Seattle City Council Transportation & Seattle Public Utilities Committee 7/19/22

the June 19, 2022 meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Peterson.

Present.

Three present.

Thank you.

And Council Members Herbold and Sawant are excused.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Chair's report.

Good morning again.

Welcome to the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

On our agenda today, we have four items.

The first item is an ordinance from SDOT, which would designate parking spaces for tractor truck parking.

The second item is a preview from SDOT on a proposal to vacate part of the alley near And we have a briefing on SDOT safe starts permit program, which was created during the pandemic to allow restaurants and stores to utilize the sidewalk and curb space outside their businesses.

The last item on the agenda is a briefing on the mega project, the ship canal water quality project from Seattle Public Utilities.

At this time, we will open the general public comment period for the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

For our hybrid meeting, we have people signed up to give public comment both online and in person.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll start with the speakers who have registered online, and then I'll call on speakers who have signed up here in council chambers.

I'll call on speakers two at a time and in the order in which they're registered on the council's website and on the sign-in sheet in the council chambers here at City Hall.

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website at seattle.gov.

or by signing up at the sign-in sheet near the public comment microphone toward the front of this chamber.

For remote speakers, once I call the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone, and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak, and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

For all public commenters, please begin by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or to our committee's oversight responsibilities.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you've completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following the meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

The public comment period for this committee meeting is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

One moment, let me pull up this list.

The first speaker will be Erin Burke, followed by Sabrina Value.

Go ahead, Erin.

Erin, press star six to begin speaking.

My name is Erin Burke, and I'm one of the property owners on Harbor Island.

I am located in location number two, which is in your packet on 11th Avenue Southwest.

As you can see, this is a shared communal space, not only by the five businesses, but also Bridge Gear Park.

This area has been designated as a Superfund site, which requires the property owners to not only provide soil samples and water samples annually, to keep documentation with the EPA.

The latest documentation review I have found on the website was updated in 2000. All of this verbal testimony has been submitted to the chair in written format for you to follow up on your own.

I believe that changing the use of the land and providing truck tractor parking with diesel fuel up to 25 now and possibly more later creates a risk to the property owners for permitting the soil testing and land testing that we are required to do.

Not only is this shared area used by everybody, but documentation going back to 1997 shows that parking spaces used by business owners, customers, and employees have had to privately lease property in the future.

And parking leases are not available, as you know.

Harbor Island businesses are primarily industrial, which we use full semi-trucks that use the full width of 11th Avenue Southwest, which also impacts.

Thank you.

Please feel free to submit your comments to council at Seattle.gov by email as well.

Next up, we've got Serena Moulyou, followed by Jordan VanBost.

Go ahead, Sabrina.

Hello.

Good morning everyone.

My name is Sabrina Beaulieu.

I'm from the Port of Seattle.

I'm providing comment today on behalf of the port and our sister company the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

I want to thank the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee for hearing Council Bill 120364 to dedicate truck tractor parking and industrial zone locations nearby active terminals and facilities that truck drivers service.

I encourage your full support of this legislation because it's good for the environment, Duwamish Valley residents, and truck driver safety.

This legislation does not penalize truck drivers for parking in industrial areas, but rather provides drivers with certainty of dedicated overnight parking locations closer to working terminals.

There's also federal and state pushes for improved parking for all types of drivers, long haul, short haul, and drayage.

and a bipartisan infrastructure of all the knowledge, the need for support of the trucking industry, including parking.

This work is not new and it's just one first step.

And the report remains an active partner of the cities in identifying additional off-street parking to alleviate heavy truck traffic on residential streets, reduce truck idling and greenhouse gas emissions in residential areas, and provides drivers with reliable overnight locations to leave their vehicles.

This is a really great piece of legislation, and we are very excited to support it and happy to answer any questions that you care or any of your colleagues might have as this bill continues to be heard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Jordan Van Vost, followed by Gordon Padelford.

Go ahead, Jordan.

Good morning council members and staff.

My name is Jordan Van Vost.

I'm a 40 year Seattle resident the last 15 in South Seattle.

I'd like to begin by thanking the council especially council members Morales and Peterson for your continued advocacy so that Seattle can reach its Vision Zero goals eliminating traffic deaths.

But as you yourself have acknowledged the latest data doesn't look good and there's much work to be done.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a large portion of Rainier Avenue South between Columbia City and Mount Baker has recently dedicated one lane to buses and cyclists.

I rode my e-bike on it a few days ago.

And though I did experience one car illegally used the lane to jump to the head of traffic, it's still a major improvement.

And I hope SDOT will consider extending this lane further North and South.

As the climate emergency continues to explode with record heat around the globe at this moment we need to shift our addiction away from fossil fuel travel and emphasize local community resiliency and livability.

Seattle can be a leader in this movement.

I would also like to recommend that SDOT add another speed bump or two at minimum on 31st Avenue South between McClellan and Grand Street.

and painted crosswalks installed and signs at Dosey Terrace, which connects to the steps leading to Mount Baker Park.

I live in the middle of this long and wide straight section of road that is signed at 25 miles per hour, but practically every day I see cars doing 50. And as Rainier becomes more gridlocked due to the recent transit and cycling improvements, the pressure on alternate routes such as 31st Avenue South and Lake Washington Boulevard South will only increase.

A serious injury or fatality is only a matter of time.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Gordon Padelford, followed by Holly Craji.

Go ahead, Gordon.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Padelford.

I work for Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

And firstly, I'd just like to say thank you to Chair Peterson and Council Member Morales for leading SDOT on a tour of D2 safety issues last week.

You know, I hope the council will consider taking action to deal with the Vision Zero crisis soon.

But on your agenda today is a presentation about the extremely popular and successful Cafe Streets program, which SDOT is calling State Starts.

And cities like Edmonds and Boston and San Francisco have all really smothered these programs with excessive fees and excessive regulations.

And we needed to avoid doing the same in Seattle.

And you don't have long for the presentation today.

So the one thing I'd like to draw your attention to is the quote on slide 15, which talks about focus on cost recovery as a goal.

And we don't think this is a worthy goal.

These spaces don't exist just to make money for SDOT.

They reduce disease transmission and strengthen public health.

They create public space, which strengthens community.

They increase public safety by cultivating a cared sense of place on the street.

And people enjoy being in them, and it increases our quality of life.

And you know, a Tom Douglas restaurant may be able to pay high fees and jump through the regulatory hoops, but we've heard from a lot of small mom and pop restaurants that just think that's too difficult.

And so I'm hoping that you will make sure SDOT keeps the fees low, less than $1,000, and the regulations as simple as possible so that every small business can participate in this program, and the communities throughout Seattle can benefit from it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our final online speaker is Holly Crecci.

Go ahead, Holly.

Good morning, Councilmember, Councilmember Peterson and committee members.

My name is Holly Crecci, and I am taking my morning coffee break to come to you as an individual who served on the 2007 to 2009 South Harbor Trucking Group, many mornings with Mike Esty in that group, and as a resident of Georgetown.

And this is to speak specifically of the proposed legislation for the truck tractor proposed legislation.

I also submitted comments and attended two of the public meetings that was hosted by Bestot and the Port And two things come to mind that I'd like to just raise as areas of concerns.

One is that the proposed legislation as written does not address how future port or future truck designation will be made in industrial zoned areas.

How will residents and businesses be engaged on the onset?

We came into this particular legislation on the back end.

And so there, it kind of raises a spidey sense for me about how this might move forward going in the future, especially in light of the draft EIS that is in front of us for the maritime industrial strategy.

The second, well actually there's three things.

The second thing I'd like to highlight is that a recent study provided by the city highlighted that industrial zone areas are where inhabited vehicles most frequent and I am interested in learning more about how the proposed fee structure and enforcement might move that might impact most.

And then lastly, I'd like to note that the Georgetown area map that was used for the Heffron study is not correct by Seattle Department of Neighborhoods map.

The Georgetown Northern

Thank you very much.

And we did receive your written comments as well.

I'll be asking some questions of SDOT staff based on those questions.

So thank you very much for your public comment this morning to all the speakers.

And we have a speaker in chambers as well, Alex Zimmerman.

Do you hire my dirty, damn Nazi fascist, mob bandit and psychopath?

And when you start show people my face, my sign and Nazi rats.

Yeah.

My name is Alex Timmerman.

I want to speak about agenda number one.

Yeah.

Parking for truck is very important.

People, homeless or business is very important.

But we're talking about maybe a couple of dozen, maybe a little bit more.

But for many years, I talk about something that has touched a thousand and thousand people.

And I talk about this for many years.

We need to open an HIV line for senior citizens disabled and veterans.

This situation is so critical.

Number one, because penalty right now is a nightmare.

It is more than my social security.

But it's not a point.

Point.

When people go older, you know what it means.

Disabled people, veterans, most of them are sick, you know what it means.

It makes the situation much safer.

It's good for business, good for traffic, good for people, and good for government because it will be shown so you respect these people.

Each line is always empty, you know what it means.

And buses go only for a couple of hours.

They go night, who care about night, empty buses.

That's not the point.

So I will right now speak to everybody who listen to me.

Can people talk to this freaking?

Nine service animal rats staying in this chamber.

You know what this mean?

Open HIV line for disabled senior citizen and veteran.

It's win-win situation.

I talking about this for year, hundred times.

It's in my statement when I go for election.

Nobody listen to this.

It's idiotic situation.

We don't have one normal.

business, mine, people in this dirty chamber, stand up America, clean this Nazi pig.

Thank you.

That concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

Now we will move on to the first legislative item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, council bill 120364, an ordinance relating to the traffic code, adding a new section 11.72.445 to the Seattle Municipal Code to establish the authority to designate parking for truck tractors in the public right of way and amending section 11.31.121 to allow for enforcement of truck tractor parking for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Council Bill 120364 is a very brief bill.

It's just about one page.

