Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 6/2/21

Good morning.

The June 2, 2021 meeting of the Transportation and Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Councilmember Morales?

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Chair Peterson?

Here.

Three present.

Thank you, and the Council President Gonzalez is excused for this meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We actually have just one item on the agenda, but it's very important.

Today we'll be hearing from the Seattle Department of Transportation's Vision Zero team about their efforts to reduce traffic-related injuries and fatalities.

This is some of the most important work our committee oversees.

I'm looking forward to this presentation.

Again, Council President Gonzalez is excused from today's meeting.

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

I ask that everyone please be patient as we operate this online system.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine-tune this process of public participation.

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

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

I'd also just quickly like to note that Council Member Morales has joined us.

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

Public comment period for this meeting is normally up to 20 minutes.

And so it looks like we will not need that time for this item.

I'll call on two speakers at a time.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

If you've not registered on the council's website to speak but would like to, you can go ahead and sign up before the end of this public comment period.

Just go on that council website, Seattle.gov forward slash council.

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

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I do want to note that Council President Gonzalez has joined us for this meeting.

So everybody's here.

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

Please remember speakers to press star six before speaking.

We'd like to hear from Juan Tao, followed by Clara Cantor.

Go ahead, Juan.

Thank you, council members, for providing the space.

I'm here to speak about Vision Zero.

My name is Yuan Tao, and I am a Mount Baker, Columbia City resident.

I do not own a car that I can drive, so I ride my e-bike everywhere, rain or shine, and I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with friends, co-workers, and even just random strangers that came up to talk to me about my e-bike.

about cycling in Seattle.

And I tell them that cycling every day is good for their health, it's more fun to cycle than it is to sit in traffic, and that it's good for the environment to take cars off the street.

But the one thing that always, always, always holds them back is safety.

I can't lie and say it's very scary to ride in Seattle every single day.

You have to have a certain aggressive temperament.

And there are a lot of people that are actually very interested in driving less and cycling more.

But I have to warn them about the dangers.

After all, Michael Coleman, who was an experienced cyclist who was riding on a popular cycling route in broad daylight, was killed by a car one mile from my house.

I urge you to fund Vision Zero using this money.

Again, there's so many people that want to cycle but are afraid to.

And I, please, when I encourage others to cycle in Seattle, I do not want to feel as if I am potentially signing their death warrant.

Thank you for hearing me out.

Thank you very much.

Next, we have Clara Cantor, followed by Gordon Paddleford.

Go ahead, Clara.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, my name is Clara Cantor, and I'm a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and I'm also calling in to comment on the Vision Zero presentation.

Like Yuan, I also bike to get around on a daily basis, and I live in Rainier Valley in District 2. And just, I just wanted to share with the council, over the last five years, District 2 has had double the number of fatalities as any other council district.

Just in the last month or two, we've had two memorials for people who were killed while riding bikes on routes that I use regularly.

The first was Robert Mice, who was killed down in Georgetown, and the second was Michael Coleman, who was referenced by you on Killed on Seward Park Avenue.

These are places that people bike every single day.

And right now, they feel really, really unsafe.

There's a lot of investments that can be made.

The SDOT team, the Vision Zero team knows where those investments can be made.

They know the problem areas.

They know the specific streets that and the intersections need to be improved, and they really just need funding in order to be able to get there.

So I'm asking Council to continue the funding from 4 Vision Zero past 2021 and increase the funding in an ongoing way that's going to be really meaningful for people's safety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Clara.

Next, we have Gordon Paddleford.

Good morning, Gordon.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Gordon Fidelford.

I'm the Executive Director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and I'm grateful that you all are taking on this topic of Vision Zero.

As you've probably heard, we're not making sufficient progress to make sure that everyone is able to safely travel around our streets.

And I just want to leave you with an analogy to chew on today, which is that, you know, back at the Michael Coleman Memorial, I was speaking because he worked at the airport, and many of his colleagues from the King County Airport were there.

And, you know, I said, If this were happening at an airport, if you had 20 people dying every year at an airport and 150 suffering life-threatening and life-changing injuries, there would be drastic action that was taken.

That would not be seen as okay.

And I think we need that same sort of mentality when we're thinking about road transportation.

Just because we've gotten numb to it and you're used to hearing a traffic report talk about the inconveniences of a crash rather than the human life toll doesn't mean that we should be numb to it.

And we need to address these traffic safety challenges head on.

And as Clara said, the city has a really good Vision Zero team.

They have a really data-driven strategy for how to address known issues, but they need funding.

So my hope is that this fall, during the budget process, you'll find a way to adequately fund Vision Zero.

You know, there's an opportunity with the vehicle licensing fee, which we've talked about.

There may be other opportunities as well to bring this program up to the level it needs to be to really make a positive difference for our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gordon.

I'm not seeing any other speakers who are present, but I'll just double check with our IT team.

Do you see any other speakers who are present?

There are no other public comment registrants.

OK, thank you for double checking that.

This concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

Now we will move on to the first legislative item on our agenda, which is the only item, but very important, Vision Zero.

And we know we have much more work to do to meet Seattle's Vision Zero goals.

While crashes in 2020 decreased compared to 2019, the reduction in fatalities was disturbingly minimal, considering the decrease in vehicles on the road.

And considering SDOT's ongoing work to improve traffic safety, a lot of projects that we funded, the Move Seattle levy as well.

And I note that even though there were only a few speakers this morning, I think that's a testament to the good work SDOT has done to communicate the Vision Zero plan to the different transportation advisory boards.

I was at the Move Seattle levy oversight committee last night where they were complimenting our presenter, who we're going to hear from soon, complimenting her on her presentation.

And so I think she really got the word out there to folks who are really focused on these issues.

And so now we get to have our own briefing here at this committee.

I want to welcome our Director of Transportation, Sam Zimbabwe, and also want to open it up to Calvin Chow, if you have any, from our City Council Central staff, if you had any opening remarks to set the table for this before we hear from Estada, from Allison Schwartz and Jim Curtin.

No, Council Member, I don't have any opening remarks.

Okay, thank you, Calvin.

Good morning, Directors Zimbabwe.

Good morning, and thanks for having us here to talk about this really critically important conversation and topic.

We have a presentation that we will provide, and then really look forward to questions and discussion as we go forward.

