Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 8/19/2020

transportation and utilities committee meeting will come to order the time is 9 31 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson chair of this committee will the clerk please call the roll Gonzalez here Morales Strauss wasn't Peterson here for present Okay, and I think Council Member Herbold will be joining us later and want to make sure that when we get to the speakers, we want to make sure that they are present.

So IT may want to look into that.

But for now, let's look at approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be amended by removing item four.

That's appointment 01600, the mayoral appointment of Deborah Kahn to the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board.

The applicant's withdrawn and the executive will submit a new name at a later date.

So hearing no objection, is there any objection if we amend this accordingly?

Okay.

So hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted as amended.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period.

I'll ask that everybody be patient as we learn to operate this new system in real time and navigate through the inevitable growing pains.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process and adding new features that allow additional means of public participation in our council meetings.

It remains the strong intent of the City Council to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, the City Council reserves the right to revise these public comment periods at any point if we deem the system as being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

So I'll moderate this public comment period in the following manner.

We'll have 20 initial minutes for public comment.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on two speakers at a time and in the order in which registered on the council's website.

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

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue.

And the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

So speakers, please be sure to press star six when you're given your cue to start.

Please begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

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

Once you hear that chime, please 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 the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public 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 listed on the agenda.

Okay, so the public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

And the first speaker that I see who's signed up and present is Brittany Bollet.

Go ahead, Brittany.

And press star six.

Good morning.

Hi.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Sorry, sorry.

too sleepy this morning to use Zoom properly, so thank you.

Good morning, Captain.

My name is Brittany Bush-Bollet.

I'm chair of Seattle Group, talking about the scooter share.

We've been really supportive of the idea of a scooter share program for a long time, and we're excited about the possibility of finally getting going on this.

We feel like it's a really important addition to our last mile solutions to help make it easier for people to get to and from the bus and other transit, and also just to make short trips outside of the bus or the car altogether.

You know, you've received a letter from us about our excitement, and I do just want to mention that we also feel it's really important to make sure that it's brought in an equitable way, in a way that keeps our sidewalks and our right-of-ways clear for people who want to walk and roll in other methods, but we're really excited to see this going into Yeah, see, sorry, I am not awake yet to see what we can do to keep bringing people out of their cars and moving around the city in other environmentally friendly ways.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brittany.

Next, we've got Rachel Brown followed by Connor Inslee.

Go ahead, Rachel.

Hello, John.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Hello, council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment this morning.

My name is Rachel Brown.

I live in District 3. I'm a renter, and I'm an incoming graduate student to UW's Master of Urban Planning program, and I also live without a car.

I'm speaking to you to represent the Board of Seattle Subway, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to expanding light rail service in the Seattle area.

And we would also like to express our support of CB119867 and CB119868 related to the proposed scooter share program.

At a time when transit is facing enormous cutbacks, we feel it's important to provide affordable and low emission transportation alternatives to fill in these gaps left behind as transit is cut.

And he also pointed out that between one-fourth and one-third of scooter users are replacing what would have been a car trip, either in the first or last mile of their journey.

And I see the addition of scooter share on Seattle streets as an important piece of our continuing efforts to decrease car dependency and reduce emissions, especially for people like myself who live without a car, increased access to additional services and opportunities that are sometimes difficult to get to.

So I urge you to approve both of these ordinances in the name of a greener and more accessible Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel.

Next, we've got Connor Inslee followed by Jacqueline Gruber.

Good morning, Council.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you this morning.

My name's Connor Inslee.

I'm the Associate Executive Director with the Outdoors for All Foundation.

We provide outdoor accessible recreation to individuals with disability.

We are based in Northeast Seattle out of Magnuson Park.

I want to speak in support of this program in that it does two crucial things for individuals with disability.

First and foremost, it provides accessible transportation.

In our internal polling of our user base and participants We find that transportation is the number one barrier to individuals with disabilities accessing recreation throughout the Seattle area.

A seated scooter-style transportation not only would provide additional opportunities for these individuals to get around Seattle, but it would support them in getting to our base of operations to access our adaptive cycling center.

Through partnership with Seattle Department of Transportation, We had a over 300% increase in ridership in our cycling center, thanks to support that came from programs like this.

So last year we delivered over 750 riders.

We believe that continued support through the scooter share program, not only supports that program and helps us grow that to no cost to the rider, but provides a citywide transportation options for our users.

I want to thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Jacqueline Gruber.

And some other speakers have signed up.

They're not yet present.

So right now, we've just got Jacqueline Gruber.

And we'll keep an eye out for other speakers.

Go ahead, Jacqueline.

Hi, my name's Jacqueline Gruber.

I'm the director of built environment for the Downtown Seattle Association.

The DSA supports the ScooterShare pilot program.

The coronavirus pandemic has limited some modes of alternative transportation and restricts capacity on transit.

A scooter share program has the potential to increase mobility and access to, through, and around downtown, expand walk sheds, and reserve transit options for those who need it most.

Initiating the scooter share program as a pilot ensures a program that incorporates public feedback and experiences and is thoughtful and well-designed in time to adequately assist with downtown's recovery and reopening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm looking at our speaker list, and we've got some others who are signed up, but they're not present yet.

So we're going to pause here for a moment for 30 seconds to see if anybody's going to pop through here.

Ah, yes, we have someone.

So the next speaker will be Tim Alborg.

Tim, go ahead and press star six to unmute.

Tim Alborg, go ahead.

Looks like we lost that caller, Council Member.

Okay.

That's okay, let's just wait 10, 20 more seconds to see if anybody comes through.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

I'm receiving communications that folks are on the line.

However, they are having difficulty speaking or it might be that they need to hit star six or.

possibly something else.

If IT information technology folks have any tips, I see about four other people who signed up, but they're listed as not present.

So information technology.

There are no other callers currently on the line.

Oh, hang on.

We got another one coming in.

I see Tim is now getting on.

So just give us a second here so we can confirm that.

And those who have signed up and are not able to speak, just email your comments to council at Seattle.gov, and we will see them there.

Tim Alberg is back.

So go ahead, Mr. Alberg.

Good morning.

Can you hear me, Mr. Chairman?

Yes.

Fantastic.

My name's Tim Alberg.

I'm the head of government partnerships for SPIN.

and I'd like to speak on items eight and nine before you today.

The proposed scooter pilot program would provide the residents of Seattle with another convenient and affordable transportation option, especially those with low incomes.

SPIN currently operates in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other cities.

We'd certainly welcome the opportunity to provide our service to the residents of Seattle.

In Portland, we actually partnered with the city during the first few months of the pandemic to increase the number of scooters available and decrease the cost of each ride in order to ease crowding on public transit to encourage physically distant travel and to promote driving less.

The partnership was an outstanding success and it resulted in more trips with longer distances, especially in underserved equity areas.

We share the city's goal of reducing Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions, in fact, SPIN is committed to being carbon negative by 2025 in the cities where we operate.

We're going to achieve this lofty goal by removing more emissions from existing transportation ecosystems that we provide our services in.

And we are also committed to safety and distributing free helmets in Seattle.

In San Francisco alone, SPIN has already given out over 1,000 free helmets.

So in summary, we ask that you approve the pilot program today and move to council for a final vote.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Thank you, Tim.

The next speaker will be Fong Vu.

Fong, go ahead and press star six.

And then we'll be followed by Jonathan Hopkins.

Good morning, my name is Phuong Bui and I'm the Government Partnerships Manager for SPIN.

I'd like to speak on items eight and nine.

SPIN urges the city to move forward with the proposed pilot program.

We share in SDOT's mission to deliver a system that provides safe and affordable access to transportation.

Microbility can play an integral role in enhancing transportation ecosystem and SPIN is committed to assisting communities deal with major transit and economic disruptions And with the continued need for residents to socially distance and utilize outdoor environments more, bikes and scooters are a more sustainable and compact mode of transportation to help Seattleites complete a central trip and aid in the economic recovery of local businesses.

It's been as a robust community engagement plan to educate users on local parking, riding, and helmet rules.

We plan on offering free helmets at outreach events and through online requests.

We also know that owning a helmet is half the battle.

That's why we offer a discount for foldable helmets through our partnerships with OverAid to make carrying one more convenient.

And if given the opportunity to operate in Seattle, we will work closely with the city to provide service to diverse neighborhoods, including but not limited to West Seattle.

For example, the micromobility can help fill the gaps created by the closure of the high-level West Seattle Bridge.

We know that that closure has led to increased traffic on the South Park and First Avenue South Bridge and increased congestion and pollution in equity-focused areas.

So working together with Seattle stakeholders, these alternative forms of transportation can speed the recovery of the transit networks in the region.

We look forward to a future in Seattle where more people choose bikes and scooters over single occupancy cartridge.

We ask that the committee move forward with a pilot program.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Thong.

Our next speaker, and I think our last speaker is Jonathan Hopkins.

Go ahead, Jonathan.

Good morning, Council.

This is Jonathan Hopkins from Lime.

Pleasure to talk to you all this morning.

I'm speaking on obviously the scooter resolution, not resolution, the ordinance is related to improving scooters.

Because the safest cities in the world have scooters.

The cities that achieved zero traffic deaths last year have scooters, thousands more than Seattle is proposing.

Why?

Because fewer cars mean safer streets.

Global studies back this up, noting scooters are as safe as bikes.

And fewer cars means less climate change, and fewer children having health difficulties living near our car-intensive areas.

What does approving this long-convince plan mean for Seattle?

As transit is cut and the West Seattle Bridge remains closed, scooters offer low-income riders an option that's cheaper than the bus for the typical ride and saves time.

For that reason that scooter riders are frequent transit riders, in fact, half of them are, and 10% of our trips are people connecting to transit.

It means a strengthened bike share system.

Instead of less than 500 bikes, as have been on the streets in recent weeks, the system will expand alongside scooters to near 2,000 bikes.

providing better coverage in West Seattle, the Rainier Valley, North Seattle.

A scooter bike system is financially viable and will serve the city for years or decades.

And a large bike share only system operates at a multi-million dollar loss annually in Seattle alone and cannot be sustained without scooters.

It also means a safer city.

The only city in the world that achieved zero traffic deaths last year, major cities, had thousands of scooters, Oslo and Helsinki.

The founders of Vision Zero, Sweden, have 12,000 scooters in Stockholm, Paris, building a 15-minute, essentially car-free city center, has the largest scooter fleet in the world.

They all agree with the concept of fewer cars equals safer streets and see scooters as a means to get there.

For this reason, the Urban League, TCC, Transit Riders Union, Sierra Club, Seattle Subway, Black Girls Do Bike, and Seattle Neighborhood Greenway have asked that you approve this ordinance as written.

We hope you support this as well, approving expeditiously so that the program can begin in good light and weather this season.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes our public comment period.

Those who are listening are able to still submit comments to your city council at council at seattle.gov at any time.

Any items that pass out of this committee, because our council is going to be on a two-week recess, there's extra time to submit comments.

So the full city council meeting, the next one is Tuesday, September 8th.

So let's get on with the rest of the agenda.

I want to thank the speakers for taking time out of their mornings to call in.

It's really helpful to hear from you.

So item one, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Appointment 01594, appointment of Danny Bell as a member Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee for a term to March 31st, 2023.

Thank you.

And we're going to hear the presentations first.

So we've got Jennifer Muilenburg from SDOT here to talk about this appointment.

Thank you, CM Peterson.

This is Jenny.

Can you hear me?

Could you speak up a little bit, please?

Yep.

Sorry.

Can you hear me better now?

Not much.

I don't know.

Maybe the microphone.

All right.

I'll do my best to be as loud as possible.

OK.

Hi, everyone.

As mentioned, I am the SDOT liaison to the School Traffic Safety Committee.

And this committee works closely with SDOT in our Safe Routes to School Partnership to make it easier for students to walk and bike to school.

The committee has 11 board members, representation from Seattle Public School, Seattle Department of Transportation, King County Metro, Seattle Police Department, and then five other volunteer positions.

And one of these five volunteer positions is a position that Danny Bell will fill.

Among other tasks, the committee provides a mechanism for any community member to raise awareness about school traffic safety issues.

They work to improve walking and bicycle options for transportation to schools, and they review circulation plans for new and renovated school buildings.

If you would like more information on the committee, I can provide that as well.

I did want to note that Danny was not able to make it this morning, so I can provide some information about him if you would like, or if you would like to have other questions or discuss, let me know.

Yes, we do have the appointment packet with information, but just a couple of points about the applicant.

I do want to note that Council Member Herbold is with us as well.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Jennifer.

Just tell us a little bit about the candidates, a couple of sentences.

Yeah, so Danny is a new father, an educator, and a South Seattle resident.

So he's an educator at the Makerspace Tinkertank and has a master's in education from National Lewis University in Chicago.

He strongly believes that working to ease mobility for all citizens in transportation modes, that we can not only build a safer and more efficient city, but a more equitable one as well.

So we are excited to have him on the committee as both his role of being a new father, an educator, and a resident of South Seattle.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Council members, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 01594. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of this appointment.

Are there any comments on this applicant before we vote?

OK.

Thank you, Jennifer, well done.

And I really appreciate all the applicants for these commissions volunteering their time to advise policymakers on these important issues.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss?

Aye.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five, yes.

Nobody against or abstaining.

OK, thank you.

The motion carries.

And the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the September 8 City Council meeting.

Items 2-5, we will work together on those.

Estat will be talking about all of those applicants.

Will the clerk please read items 2, 3, and 5 into the record?

I'm going to start over.

Appointment 01598. Appointment of Maria Sumner as a member of the Seattle pedestrian advisory board for a term to March 31st, 2021. is appointment 01599, appointment of Bianca Johnson as a member of the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board for a term to March 31st, 2022. Appointment 01601, appointment of S.D.

Mintz as a member of the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board for a term to March 31st, 2022.

Thank you.

We're going to hear from Polly Membrino at SDOT about these applicants.

Go ahead, Polly.

Hi, thank you for having me.

My name is Polly Membrino.

I'm the SDOT liaison for the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board.

The board oversees the pedestrian master plan and provides guidance to council, the mayor, and SDOT to promote safer and more comfortable crossings and pedestrian spaces.

They provide guidance and their insight on projects and the process for approving pedestrian projects, and they present a report at the end of the year as well.

It consists of 11 members plus one YMCA Young Adult Get Engaged member, and I'm here today to bring forth the appointments of Maria Sumner, Bianca Johnson, and Esty Mintz.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now, we have the packets of those applicants, and those are available to the public as well.

Polly, could you give us just a couple of sentences on each one?

Sure.

I believe they're all here as well.

Do you want me to introduce them or have them introduce themselves?

Sure.

Yeah, that would be great.

OK, great.

First on the agenda is Maria Sumner.

Hi, good morning, everybody.

Like Polly said, my name is Maria.

I work at Facebook as a program manager working on natural language processing.

I've been in Seattle about five years now, and I currently live in District 5 in the Meadowbrook community.

And I'm an avid runner, dog mom, and really hoping to work with the board on making Seattle pedestrian activity safer and more equitable for all.

Thank you, Maria.

Any questions for Maria from the council members?

Councilor Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Maria, I'm really glad to have you joining the Pedestrian Advisory Board.

In particular, living in the Meadowbrook area, I'm sure that you have firsthand experience with the lack of sidewalks or sidewalks being there and our ability to put in temporary measures that that improve the pedestrian experience such as around Nathan Hill High School.

I know in the past that used to be gravel driveways and there wasn't a clear distinction between if you were in the street or on the sidewalk.

Do you have any thoughts that you'd like to share with the committee about the Meadowbrook area and the ability to have a safe pedestrian experience in that area?

Yeah, so we're not too far from the stay healthy streets that are a little bit farther north in the Lake City area.

So what I've been noticing in our community is people kind of using the streets as if they're already stay healthy streets.

So any ways we can expand that or just expand safe passages, whether that's sidewalks or markings or things to keep people safe who are walking around, that's the direction I'd like us to move here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Maria, for joining us today.

And Polly, if Bianca or Etsy are here?

Yes.

Next on the agenda is Bianca Johnson.

Hello, Bianca Johnson.

So I am actually originally from California by way of Arizona.

I have found my way into Seattle for the past four years now.

So I currently work as a support manager at a local startup, and I'm actually moving into the UW to pursue my MPA in September.

So big transition.

And being a part of the pedestrian advisory board really allows me to add a bit of the things that I do outside of work.

As you can see in my resume, I have a lot of community work that I like to be involved in.

And so moving over to the MPA program will be a new step in that direction.

And as far as the Pedestrian Advisory Board goes, I was really interested because I grew up in an area that lacked public transportation.

And so moving to Seattle, a big decision for me was the first thing I looked at was the bus routes.

How can I get around without a car?

And so Seattle really has on the pedestal and that was really important to me.

And so to be able to add that perspective of not having a car and at the same time having grown up without the car is really important.

So that would be, that's my contribution to the board there.

Thank you, Bianca.

Any questions from council members?

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Bianca, can I take a guess?

Do you use the route 40?

I did when I was going to work, yes.

Fair enough.

And I also noticed that you spent some time in Davis, California.

And can you share any lessons that you learned from Davis that has a very robust bicycle network and what lessons you learned there and how that can be applied to Seattle?

Yeah.

So I should start by saying I never rode my bike on campus.

I was way too scared.

The bike circles are something that is, you know, it's a new it's its own kind of beast.

But I think that the the way that cars interacted with bikes was a huge.

it was a huge thing that made a difference when you felt safe to ride your bike.

There's a difference between, you know, riding within the bike lanes and, you know, thinking that you're safe and then having the mindset of the cars that way.

