Joint Seattle Sustainability & Transportation Committee & Sound Transit Special Meeting 4/26/19

I'm calling the elected leaders group meeting to order this morning I want to welcome everyone to the final elected leadership group for Sound Transit Westdale to Ballard link light rail extension project.

I'm Joe McDermott King County council member and member of the Sound Transit board I co-chair this group with my colleague council member Michael Bryan.

from the City of Seattle.

This group includes, this is the same script you've heard me share before, select Sound Transit board members, members of the Seattle City Council, a commissioner from the Port of Seattle, and is a special meeting of the City of Seattle's Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

Over the last year, we've gone through three levels of screening and have learned a great deal about the corridor alignment, station location alternatives, and the community's interests and priorities.

The community engagement has been robust unearthing key issues and some promising ideas.

And this is just the beginning.

The conversation started during this process will continue through the draft environmental impact statement and the station planning continues.

Ongoing public input is essential to getting this right.

I want to acknowledge that the screening process hasn't been easy.

Projects like this never are.

We are trying to thread a needle through a built environment and beloved communities.

Some of the conversations have been hard on residents and on business owners who want to understand what this means for them.

And I want to thank them for staying engaged, providing feedback, and bringing solutions to the table.

I also want to offer some other thank yous to the stakeholder advisory group.

These dedicated volunteers have put an incredible amount of time and brainpower into this project and they've served their communities and this process well by trying to balance neighborhood interests with technical information.

To any members of the SAG who are present, thank you very much for all of your labors.

And also to the Sound Transit staff, do you guys ever sleep?

I believe it.

Because whether it was early morning meetings as recently as this morning or late night emails and community meetings, I don't know when you get the analysis and the project work that has been so robust done in between.

Thank you.

I'd also like to thank my colleagues around the table here.

I look forward to our conversation today, and as we prepare to discuss which options we'd like to see studied further, I thought I'd remind us about our role in this process.

In addition to appointing members of the stakeholder advisory group, we've been asked to represent the communities we serve and share community priorities, consider the needs of the project within the context of the greater regional transit system, work with project staff to understand and evaluate tradeoffs and make recommendations to the Sound Transit Board.

That's no small task but I know we're up to the job.

I look forward to this work with you and I turn over and introduce my co-chair Michael Bryan.

Thank you so much, Joe.

Thank you, everyone, for being here today.

I want to take a moment to welcome my colleague, City Council Member Deborah Juarez.

Thank you for being here today.

She's a mere days away from representing the city of Seattle on the Sound Transit Board.

So I appreciate you being here today.

Today's meeting, as Joe said, is a culmination of a lot of work.

It's been 17 months since we convened.

It seems like just yesterday that we started this.

There's a lot of great opportunities that are in front of us and also challenge we face when we look at this project's corridor.

And I want to highlight the work of the Racial Equity Toolkit, which has helped highlight station areas that we'll be discussing today as key areas to dedicate enhanced engagement and analysis efforts.

This has been a great joint effort between Sound Transit and the City of Seattle, which will lay the groundwork for future engagement and analysis in these critical areas.

Building light rail in our dense and dynamic city brings many exciting opportunities to address mobility challenges, but these opportunities are not without near and long-term impacts.

The elected leadership group has sought to determine how to maximize what promises to be exciting light rail investments in our communities, mobility, housing, community and civic development, while also maintaining community character and the deep cultural and historical character of the neighborhoods that this rail line will serve.

I want to thank everyone for the engagement and analysis that has shaped the project to this point.

but also acknowledge there's a lot more work to do.

So many possibilities to explore to make this project one that will truly transform our city while maintaining the assets that we love about our communities, first and foremost, the people in our communities.

Thank you so much to the community members who participated.

We will get to public comment in a moment, but first I want to turn it over to Peter Rogoff to say a few words.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I, too, also want to thank the co-chairs, Mr. McDermott and Mr. O'Brien, for all of the work that they've put in.

I also want to welcome everyone to the final meeting of the ELG for the West Seattle Ballard Project.

ELG members will recall that back in 2015 and 2016, when Sound Transit engaged the region on what projects they wanted to include in the ST3 plan, there was a resounding outcry to deliver projects several years sooner.

This continues to be probably the most frequent thing we hear as feedback.

Please build it faster.

So back in 2016 after the ballot measure passed we developed a system expansion implementation plan that maps out a way we could realistically shave three to five years off the delivery of these projects.

And the key to that plan was for delivering projects sooner was to do business differently and partner with the community and municipalities differently.

The establishment of the stakeholder advisory group and the elected leadership groups was at the very center of that plan.

And I'm pleased to say that the concept is working very well across the region.

Our elected leadership groups for the I-405 bus rapid transit project traveling through Snohomish, East King, and South King County has already issued a single recommendation to the Sound Transit Board.

Our ELG for the 522 bus rapid transit project through Seattle, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, and Woodinville has also done the same.

Our elected leadership group for our light rail extension from Federal Way through Fife and onto Tacoma is well along the way to recommending a preferred alternative to the Sound Transit Board despite the many complications presented by running light rail in proximity to tribal lands and sensitive waterways.

And today we look forward to receiving your recommendations to the Sound Transit Board for the West Seattle Ballard Project so we can deploy these projects and all the projects in the ST3 plan in a timely way that fits within Sound Transit's fiscally constrained financial plan.

Our partnership with the City of Seattle on this project really has been tremendous.

We are very grateful for the collective work of a great many city staff across a great many departments.

Thank you for acknowledging the hard work of the Sound Transit staff who has worked with them side by side.

These many efforts are all rooted in the partnering agreement reached between Sound Transit and the City as adopted by the Sound Transit Board and the Seattle City Council back in December of 2017. We look forward to our continued work together executing the many tasks called for by the partnering agreement until we can all celebrate the opening of this new rail line.

Our collective efforts at community engagement around the project have also been tremendous.

Over the last year and a half, the project team has really done it all.

17 open houses, forums, and community workshops, nearly 190 separate community briefings, tabled at 26 fairs and festivals, processed more than 5,600 comments and questions from the public.

They've held three extensive online open houses and sent 25 email updates to an ever-growing list of subscribers.

As you know, there were 14 separate stakeholder advisory group meetings, and now we're in our seventh and last elected leadership group meeting.

The team has engaged the community and the stakeholder advisory group by clearly presenting the tradeoffs for various alignments and station locations.

As a result, the Stakeholder Advisory Group reached two significant sets of recommendations to you, the ELG, one preferred alternative that would require third party funding and one that would be cost compatible with the project that was presented to the voters in the ST3 plan.

The ELG, along with the Stakeholder Advisory Group, has committed a tremendous number of hours to this work, so please know that we're incredibly grateful for your engagement and your guidance.

I hope you will accept my thanks on behalf of Redmond Mayor and Sound Transit Board Chair John Marchione, as well as our two Board Vice Chairs, University Place Mayor Kent Keel and Everett City Councilman Paul Roberts.

They along with the rest of the board look forward to receiving your recommendations to help inform their actions in May.

The only thing I would just add to amplify what Joe McDermott said, these decisions are hard but I hope people will keep in context what is being recommended today.

These are recommendations to the Sound Transit Board where the Sound Transit Board won't be deciding what project we will build.

They will be deciding what projects to put into the environmental process, what alignments and alternatives to be studied over the next three years, including preferred alternatives so we can try and move those studies along in an expedited fashion so we can get the shovels in the ground sooner and the project to the public sooner.

But we're not choosing the project to be built either today or even in May.

We're choosing the alternatives to be studied.

Thanks very much.

Thanks so much, Peter.

So colleagues, we're going to jump in with public comment.

We have about 15 people signed up today, 16 people signed up today, and a full agenda.

So I've set the clock at 90 seconds, so folks will have a minute and a half each to comment.

I'll call names three at a time.

You can come up when it's your turn.

Kevin Freitas is first, followed by David, sorry, Dale Molchoffer, and then Mark Johnson.

Sorry Kevin one second.

I think you hit the button there to get your light on.

All right.

I'll give you five more seconds.

Go for it.

Thank you.

Morning.

My family and my neighborhood support light rail in West Seattle if it's brought underground in a tunnel.

My name is Kevin Freitas.

My family and I are West Seattle residents at 36th and Edmonds.

So right near the affected area.

Prior to that I lived in Tacoma for 14 years and saw the link light rail there built.

I saw the extension of the sounder rail built through downtown.

And when I moved to Seattle, I lived in Columbia City about three blocks from the light rail station there and used it daily until I moved to West Seattle.

But let me be blunt.

I voted against ST3.

That's not because I don't like transit or light rail.

It's because, especially after living in Tacoma, I recognize what I consider table scraps.

And in my opinion, that's elevated light rail in West Seattle of any kind.

In Tacoma, when any project came to You know to our neighborhood or to the city.

We really had to fight and we really had to try to ask for just more than those bare bones.

And that's what I'm doing here today.

So we learn to speak up just to set a better stage for developing that community.

And I'm really just one here to do the same and ask the same for West Seattle.

I provided photos for everyone that I went along the entire light rail line to snap Just to kind of get a sense of the human scale of what elevated rail really means And one of my biggest concerns is that the elevated rail as it currently exists anywhere along the line Is not in a neighborhood and it's going to be right in the heart of West Seattle So, please keep that in consideration as you move forward really appreciate all your work and time Thanks.

Thanks Kevin Dale Sorry Dale, there's a button on the base of that, if you just push that the green light should come on.

There we go.

Dale Menshoffer.

The Stakeholders Advisory Group co-recommended two options for the Ballard station in the context of third party funding needed to be secured.

One of those is the blue line elevated tunneled to 15th.

The other is something that came out of scoping comments from me for a station at 20th and market.

I would like to make sure you understand this is not the same option as what was rejected in level one.

This is a different route.

It has a shorter tunnel than what the blue line would have.

So it ought to be cost competitive and it gets to the heart of the urban village.

It should have greatly higher ridership.

Also I personally walked around to the neighborhood 120 flyers and I can tell you the business owners in Ballard definitely prefer the station at 20th over one at 15th.

I also timed all of the lights for pedestrian use and I can tell you it takes two and a half minutes just to get across 15th from a station.

At At 14th, thanks Dale Mark you're gonna be followed by Dennis Noland then John Houlihan and then Lisa Coon.

I

Good morning Mark Johnson I'm an architect on the Seattle Design Commission here sharing some comments from the commission today.

Thanks for having me.

Please be expansive in studying a variety of station options and alignments in the EIS for the CID including a Fourth Avenue viaduct replacement precluding viable options without rigor lessens the public process lessening the public process will hobble this once in a lifetime civic opportunity.

The EIA should fully evaluate the implications of converting Union Station and the adjacent public realm that we have here into a multimodal transit hub and the effects that it has on the Pioneer Square and Chinatown communities and a transparent and substantive public engagement process should begin right away.

I mean it's part of today's conclusion.

To inform the visual impacts of elevated guideways and stations as we heard earlier engineering preferred concepts aren't quite enough.

Bringing the community into that conversation is quite important.

So this joint governance structure that's being built should be empowered.

to advance transit-oriented development.

While Sound Transit, the city, the county, and various PDAs have individual expertise, they should band together to create success for TOD in the Chinatown International District.

Denver, LA, and DC created similar partnerships for their union stations.

We can create joint governance here for our union station.

Thanks.

Great.

Thanks so much, Mark.

Dennis?

Good morning.

Today the E.L.G. members will recommend the Sound Transit Board routing alternatives for study in the E.I.S. as a homeowner in the Youngstown excuse me North Delridge neighborhood.

I respectfully request you recommend for inclusion in the E.I.S. both the Pigeon Ridge tunnel route and the Andover Yancey Avalon route.

These two routes merit additional in-depth study during the E.I.S. Both routings avert the needless destruction of our Youngstown community and homes.

Highlights of the Pigeon Ridge tunnel route the guideway would be next to and not through our Youngstown neighborhood.

It would also save homes on Pigeon Point and eliminate the routing difficulties of parallel in the West Seattle freeway and construction impacts on Delridge Way businesses.

The light rail station would be in their most preferred location in an east west configuration straddling Delridge Way at Southwest Genesee.

Highlights of the Andover Yancey Avalon route.

This route has the potential for the most significant cost savings that would allow Sound Transit to stay on budget.

Combining two stations into one with a transit hub beneath adjacent to the station.

This is an open undeveloped area.

Its current use is three large street level parking lots.

Please encourage the members of the Sound Transit Board to place these two routing alternatives into the IS for additional study.

Our Youngstown neighborhood is an example of everything Seattle professes at once.

We'd like to see it saved.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.

Thank you Dennis.

John.

Good morning.

John Houlahan Houlahan law.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment today.

I'm here on behalf of two of my clients.

One is Centerpoint Properties Trust and the other is coastal transportation.

Centerpoint Properties Trust is a large national industrial REIT.

They own three significant terminal warehouses at the West Seattle Bridge adjacent to Terminal 5. We've submitted multiple comment letters in the EIS scoping process as well as the public comment period.

