City of Seattle Sustainability & Transportation Committee 12319

Good afternoon, everybody.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

It is Tuesday, December 3rd.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

I'm joined by Councilmember Peterson.

Welcome to the first committee meeting with me and second to last committee meeting with me also.

So glad you're here.

Thank you.

It's 2.03 p.m.

And the first item, I guess, will be to approve the agenda.

We have two items on the agenda.

We have an approval of a street vacation for Harborview, and then we're going to get a briefing on the Rapid Ride Delridge line, Rapid Ride H, I believe.

And so planning to vote on the first one, depending how the conversation goes, and the second one is just a briefing.

And so unless there's any objections, I'll go ahead and approve the agenda.

I think I can do it that way.

I'm still learning this.

You'll pick it up faster than me, I'm sure.

So that agenda is approved, and now we can move on to public comment.

And I'll ask Kelly to bring me that list.

Staff today by Kelly Reefer.

Thank you for being here.

Well, that's a lot of sheets.

Do we have a lot of public comment today?

Okay.

Oh, there we go.

We have five folks who've signed up.

Megan Murphy, you're first.

You'll each have up to two minutes.

Megan's going to be followed by Lee Bruch and then Doug Olerenschen.

and Ryan Packer and Don Brubeck.

Go ahead, Megan.

Okay, thanks for letting me speak.

I am a member of, well, I was in two groups, and the first one was from UW, Anthropocene and Holocene, and they have an exhibit down at the gallery on Occidental Street.

Anthropocene is when humans have so much power that they change the environment in a way like that was unprecedented in all Earth's history that it got its own epoch.

So before that was the Holocene.

And so I asked them, I thought, oh, I thought Holocene was after Anthropocene because then we're going to switch over to solar energy.

They said no.

So, okay, so then I went to the World Trade Organization, 20th anniversary this weekend, and I learned that big corporations are gathering data, like oodles of data, of algorithms, like just, whoa, just lots and lots of data, and it's being used as a form of power, of like finding out how to extract money out of people's shopping habits, or developing countries and how to turn their resources into money.

It's scary.

Lastly, I would like to say that in terms of the Transportation Committee, what if our ability to change the environment like in the Anthropocene if we use data in a way that was humane and like build relationships up and like what if they use that data to make transportation public transportation free and really clean so that we solve global warming because that you know is another huge issue and if we use data to solve the issues of um of people being separate from each other or coming together and building community in a way that's totally green and doesn't use any carbon and builds communities up and not down.

Thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

I appreciate you always being here and having a positive outlook on how we can solve some of these crises.

So thanks for your opinions.

Lee.

Hi, thank you.

I'm Lee Brush.

I'd like to thank the outgoing members of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee for all their hard work for this community and for its transportation.

And I'd like to welcome its newest member.

Never forget, the best transportation plan is a great land use plan.

That's a mantra repeated by Brent Tredarian, former chief planner of Vancouver, BC.

That philosophy has helped Vancouver's leaders to create one of the world's most livable cities where over 50% of all trips are by transit, walking, and biking.

The civic leaders of Vancouver did that by having a vision and the kind of vision of the kind of city that they could build, and by having the courage to lead through the inevitable flak that that vision creates.

One of my dreams is for the leaders of both cities to meet to explore strategies and to envision ways to implement transportation and land use plans that help people of all ages and all abilities to live, enjoy, and move around their city.

In the last 11 months, seven people have been killed by traffic on Aurora.

I am submitting to you a presentation that I did a year ago addressing Aurora.

But a war is only the tip of the iceberg.

The same record of failure and death on Seattle's streets afflicts all of Seattle.

And hopefully, some of its lessons can be applied to Delridge.

I challenge you to envision a better city and to have the courage to lead and lead through the inevitable flack that that vision will occur.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lee.

Thanks for leaving those presentations and thanks for your ongoing commitment not just to your neighborhood on Aurora and the tragic incidents that seem to be happening again and again.

Despite good advocacy work, I do believe there's a commitment at the city to achieve Vision Zero, and yet clearly we have, there's a huge gap between the commitment and the reality that we're seeing in the, you know, deaths and serious injuries that have happened in the past year.

We have a lot of work to do to figure that out.

Thank you.

Doug?

Hi.

My name is Doug Olorinshaw, close.

And I'm a resident of North Delridge in West Seattle.

I and my wife commute by bike daily.

And I take my first grade son to Louisa Bourne Kade Elementary every day by bike.

And I wanted to talk to you about the upcoming Rapid Ride H plans that you'll hear about shortly.

Can I just step just a, there you go.

Thanks.

Is this better?

Yeah.

I can hear you, but the TV crew in posterity can't hear you as well probably.

All right.

I have to admit to being disappointed that we can't have two-way north and southbound bike lanes for the full length of Delridge Way.

However, I do recognize that SDOT has made compromises to attempt to accommodate all modes.

And the hybrid route utilizing parallel neighborhood greenways, while far from ideal, can be improved dramatically with two relatively small changes that I wanted to propose.

First, the currently planned one-way southbound bike lane between Kenyon and Juneau.

should be made into a two-way protected bike lane.

This will allow northbound cyclists to safely access the 26th Avenue Greenway at the northern section of the Delridge Corridor at Juneau.

There appears to be sufficient road width to accommodate a two-way bike lane along the stretch.

Second, the 26th Avenue Greenway in the northern section of the Delridge Corridor, which is planned to be the only bike route as part of the Rapid Rideage plans, is currently being used by motor vehicle drivers as a high-speed cut-through parallel path to Delridge Way itself, especially during the morning commute.

I'd like to see traffic diverters, ideally, along the 26th Avenue Greenway so that it can be returned to the family-friendly, safe parallel route that it's intended to be.

Ideally, these changes should precede the construction of the Delridge Way Rapid Ride so that conditions don't further deteriorate during construction.

Given the already compromised design of this route, I'd encourage Council to push SDOT on these two points.

With these changes, we can help make the Delridge Corridor safer and more livable for all Delridge residents.

Thanks.

Thank you, Doug.

Ryan?

And then Don's the last one who signed up.

Thanks.

I want to start by thanking this committee, and by extension, the city council as a whole, which has been one of the most forward-thinking on transportation policy in years.

And a great credit for that goes to the chair.

As of last month, the Center City Bike Network has been expanded in four different directions in less than a year, including the game-changing connection south of Jackson Street, where I was personally afraid to ride my bike for years.

But unfortunately, I'm here again to comment on the pedestrian safety crisis.

2019 is shaping up to be one of the worst years for safety for people walking and people overall on our streets in a very long time, with just three fatalities last week.

Aurora Avenue, where six pedestrians will have lost their lives so far this year, is a microcosm of how our approach needs to change, with neither WSDOT or SDOT willing to step up to make the changes necessary to turn Aurora into a Vision Zero compatible street.

We know the solution is at work.

Lower speeds, separated signal cycles.

We just need the courage to act.

And we can't wait any longer.

Thank you, Ryan.

Don?

I'm Don Brubeck with West Seattle Bike Connections.

