Seattle City Council Transportation & Seattle Public Utilities Committee Public Hearing 6/21/22

public utilities committee will come to order.

The time is 932 AM.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Chair Peterson.

Present.

Three present.

Thank you.

And our colleagues, Council Members Herbold and Strauss are excused.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

We are continuing to conduct meetings in a hybrid manner with people attending both virtually and in person.

And we ask for your patience as we work to navigate this new hybrid format.

Today we have two council bills.

The first from the Seattle Department of Transportation vacating a portion of 29th Avenue Southwest and Southwest City View Street.

The second is from Seattle Public Utilities to grant a temporary easement and a smaller permanent subsurface easement to King County for a narrow track of land on the east side in Bellevue with the main purpose of constructing and maintaining a sewer line.

Next on the agenda, we will welcome to our committee, Andrew Lee, who is Mayor Harrell's nominee to become the permanent general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

And that's for discussion and vote.

And for the last item on our agenda, we will hear from the Seattle Department of Transportation, an update on Vision Zero, which is the public safety goal of many cities, including Seattle's to eliminate traffic related fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. At this time, I will open up the general public comment period for Transportation Seattle Public Utilities.

Of note, we do also have a public, one of our items requires a public hearing, so I'll be sure to separate those from regular public comment.

and those seeking to speak at the public hearing.

But first, our regular public comment period.

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

I'll start by hearing the comments from the first five speakers signed up online, and then we'll hear comments from those in person, and then we'll switch back to those online.

So we'll alternate between online and in person.

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

It's for up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on two speakers at a time in the order in which registered on the council's website and the signup sheet in the council chambers at city hall.

If you've not registered, if you have not yet registered to comment, but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council or by signing up in person here on the sign-in sheet near the public comment microphones at the front of the chamber.

For remote speakers, 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 that it's their turn to speak, and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

For public commenters, please begin, or for everybody who's commenting, please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

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

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

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

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

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you've completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options online.

Okay, the regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

We're gonna hear first from Ankur Toot, followed by Holden Ringer.

Go ahead, Ankur.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Ankur.

I live in District 7 and I'd like to give public comment on Vision Zero.

I don't own a car and I rely on the city to provide safe walking, cycling, and transit connections.

Last year, there were 19 pedestrian deaths, the highest total since 2006. These are not accidents.

They're preventable tragedies, preventable fatalities.

Over 90% of these occur on Seattle's arterials, wide, high-speed roads hostile to anybody not in a two-ton steel box.

Seattle needs to get serious about the safety of our streets.

It's inexcusable that up to 31 traffic fatalities in Seattle last year, 19 were pedestrian, not to mention the continued tragedies we've already seen people who walk and bike injured this year.

Our physical infrastructure has to change.

This is a city that was built for motor vehicles.

Our DOT loves to respond with phrases like maintaining vehicular throughput and traffic flow simulations.

When asked why a particular design element to improve pedestrian or bike safety is omitted, But what our DOT is failing to recognize in these requests is that the public does not have the same value system.

We don't care about vehicular throughput and what the traffic flow simulation said.

We care that our neighbors are dying because they had the audacity across the street.

We need physical infrastructure changes.

Reduce the roadway.

Don't just lower the speed limit.

Add physical diverters and traffic calming.

Don't just label a street as stay healthy.

Put in a concrete barrier.

Don't just paint a stripe on the road and call it a bike lane.

Put in a curb extension.

Don't just put up a sign saying all intersections are crosswalks.

Instead of pouring concrete into parking garages and endless highway expansion, let's repair our sidewalks and build out the safest, highest throughput, and according to my traffic flow simulations, least congested transportation system ever invented, walking.

Our streets should be designed for people.

Those 19 pedestrian lives depended on it, and we failed them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Holden Ringer, followed by Erica Bush.

Go ahead, Holden.

Howdy.

My name is Holden Ringer, and I live over in Ballard, and I'm here to discuss Vision Zero.

I joined you all today as a walker and biker of this city.

I'm relatively new to Seattle, but when I wake up every morning, I get to be excited about living in Washington, and especially Seattle.

I'm blessed to be in a city on the cutting edge of technology, culture, social movements, et cetera.

It's an amazing place to be.

However, every day I walk or bike to work, I'm reminded of the harsh truth that, like much of America, I'm a second-class citizen here.

No matter what class, gender, profession, race, or age I am, the car stands above all in this city.

I often think about when I'm inevitably hit by a car, how will I be blamed?

It wasn't visible enough.

He should have known I was going to turn right.

He shouldn't have been biking in the street.

He should have been driving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Now this may sound controversial, but I will refuse to blame the driver for their carelessness.

Instead, I will point the finger at the inherently unsafe system of transportation drivers and pedestrians are forced to contend with every day.

Something cannot be considered an accident when you can predict with some level of certainty it will happen.

That is negligence.

I want to live in a city where it's not just the most able-bodied people, such as myself, that are brazen enough to traverse this city outside a car, but instead the young, the old, the disabled, and maybe most importantly, the skeptical will not feel they will be struck down for merely existing.

I ask you, members of the council, to deprioritize the speed in which cars move around our city as the sole metric of success for an effective transportation system.

Instead, I ask that you prioritize our lives and our safety.

Uphold the ideals of Vision Zero as the indicator of success.

Please build an environment, whether that's protected bike lanes, bike and pedestrian-only streets, narrower streets, priority of green lights for pedestrians, et cetera.

We no longer feel like second-class citizens.

I yield the rest of my time and hope to be in the next time, one piece the next time we speak.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Erica Bush followed by Corey Crocker.

Go ahead, Erica.

Sorry, are you able to hear me?

Yes.

Okay, sorry.

I think it was on mute for a moment.

My name is Erica Bush.

I'm the co-lead for the Duwamish Valley Safe Streets.

And I wanted to echo the comments made previously regarding the concerns for safety in the Duwamish Valley.

In the last year and a half, we've seen seven fatalities at one key intersection in Soto.

at 4th Avenue South and South Holgate Street.

It's a abominable environment for anyone who is not driving a semi-truck.

And we have 50,000 people who come and go from Soto every day.

We have thousands more that traverse through Soto coming from our most underserved communities in South Seattle to jobs and obligations across the city.

For a long, long time we have simply ignored SOTO as a wasteland that should be utilized only by our freight services.

And that's just simply not possible when you have an industrial landscape that's surrounded by residential use.

And so I'm asking you council to really take account of the recommendations by the Vision Zero team for improvements to Soto, particularly at the intersection of South Holgate and 4th Avenue South, where we are repeatedly seeing fatalities.

Along the street at Airport Way, we also have the Evergreen Service Center, which treats thousands of folks who are trying desperately to improve their state of welfare.

And those same people are at risk of losing their lives every day when seeking treatment.

So again, this is really a critical point in our infrastructure.

And I've mentioned these limited improvements of signage and little tiny bollards.

Thank you.

Thank you for mentioning those ideas and those locations.

And please email the rest of your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Um, next we have, um, Corey Crocker, and then we're going to hear from, um, a speaker in, in chambers.

Go ahead, Corey.

Yes.

Good morning.

Good morning, my name is Corey clock or my 30 year resident business owner in the district and a member of the district mobility group and I have a public comment concerning for vision 0. Let's make crossing interstate 5 on Northeast 45th Street safe for pedestrians and bicycles, especially as the last mile to and from the new district light rail station on this project we are making progress.

But we're not across the bridge yet.

So here's an update.

The move Seattle Olivia 2015 promised a safe crossing would be in place for the station opening which opened last October.

It has overwhelming support of the neighborhoods local businesses commuters and residents.

We have 600 signatures on our online petition and dozens of personal statements about why this is important for them and their families.

This project does not remove any parking and does not impact vehicular throughput.

With your support, we now have $500,000 allocated to fund the project.

And most recently, WSDOT and SDOT have agreed to install safety fencing on the bridge.

However, SDOT says they will not make the October deadline for the fencing to be included in this year's budget, postponing it yet another year.

SDOT has refused to model our well-researched proposal that doesn't impact signal timings or vehicular throughput.

As a result, SDOT has not prioritized cyclist mobility between the new district and Warrenford.

We think that improving the overpass for both pedestrians and cyclists has been an obligation of SDOT since the levy to move Seattle.

So failure to deliver for yet another year is unacceptable.

Please help make Vision Zero a reality by prioritizing the safe crossing over I-5.

For more information and to sign our petition, visit hashtag safe crossing over I-5.

Thank you, council members.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from our speaker in council chambers, Alex Zimmerman, and then we'll go back to the online speakers.

Okay, your two minutes are starting.

Why you don't show my sign, my yellow David Star in my face?

Are you freaking a Nazi or psychopath?

That's exactly who you are.

Sieg Heil, my dirty damn Nazi fascist mob, bandit and psychopath.

I once spoke about vision zero.

I don't know what it means zero, but mathematically is no zero exist in this university.

And I talked to you many time before about couple point, what is absolutely critical.

Open HIV line for senior citizen, disabled and veteran.

It makes situation much safer.

And I talk about this with you hundred times, zero reaction.

You are real freaking stupid.

It's exactly what this mayor office told Friday.

You are a stupid.

I think you are Nazi psychopath.

Different, little bit, not too much.

Another point, why don't bring all buses in third street?

It makes situation much empty.

It costs nothing.

Different between three and four streets, only 100 feet.

So why all buses going forth when third street totally empty?

You did this for buses.

You are a cretina.

You understand what it means?

You are a stupid.

degenerate idiot.

We have third avenue that is put for buses and fourth avenue busy with buses.

You come to zero, you never come to zero because you are mentally sick.

And I told you before, you need a mental examination.

It's a problem what you have.

Number three, stop this stupid red camera.

Because right now, for my understanding, the city have $120,000 deficit.

Why you send 50% to Arizona corporation?

Corporations suck blood and money from us.

Why?

It's very important.

Distract people when people drive.

I read, see red, I always have a problem.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Vicky Clark followed by Bob Anderton.

Go ahead, Vicky Clark.

Thanks.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, Vicky.

Great.

Thank you.

Good morning, Transportation Committee members.

Vicky Clark, Policy Director with Cascade Bicycle Club, speaking today to Vision Zero.

Sitting at a bus stop, riding a bike on a sidewalk.

common activities in Seattle and activities that have resulted in serious injury or death in Seattle streets this year already.

Both of these incidents occurring in district two.

Traffic violence is nothing short of a public health crisis and Seattle is not immune.

Serious injuries and deaths to people walking and biking are on the rise and a trend that is not slowing down.

I want to thank this committee for inviting SDOT to provide this Vision Zero briefing today.

We all know these are not accidents.

They're the result of decades of political choices of what, and whom we prioritize on our streets.

You may not have been in office when these decisions were made.

You have the power to change them now.

I first want to echo support for focusing improvements in Sodo and lift up the comments just made by Erica Bush.

As SDOT updates its modal plans to bring them together in the Seattle transportation plan, one key goal is to eliminate conflict between the historically individual modal plans, which requires prioritization.

prioritization, that politically charged word again.

My questions, how is the high injury network being incorporated into the Seattle transportation plan network?

And how is the bike path safety analysis being incorporated?

I want to thank you for your time this morning.

Thank you very much.

Even though they might have clicked the public hearing button for one of the I believe that they're here to speak about Vision Zero.

So we're gonna go ahead and call on them now.

Bob Anderton, followed by Gerard Ronningen-Penrich.

Go ahead, Bob.

Bob Anderton, if you could press star six and you can begin speaking about, it looks like Seattle Transportation Plan, Vision Zero.

We can also come back to you, Bob.

Let's go ahead to the next speaker and then we'll come back to Bob.

So next speaker is Gerald Ronigan Fenwich.

Go ahead, Gerald.

Reminder to press star six to begin speaking, Gerald.

Okay, we'll come back to Gerald.

Next, we've got Joseph Breda, followed by Gordon Padelford.

Go ahead, Joseph.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hello?

Okay, perfect.

Hi, my name's Joe Breda.

