I think first, we just need to prioritize the most vulnerable users on our street.

And then second, we need to invest money in the neighborhoods, like a lot of parts of D2 that have been skipped over for generations and don't have a lot of that great infrastructure.

And, you know, when we're prioritizing safety for people who are walking and rolling and biking and accessing transit like we were talking just before we jumped on this panel, we have a major crisis right now.

You know, there were four pedestrians hit by cars yesterday, including a 10-year-old child.

And citywide, over half of the people who are killed on our streets are happening here in District 2. And that's what we should be focusing on here.

You know, there's a reason for that, and it's because the streets down here, a lot of them are really, really dangerous.

And when the city is putting in street safety projects all over the city all the time and investing our public dollars into those communities.

We need to have that happen here in District 2. We need to have that happen in the South End.

And it's not in the same way that it is in a lot of the rest of the city.

And whether that's new lights and safe crossings or new bike routes or maintenance, like fixing our crumbling sidewalks that people can get around, it shouldn't take years of community advocacy and time and energy to, like, get a safe spot for our kids to cross the street to get to the front door of their school, you know, those are things that should be happening, that should be there already.

Yeah, so we have, we have a Vision Zero plan, right, we have We have identified a pedestrian master plan, a bike master plan.

What do you think is the issue here with why these things aren't getting built out?

Anna, do you want to respond to that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's almost like I want to take it a little bit bigger.

But, you know, I think it's not just that, you know, I mean, we need these infrastructure improvements for sure.

I mean, you look at where they are and where they are in the city.

That's a big part of it.

I think it's also thinking about you know, communities like the South End that were, there was this car infrastructure created to allow other people to pass through as quickly as possible.

Like what we see with our freeways, and behind me is a freeway on-ramp that I've crossed with Council Member Morales so far.

Here in, you know, at the 90, and it's undoing that idea that these are communities that need to be passed through as quickly as possible for the convenience of, you know, whoever's trying to pass through them as quickly as possible.

And what would it mean to rethink that and be like, all right, no, the priority is the people who are trying to cross Rainier, not the people moving up and down as quickly as possible.

Or, you know, what would it mean to rethink this big interchange at I-90 and Rainier so that people can access the transit stops, the transit, you know, infrastructure that's there and is getting built there?

So I want to move to talk about this, this issue, more broadly, as you said on a, you know, when we're talking about mobility, what we're really trying to talk about is how we build healthy neighborhoods.

And you're right, like that's really hard when across the country, our cities have been planned in a particular way for decades.

And that is built around people's ability to drive.

It's shaped our cities.

It's shaped, you know, where roads go, where sidewalks go.

And this has been, you know, done in a very inequitable way, as you said in the south end, you know, the two major north-south arterials were highways.

And now trying to use them where, you know, a dense neighborhood, dense neighborhoods have grown up is really problematic.

You know, we know that in North America, low-income communities, communities of color are just kind of expected to live without sidewalks, with poor access to transit, you know, with virtually no safe bike infrastructure, just little investments.

And that is, you know, the history of redlining in our communities is another demonstration of that.

while other parts of town get sidewalk cafes and good transit and separated bike paths.

And so that is the reality.

I think what I get a little bit nervous about is that when we do start to try investing in these historically under-resourced neighborhoods, it very often leads to gentrification.

And we have to figure out how we're going to mitigate that so that the people who live there get to benefit from those investments rather than getting pushed out.

I think what makes me nervous is that then the people who live there themselves start to fear these investments and start to feel like, you know, we are intentionally trying to push folks out.

So I'm just going to open this to anybody.

Can you talk about whether you think there is a link between providing safe infrastructure, providing investment that can make community, you know, more secure, better quality transit, and that issue of gentrification.

I was just going to say it's absolutely a challenge in Vancouver as well.

And I think this is one of the places where it's so important that we connect these kinds of community investments with stronger tenant protections, for example.

And, and more participatory engagement so that communities are saying, here's what we see would benefit us in the ways that we're living in our neighborhood.

know and and so those pieces the land use piece um and the equity and justice piece like have to be part of the transportation conversation so that it's not a sort of top-down vision of how people will get through neighborhoods but really about how people will will live in them um and then I think that the challenge of course for all of us is how that balance of how folks currently living in the neighborhood get around and how we welcome more people into the neighborhood without displacing people and helping those folks get around and again I really think the nervousness that communities feel is justified because historically we have seen a lot of gentrification and displacement.

And so we have to come into these conversations acknowledging that history and doing better than has been done in the past in terms of connecting these issues.