And as the clerk said, would add a new section of the traffic code, establishing the authority to designate parking for truck tractors in the public right away.

We're gonna talk more about what truck tractors are and amending another section of the Seattle Municipal Code to allow for enforcement of that designated truck parking.

As I understand it in another, Section of the Seattle Municipal Code.

I think it's in one of the whereas recitals 11.72.070.

It already allows overnight parking of truck tractors in industrial zones.

So this would be designating specific spots that would be enforced for truck only overnight as I understand it.

The fiscal note, summary fiscal note says the city is committed to help mitigate the impacts of drainage truck overnight parking in the public right-of-way in Georgetown, South Park, Soto, and other Seattle neighborhoods near port facilities.

And I know we'll have some questions for SDOT as we hear the presentation today, but I want to welcome Seattle Department of Transportation, SDOT, here.

And also, as usual, we've got our city council central staff here with us, our transportation expert, Calvin Chow.

Wanted to ask Calvin Chow, if you had any introductory remarks you wanted to make on this item.

Okay, thank you.

Well, let's go straight to S.Ben, and I know they've got a presentation for us here to explain what they're proposing.

Good morning.

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to present today.

Wanted to walk through a little bit of background on truck parking, particularly with regard to the truck-tractor parking.

And for those of you who are not regularly involved in freight issues, the truck-tractor is that front portion of the truck that's separate from the chassis or the box that you think of when you think of a combination truck and trailer.

So it's that front portion of the truck that you see here in the image.

Also want to make sure we talk about the parking impacts on our local neighborhoods.

The agreement that we have with the Port of Seattle between the Port of Seattle and the City of Seattle.

Discuss the legislation itself and make sure we give you an opportunity to bring any questions or comments that you would like us to address formally.

The background on the purpose behind this legislation is in a line to allow us to designate and enforce exclusive truck parking in existing areas where truck parking is allowed.

And as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, that is in adjacent to industrially zoned parcels.

And we recognize that there are mixed uses with industrially zoned parcels.

And so that may mean that there is currently legal truck parking in front of someone's residence.

And this legislation is not intended to address or modify that in any way.

What this does do is create sign spaces in the right of way that are dedicated to provide overnight parking for those truck tractors.

And that is the front portion of the truck exclusive of the trailer.

The idea and the expectation is that we have people who will drive a truck during the day, park that truck, and then drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle the rest of the way home at the end of their day, as well as back in the morning to pick up their truck to complete their work.

This legislation is consistent with some of the commitments that we outlined back in 2007 with the community and with the agreement that the City and the Port of Seattle entered with regard to the West Table Bridge.

So drayage drivers, the term drayage comes up a few times in this conversation and drayage is that short haul.

It's not the long haul interstate sort of travel.

It's back and forth from a terminal to nearby facilities.

Typically multiple trips get made a day by the same driver, the same vehicle.

They'll bring their truck tractor to the terminal and pick up a loaded chassis, deliver it and back and forth.

As I mentioned before, these drivers typically do choose to park their trucks overnight near where they're using them for their living.

And that means that they are sometimes parking adjacent to properties with residential or commercial uses that are not associated with the drainage driving.

And those truck drivers typically make the rest of their trip in a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle.

So we are cognizant that having these spaces available does decrease the carbon impact of this work.

Because while those trucks are wonderful for moving large, heavy things, they're a little excessive for moving just a person back and forth.

Just to reiterate, because I know that this is a point that is potentially confusing for some members of the audience, although I know the council is very familiar.

Overnight truck tractor parking is already limited within the city of Saddle to industrially zoned areas.

And that is not something that we're looking at changing.

As we mentioned earlier, drage drivers do have a hard time finding a reliable overnight parking spaces near the terminals.

I think you heard that from one of the folks proposing a public comment today as well.

We also have heard the truck tractor parking in residential neighborhoods does create challenges for residents and visitors, both in the concept of competition for limited parking spaces and in the context of the noise and other challenges of having a large loud vehicle in a non arterial street.

Just a moment to touch base on previous action.

The City of Seattle and the Port of Seattle entered into a fairly significant agreement associated with the West Seattle Bridge, access to the Low Bridge, and other freight and bridge-related items in the fall of last year.

One of those items, and part of the reason we're here today, is based on a commitment to pursue parking spaces for drayage drivers that are available to dredge drivers.

And that is, of course, contingent upon action should City Council choose to take them.

We started environmental analysis on this.

What we did was we looked at the four locations that we had identified as potential locations, and we went through a SEPA process to identify whether there was environmental impacts associated with them.

Obviously, the legislation that we're putting in front of you is not limited to these four locations.

It is a requested authority for those locations that truck parking could currently occur.

But we wanted to make sure that we did the environmental evaluation and identified any concerns before we came to you.

We did not receive any comments during the SEPA comment period.

However, we did get comments shortly thereafter from one of the constituents who spoke today.

With respect to community engagement, we've had three community meetings as well as in-person outreach to the adjacent parcels to those four locations that we have previously proposed or that we are currently looking at.

We had a real mix of feedback.

I would say that that ranged from individuals who were concerned about loss of or restrictions in their available use of the public space in front of their homes or businesses.

On one end of the spectrum, perhaps in the middle is a concern that there was a desire for more community involvement in selection of locations.

And on the other end of the spectrum, individuals who felt that it was important to help provide places for truckers, for drayage drivers to park their vehicles so that they would not be parking within a community and not be competing for those same spaces.

With that, I'll hand over to Mike for details on the actual legislation unless there's questions now.

I just have two more slides really on the legislation itself.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Mike Esty.

I'm the manager of curbside management at SDOT.

So, as you can see there's already a definition for truck tractor in the SMC.

It's pretty much the exact type of vehicle that Matt described, the dredge truck drivers use as seen in the image.

These are the truck tractors that drivers own or lease and use for their short trips between port terminals and nearby intermodal facilities.

This is a definition that has existed for decades in the SMC actually.

More recently, truck tractors were referenced when the city adopted a heavy haul roadway network and permitting system several years ago.

References to truck tractors in the SMC are otherwise typically associated with allowed sizes or weights of the combination of truck tractors and trailers or containers.

But until now, there hasn't been an SMC reference to SDOT's authority to regulate their parking.

So the legislation before you today would give SDOT that authority to sign for this particular vehicle type and to designate a portion of the public right-of-way for truck-tractor parking only for certain hours and in specific locations.

So going back to how these dredge trucks are used, dredge drivers typically end their workday by parking their truck-tractor somewhere, often on a city street, and then drive their personal vehicle home and the truck-tractor stays on street overnight.

And then the next morning, the dredge driver returns their personal vehicle to their truck tractor and basically swaps out their vehicles in that space and starts their next work day.

So with this authority, SDOT's intent is to sign spaces in the public right of way for truck tractor parking only overnight.

And so formalizing this use in locations like Harbor Island take the pressure off of the demand for this type of parking on streets like the one you see here in this picture, which is probably in Georgetown or South Park.

So through this legislation, we're hoping to better organize more of this type of overnight dredge truck parking.

And as a result, more dredge truck tractors will be parked overnight closer to the port in locations like Harbor Island that are a little less impactful than on residential streets in places like Georgetown and South Park.

And with that, I think we would entertain any questions or discussion.

Thank you very much.

I did want to let my colleagues know, we'll be voting on this at the next meeting, which will be Tuesday, August 3. So today is the day for questions and you can obviously consult Calvin chow between now and August 3 as well.

I do have a couple of questions that we can open up to colleagues.

Thank you for the presentation that pulled together all the different sections of the Seattle Municipal Code because it's spread out in different sections, how this is administered.

And so as I understand it, just to summarize, These truck tractors are already permitted to park overnight in industrial zones.

This would be designating specific area, giving authority to SDOT to designate specific areas that would then be enforced.

I guess one of my questions is, so you had I think you referenced this in your presentation so you've outlined for areas to on Harbor Island, a couple in one in soda one in Georgetown I believe, where you want, where you're planning to designate it initially.

but the legislation itself would give SDOT the authority to do this in other areas in the city that are industrial zone areas, is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

Okay.

So does SDOT currently have plans to have these designations in other areas of the city?

Not in so much as other locations that we've identified.

We do have a discussion with the port with respect to how many locations we want to or are able to accommodate within roadway right of way versus on parcels that are either owned by the city or by the port.

So while we've identified these four locations and have not identified any other locations, that conversation may continue to add locations, but none identified at this point.

Okay, so I support the general concept of designating these spaces and then adding the enforcement so that it's clear that that's where they can park and incentivizes them to choose those areas to park overnight so that they're consolidated in certain areas.

And one of the benefits of this legislation coming to us today is it did spur public comment from people who are in the areas that are initially being designated.

But if you were to designate a new area six months from now, there wouldn't be this process.

And so I do want to think about whether we want to, you know, when SDOT is going to designate other areas, have them come back to council if there's a way to structure it that way.

but I do support the concept.

And I think we might have some comments from other council members.

Yes, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Thanks for this presentation.

It would be great if we could have the presentation because it wasn't included on the agenda.

So there's some information there that would be helpful to have.

I I think I'm supportive, but I do have some questions.

So you, I think it was slide six that said overnight truck tractor parking is already, is it already permitted or is it already limited to industrially zoned areas?

It's limited and allowed essentially.

So in industrially zoned areas of the city, you're allowed to park basically a large vehicle overnight currently.

and only in industrial areas.

Correct.

Okay.

Because I can tell you that all along 55th Avenue South, along Beersheba Park, these truck tractors are there all the time.

And so I'm trying to understand if that's allowed or not.

Sounds like it's not.

But there is a capacity issue and folks need a place to put their trucks.

So I'm interested in figuring out how we manage this.

I think my question is similar to a question of public comments are made and, and the issue that chair Peterson just raised, which is Calvin's memos as a council approves the legislation, as that would have administrative discretion to establish the parking zones.