I live in Fremont, and I moved to Seattle about three years ago from Boston, Massachusetts, and I grew up taking public transit and walking and biking basically everywhere because it was very enjoyable.

And when it came to Seattle, I was surprised at just how complicated walking ended up being.

Um, so in my 15 minute walk from like my house to downtown Fremont, or, you know, my short walk into Wallingford, um, I sort of conflict with multiple arterial roads.

Um, and there's some like particular examples of intersections that are like very difficult for pedestrians and they're at the junction of the rapid ride and 44. Um, so two of like the, you know, like higher throughput bus, um, lanes in Seattle.

Anywhere along 46th and also along Fremont Ave, cars go very, very fast.

And there's this RCW in Seattle that all intersections are crosswalks.

And I'm just sort of under the belief that this isn't working.

And I've read up on Vision Zero quite a bit, and there seems to be a lot of effort in this direction to improve pedestrian safety.

Um, but there's a lot of talk about these like large renovations, um, and these big plans.

And I just wanted to say that, um, a lot of times a solution to a problem like this, uh, needs to come quickly rather than be complicated.

And something as simple as just putting up a crosswalk, um, so that people understand or putting up a sign.

And so the drivers understand that this is a place where people walk every day, um, will make a pretty significant impact.

Um, and so, you know, I was just wanting to let people know, and I guess just request.

So there'd be more effort to put in immediate solutions while people are working on these more complicated long term solutions, which I appreciate.

But I just like to see change quickly, you know, while I still live in the city, because I like living here, and I just want it to be more enjoyable to walk around and safer.

And so, I guess, yeah, thanks everyone else for the public comments.

Ankur's opener comment was amazing.

And so yeah, thanks for the time.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Gordon Padelford, and then we'll go back to Bob and Gerald.

Go ahead, Gordon.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Padelford.

I'm the ED of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

And, you know, I don't know about you, but the state of the world feels really heavy these days, and it feels like we have these large, intractable problems that our democratic system seem unable to solve.

And to be honest, Vision Zero feels heavy too sometimes.

It's a big deal, right?

We're having over 20 people die on our streets every year, 150 plus being seriously injured at the local level.

But the good news is that it is solvable at the local level.

And there's a really important role for you all to play.

Because different cities in other parts of the world are either close to achieving Vision Zero or have achieved it.

And the other thing I want to mention is that we're building a better future by achieving safety.

We're not just reducing deaths and fatalities.

You know, I think about kids being able to walk to school and the park, elders being able to maintain their independence as they age, you know, people with disabilities having equal access to every part of our city and society, and neighbors meeting with each other in the street and building community connections.

So it's not just about preventing tragedy.

It's also about building a joyful, equitable and sustainable world together.

And that's what gets me really excited.

And I'm really appreciative that you're bringing this to the mayor's attention.

And I hope you will continue to push and make this a priority for our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gordon.

And we're gonna give Bob and Gerald another chance to speak here during this regular public comment period.

They've technically signed up for the public hearing on item two.

So I'll go back to them for that item.

It's just that in the description, it says vision zero, vision zero.

So Bob Anderton, if you wanted to talk in the general public comment period, you can go ahead, press star six.

Good morning, I'm Bob Anderton.

Can you hear me now?

Yes Bob we can hear you.

Speak a little bit louder though.

Yes.

Good morning.

I'm Bob Anderson.

I've been a daily bicycle commuter for almost three decades.

I live in West Seattle and I work in Pioneer Square and I'm asking this committee to transform the city's Vision Zero commitment from mere words into meaningful actions.

I serve on the board of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

You just just heard from Gordon Bedelford and I'm the founding attorney at Washington Bike Law.

Washington Bike Law represents people injured while walking or rolling statewide, but most of our clients are injured right here in Seattle.

Seattle adopted Vision Zero in 2015. If Seattle achieves Vision Zero, meaning that we have no more serious injuries and deaths due to traffic violence, I'll probably not have a job.

Now, most people love lawyer jokes, and I'm tempted to tell one now, but out of respect for your time, I'll just give you the punchline.

So many more people are being injured and killed in Seattle streets that Washington Bike Law just hired another bike lawyer.

Vision Zero requires that leaders accept their responsibility for making streets safe for everyone.

We are more than halfway through 2022 and this is the first time the Transportation Committee has even considered Vision Zero.

Mayor Harrell fired Stott's Director shortly after his election and he is still not named a permanent successor.

What is Seattle's vision for action to prevent more and more people being seriously injured and killed on our streets.

Now I recognize city politics are tough and that all of the members of this committee intend to serve their constituents but this is about more than politics.

It is literally life and death.

Please accept the responsibility that you have to lead and take action now to achieve Vision Zero.

My office can help make up for the harm done to people on unsafe streets, but you have the power to prevent their serious injuries and deaths.

Just do it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Gerald Runnigan Fenwich, and we're gonna go back to the speaker who's now present, Tom Lang.

Go ahead, Gerald, press star six.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Can you hear me now?

Okay, great.

Hi.

So I'm here with the Reindeer Grout, Valley Greenway Safe Street people.

And my issue is that Lake Washington Boulevard needs a 24-hour speed limit and a raised crosswalk at the Lake Washington Boulevard crossing from the parking lot at 49th Avenue South and the boulevard to the lake.

The first few speakers hit the nail on the head.

I will add to these comments by adding a comment about the boulevard.

The Vision Zero program which created a road diet of Columbia City, has encouraged most South Seattle and South King County commuters to abandon I-5 and Ranger Avenue and use Lake Washington Boulevard for their daily commutes.

The Vision Zero program made the boulevard an arterial street with a 25 mile an hour speed limit.

I've lived on the boulevard next to the parking lot at 49th Avenue South for over 20 years, and once the road diet was installed at Columbia City, And the pandemic showed that commuting by bicycle was a good option.

The traffic conflict between bikers and automobiles has reached dangerous proportions.

This situation mainly happens during commute times in the morning and evening.

During those times, most drivers drive at 35 to 40 miles an hour.

Why is this important?

The Vision Zero program was created with the goal of reducing traffic deaths.

By driving commuters from I-5 and Rainier Avenue to Lake Washington Boulevard, The boulevard has become a pedestrian bicycle safety crisis.

The boulevard should not be designated an artillery or street.

The speed limit should be reduced to 20 miles an hour and a raised crosswalk should be installed at the 49th Avenue South and Lake Washington Boulevard crossing.

Also, the long range program to turn Lake Washington Boulevard into a safe street for all pedestrians, bikers, car and cars should be included in the Vision Zero mission statement.

Living on the boulevard, I see this dangerous situation every day and know that the current situation is a...

Thank you very much.

Our last speaker is Tom Lang.

Go ahead, Tom.

Good morning.

Thank you for letting me speak a little late there.

My name is Tom Lang.

I live in Greenwood.

I represent the Aurora Reimagined Coalition.

And I'm also a new father.

My seven-month-old daughter is in the other room sleeping right now.

We live a block and a half off of Aurora, which, as we know, is one of the most dangerous streets in Seattle.

And I constantly think about, when will I be allowed to let her cross Aurora on her own?

It may not be until she's 12, 13, 14 years old, because it's such a dangerous, dangerous highway.

One thing I think about a lot, too, in our neighborhood, there are no sidewalks.

And we're not going to get sidewalks anytime soon.

We know that.

But how can we make the streets safe enough for kids, elderly people, folks in wheelchairs, and people on bikes and just walking with dogs?

How can we make it safer for them to walk around their neighborhood?

Vision Zero is a great strategy to make our streets safer.

And I don't disagree that everyone on on Council would agree that that we want to see zero traffic fatalities.

That is a shared value and I hope that we can move forward on the actual strategy to change the roadway so that we do see a tremendous drop in the number of fatalities along our streets.

Recently in the Seattle Times SBOT released some some statistics and the sales plans to pick them up, 17% of all traffic fatalities happen along Aurora Avenue.

As a representative of the Aurora Reimagined Coalition, I wanna see that number drop a lot to zero hopefully, but in the short term, we have to see a tremendous drop in the number of fatalities.

Vision Zero is the way to make that happen and I wanna see the council put some real action and budget line items behind that effort It takes political will, it takes brave leadership, and I really hope that council will take action this year to make it happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, that concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

So now we'll move on to the first legislative item in our agenda.

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

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 120345, an ordinance vacating a portion of 29th Avenue Southwest and Southwest City View Street in West Seattle for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, and if we could change the view of the screen for the public, it's, thank you, perfect.

Colleagues, as I understand it, this bill would grant final approval to vacate a portion of 29th Avenue, Southwest, and Southwest View Street, adjacent to the Port of Seattle Land in West Seattle.

And in August 2017, the City Council granted conditional approval And the petitioner has met all of those conditions for a storage facility.

Before I turn it over to Beverly Barnett of Seattle's Department of Transportation, and as is our practice to the representative of a petitioner, I'd like to give our city council central staff an opportunity to comment.

Lish Whitson, good morning.

Thank you for analyzing and tracking this project for us.

Could you let us know your overall thoughts and note whether the petitioner has met and will meet the or is likely to meet the conditions of the initial approval granted by City Council back in 2017?

Yeah, good morning, Wish-Witson Council Central staff.

Your decision today is whether or not to grant final approval of the vacation depending on whether or not you find that the petitioner has met all the conditions.

And in my reading of the conditions and the materials provided, including the property use and development agreement that has been recorded with King County, I think they have.

Okay, thank you.

Well, appreciate your looking into that for us and your analysis, Lish, on all these vacations, these street vacations.

Let's turn it over to Estad and to the petitioner.

Good morning, Beverly Barnett.

Yes, good morning.

Thank you for having us here today.

Thank you, Lish, for your comments.

This is Beverly Barnett with Seattle Department of Transportation, and I do manage the street vacation program for SDOT and provide these recommendations to City Council.

Also joining us is Steve Tagney from West Coast Self Storage.

And Bill Laborde will be supporting Steve going through a PowerPoint.

I think the chair has already highlighted kind of the key issues as has Lish.

So this vacation was approved and once the approval is granted by the city council, the developer is empowered to go out and physically change the area and construct their proposal and meet all of the conditions imposed by the city council.

And in SDOT, it's part of our job to track that and make sure everything's going okay and make sure cements and other things are addressed.

The city uses a tool called a property use and development agreement.

We always call it a PUDA and that's recorded at King County and it binds the property owner not just the current manager and owner of the property to continue the public benefit or other obligations that are imposed by the city council and that document is included in the final legislation.

I think with this, what we're really focusing on is West Coast self storage they.

proposed the vacation of City View in order to develop a storage facility.

We do have a number of slides on that that Steve is going to go through pretty quickly.

But the property in the area, there are some maps that will give us some context.

It's adjacent to the ports Terminal 5 facility, I think is how everybody knows it.

It also vacates a portion of 29th, which will and new core is the property owner adjacent to that.

And it helps to clarify the use of the property because the topography and the property owners use was inconsistent.

So you'll see there is a slide on a lot boundary adjustment.

So we're vacating Steve you which supported the development of the West Coast self storage, and then a dead end portion of 29 that clarifies new course continuing use of that for rail lines.

So we're going to try to go through the PowerPoint really quickly.

Since there are a number of different slides, we're happy to answer any questions.

But given the agenda, we thought we'll just zip through those and see if there's any other questions.

So, Steve, if you want to jump in and Bill is going to support us moving through the PowerPoint.

Sure.

Next slide.

So this is the completed project.

Completed about 18 months ago.

Next slide.

So portions of 29th and City View Street.

are what was conditionally approved back in 2017. And today we're seeking the final acceptance and approval of those satisfied conditions.

Next slide.

The location is shown here on the map on Harbor Avenue, close to or just north of the West Seattle Bridge.

It borders New Course Steel to the east, Harbor Avenue to the west.

And these two street vacations were in effect islands.

They did not connect effectively to any other improved streets.

Next slide.

The original conditions look like this.

29th Avenue is, oh, this is slightly offset.

But 29th Avenue is actually the rail yard that has been functioning as new course rail yard for years.