We're a safe streets advocacy group for people walking, biking, taking transit in West Seattle.

I'm here to support the Delridge Rapid Ride H project.

But first, I'd like to, it's Thanksgiving, I'd like to give thanks to this committee and to Mike O'Brien in particular, who you've inspired me more than you know, since coming to the Cascade Advocacy Leadership Institute about seven years ago and getting me to commit time to this kind of work.

And your continuing work has led me to continue.

And also to Lisa Herbold for adding a proviso for the continued council oversight of the Delridge Rapid Ride Project.

It's really important.

It serves West Seattle and some of Seattle's lowest income, highest densities of people of color, neighborhoods, and people who really need transit.

More than 25% of some of these neighborhoods, the households don't have a car.

And I think the SDOT team has done great work in including pedestrian safety improvements so people can get to the transit stops on foot or in wheelchairs or on bikes.

We've worked with them along the way and made suggestions.

We still have some areas where we think improvements could be made to make this really successful especially to survive the two years of repaving on Delridge when car traffic is going to want to divert to adjacent streets and those streets include the greenway streets that are the alternative routes for people on bikes and on foot.

So a diverter on Genesee, the two-way bike lanes that Doug talked about, some other measures we've given you in emails and in comments that the SDOT team has promised they would look into.

We're looking forward to seeing positive results from.

Thank you.

Thank you, Don.

Thanks for all your work.

Is anyone else in the audience that would like to provide public comment?

All right, seeing none, we'll close public comment.

And I will invite presenters forward on the first agenda item and then have Kelly read it in when she gets here.

Council Bill 119628, an ordinance vacating the alley in Block 81, Terry's Second Edition, an aerial portion of the Ninth Avenue between Jefferson Street and Alder Street, on the petition of King County, Clerk File 304408, and accepting a property use and development agreement.

Welcome, everyone.

Why don't we start with a quick round of introductions.

Lish, you may lead us off.

Lish Whitson, Council Central staff.

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Ted Kleiner, Harborview Medical Center.

Leslie Harper-Miles, King County.

Welcome, everyone.

Lish, do you have any opening words before we jump into the presentation?

I thought because this is Councilmember Peterson's first meeting on street vacations, I would give just a very short overview of the process and where we are in that process for this project.

I think we all would always benefit from this fun, complex process, so thank you.

So street vacation is a petition by a property owner to acquire the right-of-way adjacent to their property.

Because of the complex ownership of our streets and alleys, there's a separate process that we go through that's distinct from any normal property disposition process that the city undertakes.

And that's laid out under state law.

The council has three points where it touches a street vacation process and early briefing.

a review of the proposal and the public benefits that the project will provide, and then a final stage where after approval of the project, after conditional approval of the project, once it's been built, once the public benefits have been provided, it comes back to the city for final approval, and at that point, the city council actually transfers the property over to the petitioner.

And that's where we are with this project.

It was approved many years ago.

They have completed all of the conditions of the application, and they're back here to get final approval under this ordinance.

Great.

Thanks for that.

Perfect, thank you for the background.

Yeah, I would emphasize what Lish was talking about, that the City Council has established a two-part approval process.

And the reason for that is that the Council gives the conditional or conceptual approval.

It allows the developer to move forward and build the project.

But you hold back the very last step, and it's a way that the council can achieve accountability around the payment of fees, any design or development conditions, and of course, the implementation of the public benefit features.

So generally, we see with most projects, it can take several years because vacations are associated with really complex development projects.

This is unusual in that it's Not timely, but we're very happy to be here.

We're disproportionately happy to be here because it's taken a long time to get here.

And we do find sometimes with projects that there's an easements that's difficult, or we just all get busy.

It gets in the bottom of my stack.

So with this, there were some issues.

It's a very complex project to design and build.

This is one that went multiple times to the design commission.

There were a lot of structural and development issues.

then Harborview was not expecting the vacation fee to be as significant as it was.

So we had to work on finding some alternatives.

So it's just a whole series of things that have put this into this very, very delayed, but everything done, and we're very happy to be here category.

So Ted's going to go through the PowerPoint that shows the project and some of the history, and then we can talk more about process or any questions about it.

But it's ready.

It's ready to go.

Take us away.

Here we go.

So before we jump into the PowerPoint, just a quick refresher.

Harborview Medical Center is the only level one trauma center for a five-state region, and the campus is owned by King County, and the hospital is managed by University of Washington.

So here are the items we'll be reviewing.

We'll talk about the location of the Alley and Aerial Vacations.

We'll talk about the Bond Project work that was completed in 2007 and 2009. We'll review the compensation that Beverly was just referred to, and we'll talk about the various conditions and public benefits that were completed as part of the process.

So here's where they're technically located.

The Alley Vacation is the long red line at the top of the diagram.

It bisects a city block that's bounded by James Street and Jefferson and then Terry and Ninth Avenue.

The aerial vacation goes over Ninth Avenue and is just south of Jefferson.

It's right next to our emergency department.

That's where the two locations are.

There are two projects that were affected by these or benefited from these vacations.

The first we'll talk about is on the left-hand side, the photograph on the left, and it's an aerial vacation allowed for the construction of the Sky Bridge over Ninth Avenue.

The Sky Bridge is a six floors of occupied space.

And it served two really important functions for our campus.

The first is it actually seismically braced the Norm Mailing Building and the East Hospital.

The Norm Mailing Building is the building on the left-hand side of the picture.

And it was built along with the Skybridge at the same time.

It was the same construction package.

The building on the right-hand side of the picture is the East Hospital.

Both of those buildings have inpatient units.

They have acute care floors and ICUs.

The East Hospital building was built in the 1970s, so it really didn't meet the seismic standards of today's world.

So the architects and engineers came up with a solution to use the sky bridge to seismically brace the East Hospital and the mailing building, which is really important in case we have an earthquake.

It also provides some critical pathways for transporting patients and equipment.

This side of the building, the view you're seeing right now, has corridors on one side that are meant for staff to move patients back and forth between the two different buildings.

The other side of the Skybridge, which you can't see, has waiting rooms and offices.

It's got some great waiting rooms that look down 9th Avenue and on a clear day you can see Rainier and it's a great place for patients and families to go gather and get off the patient floors and to get a break.

So it's a, it solves two important purposes, a seismic bracing and also patient transportation.

The building on the right hand side is the 9th and Jefferson building and that was built on an entire city block and the alley vacation allowed for construction of that building.

It provided an important expansion for clinics and services.

We have four different clinics in the building, offices, research space.

We were also able to move the King County Medical Examiner from some very old space on the other side of campus to this new building, and it really vastly improved their environment, gave them brand new autopsy space.

So it's, both buildings did significant improvements on our campus, and they both benefited from the vacations.

I'll tell you a little background on the construction.

As Beverly noted, there was an evaluation of the value for the aerial and alley vacation, and it came in at $1.9 million.

Now, Harborview obviously runs at a very razor-thin margin every year, so writing a check for $1.9 million was going to be challenging.

