Transportation Committee 2/6/2024

All right, the February 6th, 2024 meeting of the Transportation Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I am Rob Saka, Chair of the Transportation Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Wu?

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Chair Saka?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present and one excused.

Yes, I note that Council Member Strauss has an excused absence from the Council President's office to be in Olympia.

All right, if there is no objections, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is adopted.

All right, first and foremost, welcome colleagues, members of the public.

And presenters, thank you all for being here today.

We get to pioneer our very first Seattle City Council Committee of this council and of this calendar year as well.

Really eager to get started on the important work and conversations on transportation policy and planning ahead in our city and really eager to meet and continue to meet the people who do the work every day.

Personally, as chair, I am really focused on maintaining our infrastructure, preserving and maintaining our infrastructure with a heavy focus on bridges and streets.

Representing District 1, which includes West Seattle, one of my goals is to make sure that no other community in Seattle experiences what we experience with the protracted closure of a critical bridge.

There are over 100 bridges 50-plus bridges, as I understand, in the city that SDOT has a role in inspecting and maintaining, so we need to do better in that area.

I also want to focus on safety and comfort of pedestrians and making real, tangible progress on our Vision Zero goals in part through a once-in-a-generation investment in new sidewalk infrastructure.

We want to focus on improving the transit rider experience beyond just the frequency and reliability of transit.

Also, let us focus on climate with growth towards electrification in all sectors of transportation from a fully electrified fleet through adding existing charging, EV charging infrastructure throughout the city.

And Let us also make sure that whatever policies we design, in this case, transportation policies, are not only equitable by design and on paper, let us challenge ourselves to do the work to make sure that they're also equitable in implementation as well.

I look forward to a spirited discussion about the size and direction of the upcoming transportation levy with you all and members of the public.

Colleagues, at this time, we will open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comment should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the Transportation Committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we have two remote speakers and two in-person speakers.

All right, we will start with in-chamber speakers first.

Today, each speaker will have 90 seconds, a minute and a half.

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Clerk, will you please provide the instructions?

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website or in the sign-up sheet available here in council chambers.

I will alternate between sets.

I think I'll just alternate between in-person and remote.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment period by going to the council's website or by signing up on the sign-up sheet near the public comment microphone.

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

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

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you're addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or within the purview of the Transportation Committee.

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

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

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

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed in the agenda.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list, Remote speakers, please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Today, I think we'll start with speakers in the chambers and we'll start off with Doug Palmer.

Is this the right microphone here?

Can you hear me?

Thank you.

My name is Doug Palmer.

I live in a continuing care retirement community called Skyline, which is located just a few blocks up the hill.

I'm here to talk about term permits specifically relating to SkyBridges.

Our community is divided by 8th Avenue.

We have recently filed a petition for a SkyBridge across 8th between Columbia and Cherry to integrate the two sides of our community.

Since this petition will ultimately be coming before the City Council for approval, we wanted to give you a heads up.

We understand that you will be receiving a briefing this morning on term permits, including for sky bridges.

We are keenly aware that as a general proposition, sky bridges are not encouraged in Seattle, especially ones for private use.

Nevertheless, the city has approved private sky bridges where there were good reasons warranting an exception to the general rule.

We think that our proposed sky bridge presents good reasons for an exception in our case.

We have documented serious safety concerns over the past two years for residents crossing 8th Avenue between the skyline buildings.

Given the age and frailty of our residents, there is no practical way to address them except with a skybridge.

Having one is viewed as an urgent matter of need by 95% of our residents.

We welcome a broader conversation at the appropriate time as our petition unfolds.

Our next speaker is Gordon Pedelford.

Hello.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Pedelford.

I'm the executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and we're a nonprofit that works to make every neighborhood a great place to walk, bike, enroll, and live.

And I'm just excited to be here on the first day.

I think the Transportation Committee is the best committee, so congratulations.

And thank you, Chair Saka, for your words on Vision Zero.

It's something that we hold really dear to our hearts because we think everyone should be able to get home safely to their loved ones every day on our transportation system.

And I would just offer the way our nonprofit is set up, we have all these different neighborhood groups around the city, which is really exciting because it means we have our ear to the ground in terms of what's needed, what communities are telling us, what the problems are.

So I would just offer us as a resource, both on my staff at the citywide level as you're learning more about transportation policy and our local volunteers and neighborhoods across the city as you're trying to learn about specific issues in different neighborhoods.

So thank you so much and look forward to collaborating with you all.

Next up, we have Desiree Hunter coming to us through Zoom.

Good morning and welcome to the new council members.

My name is Desiree Hunter.

I am a lifelong Seattleite.

I live on Beacon Hill in District 2. I've been a city employee for 25 years.

Since 2008, I have worked in the Information Technology Department, maintaining both Seattle's street network data and our address data in the city's geographic information system, or GIS.

I am requesting an audience with members of the Transportation Committee regarding two topics which have a direct bearing on the City's street data, especially in terms of emergency response and public safety.

These topics are related to SDOT stewardship of our right of way, and the topics require more time than what is allotted here today.

This GIS data that I maintain is pulled into both police and fire emergency dispatch systems And my position is partially supported with regional emergency 911 funding.

So my request here today for your time is not made lightly or frivolously.

I will email the Transportation Committee members so that you have my contact information.

Thank you so much for your consideration and have a great day.

Next up is David Haynes.

Thank you, City Council.

There's two issues in public transportation.

The first one is all the potholes that the bus drivers drive over, jolting your back and damaging the buses.

And the other is the nefarious activities, behavioral crisis, and the public safety and health concerns in and around the bus stops that make it a living hell for an innocent bus patron.

And I proposed to the city council that they convince the bus union drivers to start reporting the potholes and invigorate the pothole brigade.

And the second issue is convince and help coordinate between Metro police and the Seattle police who seem to like to argue that it's not their responsibility.

If you're an inch off the bus stop, Metro will not coordinate with the cops and the cops claim that they can't do anything nefarious acts are going on inside the bus and if the bus drivers would report all the nefarious activities that continue to like permeate our society right at the buses and then have a better coordinated effort between metro and city police we could solve some of the problems but the real like issue is when the cops show up they do not Trespass the individuals, and they never question them to find out where they got the drugs to go shut it down.

They just sweep them off.

They just push people off the bus stop, or they use an excuse that they're inside the bus.

And it needs to be addressed by shutting down all the low-level drug pushers.

All right.

Clerk, as I understand it, that is the end of our signed up public commenters.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Introduction to the Seattle Department of Transportation.

All right, well.

First off, welcome Director Spatz, SDOT leadership team.

We're really excited to hear from you all this morning.

I want to thank you all again for the terrific briefings that you've been giving me personally offline and helping me to get up to speed on what we do at SDOT and many more to come.

But I am very impressed by your level of professionalism and expertise and level of collaboration that you're displaying towards me as a, as a new transportation chair in this role.

Uh, and I'm really looking forward director spots to continuing our partnership together, uh, working closely with you and your team as we, again, shape and design the transportation policy for the city for the next 10, 20 years plus.

So, uh, Well, our presenters, sounds like you already joined us at the table.

Please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Good morning, everybody.

And it's really exciting to be item one on meeting one of the committee calendar.

I'm Greg Spotts, SDOT director.

I've been in this role for about 17 months.

I started Labor Day weekend of 2022, moving up here from Los Angeles.

Let me introduce everybody who's here.

To my right is Bill Laborde.

He's our council liaison, and he'll be an amazing resource for you and your staff.

He's one of, I believe he's one of the most knowledgeable people in the city and a very helpful person.

a colleague to collaborate with.

Next to him is Chris Castleman.