And I think Seattle's making its way down there.

I think over on Fremont where that, you know, there's that kind of cut turn there that cars actually just instinctively know to yield.

And so those kind of, that kind of mindset is super helpful to pedestrians and bicyclists at the same time.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Bianca, for being here.

And Polly, should we see if Esty's available?

Yes.

I see.

I believe Esty is on the call, Esty Mintz.

Oh, great.

Hi, Esty.

Go ahead, Esty.

Hi.

My name is Esty Mintz.

I've been living in Seattle and using public transportation and going around sidewalks and where they exist for close to 40 years.

I've worked mostly downtown and the university district and later on the east side most of this time.

And I've done all of that using public transportation because I cannot drive.

My goal as being a member of this committee is to look especially at improving sidewalks and improving walkability for people, especially people with disability, people in wheelchairs, people that have bad eyesight and can't see, different obstacles on the way, which happened very often, was broken sidewalks.

I said, I live in your district, Mr. Patterson, and you know that some of those sidewalks are broken, or don't even exist, and we have quite a few.

But everywhere in the city, there are problems.

And that's what I'd like to promote.

That's my goal.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thanks for all the applicants for volunteering your time for this important work and for advising all the policymakers, not just the council members.

And Polly, thanks for bringing these applicants forward to us today.

And council members, I move that the committee recommend confirmation.

Oh, Council Member Herbold.

I wanted to wait until I heard from everybody and I had just a question for either all of the members or any of the members who are interested in addressing this.

Given that we have the scooter legislation before us later in this meeting, I'd be really interested to hear from the Pedestrian Advisory Board members, your advice to us for how we can make good policy that recognizes the needs of pedestrians to use those things that we call sidewalks, things that are to walk on, to minimize the interference from people using scooters to people walking on sidewalks.

That is an area that I have a great concern for the general pedestrian community specifically.

And then I also have a concern focused on pedestrians who are differently abled as well.

So just would love to hear from you, your wise counsel on this topic that we're about to take up.

Thank you.

If I can comment, yes, it's becoming a problem when you have sidewalks and walking areas being used for different purposes.

Today, you have the problem of restaurants and cafes extending over sidewalks.

Now we're going to add scooters to that and people that walk.

It would be wonderful if there was an ability to designate certain areas for passing or for This is, you know, in a way like what we have around Green Lake, not everybody follows that, but we do try to indicate, please go this way if you're using a bike and go this way if you're walking and things.

It would be really nice if there was an ability to separate, to have lanes separated somehow.

to make it easier.

Because I know I, for example, come across quite a few barriers and actually crashed, had bikes or I mean bikes on the Berkelman Trail, for example, crashing to me and stuff.

So we have to try to separate those things.

Thank you, ST, and Bianca and Maria, if you have any comments.

Yeah, just just to add on to what I see was saying the more we can inform folks on guidelines Just as when we you know bikes and pedestrians have certain rules of the road how they're going to get along I'd like to see really clear guidelines on how we can make this work because it's it's just another mode of transportation to add to the mix and especially any visual markings we can we can have for like a indicating those guidelines and making it clear where and where they cannot go.

That would be super helpful.

Thank you.

And Bianca, if you're still there, you want to address scooters?

Nothing additional from me.

I think Esty summed it up really well when I think about Green Lake and I was on my bike this weekend and knew not to go on there because of the not public shame.

But I think there's a level of that that is very helpful for people to kind of self-inform each other.

And I think as soon as we kind of get that rolling, that will be helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Councilor Strauss, I didn't know if you had a question earlier.

Council Member Herbold asked it.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Thanks again.

And thanks for our appointees answering questions like that.

Really appreciate that.

So Council Members, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of these appointments, appointments 01598, 01599, and 01601. Is there a second?

Second.

Great, it's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of these appointments.

Any final comments from the council members?

Okay, will the clerk, oh, Council Member Herbold.

I just wanted to extend my thanks to the work and the time that folks are giving to this really critical issue.

The pedestrian master plan is one of those transportation-based plans that I always feel needs more attention, both to the policy-based recommendations as well as the I appreciate the willingness of folks to spend their time on this important part of our transportation network.

So thank you and congratulations, almost.

Thank you.

All right.

It's been moved and seconded.

We've heard comments.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that these appointments be confirmed?

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

It's a unanimous five votes.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the September 8th city council meeting.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you, Polly.

Thank you council.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Esty.

Thanks Bianca.

Thanks Maria.

Item six, will the clerk please read item six into the record?

Clerk, go ahead and read item six.

You're on mute.

It's Council Bill 119858, an ordinance relating to the financing of the West Seattle Bridge Immediate Response Project, creating a fund for depositing proceeds of taxable limited tax general obligation bonds in 2021. authorizing the loan of funds in the amount of $50 million from the Construction and Inspections Fund and $20 million from the REET2 Capital Projects Fund to the 2021 LTGO Taxable Bond Fund for early phases of work on the Bridge Repair and Replacement Project, amending Ordinance 12600. which adopted the 2020 budget, including the 2020-2025 Capital Improvement Program, changing appropriations to the Seattle Department of Transportation, and revising project allocations and spending plans for certain projects in the 2025 CIP.

Thank you.

And obviously, repairing or replacing the West Seattle Bridge is a priority.

We've declared it an emergency.

It's received a lot of attention from everybody, city government working on transportation, Council Member Herbold has been a leader on this.

Council Member Herbold, did you wanna make any introductory remarks about this item before we turn it over to central staff and SDOT?

Yeah, I just wanna say, I think the fact that we have really two really, important actions that the city has been Driving forward this week, both the SDOT's hiring of the design and the council's consideration of this financing legislation shows that the city is jointly, both the council and the executive is jointly considering the impacts of the bridge closer with urgency and moving forward expediently on addressing not only the decisions about whether or not to repair or replace, but also what is necessary to implement any of those decisions that will be made in the next month or two.

point in particular would love to be added as a sponsor to this legislation.

Chair Peterson, if that is okay with you.

And just want to jump right into the presentation from SDOT.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

And we've got Calvin Chow from Central Staff here with us.

And we've got Director Sam Zimbabwe.

We've got Heather Marks from SDOT.

Calvin, did you want to make any introductory remarks before SDOT jumps into the presentation?

No, Council Member.

I think it's a fairly significant presentation, so I'll save my comments for later.

OK.

Director Zimbabwe.

All right, thank you, council members, and future council members, it seems like, this morning, too.

Thanks for having us here.

We're excited about being here and talking about where we are, where we're going, and the importance of this interfund loan to make sure that we continue to make progress on all of the things that we are doing around the West Seattle High-Rise Bridge safety project.

It is hard to believe that it's been almost five months, if I'm doing my math correctly, since we were last here, maybe four months, May, June, July, August, four months since we were last here talking to you at the full council.

Rest assured that there has been a lot of work that has gone on and continues to go on.

And we'll talk a little bit about that, where we are going.

And then I'll turn it over to Heather to talk about where we're going and the meat of the subject today.

So since that April 20th briefing, we declared a city emergency the first time we've done so for a piece of infrastructure.

We mobilized and began stabilization work for the high bridge and are working to advance that on the low bridge as well.

We are advancing all of our options on repair or replace of the bridge simultaneously to restore traffic as quickly as we are able.

We've also made at the same time knowing the impacts that this is already having on communities on both sides of the Duwamish.

We've made 175 individual traffic and detour route improvements to date.

We know there's still more work that needs to be done.

We've done a lot of work to engage the public.

and identify other external funding opportunities and partners that we know will be needed to restore this critical connection.

There's two pieces that we'll talk about today.

The inter-fund loan that was read into the subject of this, and then also automated enforcement that we think is going to be critically important to maintain traffic mitigation that we've been able to do so far and maintain the critical access of the low bridge for emergency vehicles, freight and transit.

Just a reminder, the West Seattle Bridge, we closed the bridge on March 23rd due to rapid growth in cracking along the center section of the bridge.

And we've got this image of just how much those cracks grew in the three weeks, two and a half weeks prior to the closure.

After we closed the bridge, crack growth continued.

but slowed, and throughout this process, safety has been our top priority in closing and taking the difficult decision to close the bridge, in thinking about how we manage mitigations and manage the various access, and making sure that our crews and contractors are safe as well.

When we closed the bridge on March 23rd, it was unplanned, so we hadn't done any of the budget things that we would normally do for a project that we were planning ahead.

Some of the work that we are doing with this Interfund loan now is getting things back into sort of a more planned state and making sure that we have all the resources in place necessary to keep making the progress that we've already made.

What's changed in the last few months?

Well, we've outfitted both the high bridge and the low bridge with intelligent monitoring systems that are monitoring 24-7 to give us advance warning of a potential critical failure.

But also, we can learn things as we do actions like raising the work platforms up.

We can see how the bridge responds and understand where there is still strength and where repairs might be needed and what the feasibility and cost of those repairs are.

Our non-destructive evaluations using technological means to understand how the interior of the bridge works has found substantial strength in the post-tensioning steel strands that are embedded within the concrete of the bridge structure.

That's very good news in terms of both the likelihood of a catastrophic failure and also what our options are for repair and replacement as well.

And then the technical advisory panel that we have convened confirmed our initial determination that repair is possible, is feasible, but we have not yet made the determination of whether that repair is advisable.

And that's really the decision that we're in now that Heather will talk a little bit more about.

What the right pathway forward and how we best and with the best stewardship of the asset and the need for the community to get back and forth between West Seattle and the rest of the region, how we best make progress and.

take the next steps.

There's three ongoing categories of work that we'll talk about on the bridge, the bridge structure itself, on the ground, all the things that we are doing around the bridge closure and the mitigations for the traffic, and then in the community, what we're doing to engage and communicate and hear feedback from the broader community about what and how we are doing this work.

So with that, I will turn it over to Heather, who's coordinating all of these efforts for the department.

Nice one.

I'm Heather marks.

I am the director of downtown mobility for as well as the program director for the West Seattle bridge safety program.

I'm very pleased to be here today and thank you for having us.

So as Sam mentioned, we declared the West Seattle Bridge an emergency and expect to support funding, permitting and materials acquisition.

We've developed an emergency contingency plan in case the worst happens with the city and other interagency partners.

We've also installed 76 monitoring devices on both the high bridge and the low bridge so that we can monitor 24-7 what's happening with the structural health of the bridge.

We've created a technical advisory panel full of geotechnical and structural engineers to help inform and guide the city's recommendations.

We've started bridge stabilization work if you've had a chance to go over the low bridge on your bicycle, of course.

And gaze up, you can see the platforms that they are using to do that stabilization.

And we have finished the search for the team to design the eventual replacement.

We announced that yesterday.

It is HNTB.

Next slide, please.

Here are some pictures of the stabilization platforms that you can see.

They are at work and they are able to move back and forth across the length of the bridge.

They are installing three layers of carbon reinforced fiber.

polymer to, it's sort of like an ace bandage or a band-aid to help, it's stiffer though, a lot, to help support the bridge.

And we are also installing some additional external post-tensioning.

These are all activities that are intended to prevent the catastrophic failure of the bridge, which we consider to be of paramount importance.

Next slide, please.

We're also monitoring the low bridge.

The low bridge is a critical bridge in our infrastructure in normal times, and now it is more essential than it ever has been.

Recent updates in federal regulations require a structural and operational response to the bridge.

The bridge is now equipped with complete structural health monitoring instrumentation.

And we are in the process of selecting a designer and contractor to do this important strengthening work that's required.

Operationally, until we can get that strengthening work done, we have lowered the speed limit and we've added weight restrictions for the very largest trucks that are allowed on city streets.

Next slide, please.

We have this little graphic that shows the direction we'll go if we select a repair.

or a replacement, we expect to have that decision made this fall.

And if we go with the repair route, it is with the intention of replacing the bridge as well.

We would just take a longer time to do a careful job of that.

We would expect that in roughly 2032, we would have a replaced bridge.

Sorry, we would start work on the replaced bridge that would give us a 75 year life If we pivot directly to replacement, we could have an open repair to replace bridge by 2024 to 2026. Next slide, please.

So in order to achieve that, to take that decision, whether to repair or replace, we're engaging with our engineering consultants, the technical advisory panel and the community task force in a cost-benefit analysis.

So what that does is weighs the pros and cons of the multiple options to help us arrive at a decision of whether to repair or replace the West Seattle High Bridge.

However, it's important to note that this is a tool, it's not a decision-making machine.

And so it's gonna evaluate those pros and cons, but ultimately SDOT is going to develop a recommendation and present that to the mayor.

based not only on the cost-benefit analysis, but on the full range of information that comes to us.

It also is not gonna produce a precise cost estimate.

This is a very frustrating thing, not only for you and the public, but also for us.

In order to get a precise cost estimate, we need to have a much more significant level of design than the cost-benefit analysis is gonna provide for us.

However, the cost benefit analysis does consider a range of rough order of magnitude costs.

And it's so critical that it's given a factor to be layered upon the attributes that we're going to discuss here in the next couple of slides.

Council Member Herbold has a question.

Go ahead Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, I'm sorry, I will have a question on the cost benefit analysis, but I would like to go back to both the stabilization on the West Seattle Bridge and the strengthening work on the lower level bridge.

If you could just refresh my memory, what's the timeline for completing the stabilization on the high bridge.

And then as it relates to low bridge strengthening, do you have an estimate when it will happen?

And can you remind me whether or not it is expected to involve closures?

So the stabilization of the high bridge is going to continue on through the fall and early winter.

You know, every action that they take is providing stabilization activity.

So every moment of work that we do on that high bridge is continuing to shore.

shore it up.

As far as the low bridge goes, that's going to be probably a two-year project, but we're engaged right now in selecting the designer and contractor for that strengthening work.

So that is also on a very fast track because of the criticality of the low bridge, especially in our current environment.

There may be some short-term closures of the low bridge, but we don't expect any long-term closures of the low bridge for the strengthening work that needs to be done.

Obviously, that's a guess at this point.

We don't have a contractor on board, nor do we have a design.

And so more will come there, but everybody at SDOT and hence everybody who's going to be involved in the design and building process of that low bridge strengthening understands just how important the low bridge is to the system.

And so we'll minimize any necessary closures.

Thank you.

Okay, next slide please.

So this slide shows the process that we're going through with the cost benefit analysis.

The phase one is over.

So we've identified the attributes, we've gained the input from the technical advisory panel as well as the community task force about the attributes and we've also determined the most important criteria so that we can begin the analysis.

And we did that, I'll talk a little bit more about this through a waiting process.

Waiting, not waiting.

Phase two is ongoing right now through early October.

This is going to be applying the attributes to the 10% design that we need to create for all of the options.

It's going to score those attributes.

It's going to determine those rough order of magnitude costs that I discussed.

It's going to quantify the results.

And then it's going to present a recommendation, which we will share with both the technical advisory panel and the community task force.

In early to mid-October, we should have all of that quantified and SDOT should be able to present not only the cost-benefit analysis report, but also our ultimate recommendation to the mayor about whether we want to pursue repair and then replace, or if we want to pivot directly to replacement.

Next slide, please.

So on the ground, we've already made 175 traffic improvements.

And I know that's a really specific number, but I tell you, we have a list.

So we've installed real-time cameras.

We've connected signals at intersections into the main system so that we can adjust signal timing remotely.

We're displaying travel times on dynamic message signs via West Marginal Way instead of the high bridge.

We've installed a temporary traffic signal at Highland Parkway and Southwest Holden.

We've repaved the five-way intersection, which is the photo that you're seeing here.

We've also repaved Roxbury between 16th and 18th in a joint project with King County Roads.

And we pulled that off as a coordinated project really quickly.

And I wanna thank Council Member Herbold for her help making that happen.

We've also improved the intersection at 16th and Holden with the signal and channelization improvements long anticipated by the community.

We've also added speed signs and removed tree obstructions on Sylvan Way.

That turned out to be a favorite back route, and so we've done some things to make that a little safer.

We've also launched ReConnect West Seattle, which I'll talk about a little bit more in this presentation.

Next, please.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just wanted to, in addition to all this work that you're doing to make the detour routes work smoothly for the community, I want to give a special thank you for, despite the fact it wasn't in any of the neighborhood focus surveys, you included improvements for Sylvan Way, and that really shows your willingness to be flexible and respond to feedback from the community about what they're seeing on the ground, rather than just sticking to what might be the preconceived notions of where the traffic impacts are the greatest in the communities that are most impacted by those impacts.

So really, again, appreciate your willingness to make these improvements on Sylvan Way despite that neighborhood not being called out within the surveys.

Absolutely, you're very welcome.

And I just want to note that because this is an emergency situation, and there was, you know, nobody planned any of this, we're having to be, you know, it is necessary for us to be responsive to what communities are seeing.

And that's a key goal of our program.

So our vision for ReConnect West Seattle is to support- Excuse me, Heather, Council President- Sorry.

That's okay.

In a Zoom world, it's easy for us to just sort of plow on through, and I appreciate that.

Sorry.

No, that's okay.

No need to apologize.

On the 175 traffic improvements, obviously this slide doesn't include all 175 traffic improvement, but I did want to take the opportunity to acknowledge That the impacts of the West bridge closure and reroute obviously has impacts regionally, but but also in other parts of the city in in the Southwest Southeast area.

And so just.

I feel remiss in not lifting that up and just giving you an opportunity to really quickly share with us a couple of thoughts around how you all are addressing traffic impacts and improvement needs as a result of the West Seattle Bridge in neighborhoods like Georgetown and South Park as well.