So over the course of a couple years, we worked on coming up with ways or talked to Beverly about ways of lowering that amount or finding ways to offset it.

During that time, we actually built out space for Medic One.

And I'm not sure if everyone realizes, but there's actually a Seattle Fire Department station embedded on our campus.

It doesn't have fire trucks, but it has Medic One vehicles.

Also, Medic One does a lot of paramedic training on our campus.

So they needed new space, so we built out new offices, improve their bunkhouse, and that costs approximately $1.1 million.

So if we go back to that cost, we went back to the city and said, how about if we could take that $1.1 million and offset the $2 million fund, and we came down with the final cash contribution of $845,000.

City Council agreed that that made sense, so we ended up writing a check for $845,000 and kind of cleared the books.

That's where we ended up.

So this is a list of all the council conditions and the associated public benefits.

We won't go through this line by line on them, but I have pictures that cover all the bases that these reference.

So the different conditions, Harborview shall provide adequate vehicular and pedestrian clearance.

This is a photograph of the Skybridge facing south.

And you can see it's quite high off the city street and provides plenty of pedestrian clearance and access and vehicles.

Second condition, refinements of the streetscape to include expanded sidewalks and pedestrian lighting.

The photograph on the left is the view along 9th Avenue next to the Norm Maling Building, and we have 11-foot sidewalks there.

The photograph on the right shows the pedestrian lighting that does a really nice job lighting up the neighborhood in the evenings.

The next condition, design refinements of other public benefits specific to this vacation beyond development requirements.

So in response to this, King County and Harborview worked with artists to produce permanent artwork underneath the Skybridge.

This is a piece by Beliz's brother.

She actually has pieces here in your city hall by your offices, I believe.

And this is titled The Bridge, and you can see it has decorative panels underneath the Sky Bridge, and then some more decorative pieces on the left-hand side.

At nighttime, it's lit up with blue lights to signify water.

This is a photograph of the same artwork where it lights up the Sky Bridge in blue at night.

So Harborview's commitment to this public artwork is to make sure the lights were always on in blue and maintain the artwork.

This next condition includes generous building setbacks and expanded sidewalks.

This is a photograph of the 9th and Jefferson Building at the bus plaza.

We'll have some more detailed photographs.

This is a closer view.

The picture on the left is a closer view of the bus stop.

The photograph on the right shows a significant 20-foot sidewalk, which is pretty unusual for most downtown buildings.

And that references the setback we provided.

Next picture shows a view along James Street next to the 9th and Jefferson Building.

We have a 16-foot sidewalk.

And you can see there are some awnings above the building.

And I have to say, for building setbacks, this is a really good example.

You know, we all know how busy Jefferson, I mean, James Street can be.

And when it's pouring rain, it's actually quite nice to be able to walk underneath these awnings and kind of get away from the traffic while you're moving around.

So it definitely improves the pedestrian experience around the campus.

The next one is a view of the building along 9th Avenue.

It's a 16-foot sidewalk in front of one of our retailers, Diva Espresso.

It also shows the tree planting on the left-hand side.

And again, it's just a really nice pedestrian experience, especially in the rain.

I think this is the last photograph.

This is our bus stop.

It actually has two public art pieces.

One is this lower leaf sculpture made out of granite and marble.

That's a permanent piece.

And then the flooring, it's kind of hard to see from this photograph, but it's a piece of artwork that extends into the lobby, and it's a series of the moon phases throughout the year by a local artist.

So it covers both public art and public improvements.

And I think that's it.

Thank you.

Any questions?

When did we first pass conditional approval of this?

It was approved in 2003.

So before my time, a little bit before.

I believe Council Member Conlon and then Rasmussen were the main leads on the approval and implementation.

And how does this compare to the Port of Seattle when we did a few months ago as far as like record setting timelines?

So we still have one port project that's even older than this.

Okay.

The Terminal 5. So this is only the second oldest project ever.

But this one was pretty complicated to work out.

And Harborview has just been really a pleasure to work with, so all the issues we just kind of you know, set down and figured out a way to move forward, and the council was really supportive of finding ways to keep Harborview, keep the project moving forward.

So it was difficult, but really collaborative through the whole process.

Obviously, you know, there's a set of rules that apply to these things.

Some of those are regardless of who the party is, whether it's another public agency or not.

And at the same time, recognizing that we have some shared interests in achieving our respective goals and taking money out of one pot and putting it in another pot isn't necessarily the best way to do it.

So I appreciate the creativity.

I appreciate the partnership that exists.

I mean, there's dozens of partnerships between the city and the county, but the Medic One partnership at Harborview is great, and I'm glad that that was able to be finessed in a way that served all of our goals going forward.

I'm prepared to move this.

Councilor Peterson, do you have any questions on any of this?

I do not.

Well, I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119628. Second.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

So that will go on to the full council on Monday with a recommendation to vote yes on it.

Wonderful.

Thanks for all your work on this.

Thank you for this and I would like to say thank you to the committee chair.

It's been really a pleasure working with you and all of these really complicated issues where we've really noodled over solutions on things for all this time.

And I think you've been a tremendous leader, and we'll really miss your leadership.

Thank you, Beverly.

I appreciate that.

And I just want to say that as someone who gets to jump in and dabble in this from time to time as projects come before, That work is not possible without someone like you being, frankly, from my perspective, just a very dedicated and passionate advocate for the public good and the public interest in these projects and knowing, you know, getting as much as we can out of projects where it's appropriate and finding paths to balance the needs of multiple organizations like you did today.

And so, you're amazing.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Let's see, I can read an agenda item too.

Delridge, Rapid Ride H Line, Briefing and Discussion.

If it's under 10 words, I have permission to read them in as long as there's no codes or anything.

Invite presenters forward when they get here.

goes very far away.

No, this is like a pass the salt at one of those, you know, fancy dinners where we sit at the opposite ends of the table and have an intimate conversation.

Welcome.

Why don't we start with introductions?

Go ahead, CJ.

I'm CJ Holt, project manager with SDOT for Capital Projects and on the Delridge Rapid Rad HLion project.

And I'm Lorelei Williams.

I'm the Deputy Director over Capital Project Delivery for SDOT.

Thank you both for being here.

And thanks for coming forward to do this presentation.

This is an exciting project for a variety of reasons.

One, it's serving potential to bring some really robust transit service to the population that needs it.

Two, this is one of those rare major transit investments that is not dependent on federal funding.

So whereas there's so many other also great projects that are kind of tied up in complex timing and application projects, this one we jointly with the county, I believe, controlled our own destiny.

And so that's nice to have something we have control over.

And as a result, it's likely going to be moving forward much faster than some of those other projects.

So let's just jump in.

And I look forward to the presentation.

And as we go through this or at the end, questions that were raised during public comment hopefully you heard those too and if you feel like addressing those on the way through that's fine or I can just bring them up when we get to the end.

Yeah CJ and I were taking notes so he'll either address them as he's talking or we'll make sure we follow up as we finish things and nice to meet you Councilmember Peterson.

Welcome.

And I imagine that we will have many conversations in the future.