And then there was two private parcels and the small skinny parcel you see separating the private parcels on on Harbor Avenue was 29th Avenue.

Next slide.

Again, here's kind of the same outline.

The red area is the public right-of-ways.

The brown area is New Course property.

The gray area is owned by Port of Seattle.

And the greenish area were the two private lots that we assembled and merged.

Next slide.

Again, this gives kind of a little bit of an overlay.

The interesting thing about this particular case is that the functional boundary between Nucor's rail yard and the private parcels that we developed was really defined by this retaining wall and fence and what has been that way for years.

That retaining wall and fence is the bold line you see on the sketch.

And you can tell it's more or less in the middle of the right-of-way.

And what we did later on is do a lot line adjustment to put the functional boundary between the two uses to be in effect the fence.

And that's been completed.

Next slide.

So this is the original conditions.

Again, that existing retaining wall is pointed out here as that dotted line.

Next slide.

So after the vacation, based on the history of how these streets were first dedicated, this was the configuration.

In effect, we acquired part of Nucor's rail yard, which of course they were not interested in, and they acquired the Brown area.

part of our developed property, which of course, we are not interested in.

So again, we did the lot line of boundary adjustment on the next slide, please, to put everything back together the way it functions and has been.

And so Nucor and West Coast Self Storage cooperated nicely during that process.

And this is recorded.

The original conditions on this project.

There was a old warehouse on the property on this particular day they were receiving a shipment and used part of the bike lane Alki trail as some of their staging briefly before they put it away in the warehouse.

Other things to note, you'll see a hydrant kind of in the way of the bike lanes.

You'll see a couple of power poles in the way.

Those are all conditions that we addressed during the development.

Next slide, please.

This was the site plan for the building that you saw the picture of.

And the lower part of the screen, you can see the bike lane coursing across the frontage of the property.

Next slide.

So we had the public benefit items A through K.

Item A was to relocate two power poles out of the bike lane, which we did.

This is the southern pole.

We relocated it out to what is now a planter strip.

You'll see that.

Next slide.

And this is the northern pole, same thing.

Next slide.

And this is more or less the finished appearance of the improved, widened, cleared Alki Bike Trail.

Next slide.

Items I, J, K and L were landscaping.

In the industrial zone, there is no landscape requirements, so we added landscaping to some degree on all four sides and they reach individual conditions.

So there's planters on the back, north, south and west.

Next slide.

Items B, C, and G were landscape related and to reconstruct and widen the trail.

Those are complete.

Item G specifically was to show in delineated materials any cross paths on the trail so that bicyclists and pedestrians would be aware.

Item D was actually offsite over by Salty's restaurant, there was a prior idea to put bollards in the bike trail, I think, to warn pedestrian or bicyclists about an upcoming curb cut.

They proved to be somewhat dangerous and there was a history of accidents.

We agreed to remove those and we have done that.

Item E was to incorporate public art in some way, and we incorporated these iron grid style sculptures into kind of some faux window panels.

I think there are six of them.

They are roughly six feet by 12 feet, and they depict active scenes that you would see typically along the bike trail.

Also to provide lighting along the bike trail, item F, that has been satisfied.

And then item H was to reduce existing curb cuts.

There were four associated with that old warehouse building that we demolished.

Now there are two, an entry point and an exit point into the parking area of our building, which is the ground level parking inside.

Next slide.

And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Beverly, anything to add?

No, I think this is a smaller scale project that has a pretty impactful public benefit by looking at small individual items that add up to really supporting that bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure there so the pieces add up there.

The total is greater than the parts or whatever the expression would be.

But I think they did a really good job with a rather small project.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions?

Thank you.

I don't have a question, but I do want to just thank Mr. Tang Ni.

I know you were required to do this, but it was well done.

And I do think that it's an example of how, even in an industrial area or with a commercial project, addressing the streetscape and addressing you know, softening around the edges so that pedestrians and folks who are going through there is really important.

And I just appreciate that there is not just a blank hostile wall on that sidewalk and that it's actually an opportunity for people to enjoy as they go through and go by.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Well, thank you for this presentation.

It was really helpful to see the before and after photographs and appreciate the analysis by our city council central staff.

And if there are no further questions, I'd like to move the bill.

So I now move that the committee recommend passage of council 120345 item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the council bill.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass council bill 120345.

Council member Morales?

Yes.

Council member Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the June 28th city council meeting.

Thank you, Esthar.

Thank you, Beverly.

Thanks, Liz.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two, council bill 120346, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, declaring certain real property rights to be surplus to the needs of Seattle Public Utilities and authorizing the general manager and chief executive officer of Seattle Public Utilities to grant a subsurface utility easement and temporary construction easement to King County for public hearing, briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, colleagues.

Councilor 120346 is a request from Seattle Public Utilities to grant a temporary easement and a smaller permanent subsurface easement to King County for a narrow track of land on the east side in Bellevue with the main purpose of constructing and maintaining a sewer line.

We do have a required public hearing for this item.

and we'll use the rules and procedures similar to a regular public comment period.

I don't think we actually have any speakers signed up for the public hearing.

Oh, we do have one, okay.

So let me go through these rules.

So we will use the rules and procedures similar to a regular public comment period.

And normally we'd alternate between in-person and online speakers.

In this case, we just have one in-person speaker.

and they will be given two minutes to speak.

And so the public, and then we'll hear from our presenters after we hear the comments.

So the public hearing on council bill 120346 is now open and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list, Alex Zimmerman.

Okay.

Your time is starting.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

I don't understand why you don't show my, I don't, I don't understand why you don't show my face, my sign and my yellow David star.

I don't understand you guys.

Is this a problem?

What is we have right now?

You're acting right now like a psychopath with this Nazi behavior.

What does it make me absolutely sick?

This, They hire my dirty, damn Nazi, fascist, mob, bandit and psychopath.

I want to speak about this agenda number two.

And exactly today, you approve a boss for this agenda, a manager.

So my experience, and I come to many times in this meeting before Corona, they never listen to common sense.

We have a management, what is your choice?

You pure freaking idiot.

They got nothing to do.

It's not normal civilized business.

You're not in business, you're in mafia.

Government, mafia, democratic mafia, a pure bandita.

You a never, never won council.

Apple always fall not too far from tree.

And management, you know what it means, have Q&A.

People cannot come and talk to them.

Look, why this, pardon, idiot, not here?

Why we need see him here?

Where is you?

In heaven?

Evil, but I speak from heaven.

Guys, you need something doing.

Condition go worse, it don't go better.

You understand what this mean?

Because you start acting right now after COVID, you start acting like a real sick people, like a sick degenerate idiot, a psychopath.

You are waste choice management who are absolutely stupid.

You never listen.

I come to many meetings, talk to them in commissioner, you never listen.

You lose your common sense.

You are stupid.

Okay, that concludes our list of speakers for the public hearing.

So I'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

So the public hearing on Council Bill 120346 is now closed.

And then we're gonna turn it over to our presenters.

I do wanna let my colleagues know that I, because of the nature of this particular item, I'll ask that the rules be suspended so we can vote it out of committee today.

It is a relatively minor item.

Good morning.

As usual, I want to say hello first to our city council central staff.

Brian, good night.

Thank you for reviewing this for us.

Do you want to make any introductory comments on this before we turn it over to Seattle public utilities?

Love to hear that you've reviewed it and you don't have any major issues.

Thank you.

So let's turn it over to Seattle Public Utilities.

Welcome.

We've got Brian and Eugene here.

Go ahead.

I know you have a brief presentation too.

So you wanna share your screen.

Great, I see it.

Here it is.

Good morning.

So the purpose of our legislation is for SPU to grant a permanent subsurface easement and a temporary construction easement to King County.

The location of the easement is east of Seattle, located in South Bellevue, commonly referred to as the Factoria area.

Within this facilities has a 36 inch drinking water transmission pipeline that extends from Renton to Woodinville.

In this easement location, King County is hoping to install, construct, operate, and maintain a trunk sewer line that will cross the Eastline supply line right away.

The permanent easement area is located on the east side supply line right away.

It's 1,500 square feet and it lies 90 feet below the ground surface.

The temporary construction easement area lies just south of Factorio Boulevard and crosses Coal Creek Parkway.

All of the temporary construction easement area will be above ground on the surface.

It is a total of 44,915 square feet.

In this area, King County will be using it for 48 months for the staging of their equipment, materials, and for parking.

The permanent subsurface easement will be bringing to SPU's water fund $2,500 in value.

And the temporary construction easement will be bringing to SPU's water fund $370,020 in value.

The benefits of negotiating an easement versus condemnation is is that the property values were appraised based on the values of the property in that area.

There was approved construction plans and specifications that took place between King County and SPU.

SPU received expanded monitoring and inspection during the construction of King County sewer line, as well as after.

as well as after construction to ensure that SPU's water pipeline has not been impacted.

SPU Water Fund will receive $372,520 in value and negotiating the easement further enhances the relationship between SPU and King County.

And that is the end of it.

Well, I know one of the questions that I asked during the pre-briefing I received last week is why is the temporary easement so much more expensive than the permanent easement?

And I believe you had let us know that it's because the permanent easement, it's a smaller area and it's also 90 feet below ground, it's subsurface.

Is that accurate?

Yes, that is correct.

Okay, thank you.

Colleagues, any questions or comments about this item?

And again, I'm hoping to vote it out of committee today so we would suspend the rules just because it is a minor item outside of the city of Seattle.

Okay.

All right, so if there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow the committee to vote on a recommendation on Council Bill 120346 on the same day a public hearing was held.

Hearing no objection, the council rules are suspended and the committee will vote on the recommendation.

So I now move that the committee recommend the passage of Council Bill 120346, item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 120346.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Swan?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the June 28th city council meeting.

Thank you, Seattle Public Utilities and central staff.

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

Agenda item three, appointment of Andrew Lee as general manager and chief executive officer of Seattle Public Utilities for a term to December 31st, 2025 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I'm pleased that today we're joined by Andrew Lee, who's Mayor Harrell's nomination to become the permanent general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

As with other nominations sent by Mayor Harrell for consideration by the City Council, we're following the general protocols outlined in Resolution 31868. We circulated the mayor's appointment packet to you several weeks ago.

It was also in the introduction and referral calendar several weeks ago.

And as with all mayoral appointments thus far, the council sent questions to the nominee about their experience and priorities.

and we circulated Interim Director Lee's answers to those questions.

And because I've had the opportunity to see Andrew Lee's leadership in his role as Interim General Manager and CEO after Mami Hara departed with the previous Durkin administration, I've already formed a Very positive opinion.

The bottom line is I support Andrew Lee to become the next permanent head of SPU, but I don't want my positive impressions in any way to chill a robust discussion today with any additional questions for interim director Lee.

I would like to take a vote today on this nomination because we would have only one committee meeting on this.

However, I'm open to sending it to a city council meeting later than June 28th.

but June 28th is next week.

And I think, you know, because we've, I think I'll work with Andrew Lee and the information's been out there for a while that June 28th makes sense to me, but I'll take the temperature of colleagues after this presentation.

Before we hear directly from the nominee, it looks like we have a representative from the mayor's office, Marco Lowe, welcome.

And the floor is yours.

Mr. Lowe, if you want to make some introductory remarks on behalf of Mayor Harrell regarding this nomination.

Thank you, Chair and Council Members.

It's my pleasure to be before you today to introduce Mayor Harrell's nominee for CEO General Manager of Seattle Public Utilities, Andrew Lay.

As I was introduced, my name is Mark Rolo.

I'm the Chief Operating Officer, and I've served with the city off and on since 2002. In my experience, it's a real gift when you have a department director nominee with technical knowledge, political instincts, a calm and welcoming demeanor, and an eye towards community.

We have that with Andrew.

I'm normally concerned any time a licensed engineer wants to rise this far in leadership, but with Andrew's performance, he quiets my painful memory of working with such exacting personalities, and we're lucky to have him.