I can jump in and say this is Ana that, you know, we, Disability Rights Washington, we're statewide and Disability Mobility Initiative, we do organizing, you know, through lots of communities and to be honest, like, Most of the people we work with can't afford to live in Seattle already, because it is so expensive.

And while the folks we work with are all, quote unquote, transit-dependent.

And I hate that phrase as well.

But the dream is to live somewhere like I live, near light rail, near buses, with sidewalks.

And yet, that is not affordable for most folks on SSI.

And so I really think we have to make a massive investment in sidewalks and transit everywhere prioritizing so that it doesn't become like this luxury that you can only have if you're wealthy, the access to those things, that it is just like you have electricity.

It is considered part of what we as a society provide throughout our state, starting with places where there are a lot of trans-independent folks.

Yeah, well I mean and that's, that's my goal, certainly right is to make sure that the south end can benefit from, you know, the kind of infrastructure we're seeing it Green Lake or lower Queen Anne, you know, street upgrades sidewalk upgrades, without stoking that fear of displacement, that, as the counselor said, you know, is justified because that is how it has worked in the past.

But that doesn't mean that it has to always work that way.

And so that's the question, right?

How do we make sure that we are putting some mitigation measures in place so that people don't get pushed out?

Clara, did you want to chime in on that at all?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I think you know, whenever we're investing in an infrastructure project in a neighborhood, we always have to be thinking about this.

And any of these big investments have to be coupled with more affordable housing at all levels.

And, you know, programs to help people stay in their communities if they want to do that.

And I also just want to say, like, as much as this is a thing, like communities of color also deserve nice things.

And things like parks and safe streets and bike lanes.

And, you know, I think that there, there, there have been studies that have shown that projects like this don't cause displacement, but that fear that people, especially those who are at high risk of displacement, you know, when you hear of the city improvement coming to your neighborhood and you're like, like, okay, like, We have to be really, really intentional when we're talking about these projects, when we're building these projects, about who this is for, about who we're building these things for and about whose needs these projects are serving.

And that goes back to a little bit of what Anna was saying earlier.

Is this project serving the people who are living in this neighborhood, or is it serving people who are passing through it?

you know, that applies to like every aspect of how we're prioritizing different people and part of that project, but also like the community elements that we're putting into projects like this and the destinations that we're choosing to connect to.

And, you know, when we have major crosswalk improvements and signals in front of certain areas and not others, you know, that's showing who in the neighborhood we're prioritizing access to.

Right, right.

I want to go back to something that we kind of touched on a little earlier, which was this issue of, is it a privilege or a necessity to have a bike or a car?

AAA estimates that the average cost of owning a car is about $9,000 a year.

So I know I'll you know I know these electronic family bikes are not cheap, certainly, it's a big outlay.

One time, but it is.

It's considerably cheaper on a year to year basis for how we, you know how somebody might be able to manage that compared to having a car and having to pay for insurance and gas and especially gas prices right now.

And we know that you know the according to the Seattle, excuse me the Seattle Times Seattle has more cars per capita than Los Angeles.

shocking.

Maybe I shouldn't, but that just seems outrageous to me.

And so I'm trying to understand, you know, if we have that many people who are spending so much money to maintain a car, that seems to me like it is sort of keeping people in debt.

If we aren't creating the alternatives that can help them move out of that car.

And so, you know, I used to do food systems work and we're always talking about how we need to stop blaming neighborhoods, people who live in neighborhoods where there's only fast food but no grocery store, you know, stop blaming them for being overweight.

We make the healthy choice, the easy choice, if we have more fresh fruits and produce if we have more grocery stores that have good high quality food.

Then we've started to solve that problem.

I feel like it's the same thing here.

You know, if we want people to get out of their cars, then we have to create the infrastructure and the alternatives for them to be able to do that easily.

So I guess part of what I would love somebody to answer is, you know, how are our history of redlining, our racist zoning laws kind of contribute to the challenge people have of getting from point A to point B?

And then kind of beyond road design, you know, what else can we do to make our neighborhoods more accessible for people so that we can you know, give people their $9,000 in car expenses back and people have, you know, more discretionary income, more disposable income.

I don't think I asked anyone in particular that, but.

I can jump in on the land use aspect of that for sure to start us off.

I mean, I think land use and zoning is like absolutely a huge factor in how easy it is to get around.

And, you know, we talk about redlining is like this bygone historical thing, but that's still continuing.

It's just using different words now.

And the way that we zone our neighborhoods plays directly into the way who we're prioritizing when we're building streets in those neighborhoods depends entirely on The label that we have on that land, you know, we were talking earlier about Soto and Soto is entirely zoned industrial, you know, that means every single streets built for free.