And I'm joined this morning by Allison Schwartz, who is our Vision Zero Program Manager, and Jim Curtin, who is the Director of our Project Development Division.

So I just wanted to start off, and we can go to the next slide.

We wanted to start off by acknowledging and remembering the people who have been killed and harmed in traffic violence.

And unfortunately, this slide, which we provided late last week, is already out of date.

And 147 people have been killed in traffic crashes since we launched Vision Zero six years ago.

This includes 13 fatalities in 2021, and that's five people walking, three people biking, one person riding a moped, two people riding motorcycles, and two people in vehicles.

Our team responds to every fatal and serious injury collision report and tries to understand some of the underlying factors that were involved in that crash.

First responders and SDOT's own incident response team are on the scene of these crashes.

SPD's Collision Investigation Squad reconstructs fatal crashes, and family members and friends carry lifelong grief.

So many layers and levels of trauma occur through these crashes on our city streets.

While we're presenting a lot of data today, we must also center our discussions on the lives lost and harmed, like the one commemorated in the memorial on this slide and the ones we've heard about from the public comment.

Vision Zero is a holistic strategy and it's important for us to recognize just the impacts that all of this has on, that is happening within the right-of-way as we continue to advance our traffic safety goals.

And how also in line with our race and social justice initiative goals, it's time to, daylight, the uncomfortable reality that relying on an enforcement heavy approach in transportation can also lead to disproportionate financial impact, injury and death for black and brown community members across our city and across the country.

With that, and before I turn it over to Allison to walk through the bulk of the presentation, I hope you'll join me in a brief moment of silence to remember those lives lost on our streets.

And together we affirm our support for safe and racially equitable streets.

We acknowledge our commitment to end serious injuries and fatalities on our streets.

And with that, we can go to the next slide.

Just a couple brief overview points before I turn it over to Allison.

Fundamentally, street design is critical for how we achieve Vision Zero.

And our smart street design also connects to the city's goals around racial equity and sustainability.

we're gonna discuss that we are not getting closer to Vision Zero yet, but that we have an opportunity to course correct by making greater use of the engineering tools that we've seen work in our city, some of which we'll be highlighting later on.

And we'll also talk a little bit about where we see our Vision Zero efforts going in a way that centers racial equity and looks to more holistically address safety on our streets.

And with that, I will turn it over to Allison.

Thank you, Sam.

Shawna, next slide, please.

And thank you, council members, for having us here today.

My name is Allison Schwartz, and I'm the Vision Zero program coordinator at SDOT.

Along with my team of four staff, we lead the charge on the city's Vision Zero efforts to end traffic deaths and serious injuries.

As Sam just mentioned, we are already looking at 13 traffic fatalities this year.

And I think many people may be wondering, you know, what's going on, and specifically, to Council Member Peterson's point earlier, what happened in 2020?

Why were there so many traffic deaths despite a drop in overall traffic and in crashes?

And there are still definitely many unknowns about how the pandemic has affected human behavior.

And while what we're seeing here in Seattle aligns with national trends, we do want to step back for a moment and discuss, you know, the quote unquote normal that we've become accustomed to.

Let's look at 2020 in the context of the last several years, where on average here in Seattle, 20 people are killed in crashes and 160 are seriously injured every year.

In 2020, we did see that increase to 25 people killed and serious injuries dipped slightly.

This is nested in a broader context of more than 500 traffic deaths a year here in Washington State and close to 40,000 a year in the United States.

And while we did see lower vehicle volumes and fewer collisions overall, we believe we're seeing similar overall outcomes because we're operating in essentially the same system.

It is possible that increased speeds due to fewer vehicles on the road may have contributed to the increase in deaths because in a normal year, we actually rely on some level of traffic congestion as a natural traffic calming mechanism.

So as we continue to make our way out of this pandemic, I hope we can also all realize that traffic death and injury are a public health emergency as well that has been happening in slow motion, not just in 2020, but for decades.

Next slide, please.

So why does this continue to occur?

When we're talking about same system, same outcomes, we're talking about street design.

And for decades, many of our streets have been designed to move cars quickly at speeds that humans simply cannot survive.

We are working to undo that.

and are going to touch on the importance of lowering vehicle speeds throughout this presentation.

I want to point out that half of our fatal and serious injury crashes occur on just about a tenth of our streets.

These are mostly multi-lane, high-speed, high-volume arterials, and I've listed many of them here.

And while we have made significant improvements on portions of Rainier Avenue South and recently to Lake City Way, and we're actively designing improvements along portions of Martin Luther King Jr.

Way and working toward a large planning effort on Aurora, there's much more work to be done if we are to achieve Vision Zero.

Next slide, please.

So year over year, we see the same top contributing factors to crashes, speeding, impairment, distraction, and failure to yield to pedestrians.

But I want to point out, too, that each of these behaviors can be affected by street design, because smart street design can slow vehicles down.

And speed is really the critical factor in both the frequency and the severity of crashes.

I do also wanna note here on the right of this slide that over the past couple years, we've seen a significant increase in the percent of crashes that are hit and run, which can make it difficult to determine the contributing factors to that crash.

Next slide, please.

Alice, excuse me, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Thank you, Allison and Director Zimbabwe for being with us today.

On that last slide, you said something very quickly that I think is important to call out about speed.

And so one common theme that I've already heard in this presentation is talking about the need to reduce speed.

And I just want to highlight that it's not just because we think that that's a good idea.

What I heard you just say is that speed is the number one.

Can you repeat it so I don't say it incorrectly, but it sounded like it was the number one reason that collisions occur, and it's the number one reason why people don't survive that collision.

Can you put it in a more articulate way?

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Council Member Strauss.

So the phrase that I and my team and others use often is that speed is the critical factor in the frequency and severity of crashes.

And we do have a slide later that's gonna specifically talk about some of the physics behind speed and why it matters so much in terms of survivability when people are involved in crashes at high speeds.

Great, I'll wait for that slide to make more comments.

But what I just, I know that you've got that great phrase that you use within your team, but what I heard you just say is speed is the determining factor on how many crashes and collisions occur in our city, and speed is the determining factor in how badly you are injured if you are hit.

Absolutely.

I guess I just really wanted to raise that because throughout this entire conversation, I think that, and I've already heard you talking about speed, that is why speed is such an important part of this conversation because it makes the difference between how many collisions and how badly people are hurt.

I'll turn it back to you.

Just wanted to highlight something that you said.