I'm here just to reiterate that for Centerpoint Property their tenants which are in the freight and marine trade industries that we would support a south crossing of the Duwamish River and specifically request that the north crossing which is not supported by the stakeholders group or the Port of Seattle be eliminated from further consideration in the EIS.

The north crossing would have a large footing land immediately in the center point properties and essentially eliminate those operations.

Coastal transportation is one of the last intercoastal shipping operations that serve Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

They're located at the Ballard Bridge on the south side at the foot.

We would request and have made comment that the Ballard Crossing include the tunnel options, including the most recent 20th Street station and tunnel option.

A 14th Street high level bridge will essentially bisect their property and cause them to be relocated out of Seattle.

Thank you for your opportunity today.

Thank you, John.

Lisa, you're next.

And following Lisa will be Alex Zimmerman, Micah Winkler-Chen, and Savitha Reddy-Pathy.

Go ahead.

Hi, I'm Lisa Kuhn.

I'm addressing the orange line going into West Seattle, the elevated line.

My first question is, who outside the Sound Transit echo chamber is in favor of the orange line plowing through West Seattle?

My second question is, is this being done for the people or to the people?

And I have an analogy about the elevated line being presented in January.

It's like having a desire for this wonderful tattoo, and you want it on your arm, and it's going to be really glorious.

And you go to the tattoo artist, and the tattoo artist locks the door behind you and says, guess what?

I'm putting it across your face, and there's nothing you can do about it.

And the question is, do you think that the person who's getting that tattoo is going to be happy with that?

Do you think they are not going to be very upset?

This is, I guess, all I have to say to you at the moment.

Thanks, Lisa.

Alex?

Sieg Heil, my dirty, freaking Fuhrer, a Nazi garbage rat from animal farm, a criminal, a bandit, a killer.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

I want to speak about agenda.

In agenda right now, talk about equity.

I'm totally confused about what does this mean.

I know 50 percentage people from three counties, 4 million against sound transist, 2 million against sound transist.

For many years here, I never see one who represents this 50 percentage.

It's very critical situations.

Nothing surprised me.

So all America knows is Seattle, number one fascist city with Nazi Gestapo principle.

And I give you another classic example so you understand who you are.

You're not only freaking Nazi or fascist, you're a mentally sick psychopath.

That's exactly who you are.

Consul Gonzalez violated constitutional crime five times.

Open public meeting of Five times, five times, no one in court recognizes and punish her.

No one counsel, no one in Seattle, king country, no one take her out, go out, she violate law.

Five times, court recognizes, no one talk out.

This exactly shows a fascist So city Seattle, number one fascist city with Nazi Gestapo principle, and I know this.

So right now I speak to everybody, stand up Americans, stand up Seattle.

Clean this dirty chamber.

Thank you very much.

So Micah is going to be next, followed by Savita and then Kathleen Johnson.

Good morning, I'm Micah Winkler-Chin with the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, SCIPTA.

SCIPTA was established by the city of Seattle and the community in 1975 to work for the conservation and renewal of the unique cultural and ethnic integrities characteristic of our neighborhood.

At this time, SCIPTA asked Sound Transit to carry all of the level three alternatives into the draft EIS process.

Let the process do its job.

Sound Transit staff have done an excellent community engagement process to this point they've met with and heard from the range of stakeholders in the Chinatown ID and they've done their job and we'd like to thank them because We know it's not easy.

That's you Lita And carry The fact that we can't narrow down the alternatives is not a reflection of them doing a bad job.

They have heard what the community wants as goals and outcomes, but there is no consensus on a preferred alternative at this time.

We ask Sound Transit to design with the intention of meeting goals and finding cost-saving opportunities to make a better project.

The EIS process will give the community and you the information we need to have the conversations about a preferred alternative and third party funding after the draft EIS stage.

So let the process do its job.

Please carry all level three alternatives forward into the draft EIS.

Thank you.

Thank you, Micah.

Savita?

Hello, thank you ELG for the opportunity to comment today.

My name is Savita Reddy-Pathy.

I'm a board member of the Wing Luke and I am also a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Group.

Thank you again to the Sound Transit staff for all your hard work this past year and a half.

I ask that you carry all the level three alternatives forward into the draft EIS.

That's the purpose of the EIS and especially for the Chinatown International District.

This neighborhood has traditionally been left out of decision making for infrastructure projects.

Sound transit's own racial equity toolkit report reads the CID is the only station area with a concentration of communities of color based on evaluation results and community feedback it's unclear which alternatives would pose the greatest net benefits and Continued meaningful engagement with the community building on the foundation of centering race and low-income communities During the alternatives development phase will be important to continue to understand the potential benefit and burden of the options That are being studied in the EIS I've worked on climate change issues for over 20 years.

Since 2010, I've been the Development Director of Climate Solutions.

I should be the first person here advocating for faster and cheaper public transit projects to reduce carbon emissions.

However, you cannot do good environmental work or climate action without an equity framework in addressing the issues for this neighborhood.

Please study all the alternatives in the EIS process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Saviva.

I am Kathleen Johnson.

I'm from historic South downtown Thank you for allowing me to speak to the elected leadership group today and thank you to Sound Transit staff for their efforts in working with Chinatown International District and the Pioneer Square communities as my colleagues have already testified there are many unanswered questions and important details that our community Sound Transit and our elected leaders need to answer before we pick a Preferred alternative or alignment.

We are asking that Sound Transit advance all of the level 3 options in the CID and Pioneer Square neighborhood and use the E.I.S. process to focus our choices.

We recognize that budget is a significant concern and we wish to see the W.S.B.L.E. team unleash its creative engineering potential to meet more of the neighborhood's clearly articulated priorities within the funding available and define more clearly where and what level of third party funding would be needed.

But it's too early to make these important decisions now, and we ask that Sound Transit use the EIS process to sharpen their pencils and to do their good work.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Kathleen.

Thank all of you for your ongoing advocacy.

Next, Mike Stewart, and then Lisa Howard, and something Blanton.

Good morning, members of the elected leadership group.

My name is Mike Stewart.

I am the Executive Director of the Ballard Alliance.

First, thank you for the opportunity to serve on the Stakeholder Advisory Group.

I'd also like to thank Sound Transit for conducting a really very thorough and substantive engagement process.

On behalf of my Ballard colleagues who served on the Stakeholder Advisory Group, the North Seattle Industrial Association, and the hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents that we represent, I'd like to restate our recommendations made to the SAG.

Ballard is unified in its approach and encourages you to carry forward two options for studying the EIS.

The first option is an alignment that would terminate at 20th Avenue Northwest, just north of Market Street.

While the ELG has reviewed this same station location earlier in the process, this is a different route.

This route aligns further east.

It includes a shorter tunnel and ship canal crossing than the previous version.

It bears mentioning that this option came to fruition through the recent EIS scoping process and clearly demonstrates the value of seeking community input.

Additionally this station location is at the core of the hub urban village and would serve the density and Ballard that is already there and delivers on the promise of providing additional transit service to a community that has agreed to accept The impacts of additional residential density.

The second recommended option is the blue alignment Terminating at 15th Northwest because the cost projections are the same We would suggest that the 14th Avenue Northwest tunnel be removed for that reason.

Thank you.

I

Thank you, Mike.

Lisa.

Hi.

Thank you to the LG today for letting us have the opportunity to share our thoughts.

My name is Lisa Howard.

I'm the executive director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

Our organizational mission is to help preserve what makes Pioneer Square the most authentic, engaging, and dynamic neighborhood in Seattle.

We represent over 800 businesses and a cross-representation of stakeholders in the district.

The Alliance has represented the Pioneer Square District for almost 10 years on all things transportation, from the impacts of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seawall, First Hill Streetcar, Coleman Dock, First Avenue Utility Work, and all other public and private projects that impact our streets and sidewalks on a daily basis.

We strive to be a voice for the neighborhood, a sharer of information, a flagger of issues, and a partner with integrity.

In this process, we have had to submit our comments and concerns from the outside as we were excluded from the sag.

We have indicated this in our scoping letter to sound transit.

I'm here today to ask for a seat at this table from this point forward and that the Pioneer Square neighborhood not be forgotten or excluded.

Regarding your decision that you will be making soon the level 3 alternatives being considered by your committee today are absent of any meaningful input from Pioneer Square And we are aligned with our Chinatown International District neighbors We ask that you carry all of the level 3 alternatives forward in the draft EIS And we work to identify the preferred alternative after more information has been developed and presented in the draft EIS Thank you

Mr. Blanton, you'll be followed by Jordan Warrior, then Amy Reardon, and Ty Aurelius.

Good morning.

My name is Barry Blanton, and I apologize for the cryptic writing.

I get that a lot.

I'm the chair of the Chinatown International District BIA.

I'm also the co-chair of the Alliance for Pioneer Square, so I'm wearing a couple of different hats today.

And I'm also on the Ballard Alliance, so it's all of those things.

Today I'm asking that we thoroughly consider all of our options relative to the location and the approach.

to the new ST3 station located in Chinatown International District and carry them forward into the EIS process.

This decision is important to Chinatown International District, Pioneer Square, the stadium district, and the waterfront, which means the future ferry terminal and includes the new cruise ship terminal.

And so it's going to serve all of these neighborhood stakeholders over the next 100 years.

and would be integral, a very integral part, the most important transportation hub in the region.

For those reasons, it's important that we get this right.

And I understand that by asking to take this into the IAS, it takes more time and resources.

But I honestly think it's worth the time, the resources that we get this right.

So I appreciate everybody's attention and everybody's thought to this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barry.

Jordan.

Thank you.

My name is Jordan Royer, and I'm with the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.

We represent container shipping lines and marine terminal operators that serve the West Coast.

I'm here to, like everyone else, urge a thorough study of all the alternatives.

We have some really big concerns, obviously, about the North Spokane alternative because of the construction impacts and other, what we think, unmitigatable issues with that alignment.

Of course, your study will show what it's going to show, but I would just urge you to consider that given that the port is investing in Terminal 5 as is SSA and other private investors.

The competition for this cargo on the West Coast is very fierce right now.

Canada is expanding their capacity and they're trying to take the discretionary cargo from us.

and they've been very successful in doing that in recent years.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance was formed specifically to compete better with Canada and with California ports.

Also, the widening of the Panama Canal has added more to the competition because the larger ships that are building now can get through that Panama Canal now.

So I'd urge you to take all that into account because we don't want to lose our competitive edge because it would hurt all of the exporters in Washington State and would, obviously, we don't want to lose those good paying family wage jobs.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jordan.

Amy, you're going to be followed by Ty Aurelius and then Megan Murphy is the last person signed up.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to comment.

My name is Amy Reardon.

I'm a mother of two, a former journalist, and now a communications manager, longtime resident of West Seattle.

Prior to living in West Seattle, we lived on Beacon Hill.

In fact, we purchased our first home specifically because of its proximity to light rail.

We were happy to vote for Sound Transit's extension to West Seattle and looked forward to the day when we or our grown children could take the train downtown on a weekend or to work.

We were devastated when we realized in February, after following the design process, we thought carefully, that suddenly there was a new line, virtually out of nowhere, that would obliterate the eastern flank of the Junction neighborhood and take the heart of West Seattle with it.

We've spent the past couple of months organizing and coming together as neighbors, both in the Junction and beyond, to form the East Alaska Junction Coalition.

We've been in touch with many of you and we've appreciated some of the responses we've received.

We're heartened by the stakeholder advisory groups recommendation to take the orange line off the table as part of the EIS process While we are advocating for a tunnel an elevated line should only be considered on an existing right-of-way now and in future extensions This is a permanent infrastructure This is permanent infrastructure that will impact our neighborhood and really the greater community and greater Seattle tri-county area for decades to come It's a generational decision and I would ask you to please keep the orange line off the table at the junction and do not put cost and calendar over community.

Thank you very much.

Hello, my name is Ty Urelias.

I'm also a resident of West Seattle, and I've been working with Amy as part of the East Alaska Junction Coalition.

I wanted to start by saying thank you very much to the Stakeholder Advisory Group, the Sound Transit staff, and the elected leadership group, and the staff members of those members.

So first of all, I wanted to say that we're very much in support of the stakeholder advisory groups recommendation to Take the orange elevated West Seattle line off the table But I had some personal comments outside of our coalition that this was the right time to bring those up.

I I also do not support anything that reduces the port's competitiveness, but I believe that the entire Spokane corridor is integrated in such a way that the EIS should study all options through that area and to be mindful of the port's competitiveness, but there may be things to do along that corridor that would not be considered if only a south crossing were studied.

Also, I want to be in solidarity with our Youngstown neighbors.

Some financially responsible option needs to be studied in the EIS that saves that neighborhood, including possibly the Yancey Tunnel.

Also the revisions to the Purple Line might find cost savings if they're considered properly.

And then I also had concerns about the advancing the schedule in West Seattle when the connections to downtown will not be fully complete.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Megan Murphy.

I appreciate the planning that is taking place for energy that is green energy.

Carbon zero is the goal.