And I guess my question is, in the future, or even for these existing sites, what are the criteria by which you decide where these zones should be so that we can start to understand where in the future these additional sites might be located?

Yeah, when we looked at these sites, what we looked at, and Mike will probably have to add a few things on because it was a community communal process within within the team.

But we looked at access and availability to the port terminals that we know these drivers are using.

because we know that proximity and that access for a larger vehicle is critical to the success of these locations.

We also looked at what the adjacent utilization was and the parking utilization currently was in the locations that we moved forward with.

So we tried to balance the benefit from this parking with an acknowledgement that parking within the public right of way is maybe not a universal good, but a broadly shared good for our city.

I think that's, I would essentially say the same thing.

And, you know, we have, we went through a SEPA process specific to these four sites.

Another thing we have talked about is, If we were to look at additional sites beyond these four, we may likely go through a similar process combined with community outreach in this area.

So we weren't just sort of taking this authority and popping sites down, you know, site unseen, unexpected, but, you know, being thoughtful about in the ways that Matt described with sort of the criteria we're thinking about to be, to be looking at sites where the adjacent uses were consistent, trying to think about where we can be less impactful so that we can address things like, like the Beersheba Park that you described, but we're providing opportunities for this kind of parking in places where it makes a little more sense than the locations that you've observed, but doing that with a little bit more additional outreach if we're looking at further sites.

So can you talk about a couple of things and do you have a sense of what the demand is and and what capacity with these four sites provide you know what is the Do those things match?

And then a commenter was asking about, and I haven't had a chance to read through her, the written comments that we've received yet, but there was a question about how residents will be engaged.

So can you talk a little bit about that process for these sites and for whatever future conversations you might be having, as you mentioned, you're already having some with the board.

So, and my apologies if I don't catch all of those points, please correct me if I only address a couple of them.

With respect to the current locations, we've gone out and discussed with the local parcel owners or tenants, and in some cases we have modified our design.

For example, location number two on the map, which was referenced by one of the callers earlier in the meeting, We modified our design because we discovered that our initial approach was not going to allow the trucks that the businesses needed to receive deliveries from to fully access their loading docks.

So, for example, in that case, we modified our design to ensure that we were providing the access necessary to those docks.

In other cases, the adjacent businesses have indicated an awareness that this is a public good and that these dredge drivers need a space and have been welcoming.

In other locations, there's been concern about displaced parking by these dredge trucks.

So we've had some conversations.

Some of them, I would say, have been cordial.

Some of them, I would say, have been more tense.

With respect to the sense of demand versus the degree to which this is satisfying it, we know that there are thousands of trucks associated with drayage driving within the Port of Seattle facilities.

And we're looking at serving a small fraction of them.

There's a mix of larger company owned, a company might own several trucks, all the way down to a single driver who might own their own vehicle or lease their own vehicle.

as you look at who's providing the drainage driving.

And our goal here with this was to provide a bit of a proof of concept, but also to provide a little bit of a pressure release valve, because we know that there is parking that's not happening legally, and it's happening in places that it is disruptive to other usage of our city.

Yeah, thank you to that final point, having, you know, dozens of these trucks parked along a park where there's kids particularly this particular intersection, you know, 55th and Henderson does right across the street from Franklin from Rainier Beach High School.

not a good combination with lots of kids in the neighborhood and lots of trucks, big trucks that can't see very well, can't see kids on the street.

So it would be great if we could figure out how to help them find another place to park.

Okay, thank you very much.

I will probably have more questions and I appreciate the chair indicating that we won't be voting on this today.

So I will follow up with you, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

And it will be August 2nd.

I originally set a different date, but our next committee meeting will be Tuesday, August 2nd, 9.30 AM, which is when we would vote on this.

Any other council members with questions?

Council Member Strauss.

Yes, just briefly.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Council Member Morales for your questions.

Just on the record saying, and I think this was said, just re-highlighting it, that this helps us address our climate crisis.

because it means that these trucks don't have to be driving on the road to and from.

They get to stay where they're working.

And many different drivers are able to use, you know, whether it's electrified vehicles or cars that use less gas.

This has that third bottom line as well.

So looking forward to voting on it at the next committee.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, yes, I think we're hearing support for the concept and just might have a couple of ways of tightening it up a little bit, which would then enable even more of these designated spaces in the future.

Anything from central staff on this, at this point?

Hi, Calvin, put you on the spot.

No, council members, I'll be happy to work with your offices next couple of weeks.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

We appreciate Estop being here for this presentation.

We'll see you back on August 2nd.

And with that, we'll go ahead and have the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record.

Agenda item two, petition of the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority for the vacation of a portion of the alley and block bounded by Northeast 45th Street, Roosevelt Way Northeast, Northeast 47th Street and 11th Avenue North at 1000 Northeast 45th Street for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, colleagues as you may recall we successfully arranged to have sound transit generously lease their land to the city for a couple of years, which enabled us to create a 35 unit tiny home village called Rosie's village at the corner of Northeast 45th Street and Roosevelt way northeast.

And has always been the ultimate goal for that site we want to build lots of permanent low income housing.

My hope is that we maximize the number of units at the deepest affordability levels.

We're very close to light rail at that location.

Ideally, all the future units will, on average serve households earning less than 60% of area median income and I'd love to see at least 35 of the units set aside for extremely low income residents at risk of homelessness so the 0% to 30% of am I, my preliminary review with this this is a this is a preview of what sound trans is asking us to do actually vote on it later.

But I agree that vacating a portion of that alley could enable a nonprofit housing developer to build more units of low income housing there.

And after the up zones of the district.

We've seen some demolitions of naturally occurring affordable housing in the district and most of the real estate developers building there are opting to write their in lieu check for affordable housing that is built elsewhere.

But here's a site where we can actually build a low income housing near the light rail station on site.

And we'll see how vacating a part of that alley would impact this and make it easier to do.

So again, today's just a preview of Sound Transit's petition.

I will be at a later meeting when we would impose public benefit requirements in exchange for potentially allowing this alley vacation.

and we're joined today by, I wanna welcome Sound Transit for being here, Abel Pacheco and Tim Bates.

And then of course we have our city council central staff, Lish Whitson and our reliable Beverly Barnett from SDOT as well.

So Lish, did you, from central staff, did you wanna make any opening remarks before we turn it over to our other guests?

Yeah.

Very briefly, when the council updated the street vacation policies in 2018 they added in an early opportunity for council members to see the vacation and provide early comments.

Sound Transit has filed the petition to vacate a portion of the alley on this block.

And next steps are to send it to city departments and the Seattle Design Commission for further analysis and review of the petition.

This is your opportunity to provide your thoughts for things that should be considered as part of that review, in terms of potential impacts of the vacation that could be mitigated and public benefits that you might like to see as part of the project.

So I'll hand it over to Beverly to provide some more background on the street vacation process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lish.

Good morning, committee members.

We really appreciate this opportunity.

And it really is kind of fun for us to bring a brand new project here and receive some guidance from the committee on things we should be looking at.

So the bulk of the presentation is going to be the PowerPoint.

And I think Tim's going to go over most of it.

And able, we'll have some comments on that as well.

But Lish in his very clear memo kind of outlined what we're doing here and why the council added in this early opportunity for their guidance.

What is a little bit different with this is that the city is working with Sound Transit to support Sound Transit going out for bid and selecting an affordable housing developer.

So we do not have a specific solid proposal in front of us.

We're looking at the zoning code and the physical area and the size to determine what might be built there.

As you'll see from the Sound Transit presentation, their early feasibility analysis is that the alley vacation can consolidate the site in a way that will really create much more of an opportunity for the development of affordable housing.

I think from the SDOT perspective, because we don't have a specific project in front of us, we'll be really focusing our review and the conditions we recommend to the council on the clear impacts from the vacation.

So the first thing for us is, of course, looking at the function of the alley.

As you'll see from the PowerPoint, Sound Transit only owns a portion of the property on the southern end of the site at 45th.

There are other property owners to the north that still need and will continue to use the alley.

So preserving access utilities and other alley functions for other users is of critical importance.

We also look at how the new proposal will take care of their alley services.

So both the existing and future alley use has to be accommodated within the remaining alley right of way.

Another thing that we look at is the front facade.

Since the alley is going away, we're looking at a longer facade on 45th.

And perhaps that intensifies the development there so looking at that the pedestrian character and the length of the side will be issues we look at.

And then once we look at the physical world we also always look at community engagement and the community interest in public benefit, and what the public benefit proposal is and we'll be working with Sound Transit and other city staff.

And we really look to the Design Commission to help guide that.

So we're going to be very tightly focused on the vacation impacts.

And I think that will be made more clear as Tim and Abel go through the PowerPoint.

So unless there's questions for me on what we're going to look at, I think we can just ask Tim And I think Shauna was going to run this.

She always helps us with our presentations, but Shauna is going to run this for Tim.

Okay, well good morning Council Members.

I'm Tim Bates.

I'm a Senior Project Manager for TOD here at Sound Transit and I'm here to introduce the opportunity that we have and talk a little bit about why we're interested in beginning the alley and I think Everyone's done a great job setting some context, and so we'll try to add a little bit more to the story.

So first off, we see our site here in the U District as a unique opportunity.

It's a chance to deliver much-needed affordable housing.

It's a publicly-owned parcel, and it's a chance to realize the full potential of the site.

It's in a fast-growing, high-density area, the heart of the U District.

And so you can see here in the diagram, it's at the corner of 45th and Roosevelt.

And, you know, we think it's a great opportunity.

I did want to just quickly say, you may know this, but I wanted to reiterate, you know, our transit oriented development program seeks to repurpose property that we've used during the construction of our transit projects.

And often that means redeveloping those parcels for affordable housing.

We work to set those projects up for success, but we don't actually build the projects.

So we go out, we take our properties out to the market and seek competitive bids typically to see those development outcomes realized.