This is very focused on sort of the adjacent areas, the immediately geographically adjacent areas to where the Low and High Bridge are at.

But I acknowledge and recognize that there are other parts of the city that are experiencing traffic impacts as a result of the detours and diversions and trying to just figure out how to get around and into and out of West Seattle.

So maybe you can share with us a little bit more about what has been doing there.

Absolutely, Councilmember.

And thank you very much for bringing that up.

Making sure that we are attending to and caring for the needs of the communities that are most impacted by the closure of the West Seattle Bridge, particularly by additional detour traffic, is something that is of the utmost importance.

And a little bit later on in the presentation, I'm going to go into that a little bit more deeply.

Should you have additional questions beyond what's in my presentation, of course, I'm happy to respond to that.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Next slide, please.

hear some words about that.

In fact, we want to make sure that during this time of West Seattle Bridge closure that we're supporting similar levels of travel across the Duwamish as those that we saw before the high rise bridge closed.

Now this is a big challenge for us because we used to have 21 lanes across the Duwamish and now we have 12. So clearly to support that same level of transportation with fewer lanes, it means we're going to have to explore options beyond the single occupant vehicle.

We also, you'll note, have a goal of reducing the environmental injustices that impact communities in the Duwamish Valley.

South Park and Georgetown, particularly South Park, but Georgetown as well, play host to significantly higher levels of air pollution than other parts of the city, as well as their proximity to a Superfund site.

And so we're well aware that not only additional traffic through those neighborhoods is a nuisance, but it is also creating additional air pollution in those areas that can ill afford it.

Through a community led process, we've identified the challenges and prioritize solutions that are going to help increase options for transit ridership, bike and pedestrian trips for those who are able, of course, and safety on our streets and sidewalks.

Next slide, please.

So there are three parts of ReConnect West Seattle.

The first are the neighborhood mitigation strategies, and those are the ones that are particularly focused on the neighborhoods of the southern part of West Seattle, including Roxhill, South Delridge, Riverview, and Highland Park, as well as South Park, Georgetown, and Soto.

And so we've created specific neighborhood traffic mitigation plans for those neighborhoods that include things like traffic calming and wayfinding and improvements to the streetscape that are going to help minimize the impact of those detour routes.

In addition, we've created some network connectivity plans with key connections for freight and bicycles.

And we have a broader mobility action plan that reimagines and reorients transportation in West Seattle across the Duwamish Valley.

Next slide, please.

So I'm pretty proud of the level of input that we received to our surveys.

It's pretty impressive.

For the mobility action plan surveys, we had more than 15,000 responses, which is about 22% of registered voters in that area.

And we also received more than 1,600 neighborhood prioritization ballots.

We went to some particular lengths with our partners at the Department of Neighborhoods for in-language and in-person and virtual outreach through their community liaisons.

to communities that are a little bit more challenging to reach.

We also had a significant presence on ethnic media and made sure that all of our materials were translated, of course, and available in all the languages that are the most prevalent in the neighborhoods that are included in that neighborhood traffic mitigation portion of our program.

Next slide, please.

So the big themes are from the mobility action plan are to do a significant mode shift from where we were in 2019. So all those surveys confirmed that social distancing results in fewer trips today than in 2019, which is pretty evident if you're out on the streets.

The only mode though that has maintained its same level is bicycling.

The surveys also indicate that we can achieve that mode split with some additional travel options and investments.

And we also learned that when social distancing ends, may that be soon and in our days, respondents indicate that they do plan to drive less than they did before and take more trips on the water taxi, bicycles, carpool, and vanpool than they did in 2019. Next slide, please.

From the neighborhood ballots, as I mentioned, we focused on Highland Park, Roxhill, South Delridge, Riverview, South Park, Georgetown, and Soto.

We found that the items that folks are most concerned about in those neighborhoods are traffic and congestion.

pedestrian safety and accessibility, speeding, and of course, the environmental impacts and pollution.

The top priority projects of these three categories, some of them are in progress right now.

Some of them can be done before the end of 2020. And some of those projects are going to be completed in 2021 after some further refinement and conversation with those communities that I mentioned.

Next slide, please.

Meanwhile, I've been spending a lot of time with a lot of stakeholder groups.

So we go out and- Excuse me, I'm Council Member Herbold.

Hi, Council Member.

Yeah, on that last slide, I just wanted to recognize that I really appreciate the focus, using an equity focus to focus on those particular neighborhoods.

But also the reality is that These are also the neighborhoods that are experiencing the highest traffic volumes, and that is occurring in South Park and South Delridge.

And so I think it's important to recognize not just the equity focus based on lack of historical investment in infrastructure in those communities, but also the significant detour impact in those communities.

And also, and so the investments are really important because we're also thinking forward to the fact that a replacement or fix the bridge that results in traffic diversion to Southern communities could have this effect permanently.

So I really appreciate the conceptually that SDOT through this approach is connecting sort of the historical inequities around investment in these communities to the current impacts to these communities, to what may be future greater impacts to these communities in using this particular approach for investment.

So just another thanks.

Well, thank you very much Council Member Herbold.

And one of the things that's gonna allow us to continue to make those investments both for current conditions and future conditions and to make up for past inequities is exactly the funding that we are talking about that is the subject of the legislation today.

So as I mentioned, I've been meeting with lots of stakeholder groups and we've also created a 40 person community task force to inform and guide the city's response to the bridge closure.

We are communicating all the time through our website, blog, email lists, and media.

If you are interested in signing up for those updates, please go to the website and sign up.

There's a little subscribe now button.

We also started out our low bridge access really limited.

We just limited the low bridge to transit, freight, and emergency vehicles.

But over time, we've been able to collect enough data to identify that there are there's some additional capacity on the low bridge.

And so we've extended that access to some very specific and community of maritime workers, some essential van pools that are run by King County Metro Transit.

shuttles that are run by large employers and also to support business access for West Seattle businesses in both the junction and throughout West Seattle.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

On the business shuttles, I appreciate that SDOT has approved, I think, 22 business shuttles for a number of different businesses.

I learned last week, though, that those shuttles, for the most part, aren't under operations because many of the businesses, there are large businesses that we've awarded the ability to use shuttles to are still doing stay at work.

And so they're just not finding it necessary to operate those shuttles.

And I know that there are requests from, for instance, the West Seattle Chamber to fill some of those, for lack of a better word, I think, Heather, you've referred to them maybe as slots.

And I'm just wondering, what can we do to meet the need that exists now while saving capacity for the need that may not exist now, but that we're sort of reserving for businesses who are gonna need it later?

Yeah, that is, it's a good question and we are actively engaged in solving that right now.

We're on a little bit of a razor's edge because on the one hand, if there's any capacity, we wanna make sure that we're able to provide it to those small businesses that need to have easy access back and forth across the bridge to go to Costco or whatever they need to support their businesses.

On the other hand, when we do get back to a situation where employers are going to be wishing for their employees to come back into the office, we're going to need to have that available too.

creating a situation where we're going to say, here are some passes, psych, we need them back, doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.

So we're trying to figure out how to make that happen in a way that's going to feel equitable.

And that's also going to support our transportation goals.

So I got my eyes on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

So important to the low bridge is automated enforcement.

As I mentioned, we're trying to maintain the level of traffic on the low bridge that allows emergency vehicles to make it back and forth.

I think we can probably all agree that in a global pandemic, having emergency access across the bridge is pretty important.

So right now we have Seattle Police Department traffic officers enforcing the exclusion of individual cars from going across that low bridge.

They only are in place in the morning peak and the afternoon peak.

This is not a sustainable situation.

And so we were fortunate last legislative session to have the revised code of Washington updated to include automated enforcement for this kind of purpose.

The low bridge is within that area.

We're going to need to update the Seattle Municipal Code in accordance with those recent changes.

And so if you haven't already, you'll be receiving a piece of legislation on that topic.

So the new state law allows the use of automated enforcement for transit lanes, blocking the box, and traveling in restricted lanes.

You may recall that about this time last year, I was probably briefing you on The situation with congestion downtown, that's less of a problem right now.

But fortunately, this legislation helps us where we need it the most.

Cameras are permitted in greater downtown and select arterials, including the Spokane Street Low Bridge.

There are existing privacy safeguards and public noticing requirements that will apply to this program.

And the ordinance will be transmitted as soon as the fiscal note is finalized.

Next slide, please.

So we hope to have that pilot project started this fall.

I just wanted to give a shout out to Representative Joe Fitzgibbons for his work in Olympia, session after session after session, to get this legislation passed.

It was real, I mean, obviously, we have a need to protect our transit lanes and our pedestrians related to Block the Box.

And that predated the failure of the bridge.

And I'm just so happy that even in the 11th hour on the deliberations around this legislation, there were efforts to make it geographically focused.

in downtown Seattle, and Representative Fitzgibbon's made sure that West Seattle bus lanes were covered in the legislation.

Really, really prescient for the conditions that we're dealing with now.

Yes, and we are all very, very grateful to the work that all of our elected officials did to make that happen.

It's really going to make things a lot easier The camera automated enforcement on that low bridge are going to be similar to red light and school enforcement.

The registered vehicle owner will receive a warning notice with no penalty through the end of 2020. In January, they will start issuing tickets with a $75 maximum fine.

It requires local legislation.

So you will be seeing that shortly.

And we're expecting to roll out additional locations in the city in 2021. But right now, we're most focused on the low bridge.

Next slide, please.

So yes.

Once the automated cameras are operating, is there any likelihood that SDOT will go back to review the access policies for the lower level bridge?

Yeah, one of the things that the automated enforcement is going to do is allow us to create a more finely grained access policy for the low bridge.

Right now, we have to sort of assume that every vehicle is going to show up at the same time.

And we know that that's not true in the real world, but how to control that is one of our problems.

With automated enforcement, it makes it a lot more accessible to know that we're going to have certain kinds of vehicles that are going to be using the bridge at certain hours of the day so that we can maybe open up additional access in those times that have lower volumes.

Absolutely.

Okay, are we ready to talk about the Interfund Loan?

So because it's an emergency, we could not follow the typical and traditional planning process and budgeting cycle.

And so we, since the beginning, since we closed the bridge, have been incurring non-budgeted costs in existing programs.

And we've been keeping track of those in a very granular way so that we can assure to attribute those to the right things as we get a new program set up.

Programs that have been bearing those costs are mostly bridge rehab and replacement.

So to ensure that we're resourced to do what's best, not only for West Seattle, but also for the Duwamish Valley, particularly in the realm of traffic improvements, as well as leveraging all possible federal, state, and local sources of money to fund repairs and replacement on the West Seattle Bridge, we need to have that City skin in the game.

In the meantime, though, we do have an immediate need for additional revenue because there are things that we need to be doing right now.

The $70 million Interfund loan is going to provide that needed cash flow to cover the expenses in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. Currently, the CIP only goes through 2021 because that's as far ahead as we can look at this moment.

Very soon, we're going to have that repair or replacement decision made and that's going to allow us to forecast costs out to the end of the program, we just don't know.

And I want to assure you that this is uncomfortable for all of us.

You know, SDOT is a department made of engineers and planners.

And so having to keep moving forward when we're blind to what the end of the road looks like is uncomfortable for us as well as I'm sure for you.

So we're going to refine those project costs for the CIP as we move beyond that repair or replace decision.

One of the things that might soothe you is that we have hired the design consultant that's going to help us move through the repair process.

And so we're well positioned to have some estimates very shortly after we make that decision of repairing or replacing.

Next slide, please.

So we estimate spending between $160 to $225 million over this year and next.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

The full program, depending on what we end up doing, could cost significantly more than $225 million.

It just depends on the repair or replacement decision.

That Interfund loan that I've been talking about is backed by a bond sale and would be borrowed from the city's Constructions and Inspections Fund and REIT II Capital Projects Fund and would be repaid by SDOT with a $100 million bond sale in 2021. We were just a little too late to do the bond sale in 2020. In addition to paying off that Interfund loan, the bond sale would also support $30 million worth of spending on the project in 2021. And any needed spending above that would be supported by a separate Interfund loan established if necessary in early 2021 to be repaid by a 2022 bond sale.

I hope you're following that because I'm not sure I am.

Yes, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

And so these will be 20-year bonds that are long-term government obligation bonds repaid by REIT.

For me, I'm comfortable with this transaction because the amount is only $70 million.

To me, REIT is not the most reliable of sources in terms of its steadiness, but this is a manageable amount.

When you talk about the spending range going up to, you know, from 160 to 225 million, we're gonna wanna, you know, talk about the repayment sources and get really deep into the costs.

As I understand this, is this 70 million broken into two pieces according to the legislation for two different purposes?

Could you explain that again?

Yeah, let me pull up my notes, because I don't have that off the top of my head, for which I am sorry.

So it's actually divided up into several pieces.

The whole amount is going to be spent on temporary shoring and or emergency control demo, depending on where we need to go with that.

Of course, the hybrid stabilization work that we're doing right now.

And that's a key thing to remember some of this work.

We're, we're already doing this.

These are expenditures that have already been made.

The low bridge repairs and improvements that I spoke of earlier in the presentation.

Communications with community, making sure that we are funding our technical advisory panel, also the planning and design contract for replacing the bridge, and the ReConnect West Seattle planning and implementation.

Those are the traffic improvements that we're making to make it a little easier on the communities that are bearing the brunt of those detours.

And then, of course, the bridge monitoring, testing, and maintenance of other bridges that are in that West Seattle Bridge corridor.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okie dokie.

Next slide, please.

Hey, what do you know?

Here's an answer to the question.

So I already said all of those things, so we'll move on to the next slide.

So one of the things I want to make clear is that SDOT is not anticipating that the city of Seattle is going to be expected to bear the entire cost of this project, whether it's repair or replacement.

We're in active conversations with our federal partners, including the delegation and local FHWA division and Build America.

We're, of course, speaking with our friends at the state and at the state delegation, as well as the Washington State Department of Transportation.

We've already been successful with almost $7 million of grants from the Puget Sound Regional Council.

The port and the Northwest Seaport Alliance benefit greatly from a repaired or replaced structure.

Sound Transit, we're always in conversation in the event that it turns out that a shared structure is a good way to go forward.

of course King County Metro.

We've also begun the search for a consultant who will perform an investment grade traffic and revenue study that will examine both how traffic is going to move and whether or not tolling or other forms of user fees are an important part of how we can move forward.

That's a long process and it's going to involve a great deal of equity work, and that's a key request that we have in the RFQ, as well as a vote and many, many more conversations with yourselves and other elected officials around the state.

Next slide, please.

And I just want to really appreciate the collaboration with other jurisdictions of government around the financial needs to repair or replace the bridge.

In particular, I want to thank Representative Congresswoman Jayapal for her close collaboration and communication with our office and SDOT as it relates to notifying us of the existence of this TIFIA grant, and want to just real quickly, if you don't mind, if you could just touch on the importance of the traffic and revenue study to funding sources like the TIFIA grant, also like if the infrastructure bill ever the federal infrastructure bill ever gets off the ground, I think there's a similar importance to do this type of traffic and revenue study for that funding source as well.

Right.

That's exactly right.

So TIFIA is actually a low-interest loan program.

And so any money that we got through TIFIA, we would need to pay back, just like we would pay back a bond issue.

And so should we decide that one of the ways that we want to pay not only for the construction of the repaired or new bridge, as well as the ongoing maintenance of that structure, tolling has to be an option in the current environment.

And so an option that we have to look at closely.

We don't have any foregone conclusions here.

But either to pay back bonds or to pay back a TIFIA loan, we would need to have a revenue source.

Indeed, to get permission to toll, not only from the voters, but also from the Washington State Transportation Commission, we're required to have this investment grade study.

So we don't know where we are.

We don't know how much this whole project is going to cost.

But we wanted to make sure that we were taking steps right now to prepare us in case that's a direction that we need to go.

In addition, at the federal level, certainly we're pursuing both authorizing and appropriations pathways to funding for the bridge.

And we have a constant and ongoing conversation with all of our transportation partners in the region.

They all absolutely understand the critical importance of the West Seattle Bridge, not just for the people of West Seattle and the Duwamish Valley, but also to support our port economy and how critical that's going to be as we try to make a comeback from COVID.

Let me also just jump in on the tolling and revenue study.

I think tolling is a really big subject and big topic that the city has not looked at in depth yet.

And as Heather said, there's no foregone conclusions about what that will yield, but it will give us a good sense of what the policy trade-offs and what some policy levers might be in thinking about how to manage the construction of the bridge and all the financial aspects as well.

Thank you.

I want to thank SDOT for combining the request for this council bill for the $70 million with a general update on the West Seattle Bridge, because we haven't heard from you in this particular form for a while, even though you've been out in the community and you've been doing a bunch of meetings with folks.

I want to thank you for combining it all into one piece here for us.

Council members on the committee, any other questions for SDOT at this time?

and want to give Calvin an opportunity to chime in as well.

I don't see any other questions right now.

Calvin, how are you doing with this proposal?

Council Member, I just have two comments that I'd like to make sure raised to your attention.

One is this legislation essentially does pledge $100 million of bond revenue in 2021. So that will have an impact on your consideration of the 2021 budget.

That will reduce the debt capacity available for other priorities.

That's the way that this works.

I just want to highlight that you will end up seeing this in the budget that comes across in the fall.

And a second item that I wanted to raise to you, you may recall that in the summer 2020 balance budget rebalancing council member Herbold sponsored an amendment to include the West Seattle Bridge as a CIP project.

So there is actually a technical amendment I'd like to request the council consider on section six of this legislation, which currently says that the West Seattle Bridge project is established in the CIP.