She's our Director of Finance and Administration.

She'll be a character you'll get to know well during budget season and is in charge of a budget that exceeds $700 million a year when you combine the operating budget and the capital budget.

Next to her is Elizabeth Sheldon, our first chief infrastructure engineer.

She's in a deputy director role, but I created a new title of the chief infrastructure engineer so that when we come to venues like this, I can bring a licensed professional civil engineer to speak about complex issues like our movable bridges.

Thank you, Liz, for taking on that role.

And down at the end is my senior deputy, Francisca Stephan, who's got a wide range of responsibilities, including transportation operations, design, the execution of capital projects, and our various interaction with transit and other mobility services.

Not here today is my other deputy, Rodney Maxey, who oversees our crews.

Unfortunately, he wasn't feeling well this morning, but you'll all get a chance to get to know him very soon.

So our presentation today, we're gonna keep this item under an hour and there'll be opportunities for dialogue.

We're gonna go through four things.

I'm gonna briefly share with you our mission and values.

I just already did number two, introducing you to our leadership and organization.

We're going to spend most of this time going through different lines of business that we have, and I've clustered them into about four groupings.

And at the end of each grouping, we'll pause and take a few questions.

And then at the end, there's a very short item about how SDOT is funded.

We have a variety of different funding streams.

It's one of the more complex agencies in terms of our revenues.

So our vision and mission statement.

Seattle is a thriving, equitable community powered by dependable transportation.

We're on a mission to deliver a transportation system that provides safe and affordable access to places and opportunities.

Our core values are equity, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability, and excellence.

And I embraced these existing core values when I joined the agency, but I offered to staff a definition of excellence, and that I believe an excellent public agency is innovative, responsive, transparent, and accountable.

And that's our commitment to you, that we will interact with this committee in that spirit.

So let's go to our first category of services, the services that maintain a safe and functional public right-of-way.

And let's begin in the Transportation Operations Center.

We have a control room in the Seattle Municipal Tower across the street that is staffed 24 hours, seven days a week.

And there's this...

really amazing projection on the wall that can put up dozens of different images, live video images from our 500 cameras that are out there on the street.

And our operators there have software that can allow them to change the signal timing, to contact agencies that might need to respond to an issue.

This is an especially helpful facility when we have a special event or a weather event For example, we had extra staffing during the Major League All-Star Week in the center, and it's a really cool place to visit.

We'd love to host any of you who are interested in dropping by.

That center is run by a division, Transportation Operations.

And at its very base level, the system, the road system is run in part by a set of 1100 traffic signals.

There's also about 500 cameras associated with those intersections, and there's more than 1,000 auxiliary traffic control devices like flashing beacons that are available for pedestrians to push a button and then cross.

And our Transportation Operations Division designs, operates, and maintains that equipment.

There's about 150 staff in transportation operations.

Some of them are traffic engineers and data analysts who work in the office, but some of them work out in the field.

We have a specialized workforce of signal electricians who maintain our traffic signals and the complex hardware and software in those signal control cabinets.

Next slide, please.

Our traffic engineers also utilize a variety of non-electric traffic control devices that we cluster up and call signs and markings.

And there's a large team in signs and markings under my deputy, Rodney Maxey, who implements the work orders that the traffic engineers make for signs and pavement markings.

I've spent a lot of time visiting our Signs and Markings crews on the weekends.

I think I'm one of the only people in this type of position who shows up on public transportation to visit his crews, and I'm very proud of that.

And I do it throughout the weekend and sometimes at night and in bad weather.

Our signs and markings, folks, are kind of like the Swiss Army knife of SDOT because they can do almost anything.

They can install a bike rack.

They can fix a guardrail or a crash cushion.

They can put down green markings for protected bike lanes.

They can put down red markings for bus lanes.

And I just find it fascinating.

a lot of fun that they can come out on a weekend and transform a corner or a corridor and change how that street functions through these low-cost interventions that they control.

I'd like to speak a moment about safety.

During the interview process, when the mayor was looking at candidates for director of SDOT, I raised up the idea that, Big cities around the country were having an increase in the number of people killed and seriously injured on their streets during COVID.

And the department should have a hypothesis as to why and what we might do differently to start to reduce those number of killed and seriously injured and make our streets safer.

So in conjunction with the mayor on my first day on the job, I commissioned a top to bottom review of our Vision Zero safety program.

That review was published in February, 2023, and it contained almost a hundred recommendations, five of which the mayor and I elevated as early momentum actions for SDOT to focus on in 2023. And I think probably the most important thing I've had the opportunity to do in my year and a half on the job is to elevate Venu Namani, who used to be in the position of city traffic engineer, to an executive level position as chief safety officer of SDOT.

We had not had a chief safety officer before.

And many of the recommendations in the top to bottom review were centered around the idea that decision-making on safety was sometimes diffused or even confusing in the organization.

And the intent of appointing a chief safety officer and placing the Vision Zero team directly under Venu's control is to align responsibility, accountability, and authority so that one executive is in charge of all of our safety efforts.

And we're seeing a lot of great results from doing that.

And Venu Namani reports directly to Francisco, my senior deputy.

We will be coming to you with a Vision Zero implementation plan for discussion in the next several months that builds on the findings of the top to bottom review.

The top to bottom review is available online and Bill, maybe you can share that link with the council members and their staff after this meeting.

That reports a really good background on where we are with safety and it also describes this very exciting $25 million grant that we got from the federal government in the first quarter of last year that will finance around 100 different safety interventions across the city, the majority of which are in historically underserved communities.

So we're very proud to bring in that federal funding, which is a substantial increase in the funding for Vision Zero.

Next slide, please.

We maintain a small call center that takes in customer requests, some of which we're able to dispatch 24-7 and some of which wait till the next business day.

We receive requests from everything pertaining to fixing a pothole or requests that a tree limb has fallen down and needs to be picked up, but also much more complex requests pertaining to Let's say a real estate development project is working out in the street and blocking the access to a business.

We have a wide variety of different types of requests and complaints that we take in, and we refer them to the appropriate folks within the agency to work on.

We have a very interesting small team, the Seattle Response Team, who rolls out to complex traffic incidents.

They work individually.

They have these pickup trucks full of different tools.

And they're able to do really difficult things like get a semi truck going where the brakes have seized.

They have a wide variety of skills, and they're working around the clock to go out and be the first eyes on a number of incidents that happen on the roadway.

The bulk of our crews work a regular Monday to Friday shift.

Next slide, Bill.

When we're facing an unusual event like we're expecting snow and ice, we may move into a 12-hour shift posture where we have a 12-hour day shift and a 12-hour night shift.

Back at the end of the year, we had some cold and icy weather for a few days.

And for about 72 hours, we had at least 50 people working both day and night.

Sometimes we need to even put some of our folks up in hotels because they may not be able to get here from the suburbs where they live if there's enough snow and ice.

So we're very proud that we have some really comprehensive plans that we can roll out depending on the severity of different incidents.

One of the particular types of crews that I'm especially fond of from my days in L.A.

is urban forestry.

We have a small but mighty urban forestry team at SDOT that includes licensed arborists who do tree inspections and process various kinds of permits.

And then we have several tree maintenance and trimming crews that are out doing proactive and reactive work.

And we work very closely with other departments, depending on what type of tree emergency it is.

During a recent rainstorm on a weekend, I visited one of our tree crews when a tree that's located in a city park fell across a city street.

And because it was the weekend, we were best positioned to get out there and chop it up and stack that wood to the side of the road, and then parks could come on Monday and further clean it up.

So there's a lot of coordination that goes on between the departments.