So I think all of the context that you've heard sets that all up.

That's great.

And I did want to note quickly before we move in, our board of directors has not yet provided direction to us on this site, but affordable housing is a key outcome of our program.

And our engagement work today has indicated strong community support for affordable housing here.

So that's the working assumption for this site.

All right, next slide, please.

So introducing the alley vacation.

So we are working, as Beverly suggested, with the city here to vacate a portion of the alley in order to consolidate that site.

And so that, in our view, will significantly increase the capacity of the site and allow us to deliver more affordable housing, which I think would be a great outcome here.

We're pursuing this before having a development partner.

So as several have suggested, we don't have a specific development proposal yet.

We're trying to essentially clear the path since the vacation process can be timely and costly for a proposer to...

set this site up best for success and work through what the city's expectations would be so that when we go out and try to select a development partner, they have a clear understanding of what that will look like as they're going to do their normal project approvals and all of that.

I think I do want to mention quickly, we expect that, as Beverly suggested, when we go out to select, to put out a bid, we would expect that we'd be able to express to those potential proposers what the city's expectations would be in terms of conditions, like Beverly said, and we would expect that whatever the case, we do need to continue to serve all users and have all users on the block be able to use what remains of the alley.

So we'll talk a little more about what that could look like potentially.

And I just quickly wanted to say, as Beverly suggested, I would reiterate, we are at the start of the process.

And so we're excited to continue working with the city to deliver this both with staff from many departments, but also in partnership with the Office of Housing, who we are working with as a funding partner for this site.

Next slide, please.

So just quickly, it's a relatively small site that we have.

It's about 18,000 square feet as it exists today.

And the area that we're And what we're hoping to be able to vacate is a little over 1100 square feet and really is just that portion that runs between our parcel, it's a parcel that split.

Feverly suggested, you know, there's a variety of users today.

There's really two other users on the block.

There's a multifamily development on the east side, and there's currently a car dealership on the west side, although there is a development proposal in with the city under review for new development on that site that would include two new towers.

And as you can imagine, with changes in zoning in this area, as has been referred to, there's a lot of development that's happening.

And even just in the immediate vicinity of the site, there are a variety of new buildings that are proposed.

And those range in the 240 to 320 foot height range.

So quite intense development.

And our site similarly is zoned for up to 320 feet with all the bonuses that could be achieved.

So it's meant to be part of this core of the U district, at least as far as the community planning work that's been done.

With that, let's move on to the next slide, please.

So just a quick set of photos here to show you what it looks like today.

So on the left side, we've got a view from sort of The alley as it crosses through Sound Transit's property, looking to the north, and you can see that multifamily building on the right side.

You can see the car dealership there on the left.

And then the photo on the right is looking south and actually shows the alley as it narrows as it goes through our site.

So through our site, it's only 10 feet wide, and it gets a little wider to the north end of the block.

So that gives you a little bit of context there.

And of course, as Beverly alluded to, both for our TOD planning process and also the alley vacation process, community engagement is important.

And we have done some work thus far really over the course of 2021 to engage the community through online survey and online open houses to gauge their interests and priorities for the site.

And really what we heard was that affordable housing was a top priority really the top priority from the community's perspective, and that there was a strong desire to try to maximize the affordable housing outcome here.

So that's sort of giving rise to all of this work to try to really unlock the potential of the site.

Of course, community is also interested in space that serves more active use for the community, such as ground floor retail and that sort.

Of course, very interested in the pedestrian environment here, as Beverly alluded to.

but of course, interested in a building that has strong environmental performance.

So those are the themes we've heard so far in our engagement work, and I think really line up well with our aims here with this vacation.

Next slide, please.

So what we're really looking at as we as we put together the pieces here is we're targeting an affordable housing project in partnership with offices of housing so we will bring the land and office housing would bring.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): The funding really to deliver this as you know, like no doubt know most affordable housing projects do do have a financing gap and so typically there's funds that need to be put into the project to make them happen.

Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): So that's office housing bringing that that in and.

you know, we're trying to maximize the site capacity so we get a better outcome here.

As I believe Lish mentioned, you know, public benefit is a key topic here, and although we don't have a a final concrete proposal.

We have had a few ideas that have come up in the work that we've done so far, including in the community engagement work.

And those two ideas really, first one was about the idea of including the Cultural Space Agency as a ground floor use in the building.

So that could be, that's a new city agency, as you no doubt know, that would provide for studio space, gathering space, programming to you know, create space for artists and creative communities with emphasis on the BIPOC community.

So that was one idea that did come up.

And another was more about the pedestrian environment and thinking about creating an east-west pass-through that would sort of take that long block and make it a little more pedestrian-friendly, give a way for folks to get from Roosevelt to 11th.

So that was another idea that had come up.

Just wanted to mention that.

Next slide, please.

So while we're talking a little bit, I wanted to build on that note on circulation just quickly to let you all know that each of the streets surrounding the site are major arterials.

And so that's part of why this emphasis is on maintaining the alley function.

So we know there are users that will need to be able to use this in the midst of a really busy district.

So Northeast 40 Goods is a key pedestrian corridor, so that frontage will be really important, like Beverly suggested.

We know that there are, when we talk about the bicycle connections, there are bicycle facilities in the area, both southbound on Roosevelt, there's a planned facility northbound on 11th.

So again, adding in more busyness and activity into the area.

So all of that, again, just thinking about how does the overall circulation network continue to function and how do we preserve that function of the alley itself?

Next slide, please.

Finally, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the development capacity of the sites, and I've alluded to that several times, and I wanted to just talk a little about why we think this vacation is going to be so impactful.

So today, the way the site is configured, we don't believe that high-rise development or high-density development as envisioned by the zoning is possible on the site.

And that's because the floor plates are too small to produce an efficient building.

It's also knowing that there's proposed a high-rise development on the north side of the site, we know that we need to have some separation from those towers.

And so all of that sort of results in not having enough floor plate to make a really tall building here.

If we were able to achieve the vacation, we do think that a tall, a high-rise building would be potentially possible, even meeting that tower separation requirement.

You can see here on the slide, we've illustrated a relatively gross area that could potentially be a building footprint for a high-rise building.

Of course, there's lots of considerations in how you design a high rise building and where the setbacks are, how you configure all the requirements for development, but just as a top line, top level view, we think that that sort of would shift the potential floor plate to the south side of the site there.

So that's sort of the first bit.

Let's go to the next slide, please.

In order to maintain alley function as we look at this, of course, the pedestrian and parking access for the block is going to be important.

Service and utility vehicles as well use the alley.

So we want to be able to find a solution that both allows us to retain the circulation and reconfigure it while also retaining and creating that feasible high-rise floor plate.

And so here I've illustrated a few ideas that have come up.

Of course, they're concepts, they're sketches to sort of illustrate what some of the options might be.

But in essence, we think that either realigning the alley one way or the other, east or west, or potentially a turnaround, could be viable solutions that sort of provide that function, but also allow for a high-rise foreplay.

And you might note, that actually either of those realignment or turnaround options would actually consume a fair amount of land on Sound Transit's property.

However, we would still, we think, be able to create that high-rise floor plate even despite that.

So again, this is all work that we'll need to continue doing work with SDOT and other city departments to figure out what's going to be the right solution here, but we did want to illustrate what some of the ideas that have come up thus far.

So with that, that's the end of the slides, and I would be happy to hear discussion and take any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much.

And just want to reiterate my thanks for Sound Transit working in partnership with the city on this site for so long and into the future here and appreciate this presentation.

We see Councilmember Strauss, yes.

Thank you.

And Tim, if you could circle back to the alley configuration slides, that would be very helpful.

And actually sit on this next slide for a minute.

the one in between that one.

I just think this really helps us understand that without an alley vacation, our options are more limited.

with an alley vacation, we are able to provide density on a high-frequency transit corridor adjacent to Interstate 5. I'll note for the record that we need to be figuring out how we get people across Interstate 5 on that bridge.

I know Councilmember Peterson agrees wholeheartedly with me.

So, Sound Transit, I might ask you for your help here.

Back to the topic at hand, This slide just really illustrates for us that we're able to create the density that we need in the place that we need it.

And if you could now move to slide 10, that would be helpful.

What's key for me in this moment is that each of these options are used throughout our city.

I see in Greenwood that we have alleys that have been realigned off of Greenwood, so they are east-west facing until they get to Greenwood Avenue, and then they make changes like this.

This is along 14th Avenue Northwest in Ballard.

The same thing happens.

What is important for me in this moment is not as much the vehicular travel, but what is the pedestrian connection?

I look at when we allowed for the Seattle Times building to be redeveloped, that took the entire block.

And how were pedestrians able to make crossings?

Did they have to go all the way around the block, or were they able to make a mid-block crossing?

And so I just flag for Sound Transit, Beverly, you're always amazing with this, and for the chair, that it's more than just cars.

How did the people get through this space?

And so in some ways, no vacation we can achieve the same results for pedestrians with no vacation as we can with any of these other options if we're able to create a mid-block pass-through.

So I'll leave that up for further discussion, but I just raised that it's more than just cars.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And I really appreciate the opening remarks from Beverly Barnett as well about all the things that SDOT will be looking at, including use by Seattle Public Utilities, the recycling trucks, emergency vehicles and such.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks for this presentation and for bringing it to us in early days.

I'm excited to hear the mention of the Cultural Space PDA.

That kind of an entity is exactly what I would love to see and would put in a plug for actually keeping this in public ownership and instead leasing it to a developer so that we get We get the benefit of the affordable housing that we all know we need and we keep it in public ownership rather than sell off this land.

I think that is one way for us to address the permanency of affordability and look forward to working with you to figure out how we might be able to make that happen.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I know when the city government has land, I too prefer that they look at a 99 year lease.