Thank you, Council Member.

So I want to spend just a moment on talking about what Vision Zero is.

Of course, it's a City of Seattle initiative to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030. But what are the key principles that ground this work?

So with Vision Zero, we believe that traffic deaths are not inevitable, nor are they accidents.

We believe they're preventable through better system design that takes into account the sheer fact that humans are not perfect and that we can't rely on every individual who's moving in, out, and around the city to make the right choice every time.

But what we can do is manage Seattle's streets, sidewalks, and signals in a way that centers the safe movement of people so that when someone makes a mistake, it does not end in injury or death.

Next slide.

But for the better part of the past several decades, most US cities, including Seattle, haven't quite fully embraced that safe systems approach.

And instead, we've relied on this more traditional approach of the three E's listed here, which are engineering, education, and enforcement.

And often we've placed equal value on each E.

Next slide.

So we want to talk about where that approach of the three E's has gotten us.

Unfortunately, we are no closer to ending traffic deaths.

So looking back across the last decade, we can see a few things.

This graph here shows overall fatality trends projected decline.

That is the top gray dashed line.

Trend lines are increasing for people not protected by vehicles.

These are the purple lines.

And decreasing for people protected by vehicles, the orange line.

I do want to note also that we're looking at data sets in the realm of about 20 people per year.

So small changes year to year can look like large jumps.

But what we do see as clear is that the total fatality trend lines is climbing due to an increase in fatal crashes involving people walking and biking.

Next slide.

Vision Zero is not just about ending traffic deaths, but serious injuries as well.

While the total number of serious injury crashes decreased slightly in 2020, what I neglected to point out earlier is that even though the raw number, the overall number of crashes was fewer than the year before, Because there were fewer overall crashes, we saw like as a percentage, serious injury crashes actually increased.

But regardless, it's important to look at the bigger picture to pan out to see more than one year at a time.

And on average, we see about 160 serious injury crashes a year.

And over time, we're seeing serious injury crashes remain pretty constant, diminishing at a rate of about one less serious injury every two years.

which means at this rate, we will not achieve zero serious injuries until the year 2280. Next slide, please.

As highlighted a couple slides earlier, people outside of vehicles are increasingly affected by crashes.

People walking and biking are involved in a small percentage of total crashes, about 7%, but make up two-thirds of the deaths.

In addition, we see older adults overrepresented in pedestrian fatalities, with the average age being about 56 years old.

And we're also seeing that close to 20% of people walking who've been killed in a crash were likely experiencing homelessness.

These are our most vulnerable travelers.

Next slide, please.

And then when we look at race data across fatalities, we see that black community members are overrepresented.

So this graph shows by racial category, the percent of people killed in traffic collisions, which is in red, versus the racial demographics of Seattle in blue.

And we can see a clear disparity in one group that I've circled here, and that's Black community members.

Where 7% of Seattle residents identify as Black, Black people make up 12% of those killed in collisions on city streets.

Next slide, please.

And here we've overlaid fatal crashes with the Office of Planning and Community Development's Race and Equity Composite Index, which is a mix of health indicators of information around race, country of origin, poverty level, educational attainment, and other variables.

And so the purple color here indicates the highest disadvantaged census tracts based on that index, which you can see are concentrated in South Seattle and also the very north portion of the city.

Over the past five years, we've seen that 31% of traffic deaths, which are these dots on the map, are in the 20% of census tracts, making up the most highly disadvantaged communities.

Next slide, please.

In addition to being disproportionately affected by crashes, research indicates that Black people are disproportionately affected by traffic enforcement and by the fines and fees associated with that enforcement.

So last year, the city's Office for Civil Rights commissioned a study that was led by researchers out of Rutgers and UW and they presented their findings to the Council's Public Safety and Human Services Committee in September of 2020. They analyzed Seattle Municipal Court cases from 2000 to 2017 that involved what's called legal financial obligations.

And these are the fines, the fees, and the other costs that are imposed by the court.

They found that 83% of these cases were traffic infractions.

And then a key finding that I've highlighted here on the slide is that In 2017, black drivers in Seattle were issued 2.6 times more traffic infractions with legal financial obligations per capita than were white drivers.

The research goes in depth on the disparate effects of traffic and parking enforcement fines and fees, particularly on black men in Seattle.

So typically, oh, go ahead.

Excuse me, Council Member Strauss.

Oh, I'll wait for Allison to finish.

Thank you.

Yeah, appreciate it.

I just didn't want to get lost before the next slide.

Thanks.

So typically with Vision Zero, we have thought about harm primarily from the physical perspective of, you know, reducing harm from crashes.

But we also need to recognize and are learning a lot more about the other forms of harm that are at play, including the devastating financial and economic harm that can occur as a result of enforcement related to traffic safety.

Next slide, but happy to.

Oh, yeah.

May I jump in now?

Something that I heard earlier in your presentation was that if we create street design, and you're going to have to put it in the words that are more articulate and apt than what I'm going to generalize, is if we create street design in an appropriate fashion, then we don't have to rely on enforcement.

Did I hear you say that correctly?

Yes.

And we're going to talk about that more in a little bit.

you know, we've been using and that folks from across the country, because this is certainly not a conversation that is unique to Seattle.

People all over the country in similar roles are dealing with, you know, increases in fatalities and also these challenging conversations about, you know, what the role of enforcement is, can be or should be when it comes to traffic safety.

So the phrase is, you know, working toward designing self-enforcing streets, or the design of the street, generates and results in the behavior that we want to see rather than having to rely on traditional enforcement that we have.

That's great.

I mean, just to kind of summarize, it sounds like if we create our streets in a way that channelize people, get them in their lane, then we don't necessarily have to write tickets that will lead to legal financial obligations.

Yes.

Great, thanks.

Just highlighting what you're saying and making sure that I'm connecting the dots that you're putting out for us.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

So I also wanted to just take a moment to connect the dots between safety and climate.

And I feel like the first person who provided a public comment did that nicely as well.

Because they go hand in hand and we're In addition to being a ways away from achieving Vision Zero, we're a ways from achieving our aggressive climate goals as well.

And just have to recognize that when we invest in multimodal systems, we're also investing in safety, that if we're to meet both of our goals here, we need to redesign our roads to support slower speeds, to give people more options for walking, biking and transit so that we can reduce reliance on single occupancy vehicles.