And I'm really glad that this is being discussed and family wage jobs are being taken into consideration.

for people at the ports and Neighborhoods are being conscientious of the flow if it's underground or above ground I also hope people who are not in family wage jobs such as people at bird bar with resolution three one eight five six if that's passed they will also be impacted or their kids or their grandkids since cities are interconnected and density is increasing And also the members of Share Wheel, who I believe should be permanently funded, will also be using this.

People of various income levels who prefer not to be in really stressful roads that are densely packed with cars when they could be listening to music, planning their work week, talking on the phone instead of being stuck in a car.

So I just, I know there's different planning timeframes if it goes just halfway down or like way down.

But it sounds like people are saying the orange line, if it goes down, it will have less noise.

I'm not sure.

I'll have to follow along the meeting.

I'm just really glad this is a good conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

That's all we have signed up today for public comment, so thank you everyone who came out today to provide the feedback, and thanks for all of your ongoing engagement throughout this process.

And as we've mentioned before, we are at a point in the process that will go on for a long time, so your continued engagement is going to be really important.

Colleagues, we are going to jump into a, I would like to say a brief presentation, but it's dozens and dozens of slides.

But we will move through it rather swiftly.

It's a lot of pieces you've seen to date with some updates of the latest recommendations from the Stakeholder advisory group at the end of the presentation We will come back and walk through the alignment starting from the north end and Ballard through West Seattle and go kind of segment by segment and have a robust discussion amongst ourselves on Recommendations we propose to make towards the Sound Transit Board If you have any clarifying questions during this presentation, though, you can feel free to chime in if my colleague councilmember McDermott will allow it

OK.

Thank you.

Lead a shame with Sound Transit.

I don't know Diane if you want to go through the agenda first or I can dive right in.

Sure.

I think council member O'Brien thank you for generally reviewing the agenda.

Welcome everyone.

It's nice to see you again.

We're looking forward to our work today.

We're scheduled to go until 1130 and as Chairman O'Brien said we'll.

have some presentation material, most of this information you've seen before, but some of it will be new in terms of Lita's presentation on what we've heard during the scoping process and the racial equity toolkit process.

Cahill Ridge will walk us through kind of the technical elements of the alignments that you've seen before, and then we'll get into our discussion around level three recommendations that you may feel comfortable putting forward to the Sound Transit Board.

Thank you.

All right.

Can you engagement equity and inclusion.

So here's our community engagement and collaboration process chart.

We've come a long way over the last year through level one and level two screening and now level three.

We've engaged the public in a myriad of ways and their feedback has informed the stakeholder advisory group and the elected leadership group as you have made your recommendations.

Just to give us a snapshot of the engagement over the last year, I know that in the opening remarks we talked a lot about this engagement, but just to give you a little bit more color for that, and also to sort of say a big thank you to all those that have engaged with us in this process over the last year.

We've had 17 open houses, forums, and workshops that have engaged over 2,100 people.

We've had online open houses for those that couldn't engage in person, 189 community briefings, 26 fairs and festivals engaging more than 5,700 people.

So it's been very useful to this process and useful for us to be able to share with you.

And it's also an opportunity just to say thank you to all those that have participated with us all along the way.

So our most recent engagement was through the scoping period.

What is EIS scoping?

It's part of the federal and state environmental review process.

It was a 45-day public comment period that began February 15th and went through April 2nd.

We asked for public feedback on the scope of the EIS, so the range of alternatives to be studied, the purpose and need statement, topics to study, which informs recommendations that have been made to date or recommendations today, as well as the board identification of what to study in the EIS.

going forward.

An overview of our scoping period.

So we notified folks in a lot of different ways, postcards, advertisements, a project website, social media.

We engaged community members and organizations that we have worked with through the last year to try and push the word out through their networks as well.

We had three public meetings in February and March, an online open house, and one agency meeting, and provided other ways for folks to comment as well.

Some highlights we had 475 people attend the three public meetings our online open house had 11,700 plus unique visitors six agencies participated in that agency scoping meeting and we got I believe close to actually 2,800 total comments received via meetings and other methods and all of that those comments were Capturing the scoping summary report that has been shared with you is online now as well as all the comments were shared with you in advance of this meeting The types of input that we got we got general comments of build it faster plan for 100 year investment as examples.

We got feedback regarding the alignment and station locations EIS topics for evaluation things like construction environmental justice neighborhood and community impacts T.O.D. housing concerns.

We heard concerns regarding property impacts and also comments about funding.

And now I want to transition to our conversation about equity and inclusion.

And I'm pleased to have Jennifer Chow here from the Department of Neighborhoods with me.

So as you have heard from us before, we are proud to be building on our partnership with the city of Seattle by applying the Racial Equity Toolkit to the West Salem Ballard Link Extensions Project.

It's allowed us, through this collaboration, to elevate issues and considerations to better inform the alternatives development process and provide information that the data alone cannot provide.

We're committed going forward to reporting back to the community on the process and the outcomes, as well as continuing to engage in the EIS process and through our environmental justice analysis.

Thank you, Lita.

Hello, everyone.

The racial equity toolkit process is supported by our mayor's commitment to the race and social justice initiative, which has a vision to achieve racial equity in the community and a mission to end institutional and structural racism in city government, promoting inclusion and full participation of all residents, and partnering with community to achieve racial equity across Seattle.

The Racial Equity Toolkit is guided by Seattle Office of Civil Rights' vision of a city of liberated people where communities historically impacted by racism, oppression, and colonization hold power and thrive.

As you will see in the Racial Equity Toolkit memo, by doing the Racial Equity Toolkit process, it has changed the way engagement has been done traditionally and centers communities of color.

Thank you, Jennifer.

So what we'll share with you later is all building upon our Level 1 and Level 2 evaluation.

And you've heard this before, but in Level 1, we looked at the demographics across the corridor and identified our focus areas of the Chinatown International District Station and Delridge Station, determined shared outcomes, RET outcomes, and updated our screening criteria, which informed the technical analysis.

In level two, we documented and shared measured connections, potential impacts and opportunities, gathered and shared community input and shared all of that with you as well as the stakeholder advisory group before recommendations were made.

And then today we'll be sharing the findings of the level three data analysis and community engagement, all to understand how these alternatives Perform in terms of the shared outcomes of enhancing mobility and access opportunities for equitable development and avoiding disproportionate impacts and communities of color and low-income populations As well as meaningfully involving communities of color and low-income populations in the project

Lita and Jennifer, I just want to say thank you for your work.

This project will have significant impacts on communities and it's a culmination at least of this phase of the process to hear some folks from some of those communities that are going to be most impacted come forward and speak so highly of the engagement process when there still remains a lot of work to be done and a lot of uncertainty.

I think it's really setting a model for how government can interact with communities and hear their feedback.

Again, we have a lot of work to do to really lift up those comments and address some of the concerns that are being raised, but I just want to applaud you and your teams for the work you've done to date.

Thank you for the leadership.

Thank you.

I'm going to review the alternative screening process, the alternatives, and the results.

This is all information that we spent quite a bit of time with you already discussing in previous ELG meetings, so I'll try and move through these slides quite quickly, but I did want to just briefly put these points in your mind again as we think about your recommendations moving forward.

Just to explain the approach we've been going through over the last year, again, this is information we've talked about before.

At the top of the graphic is our prior approach during the SD2 process where we identified a preferred alternative during the environmental process.

Our goal over the last year to help expedite project development has to try and bring forward a lot of those conversations.

We started with the representative project last year.

We're hoping to identify when we go to the board next month a preferred alternative to carry through the environmental process.

with the idea that we can then advance some of the subsequent activities and overall meet the timeframes identified in the ST3 plan.

Just to explain what a preferred alternative is, it's a SIPA NEPA term.

It makes clear to the public where we think the project is headed.

It's a preference, however, among alternatives to be considered.

It's not a final decision, as Peter noted.

The board still will have a number of alternatives to consider as it goes through the DIS process, and of course, the Federal Transit Administration will weigh in with their perspective and will issue a record of decision.

In terms of next steps, going through the screening process, as you know, we've been doing level one, level two, and level three analysis over this year.

And our goal next month when we go to the board is to identify a preferred alternative and other EIS alternatives so that we can start the environmental review process, which will continue for subsequent years.

The level three recommendations, as we've been going through this process and as we discussed with the Stakeholder Advisory Group last week, there has been interest in additional scope items.

You've heard mention of tunnels in West Seattle and Ballard and various other parts of the corridor.

And these alternatives, of course, would require third-party funding.

So when we framed this conversation to the Stakeholder Advisory Group last week, we asked them to identify two preferred alternatives.

One, if third-party funding were to be secured, and a second preferred alternative if funding were not secured.

the stakeholder advisory group, and you have at your disposal the technical evaluation results that we've talked about frequently, all of the public feedback, and, of course, the input from the racial equity toolkit to inform your recommendations.

In terms of the level three alternatives, what we looked at, we had basically three end-to-end alternatives that we put out to the public during the scoping period.

The first, as you've seen from the start, is the representative project, which includes elevated alignment to West Seattle, a tunnel through downtown Seattle, and then transition to an elevated structure out through Interbay and Ballard.

A second alternative, which we sometimes refer to as the Brown Alternative, reflects a lot of refinements, modifications, enhancements, if you will, from the feedback that we received over the last year.

So it differs from the representative project in all the different ways that are illustrated on this graphic, which include refinements to station orientations or station locations, upgrade to the busway, different shallow and deep mine options on 5th in the Chinatown ID area, and so on as we go out through the corridor.

We also have a third alternative which again reflects other feedback that we received and includes tunnel options in West Seattle and Ballard.

It looks at Fourth Avenue options again in the Chinatown ID, shallow and deep options.

It includes the South Lake Union Station on Harrison.

This is all feedback that we've heard over the course of the year and refinements that we've made to these alternatives to reflect that feedback.

In terms of the level three results, again, this is information that you received before we went into the scoping period and that we've talked a lot about with the public over the last few months as we've been out there doing our briefings.

As you've seen, this preliminary purpose and need has guided our work as we've gone through this year.

And we've had these same criteria that we've used in Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 to evaluate all of the different alternatives.

And we've rated all the different alternatives by 50 plus measures, giving them ratings of lower performing, medium performing, or higher performing to try and identify differentiation between the alternatives.

We've also developed comparative estimates at points along the way.

As I've noted before, these are to help inform the comparison of alternatives.

They do not reflect the final project budget, which we would not establish until we get into the final design phase.

As illustrated on this graphic, right now we're over on the left, developing a comparative estimates, and we will establish the final project budget when we get into final design, probably around the year 2024 or so.

This is a snapshot of all of the key differentiators between the various alternatives that we looked at in level three.

Again, you've seen the graphic and we've talked in detail about these different ratings.

Green is good and red is not so good.

And you can see here, I'm not going to go through this in detail, that there is distinctions between the alternatives as you go through this process.

We've also, as we've framed this conversation to the public, noted that level three alternatives are defined as they are for purposes of the analysis, but it is possible to mix and match different elements of those alternatives.

In fact, that's exactly the sort of feedback that we hope to do to try and make these alternatives better than they are currently defined.

We've noted here on this graphic different areas along the corridor where you could potentially mix and match opportunities.

And so we have received a lot of feedback on how we might do that.

Just to step through that in a little more detail.

For example, in the West Seattle area, we have elevated and tunnel options, blue, orange, and red.

And you've seen this table before.

There are distinctions between these different alternatives.

I'm not going to go through this table in detail again.

You've seen it before.

But if you look at the column on the left there, there are differentiators in terms of the location of the Alaska Junction station, or potential property effects to residences, both in the East Alaska Junction area and in the Delridge area, potential property effects to businesses.

There's differences in terms of what the alternatives you would pick and how they would affect the guideway height along Genesee and in the Delridge neighborhood.

And then in the last row there, you can see the comparison of the estimates between the various different alternatives, depending on what you do.

Moving into the Duwamish Crossing area, we have options on both the north and south sides of the existing West Seattle Bridge.

Again, you can see the key differentiators between those alternatives.

There are differentiators in terms of engineering constraints, impacts on parks, fish and wildlife, potential property effects, effects of freight movement, business and commerce effects, and again, comparative estimates.

As you get into Solo and Chinatown ID area, again, we have a number of alternatives, primarily at grade along the E3 busway or elevated along the E3 busway or 4th or 5th Avenue options in the Chinatown ID.

Again, the key differentiators are highlighted on this table.

There is distinctions between the alternatives in terms of ease of station access and transfers in the Chinatown ID area, construction effects in the Chinatown ID, potential property effects in both Soto and Chinatown ID, differences in terms of the overall effects on the construction schedule, effects on light rail transit operations, and again, comparative estimates between these alternatives.

As we go through the downtown area, we have several options.

The blue option would generally go along 5th Avenue and then along the Harrison Street area through Seattle Center.

And then we also have an option along 6th Avenue and Mercer, as well as the representative project.

Again, the key differentiators between these alternatives are illustrated on this graphic.