And there's a ton of people walking and biking around in Soto.

But because it's zone industrial, that doesn't matter.

And so people keep dying there, including Gun Haw Lee, who was an elder who was killed just a week or two ago.

And when you go south to Georgetown and to South Park, you see more impacts of that.

You know, you see it in noise pollution, in air pollution, in the water pollution down there, big, wide, dangerous streets, the lack of safe space for people to be on.

to just exist in those neighborhoods is like, there's not a lot of space for it.

And it destroys community health like you're talking about.

Another good example is along MLK Way in Rainier Valley, where the light rail construction through here, having the train at surface level means that every year we have trains killing people in our community.

The train is also the stop the length between the stops in the rainier Valley is really really long.

And so, a lot of people for a lot of people the train is really serving as this thing that's connecting people through our neighborhood, rather than to our neighborhood and it's not really serving the people who are living here and trying to get to destinations here.

Um, and you don't see that in any other part of the train line, you know, and so as we're investing money, um, public money into expanding this system, we have to talk about, uh, putting money into making this section safer and making MLK Way safer for the community that's living here and the community that's using these streets.

I mean, you know, but eight people have been killed in the last two years on MLK.

It's, it's, dangerous.

Yeah, that made me think about how difficult it is like those east-west connections from Rainier Valley into Soto and Georgetown and like the transit routes are almost non-existent and you know biking unless you have an e-bike it's a pretty wicked hill and I don't know a lot of what I think about when I think about what would make Seattle a easier place for people to choose not to drive.

I think about my street, my block, and the people I know, my neighbors on it, and, you know, the choices they make.

And one of my neighbors is a high school student at Cleveland and can't, like, there's no good way to get from where we are in Hillman City to Cleveland High School, because it would be multiple buses, even though it's less than a mile and a half.

And, you know, his bike kept on getting stolen, and so he doesn't have a bike.

And so it just, I think, yeah, I think about the people on my block and what would change people feeling like they have to drive everywhere.

And I don't have easy answers, but I think part of it is thinking about, okay, there needs to be things, like there is so much potential to have the sort of things that we need to access in our neighborhood here so people don't need to drive as far.

But because the majority of people are driving, there's not the market for those things to exist.

Like I think about everyone going to Costco for groceries, which means that people who don't have cars and can't get to Costco for big shops are shopping locally at stores that have less choices because the majority of folks are going somewhere else.

And so what would it take to really start to change that?

I don't totally know, but I think a lot about my individual street and how much I would love if people didn't get out of their house and go straight into their car.

And if we were actually like interacting with each other more in this shared space.

I think that would help a lot with community building and mental health, but people don't feel like it's a choice.

That's the issue for me, right?

I mean, that's part of the point of this series of Seattle Within Reach is how do we start talking about what it takes to move in that direction?

We will be talking about the comprehensive plan for the next two years and, you know, making some different, hopefully making some different and better choices about what our zoning and land use looks like.

Councilor Boyle, we spoke yesterday about kind of the very narrow ways that people talk about public safety.

And it seems like our communities have some similar challenges around how we include things like pedestrian safety, environmental health access to green space as also being elements that contribute to a community safety.

And I think it's getting back to this, this issue of building healthy neighborhoods, how do we intentionally create healthy neighborhoods so can you talk a little bit more about what what you mean by that and how is Vancouver.

How is Vancouver thinking about what it means to build healthy neighborhoods.

Yeah, absolutely.

So like in Seattle and many other large cities, we are hearing and talking a lot about public safety these days around policing, but also around the way the pandemic sort of made more visible a lot of struggle that has existed for a long time and that has gotten worse during the pandemic.

And often in Vancouver, that conversation is narrow.

We don't tend to talk about road safety, transportation safety, other public health issues when we're talking about public safety, but it's It's very important I think so in the heat dome that we all lived through last that we all experienced last June in Vancouver, 100 people died in a two day period because of the heat dome.

We had across BC, a lot higher fatalities than in the US for a number of reasons.

And the majority of the folks who died during those two days were seniors.

They were people with other health vulnerabilities.

They were living alone in older apartments.

I mean, that's a that's a huge public safety issue that we tend to not talk about when in the type of public safety conversation that we are having in Vancouver.

I mean, similarly, we have a high number of traffic injuries and fatalities still and again, those tend to be more vulnerable.

street users.

So I do think we need to broaden that conversation to be looking at what are the safety issues that we're facing.

And then, you know, we don't even have really good and clear numbers in terms of the conversation about air quality and exhaust, like it is still the case in Vancouver.