Next slide, please.

So while things are not headed in the right direction.

We do have a really robust set of engineering tools that work, and we're interested in more aggressively pursuing these proven tools.

Next slide, please.

So here's our speed focus slide, Council Member Strauss.

Slowing down speeds is key to achieving Vision Zero.

And that phrase I mentioned earlier, it's the critical factor in the frequency and the severity of crashes.

And this graph here highlights the sheer physics and the effects that higher speeds have on human beings.

Over the past several years, and especially in 2020 and into this year, we focused on lowering speed limits citywide, including more recently on a first phase of state routes, and we've done that in partnership with WSDOT.

Thanks to the work of our crews, we now have more than 90% of our materials signed at 25 miles an hour, which is a really important first step in this space.

A few years ago, when we lowered speed limits in an initial set of urban villages, we found that sign changes alone helped to reduce top-end speeding by 54% and decreased injury crashes by 20%.

Our work in the space of lowering speed limits has gained national recognition.

And while we've seen positive results, we also recognize that many streets still need to be redesigned to address speeding.

Next slide, please.

Chairman, may I ask some questions on that last slide?

Yes, thanks.

Apologies.

Thanks.

And this slide is especially interesting to me.

So your graph shows how vehicle speed affects survivability.

And the x-axis is the speed, and the y-axis is the percentage of survivability.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

How deadly?

So, so, I mean, at 45 miles an hour, which we have some streets in the city at 45 miles an hour, there are definitely streets that are not signed for 45 miles an hour that people drive at 45 miles an hour.

The likelihood of surviving that crash or that collision is 50 50. Is that correct?

Am I reading this correctly?

I don't think it's quite that high, but yes, and then it depends on how old you are as well, just given that as we age, you know, our ability to recover and our frailty, the body's resilience comes into play.

So thanks, and I guess I'm just trying to understand this slide a little bit more.

So if I am on the average all ages at 45, I'm just trying to, it looks like that intersection is above 50%.

Does that mean that I have a 45% survivability rate?

What it's indicating is not quite necessarily survivability rate, but how deadly the crash will be.

I mean, those two things are related, but what it's clearly indicating is that the faster someone is driving and if they strike someone, particularly an older person, survivability is going to decrease substantially as the speed increases.

Okay, it would be helpful to follow up with specific speeds and specific survivability rates, because I see what your slide here is demonstrating.

I guess at 35 miles an hour, which is what our streets have been, just using this slide, the survivability rate there looks like it's about 30%.

So somebody has Is it 70% survivability or is it 30%?

I think so on this, as you move up on the Y axis, you're more likely to die from the crash.

So that 100% at the top at 60 miles an hour, most people are not going to survive a crash.

I think this is national data in a variety of different contexts, and I think the specifics of each individual crash obviously play into that.

level of severity of the crash.

But as you said, going from 35 to 25, you move from that place where about half of older adults would not survive a crash to a place where people of all ages are much more likely to survive a crash if one happens.

And you're also a lot less likely to have a crash happen in the first place.

That's really helpful, Director Zimbabwe.

Using the 70-year-old line here, at 35 miles an hour, it's a 50-50.

If we drop it down to 25, it's closer to about 15%.

That's just as such.

For 10 miles an hour, you change the survivability rate by over half.

And I guess I called out your comments earlier, Allison, about frequency and severity The speed is that interlinking factor.

And colleagues, I guess I'm sitting on this slide so much is because I personally was hit by a driver while riding my bike.

And it was going over 35 miles an hour.

I spent four days in Harborview.

And there's 30%, according to this graph, there's a 30% chance that I wouldn't be here with you today asking these questions.

So we can go, I can share more information about that at another time.

The frequency and severity is what I'm just, I'm gonna keep hammering home because if that vehicle, if that driver that had hit me was going slower, there would have been less of an opportunity for it to occur.

And I would not have spent 12 hours in the ER, 36 hours in the ICU and another 48 hours in Harborview being monitored.

So this is not abstract data.

This is, I had a 30%.

Yeah, anyways, Chair, you can move on.

Just wanted to make that point.

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

I am.

Curious, I appreciate that the arterials have been lowered, at least most of them across the city.

But having two of the four streets where most of these accidents occur, crashes occur in my district, it's really clear to me that lowering the speed limit doesn't really account for poor road design.

We regularly see people speeding down regardless of the new lowered speed limit on those two streets.

And so sort of similar to the point that Council Member Strauss is making, one in four people who are hit at the speed of 32 miles an hour will die.

And so I'm curious if we have data on You know, how many people are going over that 25 mile an hour?

How many are going over 30 or even over 40?

Is there, is any of that being tracked?

Because I don't see that having lowered the speed limit.

I mean, obviously, you know, if our crashes are still at 160 a year on average, that by itself is not doing the trick.

And so I'm curious if we are keeping tabs on, on the frequency of how many people are going over the speed limit.

Yes, we have in the past and will continue to collect data after we install new speed limit signs and as well after we, to your point, redesign roads.

And I think in a couple of slides, we have some data about the effects, the before and after effects of a road re-channelization or a road redesign.

Um, particularly on high end speeders, just under further, you know, getting at the importance of street design.

And while we have seen some positive changes, just as a result of, you know, lowering speed limits and putting in larger signs at a more frequent pace, just as visual cues for folks.

Um, it is not like that's not a one and done fix.

Clearly we need to be also looking at street design, um, as we do that.

So, well, I'll wait till you get to those slides, but I have a lot of questions about Rainier Avenue, so.

Okay.

Okay, so let's see.

Citywide speed limits are one example of a proactive and system-wide improvement that's going to be necessary to advance Vision Zero.

We have a comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian safety analysis that has identified other areas of focus to help reduce serious and fatal crashes.

And it recognizes that we can't end traffic deaths only by chasing fatal crashes.

We need to also aggressively approach approaches that can occur across the system so that we can prevent bad crashes from happening.

Another way that we can do that is by giving pedestrians a head start.

And we are seeing positive gains with tools like leading pedestrian intervals that give people a head start by just a few seconds.

and that reduces conflicts at intersections.

Where we've put them in, we're seeing a 50% reduction in injuries and a 35% reduction in serious and fatal crashes.

Next slide, please.

All right, here's the slide that I was just referencing.

So when we use a complete streets approach, we can improve safety for all travelers.