And then something that we're very lucky to have is we have a full-time emergency operations coordinator named Patty Quirk.

She has a variety of different activities.

certifications in emergency management.

She often volunteers to work on state fire issues during the summer.

And it means that we don't have to find someone within the organization to interact with.

central emergency operations in the city, we have somebody whose full-time job it is to prepare for and quarterback our response in incidents.

And I feel very lucky to have someone of Patty's caliber in that role.

So why don't we pause there and see if there's any questions about the safe operation of our road system.

Chair?

Go ahead, Councilmember Kiff.

Good morning, Director Spatz and team.

Welcome here.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce myself to you and highlight a few things from this introductory session.

I'm Bob Kettle, representing District 7. Previously, I represented the Queen Anne Community Council, which has given me great insight on transportation issues.

And I just wanted to highlight a few things from a District 7 perspective and from my background, particularly given I chair the Public Safety Committee with my vice chair sitting to my left, a fellow member, sitting to my right, and an honorary member with Councilmember Wu also participating.

And so public safety, for example, I view traffic safety and pedestrian safety to be key elements of that, and that's something where the two committees can work together.

It's helpful that he's my vice chair and I'm on his committee, And so that will be something that's very important to organizations that are out there.

We've been working my previous life as a volunteer on Division Zero pieces.

And so we support those goals that are there.

Mindful, too, like while we may support a, you know, do something with First West on the top of Queen Anne between Crockett and Howe, but there's other streets that like I-5, we should not be doing it.

So we have to right-size the answer, but definitely support pushing the traffic safety and pedestrian safety aspects of public safety through the Vision Zero program.

And also be mindful, as one of the speakers mentioned, how best to support the first responders as we work through those options.

PREVIOUS LIFE AS A VOLUNTEER, TOO, I NOTE REGARDING SIGNALS, I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING UPDATES REGARDING THE, QUOTE, UNQUOTE, MERCER MESS AND ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND HOW THEY'RE BEING IMPROVED AS WE GO THROUGH THE COURSE OF THIS TERM.

AND AS WE SEE IN DISTRICT 7, YOU KNOW, DOWNTOWN, BELLTOWN, UPTOWN, THE EAST, SOUTH, WEST LAKES, AND THEN ACROSS TO QUEEN ANNE, INTERBAY, AND MAGNOLIA, THERE'S DEFINITELY AREAS WHERE WE CAN HAVE SOME CONGESTION AND USING TECHNOLOGY which happens to sit in the section of my colleague to the Rights Committee.

You know, try to leverage those technologies to improve service.

I default to my chair as king of the potholes, but we definitely have potholes issues I hear from constituents on a regular basis.

I have one in mind, his name's John, lives in Belltown.

I'll give him a shout-out in terms of, you know, that's an important issue because it goes to the functionality of the streets.

Now, with all that said, I just also wanted to highlight from a District 7 perspective, and somewhat what the Chair noted at the very beginning, is that for District 7, bridges are very important.

You know, we have six just across Interbay.

Obviously, with the flyover Magnolia Bridge, queen of all bridges.

You know, how can we, I noticed your federal grant.

It's like, how can we leverage every piece of government level to do something regarding Magnolia?

But we also have the Dravis bridges.

People forget it's not just 15th, it's the railroad yard as well.

And then Emerson.

Not to mention, very important to us is the connecting bridges.

You know, the Ballard, the Fremont, the Aurora Bridge, even the East Lake, which is kind of a different type of bridge.

And then, internally, like Wolf Creek Ravine, we have a couple bridges over that as well.

So we have some bridges, and I'm very keenly interested in the status of those bridges in terms of their, again, from a public safety perspective, in terms of where they are from an engineering and safety perspective.

So with all that said, just leveraging some of these slides just to do an introduction, in a way, and a welcome, thank you, and will we be working related to public safety and transportation?

And just to highlight some of the things that really matter to us here in District 7 as it relates to transportation.

So thank you and welcome.

Thank you so much.

And I'm looking forward to collaborating with you.

And I'm also one of your residents.

I live in South Lake Union and I don't have a car, so I rely on walking and the bus system and would love to look at some of the locations that you're interested in together anytime that you'd like to.

Always good to meet another district constituent.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth, Councilmember Wu, do you have any questions, comments during this portion?

Not at this time.

Same.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

So we're going to move to a second cluster of services that maintain and modernize transportation assets and infrastructure so that we can be good stewards of public investments.

You'll hear me say maintain and modernize frequently because I believe we can do both at the same time.

The most cost-effective time to make a street safer or greener or more walkable or more transit-friendly is when we're repaving it.

And I think that we should not just kind of rebuild our streets exactly the same as they were designed in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, but when we're coming there to fix something, let's build it back better.

And I'm very passionate about doing that, and the staff has been really rallying around that idea.

We have a variety of plans that help guide our investments and our programs.

And I happened to join at a time where some very important plans were underway, and I'm really enjoying contributing to the maturation of those plans.

Previously, there was a bike plan, a pedestrian plan, a freight plan, and a transit plan, and they were all separate and they'd all been done at different times, sometimes by different staff and with different public outreach.

And we've pulled together a replacement for all that as the Seattle Transportation Plan, a holistic integrated plan for all modes that also includes a public space activation component, which I'm really excited about.

and we will be bringing a version of the Seattle Transportation Plan to you for consideration and possible adoption in the next couple of months.

I think that'll be a really fascinating discussion.

We're also working on various plans to be good stewards of our infrastructure.

We're in the final stages of completing the Bridge Strategic Asset Management Plan and the Transportation Asset Management Plan for our non-bridge assets.

Heading into 2025, Estad will have an updated and comprehensive set of plans to guide what we choose to do.

Next slide.

When we decide to do a project, there's an early phase called project development, which takes the project from zero to 30% design.

And this is the point where we're co-creating with the community, where we are working really closely to define what's the problem we're trying to solve, what are the different techniques that we could use to get that going.

And there is a role in SDOT called a project developer that's a very creative and interesting role that gets you to that 30% design milestone.

And then subsequent to that, we go into detailed design.

More and more of that gets taken over by engineers who are figuring out how the drainage is going to work, where the conduit's going to go for the new streetlight, et cetera.

And then when we complete design, we're ready to go into construction.

And we have the capability to implement some smaller projects with our own city forces, which is a very cost-effective and quick way to do things.

And I'm very pleased that we have that.

There are smaller cities who can't implement their own capital projects and have to bid them all out.

So let's talk about these smaller projects.

We call it crew delivery.

Next slide, Bill.

And we're delivering 200 or more projects a year with the same folks who also do regular small paving jobs and restoring a traffic sign that get knocked down, et cetera.

We utilize asphalt crews, concrete crews, and signs and markings crews to deliver these smaller projects.

Something that we tried recently that I'm very pleased about how it's working is we have a Beacon Hill bike lane and safety project on 15th that's going to be contracted But we worked with the community to identify some early safety deliverables which SDOT staff could install even while the project was still in design.

And we installed those late last year.

There are some speed cushions and some temporary curb bulb outs with paint and post.

And I think that's a very interesting way to get the community excited about a project is bring forth a couple of the deliverables with our own team while we're working on the larger project that'll be implemented by a contractor.

Next slide.

We have a pretty good size asphalt paving operation and we pave smaller residential streets and also do medium and large asphalt repairs, which is bigger than a pothole, but smaller than the whole street.

And it's very helpful to have that heavy equipment and that skill to be able to do that.

Next slide.

We also have some extensive concrete crews who can do everything from building ADA ramps, repairing utility cuts, to even fixing whole panels of a street.