And And I certainly have been working on shifting this, but it's still the case that that in most of our neighborhood planning we put.

our mixed income or lower income multifamily housing on our major arterials.

And we have some older planning documents that explicitly name that we're building apartments to act as a shield or a buffer for noise and car pollution from the rest of the residential neighborhood.

That is, you know, I don't need to say to you all, that is a terrible way to think about renters and rental housing in the city, but it's been a big part of the kind of, of the approach that we have taken and that needs to change absolutely.

So I mean, there is so much there to say, but I think this is why it's so valuable to be talking about land use and housing alongside transportation and health and public safety.

I mean, they're all so deeply intertwined.

They're all connected.

We have similar documents here that talk about, we call them urban villages here in our land use code.

And it is just that it is, you know, or transit oriented development of there's, they're called, it's called different things but it is putting multifamily housing along the arterials and you know I can understand how that makes sense in terms of making sure that folks have access to those services.

But when it is now being used as a reason not to allow that kind of housing, which we desperately need in Seattle, using that as an excuse not to build multifamily housing anywhere else, and all of those, we're done.

The capacity is very close to being reached for that kind of development.

We need to be thinking about all of those things in a much more equitable way.

Ana and Clara, I don't know if you wanted to chime in on any of that.

Yeah, this is Ana.

I mean, I guess the part about arterials and housing, I also feel like we can't just walk away from arterials because there is housing there and there are people who are going to be living in that housing.

And what would it take to actually not have them be full of high speed traffic and noise and pollution?

can we actually think about de-arter, de-arter, I can't even say that word, but how do we, how do we, how do we get people to drive less?

And I really think like, I know it's, you know, not a safe political thing to say, but I think people need to consider that every time they get in a car, even if it's an electric vehicle, the risks that they are externalizing and the costs that they are externalizing on other community members, those are significant.

And, you know, sure, there aren't choices, but we need to be thinking about those costs that are being borne by the people with the least options, with the greatest health risks.

And that's what happens every time anyone in our city drives anywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah, those things are all connected.

And you're right, you know, we do have Lots of these urban villages have been around for, you know, 1020 years, maybe a little bit longer now.

And so we have development that is already there.

And, you know, at least in the south end, that means that we have development on what used to be those former highways that are now, you know, a light rail.

corridor, and, and a street that is still one of the most dangerous streets in the city, because of the volume of cars that go down both of those roads.

And so how we again.

build what we need to build, whether it's more frequent transit service from King County Metro, or more bike lanes, or other ways for people to get around, until we provide those alternatives, we'll continue to have, what is in my mind, too many cars going down the street.

So we need to start building up one as we start to figure out how we reduce the other.

Um, can I just jump in to say, I think it's such a good point to be naming that we both need to be adding more housing kind of off arterials and within neighborhoods.

So folks of all income levels can be living off arterial.

And I don't even know what the word would be either, but I love it already.

De-arterializing.

making safer and slowing down those main streets, both of those at the same time.

And I always appreciate advocates reminding our council that because bike lanes can be seen as a sort of like dudes in Lycra kind of issue, which we know they aren't, but they still get framed as that, that they're actually safety improvements for all road users when we reallocate that space to active transportation, because particularly based on design, it actually, it creates space, more space for pedestrians, it tends to slow traffic, so it makes the road safer for people who are walking and rolling and not just bike commuters zipping by.

So those kinds of improvements along those arterials where people already live, as well as adding much more mixed income housing off of arterials, I think is the both end on that.

That's what we're aiming for.

Yeah, Clara, go ahead.

Oh, I was thinking about this question in a little bit of a different direction.

So I love where this conversation has gone, but Um, you know, I just wanted to take the opportunity to point out that like, as we're talking about, um, the, the infrastructure of a neighborhood, we can bring it back around to the displacement conversation.

And like, um, I just wanted to say that like historically and culturally, a lot of communities of color have like really engage with and value shared public spaces in a way that's different from the way that a lot of our cities have been built.

And that is really important to preserve and sustain, in addition to The actual like infrastructure that we're talking about, you know, the, the bike lanes in the streets and whatnot and and our city has done a really bad job of doing that, you know, I think you know displacement disrupts the whole fabric of a community in so many ways.

But the, the, the cultural element and the.

you know, the way that a community interacts with its public places and public hubs is a really, really important part of that.

And I know Council Member Ross, you've been talking a lot about like the 15-minute city idea where, you know, you're able to live near to your daily needs and and able to access those things within a reasonable walking distance.

But, you know, I think almost a bigger element of that is like your sense of community belonging and neighborhood trust and like awareness of the people that live around you and that you interact with on a daily basis.