Really, it comes down to differences between the station locations, midtown station location, there are different options there, South Lake Union, Seattle Center, and also differences in terms of the north tunnel portal location.

And also, as noted on the last row, there are different estimates for those alternatives.

We get into the Smith Cove area.

We've got options at Prospect Street for the station and also at Gator Street, which would be a bit further north, closer to the Magnolia Bridge.

Again, there are differentiations between these alternatives in terms of the station location, in terms of engineering constraints, in terms of effects on parks, fish and wildlife, property effects, and again, in terms of the comparative estimates between these alternatives.

Finally, as we get into Salmon Bay and Ballard station location, as you know, we're looking at tunnel options.

We have a movable bridge, and we also are looking at a high fixed bridge option in that area, and different options for the station location at either 14th or 15th.

Again, all the alternatives are illustrated on this graphic.

The key differentiators are in terms of the station location in Ballard, effects on water resources, business and commerce effects, potential property effects, and again, differences in terms of the comparative estimates of these alternatives.

So again, this is the feedback we've been seeking from the public about how we could mix and match these opportunities, these different alternatives to create alternatives that we would carry forward into the draft EIS process.

I'll turn it over to Lita now to go through the scoping feedback.

Thanks Cahill.

So you received a scoping summary report but what we're going to do today with this information is just go through segment by segment.

We've got different colors of boxes.

The gray reflects general comments interest themes that we heard in that segment and the orange has to do with alignment and station locations of feedback we got from the public.

These are common themes and we'll go through them segment by segment.

So starting in West Seattle to Amish we heard concern about potential residential displacement and neighborhood impacts in the north Delridge neighborhood.

We heard concerns about potential residential displacement and neighborhood impacts in the junction with the elevated alignment and station as well in the junction.

We generally heard support for a tunnel some interest in consolidating the Avalon Alaska Junction stations.

General support for junction station in the 41st and 42nd vicinity.

We also heard stay out of the junction if you are going to be elevated in terms of the Duwamish crossing.

Jumping up there we heard mixed opinions on the crossing location north of the West Seattle Bridge or south of the West Seattle Bridge.

And then there are a few other ideas new ideas that we heard comments on so interest in the Pigeon Ridge Tunnel purple alignment actually from level 2 and level 1 interest in an alternative along the Yancey and Andover corridor to minimize neighborhood impact and mixed opinions about usage of the West Seattle golf course some concerned about impacts to the golf course and some interested in utilizing it potentially for an alignment.

Going to Soto again starting with gray and then going to orange there was interest in seamless transfers of the Soto station especially with it being the West Seattle interim terminus concern regarding impacts the Soto busway and Metro based facilities concern about future traffic and development and affecting industrial businesses general fatigue with construction disruption through Soto the Chinatown National District and Pioneer Square.

And request to evaluate parking cumulative and construction impacts and environmental justice issues in terms of the station locations alignment starting at the bottom.

General support for Soto station closer to lander for improved access that's associated with that blue line.

More support for overpasses at lander and Holgate to reduce traffic pedestrian and bicycle conflicts But some concerns from adjacent property owners about the overpasses there was more support for surface alignments and Soto for easy transfers between the lines and some support for a new idea of a new elevated Soto station and elevating the existing station and Moving to the Chinatown International District Again starting with gray.

There was concern regarding construction impacts on the CID community with Fifth Avenue alternatives Interest in creating a good transfer environment activating Union Station and improving the public realm Concerns regarding streetcar impacts during construction interest in aligning the new station construction with other major projects Concern regarding traffic diversions and parking impacts with 4th Avenue construction and then interest in Chinatown International District is the station name in terms of alignment and station locations really did hear a mix of feedback a mix of opinion, so Some support 5th Avenue to for easier access from residences and businesses in the Chinatown International District and those that support 4th Avenue support to improve connections and Between transit modes and between the CID and Pioneer Square and to limit potential construction impacts in the CID neighborhood There was more support general support for shallow stations for easier transfers for either 4th or 5th Avenue locations.

I In downtown we heard concern about potential residential property impacts of a midtown station on fit also related to the midtown station improved access to First Hill interest in efficient transfers at the Westlake station which will be a big transfer point at the Denny station concern about impacts on the Seattle streetcar during construction.

And in the South Lake Union area concerned about impacts on medical research facilities in Seattle Center area concerned about impacts on Seattle Center state organizations and facilities and then interest in good connections to uptown neighborhood and Seattle Center regardless of the station location.

We did however hear more support for Seattle Center Station location at Republican general support for the South Lake Union Station on Harrison which is associated with the blue line general support for the Denny station on West Lake south of anyway again associated with the blue line and finally general support for Midtown Station on Fifth Avenue.

And finally, in Inner Bay and Ballard, starting with the gray again, general concern about traffic and freight impacts along Elliott and 15th within the Bend Mic, concern about maritime business freight and visual effects of an elevated crossing and station, little support for the movable bridge due to concerns about service reliability and greater potential maritime business freight and in-water impacts.

In terms of the alignment and station locations, starting in Smith Cove, there was support for continuing to study both station locations.

There's interest in access and serving potential future uses around Smith Cove.

There is support for station at 17th and Thorn Geig for inner Bay and interest in good access from Dravis.

There is more support for a tunnel crossing of Salmon Bay and station.

Some concerns were expressed about tunnel cost.

There was more support for the fixed bridge than the movable bridge.

And in terms of station location in Ballard there is a mix of opinions between 14th and 15th support for a station at 15th to lessen potential property impacts on traffic freight impacts on 15th and then support for a station at 15th to be closer to the center of the urban village.

There was also a new idea introduced through scoping interest in a station further west in Ballard.

Any questions?

If not, I will go ahead and move on to the next piece here, equity and inclusion.

So building upon the work in level one and two, we heard feedback and interest, and the technical results supported this, to focus our scope for the Chinatown International District Station on limiting harmful impacts Maximizing connections for all users and 100 year vision for the station and for the Delridge station bus rail integration and equitable transit oriented development serving the community as being key issues in terms of serving communities of color and low income populations.

With this scope in mind, we also expanded our engagement tools, doing listening sessions, door-to-door outreach and language with community liaisons.

We had community workshops in both of these locations, and of course we went through a lot of this in depth with you on March 29th.

We also had social service provider and community organization interviews throughout the time that helped inform our engagement and give us ideas for how to do it more effectively.

In terms of the findings based on the of course we do the technical evaluation as well as listen to community feedback for the Chinatown International District Station it's unclear which alternative would pose the greatest net benefit for the communities of color and long communities in the surrounding South downtown neighborhoods.

And for the Delridge station The st3 representative project offers the fewest net benefits for communities of color and low-income communities in terms of bus rail integration opportunities to support equitable transit oriented development and also it's being further north its proximity to the services and amenities that are further south Questions on that if not We are Ready to review what the SAG had to say.

So I'll review the SAG recommendations which they made last week.

We presented this to the SAG last week.

It's a summary of the level three alternatives.

So you see we have the three level three alternatives in each of the three columns that are colored on this graphic.

And along the left there are the different segments along the corridor and the alternatives are basically described in each segment.

We also included the feedback on alternatives that we received during the scoping period, and that's reflected in the white column on the right side of this graphic.

So, as noted there, there have been new ideas that were not studied previously, or perhaps were studied previously, but reemerged again during the scoping feedback period.

In terms of the SAG's recommendations, the discussion was broken into two parts.

The first discussion was if the scenario were to arise that third-party funding were to be secured, what would be the recommendations?

And the SAG recommended that in the West Seattle Junction area to pursue the blue 41st or 42nd tunnel option, in Delridge area, the blue north of Genesee Station option and the Pigeon Ridge tunnel alternative, the south crossing alternative, the Duwamish, Downtown the blue fifth and Harrison alternative in Smith Cove the Prospect Street location and then an interbay Ballard the tunnel with a 15 tunnel station option and a tunnel with a 20 20th tunnel station option there was No consensus in the sort of CID area or rather consensus to continue studying all of the options in that area Just to explain all of these alternatives in a bit more detail, this is the West Seattle segment of the corridor.

You can see there they considered looking at 41st and 42nd tunnel station options, the north of Genesee station option in Delridge, and the south crossing of the Duwamish, as well as looking at the purple Pigeon Ridge tunnel alternative that was looked at previously in level one and level two.

In the Soto and CID area, as I mentioned, there was just a majority interest in continuing to study all of the options moving forward into the EIS.

As we went through downtown, there was interest in the 5th and Harrison alternative, that was their recommendation.

And then in the Interbay Ballard area, a Prospect Street location in blue, and then continue to look at a tunnel with a 15 station option in Ballard, and a tunnel with 20 station option as well.

There was also a number of discussion elements as we went through the meeting.

In the Interbay Ballard area, there was general support for a tunnel crossing of Salmon Bay and having the Ballard Tunnel Station serve in the Ballard Urban Village.

There was some interest in engaging and understanding the trade-offs for communities east of 15th that would be farther from the idea of a 20th station location.

In the Soto and CID area, there was interest in continuing to study all the options in the Chinatown I.D., interest in a thorough study of traffic impacts in the EIS process associated with the 4th Avenue Chinatown I.D.

station alternatives.

There were concerns about the impacts to the E3 busway and Ryerson Base, and also was noted the importance of seamless transfers in the Chinatown I.D.

and the Soto station.

In West Seattle, generally there was support expressed for Delridge station locations that are farther south.

The second discussion was framed in the context of third-party funding were not secured.

Again, we presented the same table and went through the same process.

The SAG recommendations are noted here in the West Seattle Junction area.

They identified the red elevated station, but they also noted refinements that could be made to the representative project in that location.

And they also suggest the idea of a 41st or 42nd tunnel station, but consolidating the Alaska and the Avalon stations to hopefully achieve cost savings.

Again in Delridge, they identified the blue north of Genesee station location.

The Duwamish crossing area, they again identified the orange south crossing as being deferred.

In the Soto CID area, again, they expressed an interest in continuing to study all of the options in the EIS process.

In the downtown area, they again identified the blue 5th and Harrison alignment as being preferred.

And then in Smith Cove, they identified both the green and the blue Prospect Street locations.

They did not identify an alternative in Inch Bay Ballard area.

that would not require additional funding.

They did, however, express that they did not support a movable bridge at that location.

Just to illustrate those recommendations, this again is looking in the West Seattle area, a 41st or 42nd tunnel station with a consolidated Alaska and Avalon option shown in blue, and also an elevated alignment that basically is the same as the representative project, but look at a potential refinements of the representative project in the Alaska Junction area that would have the station either north-south on Fauntleroy or in the Jefferson Square area.

In the Delridge area, they again identified the north of Genesee blue station location and the orange south crossing of the Duwamish.

As I noted, in the Chinatown and Soto areas, they recommended continuing to look at all of the options.

Again, the 5th and Harrison option through downtown, the Prospect Street locations, blue and green in Interbay, and they expressed that they did not support a Moodle Bridge option for the Salmon Bay crossing.

In terms of the discussion, and this again was in the context if third-party funding were not secured, in West Seattle, they noted an interest in the representative project in the Alaska Junction area oriented north-south, staying east of the junction either on Fauntleroy or in the vicinity of Jefferson Square with a blue Delridge station location.

They did not support the orange Alaska Junction station location.

They did have interest in studying the blue alternative that would consolidate Alaska Junction and Avalon stations.

and they expressed concerns about the height of the guideway through Delridge.

In the solo and CID area, this mimics a lot of the comments that were made in the other discussion, concerns about impacts again to the E3 busway and Ryerson Base.

A majority of support to keep all the options on the table to be responsive to community support, to input, to the Chinatown AD's voice has not traditionally been listened to with respect to infrastructure projects.

And they felt that the comparative estimates at this point were very preliminary and should not limit the alternatives that should be studied in the Chinatown ID.

There were concerns, however, expressed about the additional costs associated with the 4th Avenue alternatives, and there was interest and discussion about the 5th Avenue shallow station option if third-party funding were not secured.

In the interbay ballot area, there were concerns about the potential traffic effects on Elliot 15th of the green Smith Cove station location, and there was interest in providing good access to that station.

There was not support for a movable bridge across Salmon Bay, and there were mixed opinions with interest in studying the fixed bridge, brown, and the tunnel, blue, in that crossing location.

Throughout the meeting, there was also general feedback.

It fell into these categories.

There was some concern about the extent of third-party funding and whether there are other needs for that funding, such as improving mobility in the city.

There were some concerns about identifying a preferred alternative at this stage to allow for a comprehensive study in the EIS.

That was particularly in the context of the Chinatown ID station options, where there was interest in continuing to look at alternatives there.

And there were comments about adding new alternatives into the process that have not yet been studied are vetted through the public engagement process to date.

Thank you, Lita and Cahill, for that exhaustive and substantive presentation.

Let me just pause and see if there are any questions from members of the elected leadership group to clarify before we Before councilmember o'brien leads us into our discussion.

I

All right, unless people are being really shy right now, which is not usual for this group.

I'm going to assume there are no questions.