I didn't know if Tim or Abel, does Sound Transit when they're in their disposition process, do they ever look at that issue of doing a 99 year lease that can be renewed for the land?

Yeah, we have done that.

Yes, sorry.

We have done that.

We've done disposition both as a fee title transfer, you know, sale to developers.

We've also done, you know, long-term leases like that.

It's, you know, every project is sort of unique.

And so I think that's a not super helpful refrain, but a refrain that's perhaps not a surprise.

So we do consider different ways of disposing the property.

And having the an option for street level uses being.

cultural community versus retail office, do those, and maybe this is a question for Beverly or Lish as well, but do we see those spaces, do they pay rent to contribute to the overall costs and operations of the project, or is it usually a reduced rent?

Because I would imagine it's harder for them to generate revenue.

We did see the cultural space agency receiving space as part of the grand street common street vacation that was just approved in the past year.

In that case, they did not pay for the space, but I think they do pay common charges.

So there are some costs.

Okay.

Well, thank you again appreciate appreciate previous city councils crafting these policies so that we get this early look.

And then, and then after this, the two step process of considering alley vacations and then and then making sure that any conditions are are met.

And I appreciate again, Beverly Barnett for messed up going through the long list of things that we will be looking at.

Obviously, we're really focused today on maximizing low income housing production, especially near near such frequent transit.

and glad that SDOT and our central staff will be looking at all the issues such as emergency vehicle access and access for recycling trucks and the general circulation there and then what the impacts will be to the adjacent streets whether you choose the west alignment or east alignment instead of a turnaround.

But appreciate the partnership with Sound Transit.

We'll keep working collaboratively with you on this so we can maximize the public benefit for everybody.

Council members, any other final questions for our team here?

Okay.

Well, thank you, Abel and Tim, for being here with us.

Thanks, Beverly and Lish.

Thank you.

All right, we will move on to the next item.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the next agenda item into the record.

Agenda item three, safe start permit briefing for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So this SDOT program has provided permits for restaurants and stores to use sidewalks and curb space during the economic downturn of the pandemic.

Today, we're getting an update from SDOT here about the potential plans for the future.

didn't know if anybody wanted to make any introductory remarks on this.

I mean, I've got more to say than there's time for in this committee, but.

Okay.

All right.

Well, we'll hear from, we'll hear from the council members during the presentation, but welcome the other SDOT team for being here today.

And of course, we've got Calvin Child back with us from city council central staff.

Calvin, did you have any opening remarks for this item?

Opening remarks.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

All right, welcome.

Well, sure.

Oh, yeah, please.

Just to say, you know, we had when the pandemic hit, and we were no longer able to be able to eat inside.

Due to health safety requirements, we were able to pivot and use outdoor space in a way that we hadn't used before.

Seattle had not been a cat a street and outdoor dining city previously and it's clear that there was a lot of pent up desire for it.

What I saw was that s dot prioritized getting permits out the door.

and took the time that they needed to create permanent legislation.

And that was really important for me because Estat focused on the priorities at hand, which was ensuring businesses had the opportunities to use their entrepreneurial spirit to get through this pandemic.

I can candidly say, I think it saved multiple businesses on Ballard Avenue.

I think it saved many, possibly hundreds of businesses throughout the city.

And it wasn't, it was this team that you're going to see presenting today.

It's a very small team and they focused on getting permits out the door so that businesses could survive.

And in the meantime, on the pathway to permanency, they've taken the time to get the policies right sized for our city.

And that's the discussion we're going to have today.

So thank you to Elise and Joel for making this happen and saving so many businesses in our city.

Thank you, Council Member.

Yeah, welcome, Elise and Joel.

Let's turn it over to you and your presentation.

All right, thank you.

And thank you for the remarks, Council Member Strauss.

Very nice.

And we are excited to be here today and to give you an update.

So I'm Elise Nelson.

I'm the Public Space Manager with SDOT Street Use Division.

And joining me is Joel Miller.

He's our Program Development Supervisor.

So we're happy to be here today to give you this briefing and kind of provide you an update on our outdoor dining, vending, merchandise display, and street and sidewalk activity programs.

So next slide, please.

One back, please, to the SDOT vision.

So this is our SDOT vision, mission, and core value slide.

And we like to have these in our presentations to kind of ground our work and this vision and mission and core values.

So for this program, we see that our work to support businesses and communities in the right of way really helps deliver.

And we're trying to work to create a program that enhances neighborhood livability, but also ensures equity, safety, and mobility.

Next slide.

We don't have long with you today, so this will be a really brief highlight.

And we'll go over our background outreach and themes and really just start to talk about our draft recommendations.

But then we will have more information that will be available on our SDOT webpage.

And we're really looking forward to hearing from you and from the public on what they think about where we are so far.

Next slide.

I'd like to try to provide us a quick 101. I know people can use a lot of jargon in urban planning.

And so we're going to talk about different areas within the right of way.

So number one on this little map is curb space.

That's where parking generally happens.

Then there's two, that's the furniture zone.

That's where you might find street trees, fire hydrants, that kind of thing.

And then there's number three, which is the frontage zone, and that's the part of the sidewalk immediately against the building.

And in between the frontage and furniture zone, you'll find something we call the pedestrian clear zone, and that's the part of the sidewalk we want to make sure is available for people walking and rolling and to make sure we're providing adequate mobility.

Next slide.

So this is a timeline slide just to kind of orient you to where we've been.

We call this the Safe Start program that was aligned with Governor Inslee's naming conventions, and it really was a pandemic program to get people out and active in the public right-of-way when it wasn't safe to be inside.

It launched in summer of 2020, and we worked to quickly turn around permits that were free.

And to date, I mean, we've still been issuing permits and still continue to during the pandemic program, and to date we've issued 300 permits.

In 2021, we really began to also learn and listen to what was working well with the pandemic program to think about what we might want to do to modify our existing permitting programs that we had.

And so the recommendations will include edits to the Seattle Municipal Code, SDOT director's rules.

And we're here today to kind of give you an update, and then we'll be back this fall for further council action.

The Safe Start program ends in 2023, which is when we plan to transition back to our regular permitting options that will be enhanced through this proposal.

We expect all permit holders with the Safe Start permit to reapply.

We currently have the pandemic program ending at the end of January, but as part of our recommendation, we'll be seeking an extension to April to give a little bit more time for those outdoor dining applications to have time to apply.

Next slide.

Just briefly, we see that this work aligns with citywide plans, such as the comprehensive plan, SDOT modal plans, our SDOT transportation equity framework, and also with our city climate goals.

So we just want to highlight that policy support that exists for this program.

Next slide.

We have been busy like I mentioned with outreach, since the summer of 2021, we really wanted to learn what was working well during the pandemic and and hear from as many people as we could so we had a multi pronged approach to our outreach, we conducted surveys we held meetings.

We met with community groups and did focus each outreach to hear specifically from people of color.

We did door-to-door outreach to make sure people knew about our survey.

And we also conducted evaluations of our pandemic programs.

And just to highlight, our public survey was really successful in that we heard from 10,000 respondents, which we were really happy to have that much feedback to help ground our work.

Next slide.

So this slide is actually a quick graphic that shows what we heard and learned from our public outreach survey, the one that had 10,000 respondents.

So you'll see overwhelmingly positive results.

90% of our respondents supported cafes, and the sidewalk, and the curved space, and street closures for outdoor dining.

Vending uses were also highly supported, and so were retail displays, although a little less supportive than everything else, still positive.

Next slide.

So we kind of stopped there and said hey what are we learning from this, and so we learned that there's strong support for the program, and that there was support to lower barriers so more people could participate.

permitting agencies get a bad rep and are not seen, you know, kind of seen as a bureaucratic, but we were seen as a partner during the pandemic.

And we want to continue that.

And finally, we asked everyone, like, what do you like and what don't you like?

So we made sure to hear what people didn't like, even if they liked the program in general.

And so we heard people didn't like parking and mobility impacts.

So we should be careful about that.

Next slide.

All right.

So from all of that work, we wanted to develop some themes to guide our work.

And we have these three themes, equity, flexibility, and a collaborative approach.

So we want to make sure our program lowers barriers and supports BIPOC businesses.

And we want to make sure our rules are clear and consistent, but also adaptable over time.

So we can continue to learn and improve.

So one of the ways that we'll do this is by moving some of the detailed standards from the municipal code to SDOT director's rules for easier updates as we learn.

And finally, we want to ensure we have time and space for applicant coaching.

We want to create simple and useful educational tools that help everybody be able to participate and understand what it takes to get a permit.

Next slide.

So now we're going to dig in a little deeper to our draft recommendations, starting with outdoor dining.

We really want to focus on creating great spaces that are visually permeable and built for the urban environment so that they're intended to last and be easy to clean and maintain.

We do plan to continue to allow overhead weather protection structures and pop-up tents.

This will allow all-season use where that's desirable.

And in some cases we will need to have stamp plans to make sure things are going to hold up and withstand high wind events.

We do plan to allow for platforms and not require them, but they will be encouraged and they're one way to meet ADA requirements to provide level seating access.

And finally, we plan to set a maximum length for the curbspace cafes of 40 feet, although it'll pen review of the site conditions to make sure there's adequate space for other curbspace use as well.

So for vending, our food and flour vendors have been really hard hit during the pandemic.

When everybody went home, their typical customers were not where they were typically getting their lunch orders.

And so we really want to look for ways to reduce barriers for vendors and have vendors be able to vend where people are by removing inflexible buffers and giving more flexibility to site vendors where people are and where vendors would like to be.

We also want to try out some new types of vending, really provide a trial permit for new vendors to try out sites that they're not sure if they'll pan out at a lower upfront cost so they can try it out with less risk.

Next slide.

Next is our street closures.

And during the pandemic, we really expanded our offerings within our street closure and event permitting to allow for longer term and seasonal closures to support business activities.

And this really worked well, particularly where there were conditions that didn't work well for curb space use or street closure wanted more space for businesses.