SPU is a 1200 employee utility tasked with managing issues ranging from waste collection, delivering safe drinking water, environmental stewardship, offering quality customer service, and many other tasks.

Running an organization like that would be a challenge for anyone, but when you have someone as talented and well-liked as Andrew, he makes it seem easy.

After reviewing Andrew's work as interim CEO these last eight months, it was easy for the mayor to recognize the talent that was homegrown from within the utility.

Further, our office consulted with stakeholders to inform the mayor's decision to refer Andrew's nomination to you, including the chair of the SPU customer review panel, the executive director of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, the utilities director at the city of Bellevue, where Andrew worked formerly, the immediate former director of SPU, and several SPU employees who work with him on issues ranging from diversity and inclusion in the utilities workforce to environmental justice.

The feedback was universally supportive of his nomination, which I'm sure is no surprise to any of you.

Andrew Lee wakes up every morning to support his staff, serve the ratepayer, and steward a water supply meant to be there for our children's children.

And council members, for those of you fortunate enough to have worked or had the opportunity to work with Andrew, you know how he bends over backwards to make himself accessible to you and how he makes it a priority to provide you with information that you need to make informed policy decisions on the utility.

He is, at his core, the very definition of a public servant.

To close with my experience and my embarrassing number of years at the city, I believe Andrew is the best person to lead this critical department at this critical time.

I hope that after talking with him today, you'll agree.

With that, I'll turn things over to Andrew to offer some introductory remarks before taking any questions.

Thank you, Mark.

Good morning.

Chair Peterson, Council Members Herbold, Morales, Strauss, and so on, I want to start by saying I'm honored and humbled to be considered for the position of General Manager, CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

I'd start by saying that the support and guidance of numerous mentors and colleagues over the years has enabled me to sit here before you today.

They modeled for me the importance of strong values, such as integrity, equity, empowerment, and public service.

And I want to include each of you in this, as you have shown civic leadership in our city that has been inspirational to me and helped our department provide our customers with the best water and waste services.

I've spent almost a quarter century in the utility industry, and I've been fortunate to work for three amazing cities along the way.

And I want to share that during my first, very first week working in public service almost 20 years ago, I met with communities who had been impacted by a huge flood in the city county of San Francisco.

And over the course of that year, I saw the opportunity that I had as an engineer to make a difference in their lives.

And from that moment onwards, I knew that I wanted to spend my career working in public service.

I'm incredibly proud to work for Seattle Public Utilities.

Seattle is an amazing city with a uniquely protected water source that supplies pristine drinking water to 1.5 million people in the region.

And our holistic management of our water resources includes drainage and wastewater services.

And you also are familiar with our solid waste contract services and our clean city services to three quarters of a million people who live and work in the city.

As part of SPU leadership for the past three and a half years and in the department for almost 12 years, including the last eight months as interim GM CEO, I've actively worked on delivering SPU strategic priorities and goals from our adopted strategic business plan.

And as I look to formally step into this role, I wanted to share with you five primary focus areas that I have briefly.

The first is equity.

Each and every day, SPU must cultivate a culture that leads with equity.

And that means making decisions that uplift people of color, undoing practices and policies that have disadvantaged and disproportionately burdened black indigenous people of color.

And we described this to you a couple of weeks ago, and this work that we're doing is going to involve implementation of our racial equity action plan commitments to strengthen our training, network, and policy so that we can increasingly embed justice and dismantle racist systems across our work.

Second focus area is affordability.

We have to strive to keep our rates affordable without compromising our service.

And you know that at utility services are essential and we have to ensure that everyone, including the most most vulnerable in our community, have access to these programs and can pay their bills.

So we're looking to manage to our adopted rate path and increase participation and rate assistance and sites or assistance programs by expanding tools such as co-enrollment and other affordability programs.

We're also actively managing cost increases to factors such as inflation, especially on large capital projects, such as the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, to make sure that we're able to stick to our rate path.

Third, on sustainability, SPU will implement sustainable water and waste solutions that protect the environment and public health.

And that means looking for long-term, multi-benefit, nature-based, and community-led solutions, and committing to address our most pressing environmental issues and inequities.

I think a great example of this actually is our green stormwater infrastructure program that reduces pollutants, adapts to climate change, and I'm committed to advancing and expanding that work and our other environmental programs.

Fourth, we want to focus on community.

This is a continued focus from our previous general manager, and we want to make sure we're community-centered in our value strategies approaches.

And that means strengthening our relationship with community, enhancing the work that community is already doing.

I think a good example of this is our work with Council Member Morales in the Little Saigon area to address trash accumulation.

And then also Council Member Herbold, our work in South Park to address sewer backups.

Fifth and lastly, a focus area is culture.

SPE must have a culture that is empowered, engaged, and innovative.

We're more impactful when all 1,400 employees are engaging with their full minds and hearts and contributing to the work that we do.

And I'm committed to developing our leaders, our employees, providing training and opportunity for our staff, and instilling meaningful opportunities for feedback to make sure we have a thriving organizational culture.

Just want to close by saying that I work with an exceptional team of some of the brightest and most passionate professionals in the city and the utility industry as a whole.

I'm excited to lead this team as we step into the next decade of providing excellent utility services to our customers.

Thank you so much for your time and your consideration, and I'm happy to respond to any questions that you have.

Thank you.

Just for the viewing audience, wanted to reference our agenda.

Our online agenda today has the 11-page nomination packet from Mayor Harrell.

It also has the 19-page question and answers.

I do appreciate interim general manager and CEO Lee being here at our committee recently to go over the race and social justice initiative within SPU and for personally taking that hands-on approach to show that commitment at the very top of the organization for that initiative.

and appreciate in your opening remarks mentioning trying to keep rates low to manage costs, keep rates low since we know that the SPU, the utility bills that our constituents pay are by their very nature, regressive with lower income households paying a greater proportion of their household income for the bills.

We are dealing with some challenges from King County passing through a greater than expected wastewater rate.

which is about 40% of our constituents' SPU bills.

So I have a couple of questions for Andrew Lee, but wanted to see if my colleagues wanted to go first or had any comments or questions at this time for him.

I have a couple of comments, if that's okay.

Okay, yes, please, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Director Lee for the long answers to our long list of questions.

I want to say two things really struck me.

One is your acknowledgement that There are some ways in which the department is perceived by community to be gatekeeping when it comes to, you know, interacting with neighbors in a way that is sort of overly technical or overly scientific rather than just explaining what the problem is and how we're gonna solve it.

So I appreciate the acknowledgement of that and your interest in wanting to shift that culture a little bit.

I will say that I have had Great.

The department's been very responsive to me.

Bob Hennessy and his team, whenever there's a problem in the South end, they notify me right away.

They keep me posted on how the problem is being resolved and have even come down and guided me on a tour of what's going on.

So I really appreciate that.

And I think that's an important part of how we understand as policymakers, what the problems are and how they can get solved.

I do want to also thank you for acknowledging the need to focus not just on the lines of business for SPU, but also on our city workers and the need they have for having their leadership and their expertise and their service acknowledged and supported in the department.

So I just wanted to thank you for those two things.

I think it's important as we learn more about your leadership style, that we have that sense of, of where you would like to go.

And then the last thing I will just ask about, Chair, if that's okay, is you mentioned in one of your responses being a proponent of results-based budgeting.

and really focusing on outcome-based budgets.

I would love to hear a little bit more about that.

I think we do things differently at the city and in my previous legislative experience working for the Texas legislature, that was something that we did too, but it was a lot of work and we'd just love to hear your thoughts on it, a little bit more about your thoughts on that process, that approach.

Yeah, I had the opportunity for about four and a half years to serve at the City of Bellevue as their Deputy Director, and the City of Bellevue switched to results-based budgeting, I want to say probably in like 2012, possibly a little bit earlier in that 2010. The part of it that appealed to me the most actually has to do with actually that gatekeeper aspect that you pointed out, because SPU, like any government organization, is a gatekeeper.

We hold access to decisions.

And potentially, one of the biggest decisions that we make is our budget.

And we have a saying, which is not an uncommon one, that our budget is a statement of values.

And so results-based budgeting, I think, transforms the budget into a series of value statements.

And it gives the opportunity In many cases, depending on how it's implemented for for the public to communicate what their values are with respect to how budgets are prioritized and what gets funding and what doesn't get funding.

What the reason why I like it so much is that potentially offers the opportunity for access and access to those decisions and input meaningful input into those decisions by the public and and and it can be a way that we in fact counter.

systemic racism by providing access to the information as well as ultimately the decisions that are made to our community, to those that are most impacted by those decisions.

So it's a Black, Indigenous, people of color community.

So that is why I'm personally a fan of results-based budgeting.

I'd like to see us potentially pilot some of this as we go through our budgeting process with our customer review panel.

And so we're actively having dialogue on that and how we engage folks in that style of budgeting in the coming years.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you.

I've got a question about one of the largest projects the city government's ever worked on, which is the ship canal water quality control project.

So currently there's a drill underground heading from Ballard to Wallingford to capture excess dirty stormwater and to comply with some consent decrees.

And the price tag on this project is massive and it's multi-year project.

And one of the things we're interested in, it is on our watch list as a normal course of business for such a large project.

We're interested in it being on time and on budget or under budget, preferably, because if it goes over budget, I know there's a concern that it could impact rates that our constituents pay through their SPU utility bills.

So just wanted to find out your thoughts on how to mitigate challenges with such a large multi-year capital project as the Ship Canal Water Quality Control Project.

Yeah, absolutely.

You're absolutely right.

It's kind of the centerpiece right now of our combined sewer overflow program.

And just a few facts, it is a 2.7 mile long, 18 foot diameter storage tunnel.

And when it's done, the beauty of it is going to decrease overflows from about 50 times a year into the ship canal down to no more than one.

And so it's a significant benefit to our environment and to our region.

The project is $570 million program and actually has six component projects, two of which were recently combined.

So we have five projects.

And four of those projects have been bid out.

And we have one project left to bid out.

And actually, one of the projects was just bid out in the past couple of weeks.

We received the bids in the past couple of weeks.

And I'm happy to report that we got a bid that was very, very close to our engineer's estimate.

So that was really, really helpful to hear.

We do, as you know, engineer's estimates at all of the major milestones of design projects, so at 30%, 60%, 90%, 100% design.

And on the remaining project to be bid, we have been looking at recent engineer's estimates that show a concerning increase because of inflation.

And the project is not going to be bid out until the end of the year when we receive bids on the project.

But anytime we see estimates that are higher than we were expecting, It causes us to pause.

And this is true, by the way, not just for a mega project like the Ship Canal project, but for a small project.

When we experience any sort of indication that cost may be increasing, we have a business process that requires us to pause and thoroughly analyze what is causing the cost increase.

So factors can obviously include things like market conditions, supply, demand, materials, labor market, et cetera.

It could also include scope changes.

And so on a mega project like that, once we have a good understanding of the causes of the increase, then we move immediately to cost control.

And so that includes things like value engineering, scope reduction, looking at things like materials, equipment, et cetera, that we can potentially make more affordable.

And so that's always our first effort is to control the cost to manage to the budget that we have set.

We're currently, though, in a market where we're seeing record levels of inflation in the last four to five decades.

And so we're actively watching that market.

There are fortunately some positive signs that the construction market may start cooling off later this year as interest rates have been increasing.

And what I can assure you is that we're going to continue to monitor it and continue to do everything in our ability to manage our cost increases.

Now, with respect to those impact, those cost increases on rates, we're also actively working on this.

And so we may not be able to avoid all the cost increases from inflation.

However, through other tools such as low interest loans, grants, alternate sources of funding, we may be able to avoid those costs translating into rate increases.

And so on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, which is, this is a great example of this, we have low interest loans for $342 million of the project costs.

And that translates into $80 million of savings for rate payers.

And with the infrastructure bill funding coming available we're actively looking for alternate sources of funding for capital projects, such as low interest loans and grants to make ultimately our projects more affordable for our customers and make sure we're living within our rate increases that we have projected in our strategic business plan.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having your teams keep a close watch on that huge project.