As we jump in, I want to build on something Peter said just to frame up again what we're doing here.

Remind folks that we are in the scoping phase.

Next month, the Sound Transit Board of Directors will put forward recommendations for what will be studied in the environmental impact statement.

And our role as the elected leadership group is to make recommendations to the board.

for what would be studied.

Our recommendations should be informed by the 17 months of process and community input including the stakeholder advisory group recommendations.

And my goal here and we have about 45 minutes in our discussion is to identify places where we have clarity, where this group feels really strong consensus about alignments or station locations that we want studied because they, rise to a level of meeting kind of broad community consensus.

It's really, I think, important that the board hears where those areas of clarity exist.

There may be areas where there's a difference of opinions here too, and I think we just want to get clear on what those differences are so we can articulate those to the board.

There may be opportunities to resolve some of those differences in the next 45 minutes and there may be places where there's just some differences that remain and rely on facilitation to help us clarify in the notes to the board what's happening and acknowledge that there are five board members who will be in that meeting next month that are sitting here too.

So I'm calling on our board members to carry, to make sure that the nuance that we're discussing here gets carried forward to the board in the context there.

So with that, we're going to start working from north to south, I believe.

Yeah, thank you.

We'll start in Interbay Ballard.

You'll hear the same question posed from me, which is, does the ELG have a recommendation to the Sound Transit Board for what to continue studying?

Do you have a preference?

Lita and David over here will be capturing the notes.

So as you are dialoguing around this, we'll be able to capture what's being said.

Cahill's going to continue to stay here to answer technical questions as they come up.

So let's start in Interbay Ballard, and again, this is a similar exercise as to what the stakeholder advisory group went through last week.

So starting in Interbay Ballard, as you look at the table up there, does the ELG have a recommendation for what to carry forward to the Sound Transit Board?

Thank you very much, Cahill.

Amazing amount of detail that you have in your brain, so I appreciate you, Alita, Carrie, for all of the good work that you have done on this.

So with Interbay Ballard, this has been an area of particular interest to me and I would say to Council Member O'Brien as well.

This 20th Street option is fairly new that I know it was a number of years ago, it came up and then it was dismissed.

The fact that Mike Stewart and others are saying let's take a look at it again, I would say let's do that.

I don't have a strong sense but I hope the community voices are clear.

But I'll tell you, over and over again, I just feel very strongly that, The movable bridge is a non-starter.

I would even say the fixed bridge is a non-starter.

I'd like to see a tunnel ending on one of those two places and whether that is something that we need more money for or if the delta becomes smaller as you do the environmental impact statements.

But I just wanna emphasize that everything I hear from the community is it's gotta be a tunnel and whether it goes to the 20th or to 15th is something that we're going to have to study further.

I'd also just like to thank you very much for the blue line, which is moving just to the west of 15th.

I think we've heard from freight and from everyone else that that particular alignment is going to preserve 15th, which is the only north-south freight corridor along that edge.

Then the last thing I want to say here is that the Gaylor studied at Smith Cove is something that the port feels fairly strongly about.

I would just urge that we keep the prospect and the Gaylor stations both on the list.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I support Council Member Bagshaw's proposal that we should not continue to consider the movable bridge in Ballard.

I do think that while it seems to me critical that we arrive at downtown Ballard, however one's going to define it in this, and downtown West Seattle and downtown CID, below grade and in a way that serves rather than harms the communities.

probably need to continue to consider, at least for the purposes of the environmental study, the high-level bridge alternative, just as we, I think, are going to be asked to consider an elevated alternative in West Seattle that I don't think is an appropriate thing for us to be building in the end.

I also think that we've made a lot of progress in refining the possibilities for Ballard in this process, and I think that this reintroduction of a different way to get to 20th and market is intriguing.

I do not know about its viability.

I don't have any independent way to know how much it differs from the alternative that was considered and put aside previously, but I do think that it is a good idea for us to pursue that if it's in fact potentially viable.

Thank you.

Dave?

I just wanted to agree with the idea of removing the removable bridge as an option.

It seems to be a consensus.

I also think we have to keep the high bridge as an option.

When we come out of this, I think it's essential that Sound Transit Board have an alternative that is close in cost to the representative alignment that we started with.

And I very much like the structure that the SAG put together with two recommendations, one with third party funding and one with no third party funding.

And I was actually hoping we would just start with their recommendations as the template, because I think they're excellent.

They did excellent work.

But I just wanted to second those comments about the high bridge.

Great.

I'll jump in here then.

Thank you.

I want to offer my comments as well with Executive Constantine and Councilmember Bagshaw that certainly the movable bridge, I think we all agree, needs to be off the table and the port supports that.

I would say that given, I agree with Dow, that if there's going to be an elevated consideration In West Seattle, most likely we're not there yet, but I could support the elevated structure being studied in Ballard, but we do support a tunnel option moving forward.

That said, on the 20th again, the 20th option just literally came forward.

You know, I got information on it on Monday.

And so it's difficult to know whether that's viable.

I will say I've asked our staff to look into it.

I think there are some considerable concerns with crossing the BNSF tracks.

So I would imagine that they're going to be weighing in heavily if that were to move forward.

So just to be realistic about if it's going to have some more study, I'm not really sure how viable it is.

But I understand that it's important to the Ballard business community.

I'll weigh in.

I concur with others who would like to discontinue study of a movable bridge.

I have not heard any support in the community for the movable bridge.

And I've heard strong support for a tunnel option, as others have said here.

I do think it's responsible for us to also be studying an alternative to the tunnel.

And I think the high-fixed bridge is the alternative that should be studied.

But to be clear, that is not a preference to be built, but it's appropriate to be studied at this point.

As far as locations of the tunnel, there's been a lot of energy and work put into looking at, I'm going to lump together the 14th and 15th station location and assume that Sound Transit would be studying those two kind of in conjunction with each other to understand which options work best from a design, engineering, ridership a land availability perspective.

There's a couple values that I'll put out there that I would love to flag.

One is bus rail integration is going to be really important.

And so as you're looking at design refinements, how the bus and rail will integrate and make those transfers as seamless as possible, because there will undoubtedly be transfers coming from northeast and west there.

Also access to the urban center I think is critically important.

And so how we heard in public comment today someone time that it's two and a half minutes to cross Market Street from the east from the west side to the east side of 15th.

So a station location that that allows for station portal assuming we're underground or even above ground I guess without having to do an accurate crossing of the street is the type of thing that I hope that the agency can study as we go into the US.

There's a lot of intriguing There's a lot that intrigues me about the idea of locating a station at 20th.

It's much closer to the kind of urban core there As others have said it's it's a little hard this at this point in the game To have much new information to see why we should bring it back.

I think There are some challenges poor commissioner mentioned I'll add that Siting a station is a major construction project as we've noted in the Chinatown International District and while I imagine a lot of businesses would love a portal that pops out next to their business, I don't know that we've fully educated folks on what a construction project would be to locate an underground station in the heart of Ballard and the disruption that may happen with that.

But Cale, do you have any more, I don't know, technical expertise on what that station would entail?

Yes, we're aware of that idea.

And as you noted, we have looked at a station location in that area as part of the level one analysis.

And as you noted, one of the reasons why that alternative did not move forward, we're concerned about the construction effects of station construction in what is a very built up area in Ballard.

And that would be the case with this alternative too.

And there was a thought that it could fit within the existing street right away, but we're not aware that it could do that.

There would likely be potential property effects with that alternative.

More concern to us is that although the idea is intriguing, as it's defined right now, it doesn't look to be technically feasible to actually have that configuration as described.

It would likely have impacts to the marina facilities along the south side of that Salmon Bay area and would potentially extend into the navigation channel.

Or we'd have to move the portal further south in which case it's going to be a longer tunnel Which means we end up with much the same concerns that we had in the level one analysis I'd like to just try to summarize where you what I'm hearing from you for the inner Bay Ballard area, which is strong support for continued evaluation of the blue option tunnel 14th 15th tunnel station knowing that that that needs to be refined a little bit and And then I have also heard interest in continuing to study 20th as well as the fixed bridge option if you know as a as a cost comparable to the representative project and having the LG recommend that the movable bridge be removed from further consideration.

Maybe I would further distinguish between the elevated and 20th.

I think an acceptance I believe that an elevated should be studied and that makes sense.

My sense on the 20th tunnel is to see what any more technical conversations happen and let the board decide if that should be studied or not.

Again, I'm intrigued by all sorts of tunnel ideas.

I'm also hesitant to put too many options on the table this late in the game in a process that has been designed to refine them.

And so I would say that if the board in its wisdom decides that that's a really viable alternative that they want to study, then I would obviously support that.

Based on what Cahill said, I have some serious concerns about that, but let's see what happens between now.

and your main meeting.

Okay.

Colleagues okay with that?

Okay.

Councilmember Herbold.

I don't mean to interrupt the flow.

I just have a process question.

Are we not making recommendations on a more resources option and a no more resources option?

It doesn't sound like we are based on the structure of this conversation.

Mayor Durkan.

Yeah, I think that that is maybe a separate conversation.

We've done a lot of work talking to other board members and the like, but there's nothing at this stage of the game that requires us to be studying what requires more funding or more funding or requiring what the alternative is.

And in fact, I think what we've learned from staff is we don't have enough technical information at this point.

to really know the costs available for anything.

So I think we're going to talk about it later, but I will be urging strongly here and also at the board that we not designate something as a preferred alternative at all.

It's just an alternative being studied.

And that the question of funding is something that is coming down the road.

The city of Seattle understands, obviously, that if there are additional funding required for an alignment, that we're going to have to be a very active partner in finding that third party funding and some of it will be in kind, it might be land, it might be services, but that we don't know enough yet at this juncture to be making those distinctions.

So as a follow up, I am 100% aligned with the concept of not identifying a preferred alternative right now.

I think my question is a little bit different, which is, how the SAG has made their recommendations has been, they also didn't pick a preferred alternative, but they did identify segments that, when taken together, would not require additional funding and segments, when taken together, would require additional funding.

And so that's how I've been thinking about the question that we are going to answer today, putting the question of preferred alternative aside.

And so I'm just asking the question, if we're doing that, and is that going to be the form that our recommendation is to the board, or are we going to do something differently?

I think my expectation is as we, Ballard is the example, we have two things that I think we've reached agreement to study.

One is a tunnel at 14th and 15th, and one is a high-fixed bridge in a similar alignment.

And I think as we walk through this, by the time we get to the end, we'll have a little more clarity on how we may want to characterize those.

But I think of those two options, there's one that, at least to the current engineering, looks like one is more expensive than the other.

We kind of know how that lies out and we'll talk maybe about how we want to characterize the variety of things we're studying we get to the end if that's OK.

Dave you want to say this is probably one of those points of disagreement that you mentioned earlier but I think it's absolutely essential that we carry forward the.

two sort of sets or alternatives that represent different cost structures, just like the SAG recommended.

And one of the reasons for that is the Sound Transit Board's going to be asked to identify what's going to be studied in the NEPA EIS.

And part of a NEPA assessment is looking at the feasibility of a project.

And feasibility includes the financial ability to construct It also requires looking at both direct and indirect effects of the alternatives on other things.

And as we've talked about many times here, West Seattle and Ballard are part of a broader system and a high cost alternative that doesn't have funding but would require Sound Transit to construct it anyway would affect other parts of the system.

And so I think we've got to at a minimum I would like to see us have one preferred alternative I would have preferred if that was the result of this.

process, it doesn't seem to be, but a structure that carries toward two alternatives, one that's within the financial plan of Sound Transit 3 package that was passed by the voters and one that has add-ons that would require third party funding is really essential.

So at least in Inner Bay Ballard, you've accomplished that, I think, by identifying the tunnel option, which is the blue, and then the high-fixed bridge to continue studying.

So to the extent that we're integrating those cost concerns and considerations into the dialogue today, I think that's going to be really helpful.

Helpful indication to the board so if I may move us from interbay Ballard if we're okay with that discussion where you landed on that into Smith Cove Councilmember Bagshaw suggested in her comments earlier that both the Gaylor Street station and the prospect Street station stay Under for further consideration by the board other thoughts Stephanie

Yeah, I'd just like a clarification from staff.

Can you give me some background on the SAG recommendation about why they would have prospect in there?

I didn't quite understand that, certainly because it has a higher cost structure than Gaylor.

I would say of all of the segments in the SAG discussion, this is the one that had the least in terms of strong opinions.

There was, in the context of the Prospect Street Station, it was mainly about allowing for access in that location, and there wasn't really much discussion about the Gaylord Street option.

And that's sort of the sense I've gotten, quite frankly, amongst the LG.

This seems to be the orphans segment that nobody's paid much attention to except for, I think, two entities, the Port of Seattle and Expedia.

And so from the Port of Seattle's perspective, with all due respect, I'd ask you all to consider the Gaylor option.

One it's one hundred million dollars less and I think we are looking for cost savings.

It does accomplish helping Expedia but it also helps our cruise ship passengers at Terminal 91. And I would add to that as there's further developments throughout the inner Bay Area in particular the armory site which is I believe coming up in the next couple of years.