Last summer, I went out and visited Sandpoint Way, and we have a program there where we're kind of targeting the worst of the worst concrete slabs and replacing them, which is short of like a contractor delivered full concrete street reconstruction, but actually brings the street up into a state of good repair by working on the panels that have really been cracked up.

And it's great that we have those capabilities.

So now I'm going to transition away from our in-house work to the work that we contract out.

The larger projects are managed by a group that we call the Capital Projects Division under the leadership of Francisco.

And they do everything from design and contract out bridge repair, major paving projects, major transit and multimodal projects, sea walls and retaining walls.

And the photo there, you can see this is our project on Madison, Rapid Ride G, which is our largest current project in construction.

It's a three-year construction duration, and it will be completed in late summer.

And we're very, very excited to have that next rapid ride corridor.

Interestingly, the Madison project has some center bus boarding islands, and that's the first time we've had that configuration in Seattle.

And King County Metro actually needed to order special buses that have doors on both sides so that you can let people off on curbside at some of the stops and let people off in the center boarding island at some other ones.

So it's going to be really exciting to make that a rapid and comfortable connection all the way up that critical diagonal street of Madison.

Here's a few examples of recently delivered capital projects.

I don't know how the staff picked some of my very favorites.

The John Lewis Memorial Bridge is a bike and pedestrian bridge that connects the Northgate Link light rail station with all the communities to the west.

It's really hard to imagine how folks would get to that station without this bridge because I-5 is right there.

So this bridge flies you over I-5 and it's architecturally significant and it's really neat that it was named after Congressman John Lewis, the historic civil rights leader.

In the middle, Rapid Ride H, right in Chair Saka's neighborhood, heading down Delridge, a really neat opportunity to rethink a corridor, put in all kinds of, you know, it's basically like a hundred-year infrastructure update as you're, building this bus corridor and a really terrific and speedy connection between downtown and West Seattle.

And on the right, there's a great project in Rainier Beach, the Henderson Stairs.

And this connects Hilltop Community with the Rainier Beach Station.

If you were going to walk along the street, like three quarters of a mile, but this just cuts you right down the hill.

It's a pretty neat project to check out and also a fun place to exercise.

So let's move on to our bridges and roadway structures.

Oh, sorry, I missed this last one.

Capital projects that we're gonna be working on this year include, we have more than a half a dozen bridge seismic retrofits, which will make bridges less vulnerable to earthquakes.

Those are going into construction.

We have four important bike and safety corridors in the South End.

When I got here, I learned from community members that there's a feeling that the bike facilities on the northern half of Seattle are much more robust than the ones in the south end.

And I really wanted to change that.

I clustered these four projects up together as like a director's special.

and had an executive be my liaison to those projects.

And we're really excited to be getting all four of them into construction this year and would love to take you guys out there when we're in construction and show you how we're gonna make the south end more bikeable.

We also have a really neat project that received some funding from the port, the East Marginal Way Corridor Improvement Project.

And this is a interesting corridor because It's really highly necessary for both freight and cyclists.

And there's a unique design that we're going to implement there with concrete separation between those two modes so that both of them can get through that narrow part of the city and connect north and south.

We're really excited to be breaking ground on that project shortly.

This summer, we're going to finish Rapid Ride G and we're going to start Rapid Ride J. And Rapid Ride J connects South Lake Union and downtown with a university.

And that's an absolutely critical transit and bike connection.

And that will be one of our very largest projects when we get that started this summer.

We have a variety of arterial paving projects that are contracted out in which we've added some safety and multimodal goodies.

And 15th Avenue in Ballard is one of them.

It'll resurface the Ballard Bridge and resurface 15th all the way to Market.

And one of the nice things we've added on that project is a traffic signal at 51st, which will make a connection between the main downtown of Ballard and the emerging brewery district.

Because right now, this 15th acts like sort of a barrier between those two very vibrant places.

And I'm excited to help make a better connection there.

That was a good slide, Bill.

I really shouldn't have skipped that one.

Okay, bridges and roadway structures.

This is a special group that's under the supervision of Liz Sheldon, and this team has both engineers and specialty crews.

We have crews who have a variety of different special capabilities to do our smaller bridge repair work.

You can see on the slide the large quantities of different types of specialty assets that we maintain.

We have some capabilities that are unique in the region.

We have a specialty truck with this incredible arm that can take you up or down and inspect parts of the bridge that would be very hard to visualize without it.

And other neighboring communities ask us sometimes to help them with their inspections.

But we are really focusing this team's efforts on Seattle assets because we have so many key assets to maintain.

An interesting thing about this job as director of SDOT is if the Spokane Street Bridge doesn't open, then Alaska starves.

No pressure.

A lot of the food that is consumed in Alaska comes up through the Duwamish and goes through our rotating bridge at Spokane Street.

We have four movable bridges.

That one, University, Ballard, and...

And we actually employ bridge operators who staff these bridges and take note of when a boat comes and make sure the bridge is closed and then close to pedestrians and cyclists and cars and then open up the bridge.

And we're expected to open that bridge within 15 minutes by Coast Guard rules.

So it's really interesting how...

the maritime nature of our Seattle economy plays through into SDOT's own work plan here.

So maintaining those bridges is a really critical task.

Each one is unique, sort of a unique a complex mechanical and electrical object.

And one reason why I created that chief infrastructure engineer position was to have an executive level person who could oversee that very complex work of keeping those in a state of good repair.

So why don't we pause there at the end of that segment for any questions?

Colleagues?

Council Member Wu.

Could you talk a little bit more about what community outreach looks like?

And how do you pick projects based on community output?

Sure.

You know, when I interviewed for this job, I told Mayor Harrell that the era of transportation planners drawing lines on a map and then telling the community what they were gonna get had to end.

And we need to enter an era of co-creating projects with the community with a special emphasis on investing in historically underserved areas.

And when I got here, I found a department that had a very robust and multi-layered set of different tools for community outreach.

a department that had recently adopted a transportation equity framework that includes more than 200 techniques that we can use.

We talk about bringing the table to people who don't even know there is a table.

and bringing it to them in their language that they want to communicate with us and in a culturally relevant way.

And so I was really attracted by that transportation equity framework.

It was one of the reasons why I wanted to pursue this job.

And so we're constantly trying to lift that up and bring that to life.

One of the...

Areas that we'll be discussing as we frame up a potential new transportation levy is could we have more programs that explicitly bring the community in in the early stages to help identify what it is that they need.

We have had some programs like that in the past and the funding for them has kind of come and gone here and there.

Those programs are very popular programs where there's staff and money available to kind of solve a problem that the community lifts up that we might not have detected in our making of large-scale plans.

And we'll be discussing with you ways to further sort of institutionalize that and fund it better as we go forward.

Quick question, actually a couple.

On that point, first, I'd like to thank you for that slide.

I recognize McGraw and Seventh West.

The place I noted earlier on First West Crockett, that's near McClure, and what that picture represented was a crosswalk near Coe Elementary, so I really appreciate the work related to neighborhood schools and making them safer, very important.

And along those lines, in terms of the communities, you should know that I'm gonna be setting up, it's kind of an informal-formal District 7 neighborhood council where I bring together the community councils plus other organizations to fill in the gaps.

And so, my goal is to make them smarter on transportation issues so they put a stronger demand signal on SDOT in terms of getting that community input in there, because it's so important, just like those two examples I just mentioned, but plus others.

And speaking of neighborhoods and the like, and a bigger picture, I'm curious, In general, one of the things I really want to push is our relationship with the port.

I believe, as I've said many times, that we were a port city 100 years from now.

We need to be a port city 100 years from now in the future.

And so how can we make a viable port in the future?