And of course we will, as part of our city council process through our own watch list program, but I appreciate you're looking for opportunities to, if you think costs will go up through inflation, then perhaps finding savings elsewhere with that project so it does not impact rates.

For the viewing public, we did approve a rate path, a multi-year rate path for the different lines of business with SPU.

And even though there was hope to come in below that rate path, I think just as long as we keep our promise on the formal, approved rate path, that would be ideal so that we're, but I know that again, King County has a major pass-through, which we can't change that impacts 40% of the bill.

So we're eagerly awaiting to see what King County is going to do with their pass-through rate.

Any other questions or comments for Andrew Lee?

Okay.

And then colleagues in terms of the timing for this, I think on July 5, if we were to give it more time on July 5, the downside there is not everybody may be present for July 5 because it's coming off of another holiday weekend.

June 28th is sooner and there'll probably be more people available for that vote.

So if there's no objection, I would, want to recommend that we have the appointment voted on June 28th.

Okay, so let me go ahead and move this appointment from our committee and then at the end, I'll specify that date.

Let's see here.

Okay, I'd like to move the committee recommend confirmation for the appointment of Andrew Lee as permanent general manager, CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

That is appointment 02194. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend the appointment.

Any final comments or questions?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on passage of the appointment.

Council member Morales.

Yes.

Council member Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The committee recommendation of the appointment be confirmed will be sent to city council meeting for final confirmation as early as June 28th.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Andrew Lee, and thank you to the mayor's office for another excellent nominee.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

All right, take care.

Okay, colleagues, we have our fourth and final item.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item four, vision zero update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Today, we will hear from our Seattle Department of Transportation, their Vision Zero team, and Interim Director Kristen Simpson is here with us from SDOT to get an update on their efforts to reduce traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries.

We've had a number of disturbing incidents and deaths, tragic deaths that have occurred.

And I appreciate Council Member Morales for raising these concerns and making sure we had this interim update on Vision Zero.

I know we'll have lots of comments about this.

There's some very disturbing data in the report that we're about to see.

So if there's no, is it all right if we just turn it over to SDOT right now and start the presentation?

Okay.

So welcome.

Team SDOT, and just for a reminder, we also have a city council central staff analyst who tracks SDOT and gives us advice on SDOT.

This is Calvin Chow from our city council central staff, but let us welcome interim director, Kristen Simpson.

And we have Jim Curtin and Allison Schwartz from SDOT.

Good morning.

Thank you, council member Peterson.

And thank you council members Morales and Sawant for being here as well.

We're here this morning for a very important conversation around our efforts as a city to end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. When it comes to making Seattle safer for people walking, rolling, and driving, we are seeing that where we make changes to our infrastructure, we can improve safety.

And we know that there is a lot more work ahead to undo decades of design that have prioritized the fast movement of vehicles.

To achieve Vision Zero means centering on the safe movement of people, and we appreciate your leadership and partnership in this work.

At this point, I'm going to pass the microphone to Jim Curtin and Allison Schwartz to share our presentation with you.

And we look forward to questions and a discussion after that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kristen.

And I think Bill was going to tee up the slide, so I'll give him a second.

Bill, can you move to the second slide, please?

Thank you.

OK, thanks again, Kristen.

And thank you, council members.

My name is Allison Schwartz.

I use she, her pronouns, and I'm the Vision Zero program coordinator at SDOT.

I'm also a mom of three and a resident of the Central District.

My family gets around in all the ways.

We walk, bike, drive, and ride transit.

And I have the honor of leading a team of five people who are deeply passionate about safety, about racial equity, mobility, justice, and climate action.

And across the department, it's our goal to make vigorous progress on Vision Zero.

and to reimagine community safety to eliminate injuries, deaths, and disparate impacts.

Next slide, please.

So today we're here to highlight what is needed to achieve Vision Zero.

We're here to acknowledge that while we've made progress in some areas, there's much more work to do together.

We're going to review trends and talk about who's most affected.

We're going to emphasize the importance of focusing on system design and on changing the environment to change our outcomes.

We'll walk through how we prioritize our work and where we're focusing our efforts, talk through a number of tools and projects that support our Vision Zero goals.

And throughout the presentation, you'll see themes of safety, racial equity, and climate coming through as we feel it's really critical to connect these pieces together and to recognize their relationship to one another.

And we're particularly striving to anchor our Vision Zero efforts directly to the department's recently released transportation equity framework.

Next slide, please.

So as we begin this presentation, I want to invite everyone to take a moment together and ask that we hold space for the 175 people who have lost their lives in a traffic crash in Seattle since we launched Vision Zero in 2015. And also to acknowledge the nearly 1,200 people who have been seriously injured in that time.

It's important that we remember to center this work on people.

And for those of us here at this virtual table or in person at council chambers, it's important that we recognize our role as public servants and that we stretch beyond words, beyond thoughts and prayers and into actions so that we can really prevent this harm and loss of life.

Next slide, please.

So this is a visual representation of each person killed.

It's an attempt to try to represent the scale of the loss of life over these past seven years.

Of course, it really can't be conveyed on a slide.

But collectively, I think it's really important for us to let this sink in, to remember that every time this happens, families and friends are devastated.

An irreplaceable void is left in their circles.

And we have to think about our first responders and our incident responders who are on the scene of each of these crashes and the harm that they absorb day in and day out.

And then my team and many others at SDOT are looking at each of these collision reports.

And this isn't something that one corridor project or a few spot improvements can address.

Those are important, and this requires a system level shift.

In addition to the human scale and loss, there are broader societal costs of crashes.

According to data from WSDOT, over the past decade, The societal cost of fatal and suspected serious injury crashes occurring on city of Seattle streets was more than $2 billion.

Next slide, please.

So I know everyone on council is familiar with this goal of Vision Zero for anyone attending who isn't.

It's our goal to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030. And I really want to emphasize the principles that are foundational to achieving this goal.

that traffic deaths and injuries are preventable, that human beings are imperfect, we're also vulnerable and fragile, and that we can't succeed at this by focusing on individual behavior, but rather we need to pan out to design a safe system.

Next slide, please.

Nationally, we've been seeing fatalities increasing across the country.

Pedestrian deaths have been on the rise since before the pandemic and they continue to rise.

And throughout the pandemic, you know, over the course of more than two years, seen changes in travel patterns and volumes.

We've seen congestion and traffic go down and up and down.

And when it does that, it gives way to more open roadways.

Among many things, the pandemic has really highlighted that for the most part, streets are designed for speed.

And then nationally, there's been more discussion and acknowledgement around the size and the weight of vehicles, and how when you combine that with speeds, you get particularly bad outcomes for people outside of vehicles.

Next slide, please.

So here in Seattle, overall trends are headed in the wrong direction, most notably for people walking.

This is the red line here on this chart.

If 2022 trends continue, we anticipate somewhere in the realm of 27 fatalities for the year.

And that's the top gray line that you see.

Next slide, please.

And here you can see fatalities by mode for this year.

And this is up to date.

So we've seen 11 people lose their lives.

This includes four people walking, two people biking, and five people who were in a vehicle, either driving or a passenger.

Next slide, please.

I also wanted to share how serious and fatal crashes have looked over the past three years by month.

So what this is showing is that we're trending slightly higher than the three-year average, which is 2019 to 2021, which is the blue line per month has been that three-year average, and the red is what you're seeing 2022 outcomes have been so far.

Next slide, please.

And then let's talk about who is most affected and how this guides our work when it comes to Vision Zero.

As reflected in a few of the earlier slides, people walking and rolling and people biking are disproportionately affected.

They're involved in approximately 7% of total crashes.

That's over the past five years, yet they make up 61% of the fatalities.

I do not want to discount any fatality.

And that said, we need to recognize the protection that vehicles offer to occupants and the fact that when you're outside of a vehicle, you just don't have that same level of protection.

We've also shared here on this slide the average age of people killed in crashes is 52 years old.

And people experiencing homelessness.

We have been able to review our data from the past five years and we get this housing status information from the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

Over the past five years, we've seen that 13% of people killed in traffic crashes were also experiencing homelessness.

And last year, what's highlighted up here more than one in every four traffic fatalities with someone experiencing homelessness.

And we share this to really highlight what I consider to be the amplified vulnerability of our houseless neighbors.

This matches what we're hearing from other cities, as does the national trend of Black people being disproportionately affected by fatal crashes.

So we use the word vulnerable travelers a lot, and this is what we mean.

These are our most vulnerable travelers, They're the most marginalized community members.

And we focus on the most vulnerable because they are disproportionately affected.

This ties into our approach that is data and equity driven.

And we feel that if we can improve safety for them, for the most vulnerable, then we can improve safety for everyone.

Next slide, please.

Okay, this map is a bit busy, so I'm gonna take a moment to explain it.

And in doing so, I'll get to explain the city's race and social equity index.

So Bill, if you could jump ahead to the next slide for a second, and then we'll come back to this.

Thanks.

So the Race and Equity Index is a tool that was developed by our colleagues in the Office of Planning and Community Development.

It's a composite.

It combines a number of factors, including race, language spoken, whether you were born in the United States or elsewhere, income levels, education, and also health outcomes.

And these factors get combined.

And then each census tract across the city is indicated to be higher or lower disadvantage or somewhere in between.

And so the higher disadvantaged communities are that, I'll call it purplish, maroonish color.

And that highlights higher rates of people of color, lower rates of native English speakers, higher rates of poverty, lower rates of college education and lower health outcomes.

So that is kind of the foundation that's behind a few maps that you'll see throughout this presentation.

Bill, if you could jump back to the previous one.

Thank you.

So what this map on the right is showing is the past three years of fatal and serious injury collisions overlaid on top of that race and equity index.

And we can see the relationship between areas of higher disadvantage and where we're seeing more serious and fatal crashes.

And you can see, again, the inverse of that, lower the instances in areas of lower disadvantage.

And then here on the left of the slide, when we break down fatal and serious or just fatalities actually is the focus of the pie chart by council district, we can see Council District 2 bearing disproportionate burden and District 5 as well.

Next slide.

One more, thank you.

So we use that crash history to inform our focus areas.

And of course, as a program, we're operating on a citywide scale and need to understand that the need is greater in some areas than others.

And so we need to put together a prioritization framework.

So this map is showing what we call our high injury network.

And it's based on the past five years of data of fatal and serious collision data, as well as an emphasis on that race and social equity index.

In total, the high injury network is comprised of 400 arterial street segments.

Each of them are about a mile long, so we can be comparing apples to apples and collision rates and densities.

So it's a bit small on the screen, but the segments are prioritized from low to high, and the darker the orange, the higher the priority.

Understanding and addressing past crash history is important, and it's what we consider to be kind of the reactive and targeted side of our approach.

And we also use crash data to understand all the different factors at play at the intersection level, which helps us get at crash risk and exposure so that we can prevent future crashes, particularly for the most vulnerable travelers.

And that is, in a very high level nutshell, our bicycle and pedestrian safety analysis.

And that's a tool that guides our proactive investment.

So together, the High Injury Network and the bike safety analysis are really our key tools for making investments in the most equitable way.

And I'm going to hand it over to Jim for a bit now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Allison.

Thank you, Kristen, council members for having us here today.

I'm Jim Curtin.

I oversee the Project Development Division at SDOT in which the Vision Zero team is housed.

We also play a huge role in the implementation of the Pedestrian Master Plan, the Bicycle Master Plan, our ADA program, And we do a lot of the early design work for our large capital projects like our transit plus multimodal corridor program.

Bill, if you could go to the next slide, please.

So, as noted several times in public comment earlier this morning, and as we'll highlight several times throughout this presentation, the majority of the serious and fatal collisions that occur in Seattle happen on our arterial street network.

Many of these streets have multiple lanes, which creates more challenging conditions for everyone that uses the street, but especially for pedestrians.

In fact, 93% of pedestrian fatalities occur on arterials and 80% of those were on multi lane arterial streets, which had more than 1 lane in each direction and.

Those streets make up just a small subset of our arterial network.