And that's a huge part of dense affordable housing and we need it everywhere.

But like, it's an element that we're not really talking about here when we talk about a lot of like the infrastructure improvements.

Yeah.

So, Clara when you first started talking about kind of My mind went to cultural spaces, religious institutions, community centers.

When I'm thinking about how we preserve space for our cultural communities, we have a lot of different ethnic communities, particularly in South Seattle.

But can you say more about what you mean when you're talking about remembering to preserve cultural space, folks?

I think I'm talking about the way that communities interact with public spaces that often is the street or public squares or just hanging around outside, like in public parks, in community gardens, in the sidewalk space between the building and the street.

And the way that that allows you to familiarize yourself with your neighborhood and your community.

And I feel like it's something that like when you move into a space or when you look at a space that's like single family zoning with like a lot of space between the houses and a lot of space between the building and the street, and there's just like a lot of empty space there that And kind of the like white cultural need to like keep to yourself a little bit more.

Or you're just sort of like isolating.

And I'm trying to place an emphasis and value on people coming together in those spaces and those spaces as connecting.

Important, sure.

That makes sense.

Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, I would just like, that made me think like, I mean, For me, there's so much value.

And this is because I think I lived in New York City for a long time.

But that comes from that interaction on the street.

And that interaction can't really happen when people are inside cars.

And that's what I miss on my block, right?

Because people get in their cars and leave.

And so intentionally trying to create that space with block parties.

But I think it's so valuable.

And I think what we're talking about climate change and crisis.

I was in a really, in New York during a bunch of flooding during Hurricane Sandy.

And I think what, you know, what people saw coming out of that and what we see in so many of these crises, but in particular climate crises, is that community connection and knowing your neighbors and knowing who to check in on and knowing there's someone there, like that is so critical.

And I think we build that by knowing each other and that happens easier when people aren't in cars.

Well, and that is a perfect segue to what I wanted to ask Councilor Boyle, because this is about, you know, the goal here is to create networked neighborhoods, right?

Neighborhoods that are well-resourced, that have the things that they need, but also a very nearby neighborhood that has its own resources and things that they need so that there is that ability to just kind of walk around and get the things you need and talk to your neighbor and check in on an elder.

You know, it's, I've heard it called 15 minute city, I think, Councilor Boyle you were talking about, you know, you call it complete communities, but we're really talking about how we all of these issues affect the neighborhood and how to build that healthy neighborhood system.

And Councillor, one of the things we talked about yesterday was this question of how we move away from really siloed policymaking regarding transportation to be more inclusive.

And it sounds like Vancouver is moving down that path of kind of moving away from siloed policymaking and really thinking a little more comprehensively.

Can you talk a little bit about the work that you're doing there?

Yeah, absolutely.

So Vancouver is unusual in that we don't have a citywide comprehensive plan.

We so far have, we have 1 million plans, but not kind of one plan.

So we have neighborhood plans and then we have, you know, then we have overarching transportation plans and economic, uh commercial land plans and um and of course they theoretically layer um but uh we have been um engaged in the last few years um for the first time in a few decades in a city-wide plan um trying to look at how these issues connect to each other and also helping sort of engaging with residents in connecting the dots between those issues so people see them.

And I really think the starting place for all of those conversations is about how people live in or could live in their neighborhoods and communities.

And sometimes I I think one of our challenges is strengthening that creative muscle that a lot of us have sort of lost in envisioning how great our communities could be.

We end up fighting for these little changes or just trying to prevent things from getting worse.

And to have the creative community space to think about how much better it could be is such a valuable and important tools.

So I think there's richness in that conversation, in thinking with people about the types of, you know, when we ask, what do you want your neighborhood to look like?

What we hear from people are about the community spaces that they and public spaces that they love.

It's about the small local businesses.

And I think a lot about the small culturally significant businesses that we have around neighborhoods too, that are destination points for people, that are real important places for culture and connection.

So how do we protect those.

We have limited, I think more so in Canada than in the States, limited tools at the municipal level for addressing a bunch of these challenges.

We have seen massive downloading of responsibilities and we don't have all the tools we would need to address them.

But I think that first place of thinking about the kinds of places we'd like to live, and then building our communities up around them.

And it's no surprise to all of us.

It is easy access to your daily needs.

It's safe streets to get around.

It's space in neighborhood schools.

I certainly, to your point, Anna, in my own experience, see how when I walk my kid to school every day, I meet neighbors and then I know those neighbors so when I need to borrow something or they need a hand with child care like those are relationships that I have and those are relationships that have really been built over a 10-minute window every you know five days a week and they make my life exponentially better and also easier.