There's a group looking at that right now headed by Governor Locke.

the Gaylor station actually helps more in the future than the prospect station.

So I'd ask the team to consider that moving forward.

I think hearing belief consensus of recommending to continue to study both a Gaylor and a prospect alignment.

Does anyone else want to comment on this?

I'm happy to move on to take a time.

And I think noting Commissioner Bowman's comments on the preference for a gailer from the port's perspective.

So moving both forward and costs and cost and to council member Herbold's point you know at some point we're going to have to have maybe not this group it sounds like but somebody is going to have a conversation at the board about how to fund this.

And so I for me it's important to have segments go along that are somewhat within a budget.

So that's another strong reason for a gailer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, moving into downtown.

Does the LG have a recommendation to the board?

Council President Harrell.

Okay, whoa.

Sorry about that, I was multitasking.

So first of all, I deeply appreciate all the work the staff has done and the stakeholder group.

I think you may hear that theme resonate throughout of this.

Where I'm coming, I'm speaking one of I think six or seven members of the city here is to basically advance all four of the preferred alternatives.

And when you look at Both 5th Avenue, deep or shallow, even 4th Avenue, deep or shallow.

What I'm hearing the stakeholder groups sort of say is...

Council Member Harrell, may I?

Please.

Pardon me.

We're moving, we're eager to get to Chinatown International District, but that passageway right through downtown at 5th and Republican, 6th and Mercer, 5th and Harrison, I think is in terms of sequencing where we want to go next.

I thought I heard someone say Chinatown International District.

I did play football, but I thought I heard someone say Chinatown.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Why didn't they stop me?

Why did you are the only ones that stopped me?

Go ahead.

I take back what I said.

We've tried to stop you in the past, and it doesn't go so well.

So we're going to let the paid help do that.

I think the conversations that I've heard and had along are consistent with what we saw out of the stakeholder advisory group is, so I'll just put this on the table, an alignment, essentially the blue alignment, which has a stop on Republican near Key Arena.

with understanding that there's still some design refinements to do there as we understand what that looks like.

When we get into South Lake Union, a Harrison alignment being what wants to be studied.

As we get to up West Lake, again on the blue alignment.

And then the interaction with the West Lake Station along Fifth Avenue, but understanding what we've heard from the stakeholder advisory group too, a seamless interaction between the two lines there would be important.

I haven't heard a strong preference versus fifth or sixth except that it seems that fifth is less expensive.

And so in the spirit of finding cost savings that is something that we support.

But I imagine the agency will study some varieties around there to continue to see what makes sense.

And so effectively I think the blue line meets the needs of folks I've heard here.

Does anyone want to add anything to that.

Thank you very much Council Member O'Brien about this.

Interestingly, the blue line and going through downtown has had the least attention of anything that we've worked on.

I have, I represent this area and this is extremely important that it works seamlessly at Westlake but it seems to have created the least amount of conflict.

So I would just say that the key arena station, you know, big thumbs up with all the work that we're doing around Seattle Center, the interchange, the seamless interchange at Westlake is important and I think it is something that I'm hearing.

Let's just support Blue Line and I would recommend that we move forward with that.

Diane, you're looking at me like...

I was just going to ask if you could put the microphone a little bit closer when you speak.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hearing you correctly, you're advocating 5th and Harrison as well, the blue line.

Correct.

Thank you.

If I wasn't clear, it's because there seems to be support for this in the downtown area and I have not heard anybody raising a ruckus that it needs to be something else.

Mayor Durkan.

with Councilmember Bakeshaw with maybe one refinement in that once it swings into downtown at Westlake, studying that segment of both 5th and 6th Avenue to make sure we see what that alignment is with the current capacity and the Madison Street BRT.

Thank you Mayor Durkan noted certainly.

So I'm seeing majority consensus at least for 5th and Harrison being advanced.

Thank you.

You've got the notes of transfers and integration are key things that we want to continue to look at refinements to maximize the benefit of those.

Fantastic.

I think in some ways our conversation is is framed by the fact we were just presented with the site recommendations as well.

And you've referenced it.

Council member Baggio I want to underscore the value and essential qualities of that transfer at Westlake.

Great.

Councilmember Harrell, may I invite you to?

Commence with our discussion Someone didn't mention Chinatown International District, so she's got your back So I won't repeat what I said earlier, but I think you know I should let the cat out the bag that Unfortunately, we couldn't narrow it down either from fourth to fifth.

It sounds the community couldn't and And I think our elected leaders sort of struggle with this as well.

And whether it's a shallow or a deep, deeper station, it was just sort of difficult giving where we are at this stage.

And so I think what we are suggesting is to advance all fours, four options basically, and fourth and fifth, shallow and deep, as preferred alternatives.

I must say that in a perfect world, because we know the options on 4th Avenue do require third party funding, that we could have very likely made a strong stance now whether the City of Seattle, as an example of that third party, could have said we are willing to sort of put some skin in the game at this point.

at this stage in the discussion but we thought that premature as well to either say to Executive Summers' point to try to narrow it down a little bit that we still weren't comfortable doing that at this stage and so I think at least my preference would be to advance to all four alternatives.

I'd like to highlight what we heard in some of the public testimony today and that is a great desire to move all four options forward and great compliments for the work that the community, the Chinatown International District and Pioneer Square communities have been able to do with the agency and with our staff.

The collaboration, the great work to this point yet recognizing that given this neighborhood and historic issues of infrastructure being imposed in the neighborhood and the particular logistics of fourth and fifth that we haven't come to a conclusion.

And so yes, would very much support studying all four options going forward.

We've also heard, and I would be supportive of efforts, whether it's directly related to the alignment or other efforts by the agency to activate Union Station further.

And as we study the four options, I do think it's important to be mindful of its impact on bus service, particularly our partner Metro Transit and the Ryerson base.

To not do so would impact our ability to provide transit throughout the region.

and we need to make sure that we're integrating and moving people throughout the region, not just on one single system.

So I think being mindful of that yet studying and moving forward with all four options has great value.

Moving forward, yes, Council Member Bakeshaw.

This is just a technical question and I've asked it a number of times and I also want to say thank you to Michael and others that were here today to talk about their vision for how do we reduce the impact on CID.

Here's my question operationally.

I look at these deep tunnels, and I don't understand how they're simply going to work.

At the UW, as an example, that's a pretty deep number of escalators to get down.

And my understanding is that the deep tunnel as proposed is twice as deep as that.

So that means that we're going to be relying on escalators.

or elevators primarily to get people up to the surface and down.

So is it, I guess my technical question is, is that reasonable?

From an operational standpoint, maybe it has less impact from a construction standpoint on the neighborhood, but going forward for the next 100 years, are massive elevators in that deep going to really promote the benefit of the community?

Yeah, in our analysis we did identify that particular concern, so that's something that we'd have to, you know, really evaluate as we move forward in the EIS process if this alternative is to be looked at further.

But we would have the similar concerns about access associated with deep stations.

So I guess maybe this is just, I'm not, I'm not clear on when we say we're going to put it in the EIS and you say you're going to study it further, have we really given you the tools that you need to say, you know, we're going to study it and then you come back to the board.

But if there's something that just seems like, hey, that's just not going to work, should we be advancing something that from a standpoint of of just the long-term operations.

You guys know this.

As a non-engineer, I can't tell you.

I'm just talking about practically speaking, it strikes me as something that's going to be very difficult for a user.

I'm not being particularly articulate.

I think where I am on this is to carry all four forward and I'll articulate why.

I think each of the four options here pose some significant challenges.

And I think you've identified a couple of challenges with those deep ones.

Unlike in other areas where we've eliminated the ones that had the big challenges, there were some good options left.

It feels like at the moment, until we understand some more of the tradeoffs, that they all have particularly hard challenges for that community.

I think that the challenges you've identified about transferring in a deep station are important and I think that they've been noted as part of the EIS and we expect to see, you know, maybe there's a way to address that.

There's nothing that's popped up at the moment.

There are other challenges with the shallow stations that we've talked about too.

And again the hope is that those will be addressed in a meaningful way to communities as we further refine the study them.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bowman.

Sure.

Just a footnote.

I'm not sure that most people realize and correct me if I'm wrong staff but I've asked this before the Beacon Hill tunnel is 160 feet and this tunnel would be 200 feet.

Is that correct.

That's correct.

So I would just say that I know that there's been a sort of general concern about a really deep station but we have one at Beacon Hill.

And so the difference my understanding is that with this there's the volume of people and so that's an operational issue.

But in terms of the tunnel depth we've it's happened in Beacon Hill so if you haven't.

Had a chance to go to that station I'd encourage you to there's no escalators it's only elevators so I would be in favor of moving it forward just for that reason that the staff has done a good job of working it out in Beacon Hill.

Not to say that it's a preference just for that reason in terms of everybody wanting him to move forward.

If I could just add one thing though.

Beacon Hill is not a transfer station.

And what we haven't really discussed as much in this context is East Link will first enter the spine at this station at International District Chinatown.

So it is in fact if you're coming from the east side and heading to the airport You since the East Link trains will continue to go north.

You will need to transfer to then go south So it is going to be a major node To mr. O'Brien's point many of challenges with all four options, but that is certainly one Okay, mayor Durkin and then I'm going to move us into Soto.

I

I want to concur with everyone who's supporting moving all forces forward.

But I want to call out another issue.

We got a presentation from Jennifer, thank you for that, on equity.

And I think we have to center this discussion on that.

We cannot look at Chinatown International District without recognizing the irony that we're sitting in a train station.

where those train systems were built by Chinese labor, where that Chinese labor was then excluded from our country by discriminatory laws, where they carved out a toll hold here in Seattle, where the Japanese community landed, and then we took them and interned them.

And this community has been a vibrant part of our city for a long time and that community deserves to have more input More understanding as we move forward and I think that for us to study these four alternatives We know that this whole system will probably have a greater impact on this community than anywhere else in the system it is the place where everything joins and And so for us to move these four things forward is the right thing to do.

I also think it's a smart thing to do because it will not slow us down.

The worst thing that can happen to us is if we end up going through an EIS and then have to do a supplemental EIS because we haven't considered things or there's too much resistance or things.

So I think that moving these four forward gives us the opportunity to work with community on an ongoing basis so as the technical parts are being studied we can also deeply understand how this will impact the community.

So for those reasons as well, I am very much in favor of moving all four alternatives forward.

Powerful words.

Mayor Durkan, thank you very much.

I think we have a violent agreement.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

OK, let's move into Sodo.

Does the ELG have a recommendation as we pass through Sodo?

Just for folks, this is not one we've talked a lot about, but just to highlight the options we're considering here.

The current alignment, of course, is that the existing light rail system is at grade, and the representative alignment would be an elevated through there.

An option that has emerged would be to instead have the ST3 connection to West Seattle be also at grade, which to me makes a lot of sense.

The traffic impacts would, let's see, the car-rail interaction would be addressed in the case of two lines at grade with a vehicle overpass at both Holgate and Lander.

So that would be one option.

Another option, one option of course would be to keep one elevated and one at grade.

Another option that has been mentioned through the SAG was to elevate both alignments and instead have the cars pass under them and the rail be the overpass.

I think there's some challenges with that, but I don't know if folks want to comment on what they've heard from community members.

I'd like to just ask a few questions and make sure we all have a common understanding of what dual elevated would do.

I think some of the interest would particularly be to preserve the E3 busway for Metro bus use.

Practically I think we need an understanding of how operationally that would be implemented and operate in the system and also whether we have an idea whether that working with the new track can be done with ST3 funding.

Yes, well as councilmember Ryan described the current assumption with the representative projects that you'll be elevated through that area with the new line that we Constructed and this idea would be proposing to also elevate the existing line Which is at grade and to do so, of course That was not an assumption in the st3 plan So to your cost question that would be additional funding if you want to also elevate the existing line in that area And obviously, if you're doing that, you will be disrupting service on the existing line when you do that elevated construction at a point in time in the future when there would be quite substantial ridership and service on that line.

So the implications are both in terms of cost and in terms of construction impacts, operational impacts.

Councilmember O'Brien, could we get back, were you articulating a preference or a recommendation to move forward with E3 at grade, the blue option?

Maybe, just about to.

Did you have another question or did you get what you needed addressed?

That's what I need for the moment.

My understanding is that, my sense is that having them both at grade makes a lot of sense for ease of transfer and ease of making a, to separate vehicle traffic as opposed to having the intersections that we have today.

The concerns as I understand them from some adjacent property owners is when you build that overpass It's it's it's above grade for it is today, and it may impact access to their properties and I think those are fair concerns to be addressed and my recommendation would be to focus on the an at-grade dual at-grade with vehicle overpasses, with notes to recommend that as we do the further study to make sure that we address adjacent property owners' impacts of that construction.

Now?

Just to add on to what Councilmember McDermott was saying, we do still need to, I know a lot of this is unresolved, work to examine the impacts, not just to bus transit that is currently using the E3 busway, and that's a lot buses, but also to the Ryerson base in particular.