I'd ask you to consider amending it to say substituted because the project actually exists in law right now.

And I've confirmed this with the law department this morning who asked for this technical amendment.

Thank you.

Let me address both those items.

So the first one, just to clarify, the $100 million, that includes the $70 million.

That is $70 million that is being loaned to SDOT this year.

And the legislation anticipates a bond sale of up to $100 million that would support another $30 million for next year's spending.

OK, so it's $70 plus $30 gets us to the $100 million total.

Yes.

Not $170 million, but $100 million, including the $70 million.

Yes.

OK, good.

And then the council bill before us currently says section six, the West Seattle Bridge immediate response MCTRC110 project is established in the 2020-2025 adopted capital improvement program as described in attachment A to this ordinance.

And what I hear you saying is that you'd like us to amend that.

Could you restate what words would be struck, what words would be added?

The word established would be replaced with the word substituted.

The West Seattle Bridge immediate response project is substituted.

in the 2020-2025 Adopted Capital Improvement Program as described in attachment A to this ordinance.

I move to amend the council bill as such.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion on this amendment to the council bill 119858 as presented by our central staff?

Okay, so it's been moved and seconded.

Let's, uh, let's have the clerk call the roll on amending the council bill.

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Strauss.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Uh, back to Morales if you're there and unmuted.

Four yes, one missing.

Okay, so the amendment has been approved to this Council Bill 119858. Are there any other comments or questions now that the amended bill is in front of us?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Just wanted to thank Heather and Directors Zimbabwe and everyone else and Calvin and everyone working on this project.

This is an incredibly difficult and complex project to bring together and to fix.

And Heather, I am just continually impressed by the magic that you create for our city and our transportation and mobility, whether it's the squeeze downtown with the viaduct and now the over getting to the island of West Seattle.

So just want to compliment and thank you this robust presentation.

Thank you.

So the council bill 119858 has been amended and that amendments.

Um, now, now we're considering the amended bill.

So, um, let's have the clerk please call the roll on approval of the amended bill.

Council bill 119858. Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Aye.

Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five votes.

Yes.

Great.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that bill pass will be sent to the September 8th city council meeting.

Thank you everybody.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Now we have item number seven.

Will the clerk please read item number seven into the record?

Council Bill 119865, an ordinance relating to street and sidewalk use amending ordinance 125706 and the street use permit fee schedule authorized by Seattle Municipal Code section 15.04.074.

and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

One moment.

Okay, so we have SDOT here as well to talk about this item, item number seven, Council Bill 119865. Elizabeth Sheldon from SDOT, welcome.

And then Calvin Chow will remain with us.

Calvin, did you want to open up with any remarks, give a quick overview of this?

I think SDOT's presentation is a better place to start.

Okay, great.

Elizabeth, you're going to be somebody will establish, share something on the screen for us here.

Yes.

Thank you.

Council members for having us.

And I believe Sean is going to share the screen for the presentation.

And Elizabeth, could you speak up?

Oh, yeah, sure.

Is this better?

A little bit.

I will lean more forward and see if that works.

That's better.

So thank you for having us.

And I've been told to go quickly because I know there are two meaty subjects, the first one and the one following.

So I'm going to try to go quickly through this.

But please let me know if you have questions.

So Shauna, do you want to skip?

So let's yeah let's do that quickly.

So want to give you a quick update on and background on what the street use fees are.

A quick discussion of our proposed fee changes reasons and backgrounds why we are proposing these fee changes and then look at some impacts and a couple of project examples.

So next slide.

So a little bit of background as far as what street use fees are.

We have three large buckets of fees that we collect.

The first are permit issuance fees and renewal fees.

Those are generally used to recover mostly administrative time of processing permits.

So things like taking in payments and copying paper, filing.

that kind of thing.

We have hourly service rates.

Those are review and inspection rates that recover our staffing time for reviews and inspections.

And then the third large bucket of money is a more discretionary type of fund, and that is what we call our use and occupation fees.

Those fees are what are used essentially to disincentivize use of the right-of-way during construction and minimize the impacts for construction.

And those funds are That's what they're used for.

Next slide, Shauna.

So we are proposing three big changes to the use fee schedules, and you'll see actually two schedules in the legislation.

One is a ratify and confirm to make effective our changes and additions for temporary sidewalk closures or sidewalk cafes and vending.

And then also to include, we've recently started issuing temporary permits for street closures.

So either small spaces in the sidewalk or curb space or full street closures.

The second big change is we are looking at eliminating permit fees for sign permits.

We heard in January and pre-COVID from small businesses that our fees associated with sign permits were fairly expensive and duplicative of some of the other permits that we were issuing.

So we are looking at eliminating those fees.

And then finally, we are looking at Changing our use fees a bit.

Sorry about that.

Changing our use fees to better incentivize, disincentivize the use of sidewalks, bike lanes and transit lanes.

And then also really looking at.

shifting some of those costs when we originally implemented this fee schedule a few years ago now we were really looking at shifting some of the costs from the like middle income kind of housing projects so smaller townhomes to the larger downtown projects that are that are more impactful to more people and realized that we didn't It didn't quite meet where we wanted to get, so doing a little bit of shifting on the use fees.

And then the biggest thing is changing the methodology that we use to calculate those fees so that it reduces the amount of data entry time both for applicants and for us.

So I'll go into that a little bit later.

And we're proposing this now really because we need to implement this along with our launch of the Acela permitting system that's scheduled for November 7th.

Um, we had, um, not the, not the temporary permits, but the others, um, teed up pre COVID to start working on these.

And so it was a little bit of a, um, scramble to get it, get it to where it is now, um, given the COVID issues.

All right.

Um, next slide, Shauna.

So a quick update on our temporary business recovery permits.

So as of August 11th, we had 158 applications.

And as of yesterday, we had up to 165 applications.

We look like we have issued about 84 of them.

So a little over half have been issued.

And we're now working on, we've had 12 applications for street closures and four have been issued at this point.

Next slide.

Again, some of the reasons why we're looking at the change, and I am focusing a lot of this on the use fee methodology.

I am assuming and hoping that just given the temporary, the changes to the temporary permitting, everybody is fairly familiar with those.

So I wanted to more highlight the use fee methodology change.

So we're really looking at continuing to align where our use fees are charged with modal priorities.

So looking at further disincentivizing uses of sidewalks, bike lanes, and transit facilities.

Adding a little bit of transparency in the system.

A lot of that transparency is gonna come with the Acela system, where applicants are gonna be able to see where they are in the permitting process much better than they are now.

And then really focusing fees on the areas of greatest impact.

So where there are more people, making the use fees a little bit more proportionate to the impact to people versus the cost of the use fees.

We are really hoping that the new Excella system and in combination with the new calculation will really help to add some transparency and really simplify the amount of time that it takes for just data entry.

And I have a slide here that kind of illustrates that in a bit.

And then looking at, again, reducing fees for small businesses as much as possible and promoting the ability for middle income and low income housing in kind of the townhome and smaller development settings.

Next slide.

I'm going to skim through this pretty quickly.

So what we are looking at really is changing a lot of the factors that go into the use fee calculation and then also changing the calculation itself.

So we are looking at shifting some of the factors and again increasing the factors that are associated with transit, bike, and ped access.

And then looking at increasing the fee, the factor for urban centers a bit.

And that is primarily to cover the offset of the sign fees.

So we're eliminating the sign fee costs and then adding a little bit for urban center usage.

And then again, reducing the use fee factor if developments happen to be outside of urban centers or urban villages.

Next slide.

Again, this really talks about how we are simplifying the calculation.

So right now, for each frontage, either an applicant or someone in street use would have to enter essentially at least four lines of data entry.

And we're proposing to reduce that to one line.

And that doesn't seem like a huge deal.

But if you think in the grand scheme of issuing 20,000 permits a year, that adds up to a significant amount of just data entry time that we want to eliminate.

Next slide.

A little bit of look on how this might impact particular developments.

So looking at kind of the varied developments that we issue permits for, it is looking at increasing costs for downtown high-rise developments.

And these were given sample projects that are comparing kind of our change in time from 2005 to what our proposal is.

So it would increase downtown high-rise development projects, lower the cost for urban village townhomes, lower the cost a bit or maintain urban village mixed use, and then utility projects pay fairly minimal in-use fees as it is.

So looking at that.

Next slide.

So the costs for downtown are, you know, given if everything remained the same for a given development, the cost would increase.

But there are ways that any project could lower their cost.

And that's specifically by looking at, again, prioritizing sidewalks, bike lanes and transit lanes.

So there's there is work that a development could do to shift traffic and make sure sidewalks and bike facilities and transit lanes remain open.

and that would actually overall lower their cost from before.

A lot of developments choose not to do that, but we're hoping that with increased costs we can, or increased the use fees, we can again continue to disincentivize those kinds of uses of the right-of-way for private construction.

Next slide.

So where we're at we are looking at right now council briefing again the Temporary free permits have already been in effect since June We are looking at we did some preliminary outreach with developers back in January and February and did a little bit of reaching out before this legislation came to you for Review, but we're really looking at tying a lot of the use fee outreach to our launch of Excel.

So that would happen August through November.

And in October, we have scheduled public external workshops that will be using to like really train people on using the system and.

engagement with the use fees as well.

And then timing this again with our launch of Accela in November.

So November 7th is the date we would shift over from our current system to the new system and it would be really beneficial to have those fees in effect at the time that we do the launch.

So I went through that fairly quickly and I don't know if there are any questions.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes, thank you chair.

Thank you Elizabeth and your team has been fantastic and amazing in being able to roll out the sidewalk cafes and the cafe street permits and I know that you have maybe technical names and I'm just using plain language.

It has changed the fabric of our of our neighborhoods as we're seeing fewer cars in our downtown business areas and we are seeing COVID rates not being COVID not being transmitted in open air that this is using parking spaces in front of shops and sidewalk spaces is transforming our city in really positive and important ways.

My only question is, as the weather turns, are there considerations that we are taking in how to ensure that these businesses are able to still be able to use these sidewalk and parking spaces in front of their businesses?

You know that, thank you Councilmember Strauss.

It's something that we're starting to like think about as I'm looking outside and the leaves are starting to turn colors a little bit.

I think we've been really focused on kind of slow and thoughtful rollout of the temporary permits.

I think our kind of our next strategy is going to be to do some in-person outreach both for those communities where we're not seeing a lot of applications come in for the temporary sidewalk or vending to see if there are needs that we're not meeting with those permits and if we can add additional options or alternatives and then also to start doing some outreach to the The locations that have permits to see if there's, uh, how we can keep it going through through the fall in the winter.

And I'm assuming, although I'm not 100% sure that each business is probably going to have, um, or many businesses are going to have different and varied needs.

So, I think our next step is really to do that kind of follow up outreach and, um, information gathering and then go from there.

Great, I really just wanna thank you and your team and directors in Bobway for supporting this work so much.

I have further questions and with everything going on on this agenda, I'll follow up with you offline.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss for your leadership on this issue in terms of helping small businesses figure out other ways to thrive during COVID.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

And Alyssa, if you may have answered this, I got dropped off for a second here on the call or on the platform.

As it relates just generally to my understanding of regulatory fees, for the fees that are going to be free, but that still require staff work to process, and the fees that you are going to reduce the cost of, how do those, I mean, and I'm asking the question, I totally support the work that you're doing, I'm asking the question is because I have been, Every budget process asking the executive to identify regulatory fees that are supposed to that are designed to Recover the costs associated with delivering the regulation and so sort of user fee by user fee they've been making recommendations how to how to make sure that less general fund dollars are going into supporting those functions.

And so just generally, should we expect that these functions that either we're going to provide for free or functions that we are, not functions, the permits that we're going to provide for free or the permits that we are reducing the cost to deliver, Are the inspections and the reviews of those permits going to be supported by a larger amount of general funds now, or have we found a way to do them in such a way that they cost less to do?

Um, so not necessarily cost less to do, but what we are looking at doing and so that is 1 of the reasons why you saw that there was an increase in, um.

Our use fee calculation for urban centers, urban villages is really looking at ways that.

With our ability to provide some discretionary fees that are on top of our just straight revenue collection.

So our permit issuance fees and our.

Hourly rates are very much tied to the cost that it takes for us to do business.

But in our use and occupation fees, we are able to use that as a bigger kind of pool that we can look at offsetting some costs of positive uses of the right of way.

So, where we want to have the temporary sidewalk cafes and temporary bending.

Or some other things block parties and there are some other things along those lines that we are able to actually.

Change the amount of those use fees so we can increase the use fees to.

Both disincentivize use of the right away and then also take those fees for those who.

Choose to not keep sidewalks open or choose to not have bike lanes open and kind of ship those costs.

or shift those fees that we collect over to the positive uses that we want to see.

So we're able to kind of work within our own cost center to shift funding.

Thank you, Heather.

That's helpful.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I agree.

We also want to make sure that those benefiting from those are paying for it.

We're not using the general fund dollars to subsidize it to the extent possible.

Calvin, please.

Council Members, just to remind you that one of Council's standard questions during the budget process is an accounting of the street use cost center.

As I recall last year, it did subsidize some other program offerings in the department and did not use any general fund dollars.

There may be other programs within the department that do use some of that money, but it wasn't from the district use cost center.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions on this Council Bill 119865?

councilmembers, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119865. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill.

Are there any further comments?

Great.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 119865. Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Aye.

Strauss.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Morales off mute.

Four votes yes.

Aye.

No.

Yes.

Great.

Sorry, everybody.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

The bill passes committee unanimously and that bill will be sent to the September 8th Seattle City Council meeting.

That brings us to items eight and nine, which are about scooters.

So they're both separate council bills that we'll have to vote on separately.

The presenters will be the same, and it's the same PowerPoint presentation.

And we'll just get all our questions out at the same time here.

But we'll have the clerk go ahead and read item eight into the record.

Do you want me to read both eight and nine?

It seems, unless I hear negative from the backup clerk, I'll do that and then we'll take separate votes.

Council Bill 119867. an ordinance relating to the city's traffic code amending sections 11.46.010 and 11.46.020 of the Seattle Municipal Code to revise permissible areas of operation in the right-of-way and other public pathways for electric personal assistive mobility devices and motorized foot scooters.

Council Bill 119868, an ordinance relating to use of city right of way by free floating scooters, amending section 15.17.005 of the Seattle Municipal Code, adopting a free floating scooter share program fee schedule, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

Okay, so both of these council bills go together to authorize a scooter pilot program.

We're going to hear from SDOT, from folks at SDOT, and they're gonna go through a presentation.

Council Member Strauss, did you wanna have any opening remarks?

And then we can ask Calvin if he wants to say anything for opening remarks.

Sure, thank you, Chair Peterson.

As I've said before, we've been having this academic conversation regarding scooters for 18 months or longer.

I still have many concerns about safety, how we are parking these devices, et cetera.

And Council Member Peterson, the questions that we discussed last night, I will let you ask those questions since they are your questions.

And they are many of the same questions that I have.

And so while I still have many concerns that I think need to be addressed, we are at a point where the academic conversation has gone on long enough that if we don't try this in the real world to see if this program does work and is appropriate for our city, we are just gonna continue circling around the same questions that can only be answered if we try it out in the real world.

And so that's why I find that a pilot is important and that it is important to move now because if we are able to allow people to learn to ride these scooters in good weather.

When it's not rainy and dark.

We have a higher likelihood of people being able to use these in a responsible and effective manner that is taking into consideration their safety.

And so I.

I have many questions that I'll be asking today.

I support the questions that you raised with me and others last night, Chair Peterson.

And I think that some of the points that you brought up, Chair Peterson, are going to be needed to be addressed.

So I'll let you ask that.

All that to say is we are beyond the point of circling around the same academic questions that we've been asking for the last 18 months.

Many have been answered.

We have much more understanding of how these programs can work.

And I think that it is time that we test this out in the real world in a pilot program.

And if at the end of the pilot program or during the pilot program, we see that the city of Seattle is not suitable for this program because of hills or rain or other factors, then we can end the pilot.

And so all of that said, I think we need to move forward at this time.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Shaw.

Just so everybody knows, Councilmember Morales is here.

She's just on her phone, so she is present.

Calvin, did you want to, from central staff, did you want to add any introductory remarks before SDOT goes into their presentation?

Council members, I think Estelle will highlight this more, but I just wanted to reinforce that the first council bill is really about governing the use of all scooters in our right of way.

So it covers private users as well as public users.

And it really is about getting in line with the state changes that happened earlier in the session.

And then the second item is the one that really focuses on the city's approval of a free floating scooter share program.

Estat, go ahead and share your screen for your presentation, which applies to both council bills.

Sounds good.

And while Alex is bringing that up, I will give a little introduction.

Again, Sam Zimbabwe, director of Estat, and Joel Miller is here.

Our micromobility program lead is going to walk through most of the presentation.

But I just wanted to talk about how this The both bills, particularly the scooter share program, fits within our mission, vision, and core values of providing Seattle as a thriving equitable community powered by dependable transportation and providing safe and affordable access to places and opportunities.

And we really think that the scooter share program can uh...

help us reach these values we know that people are already buying scooters and uh...

riding around seattle in this trend we think will only accelerate in the future uh...

this helps us prepare for these trends uh...

and make sure they're meeting our goals uh...

and then also uh...

uh...

bring a bring in test out a scooter share program that uh...

that we can modify and adapt over time.

This is truly a pilot program.

We've put together a pilot program that Joel will walk through that captures the potential mobility gains while protecting pedestrians and people with disabilities.