And we saw some very successful examples, such as the Ballard Avenue Cafe Street, 11th Avenue in Pike and Pine, Occidental in Pioneer Square, and Crockett in Queen Anne.

Based on the pandemic success, we'd like to continue to offer those ongoing street closures that we began during the pandemic, both with full year and seasonal options, and add that to our toolkit of more day-to-day street closure activities that we already permit.

Next slide.

Last but not least is our merchandise display permit.

We were really kind of thinking through this.

We didn't see a lot of merchandise displays permitted pre-pandemic.

And we think that it might be simpler for folks that have retail businesses just to be able to set up small building frontage displays without a permit moving forward.

So we're looking to have standards that they could follow, but without a permit required.

in the building frontage zone.

For furniture zone displays, it's a little harder to get it right, so we'll still have a permit so we can make sure to check for the site conditions and guide businesses through that process.

Finally, during the pandemic program, we tried out merchandise display in the curb space, and we didn't see widespread use.

Based on competing uses of the curb and the lower support we saw during our outreach process, we plan to no longer allow curb-based merchandise display, except for as a component of a street closure permit.

Next slide.

Finally, I wanted to give a highlight of permit fees.

We waived our permit fees during the pandemic, but we'll reintroduce them at the expiration of our program.

in 2023. We're looking to create a simple free structure that focuses on cost recovery and to level the playing field for all outdoor dining spaces, whether they're on the sidewalk or in the curb space.

We want to lower fees for public street and sidewalk activities, including those small and mid-scale neighborhood events.

This would make it easier for community organizations to hold events that aren't really big, but that aren't quite fitting in within our free block party permit program.

Finally, we recognize that businesses and communities may be hard hit still by the pandemic and that reintroducing fees may be a barrier.

So we are looking for ways to lower barriers, such as perhaps having payments spaced out over time rather than a lump sum up front.

And the next slide is my last one, which is just that we're happy to be here to talk to you today.

We're appreciative of your time and look forward to any questions you might have.

Thank you very much.

I have a couple of questions.

Could you go back to slide nine?

So big picture is, is SDOT's proposal or is there a, is the idea here that post pandemic that SDOT would be wanting to make these, some of these changes permanent?

Yes.

Yeah.

We already had existing programs for, for all of these uses.

And so we want to take what we learned as far as what was working well from the Safe Start program and bring it into our permanent permitting options.

What is the process you use or would you be using if, let's say there's several takeout establishments where there's no dining there, that's not their business model, it's primarily takeout, but then you have a bar or restaurant that wants to use the parking directly outside where the delivery pickup usually occurs.

So if a restaurant says, hey, I want to use this space, are you checking with the adjacent businesses to make sure it doesn't negatively impact their business?

That's a great question.

Well, we do plan to have a public comment period on the applications moving forward, so that will be one way to hear from people that are nearby what they think about the use.

And then the other thing I'll say is we work closely with our SDOT Curbspace team.

Mike Esty was here earlier to understand the curbspace needs on any given block and kind of consider how this activation use fits into any needed space for access like loading.

So that public comment period you mentioned that would be for each permit?

Yes.

Okay.

And then would you mind going to slide 12?

There's a bullet point there, allow vending in neighborhood residential zones.

detailed implementation be addressed by director's role?

Could you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, the idea here is that there are sometimes you know, uses in neighborhood residential zones or, you know, side street right off, you know, main neighborhood commercial area, where a vendor might make sense, you know, not everywhere, it won't make sense everywhere, but that we want to have a little bit of more flexibility to issue these permits, you know, maybe adjacent to um, a park where there's like a lot of soccer tournaments happening or, or things like that.

So, you know, to be honest, this is a new area for us and we're working on trying to create some, a framework for review, um, that, that will work.

And, and again, our whole idea with this approach is to be flexible, um, and iterative.

So, you know, we'll try to have some review criteria that makes sense.

And then we can adapt if we're finding that we didn't get it quite right initially.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

So I didn't have a question about this slide, but while we're here, I appreciate what you're trying to do here as somebody who was really advocating for us, you know, allowing more food trucks in the city.

I think it's important that we support these small businesses.

And, you know, I mean, they have food truck pods in Portland that are very successful and really provide an array of food options for neighbors and support these small businesses.

So just glad to see that you're trying to figure out what the right answer is there.

I actually have a question about slide 13. As you're talking about street closures, I'm thinking in particular about the Columbia City patio project that was going for a while during the pandemic and, and, you know, fairly successful people in the neighborhood really appreciated the opportunity to go to the neighborhood restaurants and bring their food.

to this covered space so they could sit outdoors and eat.

And it wasn't a space for any particular business.

It was for all the surrounding businesses.

And they had a small stage, and there would be evening events.

And I'm not quite sure what happened, but it's gone.

And so we're interested in figuring out how we can bring that back.

And on this slide, what I'm trying to understand is, The first bullet point says allow ongoing street closures with full year options.

And then the third bullet says full year or seasonal permits will be issued for public events.

So are those two different permit types?

Could the Columbia City Patio, for example, come back and be permitted year round if it doesn't have public events going on all the time?

Great question, and we are talking to the patio representatives and hoping to see that come back to Columbia City.

But yes, we do think that there's an important space for those types of spaces to come back via this permit type, our street closure permit type, whether HAB-Charlotte Pitts, she or hers): Whether or not there's events happening.

So I do think that that would be a home for the patio via our streets permitting process and And I think, you know, the idea of having it be open for more public seating is really great.

I think it then can support a variety of businesses, you know, on the side street, like it is, you know, when they're kind of off a busier arterial street.

So I think it's a really good model that we hope to see, you know, perhaps come to other neighborhood business districts too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions?

Oh, sure, can't resist.

Chair, may I?

Yeah, please.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Real quick, Council Member Peterson, I think your question about the takeout was spot on.

And one thing that I've noticed, because all of the questions that we've wrestled with just here in this committee so far, we've wrestled with on Ballard Avenue.

And one of the solutions that we found is because a business can take out a permit for the space directly in front of their business, they're able to sign up for one s.

Same group here at least Nelson's team set up the three minute pickup for food permit, and at least is that I know on Ballard Avenue there's been places that we permitted for that so that a takeout restaurant can have that.

In particular, we have other coast cafe that's right next to a retail restaurant other coast cafe or retail merchandise store.

Both other coast doesn't really have our CNN got maybe a couple chairs.

You can eat your sandwich there if you want to, but it's not, there's easier places to eat your sandwiches, is what I would say.

And they've done a really nice job of partnering with their neighbors who are doing retail.

So the space kind of fluctuates.

And then during the farmer's market, that whole, the frontage flips.

So then the farmer's market uses that pergola.

But what stood out to me was the ability to have that three minute parking.

And I think it's something that to-go restaurants in particular really benefit from because it makes sure that nobody's lingering in front of their business.

Folks can come in, pop out, come in, pop out.

Elise, is that still something that businesses are able to apply for and use the parking space in front of their business for?

Um, well, just to clarify, it's not my team that issues those.

Um, we work with Mike SD and others that are also great.

Yeah.

I mean, we do, I think they've transitioned maybe to a five minute, um, loading zone.

Um, and then there's like kind of standard, like you'll, you'll see like 15 minute pedestrian passenger loading.

Um, and so, yeah, I think.

Maybe what I would say high level is, you know, every curbspace application, we work closely with their team to really consider the need for loading and access on that block.

So we're making sure to get that right.

So yes, like a five minute loading zone might be a good solution to make sure that businesses have what they need on the block, or maybe it's right around the corner.

So we'll work with our curbspace team and consider how to make sure we're accommodating like the multiple uses that we must accommodate within the right of way.

Thanks, Elise.

And speaking to, I believe it was slide 14, maybe for 15, the fees is where we're going.

There we are.

Understanding that in the past, our fees were so high and the flexibility for these spaces was so low.

It's why we didn't see businesses using this permit.

When I think back to Noble Fir on Ballard Avenue, they had a they had less space in front of their business than I have sitting at this desk to have a table and chairs.

And so just looking, you know, we're sitting at my desk, you would literally have to be up against the wall here and allow for pedestrian passage.

And so, and it was very expensive.

And so I think that the flexibility that you've created is very important.

and and cost recovery.

I know that you're this section of your of Estat is funded by the permits that you provide the same as building permits and STCI.

This is a pretty common practice in the city and it makes sure that our general fund isn't being used beyond what we needed to because we've got a lot of housing needs.

We've got a lot of public safety needs.

We've got a lot of That said, I understand our need to have cost recovery here, understand that we were able to use federal one time funds to buoy the good work that you were doing by issuing permits for free.

And I also, you know, heard public commenters today mentioned that we need to make sure that these fees are reasonable.

I just wanted to say I agree with both you and public commenters about the need for these fees and we just need to make sure that they're right sized, because something in the past that we were basing these off of was what was the potential parking revenue for a parking place.

And that doesn't take into account the time that that parking stall might not be used it also in this iteration now as we're moving forward into the new era of outdoor dining, we also need to be considering.

how much tech general fund tax revenue is created by sales tax by the business activities that are occurring in these spaces.

I also know that within your team at least we're wrestling with the public private use of these spaces and what is public benefit.

and we'll talk more about that.

Happy to happy to chat more about that but I just wanted to highlight that the fees are not as straightforward as it might seem on its face.

We've come a long way.

We need to make sure that they're right sized and there's also that third benefit of sales tax that is coming to our city.

That's all I've got for now and just thank you Elise, Joel, Mike Esty with all of these different tools in our toolbox, we're really able to create that need or the right size fit for each section.

Actually, I had one more thing to ask.

Elise, when we're doing public feedback on each permit, I know in other aspects of the work that I do here for the city, sometimes that's used to delay, whether it's intentional or unintentional, Or oftentimes, on another set of questions, oftentimes the bureaucracy just becomes a little bit more grinding because we're having to create these opportunities for public comment.