There's a lot that we're doing.

Like Council Member O'Brien said, Delridge is one of the first corridors that, in conjunction with hopefully Madison, that will move forward to construction in 2020. So it's pretty exciting.

We have been able to move forward.

a number of big projects, more on the bridge side.

And so these will be the first two corridors out of the levee.

So it's been a long road and one we're excited to proceed on.

So we're here today as a follow-up to when we were here earlier this year, where we were talking about things at around the 30% design milestone.

And so we're gonna walk through all the things that we have done throughout the course of this year.

and where we're at at 90% design as well as addressing some of the public comments.

And I'll click us through.

So we at SDOT always start our presentations with our vision and mission on the slide deck.

And so you'll see this time and time again.

And I'm just going to speak to it briefly because it's very important and we've heard comments to it today.

So our vision is that Seattle is a thriving Equitable community powered by dependable transportation.

And then our mission is to deliver a transportation system that provides safe and affordable access to places and opportunities.

And within that, we've defined six core values, equity, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability, and excellence.

And then this is our presentation overview.

And so CJ is going to cover basically all the bases of background, what we've done recently, specifically the in-depth community and business engagement that we've been doing, as well as some very specific follow-ups on actual requests we've gotten and whether we're going to do them or not and why.

And then following this presentation here shortly, we expect to respond to the council ordinance about the details of the PBL decisions.

So that is forthcoming also, as well as there is a proviso on this project prior to construction, where we will submit a full report that this is a precursor to, but we'll have more information immediately prior to construction.

So now I'm gonna turn it over to CJ for all the details.

Yeah, thanks Lorelei.

Yeah, so I liked kind of starting big picture, especially council member, you may not be familiar with the project.

So I kind of want to start start big picture, give you a little bit of background and then dig into some of the details.

So I like to start with this graphic, it's kind of a layered you know, look at the overall H line.

It's, you know, we kind of think about it, you know, in these layers.

The blue line is the Metro RapidRide H line overall project, which runs from, hi, Councilmember, which runs from- Councilmember Herbold, thank you for joining us.

which runs from South Lake Union to Burien via Delridge.

And the kind of the green box there is the SDOT-King County joint delivery of the Transit Plus multimodal corridor.

which includes obviously the transit improvements in that area, as well as the multimodal improvements.

And then we have the red kind of box there, which is the SDOT only delivered paving piece where we're doing full reconstruction in that area, in addition to some utility upgrades.

So for the blue line, the Metro line, that northern part outside of the green box, that's delivered only by Metro.

And then south of Barton at the bottom there, all the way to Burien, that's delivered by Metro.

And then, like I said, green is joint.

We have an agreement in place, a cost share agreement.

Metro is a funding partner.

And just overall goals, faster, more frequent bus service, improved access to transit, and then improved safety for walkers, bikers, drivers, and transit users.

So existing conditions, it's about approximately four miles of principal arterial.

And again, we're just talking about the Delridge piece right now.

There are sidewalks on both sides of the road, generally.

It's a mix of bike lanes and sharrows on Delridge.

And there's also parallel greenway.

between West Seattle Bridge and Graham on 26th Avenue Southwest and then there's also to the west of Delridge and then to the east of Delridge there is a Greenway between West Seattle Bridge and Cambridge to the south And I'll get into a little bit more detail on that those facilities when we get to that section Just

want to check on the numbers.

So current number of trips, 9,200 trips.

Goal, another 7,100.

So is that, am I simply adding those numbers to name a goal that we have for this project of more than 16,000 riders by 2035?

The 7,100 is just for the Delridge section.

Okay.

Whereas the 9200 is for the overall 120 line?

Got it.

So if we were to look at an overall goal for the project, we should, we're only, for our purposes now, we're only talking about the 7100.

Right, yeah.

We just carved that out since we're just talking about the Delridge section, but we could pull the numbers for the overall route.

Would you like those numbers?

Well, it just gives us a little bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

It might be useful to have both the current Delridge-only numbers.

I guess maybe that's what I'd be more interested in, the current Delridge-only numbers versus the projected 2035 numbers.

It feels like we're approximately doubling, expecting the double in that specific corridor.

Sure.

It would be good to know that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Right.

Thank you for pointing that out.

We can definitely get an update on that.

So overall, just back to the existing conditions, we have parking throughout the corridor.

It's a busy corridor, especially at the north end, 19,000 ADT.

It gets a little bit less toward the middle and south.

The 120, as we've been kind of talking about, it's a busy route.

It's one of the top.

the busiest routes in the city in terms of ridership.

80 bus stops, runs all the way through Delridge, White Center, Burien.

There's a lot of riders there.

I think it's already on the county's top 10 list.

On that, how will, I know there's a sort of a standard rapid ride frequency, and how does that frequency, the new projected frequency, compare to what it is currently?

Because I'm already, I get, frequent concerns about the fact that full buses pass folks by and aren't taking on more riders.

And unless we're also significantly adjusting the frequency of the new rapid ride, I'm concerned that we're not gonna be getting at that overcrowding issue.

Yeah, so that's a good point.

King County did make some improvements to the 120. So you're already getting faster service than it was prior to those improvements.

But we're still expecting additional time savings by some of the measures that we're implementing as part of this project, things like transit signal priority, more efficient boarding, better speed through the corner.

Yeah, there's other efficiencies for sure.

Sure.

Exactly.

We just would love a comparison of rapid ride frequency to the current frequency of the 120.

And just to make sure I'm clear, there's the travel time savings conversation, but there's also the frequency and the number of buses on the route that you're asking us to drive.

Okay, and then just generally you can see there's a lot of folks served, you know, 187,000 jobs, 49,000 residents, a very diverse neighborhood.

Almost 40% low income, 48% people, persons of color, 34% of folks do not own a car.

So we're really, you know, we're really cognizant of that population and trying to serve them to the best of our ability.

So this is just a high level.

Can I ask a quick question?

One of the features typically of rapid ride programs is some stop consolidation to slow, to reduce dwell times and get things moving faster.

Has that been, what are the 80 stops going to go to when it becomes rapid ride?

If that's, do we know that yet?

Yeah, so we did do stock consolidation as part of this project.

If you recall back at 30%, that was part of the between 10% and 30% design.

We took those stops, which were, you know, It varied throughout the corridor, but we consolidated them to a third of a mile, generally consistently throughout the corridor.

So there were a lot of decisions on the micro level, where to close stops, where to add stops, where to consolidate, bring in other stops based on ridership, based on needs.

So we did go through that process.

We put a lot of thought into that, did a lot of outreach around that process.

And that's what you're seeing today, the result of that.

And so the 80 stops is currently on the 120. How many stops will the Rapid Ride H have?

Well, again, I'm only speaking to Delridge.

We're at 20 stops on Delridge.

I can look to our friends at King County to get a count for the overall H line, if that's what you're looking for.

So sorry, the, yeah.

I'm not actually sure what I'm looking for.

I'm trying to think through, as we consolidate stops, dwell time will in theory go down, so we'll speed it up.