And we know this is a ever shifting industry and we know that we will need to stay nimble and adapt over time.

We've seen that shift already within the bike share landscape.

in the city, the car share landscape in the city, and how small and large changes in external environments affect what and how these micromobility and new mobility programs work.

We can't depend alone on bike share for the millions of annual trips it provided without better understanding what those market conditions are and where and how we will need to evolve and iterate on those programs overall.

And we think that this program is the best way to build on our success of bike share and give people in Seattle clean, healthy, and safe transportation options.

So I'll turn it over to Joel who's going to talk through a lot of information because there's so much and it might answer some of those questions.

You know he's got a lot that walks through what this pilot is and how it will operate and then we're both very happy to answer questions at the end as well.

Thank you Sam and thank you council members for taking the time to hear us.

So I want to quickly go over the presentation.

We're going to start with just a little bit of background, what these are.

I want to talk a little bit about why now, the challenges that we face, and then a little bit about the strategies that we've developed to address a lot of the issues and a lot of the questions that I know that a lot of you have, and then finally get into a little bit about just the actual nuts and bolts of the program and the legislation.

So what is ScooterShare?

I actually want to call out those two photos on the right there.

The top photo shows your traditional standing scooter.

That's what we all know.

That's what we've seen in a lot of other cities.

Proven very, very popular.

The lower photo shows what we're calling a seated scooter.

That fits in the RCW definition of a motorized foot scooter.

We're really excited about what these might offer Seattle, they tend to have larger wheels, a lower center of gravity and a further back center of gravity, and might be both better suited to our pavement conditions or weather or hills, and also a more useful device for people with disabilities.

This would operate very, very similar to Bikeshare.

We're advantaged in that we've seen free-floating Bikeshare, so we have a good idea of what ScooterShare would look like.

It'll be free-floating.

These devices will need to be parked in a paid furniture zone, bike rack, or one of the 150-plus corrals we built last year, or the 100-plus corrals that were existing before that.

They'll have a 15-mile-an-hour limit, and these already exist in lots of cities across the U.S.

We have done a lot of work to date.

We obviously took lessons from two iterations of BikeShare and applied it to this.

We've researched other cities.

We met with over 30 regional stakeholder groups.

That's neighborhood groups, that's disability rights groups, that's transportation advocacy groups.

We surveyed Seattle residents and we did a very robust SEPA process and appeal.

And now we're here to you with a permit and legislation.

This is a photo.

Actually, go back, Alex.

This is a photo of another of the seated devices, and that's our esteemed traffic engineer on a rainy midwinter day trying it out.

Next.

Okay, so COVID-19.

It's here, and we know it's affecting the city in a lot of ways, and transportation is one of the big concerns.

Our transit that we depend on to get around the city is going to be hurt.

People will be less likely to get in those enclosed spaces.

And then we know that there's funding issues with transit as well.

So scooters can help replace some of those trips.

We're seeing exciting things in other cities.

We're seeing a lot of people still use scooters during COVID, but interestingly, we're seeing the rides happen differently.

In Portland, Detroit, a lot of other cities, people are taking scooters for longer trips.

They're going almost two, two and a half miles for their average trip.

And that's telling us that During this time when people are reluctant to get on transit, reluctant to get into a car share or TNC, they're using scooters to get all the way from where they are to their destination.

It's a real transportation option for essential trips.

Next slide.

We have West Seattle.

We already heard a great presentation from Heather about that.

This graphic on the right goes through what some of those mode split goals are for 2021. Really important one is transit and the water taxi.

Before the high bridge closure, 18% of people were using transit and water taxi to get off of the peninsula.

Our goal is to get that to 40%.

Let's say the city's goal is to get that to 40%.

Scooters can help that.

They can help people get to the water taxi, get to the transit hubs.

The survey of West Seattle residents that Heather talked about, 40% of those respondents in a preliminary look at the survey said that they would be more likely to use transit if it was more accessible.

So scooters can help get people there.

The bike trips.

Before the closure, 1% of people were using bikes to get off the peninsula.

We're trying to get that to 10%.

If we include scooters in that definition, that can really, really help.

Vendors are required to serve West Seattle from launch.

And we see that as a robust option.

And finally, just this week, King County launched their pilot down in White Center.

We can partner with that, and scooters can be a great option, not only for people to get off the peninsula, but to get to their coffee shop, do their essential trips, do some grocery shopping.

And if they're able to, they can use a scooter for that, freeing up that road capacity for the people that need to be in a car.

And finally, environmental stewardship.

Our climate crisis isn't going away and scooters can be part of a solution.

We're starting to see interesting results from surveys done across the U.S. and getting more and more comfortable that people are using scooters to replace car trips.

That 25% number is kind of the low end.

It's like 25% to 35%.

of trips are replacing car trips.

That's private car trips, TNC trips, car share trips, things like that.

We're excited about that.

And then we also know that there are concerns about the negative environmental impacts of scooters, whether that's life cycle or added trips for rebalancing.

And we're proposing as part of our pilot, Seattle specific environmental impact analysis that'll take all of that into account.

So we can really learn what scooters do for Seattle.

Challenges and strategies.

The image on the right here shows one of the corrals we built, one of the 150 we built last year using bike share permit revenue.

That's one of our strategies.

We're going to continue to build these, and they provide great places for people to park.

They're delineated, they're clear, and they're out of the way.

Some other strategies, we're not allowing riding on the sidewalks.

That's actually the existing SMC.

We're not proposing to change that.

really continue to have people park in furniture zones, bike racks, and audit that.

So we developed for Bike Share kind of a first in the nation, a nation leading auditing system where we're, our staff or vendors are out there every week looking at how people have parked.

We're proposing to go even further with that and adding some specific enforcement actions.

We've added our ability to find vendors for noncompliance, but importantly, also riders.

We're saying, hey, if a rider has, after receiving a warning, continued to park incorrectly, our audits find it, the vendor will fine them $20.

So that's something that we're excited about.

We developed that working with Disability Rights Advocates, the National Federation for the Blind, to kind of come up with this more robust strategy.

One more bullet on there is that on-device and in-app parking education I want to talk about.

We know that a lot of times people just swipe through screens, and so we're saying we need the vendors to develop quizzes, quizzes that people need to interact with and need to answer correctly within their first few rides and every several months thereafter, showing that they understand how to correct parkly, how to ride correctly.

and really just kind of get them more engaged so that they're not leaving these improperly parked.

And finally, geofenced areas.

Geofencing is the ability for the device not to allow you to park it there or allow it to be ridden there.

That technology has come a long way in the past year, and it's starting to get more and more accurate so that this can be a tool to say, hey, a large area, say, in front of Pike Place Market, if it's inappropriate for scooters to park there, Ride there, we can tell the vendors, geofence that area, and we're not going to allow scooters there.

And then rider safety is also a big issue.

That's part of the reason why we're proposing to allow scooters on bike lanes, on public paths, not on sidewalks.

But we're also looking at what the top speed is.

We know that speed can be a large factor in a lot of serious injuries.

And so we're limiting the top speed to 15 miles an hour.

That's consistent with the top assist speed for bike share.

But we're going a little further.

We saw in a lot of the studies done that injuries are happening in a user's first few rides.

And so we're saying, hey, for that first ride, you need to go slower.

It might not be as convenient.

It might not be as fun, but it's going to be safer.

So that first ride, a user's going to have to go eight miles an hour.

And then we're incentivizing helmet use.

That's something that we know vendors will distribute thousands of helmets to people, and especially low-income people.

We really, really like that.

But there's a lot of programs out there that go farther.

Vendors have developed ways that you need to say take a selfie before a ride.

And if it shows you're wearing a helmet, you'll get a discount on that ride.

Another vendor has developed a helmet that locks to the device, and it unlocks before a ride.

It has a biodegradable removable filter, not filter, but liner, so you can just take that off, have a clean helmet for you to use.

And finally, we're proposing a joint safety study with the folks at UW and Harborview, really looking at, OK, if Seattle's doing it differently, if we're limiting the top speed, if we have more robust scooters, if we have sit-style scooters, What does that mean?

How does that affect our injuries?

How safe is this pilot?

And so we're partnering with the University of Washington on that.

We have had a lot of great conversations.

We have verbal agreements.

Once we know the scale of this pilot, we can go forward with the scale of that study.

And then COVID-19.

Really, really important.

We've amended the permit to speak specifically to this.

Vendors have to sanitize all the commonly touched points on the devices every time essentially they touch a device.

That's if they battery swap, if they rebalance, if they bring it into the warehouse.

That generally happens on a daily basis.

In the winter, it might not happen quite as often if the scooters aren't getting ridden as much.

Additionally, they have to sanitize their vehicles, train their staff, and importantly, we wrote in that we can add more precautions to this as we go forward.

We know we're still learning a lot, the environmental health community is still learning a lot about COVID, so we can apply those learnings to this permit.

Equity, we know that For us to do this, it needs to meet the city's values and equity is central to that.

And so we're looking at where these are.

Are they available?

Are they affordable?

And can people actually access them?

So we're saying that 10% of the fleet has to be in these specific environmental justice communities.

Those are areas that have lower incomes, less access to jobs, and higher displacement risk, and also don't see a lot of bike share distribution naturally.

So we're saying, okay vendors, you need to go forward and put devices there.

This is the same requirement as bike share.

We're requiring low-income plans.

If a resident qualifies for ORCA lifts, SNAP benefits, anything like that, then they qualify for a low income plan from any of the vendors.

And we've stipulated that needs to be less than, the average ride needs to be less than your ORCA lift cost of $1.50.

And a lot of vendors have gone kind of above and beyond that in other cities to make really this a very affordable transportation option.

These will be accessible for people without smartphones, without credit banking, get into details of that if anyone has questions.

And this last bullet is really important.

We're taking a portion of the permit fees and we're going to have really in-depth conversations with communities of color, with low-income communities about how we can craft the next version of this, the next version of bike share, the next version of shared micromobility, so it can be a really great option for specifically people of color, specifically low-income communities, and really bring them to the table.

And then we'll also be able to use that as an opportunity to tell people, hey, there are these low-income plans.

Here's how you sign up.

We'll take that role as the city to make sure that folks know about this.

And just a little bit about the overall permits.

What we're looking at, we're looking at three permits with 500 initial devices per vendor, 2,000 maximum.

And I'm going to go through these in detail.

Permit slot A there is for our operating bike share vendors.

So that's Lime.

We really see a value in A, incentivizing more bike share investment.

This is what keeps bike share in Seattle.

And B, seeing how this works as a crossover vendor, is this more friendly to Seattle's residents to say, hey, I have one app and it works for both devices?

And then that seated scooter.

Other cities haven't really looked at doing a seated scooter as this major proportion of their fleet, but we want one vendor to launch with the others with this new device that we're really excited about.

Then finally, a standing or mixed scooter.

This is the device that's proven popular, and it's the next sort of the third highest scoring or the highest scoring vendor that isn't getting A or B would get the permit slot C.

D, you see there, that's nothing we're planning on issuing at launch or probably for the permit period, but we want to remain nimble.

If there's a new device that we think is really interesting, we might want to try it at a small scale.

If there's something that looks like a great solution for a specific part of town, say West Seattle, we'll want to try it on a limited scale.

This digs into that fleet size a little bit.

You'll see the graph on the left is scooter density per square mile.

On the right, it's per residence.

You'll just see that both that launch size and the max size fall largely in line with what other cities have done around the US.

So we're not proposing anything that's kind of a crazy huge scale.

And finally, the budget.

We'll be asking for $150 per scooter from these vendors.

They're willing to pay that.

And that funds, that wholly funds the program.

That funds my time, that fund that'll help fund bike share.

It'll fund the auditing, kind of all of the management that goes in there.

And it'll also bring other things to the city.

We'll continue to build parking.

I said, we build 150 of those new corrals.

Last year, using just bike share fees.

This year that will have to shift to scooter share fees but we can use those fees to increase parking, not only for scooter share but for bike share and private bikes as well and we've also seen these actors a great safety benefit for the streetscape as well.

Outdoors for all we heard a caller Colin talking about this.

This was a partnership I'm really proud of that we did with Outdoors for All using bike share fees to increase access to adaptive cycles for people with disabilities.

BikeShare isn't bringing in the revenue to support that this year.

ScooterShare can continue that partnership to really make sure that people with disabilities have access to adaptive recreation, and I'm excited about that.

And then finally, this will fund that micromobility-focused equity and outreach work, making sure that not only does this pilot, but future micromobility in the city kind of really center low-income folks, people of color, and people with disabilities.

This just goes over those two ordinances again 1146-010 is the traffic ordinance allowing them on bike lanes.

Importantly, it also allows them on sidewalks only where it's part of a bike path.

So we're talking about the movable bridges in Seattle.

We don't want scooters to be on the graded Fremont Bridge.

We want them up on the bike path.

And then the 15-17-005 just allows us to issue permits and charge that street use fee.

And with that, any questions?

I'm sure there are some.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss as a sponsor, please.

Or, you know, I guess I'll be quick.

Joel, I did raise my hand a number of times throughout that presentation.

Maybe if we could go back to a couple slides.

Sorry about that.

No, you're totally great because Joel answered the questions.

It's one of those situations where I was glad that I just sat back and listened because, you know, especially about parking and enforcement, my question about how are we providing enforcement to both the vendors and the users?

I think that it is very important that we are able to enforce a penalty against users who are not using the devices correctly.

I'm wondering if I know in London they have a very prominent sticker that says that the user will be fined 20 pounds for improperly parking.

Is this going to be something that is very visible to the public that the user will be fined for improper use?

Yeah, we expect that to be a central part of our communications as this launches.

We're working with our comms team on how we get this messaging out.

There's a lot of signage we're requiring on the devices themselves.

We can explore whether this wants to be part of that as well.

And then importantly, we're also mandating that in the education that's in-app that a rider has to look through before they're able to rent a device, that's featured prominently.

But we know that we need to do a lot.

A big part of that outreach work that I spoke about is also that education.

we are drawing up and have drawn up kind of a robust plan for what education looks like and then COVID happened.

And we're frankly exploring like how do we do the robust education we want now that we can't have in-person events or those events might be limited.

So we're exploring those as I think a lot of other folks are and how you reach communities right now.

But I think the fines are, a really, really important, almost more of an educational tool than an enforcement tool.

But if people know that they might get fined, they'll be more likely to park correctly.

And putting them on the device is an idea we're very happy to explore.

Thank you.

I think that that will be important because I think it is just as important for the general public who are not using these devices to know that the users are being held responsible for improper use.

I think that it will help the public perception of this program.

We also did a video with Rooted in Rights last year on the bike share, on proper parking for bike share.

And those are the types of education and tools we can continue to expand as well moving forward.

Great.

Thank you, Director.

Regarding the eight miles per hour on the first ride, I think that this is extremely smart.

It is very good policy.

I'm wondering, why is it only restricted to the first ride?

Should we consider extending it to the second hand or third ride?

It's something that we thought a lot about.

And We heard a lot from both sides, and people were also very concerned that if this doesn't, in their first few rides, appear to be a great transportation option, they're not going to use it.

If they think, hey, this is a slow thing, it doesn't get me where I want to go, it's not convenient, I'm going to call a TNC.

I'm going to go ahead and get on Uber or Lyft, or I'm going to drive my car.

And so we thought the first ride made a lot of sense.

If it's not working, if we're seeing issues with that, we have the authority to expand that for sure the first two, the first three rides and see how that's working.

Great.

Thanks, Joel.

So what I just heard is that as the program is operating, we have the ability to extend that eight mile per hour cap to the second ride if needed without changing legislation.

And we can just do it in real time.

Is that a correct understanding?

That is a correct understanding.

That speaks to a great point that with all of these requirements being in the permit, we have authority to change almost kind of anything to better protect pedestrians, better protect safety, make sure this is meeting our city's goals as the program moves forward.

And so things like that, eight miles an hour, it's not working just on the first ride.

We're seeing crashes on the second ride.

We're seeing crashes on the third ride.

We can go ahead and expand that at any time.

Thank you, Joe.

And this conversation that you and I are having right now in committee is the example of what I was speaking to earlier, that we can continue to have an academic conversation in a vacuum without understanding how it operates in the real world, unless we move forward with this permit, with this pilot program.

My next question is in line with this.

On slide 17, you noted the different levels of permits.

So we have the bike share vendor, 100% seated scooter, standing or mixed scooter.

Is this something that if we are seeing standing scooters not being appropriate for the city and that seated scooters are, are we able to adjust these both launch fleet numbers and maximum fleet numbers.

Are we able to adjust those in real time during the permit process or will that require additional legislation?

It will not require legislation.

We'll have the authority to adjust that as needed and in the permit there's actually levers to reduce fleets if we're not seeing compliance.

So if we're not seeing compliance from a vendor for parking, for data, for Really anything for the equity requirements, we can both find them and reduce their fleets which kind of.

They both work differently.

A fleet reduction hurts their competitiveness, which sometimes is a bigger impediment for the vendor.

But yeah, we can adjust these anytime.

One thing I do want to note, Lime operates the stand-style scooter, and they're also the ones bringing bike share.

And so if we adjust that down, we might have more danger to the bike share program.

Okay, that's helpful.

I think what's important for me to note here is that if we are seeing, you know, the pictures of the seated scooters seem like they will have a higher likelihood of being safe on on hills and even on that the brick in Occidental Square that we saw on a rainy day that looks very dangerous, no matter what.

two-wheeled device you're using, whether it's a bicycle or a scooter.

So as we see which of these different types of scooters are most appropriate for the city, it's important that we're able to adjust that in real time.