Can you share with me how we're going to streamline this so that we're not making businesses wait through a season that they could be getting business and creating tax revenue?

And how are we going to make sure that this is properly used to get the input from the neighboring businesses but also not use it as a way to stop us from moving forward?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.

And I think that one thing is just to be upfront about the timeline for businesses so they know what to expect and can kind of take that into consideration when they're making their application to SDOT.

And I guess one thing I'd also say is it's always good to have conversations with your neighbors.

If you are thinking about applying, sometimes you can have some really good informal conversations up front that then might I mean, I thought doesn't get a comment letter and email later if you've worked it out already.

For us, I think.

You know, 1 thing that's important is to not kind of assume that something that was really successful during the pandemic doesn't need any, any kind of modifications moving forward.

We want to do our process that we always have had of requiring public notice on these permits.

and make sure we're hearing from folks that now, because it's been a couple of years, I think really what we focus on is what do neighbors think?

What are we missing that we might not see from reviewing the site conditions and kind of having eyes on the street?

What do they know better than us as far as, oh, well, that loading truck comes here and at this time of day, and so we can kind of sort that out.

So really, we're hoping to hear, you know, kind of technical concerns from folks that we can maybe add to our review.

So we make it even better when that cafe gets approved in the neighborhood.

Thank you, Chair, that's all I've got.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate the presentation and we can follow up with any other questions that we might have later.

And we'll go ahead and move on to our final item on the agenda, which is a half a billion dollar item on our agenda, the Ship Canal Water Quality Control Project.

So let's have the clerk read the next item into the record, please.

Agenda item four, Ship Canal update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, you're familiar with this mega project.

It's going to improve our environment with a nearly three million or three mile underground system to store polluted stormwater until it can be treated.

And we wanted to get an update.

We know they've encountered and worked through some challenges here.

So welcome our officially confirmed general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities and Keith Ward, project manager.

Thank you, Chair Peterson and council members on this committee.

We're about to hear today an update about one of our most important capital projects that SPU has ever undertaken.

The Ship Canal Water Quality Project, as Council Member Peterson referenced, will prevent an average of 75 million gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater from entering Lake Washington Ship Canal, Salmon Bay and Union Bay.

It is actually the centerpiece project in our consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Ecology and Department of Justice, and will provide both public health and environmental benefits to our city.

As Councilmember Peterson noted, it's also the most expensive and most complex capital project that we've implemented, and not to mention during a period of unprecedented challenges.

I want to thank Chair Peterson and the other council members on this committee for the attention that they have placed on this project with the goal of delivering it on schedule and on budget.

Today, Keith Ward, the program executive, is here to provide an update on the project and give a sense of how the challenges of the past two and a half years are affecting the project.

At this point, I will pass it off to Keith.

All right, thanks, Andrew.

Just make sure.

Can you see full screen?

Yes.

All right, so thank you for having us on your agenda today for this presentation.

I'll start with a project overview, including our current schedule and construction projects.

Then I'll cover our cost estimating and management practices, our budget, and our proposed next steps.

The Ship Canal Water Quality Project is a storage tunnel to reduce combined sewage overflows into waterways.

Seattle, like many, cities have areas where stormwater combines with sewage in the same pipes.

During dry weather, the sewage flows normally for treatment, but during heavy rains, stormwater fills these pipes, causing the system to overflow in the local water bodies.

This image shows how once the Ship Canal Water Quality Project is completed, many of our worst overflows will instead be routed into a storage tunnel in the lower right-hand corner.

The project will improve water quality by keeping an average of 75 million gallons of polluted stormwater and sewage out of Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and the Ship Canal each year.

In 2013, the city signed a consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington Department of Ecology about these combined sewer overflows.

The performance requirement is that we must have less than one overflow per year per outfall on a 20-year moving average.

This applies citywide to all of our 82 outfall locations.

The Ship Canal Water Quality Project addresses overflows at six locations.

Currently, these six outfalls overflow 104 times per year on average, and we will reduce this to less than six times per year.

This is a shared project with King County.

It will address four of the city's outfalls and two of the county's outfalls.

The four city outfalls overflow the vast majority of combined sewage overflows annually for all of our outfall location.

This map shows the county's drainage basins in green and the city's drainage basins in pink to the six outfall locations.

The cost of this project is shared, our joint project agreement, with King County includes a cost split of about 65% for the city of Seattle and about 35% for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division.

Now I'm gonna talk about project design and construction.

This is a plan view of the project.

Our work includes construction in the five neighborhoods shown here along the ship canal.

The backbone of the project is a 2.7 mile long, 18 foot, 10 inch diameter storage tunnel from Ballard to Wallingford.

to give you a size of the scale, an 18-foot 10-inch diameter tunnel is your standard transit tunnel like Sound Transits.

We also have two other smaller tunnels shown by number twos and three here, one under the ship canal from Fremont to Queen Anne and one in Ballard.

This is a simplified section of the project.

Each of the five neighborhoods which I showed earlier are shown at the top.

The three colors denote how we've packaged work between three construction packages.

Shown at the top, conveyance pipes grab flows from the existing system.

These are shown by arrows.

These conveyance pipes bring flows to drop shafts, and the drop shafts take the flows from the surface down into the storage tunnel.

The tunnel is shown in dark blue and will be between 57 to 105 feet deep.

It'll provide about 30 million gallons of storage capacity.

There are only two above ground structures, a small electrical building in Wallingford and our pump station in Ballard.

The Ship Canal Water Quality Project is a massive effort that spans 11 years.

We have four major construction packages, which are shown on the left side, and years are shown across the top.

In late 2018, we removed a fifth construction package which realized a cost savings of about $10 million.

The different colors of the bars show how we plan and have moved through options analysis, design, and construction phases.

We'll be working on this project through 2025, which is the purple line on the right, and we must have complete construction and be operational by then.

The dashed yellow line denotes a key linkage in our project.

The pump station cannot begin construction until the storage tunnel is completed, so we are closely monitoring progress of the storage tunnel.

We've made considerable progress on the project the past seven years.

We've completed the designs of all of our projects.

We've completed construction on one project and have bids on two more.

These are denoted by the darker blue bars.

Because we have bids for this work, we have more cost certainty on over $270 million of construction work.

We only have one more project to bid, which is our $120 million pump station and downward conveyance project, which is shown as a lighter shade of dark blue.

We will be bidding this project this fall and expect to know the construction costs by early 2023, which is shown by the yellow star.

We've expended over $256 million on this project so far.

This is a photo of our Bowerd Early Works project that was completed in 2019. It was a $10 million construction package that prepared the Bowerd site for tunneling operations.

We completed this construction package in advance of tunneling to remove risk for tunneling contractors to get better bid prices.

It was completed $3.5 million under budget.

Shown here is the removal of about 22,000 tons or 1,000 truckloads of contaminated soil.

Although we encountered more contaminated soil than expected, we had planned for and budgeted for possible risk events like this.

Our storage tunnel is in active construction across five neighborhoods, and it includes the 2.7 mile long, 18 foot, 10 inch diameter storage tunnel shown in the center of this slide.

slide.

And again, this is the backbone of the project.

This part of the project has been featured in the media for the successful tunnel boring machine naming contest where over 34,000 people last year voted and Mudhoney was selected as the name of our tunnel boring machine.

Also featured was Mudhoney's triumphant defeat of a 10 foot tall boulder earlier this spring, affectionately called Mega Boulder.

We selected our storage tunnel contractor in 2019. and they have been working for the last two and a half years through the pandemic at each of our sites.

They've completed about 25% of the storage tunnel as well as heavy construction work at our five neighborhood sites.

Two of our construction projects are not yet in or through construction.

On the right is a map showing the location of our Wallingford Conveyance construction package.

In the past month, we received construction bids for this $8.7 million project, and they came in within our budget.

On the left is a rendering of our pump station, which is part of our pump station and power conveyance project, and it is our biggest remaining uncertainty and is expected to bid this fall, as I said.

I'll talk more about this later.

Now I'm shifting to talking about cost estimating, cost management, and budgets.

On a large project like the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, estimating and managing costs is very important and includes strategies to manage changes, uncertainties, and risks.

There's a lot of terminology in cost estimating, but I wanted to highlight four key factors.

The first is base costs.

This is what most people think about when they talk about designing construction.

It includes the construction costs such as concrete, rebar, and skilled labor.

It also includes engineering and support services.

To find base costs, we look across all of our projects for base costs in the year that we're preparing our estimate.

Second is escalation.

This is what it will cost to complete the project in the future.

We didn't buy steel, diesel, and other materials for our pump station in 2018 when we developed the last budget.

We'll buy those materials and hire the contractor for contract construction labor for that project in 2023. We have to estimate what escalation will be through time to project our budget.

Our $570 million budget included $60 million in escalation.

In any estimate, there is always uncertainty.

We can't know everything about the design or know how escalation will really impact the work.

We incorporate uncertainty into the cost estimates.

And as we have more design definition and then the bids from the contractors, uncertainty decreases.

Shown on the left is what we call or what is called the cone of uncertainty.

It conveys how uncertainty decreases as there is a higher degree of design development as you move to the right in this figure.

And finally, when construction bids are received from our contractors.

And lastly, construction projects have risks.

If these risks happen, they impact costs and schedule.

We plan for and manage risks through our risk registers and integrate risk reserves into our project cost estimates and schedules.

An example of a risk event that has occurred is the mega boulder we encountered several months ago, which is shown on the front of the tunnel boring machine on the right.

We had a risk event for boulders in our risk register and are currently evaluating if the impact is as we had predicted.

It is important to remember that our cost estimates don't include a single estimate, but a range of possible outcomes based on various uncertainty and risk scenarios.

This type of estimating is best practice for mega projects and is practiced by other agencies like the Washington Department of Transportation and Sound Transit.