So I'm trying to get a sense of that.

There's obviously...

you know, some people will lose a stop that's really convenient, and so there's a tradeoff there.

We're trying to figure out for the greater good, and I imagine you all, along with the county, have done some good work to do the best to evaluate that.

And so, you know, just trying to get a sense of that.

Yeah, there's definitely a reduction in stops, and it's going to be, you know, it's going to make it more efficient.

It's going to make the bus move quicker.

We can share the overall numbers if that's helpful after the presentation.

Yeah.

But the rapid ride line will run all the way to...

And so there is, you know, outside the city of Seattle, I'm assuming there is additional stop consolidation.

Maybe the stops were already configured appropriately, but I imagine there's some adjustment happening.

And so it'd be good to know, I guess, just from 80, how many we're going to and what that looks like.

So one of the ways that we obviously get more frequency is adding more buses and drivers and add more capacity if they're bigger buses or more space.

But another way is if we can take a route that takes, you know, 40 minutes to run end-to-end get it to 37 minutes, you know, we can get those same buses and drivers delivering a few more runs a day.

And so, you know, that consolidation does have not just the people that are on the bus get a slightly quicker ride home.

we are able to move more people with the same amount of investment.

And so trying to get a sense of what that looks like would be good to know.

Absolutely.

And not to steal CJ's thunder, because you'll see it a little bit later, but that's another element that we had to carefully balance in this corridor is where we felt we needed transit dedicated lanes and the space that takes up and how we have to make decisions between those two.

Because that's another way that we...

When you speed it up.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, so that's a pretty good segue into the overview.

You know, these are just some of the features just for, you know, this Delridge piece, what we're looking at to improve that speed and reliability for the H line.

Yeah, dedicated bus lanes.

We have a mix on this project.

of bus-only 24-7 lanes and peak-only dedicated lanes to improve the speed and reliability.

We have enhanced bus stops.

So this is a rendering, not to scale and all that, but that's just kind of an idea.

It's an updated kit of parts that we're implementing as part of this project.

A lot of those stops are going to be in lane, so we're going to bulb them out from the curb so that the bus doesn't have to pull off to the curb out of traffic, pick up riders, and then go back into traffic.

So that's going to save a lot of time.

You know, just more comfortable station, seating, lighting, other amenities.

And then, of course, off-board fare collection, so Orca readers so people can, you know, pay before they enter.

Specialized buses, you know, that rapid ride bus that has easier loading on and off.

Transit signal priority, so at the major intersections, I'm thinking Holden, Orchard, Genesee, where we have arterials coming on to Delridge, we're implementing the transit signal priority so that the buses can get the green light as much as possible as they're coming and they don't have to wait.

And then also better connections to the stops.

And again, I'm gonna talk about this in a little bit more detail, but just improvements to get people to the bus stops so that they can use it more efficiently.

I recall hearing a few years ago that there were a finite number of Orca readers left and they weren't making them anymore.

And I'm curious if that is still a constraint.

I know we're moments away, which could be years, I can't remember if it's Orca Next Gen or Orca 2.0 or whatever the next version of Orca is.

But I'm curious, is the installation of readers an issue?

Or is it like, no, we figured that out, or we haven't heard of it yet?

No, King County Metro implements the readers, and I believe that it's lined up, you know, per our agreement that they're going to be implementing that on schedule.

I can't speak to the specifics.

That's fine.

Yeah, we had that push on 3rd Avenue, I think it was, and we were running low on inventory and accessibility of them, but they haven't raised that as an issue recently, so I think we're, as far as we know, we're engaged.

That's great.

And just a high-level schedule, obviously, there's a lot more detail within this.

But this project's been going since 2015. We work through planning, alternative development.

between 2015, 2017, started design early 2018. We're currently at 90% design.

So we're getting close to final design, not all the way there.

But by early 2020, we're looking to finalize design, get that contract package together, put it out to bid and get a contractor on board, start construction by spring of 2020, and then construct through the end of 2021. And then we're, our goal is to have rapid ride age line up and running September of 2021.

And will a single contractor do the, you know, you said there's utility work, roadway work, obviously there's lane reconfiguration, bus bulbs, there's the installation of electric for the poles and the readers and all those things.

Is single contractor who manages, will oversee all that?

Yeah, generally there will be one prime contractor.

They're going to have a lot of subs, you know, specialists working underneath them.

But yeah, it's a big contract.

So it's going to be a really big deal for whoever gets that.

So we have to really be cognizant of who gets that and what kind of structure they use in terms of getting everything done on time.

On the question of the paving project, It's a two-year project.

People are excited that it's happening, but there obviously are very likely to be impacts associated with a project of this size.

Can you talk a little bit more about how that's going to be managed?

Is it something that we're looking at doing in phases or just any information you can provide?

Yeah, we are we are absolutely gonna Look at a phased approach.

You know, we don't want to have the entire Corridor shut down, you know at the same time So we're we have a you know kind of a structure in our specifications that the contractor has to provide You know sequencing phasing plan that we're that we are able to review and approve Before they start construction to make sure that it works for everybody we are putting some constraints on the contractor to make sure that at least one lane in either direction is active at all times so that we don't detour people onto residential streets.

We're going to have uniformed police officers on hand to direct traffic and implement mitigation measures if needed, if we need detour routes, if we need.

reader signs, so that's all in our specifications.

We're definitely very cognizant of the impacts and trying to do whatever we can to mitigate those for the community, while at the same time trying to deliver the project on time.

And as it relates specifically to the phasing, I had a little bit of recollection of the phasing work done on 23rd because of my oversight of the Office of Economic Development and their need to work with the community to get some business stabilization funding out to the community to address some of the economic impacts of the project.

And so I know that in that instance, SDOT worked really closely with the community in developing the phasing approach.

Similarly, the Avalon project, SDOT has worked very closely with the folks in the Avalon neighborhood in developing what the phasing looks like, getting their input on you know, there's going to be some pain here.

How do you want it?

Is that something that we can expect?

Or is this just a conversation between SDOT and the contractor?

No, we absolutely want to include the community in that discussion.

You know, as we get closer to construction, where we have a contractor involved, we have a construction phasing or construction schedule, we want to get that feedback from the community and make sure that we're not impacting people in that way.

I will say we have been engaging Department of Neighborhoods and Department of Economic Development to make sure that we're having those conversations early, getting them engaged.

There are pockets of commercial, you know, small businesses that we're really paying attention to, and we're already starting those conversations now to make sure that we're, you know, meeting their needs.

Great.

So, it's not just a question of, like, okay, we'll get you some closed for business signs, or open for business signs, but it's a conversation where we're getting their input about, how to actually best to phase.

I'm just concerned because we're looking at construction starting pretty soon.

And I don't know the details of when those construction agreements are gonna be finalized.

And I know you've been really focused on doing community outreach around design and I know Office of Economic Development has been involved with some of the commercial nodes.

But I don't know that we're actually asking the community how they want the paving project to be phased and just wondering when exactly that piece is going to happen.