So I feel like I just spewed a million ideas because it's such a topic I love so much.

But yeah, I think, I mean, I feel really strongly that people resonate with these ideas about complete communities.

And one of the barriers often is, is kind of trust in being able to get there.

Mm hmm.

And so are you, I mean, we're in a similar boat, right?

We have lots of different plans.

My hope is that as we move through the comprehensive plan conversation, you know, we don't make any decisions on one piece before all the other pieces line up, but it's challenging because there are so many needs and people are, as you say, sort of fighting for crumbs instead of kind of zooming out and taking the big picture and trying to figure out how do we, How do we hold all of this and make the decisions in a way that serves as as Clara was saying you know starts with serving the most vulnerable in our community and making sure that their needs are met, that they have access to the things that they need.

And work out from there right it's the Paul Wellstone saying you know we all do better when we all do better.

And that means you have to start with the folks who are who are furthest from justice, whether we're talking about transportation or housing or any of the other things.

Yeah, well, and I think so much of historically, at least our land use has been the opposite, that the voices who are most loudly heard in a lot of local government decisions are folks who are comfortably housed, you know, in a lot of places, like homeowner associations function as those loudest voices that really resist the type of changes that invite more people in or hold and protect space for those furthest from justice.

And that's a challenge for us in our structures and our democracies.

And the other thing I'll add, not to like just name problems, is I witness sometimes that planning functions to slow down change that we really need to be making a lot more quickly, particularly on the timeline of the climate crisis that we're seeing.

So we will, and we're in year three of a citywide plan, and I think there's value to it in terms of connecting all of these points, but we're already hearing that we shouldn't approve it this spring, because there hasn't been enough consultation about it.

And in a lot of ways, I think that is, Delaying changes that we really do need to bring in and there's a tension there, but on a lot of these issues we do need to be acting.

more quickly and so I absolutely agree in that challenge of how do we center those who are furthest from justice and then be making those changes and learning from them and continuing to make them rather than kind of constantly delaying or letting those voices who are most comfortable call the shots.

Yeah, community engagement and and what that means and who is engaged is certainly a big question and something that we're finding, particularly when it comes to housing, something that is particularly challenging here.

Um, and I wanted to ask you, you know, from your perspective, what, what are the missing links that keep Seattle's transportation network from from really serving the different needs of a community, I mean we have.

We certainly have a lot of infrastructure needs.

You know, I mentioned sort of at the top that we have very few bike protected bike lanes.

Are there other things that you're thinking about, whether it's from a citywide perspective in terms of like how big picture infrastructure things should happen or in your neighborhood, you know, people's ability to access the child care center or get to get to school.

what do you think are some of the missing links and how do we close those gaps to start making some improvements for our neighbors?

This is a hard question for me to answer because I start from this perspective of like the people that I talk to through my work, most of them would love to live in a place, like love to live in Seattle, anywhere near Seattle, where there's the kind of, you know, King County Metro exists, right, where there are sidewalks.

And so In some ways, it feels like nitpicky to talk about the gaps in our system, because the gaps in the county or in the region or in the state are so much bigger and present so much more of a challenge for people who don't have the access to drive.

But that being said, I look again at my blog and I'm like, why aren't more people riding the bus?

The 7 is a two or three minute walk from people's front door.

What is stopping that?

And I think, you know, I mean, in some cases there are accessibility barriers, like there aren't curb ramps.

There aren't accessible crossings.

Cars don't always, you know, yield at intersections.

You know, those are things.

But I do think it's more than that, and it's going to be about a cultural shift, and maybe it's about making, you know, how do we get people to choose to not drive somewhere?

And I think it might come down to making driving less of an attractive choice, because I think To be honest, our transit system here in Seattle, I mean, there are gaps for sure, but it's pretty darn good.

And so it's time to start, I think, looking at the other side of the equation.

I sometimes wonder like one of the metrics I think about is if someone's pulling up Google Maps to see how long it's going to take them from one place to the other, it is a major problem if it takes half the time to drive there than it does to safely take transit or safely use active transportation.

So we need to rebalance that so that the most convenient choice is also the choice that is That is like the uses the least emissions and is the most efficient and safest for the whole community and not just for each individual.

Well, and we do you know we have the.

We have a great bus system.

And as I was saying earlier, you know, my kid goes to Cleveland High School to, you know, getting from where I live to that high school is, you know, one, two buses, maybe three.

And we're like, you know, a mile and a half, two miles away.

So how we, you know, and this this is a conversation to be having with King County Metro about how we increase frequency of the buses, how we increase reliability.

Because as great as the seven is, and I don't worry about what time the bus is coming if I'm taking the seven because it comes every few minutes.