And a lot of this comes down to logistics, and logistics is transportations, road, rail, and the like.

And I was just curious...

since you mentioned the Marginal Way project, anything related to the port and to facilitate their operations.

And my belief is that if we do address this, then maybe we can move forward on other areas of the port-city relationship.

Yeah, I agree with that as a very important place to focus our efforts.

And we have a variety of different points of collaboration with the port and various folks within SDOT who face the port on different issues.

And, you know, we have a history of identifying projects of shared interest and even finding ways to jointly fund those projects.

So we have a great line of communication with the port and other similar entities.

And we do want to help bring a thought leadership role into, for example, last mile delivery.

Are there ways to make last mile delivery lower carbon and perhaps smaller and lower polluting?

It's a very interesting time where the world is rethinking how we move goods around.

And we want to be strong partners in all of that.

All right, thank you.

Go ahead.

I also hadn't mentioned just a further follow-up on the community outreach.

We have several different advisory boards, which are like points of connection for the public, and they meet monthly.

We have a pedestrian advisory board, a bike advisory board, we have a freight advisory board, we have a transit advisory board, we have a school traffic safety committee, and we have an advisory board for ADA issues.

So we have six of them.

And one of the things I've been promoting in my time here is that when we have a project that hits a certain design milestone, you know, 30, 60, or 90 percent, let's take that design to the appropriate advisory boards and let all stakeholders understand it together at the same time and hear public comment about it.

So those are really good ideas.

points of intake for various communities to get involved.

And those are all staffed by volunteers.

And I believe usually it's the council who picks the people who are on those boards.

Okay, so our next class of services is services and programs that enhance the transportation network, creating attractive places.

I'm very pleased to see the deep and collaborative relationship that SDOT has with King County Metro.

and with Sound Transit.

The only transit service that we actually own as SDOT are the two streetcars.

But we contract with King County Metro to actually run those streetcars every day.

But we have a wide-ranging, multifaceted relationship with King County Metro so that we're working on ways the street can be more supportive of the bus system.

And I think there's really excellent alignment there between the two organizations, and it's something we have a group of people working on.

And something like a RapidRide H or a RapidRide G only comes to pass because of long-term planning and collaboration about what such a project would be and who funds which pieces of it.

You know, something that really benefits the residents of Seattle is the Seattle Transportation Measure, which is a special tax that the voters approved to provide a revenue stream to invest in transit.

And Ultimately, through the annual budget process, it's the council members and the mayor who program those funds.

And those funds allow us to buy additional service hours so that we can pick key routes that would benefit from a higher frequency and pay for that additional service.

But it also allows us to make capital improvements so that you'd have a better bus landing, safer crossing, a special signal that gives the bus a queue jump, all kinds of different things we can do with that.

Also, You know, right around when I got here, the Seattle Transit Measure was funding free ORCA cards for Seattle youth.

But then the state saw that and thought that was such a great idea that they took that on statewide, and that freed up some of the funding in STM.

And I was very, very pleased to greenlight with the mayor an investment in giving free ORCA cards to residents of Seattle public housing.

And we've provided almost 7,000 free Orca cards to residents of the buildings that are operated by Seattle Public Housing Authority.

And the usage of those cards is very high.

And when you think about inflation and the price of the supermarket, someone who might be on social security disability, a free transit card means they don't have to choose between mobility and food.

it really can be very, very liberating.

And so that's an equity-oriented usage of the STM funding that I'm very proud of.

Next slide.

Also, we help bring forward a variety of different mobility solutions.

We have a permit program for commercial operators of shared scooters and e-bikes.

We had record ridership during Major League Baseball.

All Star weekend, we had 1,300 trips to the stadium and 1,300 trips back from the stadium on the All Star game on these shared mobility devices.

And that's a lot of averted carbon emissions that we didn't have if those people tried to go to the game by car.

We also have a transportation demand management program where we work with major employers to encourage them to have their employees use lower carbon commute mechanisms, methods.

We also are at the cutting edge of regulating the testing of autonomous vehicles on city streets.

The state legal framework provides a baseline And localities are allowed to add to that if they so choose.

And I'm very proud that we stood up an additional layer of local regulation on the testing of EVs on Seattle streets.

We partner with City Light and other folks on some curbside chargers for EVs.

There's about 40 of them that were installed over the last two years.

Next slide, please.

We have a wide variety of pedestrian programs.

We build new sidewalks every year, both conventional type and alternative type pathways where a new sidewalk might not be practical or cost effective.

The Levy to Move Seattle will fund delivery of about 250 blocks of sidewalk over its nine year life.

We have a robust Safe Routes to Schools program that won an award last year.

And during the levy to move Seattle, every single public school in Seattle got at least one safety improvement for folks walking and biking to school.

And some of our smaller scale pedestrian improvements do come from special programs we have that empower the community to tell us where those types of projects are needed.

Another benefit, next slide, Bill, of being a large agency is we have a robust ADA program.

Oh, did I skip one?

Oh, there it is.

We have an ADA coordinator named Tom Hewitt who oversees a small team that makes sure that we're really leaders in advancing access of our street system for folks with all kinds of different mobility impairments.

In this job, I've learned a lot from our ADA coordinator about...

how to accommodate and assist visually impaired people from navigating our streets.

And some of that work is informed by our Pedestrian Access Advisory Committee comprised of people who actually have various mobility impairments and can share with us what their needs are.

Two of our exciting kind of neighborhood-based programs are Neighborhood Greenways and Home Zones.

Neighborhood Greenways are sort of a traffic calming so that you could have a street that has less through traffic and more comfortable to walk and bike through your residential street.

And we also improve how that street crosses arterials.

I went on a bike ride recently where they took me through like six different communities all connected by this web of neighborhood greenways.

And then Home Zone is one of those programs that we've had where there's funding for community requested pedestrian safety and traffic calming elements.

Next slide.

We have an extensive bike program.

We have projects large and small, making it safer and more comfortable to bike in Seattle.

I think during the Levy to Move Seattle, we've really seen a citywide bike network start to come into focus.

And much of that network has had a second round of hardening with various types of concrete, whether it's concrete islands or curbs or Jersey barriers.

We're testing a new type of barrier called a Toronto-style barrier in District 2 in two different locations, which is kind of a mini version of the Jersey barrier, and we're finding really getting a great response from cyclists on that.

We also maintain and make investments in urban trails and bikeways that are off-street, and the Neighborhood Street Fund is another one of our community-driven programs.

There's actually two really neat placemaking projects that were completed during my 17 months here so far.

One of them I pictured at the top with those red planters is the portal porch in Belltown.

And it was kind of a quick design project that we worked with the community to make a sort of down payment on investing on this portal that used to connect you to the viaduct that's no longer at the waterfront.

There's community aspirations to have some sort of park there.

But we built this kind of overlook that's sort of an expanded sidewalk with a railway and some places to sit there that opened last summer.

Also, a little bit earlier than that, we opened Detective Cookie Chess Park in the South End, which is a really neat place that was just sort of excess asphalt that wasn't really programmed, that was public right of way.

And now it's a place where kids of all ages can meet up and play chess.

And it's named after Detective Cookie, who started the citywide chess program for youth.

And also, we've done a lot of work on Ballard Avenue, creating a sort of cafe street there.

And it's a very, very vibrant place post-pandemic to dine and shop with very few cars around and a really terrific farmer's market on the weekends.

Let's talk about interagency programs for a moment.

We have a specialty group that faces partner agencies because there's a lot of different projects that we don't run that affect city streets.

One of the larger projects we've been interacting on is the 520 bridge replacement, which is has a new lid going in.

That'll be a cool place to wait for the bus and hang out as you get close to Lake Washington.