Circling back, I believe it was slide 15 regarding equity.

I was just wondering why not more than 10% in environmental justice community areas?

That's a great question.

It's something that we struggled with.

Those areas cover about 10% of the city, so it matches up that way.

And we were looking at a lot of different ways we could grow this, but we determined that, especially in the spring with COVID happening, we weren't able to have the real conversations needed with communities to see what the actual barriers are.

How do we make this the most equitable program?

And so we thought, let's go with what we know worked okay with bike share.

It wasn't perfect, but we said, let's take that status quo.

Let's continue, but let's really invest in this program and having those conversations.

So we know what the best approach is that really comes from the community to address this, this very, very large equity question.

Thank you.

And if we were to adjust this upward to say 15%, would we need to do that in the legislation?

Nope.

That's just part of the permit.

Okay.

I think that that is something that we should likely do.

I'm going to reserve the rest of my questions because I know that Council Member Peterson has a number of questions that I also have, and I don't want to take anything that he's already shared with me because that would be unfair.

And so he's got some really good questions as well.

I'll step back.

Joel, thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I'm gonna ask my questions and unfortunately, I'm gonna ask Calvin and I know my staff is monitoring this to monitor the answers and get back to me.

I do have to get on to the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting.

But following up on Council Member Strauss' issue related to the equity allotment, for particular neighborhoods.

I appreciate that it appears that the 10% mark was identified in recognition that that is roughly the proportion of the city that is represented by those neighborhoods.

But I would just like to remind everybody that that is not the definition of equity.

Equity is not equal.

Equity is recognizing that some areas of, the city with historic disinvestments require more investments.

So I would be very interested in increasing those percentages as well.

As it relates to the enforcement question, I am somebody who has for a long time been very concerned about the use of scooters on sidewalks.

sidewalks are for walking, as well as the parking of scooters in ways that impedes the use of sidewalks.

I would like to request that we think about this enforcement question a little bit differently than a fining approach.

I don't know if this is possible.

And I don't know if it's possible to instead of finding people who park or ride on the sidewalks, whether or not we can deactivate their use.

And I say this because I really want our city and our council to be consistent in our approach around monetary fines.

We have just We received a study that the City Council requested from the Seattle Municipal Court doing an inventory of all of the fines and monetary sanctions that the Seattle Municipal Court issues because we want to reduce the disparate impact of these monetary fines on low-income people and communities of color.

So I'm, on one hand, really supportive of reducing the fines associated with traffic infractions.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that we may be adding on another layer of fines for this potential new use.

As it relates specifically to the plan to increase service in West Seattle, I'd like...

I may not have the detail on what it is that you're asking vendors, but simply a plan to increase scooter use in West Seattle, I don't think is...

fully sufficient to incentivize the kind of service that I would like to see in West Seattle.

I think because there's very low service right now citywide of scooters, it would be pretty easy, an easy bar for a competing vendor to produce a specific plan to increase service in West Seattle.

I think what I would like to see more of is a specific plan to increase the use of scooters to fulfill that last mile function, to get folks onto buses.

I think that is the real nut to crack for West Seattle, especially considering that studies show that riders of scooters are only 25% replacing single occupancy vehicle riders.

75% are people who are moving from walking, cycling, or using public transportation to scooters.

So we don't need to have a system I mean, moving people out of cars is great, 25%, but I don't want to necessarily move people out of buses onto scooters.

I want to move more people from scooters onto buses.

The other question related specifically to West Seattle, since there is a pilot project in White Center, I'm really interested to know whether or not riders are able to cross the city limits back and forth between White Center and West Seattle.

And then my final question is, I'm just, I'm, we keep calling this a pilot project and I'm not, I don't understand how this is a pilot project.

The legislation seems to permanently authorize this program.

The back of the envelope math of the number of of devices that the fee would support is, it looks like 6,000.

It doesn't seem to be confined to a particular geographic area.

It doesn't seem to be confined to a particular time period.

So I don't really understand how and why we are thinking of this as a pilot.

And with that, I'm going to log off and get onto my other call and look forward to getting answers to these questions before full council.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Should I go through and answer these questions for the record?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes, please.

Okay, great.

And Alex, if I miss one or someone else, please.

let me know as I took notes, but I may have missed something.

The equity focused neighborhoods, that was a very astute question.

And first of all, thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit more about this.

The geographic distribution requirement is a very blunt tool.

Yes, there might be scooters in that neighborhood, but they might not be where we want them to be.

We might have raised that requirement to 30% and 20% just sit unused because the desire is not there.

We haven't done enough education.

We haven't put them in the right place.

Maybe they're not in the business district, maybe they're not by the buses, something like that.

So that's what I was talking about when we were talking about really having those conversations with communities to learn how we can address this.

We know that distribution requirements are a very, very blunt tool.

We know it's not speaking to any of those nuances and not really particularly speaking to equity like Council Member Herbold pointed out.

We do know that it's a great starting point and then we need to have these conversations and so that that was the thought behind that.

Adjusting fines to deactivating use.

One thing I didn't mention that I should have was that Users using the low-income programs would be waived from fines.

We would push them more to education, awareness, things like that.

But we don't want to throw that $20 fine to someone that's using the low-income programs.

That's going to be a really, really large detriment.

And then for all of these areas, we also In our applications to vendors scored them and we said, hey, how are you going to address these things?

And a lot of vendors said, hey, here is our chart for when we deactivate a writer.

And a lot of them had, after two or three infractions, that showed that they weren't parking or riding or using these things correctly.

They would deactivate.

And that's something that we can talk about.

That's something that we can do as a city as well.

But we know that these are going to be new.

Some people won't know the rules.

And we want to work with them to educate them.

And that's what we really like about the fines as well.

It gives them the chance to adjust their behavior, causes notice.

But they can still use them in the future to replace those car trips.

Speaking specifically to West Seattle, let's see.

Easy question, yes.

If a vendor is permitted in both the King County pilot and the City of Seattle pilot, they'll be able to cross the border.

If a vendor is not permitted in both, then we can talk about it.

We can see how we want that use to work.

That's one potential use for that fourth slot.

And so we want to really craft that carefully.

But the easy answer is yes.

If they're permitted in both, they can take the scooters back and forth.

Moving people onto buses is a great, great question.

I think Directors Mbabwe had to hop off But I don't think, you know, in a lot of cities, transit is being, even before COVID was going down and saying, hey, we're gonna take more transit users off the bus, on the scooters was a highly negative thing.

I think with COVID, with reduced transit, with reduced transit capacity, that might not be that large of a negative for us.

And then just also wanna call out that, That 25% that are coming out of cars, it's a smaller number than 75%.

But when you're talking about millions and millions of trips, it's a significant reduction in car travel.

And so we do like that.

And Joel, I'm multitasking.

I think the biggest thing for the bridge is going to be that for all the mitigations in West Seattle is gonna be all of the above solution and scooters are gonna be part of that.

They are not gonna solve all the problems that we talked about earlier this morning about mitigating, but we think that they can be an important part, whether it's accessing neighborhoods, transit, or even taking some longer trips to and from the peninsula itself.

Yeah, thank you, Sam.

And then the other point with that is, Again, the requirement that they be in West Seattle is kind of the minimum.

It is, again, a blunt tool.

Council Member Herbold is correct.

Increasing from zero is very, very easy.

But we are working with potential vendors on plans.

That was part of applications.

The application process that we put out was that vendors need to tell us how they're looking to serve West Seattle, and we're expecting to see things like hubs at transit.

So the devices are where people need them, not just they need to be in West Seattle, but they need to be in useful places.

The vendors need to have a really well thought out, crafted plan to make sure people can use these to get around, to get to transit, and exactly what Council Member Herbold was mentioning.

Anything I missed?

Alex Pazicanix, my boss, is on the call as well.

Maybe taking notes.

Yeah, maybe to talk just a little bit about what in what way this is a pilot program.

And I can start and say, you know, I think that the size of consideration is important there, both because the citywide geography is necessary to understand how different aspects of the city topographically in terms of sort of density.

have different effects on the system, and also to kind of recognize the network effects.

We've seen in some of our peer cities who start with pilot areas that are too small, that they're not necessarily able to gain appreciable information about how it's changing travel behavior.

You know, our pilot structure is essentially in the iteration and the sort of sense of conditions that the program operators getting into the program with us understand that there is iteration.

There will be opportunities for the city to make changes if we feel like the sort of pilot is not.

in service of our goals and our objectives, ultimately potentially leading to the suspension or ending of the program if we feel like it's not meeting those goals.

I think we know that those numbers are important to start to see what the network effect is to build some sense of reliability.

that if you want to take a trip by shared micromobility, the devices are available to you.

We've seen over the last couple of months with the reduction in bike share that the decrease in the fleet size has an effect on the use of those vehicles because people just don't know if they leave the house if there's going to be a bike available to them.

So there is a certain sort of minimum viable level of density of devices in order to kind of make it a worthwhile travel opportunity or travel alternative.

Yeah.

Thanks, Alex.

To expand on that just a little bit further.

Calvin Chow has a question.

Sorry, council members.

Just to reiterate that point, I think It's important to kind of note that this legislation really focuses on establishing the fee structure for the department.

That's the legislative action that's required to make this possible.

The authority to regulate free floaters scooting is established in the Seattle Municipal Code already under the, under the traffic code and other parts of SMC.

So whether it's called a pilot or not is largely driven by the administration's proposal for how to enact that authority.

And what they're presenting right now is sort of how they're stepping into it.

From a council perspective, this is asking for authority and it's leaving it up to the executive for how they would administer it.

And then we've got questions from Council Member Morales and Council President Gonzalez.

Joel, is there something?

No, thank you.

Okay, Council Member Morales and then Council President Gonzalez.

Hi, thank you.

So I'm excited about this pilot.

I think it's a great additional tool for trying to get people out of their cars and I can see how it would be really important in those short trips within a neighborhood.

I live in South Seattle, and so one of the previous slides you had a picture of the parking dock or lane, and it just made me think, yeah.

I'm glad to hear that scooters will not be on sidewalks.

And I am wondering how we encourage people to use scooters on roads that are safer for these very small modes.

I am thinking about the safety in particular, and it seems that an encouragement to be on greenways.

I'm just worried about Rainier Avenue.

I'm just going to come out and say it.

you know, how we keep people safe on these.

And I don't know if it is right to say that we want to discourage them from being on those major arterials, but maybe you can just talk about your plan for educating people about how and where to use scooters.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

One key point that we'll be doing is not allowing the shared scooters be ridden on streets with a speed limit higher than 25 miles an hour.

And so we're really looking at that speed differential.

Hey, these are going 15. If you're on a street, the cars are going 30. We didn't like that differential.

We worked with our traffic engineer, and we thought 25 made sense.

And the department right now is switching almost all arterials to that lower speed.

And so we really kind of like that.

lines up nicely for us and that before, say, if this was a year and a half ago, that 25 mile an hour rule would really say, hey, there's a lot of streets you can't ride on and scooters would be less useful.

So that's one way we're addressing that.

We do think that our requirements for the scooters themselves are very, very robust.

A lot of previous scooters only had one brake.

They were very unstable.

We're requiring two brakes, requiring the newest devices that the vendors are making, and those are very stable.

They're better.

And then the SITSAL scooter is something that we're really excited about.

And then education, you talked about it.

We're taking a big chunk of the permit fees to do our own education.

Like I said, we're still kind of struggling with what that looks like during COVID, but we know that the city has a responsibility, whether that's making more videos with Rooted in Rights, working with our comms team, trying to work with the media on getting lessons out there for how to ride these safely.

We see that as really, really important.

The helmet issue, incentivizing helmet use.

Helmets are required.

Let me put that out there as part of SNC.

But making sure people are actually wearing them, whether that's the selfies, whether that's having vendors that have the devices on them.

That's important.

And then the vendor education.

Vendors have all stepped up and developed a lot more robust educational materials.

than they had 18 months ago, even a year ago.

And they're starting to take a really central role in making sure that their users know how to use these safely, are riding safely.

And we think that as robust approach as cities have done, and we're gonna monitor it.

We're gonna look at it with University of Washington and we'll be able to adjust.

And if we say, hey, we're seeing hotspots where there's too many crashes there's something that feels unsafe, then we can go in and address it.

Thank you, Joel.

I appreciate that.

I think for me, what this really brings into relief is how important it is for us to actually finish building out the bike master plan, because I would feel really comfortable encouraging people to ride a scooter on the bike trails.

I can assure you that very few people drive 25 miles an hour on Rainier, MLK, or Beacon Avenue.

And those are the major thoroughfares through our district if you're trying to head north-south.

So I am optimistic about this, but I do think that we will need to be monitoring that very carefully and work with you to make sure that southenders know how to do this right.

Yeah, yeah, we'd also love to partner with the Stay Healthy Streets.

We think that's a great program that's rolled out and say we're using scooters to both increase awareness of safe, healthy streets and do a coordinated campaign there and also making sure that scooters riders know they're there and can use them as a safe alternative.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Hi, good afternoon.

I recognize we still have a couple more items here, so I'll try to make my questions crisp here.

So I also support and have in the past supported prior legislation to advance a shared scooter program in the city.

I continue to be supportive of this micromobility option to be deployed throughout the city.

I acknowledge that circumstances have changed as a result of COVID-19 and that that requires the city to take a more measured approach in terms of the implementation of a shared scooter program.

And I think that allows the city the opportunity to, in real life, make some iterative changes to the program and the launching of the program in what I think I'm hearing is the hopes of being able to scale up the program in the future based on what we learn from initially entering or allowing this program to enter into this market.

So I think that the approach that you're proposing is in terms of the model setting aside, whether it should be called a pilot program or a, you know, something else, I understand what it is you are trying to accomplish, or at least I think I do.

I do have a few questions, however, and I'm going to focus my questions on a few things.

One is around, and on this slide 12, there is sort of the corral concept providing places to park either bike share or scooters.

And I just really want to emphasize and hear from the department you're all thinking at the macro level around the need to make sure that we are providing people a clear space to park appropriately their devices.

And I say this because, you know, I had an opportunity to spend some time in Denmark with some folks from SDOT last year, around this time last year.

And, you know, they don't have as significant of an issue with people not knowing how to park their bikes and their other micromobility and other micromobility devices because the city has done their work in making sure that they are providing them the spaces in which to store those devices and bikes when they're not in use.

And so I just feel really strongly that when we talk about the parking and the enforcement issues and obstruction, all of those things will continue to be problems so long as we are not being intentional and deliberate as a city in providing the space, like actual space and designated, dedicated space to making sure that users of these devices have somewhere appropriate to put them.

It is obvious to me that if we don't do that, then people are going to leave their scooters strewn in places that create hazards for other folks who are using our rights of way.

And so I just, I think it's really important for us to hear from the department about your all's thinking around making sure that there is going to be aggressive, intentional advancement of designated and dedicated areas for parking shared scooters and bikes in the areas in which the devices will be deployed?

Yeah, really good questions.

I think one of the major issues that has plagued shared bike share, scooter share, kind of the free-floating micromobility world is, was it launched with this narrative that you can park it anywhere?

And that was part of the freedom and the fun and the simplicity.

I can pick this up, leave it right where my destination is.

And we're really working this year to change that narrative.

You need to park it in an appropriate place, paved furniture zone, bike rack, one of these corrals.

And I think the education that we're doing, I think the enforcement, we'll move that needle in just how people think about how they can use the system so that it's not this, I can just leave it.

I don't have to think about it.

We're saying, no, you have to think about it.

Please think about it.

Think about it or you'll get fined.

But don't, I don't want to stop you because I think you're taking me down a path I don't want to go.

And I'm sorry, I'm trying to sort of expedite this here.

This isn't an enforcement only question.

It is an upstream proactive effort that the city needs to take just like we do with cars and provide designated dedicated space at the same, you know, that is commensurate with the deployment of the fleet.

So, you know, we will continue to have this, you know, cart before the, course conversation around, you know, is enforcement the better mechanism or I mean, the reality is, is if we address the issues related to providing dedicated designated space for people to appropriately park their devices once they are done using them.

then I think we will be better served not only as users of these micromobility options, but also importantly for many of the populations who have expressed concerns about potential obstructions and how that interferes with their mobility and use of public space that should be available to them for other uses.

Yeah, thank you for that.

And I apologize for taking On the wrong tangent, we recognize that fully.

Last year, we used bike share permit fees to build 150 of these corrals, a lot more individual racks and clusters of racks around the city.

And we know that we need to provide places for people to park.

we're looking at doing that with this program as well, taking a good chunk of those permit fees to continue to build these corrals.

We got really good at it, we got more efficient at it.

One thing we want to do this year is focus on areas where it's harder, where there's more competing streetscape.

We were really good last year at adding corrals kind of in the um neighborhood business districts kind of on the fringe but where it gets really really dense and there's a lot of competition for that curb space um we weren't able to deliver there as much so this year we want to really trans focus on that on on places where it might be more difficult areas around sound transit stations the entrances to the tunnel Pioneer Square and focus our building there.

So I think this year we're not going to set a super ambitious goal for the number because we want to make sure we can focus on quality.

We want to make sure that we can deliver these corrals really where they're needed, really where they're useful.

And that'll be a big part of the program this year and happy to work with you on developing that as well.

If I can interject briefly as well, I think that part of the way that we intend to do that is through better use of real-time or semi-real-time data coming from the operators themselves so that we actually know trip starting and ending in particular locations is an indication for us.

that there's latent demand that's not being satisfied by that existing parking infrastructure, and enables us to be a bit more surgical about how we make sure that we provide infrastructure.