I know there will be another one if I miss the one I was aiming for.

But I would love to see our entire system working that way.

And I was talking to some of the kids at Rainier Beach High School.

Last week again, and one of the students asked me he takes the 106. And he said you know that bus comes every 30 minutes, and if I miss it.

I have to wait a really long time, either to get to school or to get home afterward you know he's got after school activities and so.

Increasing the frequency and reliability of all of our buses in a major metropolitan city like this I think is important.

And also to your point on a, you know, because we've had so many people pushed out of the city, we have a lot of folks living in South King County.

but who still ride the bus into town to go to work.

And so that is a system that I think, while I agree we have a good system, there's always room for improvement.

And especially when we're talking about those neighbors who aren't in Seattle anymore, but still have to come in for any number of reasons.

Clara, I feel like I saw you start to say something and I spoke over you, so please go ahead.

Oh no, you're fine.

I was, I was just thinking that that goes back to Anna's earlier comment about redundancy and resiliency and having multiple options for folks if you do miss a bus and it doesn't come for 45 minutes or whatever you know you have another option for how to get where you need to go.

Right.

Yeah.

Let's see, Councilor Boyle, I wanted to ask you about something that we sort of learned about that they're doing in Montreal, or maybe this is just proposed.

So during the pandemic, we know that lots of communities put some serious investment into kind of pedestrianizing streets, expanding bike infrastructure.

Here in Seattle, we did a lot of temporary things, but we didn't really We didn't really go as far as some communities did.

And I'm thinking of Montreal that has, it's called the REV. It's an express bike network that really provides clear boundaries for spaces that are dedicated to bikes, spaces that are dedicated to bus, car, you know, sidewalks for pedestrians.

And the goal is really to increase everybody's comfort, everybody's sense of safety as they're using whichever mode they choose.

I don't know if there's something similar to that happening in Vancouver, but I wonder if you could talk about what you think motivates some cities to really go for it and make those commitments.

So I'll say in Vancouver, we were similar to Seattle, we did a lot of temporary reallocation and now our challenge and part of it is like a capital budget and infrastructure cost challenge is making those temporary changes permanent, largely they were popular, you know, with the exception that like we had this temporary slow street system and we have these big orange water filled barriers, but the water all drains out and they get moved or like trucks get frustrated and ram into them and they're off in the ditch.

And so people liked the temporary slow street system, but they were frustrated with how often they were moving out of the got moved out of place and so I think there's, there would be public support to make those changes more permanent, but it is a.

infrastructure challenge for us and having the staffing and the funding to make those changes, even though we we end up spending money on ongoing maintenance of temporary programs that would over a pretty short time make more sense to be spending on making those changes permanent.

So that's certainly a challenge and a conversation that we've been having.

I haven't been to Montreal in a long time but I also follow the changes that they're making.

And my partner grew up in Montreal and so was just back there with my daughter and the thing they talked a lot about was the kind of pedestrianizing and public space and patios, the big changes that Montreal made through the pandemic on that front that really was about reclaiming a lot of public space for people in those neighborhoods to be using that space.

And I think ways they might not have even imagined before the pandemic, but they were immediately full and lively.

Are making those changes permanent.

I mean, the 1, the last thing I'll say on this is, um.

I think some of the challenge I see is around leadership, like that funding piece is a real challenge, but also our experience time and time again.

And what I see in Montreal and in other cities is that these types of changes are quickly popular with residents, but it does take some leadership to move them into place and to not allow this sort of, small number of loud voices who might oppose them to dominate that conversation.

We know people support pedestrianization.

We know people support active transportation, but it still takes stepping out and doing it.

And like I said at the beginning, I think that's both a challenge for us as elected leaders and an organizing challenge for communities and pushing and speaking up in support of those things.

So we're kind of not far off from you on that front in trying to make these temporary changes permanent.

And those examples and the stories from places like Montreal who have really stepped up and done it and where people are responding positively, I think are important to be sharing as examples of how we could do better.

Well, Ana and Clara, I know I'll give you both the last word on this.

You've both been very involved with Lake Washington Boulevard, which is something that we are, you know, it's a, I don't know, maybe a three or four mile road along a lake.

It's a beautiful place.

It was one of our healthy streets, stay healthy streets during the pandemic.

And there's been a lot of conversation about how to keep it somewhat more permanent.

So I would love to hear from both of you about what you're hearing in the neighborhood, you know, how you how you think this space could be used.

I'll start and you can conclude it.

I guess like This is Anna.