And there's also a kind of a tunnel under the freeway for cyclists to connect from the bridge to other places.

And we're just getting ready to help support a project that Shoreline is running Along our border on 145th Street, Shoreline is creating better connections to the light rail station that's gonna open there.

And because we control the southern half of the street, we're coordinating with them very closely.

That project will go into construction this quarter.

We're building a group of about a half a dozen folks to face Sound Transit in very complex interaction to permit Sound Transit 3, the West Seattle extension and the Ballard extension collectively at $12 billion.

These are sort of the largest infrastructure projects the region has ever seen, and there's going to be tremendous opportunity for connectivity and urban design and careful work with our communities in design and in construction.

And SDOT will be leading the charge on interacting with Sound Transit on those topics.

And that Sound Transit group is another group that reports to Liz Sheldon, our city infrastructure engineer, our SDOT chief infrastructure engineer.

So let's pause there.

And then I only have one more short category and then a very, very short summary of our budget.

Colleagues, any questions?

Go ahead, Council Member Wu.

Speaking of Sound Transit 3, there's a lot of contention in the community regarding some of the siting locations.

What is your involvement, interaction, influence regarding that?

So, you know, we are definitely involved.

There are, you know, other folks who advise the mayor directly on his role on the Sound Transit Board.

But we've been to staffed many of those public meetings and work with the Department of Neighborhoods, who's also staffing a number of those meetings.

And we provide a lot of technical assistance to the decision makers to help them understand the different complex choices.

And there's another area that's received a lot of attention, which is where the stations are sited in the South Lake Union area as well.

For clarity, who is the ultimate decision maker on a lot of these siting decisions?

Is that...

The board of Sound Transit ultimately decides on the locally preferred alternative and what will be in the final environmental impact statement.

Yeah.

I guess from my perspective, so I don't sit on the sound transit board and our colleague council member Strauss does, but it is very important to me personally in my office, in my district personally to, you know, for the link light rail project, the next major $12 billion plus investment over the next 10 years that's coming through West Seattle.

to make sure that that is delivered on time and on budget with minimal impacts to communities, strong, effective anti-displacement strategies and programs in place for impacted communities and, you know, like including funding, relocation assistance, that is actually impactful to the communities and small businesses impacted.

I understand that SDOT in the city doesn't play a central role in that, but I wanna share my observations and comments on that.

And we can be a source of information and even bring in other partners to help brief you at key moments.

Awesome.

continuing the tradition of break discussions.

Obviously, District 7 ST3 is huge, so very mindful of what's going on as you come through Interbay and then through Queen Anne and into South Lake Union.

And also mindful, this is a good, you know, we're a very unique city in terms of our topography, the water spaces, the slopes, a lot of complicating factors that go into these decisions, and District 7's full of them.

And I'm well aware of pretty much all of them, too, so I'll be asking follow-up questions on that.

Saw your mobility solutions point on there, which goes with bike lanes.

One thing that we've been learning, I think it's great to your point about emissions and so forth, but one thing that I've learned is they're becoming also a public safety concern.

It goes to pedestrian safety, primarily downtown Belltown.

They go fast, and if you have somebody my size and that fast, that's a lot, it's physics.

And then if you have a elderly person who's living in a condo or apartment building downtown Belltown, that becomes a big problem.

And that's something that's growing.

And tied to this, too, in the bike lanes, again, if you're a pedestrian, and let's say you're trying to get to the Starbucks at the AGC building.

And you have those protected lanes.

And again, with these mobility solutions, with the scooters and the like, they go fast.

And this pedestrian issue, in terms of trying to cross the bike lane to get from one side of Westlake to the other side, to the businesses, whether it's, you know, start with Starbucks at AGC or go up to China Harbor, that is a growing issue from a public safety, pedestrian safety, as it ties into your slide pieces.

And...

So I just want to highlight that to you now.

And it'll come up in different ways, like with public safety and transportation as well.

I'll also note, I'm very interested from the District 7 and citywide, the east-west connectors that you had on there.

Very important, Thomas Street and all the like, the bay to the lake, all those kinds of pieces, which have different elements to it, whether it's for vehicles or for bikes or pedestrians.

I love developing those options for particularly District 7, but they're used for all Seattle.

One last piece is the portal park is not aspirational, building off the portal porch.

And you, my challenge to you is to, you can help make this happen because we need Eston City Light to do a property swap there as you move towards Lenora and Western.

We need a property swap that would facilitate parks and creating that portal park.

And so...

So my challenge is for you to work with your counterpart at City Light and Parks to help facilitate these little chess pieces, to use that other part of your slide, to get these lined up to make the portal park not aspirational, but in effect on the plan and reality.

So if you would take that on, I'd truly appreciate it.

Thank you.

Message received.

Thank you.

Oh, and I have my parks committee chair right to my side here.

Any other questions, comments, feedback?

All right, in the interest of keeping the trains running reasonably on time, Director Spatz, go ahead.

Thank you.

So to regulating the right-of-way, and I'll say, you know, as there are more and more different ways that people use our streets, SDOT has to find a way to try to help them coexist.

And a very interesting part of this job in the modern era is, you know, we don't decide what mode somebody chooses to use on a given street, but we're responsible for everybody's safety, no matter in which way they show up on a given street.

So at its core, the first thing that we regulate is parking.

I learned the other day that there's about 500,000 curb parking spaces in the city of Seattle.

They're not all marked.

They're mostly in our neighborhoods.

And we only charge for parking for 12,000 of those half a million parking spaces.

And that's the responsibility of a whole group that we have called Curb Space Management.

Years ago, we took out individual parking meters and moved to the little kiosk, the parking pay station.

But we're getting to the point where like 3 quarters of users are paying with their smartphone.

It's really interesting to see the adoption of that technology.

We also manage loading zones to make sure that deliveries can be made efficiently.

And we have some really interesting sort of digitization efforts going on where one day it might be possible for a you know, for like a Amazon driver to look on the smartphone and find out that a parking space is available right now.

And there might even be sensors to tell us that it's available or it's not available.

So there's a lot of exciting innovation involving how we manage our precious curb space.

Okay, so there's also a whole lot of other forms of regulation under the street use division that Liz was running before she got promoted.

And one of them is how people use the street during construction, and also what streetscape folks have to put in when they're doing a major real estate development.

There's a whole wide variety of regulatory functions we have, and we have uniformed investigators who can roll out on same-day notice if we hear from a constituent that there's a problem with how the street is being used by somebody out there in the world.

Okay, so here's just some quick numbers that you can review at your leisure.

Issued over 12,000 permits.

There's a lot of activity going on in our growing city.

So now I'm going to hand it to Chris Castleman, my finance director, just to give you a very broad overview of how SDOT is funded.

And this is information that we'll get into in much more detail down the road as we get into budget season.

Go ahead, Chris.

Thank you, good morning.

I'll be brief.

SDOT's adopted budget has been over the $700 million mark since 2020, with the exception of 2021 due to revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

Here you can see that 53% of our 2024 adopted budget is devoted to our capital improvement program, most of which is related to delivery of the levy to move Seattle.

Note that our 24 capital program will also include spend of 2023 carry forward dollars for projects that are still in flight.

26% of our budget supports our ongoing services portfolio that Greg reviewed.

15% of our budget is categorized as reimbursable work, This is largely support to active third-party projects in the right-of-way and mostly includes right-of-way restorations after a utility project has completed, the utility cuts that Greg referenced earlier.

And then finally, 6% of our budget this year will pay debt service in support of our bond-financed capital projects.

Go ahead.

Turning to the next slide, our portfolio relies on many more funding sources than most city departments.