In fact, about 35% of our arterial streets.

It's important to note as well that 40% of our serious and fatal ped crashes are occurring at signalized intersection, which is logical because we do want pedestrians to cross at those signals when they are provided.

And then I think an interesting data point, and one that I hope we can we can really take to heart is that more than 80% of the people killed while biking were in places where there were no bike lanes provided.

Next slide, please.

So redesigning streets is a critical factor in our approach to reducing conflicts and reducing collisions.

Again, more lanes equal higher volumes, fewer crossing opportunities and higher speeds.

Changing the physical environment is a proven way to reducing speeds and significantly reducing injuries as well.

We've designed a number of streets where we've been able to deploy these countermeasures and see positive results.

Places where we've been able to reduce the length that a pedestrian has to walk to get across the street, limiting their exposure to vehicular traffic, Converting lanes to other uses, whether that be for transit or bikes or parking.

Looking at ways in which we can reduce the speed at which turning movement happens, where there are potentially multiple conflicts that drivers and pedestrians face in that situation.

Of course, we're adding ADA curb ramps at a massive clip these days.

These tools really are all intended to help improve accessibility and safety for the traveling public and provide a more predictable environment that keeps everyone on our streets safe.

Next slide, please.

And again, where we've been able to deploy these useful tools, we've seen excellent results and Rainier Ave is an example of what redesigning a street can do to enhance safety for all users.

Rainier is a street that we used to talk about as one of the top streets for crashes in the city of Seattle.

And after many different projects out there, we've now made significant safety improvements to Rainier.

And as you can see here, collisions are down 30%.

Collisions with people walking and biking are down 40%.

And this last bullet top and speeding down 75% is critical to making sure that when a mistake is made, the result isn't a tragic loss of life or a serious injury.

And we've done this on Rainier and many other streets throughout the city.

Nickerson, Northeast 75th and 35th Avenue Southwest come to mind.

So we continue to work on these corridors and bring much needed safety improvements to these streets.

We're going to continue our work on Rainier Avenue South later this year as we start engaging with the community in Rainier Beach to identify improvements south of Henderson and along Henderson to create a safer Rainier.

Next slide, please.

Again, creating shorter crossing distances, reducing exposure, increasing visibility, increasing walk time, and slowing turning vehicles are just a few ways to enhance safety for people and for all modes.

Pedestrian crossing islands and curb bulbs make pedestrians less exposed to traffic and reduce speeds by visually narrowing the roadway.

We install rapid flashing beacons that provide pedestrians with A very high level of service, they're very responsive and actually improve driver compliance with pedestrian laws and we use hardened center lines to force drivers to make left turning movements at a slow and deliberate pace and force vehicles to stay in the right lane when making those turning movements.

Next slide please.

And safety comes through in projects from across the department.

Everything we do in our capital program, Vision Zero is baked in.

You can see on this page a few examples of some of our recent improvements here.

We've built lengthy amounts of new sidewalks on Lake City Way.

We've built a number of safe routes to school improvements for Wing Luke Elementary and D2.

We've provided a street redesign on Rainier Avenue South to improve the efficiency of transit service, but also reduce the exposure of pedestrians to vehicular traffic.

And on 12th Avenue South, we've started our work to bring much needed bike facilities to the south end of Seattle.

And we're looking to continue to fill those gaps in our bike network as we move forward.

With 12th Avenue South, we now have a connection that is going to bring us closer to Beacon Hill, and we have a project in the works right now that will go to construction in 2023 to continue those protected bike lanes and much-needed investments further south.

Next slide, please.

Treatments like leading pedestrian intervals are definitely a small, less visible tool that is highly effective.

LPIs, where people walking and rolling get a few seconds head start before drivers get the green, is a fantastic way for us to provide higher visibility and fewer conflicts.

This is important because, again, 40% of our serious and fatal pedestrian collisions occur at signalized intersections, as I mentioned earlier.

We've really ramped up the installation of over the past few years, and we are approaching about 50% coverage of citywide signals and we'll be continue continuing to close that gap.

You know, again, looking for locations where the needs are at the highest.

This is just 1 of many small tools that has.

Big results next slide please.

Slowing down speeds is the cornerstone of our work.

We absolutely must recognize that speed is the critical factor in the frequency and severity of collisions.

We've been working for many years to reduce speed limits and speeds throughout the city.

Last year, we continued our citywide speed limit reductions.

Now, more than 90 percent of our arterials are signed at 25 miles per hour.

We continue to work with WSDOT on state-owned arterials, making reductions there as well.

The signs themselves are a first step in getting to lower vehicle speeds, and in some cases, they are enough to help speeding.

So far, what we've seen since we lowered the speed limit is a 20% decrease in injury crashes and a 54% decrease in top-end speeders.

This is promising.

But in most cases, design changes to the roadway are needed to really get to the slower speeds that we need to see out there.

Looking ahead, a key part of our speed limit work will be to identify those streets, prioritize them based on speeds, crash history, and equity, and deploy countermeasures to address those speeds.

Next slide, please.

Again, to advance safety and equity, we need to provide investments in the areas of highest need.

And we're encouraged with the recent investments that we've received, including the funding increase for the Vision Zero program that was approved by city council in last year's budget process.

We've been successful in receiving grant funds to support this work.

And of course, we're very grateful for the $50 million investment in Aurora Avenue that will help us set the course for a much safer Aurora in the future.

So there's some exciting projects on this list.

We continue to focus on downtown pedestrian safety.

This is typically where we have the most people walking and the most opportunities for conflicts.

So we'll be looking to look at protecting right turns, perhaps restrict turns on red, deploy those leading pedestrian intervals and other safety improvements that will help us reduce crashes.

We are looking to make short-term improvements in Soto.

We'll be making the connection between Georgetown and South Park starting later this year to provide much needed walking and biking facilities between those two South end neighborhoods.

And then shortly after that, we'll launch a new effort to connect Georgetown to downtown, which will fill a major gap in our bicycle network.

And again, provide the space that people need to be safe on our streets.

We have an exciting project on West Marginal Way that will close a gap on the Duwamish Trail.

We will be constructing new protected bike lanes on MLK Jr.

Way South starting later this year that will bring a number of traffic calming benefits along with space for people to walk and bike in particular.

We have several safety corridor projects in the work as previously mentioned Rainier phase 3 will get underway shortly.

Sandpoint way is and 23rd Avenue as well as Lake City are already in the work and our reconnect West Seattle program continues to make much needed safety improvements in the West Seattle neighborhood through our home zones program and through the upcoming Southwest Roxbury street project, which will actually go to add next week.

Okay, next slide please.

And then just to touch on a few of the annual work plan highlights here, from the very start of the levy to move Seattle, we've been able to deliver 2 to 3 safety corridor projects per year.

We've delivered 20 to 50 blocks of new sidewalks every year, including, as I previously mentioned, lengthy new structures of sidewalk on Lake City Way.

In addition, we continue to push Safe Routes to School, which is a program that has built sidewalks and crossing improvements at every single school in the city of Seattle and continues to make impressive improvements that we really need to ensure that students in Seattle stay safe.

Our ADA program is building a minimum of 1,250 curb ramps every year to improve accessibility and mobility for all.

We continuously are working on our maintenance.

And part of that is to ensure that we remark 1500 crosswalks every year.

We are certainly working hard to deploy pedestrian and bicycle spot improvements in a timely manner.

And we do 10 or more of those improvements every year.

And of course, we continue to build bike facilities.

Last year, we built nearly seven miles of new PBLs in the city including important new connections in downtown on 4th Avenue and connections to the uptown neighborhood, the Climate Pledge Arena on 1st Ave and Queen Anne.

And of course, we expanded our network into Southeast Seattle on the 12th Avenue South Project.

Just this morning, People for Bikes released their annual city ratings, and we're happy to report that Seattle was ranked 4th of the large cities for bicycling and we're really poised to build on this moving forward with our projects this year and in subsequent years as well.

Now I will hand it back over to Allison for a while.

Thanks Jim.

So we focus a lot on engineering and design changes because they've been proven effective and are in our immediate wheelhouse as a Department of Transportation Other tools and areas complement this work, and so I'm going to share a bit more about how our approach is shifting and how this work relates to transportation equity.

Next slide, please.

We're seeing some really great things out of the federal level.

Earlier this year, U.S.

DOT Secretary Buttigieg offered this statement here in a tweet.

It's time for a new mentality for roadway safety.

And following that, his agency issued the country's first ever National Roadway Safety Strategy.

really elevating Vision Zero to the national stage and bringing to the forefront what's called the safe system approach.

So I want to highlight the elements, some of the elements of this graphic, these five inner components, the graphic on the left, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, post-crash care, and safe road users.

And then there are six principles around the edge, several of which echo some that I touched on earlier.

I did also want to quickly mention here that with respect to safe vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through what's called its new car assessment program, which is when they issue safety ratings for new vehicles.

Over the past few months, they issued new recommendations and had a comment period that closed just a few weeks ago.

And we submitted comments to that to encourage that more be done to emphasize how safe a vehicle is for not just people inside of the car, but for people outside of it as well.

So it's really promising that NHTSA put out some new recommendations and open it to comment, and we look forward to seeing how they respond to comments that they've received from across the country.

Next slide, please.

And as Secretary Buttigieg has offered, ending traffic deaths and serious injuries requires a paradigm shift.

And I think we want to be really clear that Vision Zero is much more than a slogan, and that it has to be more than a slogan if we're going to achieve it.

Achieving Vision Zero means that we prioritize the safe movement of human beings over the fast movement of vehicles.

And that requires alignment across all levels.

This is our goal, and that aggressive actions will follow to meet that goal, namely actions that are going to slow down vehicles.

It means community support behind often challenging and controversial projects that reallocate travel lanes for other uses.

And as Kristen touched on in her remarks, We're really up against decades of design and culture.

This is going to take some time to undo.

And collectively, we can choose how much time that will take and how quickly we address it.

Next slide, please.

Because really, if we want different outcomes, we need to be willing to take a different approach.

And so this slide highlights some of what's already been shared today.

The difference between the traditional approach and the safe system approach.

Again, we're really trying to move from individual blame and correcting individual behavior to a focus on system design that, again, accounts for human imperfection and that recognizes the responsibility of people like us who make decisions daily on how we design and operate our system.

So the traditional approach to road safety has tended to rely on engineering and enforcement and education, the three E's, and has often done so equally.

And it's time to examine that approach.

So next slide, please.

I mentioned at the very top of the presentation that we're really working to be guided by our transportation equity framework.

And so the Vision Zero program and teams across SDOT are examining our traditional practices.

And the equity framework serves as a roadmap for our department to advance equity in all that we do.

And the transportation equity work group, along with staff, identified more than 200 tactics.

I've called out just a few here on this slide and the next slide.

So this includes a tactic related to rethinking what we mean when we say safety.

And we're working in partnership with a community group called Whose Streets Are Streets to better understand Black, Indigenous, and people of color community member experiences when getting around in Seattle to hear their ideas when it comes to improving safety.

What would it mean for them to feel safe driving, biking, walking, getting to and around on transit?

The equity framework also includes a number of tactics related to reallocating and repurposing travel lanes for people walking, biking, and riding transit.

Next slide, please.

And there are a number of tactics focused on transportation justice, specifically relating to enforcement.

So the overarching guidance from the equity workgroup and within the framework is to examine and to reduce our reliance on punitive mechanisms and instead turn more to engineering, to education, and to engaging more closely with community.

So to that end, the Vision Zero team is currently leading a racial equity analysis of the city's school safety and red light automated enforcement camera programs using the racial equity toolkit to clarify what our goals of the programs are and to understand critically the unintended consequences and who bears the burden of those.

and then to seek ways to increase racial equity by making changes to the programs.

So we're still kind of midway and actively working through this racial equity toolkit, but we're having conversations, you know, around fine amounts and changes to warning periods and other possible changes to the program.

And we're working with the Transportation Equity Workgroup and with Whose Streets Are Streets, again, centering their experiences and ideas as we move forward in this work together.