I think Seattle has led in free-floating micro-mobility infrastructure, and we want to continue using that real-time data as making sure that we're spending our time and energy in the right places.

I appreciate that.

I mean, I have said multiple times in the past that the success of these shared mobility programs are dependent on a lot of varying factors, but the most significant concern that we continue to hear is about this parking issue, right?

And today's presentation was pretty heavily focused on the enforcement aspects of how you can disincentivize people from parking these devices in an improper way.

And I didn't want to lose the opportunity to allow you all to directly address the issues of parking infrastructure, which I think is a more upstream appropriate way to deal with the realities of people improperly parking micro-mobility devices and other shared mobility options throughout the city.

with all of you around making sure that that parking infrastructure conversation isn't going to be left behind and that we are sort of making sure that the deployment of the fleet is occurring in parallel with the need to quickly address parking infrastructure concerns.

so that we aren't put in a position in six, seven, eight months from now of people deeming this program to be a failure because we failed to be nimble and responsive to parking concerns.

I also think that this is a piece with what Council Member Morales was talking about as well in terms of making safe infrastructure.

And it is not only a programmatic solution, but it's also an infrastructure approach that we wholeheartedly agree with as well.

Thank you.

I'm going to shift gears here really quickly if I can.

So I want to talk a little bit more about the equity in the program.

And I guess before I do that, I want to take a step back, just sort of a point of order if I can.

The legislation that is before us, we have two bills.

That legislation, based on my review of it, doesn't include approval of the permitting documents.

So I just wanna get a clear answer that my understanding of that is correct.

We are not approving the permit fee requirements with this legislation.

Council Member, the piece of legislation that is required is to establish the fee schedule, the amount, the charge that we are going to collect from the vendors.

But the rest of the permit program is covered under existing SMC authority.

Right.

So I just wanted to make sure, because we're spending a lot of time talking about permit requirements.

And the legislation itself is actually quite simple.

I think in both instances, there are a couple of pages.

But this is our opportunity to sort of get on the record around some of the permit requirement issues that have been negotiated.

And I just want to flag a couple of things.

And I acknowledge that the permit requirement documents for the free floating scooter share program were not included or attached on the agenda for today's committee.

They are, however, on SDOT's website.

And so I'm looking at the full 49-page document that lays out the specifics around the fee requirements.

And just really quickly, on the parking issues, which appears on page 11 and continues to page, I think, 13 of that document, there is a reference on page 12, it's P1.3, parking on sidewalks, where it says, where a sidewalk is present, devices may be parked upright in the furniture zone of the sidewalk.

Devices shall not be parked in a manner that reduces the pedestrian clear zone to less than six feet.

And I just wanna make sure that it's clear in my head what the furniture zone is.

And I think what it is, is that picture that we've been seeing on page 12, Perhaps you can take a moment given that language in the parking fee requirement document to just make sure that it's crystal clear to us and to members of the public what P1.3 actually permits in terms of parking on sidewalks.

Yeah, and I'll actually refer you to a couple pages down, page 14, and for folks that don't have this in front of them, it is on our website, or this is also an image out of Streets Illustrated, and that we've added some bubbles to about bike share and scooter share.

But you just see that That strip that's not the clear pedestrian path that we call the planting strip, other things like that, the parking strip, that's what we're talking about.

And so that's the furniture zone.

It has a definition in Streets Illustrated.

And so that's what we're referencing that document.

But in some areas of the city, downtown, it's quite, quite clear.

Here's the furniture zone.

In other areas of the city, it's not.

Council President, that is where your point is very, very well taken, that we need to build capacity, and part of this is an infrastructure question.

And what we need to do also, though, is just make sure people understand, here's the legal definition, we're referencing it, but leave six feet, leave that six feet clear pedestrian path so that people can get by, people with a wheelchair can get by, people that are blind and navigating along the, the building edge that we call the frontage zone using their cane, the devices aren't parked there.

They can trip up a cane.

So those are some of the things that we worked on with Rooted in Rights on the video last year and a really central piece to the education as well for scooters.

And I appreciate that.

I do point that out because I think that while as technocrats we can use particular terms and we think we know what they mean, in practice it can turn into something quite different.

And so I don't want people to walk away with the impression that every inch of the sidewalk, as we colloquially understand what a sidewalk is, is off the table, as they say.

There are, in fact, designated portions of a sidewalk that aren't primarily used for pedestrian access that can be used for parking infrastructure under the parking fee permit requirements that SDOT has negotiated.

Is that accurate?

Yes.

Okay.

And I think that's where we run into this pickle around enforcement and cleaning up and making sure that vendors know what their obligations are and what riders are.

I'm going to shift gears really quickly here.

On slide 20, I wanted to ask a quick question around slide 20. Is there any thinking around enhanced signage or any kind of signage about this issue related to sidewalk use.

So again, here we see that it talks about writing only allowed when sidewalk or crosswalks are part of connected bike network.

Again, when I spent some time in Copenhagen, I was impressed with clear signage that let people know where they can use these and where they were absolutely not permitted, right?

And so I sort of think of it as in car driving terms, when you take your license exam, you have to understand that if there isn't a speed limit posted, then the speed limit defaults to, I think it's 30 miles per hour, maybe 25, depending on the area.

But I just want to get an understanding of what SDOT is planning to do in terms of providing clear signage to users around when it's appropriate to be on sidewalks and when it's not?

Yeah, signage is something that a lot of cities have done.

Portland's done a great job with it.

And it's definitely in our toolkit.

As we're developing a robust education program, it is something that we'll look at.

It's not something that we're pointing to exactly saying, we are going to do that.

I think we want to see where the issues are and then respond accordingly.

OK.

I'm just going to keep saying that I'm a little concerned about that, taking the wait and see approach on letting the problems bubble up.

I mean, we know problems are going to bubble up.

So I think I just want to encourage you all to be more proactive in that space instead of waiting for the mole to rear its ugly head and then having to whack it.

Slide 19, budget information, talks about permit fees, fund programs, and what it will support.

I understand that the fee will be, as proposed under the bill we're going to be considering here, is $150 per year per scooter device.

And on slide 19, it talks about how that permit fees will, in part, support increased parking, outdoor sprawl partnership, and micromobility focused equity and outreach work.

Can the department, can you all talk about what percentages of funding are designated or allocated to each of these programs?

Yes.

And if you don't have the, you can get it to us later, but I would be interested, I would be interested in understanding what the proportional allocation is to each of these proposed programs.

Yeah.

And you can actually, the fiscal note, um, has that breakdown, um, and, and that, uh, and so I could refer you to that, or, um, we're also happy to, to touch base, um, touch back with that information.

Oh, sorry about that.

I did not see.

Oh, there it is.

There's the breakdown.

I appreciate the direction to the fiscal note.

OK.

Helpful.

Thank you for helping me understand that.

And then lastly, slides 17 and 15, which I kind of hope would be able to go together a little bit better.

So on, there we go, 17. So 17 talks about all of the different categories the permit types that will be issued, i.e. the kinds of scooters that will be deployed throughout the city.

And then slide 15 talks about sort of the equity geographic areas.

And I noticed that appendix D, which is on page 44 of the permit fee requirement document, goes into a little bit more detail around how you came up with these equity zones, I'll call them.

I think what my concern is here is one, that it's being copied from the bike share program, which was not excellent in my opinion.

But two, it wasn't excellent in my opinion because there wasn't any clear designation on sort of micro percentages that were going to be required to be deployed within these zones.

That resulted in, for example, you know, West Seattle or South Park having literally one bicycle and everything else was somewhere else, like north of the cut.

And so I'm just really, I'm really concerned that I'm not seeing any language in the permit fee requirement document that sets a minimum deployment in these environmental justice community areas, or setting aside how, you know, assumptions that you all made around defining those areas.

I'm very concerned that we are giving the vendors too much space to decide how to, you know, de minimis comply with this goal by only deploying one device in a particular area and then putting everything else in areas that they think are more profitable to them.

That's a very, very fair call out.

And that kind of gets into our lack of ability to have really in-depth conversations in the past few months, because we did want to address that.

We did want to talk to community about where do you want these?

What is the need in that central area versus the south area on that map in the north area?

And we weren't able to have those conversations with COVID.

And so we thought, we'll start with this.

It's the base, it's not perfect.

And we can adjust this as we go, as we learn, as we start to see what's actually happening.

And we maintain that authority to say, okay, you know what, actually we're seeing that you're not putting any devices.

down in the far southern portion of the city or in the northern portion of the city.

You need to do that now, and we have that authority to do that, and we plan to.

We plan to see how this goes, talk to community.

Really, really important to hear from folks about where this should be, and then also look at other metrics.

I think the use of the low-income plans, the actual use in this neighborhood, these neighborhoods are really important.

Those are things we're planning on looking at, not just or the scooters are sitting there as an option, but maybe not being used.

How do we get people on them?

How do we get people using the low, excuse me, low income plans?

That's a new metric that's in this permit that wasn't in bike share.

The vendors have to report exactly how many and what percentage of their trips we're using these programs so that we can adjust and grow those accordingly.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, Council President.

I'll go ahead with my questions now.

And one of the things that might be helpful for the general public and this whole process is that when this item, I'm presuming it's going to advance out of the committee and go to full council as early as September 8th.

is to have a question and answer document that you just, we post online as supporting materials.

So you can include all the questions that were asked by the council members today and just put your, type out your answers.

You'll have hopefully the permit.

the permitting document that you had circulated just, you know, right as committee was starting.

That's a helpful document to flesh out a lot of details and answer a lot of questions for folks.

So, you know, when it presumably this advances out of this committee, it goes to full council on September 8th to having a couple of additional supporting documents, Q and A and the permitting details, I think that would be really helpful for the public and the media.

And I know that permitting documents are going to go up online on our committee website as well.

So thank you to my council colleagues who raised issues about or asked questions about equity and the parking requirements.

Also, when I connect with Rooted in Rights, that was one of their main issues was having designated parking spaces for this.

I do want to talk about safety.

I want to talk about financial liability issues.

And I want to talk about the legislation in general in terms of it being called a pilot, but then there's no, there's, it doesn't say it's a pilot anywhere.

And so that's a big concern to me.

I don't want to cede all the legislative authority to the executive on this important matter.

And so I think that When I look at the King County legislation, their actual ordinance defines the pilot program at King County, which they just passed.

So I'm interested in exploring that.

And we can talk about that in a moment in terms of safety.

So we received a letter from Dr. Fred Rivera, who's a national expert on safety issues.

A pediatrician works at Harborview.

And he writes, he wrote to all of us on August 4th, e-scooters are dangerous.

There have been now studies published from around the world demonstrating crashes on e-scooters result in serious injuries, including brain injuries.

He goes on to cite multiple recent studies about this issue.

What I'm hearing from you is that what you're doing to try to mitigate that is to...

The Seattle Municipal Code says helmets are required, so it's on the user of the scooter, and then you're...

You're requiring the corporations to provide some education on helmet use.

Is that sort of the mitigant to what these studies have shown about the physical danger that could occur?

I think that and actual tools, incentives, and that wasn't part of the programs when these studies were done.

We know that more people need to wear helmets.

By having incentive programs, by having helmets available on the device, vendors are offering that now.

We think that that'll be important.

And those are things that are- Are you requiring that as part of your permit though?

Those are part of their scored applications.

And so a vendor that has a better helmet program plan, that we are more confident we'll get more helmets on more people will have a higher chance of getting a permit.

Okay, regarding the concern about financial liability.

So we'll be putting onto the market six, you're asking the city council basically authorize these private companies put 6,000 e-scooters on the market and then presumably more later if it's successful.

So how is the city government indemnified from financial liability?

Yeah, that's a great question.

We've the mayor and the city attorney's office have drawn up what they've told me is one of the strongest indemnification languages that protects the city as best as we can.

And.

Any kind of further details, questions, interpretations of that?

I'll have to refer to Patrick Downs in the city attorney's office for an executive session.

comfortable speaking into what our actual risk is, or the liability, the interpretation, the legal interpretation of that document, but we know it's as strong as it can possibly be.

Okay.

And then in the fiscal note, I didn't see anything about, you talk about infrastructure, providing infrastructure, providing parking spaces, et cetera.

Is that accounted for in the fiscal note, those costs that would be associated with that?

Yes.

Let me confirm.

I'll bring that up.

I see it.

It's designated bike and scooter share parking program component 250,000.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the pilot program.

So it's being called a pilot, but the legislation doesn't mention that.

The King County legislation does mention pilot program, and it has a specific period of time.

It's also unclear to me what you're planning to measure.

So what are the metrics you're using to determine whether it's successful and that, in your opinion, it should be continued or expanded?

Yeah.

I think a few documents that we can point you to are the two evaluations we've done for bike share so far, and that really looks at use.

Are people using them?

Are they using them across the city equitably?

There's surveys of what trips are people doing.

Are we generating recreational trips?

Are we generating More tools for people to get to work or to get to their essential trips, coffee shops, visit friends, things like that.

Maybe we'll open up from COVID at some time.

And then safety.

Safety is a huge one.

I've mentioned the work with Dr. Rivara's colleagues, and we're excited about that.

Dr. Rivara got back to us today.

He's excited about that work.

Yeah, I think Sam might want to talk a little bit more about that as well.

Sure.

So just a couple of responses on a couple of these questions.

So we did respond to Dr. Rivara's letter with some very specific pieces that we're doing to address some of his concerns.

I think, like Joel said, the specifics of the liability issues might need to be a conversation with the city attorney's office.

I will also say that just as with bike share, there will likely be more private bikes, more private scooters than we have in a public shared scooter program.

And a lot of the potential liability stems from normal use of those devices, you know as best shooter program doesn't necessarily expose us to to additional liability than we would otherwise have by people privately using those devices in the in the street and then i think some of these discussions about the the pilot in the structure of the pilot we're very happy and over the coming couple of weeks to uh...

follow-up and have additional discussion and and figure out how we can Tie some of the the you know timing or reporting or things like that through the Through at a full council approval of the of the permit fees We are we do feel like they're in order to launch a program this year.

We're starting to run into some time constraints with the ability to have people get get equipment here and get up and running in an orderly way so we can see what happens when it's both good weather and a little bit less good weather as we sometimes have in the fall as well.

Thank you.

And so one of the ways to potentially address the concerns that there's nothing where the legislative branch is saying, has any leverage that this is a pilot or what we're measuring or how long it goes for, but without holding up the legislation, without bogging down the Seattle Municipal Code, Is to perhaps put together a companion resolution that simply says, you know, this is a pilot for this period of time.

These are the things we're going to measure and attach the permit requirements to the resolution, you know, so that so that everything's in a in a more comprehensive package for for the for the general public and the council is stating its intent that this is a pilot project and so the executive, we're not ceding all of our authority to the executive immediately when this presumably gets approved on Tuesday, September 8th.

So I will confer with the sponsor on whether there's any interest in that and work with central staff.

so that there's a more comprehensive view of this rather than just the single page for one ordinance, single page for the other ordinance.

It would be helpful to have it all fleshed out and attached so that the legislative branch is having its full say on this program.

And we'd be happy to collaborate on something like that over the next few weeks as well.

Thank you.

Council members, are there any other questions before we vote on the first of the two council bills?

Councilor Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Just to your point and regarding the pilot duration and the Q&A document that you brought up, I think it is very important just for ease and accessibility for the public to understand that these are the questions that have been asked and these have been the questions that have been answered.

For instance, the letter that we received from Dr. Rivera was very important for us to understand that those are the concerns and it was also equally important to read the letter that Director Zimbabwe responded with.

A lot of the questions that I came into this meeting with today were actually answered proactively and then I think that it could be as simple as I believe your suggestion of doing a companion resolution to outline the Q&A document and pilot duration, et cetera, I think that that could be a smart way forward.

Council President Gonzalez, please.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chair Peterson.

I just want to say that I'm not hot to trot on a resolution idea.

I think that the probably more appropriate mechanism, as I'm understanding the proposal, would be to perhaps include a clerk file that has the relevant documents and makes them part of the record that is supportive of why we are advancing these two council bills at this point.

That would be a good mechanism by which to include copies of the permit fee requirements that have been posted publicly by SDOT on their website on a page dedicated to the Share Scooter program.

It also posts on that website the vendor application, for example.

You know, we could also post some of the additional equity analysis documents.

But I think if what we're trying to do is build a legislative record that addresses in one place the information that was taken into consideration by the council in weighing the advancement of these two council bills, my suggestion would be that we pursue a clerk file as opposed to a resolution.

Thank you, Council President.

For me, a resolution would be important just to shape the parameters of the pilot.

I don't think the permit does that.

So, but it's also- I'm a little, may I?

Please.

I'm a little concerned about the framing of using a resolution to shape the pilot program.

I think we shaped this program through binding legislation, which would be an ordinance, not a resolution.

I think we have had extensive conversations about this program.

It has been legislated by this city council and past city councils in terms of advancing this effort.

Now, if there are additional pieces of information that we need from SDOT around Uh, implementation pieces, I think it's appropriate for us to have.

Committee hearings to ask for that additional granular detail and to make sure that the public is aware about.

The implementation and the monitoring of the implementation so that it is transparent and accountable and so that.

some of my own issues that I flagged would be addressed in terms of making sure that we get a clear understanding about when issues do arise, how is SDOT being responsive to those issues and modifying the program.

But again, I think that what we are seeing here today through these council bills is a Soft launch of the scooter share program that would allow the S dot an opportunity to in a measured and judicious way evaluate what a.