The current count is actually 83, including state and federal grants and local partnerships.

This slide shows our primary funding sources and indicates which are voter approved, which are council generated, our finance general funding, and those revenues that come to us by other avenues, including our portion of the state gas tax.

The largest single contributor to our budget is the levy to move Seattle, expiring at the end of this year.

And our other voter-approved funding, the Seattle transit measure, which Greg spoke to earlier as well, will expire in 2026. And in the interest of time, I'm going to hand it back to Greg for a final word.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chris.

And early on in my time in the job, I elevated Chris to our executive team, and she reports directly to me, as does our head of personnel.

And I thought that would really help me in this window where we have to finish strong on the existing levy and prepare to bring a new levy to the voters.

And I'm really looking forward to collaborating with all of you.

Hopefully this introduction gave you a kind of a la carte menu of things you could decide to double click on for this committee to further look into.

And we're also available to you individually for briefings on topics that interest you.

And of course, go out and explore your district together.

We can look at projects that are underway, places of need, or projects that were recently completed, whatever's most helpful for you.

All right.

Well, thank you, Director Spatz, SDOT leadership team, for this very insightful overview presentation.

Really helpful from my perspective.

A couple quick notes.

Yeah, I am very clearly passionate about potholes.

As Councilmember Kettle noted earlier, everyone at the dais here is pothole royalty.

And I want to call out some important work from SDOT.

A few days ago, last week, I believe, SDOT released a press release that indicated SDOT filled 25,000 potholes in 2023, which was the most it's done in five years.

Folks, that is where the rubber meets the road in terms of demonstrating value and impact.

Pothole, like quickly filling potholes.

I was really pleased to see that particular stat.

It's a reflection that, it's a indicator of success that reflects well upon you, Director Spatz, your entire leadership team, the frontline workers actually doing the work, the mayor's office, my predecessors in the Seattle City Council.

It's a huge win that I had no part in, but just someone who's really passionate about potholes, I'm really excited to see that.

When I said at the outset of this journey in my introductory remarks about being sort of the quote unquote king of potholes, I meant potholes obviously filling potholes in the literal sense, but also potholes as a synonym or catch-all for broader transportation-related challenges.

And so I'm looking forward, Director Spatz, to working closely with you, the mayor's office, and communities to figure out how we can improve on the 25,000 pothole figure.

Or maybe, because we know potholes, for example, they generally occur in roads that are more structurally deficient.

Maybe it makes more sense to invest in the systemic issues, the underlying issues, to ultimately minimize the downstream likelihood of creating potholes to begin with.

I don't know.

I don't know if we have a firm answer, but, but regardless, that is impact.

That number is impact.

It shows, you know, hard work and dedication.

And I, it's something that I appreciate personally.

I mentioned also like kind of close out this portion of the presentation by saying, um, you know, I mentioned at the top of this meeting kind of highlighted some of my priorities as chair and, um, Those, for clarity, are priorities that have been informed, at least initially, by conversations that I've had with everyone that sits on this committee and also some of my other colleagues as well.

Very introductory kind of initial conversations that remain ongoing.

You know, so those priorities, at least at a high level, are shared.

I think we're using different vernacular and language.

For example, I strongly support localized Seattle implementation of the Biden administration fix-it-first approach to infrastructure and transportation planning investments at a very high level, which means, you know, let's fix, let us fix what the existing assets and infrastructure we have first before either building net new assets or chaining on new features on top of, you know, existing crumbling assets.

And, you know, we heard various iterations, even from council member kettle on his, when he's calling out the importance of preserving and maintaining bridges and district seven, I talked about, uh, the importance of equity by design and equity in implementation, truly equitable implementation.

And I heard council member Wu talking about, you know, the importance of community outreach engagement and being adaptive and responsive to community.

So to your point, it's not just like your valid point, which I really appreciate earlier and direction when you first took office, we're no longer just designing policies and drawing lines on a map in an ivory tower somewhere.

We are accountable for our decisions and we're always doing the work and willing to humble ourselves to make sure that the plans are truly equitable and fair in implementation.

I think that is part of our ongoing challenges in our oversight role at the council level to make sure our SDOT colleagues have what they need to be successful in that regard.

Finally, I'll share So as I mentioned earlier, it's really important for me to get these awesome briefings, which I've been getting offline with you all, with our own central staff, colleagues, and experts, Kelvin over here.

But I'm personally trying to balance that as part of my kind of transportation learning journey with on-site visits, which are important.

I'm already excited and proud to announce you'll see me doing some pothole work, rolling my sleeves up with the frontline crews doing that work every day, visiting some bridges, and meeting the crews that do the sort of basic maintenance and repair work that we can do before we need to, before it reaches a certain threshold, before we need to farm it out.

We'll visit the SDAO Operations Center, which you call out at SMT, and more, many, many more.

And I would also encourage my colleagues to find opportunities as your busy, busy, busy schedules permit to kind of incorporate some of the real world practical examples and onsite visits with some of the more important kind of high level constructs that are gonna inform all aspects of our decision-making.

So in any event, thank you again, Director Spatz for that overview.

We'll now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Introduction to term permits and street vacations.

All right, thank you.

Will our presenters please join us at the table?

Looks like we're in the process of doing that.

And share your presentation.

Once ready, please introduce yourselves and begin the presentation.

Hi, everyone.

Good morning.

My name is Elise Nelson.

I am the interim Street East Division Director.

I'm kind of filling in for the position that Liz Sheldon, who you just met, vacated.

So today I'm here just to kind of introduce what we're talking about today.

I know you're running a little bit behind, so we'll try to keep it quick.

But we want to take this opportunity to share a little bit about some of what you'll...

soon see in front of you on other agendas about street vacations and term permits, which are two types of activities that we process in street use that require council review and approval.

So I'm joined today by Beverly Barnett, who is a strategic advisor and oversees our street vacation process.

and then Amy Gray, who is a term permit specialist.

And so they're both going to be the subject matter experts that really focus and give you the details, and I'm just here to introduce them and then learn alongside with you on these very complex project types.

So today we'll talk about what is the right-of-way, street vacation policies, some examples, which I think always help to show what we're actually talking about, and then we'll turn to our term permit process.

Oh, and Lish.

Sorry, Lish.

That's fine.

Lish Whitson, council central staff.

And just want to add that the street vacation process in particular under state law is a legislative action.

SDOT is a wonderful partner in reviewing street vacation and term permit applications, but they are guided by street vacation policies that the council has adopted that set out both the criteria that they use and the process that they use to review the applications.

All right, next slide, please.

So one way to kind of ground our discussion is to talk about what right-of-way is.

And it's interesting, having worked for street use for about 10 years, that people don't always understand what right-of-way is.

You look outside your door, and you see the streets, and you see the sidewalks, and you think that's what the right-of-way is, but oftentimes it's a lot wider than what you see, and that allows us to make future improvements.

And so you can see in the images here kind of some examples of right-of-way and what it might look like, and it can be additional from what is just in front of you, what you see today.

And it's usually...

SDOT's role is as a steward of the right of way.

So it's usually dedicated during plotting processes.

And so really, we are holding it as a trustee.

And when we process permits and vacations, we're looking to make sure that the vacations are in the public's interest and that it really makes sense for the Seattle residents.

One thing that's important to know about vacations, and this is something that kind of surprises some people, is that when we do vacate public right-of-way, it goes back to the property owners on either side.

Typically, that's how it kind of returns as it was dedicated.

And so I just wanted to note those things to kind of guide the conversation today.

And with that, I'll be turning it over to Beverly to kind of dig into the details.

Good morning.

And we're very excited to be here with the kickoff first meeting.