So this map here shows where current school zone and red light cameras are.

Again, it's overlaid with that race and equity map that we touched on earlier.

And I think it's just really important that we see the relationship and understand how that ties also to our high injury network.

Real quick, last year, we also conducted a deep dive on in-person traffic enforcement citation data.

And with that analysis, we partnered with the Office of the Inspector General and with SPD.

Earlier this year, Chief Diaz announced they'd be prioritizing a number of traffic offenses that don't have a clear linkage to fatal and serious collisions, but that do disproportionately affect Black people traveling in Seattle.

We look forward to continuing to work with OIG and SPD on additional changes in this space.

Next slide, please.

With education, I wanted to highlight an upstream and a downstream approach.

So our Safe Routes to School colleagues run in partnership with Seattle Public Schools, and Cascade Bicycle Club, our Let's Go program.

Let's Go is in all third, fourth, and fifth grade Seattle public classrooms.

Students receive walking and biking safety education, including getting to ride bikes in their PE class.

My fourth grader was very excited to experience this program this past spring, so much so that she made her younger brothers very jealous, and they're going to, I think, happily get to experience it in the next few years.

So Let's Go is expanding into middle school.

We've piloted in one middle school this past spring and will be expanding to seven schools in the 2022 school year and reaching all middle schools by the following school year 2023. Our Safe Routes to School program was recently nationally recognized with the Vision Zero for Youth Award, really, you know, uplifting their let's go work and part of that recognition was also due in part to the work of the department around citywide speed limit reductions.

I also want to mention that a newer position, a Safe Routes to School active transportation position housed in SPS was recently created and filled.

So now we have folks at SDOT and SPS dedicated and working together, focused on prioritizing investments at higher equity schools.

On the downstream side of things we've worked on a number of public education campaigns over the years.

Oh, same slide Bill, sorry.

and are gearing up to launch our next one coming in just a few weeks, focused on slowing down on the importance of the 25 mile an hour speed limit and on emphasizing that all intersections are crossing, are legal crossing.

So coming in a few weeks, you'll see billboards, bus ads, social media ads, and hearings on the radio too.

And this is funded by a grant from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.

Next slide, please.

Last but not least, we work across agencies and with community organizations to build awareness and create change.

We're part of the King County Traffic Safety Coalition, led by our Seattle and King County Public Health Injury Prevention colleagues.

We work in close partnership with them.

This includes some recent current coordination related to helmet distribution as well.

We work with our partners at Sound Transit, and we'll be sharing more about our efforts engaging with them on improving safety on MLK.

in a slide response later this year.

And we meet monthly with SPD and we work very closely with the Traffic Collision Investigation Squad to learn more about crash details.

I just, I want to take a moment, I know I've spoken a lot this morning, but I want to recognize the really challenging work they do responding to and reconstructing crashes and the very hard work, the critical work that they do working with and supporting the loved ones of people killed and injured in crashes.

So Actually, to speak to this content on the slide, I wanted to share just a little bit about a partnership we've been working on with East African Community Services, which is a nonprofit based in New Holly.

Part of this partnership involved last summer, a distribution of free bicycles that were donated by a super pedestrian.

And we provided helmets and lights to 100 youth who are served by EACS.

And then over the past several months, we worked with a smaller cohort of middle school and high school students sharing information about SDOT, about transportation safety and Vision Zero, that they then ran with to develop a project and presentation on traffic safety education.

And they presented to their peers, to us, to EACS staff and to family members back in March.

Had some great presentations there, youth, you know, sharing information on why it's important to follow the speed limit, not be distracted, etc.

And one thing I just wanted to share out of that was something that a parent of a couple of the students shared back with us at that event.

Two of her daughters were both talking a lot about Vision Zero through the course of this cohort, and they were constantly reminding her to not use her phone while driving.

And I just really appreciated hearing that because it showed me that reaching youth means reaching families.

And if a young person can engage with adults in their family, it can really have an effect.

So we loved working with the team at EACS, the amazing youth that they serve, and we hope to continue this partnership And with that, I promise we're only a few slides away from the end.

I'm going to hand it over to Jim to cover the last.

Thank you, Allison.

Yeah, just a couple more slides.

First, we want to remind everyone that we need all hands on deck for safety.

So please continue working with us to share your experiences and observations around areas that need investments, needs us to deploy some safety countermeasures.

We know that The city of Seattle will continue to support safe streets and we hope that residents will come to the table and help support proposals that help reduce speeds and collisions on our streets.

In the meantime, we need everyone to slow down and follow the posted speed limit because people's lives are at stake.

Next slide please.

Looking ahead, we are currently programming the additional funding provided to the vision 0 program.

Thank you to the city council to support the next phase of our speed limit work, arterial traffic calming and this program will use channelization and features like median islands, curb bulbs and other tools to help visually narrow the street and encourage lower speeds.

We're also working on a proposal for the federal safe streets for all grant, which will be coming to a head here in the next few weeks.

And as Allison mentioned, we're preparing our response to the statement of legislative intent for Martin Luther King, Jr.

Way South.

That will start a discussion around the future of that street.

In addition, we will be updating our Vision Zero action plan to incorporate our approach, the safe systems approach that Allison talked about earlier, as well as include new data and our upcoming work plan.

We're also working on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Analysis 3.0 to guide our work to proactively reduce collisions.

And we're plugged into the Seattle Transportation Plan.

In fact, Allison is on the advisory team to help guide this process as it unfolds and ensure that Vision Zero remains centered in our work moving forward.

Next slide, please.

Finally, in summary, speeding matters and is directly related to street design.

Reducing speeds and separating people inside and outside of vehicles through time, aka signals, and space separated facilities is key.

Again, as I think we've mentioned many times, where we're able to make changes, where we make different street designs, we see progress.

We see positive results.

And making more of these changes will help us shift trends and move towards Vision Zero.

Finally, Vision Zero is achievable.

It takes all of us working together to get there.

And with that, that ends the presentation today.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

I know we've got some remarks and questions here.

I'll quickly go first as chair.

Safety must be the priority for everyone using Seattle's roads.

And unfortunately, the first part of 2022 with your presentation, it continues the disturbing national trend of unacceptably high numbers of traffic related injuries and deaths, especially among pedestrians and people experiencing homelessness in South Seattle.

Council Member Morales and I asked SDOT to return to our committee today as soon as we became aware of the disturbing trends in the first quarter of this year, and we'll have you come back so that you can provide details when your action plan for Vision Zero is fully updated.

And while we've lowered speed limits and increased sidewalks, I believe we must also respond to the drop in police enforcement by increasing the use of speed cameras and fines based on ability to pay.

And we must also reduce the traffic related harms to people experiencing homelessness by having city departments redouble their efforts to bring more people inside faster.

I'm hopeful that the city council's additional investments for pedestrian safety in South Seattle will reduce injuries once SDOT finishes more of those projects.

Today's initial 2022 data sounds the alarm that the mayor's upcoming budget proposal must continue to increase our investments in South Seattle and other under-invested areas so that our transportation infrastructure is made safer.

I think we'll have some additional comments and questions here.

Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you, Chair Peterson, and thank you to the presenters, not only for the very thorough presentation, but obviously the seriousness and the dedication that you all approached this work with, and as you, just to echo what you yourself said a few minutes ago, which is that Every fatality that happens matters to us because it's a human life and it's families and friends that are devastated when these things happen.

A lot of the points that you've made are obviously extremely important.

They're based in solid statistical evidence.

And as you said, speed is is one of the major contributors to the accident rate and especially the fatality rate, especially when you consider pedestrians who are affected by it.

I also wanted to draw out one other point that you made in your presentation, but perhaps may not, might not have been highlighted enough in my view, just given the numbers that we see in statistics, obviously you all are much more well versed in this than I am, which is the role that the, that is played by public transportation, as you yourselves know.

And I just wanted to share for the benefit of the members of the public, and please feel free to add to it anything I'm saying.

The studies from the American Public Transportation Association and the Vision Zero Network nationally show really just a dramatic role that is played when you have a denser network of public transportation and fewer individual vehicles.

And of course, it seems, logical that that would happen, but the statistical evidence is really compelling.

It's the report, the hidden transportation safety solution, public transportation that was released some years ago shows that it is 10 times safer per mile than traveling by car.

Public transportation is 10 times safer per mile than traveling by car because it has less than a tenth the per mile traffic casualty.

rate injury or death rate as automobile travel.

And obviously this goes to the point about, you know, speed matters, but also human error is a big contributor, just the fact that you're driving, even when you're very, very careful as a driver, there may not be, there may be another driver who's not as careful.

And then you have, you know, multiple vehicles obviously involved in accidents and then pedestrians obviously are the most vulnerable.

So I feel that, we as city council members I think we should really register the tremendous importance of public transportation and Seattle obviously is one of the better cities in terms of public transportation but we should aim to be even better and we should have we should aim to push as elected representatives in my view aim to push more and more for public transportation investment, more and more progressive revenues by taxing big business, taxing the wealthy in the city and state to make more and more funding possible to increase public transportation to make sure that we have a really dense, much denser network of routes and frequencies so that people are in a real way, not in an aspirational way, but in a real way able to leave their cars at home or even not own cars at all and be able to rely entirely on public transportation, clearly safety and the reduction in traffic collisions and the reduction fatalities is a very, very desired effect that we would have from them.

Thank you, councilmember Sawant.

Councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

I'm going to take this off so my glasses stop fogging.

I fully agree with councilmember Sawant that a huge piece of the puzzle here is making sure that we do have better public transportation, more reliable, more frequent, more available.

And we also, as you've all been saying, need to focus on the design of our system as well.

I'll be honest, these slides just reinforce what we already know in the South End, which is that our streets are not safe for children or elders or people with vision impairments, really just not safe for anyone who's not in a car.

And it's not just Rainier Avenue, it's not just MLK, and it's in part, not just an enforcement problem either, although I do wanna talk about that as well.

It's a problem of the design of our streets all over the South end.

And as you started today, we've seen that parents, siblings, children have been involved in serious crashes or have been killed.

And that's not just heartbreaking and tragic, it's also really, it's unacceptable because it's all preventable.

And that's what we are here to talk about.

I wanna see a fundamental shift in our priorities.

I wanna see that we change the way we plan and prioritize and invest in a system so that we prevent these deaths.

I have a lot of questions, Chair.

I know we've been here a while, but I do have questions on some individual slides, if that's OK.

So I want to start with First of all, acknowledging what you say, which is that success doesn't hinge on individual behavior, but on the design of a system.

And I want to go through some of these slides to talk about the design of the system as it stands.

So on slide 12, For example, last three years, nearly half of crashes were in D2, 56% last year, so well over half.

Can you talk about the correlation between the highest disadvantage code that we have here and the highest rate of fatalities?

I can hop in.

I think the relationship, right, ties back into speed.

and the design of the streets.

As you said, Council Member Morales, Rainier, and MLK, but many other places as well.

And they're, in general, have been designed to prioritize the speed and movement of vehicles.

And I think, you know, the relationship between the equity areas, the disadvantaged nature, or the OPCD Race and Equity Index, the relationship between the high injury network, which I would have added here, but would have cluttered the map even more.

You know, the high injury network pops out without the lines on the map, because you can see the streets starting to be pulled out by the, you know, the indicators of people killed and injured on that map.

So there is a relationship, and I think it's really important for us to see that, to call it out, and then to begin to address it.

Well, and I think it's no coincidence that the double digit fatalities occur in the two districts with the highest disadvantage, right?

So district five up in the North end and in the South end.

So looking at slide 14, it says to advance safety and equity, we prioritize investments in areas of highest need.

Does this mean we should prioritize or does this slide mean we do prioritize?

And if that's the case, in what way do we prioritize investments?

I can speak to this a little bit, but Kristen and Jim, feel free to jump in.

So specific to the program that I manage, Vision Zero, and I think this slide correlates with one that Jim might have spoken to.