And this chart here highlights before and after results for a number of road redesigns that SDOT has put in place over the past decade and more.

These are also known as re-channelizations.

And this is when we take a typical four-lane cross-section of a street where there are two lanes of travel in each direction, and we adjust it to one lane in each direction with the center turn lane.

What this does is it reduces opportunities for speeding and for collisions, notably for injury collisions.

The design is self-enforcing, again, which encourages the type of behavior we're after.

which is slower speeds so that people can have greater time to react.

They have a wider field of vision to see other travelers.

And then if a crash does occur, the impact will likely be lower because of that lower speed, which again is critical to the survivability of people, especially people outside of vehicles.

When we redesign streets, we also are, you know, it also provides us with an opportunity to repurpose some of that additional space for more efficient modes or uses.

Council Member Morales.

So I'm going to go back to Rainier Avenue.

It's used as a reference here as a presentation for street design.

Even on the portions that already have a road diet, the center turn lane is being used as a passing lane very often.

People frequently speed.

There's regular crashes.

In some places, it's still five lanes wide.

And there is very little traffic calming, you know, there are long stretches of the of the road where there's no traffic lights or street crossings.

So I'm interested in knowing what we can do to make that road safer.

How we turn it into a real street that reflects that there are many small businesses.

We have hundreds of units of housing going up along Rainier Avenue where people will be accessing light rail, accessing transit stations.

So we know that there are even more pedestrians coming on that road.

I would be really interested to know how we install more traffic lights and marked crosswalks.

and also how we can narrow the lanes, maybe even get rid of that center turn lane so that we can add more bus, maybe even protected bike lanes on there.

So I'll stop there, but I have a lot of questions for you.

Great questions, and I appreciate them.

We do, you know, even though we have made investments in Rainier that have produced some positive results, we know that Things are still happening on this portion of Rainier Avenue.

We did just do a complete, toward the end of last year, a second phase of improvements on Rainier that extended the rechannelization down to Rainier Beach.

And then our hope is to continue working south of Henderson as well to make Rainier safer.

And to your point, there are possibly additional improvements that can and should be made throughout this corridor.

And it's a matter of One, ensuring that we have the funding to make those improvements.

A lot of our initial work is to kind of redesign with paint in a lot of ways with signal timing and in some instances curb bulbs and improvements to pedestrian crossings.

But there may be more, you know, maybe some more concrete work that we can do.

Can I follow up with one more?

Please.

Thank you.

You know, another portion of this presentation really shows that the South End is ripe for safety improvements.

And I know that, you know, there is an examination through the RSJI lens.

And still, you know, in the Bike Master Plan, the South End has the fewest projects, the fewest miles that are funded through construction.

I'm curious why the most diverse area in the city is seeing the least amount of investment when, as your slides are saying, we know that people of color are disproportionately impacted by these safety concerns.

I can jump in a little bit on that and maybe the previous Previous comments as well, so I think a lot of this is the pipeline for projects and I think we've got a lot that is underway and in the planning and design stages, but we have to prime that pump more to be able to deliver.

And that also includes being able to engage with communities about.

about how people are traveling and how changes could impact.

We also, you know, in using these streets as examples, We have taken a very data-driven approach to Vision Zero.

That includes before and after, as this shows, but also a commitment to come back and continue to work to improve safety along corridors.

So we might make one change, see how it's working, continue that, and or So if we're seeing some improvements along a street like Rainier, but not getting to zero, then that tells us we still need to make investments and figure out how to make that truly a safe corridor for everybody.

So things like additional safe crossings, ways to make that center turn lane into a non-passing lane and really have it being used for its intended purposes are all part of how we continue to look at the street.

I can tell you that whether it's Rainier or Genesee or Alaska, people use the center lane and the painted bike lane as passing lanes, which is why I'm pushing so hard for protected bike lanes, because paint doesn't protect anybody.

So we can continue this conversation later.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I think we can move on to the next slide, Shauna.

OK.

So just excuse me, Allison, Council Member Herbold has a question.

Sorry, I was a little slow on the draw there.

Just go back one slide.

Thank you so much.

I have a question about the Fauntleroy line there.

Is that data for all of Fauntleroy Way or a portion of it?

It runs from, of course, the dock to the West Seattle Bridge.

So just want to get a sense of I want to take this opportunity to ask the question, even though it was one of the few fully funded projects in the move levy, the.

Fauntleroy Boulevard Safety Project has been defunded.

It is still in the CIP.

So I'm wondering whether or not I should consider that not a termination of the project, but just a delay.

And then also interested in two additional questions.

what time period is this data for on Fauntleroy and just want to get a sense of why there's so much variability in the data about injure collections and 40 miles per hour speeding.

just, you know, obviously comparing Fauntleroy to, as Council Member Morales said, to Rainier, where collisions are down on Fauntleroy significantly, and less so on Rainier, where in both instances, the 40 mile per hour speeding is down significantly more on Rainier than in Fauntleroy.

In other words, in one case, speeding is down a little, but injury collisions are down a lot, and in another, speeding is down a lot, but injury collisions are down a lot less.

That's a great question.

I'm going to need to get back to you on the Fauntleroy question around what extent and what time period this is looking at, if that's all right.

I think it's like the amount of font Leroy that you're covering there.

Is that what you mean by extent?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it.

My understanding is it's covering the part that was rechannelized and that goes from Edmonds to the dock or I don't know exactly what the southern extent of that is, but I think it starts at Edmonds.

I think just in terms of the percentages, it might also help.

And I think we could provide to the council the raw numbers because that also plays into percentages, obviously.

And so some of the percentage drop could be a result of different starting points from a raw number perspective.

Uh, and then question about a future of the future.

So, I mean, we've, we've held that project as sound transit goes through the environmental impact statement process for the West Seattle to Ballard extension.

not knowing exactly how the future construction of that, both in timing and in space, would affect the Fault in Our Way project.

I think as that process continues to move, we can obviously continue to discuss how to advance investments along Fault in Our Way as well.

Please continue, Alice.

Thank you.

Okay, next slide please.

So I wanted to circle back to this three E's approach.

Guided by the city's racial equity toolkit and our race and social justice initiative goals.

Since about last summer, we in the Vision Zero team with folks from across SDOT have been asking ourselves a number of questions.

Again, guided by the racial equity toolkit.

Is this approach advancing Seattle's safety and racial equity goals?