And CJ, you can grab me if I say something.

inaccurate here, but I think it's a fair statement that between 90 and 100, we have more of those details and conversations to work out.

So one of the things we've identified is we want to keep one lane each direction open.

So from a traffic maintenance standpoint, that detail we've got laid out.

We vary on our projects as far as how much prescription we give to the contractor about what their limitations are.

We try to leave as much open to them as we can, but also make sure that they can't open up, like CJ said, the whole corridor at one time.

So I think we have more work to do to make sure that we get the right balance within the contract.

There is some base rules about how we affect driveways and we have to maintain access and all those things.

And some of those details and that coordination is definitely a process during construction as we get the contractors really minute detail of where they're going to be working and when.

So I think we have a little more work to do before we go to construction and we can add that to our proviso response.

Also the details that we've gotten to and then what things we expect to handle later.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Sorry.

OK, yeah, so that's a good segue into kind of community and business engagement.

So we kind of talked a little bit about this, but we've been doing outreach since the beginning, right, throughout planning to develop the alternatives through design.

We're currently in the middle of kind of a 90% design push where we're doing a lot of this.

We're getting out mailings, we're talking to people face-to-face, we're doing door-to-door, we're meeting with advocacy groups.

But we're doing this throughout the process, so it doesn't stop when design is over.

We're going to be doing this into construction and throughout construction until the end.

Because of the diverse community, we have taken an equity approach, make sure that we have the right expertise on the team to be able to have, you know, translation services for materials and for talking to folks in language.

We also have translators, interpreters on hand for public events.

You know, we're just really cognizant of getting the word out in a variety of ways that we're really maximizing who we talk to.

And then, you know, we've been hearing a lot, right?

We have, you know, hundreds and maybe more comments from folks about different details along the corridor.

I'm not going to go through everything with you guys, but I did want to cover a few of the kind of big picture themes that we've been hearing and talk a little bit about what we're doing about it.

So as you heard kind of in the beginning during public comment, We have been getting requests to take another look at the bike configuration along Delridge and the greenways to make sure that we're really taking into account all the various considerations there.

where we've been working really closely with the Youngstown Cultural Center to make sure we're meeting their needs in terms of parking and access.

We got a lot of comments on the new Finley Station.

We talked about stop consolidation.

One of the consolidations brought the stop at Brandon Street and the stop at Juno Street together at Finley, which is kind of a neighborhood you know, center, a node.

And the original design didn't have a robust pedestrian crossing, so we added a rapid flashing beacon.

We got a lot of feedback that that wasn't enough from the community, so we took that a step further, and now we're adding a pedestrian activated signal.

We're working with businesses.

I talked about this, you know, we're working face-to-face with folks to make sure that their needs are met where we're taking parking.

There is parking loss along this corridor as a result of the protected bike lane southbound, as well as, you know, where we're putting in bus bulbs, bus stops.

So we're just working really closely with folks, not just businesses, also residents, to make sure that their parking needs are acknowledged and looking to make sure that we're doing everything we can to address that.

And then we also have been getting a lot of comments about on-street flooding.

This corridor really didn't have adequate infrastructure for drainage, and so we're doing a really hard look at that.

We're doing a lot of improvements along the way in terms of stormwater conveyance, working closely with SPU to make sure that we're taking care of that and making some improvements along the way.

And you took some good positive action in response to feedback from Youngstown as it relates to the left turn lane.

Yeah, we heard them.

It was really a question of trade-offs between the 24-hour bus lane versus the parking lane versus the left turn pocket.

And they really wanted that access into their parking lot.

So we took that to heart and put that into the 90% design.

This is just kind of an overview of the 90% design elements with a little bit more detail.

There's kind of a lot on this graphic, so I don't want to get into too much detail.

But we talked a little bit about the transit-only lanes.

You see the dark red at the north end between Andover and Alaska Street.

Those are 24. 24-7 bus-only lanes.

One public comment was, well, we got it from a variety of sources, was to extend that to the south for the northbound lane.

There was a lot of backup in the morning, a.m.

peak, between 6 and 9 a.m.

there between Alaska and Hudson.

So we did a little a little survey to check the traffic backups and verify that that was in fact the case.

So we extended that bus-only lane to Hudson in the AM peak.

So that was one result of the feedback that we got.

You can also see we have some bus-only lane at Graham Street to Myrtle Street in the south.

This is also the H, you know, those H's, those red dots are the final placement for all the stops.

So you can kind of see that consistent pattern that we're trying to keep throughout the corridor, keep that third of a mile placement.

The other thing to keep in mind is We have a landscape median island for the north half of the project.

That blue line is landscape median island.

That was a really important feature for the community to kind of beautify and also provide a safety feature to slow traffic through that area.

It's not a continuous island like this shows it's broken up.

Obviously, there's still turn pockets, left turn pockets where necessary.

But just keep in mind that that's a major feature of the project.

I'm going to, the next slide is going to talk about the bike facilities.

Let's go back to the first one though.

But I did want to point out that the paving area is between West Seattle Bridge and Orchard Street.

There is an area north of Genesee where we're only doing spot repair and repaving, sorry, resurfacing.

That is because the Sound Transit station is going to be in that area.

We're not exactly sure what the alternative is going to be, but we know that there's going to be a great deal of construction activity there.

And so we don't want to put in a lot of infrastructure that's going to get torn up in five or six years.

So we pulled that out and we're just doing kind of spot improvements until Sound Transit comes through.

And one other question about the 24-7 bus lane as it relates to the needs of Youngstown, particularly in the evening.

I believe that, I don't know if it's agreement or if people just do it, but there's parking across the street sometimes when their parking lot is full at the community center.

But I can't remember if there's a crossing.

There is a crossing at Genesee and it's a signalized crosswalk.

And then at the south end at Oregon, there's actually a raised pedestrian.

bridge that goes across Delridge.

We're also adding, as part of Your Voice, Your Choice, we're adding an additional crossing at Oregon on street on the south side of that intersection.

So there are going to be multiple options for people to get across.

And so do they have concerns at Youngstown about parking access in the evenings?

But we did hear some comments from folks about that.

And we did look at the area and did a utilization study of parking and found that there was available parking at different times of the day.

We kind of worked through that with them.

And I think we have capacity in that area for parking.

All right, thank you.

OK, let's go to the next slide.

I do want to spend a little bit of time on the bike facilities design.

We had talked about the memo that we're working on for the ordinance that we talked about.

So we're going to provide a lot more detail on this in a bit.

But I did want to talk about the concept.

So the idea here with the bike facilities is that we have existing greenways at the north end on the west side between Juneau and Andover.

on 26th, which is about two blocks off of Delridge, and then also from West Seattle Bridge down to Cambridge, which goes on 21st and 17th Avenue Southwest.

So throughout the process, we got a lot of feedback, especially early on, that they wanted the bike advocates would like protected bike lane on Delridge Southbound.

So we added that southbound bike lane between Cambridge and Juneau.

And we extended it.

It was originally to Graham.

We extended it to Juneau.