So how do large projects manage for uncertainty and risk?

They use risk registers.

As I said, we've used these.

Working with subject matter experts in many fields, including tunneling, we identify, analyze, and monitor risks that could impact the project.

In some cases, we perform mitigation measures to decrease their impact and likelihood of occurring.

Second is uncertainty and risk modeling.

We utilize these to predict the range of possible outcomes based on various uncertainty and risk scenarios.

In the end, we can develop a range of budgets and corresponding uncertainties to better understand the confidence to deliver the project at a specific budget.

And lastly, we utilize contingency funds and reserves to respond to risk events when they occur or changes in cost estimates due to uncertainties.

Shown here are some cost management best practices, which we are doing on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project to proactively try to stay within our project budget.

Monthly, our project teams and our management review scopes, schedules, and costs for each of our contract packages and the overall project.

We also review our risk registers, which include over 400 risk events, and we evaluate our budget confidence to deliver the project within our $570 million budget.

Next, I want to talk about the last three, which are shown, the last three strategies which have been key cost reduction strategies for this project.

Some past best practices in cost management we've done include finding over $67 million in cost reductions through three major value engineering and cost reduction efforts in the last seven years.

Our latest cost reduction effort in 2020 reduced costs by $7 million by changing the exterior of our pump station and changes in how soil would be removed from construction of the storage tunnel.

We also have secured $342 million in low interest rate federal and state loans, which will save ratepayers $99 million.

Council recently approved the last of our state loans.

Looking forward, We will continue our review of our scopes, schedules, and costs, as well as risk registers and other cost management practices.

We'll also work to manage construction to contain costs.

And we are evaluating the use of commodity escalation risk sharing on our remaining construction package that we'll be bidding soon.

This will help decrease bid costs and will help attract the best contractors for this complex construction package.

Here I'm going to move into talking about the project's budget.

As I do, please remember two things.

First, this is a joint project.

About 65% of the costs are the city's and the remainder are the King County's.

The city's contribution currently is $395 million of the $570 million budget.

Also, I'll be talking about confidence.

Confidence is how we convey how certain we are that a project will be at or below a forecasted amount.

We strive to anticipate trends in escalation, accommodate uncertainties, and manage risks, but these factors vary through time.

Shown here is a chronology of a few key budget-related items.

First, we set our current budget in the spring of 2018. Council Member Herbold was the chair of our committee when we developed this budget due to changes in historical rainfall and an increase in regional construction market conditions.

I was also brought on board at that time.

And in order to develop this budget, we initiated an extensive 10 month long cost estimate review and reconciliation process.

We worked with national experts and we evaluated all the key factors for the project and worked with the mayor and city council to set the project budget at $570 million and a 65% confidence.

A 65% confidence means that there is a 65% chance that the project will be brought in at or below the estimated cost, and a 35% chance that the estimated cost will be exceeded.

Again, included in this estimate was an estimate of about $60 million in escalation.

Since 2018, we've been managing cost risks and uncertainties and implementing cost reductions, as I said.

but we have experienced some risk events and still some significant risk events are present in the project.

I'm going to talk more about what we're seeing in a comprehensive cost estimate review and reconciliation effort that we'll be conducting for the remainder of this year.

This will be similar to our effort in 2017 and 2018. Shown here is a status of our major risks costs and schedule for risks last summer we presented an update to the Council on the project and presented several future construction and bidding risks and I want to highlight two of these risks.

The first is that we have a lot of underground work remaining on the project, so we continue to manage this risk.

We have encountered some underground issues such as the mega boulder this past spring, but we have successfully overcome these challenges.

And I don't believe so far that they will have a significant cost impact.

However, we have three more years of underground work on the project, including completion of our storage tunnel and our two conveyance tunnels under the ship canal and in Bower.

The second risk event is related to escalation and has changed considerably in the past nine months.

And it threatens our ability to bring the project in at or below our current budget.

I'll expand on this risk more in the following slides.

For cost, our confidence to deliver the project at or below the $570 million budget is at 60%.

It is within 5% of our 2018 estimate.

For schedule, we're currently estimated to complete the project in September 2025, four months ahead of our regulatory completion milestone.

We have experienced some delays in tunneling, and the estimated duration of our pump station project has increased.

So we're looking for ways to mitigate these impacts.

We set our current budget in 2018. Two of our projects were in options analysis, where we were still evaluating the best alternatives and alignments.

The other two projects were in design phase.

We had not yet started construction on any of the packages, as you can see here.

Since 2018, we have advanced the project considerably and have more cost certainty in many areas.

I want to talk more about escalation.

Shown here is escalation data from several local and national sources from 2008 to early 2022. It shows the percent annual change from the previous year.

This data is specifically related to construction work, and it includes construction labor, materials, and equipment.

You see that in general between 2008 and 2020-21, the change in escalation varied between negative 1% and about 5% annually.

The highest annual rate changes up until 2021 to 2022, or due to federal infrastructure funding during the Great Recession and another local building boom in 2017 to 2019. You may recall that Seattle had the most number of tower cranes in the nation during this latter period.

This is also when we developed our budget at $570 million.

You can also see that the escalation rate change from 2020-21 to 2020-22 on the right for these indices has been unprecedented at between 15 to 21%.

This figure shows what's happened with escalation since we set our $570 million budget in 2018. Shown here is the annual escalation rate over time.

It represents the blended escalation rate for labor, materials, and equipment on local construction projects.

In 2017 and 2018, when we were developing our project budget, escalation was running above the historical average in Puget Sound, which is denoted by the dashed yellow line.

We worked with national experts and estimated it would take about five years for escalation to return to the historical average.

And the blue line shows the estimate, which was included, or the annual rate change, which was included in our estimate of $60 million for escalation.

Realized, Annual escalation was tracking closely to our estimate for the first couple years as it moved back towards the historical average.

This is denoted by the first three years of the solid red line.

Then in 2021, as you can see, escalation increased sharply with an 11% increase due to shortages in construction labor, supply chain issues, and increased commodity prices.

Annual estimates for 2022 and 2023 are projected to be well above the historical average with the 2022 projected to be at almost 14%.

Escalation compounds over time, and shown here is the cumulative impact of escalation over time since 2018, with our 2018 estimate in blue, and the realized and future estimated escalation in red.

We will be bidding the $120 million pump station in Ballard Conveyance Project soon, which is shown by the purple arrow.

Contractors will be completing the work between mid-2023 and through 2025. We received bids for our $255 million storage tunnel construction package in mid-2019, which is shown here, before escalation rates increased, so there is no risk of escalation price increases for this construction package.

Our next steps include continuing to move the project forward through construction activities.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be conducting a comprehensive and time intensive evaluation and analysis of all of our project costs, which will include reevaluating all of our remaining costs and schedule, evaluating remaining risks and uncertainties, looking for continued cost reduction opportunities, further evaluating the impact of escalation and updating our uncertainty and risk model.

Some of these methods are special to a mega project and are not typical of what we do on our standard projects.

We will also open bids on our remaining construction package in early first quarter 2023. So we'll have more certainty on the cost of our last project to go into construction and the impact of escalation.

We would like to provide a full budget and schedule update to council in the second quarter of 2023. And if there's any questions.

Thank you very much.

We're very impressed with the progress thus far on this mega project and really appreciate your noting the cost management that you're doing along the way with this project that you're not just letting the project unfold but You did value engineering along the way.

You refinanced some of the debt to save money.

Meanwhile, we're going to be battling inflationary costs over the next 12 months at least.

We will certainly have you back.

We do want this project to come in on time and under budget.

we of course have a separate formal watch list process as a city council thanks to the council members who set up that watch list process and of course this project is on the watch list just to monitor and so we'll have you back here in addition to being part of the formal watch list process colleagues any comments or questions today.

Chairman?

Yes, Council Member Strauss.

I'll be brief and just say that I know there are many people in my community that I have a lot of challenges with the way that the city does business and even for these folks that have many challenges across our city.

They say only good things about you, Keith, and that's because of your intense and regular communication and your ability to work with people make adjustments as needed, and keep the project moving forward so just want to want to thank you there.

I, I know that one accident is too many, and I'll just state that your record is better than pure projects, you have kept a very safe workplace did want to just check in to see how Travis is doing.

I know that he was injured earlier this year.

Thank you Councilmember Strauss and thank you for your kind comments.

Yeah, Travis is a worker in the tunnel and he actually was injured on March 30th.

A very serious injury, broken hip and some broken ribs.

And we've been monitoring his progress closely.

He is, I believe, just about ready to return to work.

And so we've been really looking out for him.

Safety, you know, I talk about cost and schedule and of course those are very important Safety is the most important thing for us.

This is very dangerous work.

We have crews working 24 hours a day and three shifts down in the tunnel, miles in the tunnel at some point.

So safety is one of the most important things and we are monitoring that and working on that very closely with our contractors.

Thanks for asking.

Yeah, thank you, Keith.

And just for the record, I've spoken to people who have completed peer projects and they've been surprised at how few accidents you've had.

So just highlighting that, you know, just putting on the record, always my desire to, as we return this space into a public place with the pump station going out to bid soon, just wanting to highlight my desire to reconnect our access to the waterway for hand launched crafts.

Great, and you can see actually on this rendering that that is actually part of the pump station plan.

There we are.

While I'm not a paddle boarder, I still love them.

So thanks, Keith.

Sure.

Thank you, colleagues.

Any other final comments or questions before we wrap this up?

All right, well, thank you, General Manager Lee and Project Manager Ward for your thorough presentation today.

It's a real resource for the community to have that PowerPoint and see all the hard work you've been doing here.

And with that, colleagues, if there are no further comments or questions, I'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, it's 11.37 a.m., and this concludes the July 19, 2022 meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

We anticipate our next meeting will be on Tuesday, August 2nd.

Thank you, and we are adjourned.