What we hear from the folks that we talk to who don't have the access of being able to get in a car and drive to a park, say, in the Cascades or in the Olympic Peninsula, is the importance of open space in our communities accessible to us, accessible to transit.

Not that there's the best transit connection to Lake Washington Boulevard because the 50 doesn't run that often, but there is a transit connection.

I hope we have a real conversation about what are open space options for people who can't afford to or don't have access to getting out of town to get that open space.

So that's my hope for this conversation.

Totally agree.

You know, I think we had a very similar experience in Seattle to what you had in Vancouver with regards to some of these open spaces during the last couple of years, where, you know, it was kind of a quick install sort of a situation.

And a lot of the materials that we were using fell apart really quickly.

And there was like a huge, really energetic community response at first.

And then there was just a lot of community anger about like, you know, someone ran over the sign on my street and now there's like a pile of wood sitting in the middle of the street and it's even more dangerous.

And, um, I think there was a lot of like really deep frustration about these like, uh, temporary rollout pilots.

I think particularly in the South end, you know, we get used to the city kind of like rolling in with something really exciting and taking a bunch of pictures and then kind of like swooping out and just sort of leaving it.

And it falls apart in less than a year or whatever.

And there's a lot of thirst for like the permanent real investments that are gonna make our communities better and help our communities thrive.

And I mean, like Washington Boulevard is beautiful.

It's so pleasant to be down there.

I was just down there this last weekend that it was closed and it's like, It's such a joyful space.

It was almost too crowded.

There was just so many people there.

It's absolutely astounding to me that we haven't figured out how to make that a regular thing.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

And I didn't make it out to Kitticole Mass, but I hear that there was so much fun.

Lots and lots of kids on bikes having a good time and and able to enjoy it with their families.

So, yeah, we'll you know, the road is closed on weekends for the summer and we will see.

We will see if we're able to to move, move towards something a little more permanent.

We are running out of time, but I just wanted to share back kind of reflect back to all of you a few things that we talked about today that I think are important as we move forward.

We talked about accessibility and needing to keep in mind people who we may not you know, may not work with, may not talk to, may not know, but who are still important members of our communities.

So, for example, shift workers in Soto, people who are walking and biking in Soto who are going to work but can't or choose not to drive, and who still need to be safe while they're navigating through that neighborhood and getting to work and getting off of work.

People who can't afford transit passes because we have them and they're great but there isn't sort of a monthly discount, you know, you still have to pay full, full price, regardless of, there's no bulk pricing which I know there are exists in other communities so how we might look at something like that.

I'm really interested in this question and maybe we can have another conversation about the question of, you know, is it a privilege or a necessity to have an alternative to having a car to be able to get around?

If it's a bike or some other, you know, motorized or non-motorized, how we make it easier for people to have access to ways to get around so that we can build in redundancies for them.

And I think something we talked about a lot is just the real need to prioritize our most vulnerable neighbors.

As we're making policy decisions as we're having conversations with our neighbors about why these changes might be good for our community and not something to to object to or to, you know, sort of rail against, but what what having some alternatives to driving could do for our relationships to one another our relationship to our city and to our neighbors and to our community so I really appreciate all of you, bringing that element into this conversation, like we're talking about people, we're talking about our neighbors, we're talking about a community, and that's what we're trying to do, build healthy neighborhoods and healthy communities.

And we should always keep in mind that we're not talking about units of production or vehicles traveling through, we're talking about people, and that's why this work is so important.

I want to thank Ana Zivartz, Clara Cantor, Vancouver City Council Member Christine Boyle for joining us today.

This has been a really great conversation.

To our audience, I want to ask if you've got comments or questions, if you've got suggestions for what we talk about in this speaker series, please let us know.

We haven't filled out the calendar for the year, so there's lots of room for adding your ideas into these conversations.

You can send suggestions to my office, Tammy.Morales at Seattle.gov.

We're on all the socials.

So if you want to tag us there and let us know what you're thinking, that would be great.

We don't have our next conversation scheduled, but there will be at least one discussion in June.

So as soon as we have details about that, we will make sure that we're letting folks know about that.

If you want to catch this segment again or if you want to watch to share with someone that you know you can find a link to this on my website seattle.gov slash council slash more Alice.

Again, this is a speaker series that we're calling Seattle within reach and I want to say that, in addition to the speaker series, we are working on policies.

based on the ideas and the conversations that we're having.

So, you know, over the next year or two, we will be unveiling the policies that come out of these discussions.

So please be part of the discussion.

We're hoping to have the next one in person, and we're hoping to be able to hear from you about what you're thinking and what you'd like to see next.

So thanks for being with us, everybody.

We are signing off, and I hope you all have a great day.