And then there was also a really important need to look at those greenways and look at upgrades to improve those facilities if we're going to send people onto the greenways, that we looked at those hard and made sure that we're making improvements.

So there's a couple of examples where we did that.

At Juneau, we basically added a section of greenway as it comes down from the top of the hill at Graham and connects to 26th across Delridge, where we basically added a section there.

We added typical greenway treatments, speed hump signs, and crossing at Juneau.

We also looked at, on the right side between Myrtle and Webster, there was a section where we had the greenway hit a stairway.

And we knew at the time when we implemented that greenway that we wanted to come back to that.

So we took advantage of this opportunity to build an alternative around that stairway.

So that's why you can kind of see, let's see if I can put my cursor just so you know what I'm talking about.

right here.

That's why we have two lines.

We have an alternative route on 18th to go around that stairway for folks if they want to use that.

It required doing a little bit of road widening to improve clearances and sight lines, in addition to some speed humps and some signage.

And then we're looking at 26th Avenue.

basically between Juneau and Andover, we're doing some upgrades there, additional speed humps, signs, new striping, and then we have heard loud and clear from bike advocates and neighbors that they are concerned about the the car traffic that's diverting off of Delridge onto 26th.

We did get data at 26th and Genesee.

I'm going to put my cursor on there just so you know what I'm talking about, where we've heard complaints of a lot of cut-through traffic.

So we got data.

We're looking at that right now, and we're going to be ready to make a recommendation on what to do about that area very soon.

But we have heard the concerns, we've seen the pictures, and we've got the data to work on that.

And the data confirms what we're anecdotally hearing, that there is a diversion.

Yes, the traffic volumes have increased.

Yeah, so we're trying to...

Very soon, like in the next kind of month or two?

That's fair, yeah, in the next month or so.

It's really a question of what's the impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

Putting in a traffic diverter has a lot of trickle-down effects on other folks.

So we really have to do an analysis of where are people then.

going, you know, if they're blocked.

Does that make sense?

We want to make sure that we're doing it right.

You can make one street better at the expense of the next block over, and we don't want to do that.

Exactly.

We want to keep them in the arterial.

Yep, and we want, you know, we want to make sure that local access is maintained.

We want to make sure that it makes the most sense.

So we're really taking a careful look at it.

This infrastructure is not You know, it wouldn't be a really big piece of work.

So it's something that we could do with crews potentially or add it to the contractor, to the contract after the fact.

But we want to do our homework to make sure that we're really doing the right fix in that location and really addressing the problem.

CJ, is it fair to say, though, that we also recognize that whatever challenges there are right now, that there's significant potential for it to get worse during construction?

So if we decide there's an action we want to take, we would seek to try to do that prior to construction?

Yes, that is fair.

And there are construction ways that we can address the problem temporarily during construction using flaggers and signs and all that sort of thing.

But we want something that's more permanent as well.

So it might be something that we do temporarily during construction and then implement it as a future condition, or maybe just put in the future.

I'm not sure yet.

And then I did want to mention one other thing on this.

So the other thing that we've heard from folks is that, you know, we have the southbound protected bike lane.

Perhaps, you know, per the BMP, we could put in a northbound protected bike lane between Orchard and Juneau as well.

So we did look at that early on.

And, you know, the short answer on that is that to do that we would impact the bus only lane and impact transit service if we were to put in standard two-way PBL.

So that's going to be one thing that we're looking at and we're talking about in the in the report back on the ordinance, that there are pinch points, especially around Orchard and Myrtle, where we're seeing a lot of traffic backups, where taking that additional space for a bike lane is going to impinge upon the transit service, and that's something that we didn't want to do.

That was something that we were looking at as a trade-off early on in the process.

And one of the comments that we've been getting is, well, you know, maybe we can put in non-standard protected bike lanes, you know, just put in a narrower non-standard bike lane.

And we're also cautious about doing that and introducing potentially some safety issues.

There's standards for a reason, right?

Right.

So that's something that we've been working on, and that's going to be something that we're going to get into a lot more detail when we get that report ready.

I'm not a traffic engineer like everyone I use the system so I kept my experience there and just want to acknowledge the expertise that you all bring to this work.

One of the things that I've observed in my years in this is that amazed and impressed at how when there's a challenge and your folks continually work a problem with community advocates and you know the county or the state or whoever else is involved that sometimes it feels like there's no way to do this and then six months or a year later there's a way to do it.

And so I never always understand how that happens but I think there's a number of examples I could point to, you know, the recent work down in the extension of the bike lane to the Chinatown International District.

And so I just encourage, as we're looking at this, to stay engaged with the advocacy community, who, you know, we just reappointed people to the bike community.

Bike Advisory Board, thank you all, both who have transit expertise.

So, you know, these advocates care about all modes and are also, you know, want to hear those balancing acts that you're trying to do and figure out just if we keep trying new things and come up with ideas that maybe there's a path to one way or another.

I mean, it may be what we heard in testimony, maybe what you're trying, and maybe some other routes that we haven't quite fully vetted yet that'll come forward.

I hope that as we're moving towards final design and bid or even some of the things that may come later, that continue to work that problem with, you know, with community impact and giving them some feedback and hearing their feedback so that if we're at a place where it's like, it's just not quite right, that we don't just simply say, well, that's what it is, but actually can maybe find those magical solutions.

Yep, absolutely.

And we have been working really hard to reach out and get the right people in the room, you know, with the big role plot, you know, with all the details and the dimensions.

And we're really cognizant of that, and we're happy to sit down with folks and go through that detail.

It's so great to see, you know, your dedicated team in action with community when I get a chance to show up with it, whether it's in a walking tour or sitting around a map.

And so it's just, it's awesome work, and I love to lift that up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ready?

So, pedestrian facilities, and I'm not sure how we're doing on time, but we're getting close to the end here.

Last agenda item, right?

Yeah.

We're fine.

I mean, I got 11 more days.

10 more, I guess.

I'm down to 10.

I think I mentioned this up front.

You know, we're bringing curb ramps up to ADA standards.

Throughout the corridor, we're adding crosswalks across Delridge Way, wherever we have a transit stop.

And as I kind of talked about the example at Finley, we're really trying to right-size those crossings to make sure that they make the most sense in terms of access through Delridge and also safe crossings across Delridge.

So they're either full signal, just a walk-bike signal, or rapid flashing beacon, depending on the volumes and what makes the most sense along the way.

And then we're also doing some sidewalk repair at key locations.

We do have sidewalks generally throughout the corridor, but there are some places where it's substandard and we're addressing some of those issues.

And then we're also looking off of Dell Ridge.

We've been coordinating with the Seattle Parks and Rec to try to, you know, improve connectivity up the hill to High Point.

at Brandon and Finley to bring folks safely through there, through wayfinding, trail improvement.

You know, just kind of looking at different ways to get people down the hill.

Because that's always the challenge with this corridor.

You know, it's literally at the bottom of the valley.

And that hill is a really tough obstacle for folks.

So we're working with them to look at options.

And, you know, we've been meeting with a lot of folks.