How effective has each of these E's been?

And what have the unintended consequences been?

And I hope that the earlier slides have highlighted that the approach we've relied on is not getting us closer to where we need to be from a safety or an equity perspective.

Next slide, please.

And there is another E to bring in here.

And so what we're doing is looking to more intentionally ground and center our work in racial equity.

And I mentioned this earlier, but that really requires us to think about safety more holistically.

Of course, it will continue to be about protecting people from the harm of a traffic crash, but we also need to continue to learn about, acknowledge and reduce the physical and the financial harm that can occur in the right of way.

that has resulted in some instances by relying on enforcement to help advance safety.

So now and looking ahead, we are aiming to guide our efforts, again, using a racial equity framework.

And we want to also make sure that we're actively aligning our work and connecting dots to the recommendations of the Transportation Equity Work Group that our colleagues in the Transportation Equity Program have been working very hard on for the past couple of years.

Part of that work includes a lot more intentional engagement and relationship development with Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities.

Next slide, please.

So as we continue to evaluate our efforts and move toward a safe systems approach of self-enforcing streets guided by a racial equity framework, I did want to touch on how we're engaging with SPD and with enforcement.

We are actively continuing to coordinate with the police department.

We have monthly check-ins with the Traffic Collision Investigation Squad and a lot of emails and phone calls in between to learn more in as real time as we can about the bad crashes that are occurring.

And while we are not requesting any targeted enforcement right now, it is certainly within SPD's realm to enforce the rules of the road.

I also wanted to share that my team is getting a racial equity toolkit effort underway related to the city's automated enforcement programs, specifically the school safety and the red light cameras.

We're working in partnership with SPD on that, who runs the program, and also with municipal courts.

Again, you know, trying to better understand any unintended consequences and racial disparities.

And we're certainly interested in finding ways to continue to partner with SPD to use a data-driven approach to both reduce fatal and serious injury crashes and to advance racial equity.

So with that, I think I'm going to hand it back to Sam for the final slide or two.

Thanks, Allison.

I think we wanted to leave and open it up to more conversation, more discussion around just a couple of key challenges and opportunities.

We've talked about some of what's been proven to work and where we want to go and do more.

We haven't talked as much about, we've talked a little bit about some of the funding constraints Vision Zero is woven into all of our investments across the department, across all programs.

I will say we're very grateful that the 2021 Vehicle License Fee Spend Plan added a bit more than a million dollars to the Vision Zero team budget, which increased the budget of that team alone by 50%.

So as Allison and her team work in partnership across the department, those resources are really critical.

to scaling up how we respond and how we can continue to do more.

We also want to not leave people on an unhopeful note even though we've struggled and a lot we've made investments but we are still fighting this tide.

We have examples of other places that do show that it is possible in the city of Oslo, which is a little bit smaller, obviously a very different context in some ways, but some of the same challenges that we face reached a zero fatalities for pedestrians and cyclists.

And that's been over many years of a series of investments.

We're still at the early stages of this, but we do want to leave on a hopeful note that it is possible and we think we can get there working together.

And it's also something that really requires a holistic view both within SDOT, but also within community and sort of a shared commitment to ending the impacts of traffic crashes on our communities.

And I think with that, we wanted to close and have any further discussion.

And again, really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation, especially without other things on the agenda, so we can have a little bit more time and space to have it.

Thank you, Director Zimbabwe.

And thank you, Allison Schwartz, and to your team as well, your Vision Zero team.

And Jim Curtin, it's good to see you as well.

We can open it up for questions.

I've got a couple just to get things started.

We obviously asked a lot of questions along the way, and you can follow up with the Vision Zero team as well.

You mentioned Oslo, Norway.

I would like to know which other similar cities have achieved better safety outcomes and what specifically are they doing differently than Seattle?

Oslo is a hopeful example in terms of them getting to zero.

From the limited information I have on Oslo, I know they also do have a pretty strong enforcement program.

Obviously, they have different contexts there.

than we do here.

But because, as I understand, their enforcement is so strong, their fines are so high and severe in Oslo, are there other cities that we could also look at that have better outcomes and finding out what are they doing differently and then applying those things here?

And that could be just a question you could get back to us on rather than put you on the spot.

or feel free to answer.

I know it counts my morales as a question as well.

Go ahead.

Sorry, I can't see you.

I mean, I think we tend to point to the European examples because they're the ones that have gotten the closest.

I feel like, and to Sam's point, even though this presentation had a little bit of a Debbie Downer tone to it, we are doing you know, pretty well compared to many of our peer cities.

And it's just, it's hard to make that comparison because we're talking about human lives.

And we're talking, you know, we certainly don't want to discount the fact that 20 people are dying and that 160 more are being injured.

But amongst our peers in the United States, we are one of the safer cities.

I think one good city to look at in the U.S. is New York and just how aggressive They have been, again, using the tools that we know across this country are working, tools that are proven by the Federal Highway Administration and by our own implementation to work to reduce crashes.

So a variety of traffic calming mechanisms that they just really aggressively deploy and have been doing so for the past, I don't know, seven plus years, if not decade more.

And they have seen decreases in their pedestrian fatality rates is my understanding.

We'd be happy to look at other examples, and we're pretty constantly engaged with folks through NACTO forums, which is the National Association of City Transportation Officials, and there's a whole Vision Zero network that connects all of our peer cities together, and we're constantly exchanging information and looking to each other to learn more.

Thank you.

I would definitely like to hear cities in addition to New York, New York.

So, you know, where they have 8 million people in five boroughs.

And just curious how that would break down and compare to Seattle.

But yes, whatever other cities you could find that are doing, are achieving better outcomes.

And Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Well, I'm really curious to get, first of all, thank you very much.

I think it's obvious that this Vision Zero team is really grappling with how to address the fact that 20 people are dying in our city every year and how to make the kind of investment that you need to make so that it doesn't take us till 2280 or whatever you said to get to our goal of zero fatalities.

I think a lot of the challenge for us is that in our American culture, we have an aversion to roads that don't center cars.

Other kinds of street design are hard for us to accept, but I think we're going to have to start moving that way.

You know, the...

I know that there are examples in Europe, you know, in Paris during COVID, they changed their busiest street, closed it to private, you know, to cars.

San Francisco changed market street.

So I know it's possible in Europe and in this country.

But what I really want to know is for you, for your team, what is it going to take?