But these dark orange areas are also our focus areas of investment currently, where we're doing initial planning work and plan to implement improvements in 2023. So Jim mentioned downtown.

We've got a downtown safety improvement project in the works with improvements at, I want to say about 50 intersections identified.

And Jim mentioned leading pedestrian intervals, no turn on red restrictions, and some other spot treatments.

We have all of Soto popping out here in the high injury network map.

And Jim also mentioned that, sorry, airplane.

Jim also mentioned SOTO improvements, we're hoping to make some near-term improvements at a few key locations as we do a holistic analysis of collisions over the entirety of SOTO.

And then also touched on our upcoming work in Rainier, in the Rainier Beach community and along Henderson.

Some of the early places that we're identifying for this Program that we're developing as we speak on arterial traffic calming the gym kind of touched on most of those are probably also going to be in district 2 and South Seattle as well.

So I would say we're currently prioritizing and will upcoming be prioritizing.

And as we're looking to develop our grant proposals, we'll be looking to prioritize investments in these areas as well.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I can add a little to that, too.

You know, I just want to note, you know, as we're developing the Seattle Transportation Plan, you know, we still have our modal plans that prioritize our work.

There are very prescriptive prioritization schemes that are noted in those modal plans, and we do look to those to help us prioritize where we work.

And in addition, I would say that we work with our various boards and commissions to vet those prioritized lists, make sure that we dialed it in and get it right.

Thank you.

Okay, so slide 15, 80% of bike deaths occurred on roads with no bike lane.

Can you tell me how many miles of road we have in Seattle?

We can get that for you.

I don't know the number off the top of my head, but we can provide that information for you.

What I'd also like to know, then, is what percent of our streets have protected bike lanes relative to the number of miles of road we have.

Slides 16, 18, 19, you mentioned several traffic calming opportunities, things that you can do to reduce speed and to make the streets safer.

There's a few glaring omissions in my mind.

I'm not a traffic engineer, I'll admit, but I'm thinking particularly of Rainier Avenue.

So more street lights at more intersections, more crosswalks, speed bumps to slow on straightaways, maybe not Rainier, but I'm thinking of Henderson, where the students at Rainier Beach High School are very concerned about the fact that people speed down the street, you know, harass them while they're trying to cross in a crosswalk.

traffic cameras to enforce speed limits.

I know you're working with community members who want to try to focus on non-punitive measures, but I will also tell you that those students at Rainier Beach High School, that's the first thing they said, double the fine, put more traffic cameras in, because they're fearful of getting hit by a car trying to get to school.

And I know we've got traffic cameras around, but I think that that is one way to get people to pay attention.

Can you talk about why there's no protected bike lane infrastructure being considered on Rainier?

I can speak to that.

We've been working in the Rainier Valley since about 2014, 2015 on Rainier Avenue South.

We worked very closely with the community, met them out where they would go and table at Safeway and other community gathering places, places where people were going about their work.

Through that process, we're able to vet whether transit lanes or bike lanes were the preferred option for that community.

What we heard from our in-person outreach out there was that transit efficiency was of a much higher, a priority for the folks that we were talking to.

However, there are opportunities moving forward to think about the north section of Rainier.

There's still work to be done as we get north of the intersection with MLK.

We do want to provide those safe connections to light rail stations and other destinations in that area.

Yeah, and I'll just say I am seeing increasingly seeing people navigate the neighborhood on cargo bikes, bikes to carry their kids around.

And I mean, I was there.

I know, you know, Mayor Harrell, while he was a council member, advocated strongly for the road diet, which I appreciate.

And I think it has provided at least through that section of Columbia and Hillman City has reduced reduced speeds and reduced collisions.

But Rainier is a long road and there's a lot of work to do.

And it is also the flattest, most direct route from the south end to downtown.

So we will probably continue to have that conversation, if not Rainier.

where is the bike infrastructure going?

I know one of the slides indicated some protected bike lanes going up on MLK, but my recollection is that that's actually District 3, not the south end.

So, that conversation I know continues.

Slide 20, where you're talking about leading pedestrian intervals, and this kind of gets back to a point I made before, the photo is from Ballard, and I'm curious if you know offhand how many, and I've seen this work, I benefit from this myself, getting a few extra seconds before the light turns, for cars, but how many traffic lights are on Market Street?

And I'd love to know how many are on Rainier as I'm thinking about how this could benefit folks who are on Rainier.

If there are no intervals, if there are no traffic lights, then this isn't an option, which is why part of my question is, how do we increase the number of lights along Rainier so that there is more opportunity for safety?

That's maybe just a comment, not a question.

Unless you do happen to know how many traffic lights are on market.

We can get that information for you again and certainly provide that to you.

We do have a new crossing at Rainier and Rose in the queue right now that should be constructed later this year.

So we definitely have a new signal coming to that corridor and we'd be happy to work with you and the residents of D2 to find additional locations for crossings.

So slide 21 addresses the need for people to slow down, which you'll get no argument from me, but the truth is that they actually don't, especially if there aren't many cars on the road.

And sometimes even if there are, I see people tearing down the roads all the time.

And so I'm curious what the data tells us about how we change driver behavior.

You said something, Jim, design changes are needed to really get slower speeds.

So what does that mean?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So, you know, we've got a long history of making street design changes, channelization changes, where we take The roadway from what is typically a pretty simple design with maybe some dashed center lines and dashed lane lines and turn it into, you know, something different.

And, you know, to go back to Rainier or a number of other streets in the corridor.

We've used paint to basically change the nature of the roadway out there by.

Reducing the number of lanes out there, we create what's basically what we would consider almost like a self-enforcing street where going super fast, speeding is actually a real challenge because the speed of traffic is set by the person who's first at the red light in many cases.

What we've seen on Rainier and 35th Southwest and other streets where we've been able to deploy that type of a change is slower speeds where we have documented speeds at the posted speed limit.

Not the previous one, but the posted speed limit that we have now.

We need to do that throughout the city.

That's again where phase 2 of our speed limit work comes in, our arterial traffic calming program.

That's where we can deploy some of those tools and some of them that you mentioned earlier, speed bumps, median islands, curb bulbs, various different tools that we have that change the nature of the roadway, really force drivers to pay attention, which is a huge step in the right direction.

Ultimately, we know we'll bring speeds down.

You mentioned one of the slides that you repaint 1,500 crosswalks a year.

Do you know how many new crosswalks you add?

That varies.

It depends on

you know, a number of different factors.

You know, number one, we take requests from the community.

Whenever there's a need for a new crossing, you know, we can be reached at walkandbikeatseattle.gov or 206-684-ROAD.

If anyone has a request, we can review those and see if we can get a new crossing in.

But new crossings typically will come from our programmatic work.

And typically that would be like a Safe Routes to School project perhaps a Vision Zero safety corridor or a neighborhood greenway project.

We've made substantial strides in the right direction in providing additional new crossings, especially across those multi-lane arterial streets with high speeds and high volumes over the years.

In fact, our neighborhood greenway program has really spearheaded an effort to push back against the years and years of manual and universal traffic control devices, the MUTCD requirements for new for new crossings.

And, you know, previously we were in a position where we would need to see a certain number of pedestrians crossing a street for a given time.

And it was, there were very lofty thresholds to reach, but we've now, we've now changed our policy there so we can be proactive in locations where we know there's going to be an anticipated volume of pedestrians crossing.

And we've changed our crosswalk policy as well in general.

And that's something that happened earlier this year And it's again, a way for us to be more proactive in some cases and install those new crossings where there's anticipated demand and also have a lower threshold to reach before we can make a call on whether we can put a new crossing in.

So we feel like we've made some positive strides in this direction, but the number of crosswalks that we actually, new crosswalks that we install annually fluctuates.

So I guess I'll ask one last question and I'll end by asking the first question you posed, which is what is needed to achieve Vision Zero?

And we've had a lot of slides here about technically what is needed, what kind of technical changes, what kind of systems changes might be needed, but I guess asking as a policymaker, what does SDOT need from us to actually be able to get this done?

Um, Allison, I'd love for you to take this question.

Um, I will say, like, we've been, um.

Really really encouraged by the 1 thing that we really need and that is, um, you know, some some budget, because some of the things that we do are are quick and we can get them done in a timely matter and other projects are going to take a considerable.

a considerable amount of public outreach and time to design and work with all the different stakeholders to get a design that is going to provide that higher level of safety for everyone.

Certainly, budget helps and we're very appreciative of the city council and the state legislature and others who have provided resources for us over the last few years and we hope that trend continues.

Allison, is there anything else you'd like to add to that?

I can.

I saw Kristen unmute.

If you want to hop in, Kristen.

Thanks, Allison and Jim.

I'll second what Jim has said and also talk about the importance of the partnership that we have and will continue to have going forward with city council members in terms of the community and stakeholder engagement that we want to do around some of these especially the larger and more challenging projects that's so important as we design and implement those to work with stakeholders in the community with our safe streets partners and Council.

To hear the voices in the Community and to respond to the needs and concerns and then to be able to move forward with those projects and implement them.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

In terms of the, just one final thought, you mentioned the budget and support from the city council, and we did increase the commercial parking tax to provide additional funding.

It looks like the amount of money we invest in Vision Zero is captured primarily in the capital improvement program budget, capital budget, I'm looking at page 289, which is labeled Vision Zero from the capital budget.

I think it would be helpful because we're seeing, what I'm not seeing there are the state funds.

Obviously those state funds were approved in April and this budget was approved last November.

So I think it would be helpful to get from you an update to this capital improvement program page, knowing now what money is coming from the state government and what, and perhaps a perspective budget about what you think you're going to be getting through federal, if you win certain federal grants.

And then asking that when the budget from the mayor is presented to us in September, asking for a holistic, accounting of what is being invested in Vision Zero, because this CIP, Capital Improvement Program page, I don't think it includes everything that you're investing to reduce traffic-related fatalities.

I know when we passed the internet for all resolution to expand affordable internet access, then we got a budget from the Durkin administration that didn't mention internet for all at all.

So we want the budget to tell that story about what you're doing on Vision Zero.

And I'd like to get something before September so we can get a fresh, an updated look at what's happening in 2023 for the Vision Zero budget.

Would that be possible to get that from you in the next month?

Yes, and thank you for making that point, Councilmember.

You very correctly pointed out that we do have a Vision Zero budget that is specific to that work and that mission.

We also implement Vision Zero through many of the other projects that we design and build.

And so I think you're spot on that being able to capture all of that in a way that describes where those other pieces are being built into other capital projects and other programs is really important.

And then also seeing the geography of where those investments are going, because we've seen, you know, from the slides today that we're not seeing, we're seeing the outcome as poor and dangerous in certain areas.

So we want to see where our investments are going as well.

We do have Calvin Chow from our city council central staff with a comment or question, please, Calvin.

Thank you, council members.

I kind of wanted to actually what Kristen said about the rest of the capital program and how that is so much of how this gets developed.

And I just wanted to highlight that it's another thing for the Council to be paying attention to as the transportation plan work comes together and we start to learn about the next phase of capital projects that get developed.

As you know, we're nearing the end of the Move Seattle levy, and it may be time to be thinking about what our transportation projects are.

going forward, that's in a couple of years, but the work that's done today, the scoping of those programs, the design work that's up front is going to, I mean, that's going to lay the groundwork for what those future investments look like.

So I think it's not just looking at the program spending, the dollar amounts that are directly related to the good work that Alice and Jim do, but sort of what's the next sort of broad citywide or department wide sort of focus of this.

Thank you.

Yeah, the Seattle transportation plan that's being developed.

I know one of the public commenters mentioned the importance of when you're resolving conflicts among modes of travel to prioritize safety as part of that.

Well, we'll look forward to getting an update on the budget information from SDOT.

We'll also have you back to our committee to when you fully finalize the Vision Zero update action plan.

And any final comments or questions before we end?

Okay.

Thank you for being here today and thank you for all the work you do to try to keep people safe in our city.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, colleagues, that was our final item.

So this concludes the June 21st, 2022 meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

We anticipate our next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 5th.

Thank you and we are adjourned.