We've been doing some walks.

I think we have a walk coming up maybe next week.

Do you remember the date on that?

Yeah, in the next couple weeks.

So we're really out there to try to look at ways to connect folks off of Delridge as well and bring them to the corridor, bring them to the bus stops as much as we can.

And I really appreciate the fact that through your ongoing engagement, you're bringing new people to the conversation.

And I know that that can be so challenging at 90% to be bringing new folks in who have questions that have been answered or there have been some decisions made around tradeoffs.

And even if everybody doesn't like them, they at least understand them.

You're having to, when bringing in new people, you're having to go through that exercise again with them.

So I think it's so important that you're doing that and you're willing to sort of risk the challenges associated with ongoing transparency and engagement.

I think it's so important.

It's making this a much better project.

Thanks for saying that.

And then we're going to close with the funding.

We're at around $72.8 million.

This is just SDOT costs.

There are additional SPU and Seattle City Light costs for some of the betterments that they're working on.

But we have about $9.5 for the Move Seattle Levy Transit Plus Multimodal.

And then we have about $38.5 for the paving.

total local vehicle licensing fee about 300 K TIB complete streets grant is 500 K.

We do have a regional mobility grant with WSDOT for 10 million dollars and I will say that we have a signed agreement for that in place.

for those that might be wondering about the I-976.

So having a signed agreement means that we're inoculated from the impacts?

I wouldn't say that.

I don't know if I can say that.

I can say that we have a signed grant agreement in place with them.

And you can determine what that means.

That seems like a pretty strong commitment.

Obviously, there's realities out there, but I think that's...

And we've also been spending that money as part of design efforts.

That's the real way to do it.

And then King County Metro is contributing $14 million approximately to the project as well as a funding partner.

And we've been working very closely with King County Metro throughout the process.

They've been a great partner and we have a really good relationship with them working on this and kind of getting everything in place the way that it needs to be.

making sure that their pieces of the overall H line are moving forward and we're all engaged in making a product that best serves the community.

So next steps, as I mentioned, 90% design this quarter.

We're gonna finalize design by early next year.

Construction starts, I'm looking at about May, June to start construction.

through the end of 2021 with service starting and we're shooting for the September 2021 service for HLINE.

I was just going to say kind of a nod to the comment you made earlier to Councilmember Herbold.

There's been so much energy and focus from everybody about what the final product is going to look like, that making sure that we spend some time and everybody understands what the two years before then are going to look like is also something we're going to have to put even more time to between now and when we start construction.

And so I appreciate you agreeing to, even though it may not be completely spelled out in the proviso, putting some level of detail about your efforts there will be really appreciated as well in the report.

Definitely.

Yes.

Question on pedestrian safety and just Vision Zero more broadly.

How does, when we're doing a major project like this, and we have our commitment to Vision Zero, how does the safety data we have on that corridor influence design?

I mean, are we going back and looking at intersections that pop up as having a higher number of incidents?

if you want to speak project, and then I can speak generally.

But I would say just a blanket yes.

I mean, our design process within SDOT has not only regular involvement from all the different pieces, So we have our TOD division and our traffic engineering side of things, our pedestrian and bicycle, you know, program individuals are always looking at how to address things they know are going on, especially in a major corridor project like this.

look at the plans and really dig in.

So I would say it's an integral part of what we do just throughout the design process.

And projects like this are a good opportunity for us to try to maximize what we're doing.

That being said, we do run into times where we don't have enough money for all the things we want to do in a corridor.

I don't know if there's anything specifically, CJ, that's jumping out on this project that we wish we could do that we're not doing in terms of that.

No, I mean, generally, you know, whenever we're putting in a, like a crossing, for example, we're looking at, we're looking at the data, you know, we're looking at the volumes, we're looking at the, you know, the vehicle speeds, we're looking at the fatality or collision history at that intersection.

So we are taking that into account.

And that's part of the, you know, a warrant process to put in a crosswalk or a signalized crosswalk.

So we're definitely looking at that data and taking that into account.

I think we're, you know, pretty much doing what we think we should be doing and what we're hearing from the community.

It's a pretty robust effort that we're putting in here in terms of the amount of crossings, the amount of signal upgrades that we're doing without completely shutting down the corridor, you know, in terms of travel times through there.

When you look at the collision or fatality data in that corridor, are there any locations that pop up as places that you put particular attention into?

I mean, is it seen as a dangerous corridor today by our historical statistics, or is it relatively safe?

I'd have to get back to you on that.

I think in general, There's nothing that jumps out at me as kind of a specific hotspot, but I'd have to look back and make sure.

I think that'd be worth getting just, I mean, one of the things with Vision Zero is it means zero.

And so there's a bit of looking at like relative to other corridors, how does this one measure up?

And so it'd be good to know that.

But of course, this is, you know, the last time we're gonna touch this in a major period before, you know, our commitment to be you know, fatality free and major incident free.

So, you know, figuring out where there's any history of things and figuring out if, just taking another look at that and maybe sharing that information out with folks, that'd be helpful.

Okay.

We can, same thing as we wrap up our 100% design and the proviso response, we could, if there's any high collision locations that we're specifically addressing or not addressing for that matter, we can share kind of specific responses to that.

Awesome.

Council Member Peterson, did you have a?

I just wanted to, I'm really happy Councilmember Herbold is here because this is a major project in District One and nobody knows West Seattle better than Councilmember Herbold.

And I mean, that was gonna be my first question.

Does she support this?

What are her thoughts, especially about community engagement and the small businesses there?

So thank you for coming.

She hasn't been shy to ask us the hard questions.

We can have a conversation offline about our Capital Watch project and our use of stage gating and provisos to have oversight of big projects in your district, too.

Great.

Thank you.

I don't have any other questions or comments.

We had a few follow-up items.

I imagine that we may be able to get some information in the next, before our last meeting this year, but some of that will probably roll over in the next year or two, and so figure out the best path to communicate that with council members as we go on in the next year or two.

Any other last comments or questions on this?

committee meeting, though, is it?

No, I have one next Friday.

I know you're like, getting them in there.

Oh, yeah.

Five or six more in the next couple of days.

All right.

I had a moment this morning with Council President Harrell, because it was his last.

I just wanted to make sure.

Good to know.

Yes.

Great.

Thanks for your ongoing work on this.

Really excited.

I really, fingers crossed, hope you can get construction started by late spring next year.

It's an ambitious schedule.

I know there's still a lot of work to do, but I hope that it works out and I hope we get some good bids.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

And just really quickly, because I know we have one more meeting, but I don't know if I'll be at the table for that one.

I just want to thank you, Council Member O'Brien, for, you know, chairing our committee and helping to lead us through the challenges we face every day.

And you just, even when we face difficult conversations, you're always positive and helpful and looking for solutions.

And so we really appreciate your leadership.

Thank you.

It's been great working together.

Appreciate it.

We're getting there.

Thanks.

Thank you, guys.

All right.

Anything else for the good of the order?

Nothing?

We will be adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Appreciate you guys.

Thank you very much.