Is it a culture issue?

Is it policy issue?

You've mentioned funding a couple of times.

I would be interested to know what kind of funding you need to make the kind of impact that would actually start moving us towards the goal of Vision Zero.

If funding is the issue, what do you need to achieve that goal?

Sure, so let me take the start of that, at least.

And just going back a little bit to the comparison to other cities, I think every city across the country actually had a really challenging 2020 and has had a challenging couple of years.

Some of that is perhaps due to things like vehicle design the visibility of people walking and biking from some larger vehicles as people have opted for larger vehicles as well on city streets.

Councilor Morales, to your question, I think it's a range of things.

I'm always reluctant to say, hey, if we just throw more money at it, that will solve everything.

We know that some of these large, The streets that are the most challenging for us from a safety perspective need some really substantial investment to redesign.

And we didn't talk that much about Aurora today, but Highway 99 and Aurora remains really the most deadly street in the city.

We are very close to securing a grant to do some really important concept design and taking that a little bit beyond concept in some places for how to re-envision Aurora to really be a safe community connector rather than the divider that it is today.

Making those investments are on a really large scale to make some of those those physical changes in a place like Aurora that has been built over years to be much more focused on moving cars than on connecting people.

Our program to change out arterial speed limit signs across the city last year was a pretty minor cost, and our cost to do leading pedestrian intervals, pedestrian head starts at intersections is also a very minor cost.

So it's not purely a funding conversation.

We definitely have been having internal conversations within SDOT about where we might be our own obstacle to to resolving some of these issues and how we can do that faster and sort of make the decisions that really do prioritize safety in every one of our projects and our decisions.

And that's not a money issue either.

That's really making sure that we have the internal policies and procedures that look at safety every time in terms of making every decision that we make throughout the department, which again is going to be really critical for for achieving Vision Zero.

So it's a really, it is a mix of things that will get us to eventually to the vision.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just another D1 specific question.

I was wondering if Director Zimbabwe, you could speak to the role of the Keep It Moving streets and the Stay Healthy streets as part of this thesis that it's really the design of the street that is important to making streets more safe.

There's a lot of really unsafe driving on Alki and historically beach drive.

Captain Grossman in the Southwest Captain has been very clear that he also embraces this concept of the safe design of streets being paramount and that enforcement is not a useful tool.

And so just wondering really how you see those design tools that you have available to you, if properly resourced, in helping also accomplish the Vision Zero goals in places such as Beef Drive and Alki.

Yeah, so that's a that's a great point and customer also also talked about sort of what other cities have done during the pandemic and in the recovery from the pandemic and we did lean heavily into the stay healthy streets and keep moving streets around parks as as a big tool.

You know, those have been, by and large, most of those, the Alki Point being a little bit of an exception, places where there were already existing other safety investments made, neighborhood greenways that we were now opening up to more people walking and biking in different ways.

But some of the underlying investments of those, the safe arterial crossings, the safe crossings of busier streets, were really critical to our ability to do To see good success with those stay healthy streets.

We're still navigating and figuring out exactly what the right way to make some of those.

uh, interim investments permanent and how to, um, how to reap the benefits of those on an ongoing basis.

Um, and, uh, uh, so I think that'll be a place by place.

And as we think about even, you know, I think it's changed a little bit how we think about deploying new neighborhood greenways going forward as well.

Um, and what we can do in terms of, uh, different, different design approaches from the start.

Um, And I think we've seen those be popular.

We've also heard some concerns about some of those stay healthy streets and want to be able to implement them in an ongoing way that is sensitive to community concerns and desires as well.

definitely part of our toolbox and we all appreciate the resources that are in the funding proposal from the rescue funds to, or recovery funds, I never know which the R is, to help us make some of those gains permanent as well.

Thank you for that answer, Director Zimbabwe.

And council members, any additional questions?

That's obviously accessible to us all the time and really appreciate their responsiveness.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to kind of piggyback off of your comments regarding Oslo, where you had mentioned, Chair, the high cost of the tickets, so a strong enforcement model.

I think something that's really important to go along with that context and to not just view enforcement in Oslo in a vacuum.

They also have separated lanes.

for everyone, whether it's a pedestrian, somebody riding a bike, or driving.

So there's a clear place and it is known to everyone on the road which lane they need to stay in, which is also not the case here in our city.

And I don't know Oslo's relationship with legal financial obligations.

Here in the United States, legal financial obligations go further than just that incident in which somebody is being reprimanded for.

So I just, I caution our reliance on just enforcement as per the slide that we saw in today's presentation, unless It comes along with the design and infrastructure that keeps everyone in their lane and safe and separated from each other.

Again, just highlighting the slide about frequency and severity.

The reason that we're lowering speed limits is to reduce the number of collisions happening between people and people driving.

I heard a term used in this presentation, vulnerable users of the road, which are bikes, people biking and walking.

I guess I have trouble with that term.

That's a personal issue for me.

Another way of saying it is somebody who does not have a steel cage around them on the road.

So if you are in a car, in a steel box, and you're traveling at 25, let's say 35 miles an hour, you have a very high survivability rate of a collision.

If you are not inside of that protected box, your survivability rate is much different.

And so everyone here, I own a car, I also own a bike, I also walk.

So when we're looking at and thinking about how we use our road, it is not for a certain segment of the population.

It is for each of us, depending on what we're doing that day.

I know that many people have taken advantage of the bike shares.

Those are people who might not own bikes and they need a safe and separated place to use those modal tools without the fear of being injured.

And that brings to the point of connectivity.

If we don't have a safe and separated place for people to be able to get around on all modes of transportation, which is walking, riding their bike, using their car, using transit, if we don't have a safe and separated place for each of those modes, then people who don't necessarily know how to ride a bike or don't know how to ride a bike in traffic don't have the same access to our streets as everyone else.

Put a different way, if somebody grows up in a place that is not the city, that does not have a high level, fast moving traffic, they don't have that same comfortable level of comfort riding on the street.

Or put another way again, is if you are five years old or 10 years old or a young child, you don't have that perception and situational awareness to be able to navigate a street.

If you had a safe and separated bike lane, you would because that level of stress is lowered to a place that allows somebody who does not have the technical ability to use our roadway.

I'll just bring this back to where I started, which is that each of us, most of us own a car.

Most of us also will ride a bike from time to time and most of us walk.