Small scale deployment.

of this program by private vendors into the city of Seattle would look like with the understanding and I think with the direction that that it would not be expanded until the research and evaluation was completed on the various components that are currently included as part of the underlying base legislation and as part of the fee schedule legislation that we're considering here now.

And so I worry that introducing a resolution is effectively relitigating some of the prior legislative choices that the council has made, which is fine.

It's totally appropriate to do that.

But if that's where the conversation is headed, then I'd want to have a transparent conversation about the chair's intent or not to fundamentally modify or narrow the scope of the program.

Okay, that's helpful to hear that context.

It was really just to take the, um, the, as King County had put it in their ordinance, what the timeframe of the pilot was and what they're looking at in the pilot.

Um, it would just be to have our own legislation where we're taking what, what SDOT saying and putting it in a resolution so that, um, we're saying this is the time period for the pilot.

If it's really a pilot, we want to learn from it.

This is what we're going to measure in the pilot.

And that's really it.

Yes, Calvin.

Council members, I just wanted to put out there that one other venue you could consider is the fall budgeting process, which will approve the funding and assets department for this program in general.

It's another opportunity to approach some of these issues and potentially talk about reporting requirements or other issues that you might not feel comfortable nailing down just yet, but we could take that up again in the fall.

So Calvin, that would take the form of a statement of legislative intent or something like that?

It could take the form of a statement of legislative intent.

It could take the form of budget provides.

It depends a little bit on what specific issue you wish to move forward on, but there's a number of tools available to us there.

But won't the SCUDA program be up and running for four months before a budget provisor to take effect from the fall budget process?

Yes, there is a period of time if this is approved currently that the department will be able to move forward for this year.

I'm highlighting that some of these issues about how to expand it could be taken up in the budget, but if that's your prerogative.

Thank you for offering that.

So I'm just trying to get myself comfortable with the legislation.

I was very excited that it was a pilot.

And then when I saw the legislation and didn't see that memorialized, that's where I'm raising the concern.

So I'll see if there's appetite for a resolution later at this time.

I'll have to, yes, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

And just to everyone's points, I think we are all circling around the same desire, which is to put information on the record, which is both Q&A and, you know, really putting on the record the answers that we've received to the questions today.

I think that putting Q&A into a resolution would be more difficult than just putting it into a clerk file.

And I think that as we have come into conversations with executive departments over this last year regarding different issues of contention where there has been tension between executive departments and Um, I, I just want to make sure that, uh, the city council that clerk files have been referenced and clerk files have been a good, a good place to put on the record, both questions and answers and.

Um, duration aspect.

So, um, appetite for a clerk file rather than a resolution at this time, just because it would allow us to put a more immense amount of information that is not just whereas clauses and as we're ordained.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Yeah, I think we could do both.

But we can talk about that later.

but the goal today is to vote on these two council bills and send them to the full city council Tuesday, September eight.

Are there any more comments before we take a vote?

Okay.

So, um, hopefully our committee clerks still with us.

Yes.

Two votes.

Okay.

So we'll, um, um, I think I'm going to move the first bill here.

Council members, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119867. Is there a second?

Second.

Bill's been moved and seconded.

Any final comments?

OK, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill move to the full council?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

I think Herbold's gone.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss?

Yes.

Peterson?

No. 3-4, one opposed, one absent, had to depart for another meeting.

Okay, thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to September 8th, Seattle City Council meeting.

Now the next related item is item nine, Council Bill 119868. I think I'll go ahead and move that, and then if there's any final comments, we can jump in.

Council members, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119868. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, the bill's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill, Council Bill 119868.

Any final comments on this?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill 119868 pass.

Gonzales.

Aye.

Morales.

Yes.

Rouse.

Yes.

Peterson.

No.

Three in favor, one opposed, one on another meeting.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 8th Seattle City Council meeting.

Thanks everybody for your patience.

Item 10, Council Bill 119745. Will the clerk please read item 10 into the record?

Council Bill 119745. an ordinance granting the University of Washington permission to maintain and operate five existing pedestrian sky bridges located around the perimeter of the UW campus as a campus pedestrian sky bridge network for a 10-year term, specifying the conditions under which this permit is granted, providing for the acceptance of the permit and conditions, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts

Thank you.

We've got central staff here to give a presentation.

I believe we did hear this item previously in the committee.

And so we're just, we got some questions answered and now we're gonna move ahead with it.

So Lish Whitson from central staff, thanks for joining us.

Why don't you go ahead and present and then we'll move for passage.

Thank you.

It's been a number of months since we last discussed this.

So just as a brief reminder, this legislation would consolidate and renew permission to the University of Washington to maintain five sky bridges over city streets.

One is over 15th Avenue Northeast, two are over Pacific Northeast Pacific Street and two are over Montlake Boulevard Northeast.

Each of these are heavy arterials and there are significant grade changes between the central campus and the surrounding parts of the campus that are connected by the sky bridges.

Most of the sky bridges were built before the Americans with Disabilities Act and are not accessible.

At your last discussion of this bill, there was a request that language, sorry, let me switch The language in the bill reference a transition plan that the University of Washington is currently undertaking on all three of its campuses that will prioritize ADA improvements across all three campuses, including improvements to sky bridges.

And also the amendment would recognize that it may be impossible for some of these sky bridges to become ADA accessible and ask the university to identify alternative accessible routes.

Any questions?

Thank you, Lish.

So just to clarify for everybody, the amendment addresses questions that were raised at the Transportation Utilities Committee meeting back pre-COVID times.

And so I'll go ahead and move that amendment so we can vote on the amended version.

Second.

Thank you.

The amendment to Council Bill 119745 has been moved and seconded.

That's what Lish is showing on the screen here, which is in his memo and it addresses the ADA concerns.

Are there any comments before we call a roll on the amendment?

Council Member Morales.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate the language here and understand that the university has, you know, the ability to sort of retrofit some of these bridges may preclude them being able to be retrofitted.

I don't know the details of that, I will admit.

You know, when we heard this in committee, my real question was whether and how people who have disabilities were, how their input was sought.

And I didn't feel like I got a very thorough answer from that.

Nevertheless, I'm glad to see that there will be a report back.

And I just want to continue to flag that as we're talking about these issues, whether it is something that can be retrofitted or not, we do still need to make sure that, um, that institutions are doing the kind of outreach and including people with disabilities in their, um, in their community engagement work so that we can begin to address in a different and better way, um, how folks are able to get around the city.

Um, so I thank you for adding this amendment and we'll continue to keep an eye out on it.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member.

Any more comments on the amendment?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Just echoing Council Member Morales' comments when this came before the committee previously, I brought up the concerns that we needed to have a report sooner after speaking with Director Clark from the University of Washington.

It is clear to me that these bridges, especially the ones connecting the Berkelman Trail to the athletic field areas will likely be replaced rather than, in short order, as the campus master plan was updated recently and those changes are going to be occurring.

Nonetheless, it is still critical that we ensure that the thought is put into allowing accessibility for all abilities as soon as possible.

Because whether or not somebody Whether or not there are other options, if there is the shortest path for an individual to take, we need to make that option available for all abilities.

And so I'm glad to see that this amendment is included.

And because of the inclusion of this amendment, I'll be able to support the bills today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member.

So it's been moved and seconded, and we've heard comments on this amendment to Council Bill 1197405. There are no further comments.

We'll have the clerk call the roll on the amendment.

Gonzales.

Aye.

Morales.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Fore, yes.

The motion carries and the bill is now amended, Council Bill 119745. Now we're going to offer any comments to the bill as amended.

Lish, did you have anything to add?

No, thank you.

Okay, okay, good.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the amended version of Council Bill 119745. Gonzales.

Aye.

Morales.

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Also four votes, none against.

The motion carries in the committee recommendation that the amended bill pass and will be sent to the September 8th City Council meeting.

Now the last item on the agenda, item 11, Council Bill 119866. Will the clerk please read item 11 into the record?

Council Bill 119866, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, creating a restricted cash account for depositing donations and gifts, authorizing the general manager, CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to accept donations and gifts into the account for the purpose of providing financial assistance to a slow income customers.

Thank you.

We have Mami Hara with us.

Hello.

Thanks for joining us.

This is a treat for everybody here.

Thank you.

And we've got central staff with us.

And so, Brian, is there anything you wanted to start with before we hand it over to our general manager and CEO?

No, thank you.

Given the time, I'll just turn it over to SPU, and I will be sharing my screen, which has their presentation.

Thank you.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you, committee chair and committee members for taking the time to hear about this proposed legislation.

I just want to note that Corinne Thibault, who has put a lot of work into this proposal, is also attending this meeting.

The purpose of the legislation in front of you today is to allow Seattle Public Utilities to receive donations from the public and to distribute those donations to our low-income customers to help them pay their SPU bills.

We were advised by the city attorney's office that under the city charter, only city council has the authority to receive donations on behalf of the city.

So in order to operate this donation fund, we are coming to you to ask for delegation of that authority to Seattle Public Utilities to receive donations for the specific purpose of helping our low-income customers to pay their bills.

For background, this effort is something that we committed to looking at as part of our customer assistance strategy planning last year and included in a report we submitted to council in June of last year.

And with COVID-19's economic impacts, establishing customer relief programs is more important and more urgent than ever.

We are optimistic about this because this proposal enables us to tap into private sector philanthropy to supplement the city assistance that we currently provide and believe it'll be a powerful tool to help our customers.

I'd also like to note that we have worked closely across the city family, including with City Light and FAS.

in the development and refinement of this proposal.

And to provide you with an overview, I'll walk you through how people would contribute to the fund and how customers would receive the funds in a streamlined way that doesn't require them to do anything differently than they do today.

Brian, may I have the next slide, please?

In terms of how we would obtain the donations, our goal is to simply align with what City Light currently does today.

They offer customers and the public the opportunity to donate to help fellow residents pay their electric bills.

And we'd like to offer the same opportunity to help our customers pay their SPU utility services.

And this would include an option to donate that's available to the public on our website, as well as the opportunity for our customers to donate via their bill payments.

May I have the next slide, please?

I'd also like to note that we're not shutting off any customer and are not charging any late fees through at least the end of 2020. But for our customers who are struggling to pay their bills, they are seeing their balances and debt growing and accumulating.

And this is not just a problem in the utility sector, but for their rent and other bills as well.

So finding ways to get ahead of that and to provide relief to customers who are struggling is really critical.

In terms of how we would distribute the funds to households in need, you may recall that we have two very important but very different and separate utility financial assistance programs.

On one hand, each of the utilities has an emergency assistance program, which is designed for one-time emergency bill relief.

And on the other hand, we also have the utility discount program, which provides ongoing assistance with 50% off every SBU bill and 60% off every city light bill to qualifying customers.

And this legislation that's in front of you and the donation fund that we'd like to create would not in any way change or impact UDP in any way.

Rather, we would use SPU's Emergency Assistance Program to distribute the donated funds to households who are already applying to and qualifying for that program.

You might recall that just last November, Council passed an ordinance that expanded our Emergency Assistance Program including raising the income ceiling from 70% to 80% of the state median income.

So it has a slightly higher income threshold than the UDP does now.

And our plan is to simply use our emergency assistance program to channel the donations we receive to households already applying to and qualifying for that program as the additional amount of assistance on top of what we currently provide to those qualifying households today.

So for the customers struggling to pay their bill and seeking assistance, there won't be any new programs that they have to learn about.

They don't have to fill out any new types of applications.

They don't have to worry about any new eligibility criteria.

And nothing will have changed except now they will see a bigger a bigger chunk of change from SPU's Emergency Assistance Program than they would see today.

The legislation that was passed in last November, in addition to raising the income ceiling, also increased the amount of assistance that we can provide with our Emergency Assistance Program.

Before, we could only provide assistance up to 50% of the bill.

Now, after that legislation was passed, we can provide assistance to for 100% of that bill, which is great.

However, one restriction that is still in place in the Seattle Municipal Code is the amount of the rate payer dollars that we can provide in assistance through our EAP program annually to each household.

And that dollar amount is adjusted each year.

And for 2020, we are limited to $448 per household.

Or if the household has children, they can get that dollar amount twice.

per year.

So the legislation in front of you would allow us to simply add additional dollars from the donation fund, you know, whatever amount is determined, you know, relative to, you know, what we receive and would be determined in our director's rules.

And so just say it's $200, it would be on top of the 448. So the customer would receive $648 instead of $448.

And the key point of our proposal is nothing will have changed in terms of the programs That we offer the alignment of those programs and what the customer needs to do to obtain assistance.

So, the only difference will be that the customers are applying for emergency assistance will now be able to get more money to help them pay their bills.

And we're working with city light on possibly doing a joint fundraising campaign.

for both our donation funds to make sure that we're coordinated on that.

We've also estimated that because we're simply funneling the donations through an existing program and to households who are already applying to the program, the administrative costs will be very modest, about 40,000 a year, and that'll include the cost of marketing and a fundraising campaign.

And we are able to absorb those costs within our existing budgeted resources.

And finally, in terms of timeline, we estimate that within about six weeks, we would be able to roll the service out with a target launch date of October 1st, which would mean that we would be operational during the entire fourth quarter of this year, which would be very exciting to be able to provide that resource to our customers.

And so with that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you, General Manager.

I see O'Hara.

Any questions for her?

Council Member Strauss.

I just have mostly comments, so I'll let Council Member Morales go ahead.

Is that okay?

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Hara.

I am excited about this opportunity for our families to get a little bit more assistance if they need it.

I'm assuming that there would be an education element to this to let families who aren't already involved or enrolled in these programs participate or know that that is an option.

And this is probably a tangential question that I will follow up later with you.

But as you know, here in district, we have a lot of families who are dealing with broken side sewers and are, you know, obviously many of them have been unemployed because of COVID and now have this really large plumbing issue to deal with.

So I'm interested in talking with you about what additional resources there might be, not for paying bills, but for when somebody has a big infrastructure problem that they aren't able to cover.

And we'll just talk with you offline about that.

But I know that that is an important thing that I have a dozen or so constituents who are worried about right now.

I appreciate your advocacy on this issue, and you'll be happy to hear that our customer review panel has approved for SPU to move ahead with a project and a study on how we can better help customers with their side sewer issues.

This is an issue, you know, throughout the city that hits low-income customers particularly hard.

And we have a great deal of compassionate interest in helping to figure out how to provide the best assistance possible for those customers.

So thank you very much.

And we will look forward to working with you on the development of this program.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Just grabbing my notes.

I'm really appreciative of CEO Hara and Kareem.

Brian, good night on our central staff for working together.

This is a really great use of our existing programs that in highlighting the fact that CEO Hara had mentioned that there's a lower administrative cost because we're using an existing program and expanding it.

I also want to really highlight the smart I'm thinking about partnering with Seattle City Light on this program.

And also highlighting that we're currently in a no shutoffs, no fees time because of COVID-19.

And so I just really want to thank Corinne and CEO Hara.

Also, Bob Hennessy, if he's listening, for all of your good work, making sure that people who need the assistance the most are receiving it so that, you know, this is a utility, this is a basic need, and I'm really thankful for how you are moving forward to ensuring folks get what they need, don't go into debt, because even though there's not a shutoff or no late fees, that they could still be racking up debt, and so making sure increasing the threshold and allowing people to have a second go at these emergency funds is just so important.

So just lots of thanks.

This is really great work.

Thank you for your desire to help those customers and many things to Brian.

Good night.

And Council Central staff for helping us with all of this.

We really appreciate all of the great work and assistance.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much.

Also, just want to express gratitude for the work that you all are doing and for identifying this as an opportunity for public-private partnership in this space to meet the needs of low-income customers who are experiencing ongoing financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 economic crisis and related unemployment levels.

I really appreciate that.

I wanted to get a better sense from you, Director Hara, around what the targets are or goals are for SPU and the executive in terms of dollars raised.

And I think I saw small references that would be an additional two hundred dollars.

Is that what you said in terms of a credit for people who who need it, an additional $200, I think, is what I saw on the slide.

But maybe you can just talk about sort of the bigger global goals around what you're hoping to be able to accomplish through this public-private partnership in terms of private dollars coming in to help supplement the UDP programs and the emergency assistance programs that we already have in place.

That's a great question.

I'm going to have to lean on Kareem to see if we have any analysis on any ballpark numbers.

We are focused on trying to see if we can get sponsorship through corporate giving campaigns that exist already within corporations, and we're very optimistic about that route.

Kareem, do you have any ballpark understanding of what might be possible?

Yeah, we haven't set a specific target, but we are encouraged by the example in Spokane.

They just set up a similar program and within six weeks they had raised $150,000.

So, you know, I think anything's possible, but we're new to this.

So, again, we've been a bit hesitant to set a specific target.

That that's helpful.

I appreciate that reference point.

And then a 2nd question is based on the data that you all have in the billing system.

Do you have a sense of.

For those who are falling behind on their bills, what what that amount.

average amount is for folks, just so we can get a sense of the scale of the need.

I think that would be important to get on the record here.

We can get that data to you.

We do track it.

I just don't want to misquote it.

So we'll provide it to you as soon as possible.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Council members, if there are no further comments, I'd like to move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119866. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill.

Any final comments?

Thank you.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

And Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four yes, no other votes.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that this bill pass, and it'll be sent to September 8 City Council meeting.

And everybody, this concludes the August 19, 2020 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

This committee will, like all committees, be in recess until September 8, The next regular meeting of this committee is on September 16, 2020. The bills that we pass out of this committee, though, will be heard at the full council meeting on Tuesday, September 8. I know a lot of those are time sensitive.

Thank you, everybody, for attending.

And we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.