As everyone is painfully aware, bus base capacity is in very short supply and the demand continues to grow.

So some of these plans have significant impacts to the Ryerson base.

Folks are generally comfortable with with the recommendation I proposed of and acknowledging that that obviously bus operations is critically important as we design that Okay, thank you so noted III at grade with consideration of the the comments that were made earlier around bus impacts and Ryerson base moving to the Duwamish crossing And again we're moving into across the Duwamish crossing then we'll get into a discussion around West Seattle.

But does the LG have a recommendation crossing the Duwamish.

Commissioner Bowman.

Well surprisingly I'll start.

Two things obviously the it was I appreciate that the SAG spent so much time looking at this and the Sound Transit staff has come out and For the ELG members that have come out to our marine terminals to see the impacts I appreciate that those of you that were not able to come out in the last couple of months I encourage you again to come out and our Longshore Labor would be happy to host you as well.

On April 2nd, the Northwest Seaport Alliance, which is this Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma, voted to invest in Terminal 5 for $340 million.

That's also tied to a private investment of about $120 million.

Just shy of 500 million dollars total just for the first phase of terminal 5 the terminal operator is SSA Which is already operating in our harbor and one of their private sector partners is going to be MSC in a joint venture This is securing marine international marine cargo at the Port of Seattle for the next 30 years It is a major investment I know I've spoken about this before, but in addition to that major public-private investment, this south crossing is $300 million cost savings for this project.

I would say that this is something that I would be shocked if we move forward on another crossing, quite frankly.

I am would like some clarification however with the staff because the only reason that I've heard that we might move forward or advance a north crossing is because of a potential for F issue.

And so I apologize I had this right up a minute ago in your recommendations and for me it's on page 40. It says it may require 4F avoidance, not must have a 4F avoidance alternative.

So could somebody clarify that?

And if you can't right now, that's fine.

I will say I have our port attorneys who are well-versed in 4F because of all of the construction we do, particularly around the airport, providing a legal opinion, which I'd be happy to share with the ELG and the Sound Transit Board.

If this is not an absolute requirement, I would ask that we just advance the South Crossing, both the South Crossing at the far end of Harbor Island and the one that's being brought forward by the SAG.

Yes, well, as I think subtly noted in one of the previous slides, we do still need to coordinate with FTA as well as the board.

And we do expect, of course, this is for them to state, that they would expect us to look at the North Crossing as well for the 4F resources concern.

So that's something to be confirmed, but that's our expectation at this point, that we would also, as part of the DIS, look at the North Crossing location.

Well, then what I would ask the ELG to consider is recommending a south crossing with a caveat that if the FTA comes back and says you need to have an alternative crossing, that certainly the board would have the opportunity to move that.

But at this point, with a $300 million cost savings, this seems like the proper thing to do.

Councilmember Bagshaw, yeah, thank you being one of the council members that went over and looked at this with Commissioner Bowman and Hearing what we are hearing from the maritime industry I don't know if there's something that we can do that really emphasizes what maybe you're saying is that the South Crossing is is so much preferred that if you have to do a north crossing with sort of a wink and a nod, I understand that study.

But coming out of this meeting, I would very much like to have clarity that the south is going to be something that we really prefer.

And then we also saw just recently, and I want to say thank you to our West Seattle friends about another alternative that's a slight diagonal.

on the crossing, but it's still south of the bridge.

So I would like to say, love to hear more about that, but I don't think that it makes a ton of sense for us to spend a lot of time, energy, and money unless we have to do that for your FTA purposes on a north crossing.

Okay, I'm hearing strong support for further consideration of the South Crossing and I want to keep moving us along if we need to, with the caveat that if the North Crossing needs to be studied, that you're going to get further clarification from Sound Transit on that.

Council Member Herbold?

Thank you.

I'm just following up on Councilmember Bagshaw's statement about an alternative crossing coming to us from the community.

It is a even more south crossing but it is I think a really necessary component to consider it continued consideration of the Pigeon Ridge Tunnel Station or the the Pigeon Ridge State the Delridge Station in the Pigeon Ridge Tunnel and it One of the things that staff asked us to consider in putting forward recommendations is of the alignments, what do we like about the alignments?

And I think for the purple line, what folks liked most about the purple line was not the crossing, but was the station and the tunnel and how that functioned in the community and how it minimized impacts.

And so community members have brought forward a new crossing that would hopefully address many of the concerns that staff had about the previous very south crossing.

I'm going to pass out a handout.

Many of us already have it.

Resist the urge to look at the whole thing.

I'm really just wanting to share it with folks so that they can see how the crossing itself is visualized.

And I'm sorry, I don't have enough for everybody.

pass it down.

Well, you have a copy.

So while that's going around, I just want to time check with you guys.

It's 1130. Permission to continue meeting.

This is important work.

So thank you.

So again this Deals with some of the issues that we've heard the it crosses the Duwamish Rock waterway via a new high-level bridge on the southern end of Harbor Island and it Allows for a transition into a tunnel beneath Pigeon Ridge and then emerges back onto an elevated structure periling Southwest Genesee Street this Allows for limited impact on commercial and residential properties and the elevated routes of course cause significant disruption harm to the existing neighborhood fabric a tunnel under pigeon which Ridge would greatly minimize these impacts.

In addition I think a really important point is that.

There was some concerns, some tribal concerns, about the proposal of the original Duwamish crossing with the Purple Line, as it relates specifically to fishing rights and their desire for a Duwamish crossing as close to the West Seattle Bridge as possible.

And I think this addresses that earlier concern with the proposed Purple Line crossing.

OK.

Cahill, do you have any comments on that at this point?

Certainly, yes.

I think, yeah, we are aware of this idea that has emerged lately.

It does address some of the challenges, as you noted, with the previous definition of that alternative that was screened out because it was, the previous alternative had the widest crossing location, a new crossing location that had obviously many environmental purposing concerns and avoided the active Argo yard issue and so on.

This alternative addresses some of those concerns.

It still has engineering challenges, obviously.

It does require portaling into the steep slope of the Pigeon Point area.

You still have those green belt issues.

It still does involve a second tunnel.

So some of those cost concerns that we previously identified with the previous alternative would still be a concern here.

And it would still have some neighborhood effect at the portal locations.

So it's improvement doesn't go all the way to addressing all the concerns that were identified previously.

So let me just try to summarize and get us across the Duwamish waterway there.

I'm strong interest in the southern crossing with the caveat around the must the north crossing be studied, but then also for the notes that an encouragement that Sound Transit continue to study that even further southern option.

OK.

Yes.

Just got a question for staff.

Between now and the May Sound Transit Board meeting, will we be able to get further analysis of this?

We did look at the Purple Line before and it was over a billion dollars additional costs and had the engineering problems that you've mentioned, Cahill, but how much more information will we have in May?

I'm hesitant to advance something at this late date that we're just so uncertain about.

And previous information was it was led it to be eliminated.

We can try and get you information to help inform your thinking at this point.

But as I said it clearly it does have some of the same challenges that we identified before.

So but we can get you more information.

Thank you.

Moving on to land in the Delridge station council member Gonzalez I don't know if you need to excuse yourself here you want to stay.

I need I am going to go ahead and excuse myself as I have an ongoing conflict of interest until the West Seattle junction issues are dealt with and I also have a committee hearing at noon so.

I have multiple reasons why I unfortunately have to say goodbye to all of you.

But I have enjoyed being part of this group and look forward to next steps.

Thank you.

Can I just say I think we had a quorum of elected officials from West Seattle.

That has been noted more than one time.

Mayor Durkan.

Thank you.

Thank you for your commitment.

OK.

Moving into.

Well we'll.

Yeah.

moving into the Delridge neighborhood.

Does the ELG have a recommendation in this area?

I think an interest, as the SEG move forward, the blue line, I think there's an interest in recognizing that recommendation with also doing more refinement to move the station further south.

And to the, whether that is swinging the turn wider by being on the other side of Delridge or moving the station only to the block, to the one block rather than two to have less impact on the Youngstown neighborhood as we've consistently heard concern.

So I think blue line with that refinement clearly identified as an interest.

Thank you.

Others?

Well I've asked with a number of these decision points in West Seattle for the Sound Transit staff to look at possible design refinements and that includes in Delridge and at Avalon looking for Yes, cost savings, but also reduction of community impacts.

The delivery of high quality transit, including the transfer environments and obviously TOD potential.

I think that what Council Member McDermott just described, trying to achieve some of those benefits with the current Blue Line alignment is an important thing for us to move forward.

I also think that revisiting the Yancey-Andover alignment, but without necessarily the assumption about where that station would be located, which was I think at the time a consolidated station of Avalon and Delridge rather having one that is in a better position to serve Delridge is an important thing for us to give further thought to.

And I've asked the staff to continue looking at whether we could have a Youngstown station essentially that both reduces community impacts and provides excellent transit service to people in Youngstown and throughout the entire Delridge corridor.

Hearing support for blue with the refinements that have been identified by executive Constantine and council member McDermott ensuring that we're continuing the sound transit continues to evaluate cost savings opportunities bus integration and transfers and reducing community impact perhaps by adjusting that station location to to address residential impacts if I could continue.

So, since we're over, I simply must leave.

I've got somewhere I need, an appointment I need to go to, but I want to just entrust to the several dozen other West Seattleites in this panel the opportunity to carry forward some of the better ideas.

I don't think we should continue studying the orange elevated line.

I do think that we should keep an Avalon station in our, study and not eliminated as was suggested by the stakeholder, some of the stakeholder advisory committee.

I do think that we need ultimately to arrive at the junction and not very remote from the junction, that we need to arrive at an underground alignment rather than above ground.

And that there are a lot of refinements still to be made.

But again, the principles of cost savings, reducing impacts, having an excellent transit environment, and TOD potential are continuing to be critical in each of these segments.

To the issue that was raised before, Madam Mayor, about a single preferred alignment or whether we have an alignment that is our current cost assumption and one that we assume is going to cost more.

I don't think we're at a design, a point in the design right now where we can figure out what is going to cost more.

I will cite the example of the Roosevelt Station where we're able to move it inland, put it in a tunnel, tunnel all the way to Northgate because we, thought harder about it and figured out how to do it.

And I think we're in that position here.

There are dozens, really there are hundreds of decisions to be made all along this line and lumping them all into a single, you know, blue line, for example, and saying that's our preference is maybe necessary in certain ways for the constraints we have under under law to study for environmental study but it's not realistically how in the end the decisions are going to get made.

They're going to get made station by station and street by street all the way along the line.

And we need to leave ourselves the latitude to do that as we learn more through study and engineering.

Thank you.

I got to go.

Diane, I also want to be clear.

I also heard Executive Constantine speak to a Yancey-Avalon alignment with a Youngstown station.

Yes, noted.

Okay.

Thank you.

Clarification, are we still talking about both the tunnel option and an elevated option?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

SAG recommendations, essentially.

Yeah, I think there's discussion.

I mean, so let's close out on the, I'm hearing recommendation for advancing the blue with the refinements and including the comments made by Executive Constantine.

No further study of the orange option.

Keep the Avalon Station.

I heard him say also tunnel to the junction.

So I think that if that sits well with the ELG in terms of advancing the blue with the noted refinements and then I want to talk about the The red option councilmember herbal.

Thank you.

So consistent with my earlier recommendation that we study the southern, the more southern Harbor Island crossing in order to facilitate continued study of the Pigeon Ridge Tunnel and the most southern Delridge Station.

I would like to ensure that we continue study consistent with the SAG recommendations.

A number of groups and businesses and labor have written to us in support of continuing this.

The American Waterways Operators, Harbor Island Machine Works, Longshoremen Local 19, East Alaska Just Junction, Neighborhood Coalition, West Seattle Transportation Coalition, the West Seattle Chamber, the Northwest Port Alliance.

I appreciate the concern around cost.

I do sort of bristle at the $1.1 billion number because I think it's really important to consider that that actually includes the $700 million junction tunnel.

So it's, in my mind, It's a $500 million cost, and it is a $500 million cost that I think really addresses one of the primary issues that we have identified through our RET process, and that is that the most southern version of a station will most serve communities of color and low-income communities south in Delridge, and this allows us to do that best, and I believe it's a good investment.

Other thoughts?

Mayor Durkan?

Just moving back to the little bit, I just want to thank the people who came from West Seattle to talk about what those impacts look like in a community.

And I was struck by the irony of here we are a generation later tearing down the viaduct, and yet we are now considering tunnels versus elevating the like.

And I just urge us all through all these things to not just look at cost, but what are the ongoing impacts to the fabric of communities?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Council Member Herbold, I want to make sure you know we've captured that in the notes and appreciate your input on that.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Bank shot just one quick final and I want to acknowledge the neighbors in Delridge in particular they invited all of us out to look at what the impact would be and Consistent with what our mayor just described to have the high elevated going right over there right over their homes Just strikes me as being something that is it's almost breathtaking to consider and as the sooner we can Get rid of that particular option the better

Just thank the staff for great work and the SAG and all the members of the public here.