And so when we're looking at changing how we design our roadways.

It's not for a certain segment of the population.

It is so that each of us and all of us can have a safe place to walk, roll, and drive.

Those are my thoughts.

I'll just kind of close out with, again, bringing a point to 35 miles an hour versus 25 miles an hour from that slide that we saw.

I personally was hit by a driver driving their car at 35 miles an hour and accelerating, that put me in the hospital for four days.

I still have pain today from that injury.

And if that car had been made out of steel, had not hit a curb before it hit me or multiple factors, I wouldn't be here with you today having this conversation.

If that car had been going 25 miles an hour, just 10 miles an hour different, I wouldn't have spent as much time in the hospital.

If that car had been driving 15 miles an hour slower, at 20 miles an hour, I wouldn't have had severe injuries.

I wouldn't have pain today.

And so there are many people who have passed away from deadly collisions.

And thank you, Directors Zimbabwe for taking a moment of silence at the top of this meeting.

And there are so many more people in our city that have been injured, whether they're, while they're walking, crossing the sidewalk, crossing the crosswalk, rolling, so many people that you probably know that have been hit, have been injured, and these collisions are preventable.

So again, thank you, Allison.

Thank you, Directors Zimbabwe.

I'm sure we will be looking for money to help you continue what you're doing.

That's for her fault.

Thank you.

Just one other question about, again, it's coming back to that resource issue that I know the department's struggling with.

But my recollection is that we also, with the overall levy reduction of $7 million, there was a reduction in the Safe Routes to School program, and I think the Neighborhood Traffic Calming program was zeroed out, so there are no funds available there for that program this year.

And can we expect to see resources available for these really important I mean, Division Zero is an overall policy goal, but it is made up of different programs that are really critical to meeting those goals.

And the Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program is one program.

The Safe Routes to Schools is another program.

Again, in District 1, there's a group of, a coalition of residents called the 16th Avenue Southwest Safety Coalition, made up of residents, representatives of the Sanislo, PTSA, teachers, students, parents, who have been advocating for safety investments.

I appreciate that there was some analysis done around that street associated with funding available for ReConnect West Seattle, but I'm really disappointed that the the investments that we're looking at there are limited speed bumps when it seems like the needs are much greater.

16th Southwest is a major arterial.

It is in the area of a school.

Southwest colleges had been asking for help a couple of years ago.

And so just wanting to understand how much the limitations of what we're doing in that area are about resources versus the analysis around need that I know SDOT has done with ReConnect West Seattle.

Jim, I don't know if you want to jump in here.

I see you coming off mute.

Yeah, most certainly.

Good morning, Councilmember Herbold.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Thank you.

I'm coming in a little late here, but I'm happy to answer questions as well.

You know, to go back, you talked about Safe Routes to School funding and Neighborhood Traffic Control Program funding as well.

And, you know, I think a thanks is in order for Council, because in the last funding in the last budget process, pardon me, you all took action to add a significant amount of funding back into the Safe Routes to School program, which, as you know, is funded in part by the automated school safety camera program, which, of course, was barely functioning last year as we went to a school from home.

approach.

So, so thank you to that.

I mean, that was a huge help that helped us continue with the great work that's happening in pretty much each and every neighborhood across the city of Seattle from a school perspective.

And the Neighborhood Traffic Control Program, it's a little bit of an older program.

It has been in the city for quite some time, but we're really, we're shifting a little bit.

We're shifting away from kind of the standalone request for traffic calming, and we're moving more towards a holistic model.

So you've likely heard about our Home Zone Program, which of course is addressing some of those neighborhood traffic issues in neighborhoods like Highland Park, South Park, Also in the Rainier Valley, in New Holly, and other locations as well.

So, you know, rather than take a street by street approach or in many cases an intersection by intersection approach, we're looking more broadly and more holistically to look at how we can improve traffic because oftentimes what we'll do is we'll intervene in one area, put in a countermeasure, and we're just pushing people in another area, right?

So we want to make sure that we're thinking as holistically as we can when it comes to those neighborhood traffic issues.

And regarding 16th Avenue Southwest, a street that I was on just a few days ago, You know, we have, I think, a lot of challenges there since the West Seattle Bridge closed, as you know.

But we are looking to bring some much-needed changes out there.

So there have been a lot of speed bumps and speed cushions added over the years.

We've added several new pedestrian and bicycle crossings on the corridor from roughly Henderson, north of the college, out in that area.

We are looking to help with some of the infrastructure issues around Sanislo Elementary as well, which there are some quirky streets there where the grid isn't nice and square like we like, and so we're getting in there, squaring up those intersections and making walking, biking, and driving in that area more predictable, more organized for everyone.

And then finally, I think, last but not least, is we are looking at the channelization on 16th Avenue.

And sometimes we, you know, we do find that a little bit of paint goes a long way and, you know, visually narrowing up that roadway and helping reduce those speeds that we see from drivers, but also create shorter crossings for people who are walking and biking across 16th.

The follow-up question, if I could.

Jim, the references to the changes around Sanislo, you're talking about past projects?

We have done a lot of work around Sanislo over the years.

Oh, I know.

I want to be able to tell constituents who are, I'm getting lots and lots of emails, so are you, right now.

And so I want to, I appreciate that work that has been done around Sanislo.

It's fantastic.

But I don't want to talk about it as something that you are, doing in the future if what you are talking to me about now is the past work.

And I want to focus on, so for instance, you're talking about some changes on 16th that are not referenced in the most recent constituent communication.

It's really focused only on the speed bumps.

So I want to be able to tell people what else you're looking at doing there.

Yeah, I most certainly was referencing what we had done in the past, but we're not done.

And that's one thing that's great about our Safe Routes to School program is when we go out and when we engage with our constituents and people who work at the school as well, we develop pretty much a laundry list of things that need to be done out there.

So we are not done at Sanislo, and I will get with our Safe Routes to School team and get you the latest and greatest information as soon as I can.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And thanks to the Vision Zero team and Director Zimbabwe.

I appreciate your time today.

And I know that you're very accessible and responsive to us, so we'll reach out with any additional questions.

So I'm glad we were able to focus on this very important item today for our entire meeting.

And with that, I will go ahead and conclude the meeting.

This concludes the June 2, 2021 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

The committee plans to meet again on June 16th.

Thank you everybody for attending.

We are adjourned.

Bye.