And as I said before, you know, I really would like to see Seattle, West Seattle, Ballard have the absolute best system they can.

I understand the impacts to neighborhoods.

I continue to be concerned that we need to start to identify those mechanisms for generating the additional revenue that would be necessary for some of the options and I guess I'd encourage the city and the board and perhaps the county and others to convene some discussions on that because those of us in the rest of the system the Sound Transit 3 package you know have our own parts of the system also that are all tied together in this one financial package.

And so we have an interest in it and I encourage and help in any way to help define those and refine those mechanisms that might be available for some of these.

And you know I get tunnels.

I'd like a tunnel myself but we just need to really get real about how we fund those and start to refine that.

And it goes back to my comment about in NEPA looking at feasibility of a project.

Thank you.

We still have a, before we totally wrap up, we need to talk a little bit about the red line alignment.

And so maybe let's do that.

Folks are okay with that.

Yeah, I think as the you know the the cost comparable alternative to the representative project and councilmember Bagshaw noting your interest in Continuing with that evaluation until it can come off Noted, but are there other thoughts on on the red line and can you as an ELG recommend that that go forward as a cost?

comparative alternative

Maybe I can start with the framing and then we get specifics.

I mean the similar to what we did in Ballard I've heard That everyone would much prefer to see a tunnel through the junction.

I think everyone would do that everywhere but we know there is a likely to be a cost Delta between a tunnel and the representative alignment and so in the interest of I assume the board will certainly Want to study an alternative to a tunnel and does this group?

have a preference on what that alternative would look like.

What I've heard is people saying the orange elevated line to the junction is not a preference, and we prefer that not to be studied.

And I believe some version of the representative red alignment with some maybe changes, maybe we may want to make a recommendation, not that that is preferred by any means, but if we're going to study two options, which we should, this would be it.

Do you want to speak to what that mix of turns and twists that that would take to make sense.

I want to concur with your theme and red line to the junction approaching 41st 42nd that we stay in right of way to the best of.

best of our ability throughout that process and is in part motivated by making sure that we're addressing mobility concerns, making sure people can get from the station to the junction on California and that mobility not be hampered by those who have impairments by being too far away and particularly downhill.

So the SAG had recommended that the red line turn south on Font Leroy, which is a number of blocks away from kind of the heart of the junction.

And so...

Actually, just a point of clarification, the SAG made two suggestions in that area, what you noted, but also looking at an option that would essentially get closer to the 41st, 42nd Jefferson Square area.

And I want to be clear that I'm fine with both.

I think there's value in, like we did in Ballard, have a conversation about 14th and 15th and refinements.

I think 41st, 42nd, and Fauntleroy, Ariel, all have value to be studied and go forward.

Excellent.

Colleagues, any other comments on that one?

Separate but related, I concur with Council Member McDermott on his points, but I did want to flag my interest in at least exploring some of the benefits of consolidated stations.

Particularly as it relates to the costs and impacts on ridership, I think it's worth taking more of a look at.

I'm not saying I want to study necessarily getting rid of the Avalon Station, but I would like to know more about the impacts on cost reductions and ridership impacts.

And to the degree we have that, can we also make sure we talk about bus integration?

Absolutely.

So I'm You you've had a good discussion here I'm I don't think there's a clear answer in the West Seattle area and Cahill's going to summarize that for us But I think there are some options more on the table one thing.

I did hear pretty clearly is that orange should come off Yes, great, okay, well we made progress then in the interest of time I Unless there's further discussion at this point

Commissioner Bowman?

Yeah, I'll just make this brief.

But I wanted to go back to Executive Summers' point about the funding issue and really kind of talk about the white elephant in the room.

And I realize that at this stage of most projects, we don't normally have to think about third-party funding options.

But I actually think it's imperative that we start to think about that and I will offer up that the port will be happy to convene the city and the county to sit down and have some conversations about what those options might look like.

I think it's unrealistic to continue to move forward.

We haven't taken much off the table today.

In fact we've added things on.

And so we can continue down this path, but the Sound Transit Board is then going to be making the tough decisions about what's going to be moving forward.

And if we were all okay with the representative alignments and the cost structure around that, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But we want the best alignment that we can have within the City of Seattle, and that's likely to cost more.

And obviously, I'm just stating the obvious.

But for some reason, we've been avoiding that conversation.

So given the fact that the Port of Seattle is impacted at three major sections along the alignment, we have a lot that we could contribute, whether it is land, whether it is money, potentially.

And please make everybody make sure that you understand me.

I'm not saying the port is contributing money.

I'm one of five but I understand that I want to see the best alignment move forward That works for the maritime community and the community at large So I'd be willing to have the port convene if the city and the county want to sit down at the table over the next few months To make recommendations to the board so we can have again a realistic conversation about how this goes as it's moving into the EIS process Welcome your comments or support mayor Durkin

I want to thank Commissioner Bowman for the offer of the port, realizing it would be able to contribute to some of these third-party funding.

I will say again, and I'll put on both my mayor and my Sound Transit board member hat, I think it is absolutely premature to talk about where funding is coming from until we know how much it's going to cost and what those various contributions may look like.

For example, much further south in the system, we are going to be considering what the option should be for the maintenance facility.

There's one option that would rely on Seattle City property that maybe could be in kind it in some way.

So we understand in the city of Seattle that if alignments are more than what a representative alignment would be we have to come up with a very strong funding package to do that.

And you have my word as mayor, together with the port, with the county.

We've already begun those discussions.

But I think it is premature to say, here's where the money's coming from until we know what the money is.

It has never been done in the history of this project.

Some of that funding will come by way of additional staff services.

Some may become by rights of way.

Some may become of land.

Some may become of cash.

It may be the federal government, the state government, the port.

and the tribes as well.

So I think that we really have to know what we're pricing before we say where the money's coming from.

But you have my commitment, Commissioner Bowman, everyone understands that there is a price to choices.

And as we further refine what this alignment looks like, we are going to have to make those choices.

And the City of Seattle will stand and understand that if we want some alignment that is more expensive than a realistic and real price for the representative alignment, then we're going to have to make some choices.

And we could have saving at other junctures.

You know, we may be doing some parts of this alignment cheaper.

Believe it or not, that can happen.

And if we do that, then we want to have the benefit of those cost savings to use them in other places.

So I completely concur, but I think that it's premature and has never been done in a capital project of this size ever that people are saying, you've got to tell me how you're going to pay for it before we even study it.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying that we should figure out all of the answers.

I'm saying that we should convene a working group to start thinking about it.

And with all due respect, the port perhaps sometimes thinks of things differently because we frequently, we use our public dollars, but we go to the private sector as well as we put together our projects.

We need return on investment for our projects.

So we tend to look at things a little bit differently than a regular public agency that doesn't consider return on investment.

So again, we're just here to offering our help, and we'd like to start earlier rather than later.

Just one last comment on putting my NEPA hat back on again.

I think the point I've been trying to make is as we go forward in the NEPA process we have to have a range of alternatives that cover the basis so we don't paint ourselves into a corner.

And that's what I've been very nervous about is if we only have high cost options and at the end of the day that's what we've studied and the money doesn't come forward or the savings don't come forward, then we're kind of stuck.

And so I don't want to cut off our options.

And I'll continue to promote that we have a range of cost options so that at the end of the day, we have an alternative that we can adopt.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I'd like to turn it over in these last few minutes that we have together, turn it over to Cahill to kind of summarize what we've heard today for you and what's going to go forward in terms of next steps.

Yeah, I'll just briefly recap the discussion in the inter-bay area.

We heard support for the tunnel on 14th and 15th, support for the high-fixed bridge, and not support for the movable bridge.

And then a recommendation to let the board consider further whether or not to move forward with the 20th tunnel idea.

Smith Cove, looking at both Gaylor and Prospect locations, the blue and the brown.

Downtown the fifth and Harrison alternative recognizing there's some work around the Westlake area to look at transfers In the CID area continues to look at all the alternatives in that area moving forward In the Soto area support for moving forward the e3 at grade option Recognizing the need to look at e3 busway effects effects on Ryerson base and adjacent property owner effects in the Duwamish area support for continuing to look at the south crossing Recognizing that there may be a need to continue to look at the north crossing also Consideration of a for the board to consider whether or not to look at this modified this new idea Pigeon Ridge tunnel so that would be a similar to the conversation in Ballard about the 20th tunnel and in Delridge support for the blue alternative but looking at refinements in that area to try and Reduce neighborhood effects and ensure good quality bus rail integration in that area And also some revisiting of the Yancey-Andover discussion with a potential Youngstown station.

Again, focused on the principles of trying to reduce community effects, improve bus rail integration, and identify cost reductions.

And then finally, West Seattle, continuing to look at the blue tunnel and red modified, essentially the SAG recommendations in that area.

Not support for the orange alternative, and not support for advancing the Avalon station location And just continue to look at opportunities for cost reductions again in that area as well and bus rate integration In terms of next steps, I'll be very brief as you know These recommendations will go to the Sound Transit Board to first of all the system expansion committee on May 9th and it's full board on May 23rd.

After that, as you all know, we'll be moving into the environmental review process from 2019 to 2022 and from there to design and construction.

Briefly, just to give you a very quick sense of the environmental review schedule, we'd obviously go to the board in May and then we'd kick off the EIS process.

We'll be essentially doing the conceptual engineering work through next year.

We'll be developing the draft EIS.

We'll also be actively engaging on station planning activities, and our expectation at this point is to publish the draft EIS and have another public comment period late next year, at which time the board will again be asked to confirm or modify the preferred alternative.

Engagement during the alternatives development phase has been really important and very useful to the team and to the process.

As we go forward, we'll continue to want to engage communities through the DEIS process.

The types of things that we'll be engaging with the community on are first reporting back on the alternatives development process and what made it through.

What the EIS process is and what to expect?

issues of environmental justice station planning potential property impacts and also when we have the DEIS evaluation results working through those with the community and And we'll continue to engage in a variety of forms.

We've learned a lot over the last year, and it's really helped build a foundation for engagement through the EIS process.

So community briefings and meetings, listening sessions, the door-to-door outreach, the community workshops, plug meetings, fairs and festivals, online.

We'll continue to do those things to engage the community.

Thank you.

I would just conclude.

I know you all want to get out of here.

Just to thank you for all of your hard work over the last year.

and for all the feedback they received today.

And, of course, we'll be continuing to engage actively with all of you moving forward.

So, colleagues and staff and members of the public, thank you all so much for this engagement.

I want to just take one second here to frame up where I think we are.

While there were some new ideas floated today, I do think that we've done an amazing job collectively with a lot of community input to really narrow the refinements.

And I think we walk out of this with I hope the board hears clarity of frankly a single alignment that would achieve all of our goals but maybe with some financial concerns and we've supported two alternatives, one in Ballard and one in West Seattle that would hopefully be lower cost depending on where that goes.

Obviously there's a number of design refinements throughout that path that we've asked folks to look at and I think you have clarity on some of the things that this group cares about.

But I'm really proud of what was accomplished, and I really appreciate Sound Transit taking the voters' sentiments seriously about how can we speed things up and move this along.

And so this has been a new process, and I appreciate that.

The elected leadership group will cease to formally exist after this moment, as will the stakeholder advisory group, I believe.

But I do think they've served a valuable purpose and I think as we go through the EIS, I would ask that the parties involved consider considering a formal role for ongoing engagement from both community and elected leaders so that we don't feel like there's a two or three year silent period while the EIS is going on and continue those discussions.

I also want to just acknowledge what came up at the end of this discussion about third-party funding, and I think there's a tension between some folks saying, how can we even talk about funding until we know what the actual bill is going to be, and others saying, we know there's going to be something that needs to be done, so let's start talking sooner.

I think that it's appropriate.

I think there's a way to achieve both those goals.

And I would suggest what I think others have is at a high level we start convening some conversations about at least the range of options.

My fear being that if we get to the end of the process, another price tag, and then we have to start a multiyear funding conversation, we're talking about delay again.

And so some way to carry on those conversations in parallel I think will be important.

I really appreciate the chance to co-chair this, so thanks for that opportunity.

I'll turn it over to my colleague.

Thank you, Council Member O'Brien.

Mayor Durkin made a reference earlier about highways creating divides in our communities and the fact that right now the city finds ourselves tearing down the viaduct.

I think the work we have invested in here actually builds communities together.

We've recognized some sensitive points and don't have a single alternative.

There wasn't an expectation that we have a single alternative today.

And we've also identified some key work that needs to be done for particularly this neighborhood, the Chinatown International District, to make sure we are uniting and supporting this community.

I think we've all done this work, this body of work, really well.

It's been my pleasure to co-chair with Councilmember O'Brien.

I want to thank the public.

I want to thank the Stakeholder Advisory Group.

I want to thank Sound Transit staff and my colleagues on the Elected Leaders Group.

for working this process with us and for doing great work for our communities.

Thank you.

And with that, we will be adjourned.

Thanks.