So thank you.

We know time is tight and we've given you a lot of information and Amy and Lish and I will have a lot of opportunities to be before you.

So we're going to try to zip through at a high level and we're always available to you or your staff for questions or briefings or whatever you want.

So I'm going to cover a few slides on the vacation process and then Amy will talk about term permits and sky bridges.

We're going to try to keep it really high level and zip.

And as Lish noted, and I should say we work very closely with Lish on everything.

He's the key drafter of the most recent policy revisions and we try to stay really collaborative.

We also work very closely with the Seattle Design Commission who have a key voice as well.

The street vacations are guided by city council adopted policies.

The most recent one was 2018. There also is criteria under state law.

State law is really more procedural.

It's signatures, the petition process.

The substance of how the city defines when they'll grant a vacation is in the City Council adopted policies.

And so the policies give us, as Lish noted, in SDOT, we have the privilege of administering the program, and it establishes the principles for the review process and the steps and the information that we ask our petitioners to provide and what we review.

There's two key areas that we look at in vacations, and the policies define those for us.

And as we get further in the slides, we'll talk about them in detail.

But we do a public benefit analysis.

Developers are required to provide a public benefit.

And we also do a public trust analysis.

And that's where we look at the impacts to existing street functions.

As Lish noted, this is a legislative function under state law.

The state has delegated it to legislative bodies in the state of Washington.

And so every street vacation decision, however large or small, So whether it's a small vacation or the convention center, it's in front of you.

And we do the recommendation and bring that forward.

So the next slide covers the street vacation process.

And what we wanted to emphasize is just the points in time where the city council will see it.

So the city council's green and you can follow the process and we won't, it would take too much time to go through it, but we wanted you to see the slide and we can always answer more questions on it at a later date.

So when we have new petitions, it comes to SDOT, but it's introduced through the city council and receives a clerk file number.

The city council then schedules an early committee briefing where they provide us guidance on new projects.

We do analysis, and then when we come back to the city council, the city council under state law is required to hold a public hearing.

And at the public hearing, you would hear public comments, of course, you'd consider the recommendation from SDOT and all of the information we have through the review and the city council would then act to approve, deny, modify and set conditions.

After that, the project moves forward and then the final vacation ordinance is done at the end of the process, only after all the fees are paid and all the conditions are met.

So it gives the city an opportunity to monitor the development, make sure everything is done as the council had anticipated.

So the next, the two steps we look at, public benefit and public trust.

So public trust is really just all the reasons that we have streets.

And they're kind of more reasons I think than people think about.

So it's getting around the city, it's getting to adjacent properties, it provides for utilities.

But the street grid also provides a lot of value for open space, light, air, open space views.

And it's a considerable amount of public open space is street right of way.

And the city council has really acted to elevate the role that streets play in providing for free speech, the opportunity for community members and the public to get together and speak their minds and just be themselves.

And it's a significant factor in land use and urban form.

The street grid provides consistency in blocks and the scale of development.

So that's public trust that we look at.

The second step is vacation public benefits.

And this is where we see the city council being the most involved and the policy providing the most guidance for us as to what the city council wants to see and under what circumstances they would grant a vacation.

So it has to be long-term.

The goal is that it's proportional.

So everybody's not gonna provide what the Washington State Convention Center did with their vacations.

We try to be really careful that the public benefits are beyond normal development and code requirements.

The council really looks at social equity impacts.

Where is the development happening?

Who benefits from the amenities they're provided?

And the council requires that there be a public engagement plan And part of the intention of that is that ideas about public benefit and mitigation are identified with the community early and those can be incorporated into the design.

So the city council policies do guide the kinds of things, physical amenities like widened sidewalks, wayfinding plazas, community programming.

There might be circumstances where we would accept real property we vacate an alley and they give us, you know, a pocket park.

The vacation public benefits can be either on-site or off-site, and in limited circumstances, we might accept payment in lieu of amenities, but we really want to get something physical for the public.

So the next, we wanted to show a couple examples, and this project will be coming to the city council for the final ordinance, the project's done, So this is at Town Hall, but this is the Lennar Ovation Project, and that shows the alley that was proposed for vacation, which the council did vacate, and the development.

And then the next slide shows some of the public benefit features.

So they did this plaza in front of Town Hall.

So as all of us that go to Town Hall, you know, we always meet people there, and it It has a very public feel, so we think that's a great example of public benefit.

And you'll see that this spring.

The next slide, I always try to include this.

Jeanette Dubois and our staff did this slide.

So this just shows all the vacations, the red hatch marks.

the vacations that have been granted in the downtown core.

And I think it really emphasizes why the city council is so careful in its review of vacations because they just changed the face of the city.

And these are done, some of these are really old, but I think it's just a powerful measure of the impact of vacations over time.

So I think then we were gonna look at term permits and we'll zip through that too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Thank you.

So term permits are for significant structures in the right-of-way that are new and they will be for a long duration.

They would impede the public's use of the space or there must be a compelling reason.

And City Council approves these as well.

So SDOT reviews the application and coordinates with all the various subject matter experts of what the project would touch upon.

And then we make the recommendation, and ultimately council decides.

And you can approve, modify, or deny the legislation.

Some examples of term permits are utility lines, private communication conduits for all the social media companies down in South Lake Union.

King County has a variety of infrastructure for combined sewer overflow projects throughout the city.

Those are all covered by term permits.

In certain circumstances, the Seattle Design Commission reviews at-grade structures, and also in certain circumstances, at-grade structures require public benefit.

But anything below grade does not require public benefit.

Next slide.

So sky bridges are a special kind of term permit.

They have their own section of the code that details all the criteria.

There are three types of sky bridges.

Public ones, you often see these at universities.

They're completely open to the public, open all the time, and there is no restrictions.

There are semi-public use sky bridges, and those are often for hospitals.

Like up on First Hill, you have to enter private property to get to them, but there's no restrictions for you walking around and using them.

Anybody can do it.

You just have to enter through private property.

And then there's private use sky bridges that occur and are completely restricted.

You need access, special access to the building or be a building resident to use them.

The Seattle Municipal Code discourages new sky bridges, but the city has allowed for public or semi-public sky bridges for hospitals and universities.

SDOT leads this review, and we also convene what's called the Sky Bridge Review Committee, which represents people from within the city with various disciplines to review the impacts to the right of way.

And sky bridges always require a public benefit mitigation to offset the impacts.

And the design commission reviews these and will make a recommendation to city council as well.

Next slide.

The term permit process for both sky bridges and significant structures, it's two steps.

The first step is a resolution where we bring a project to you that's basically at 60% design.

And this is the point where you would provide conceptual approval for a term permit or a sky bridge.

And the next step is this ordinance, and this is after the project has reached 100% design.

They have met all the conditions that council sets in the resolution, and this is the final approval.

It sets the terms and conditions of the permit, inspection requirements, removal requirements.

fees, everything that the council imposes on the project.

And there are three times in which we bring term permits to you.

When there's a new structure, you come for that's where the resolution you provide conceptual approval.

We have a number of sky bridges that are interim permits that are at what's called a renewal stage at a point set in the original ordinance.

We check to make sure the use is still consistent and updated based on current policies.

And then at the final expiration, so the final year of the permit.

They're generally 30 years.

If the project wants to continue the use, we require a new application, and that's when council would review that as well.

And that's term permits and sky bridges in four minutes.

Thank you.

Oh, and this last slide, this is my favorite term permit.

It's the China gate and it's really cool.

Love it.

Colleagues, any questions, comments, feedback, observations?

No.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

Really insightful overview of our really important term permits and street vacations process.

I love personally being able to geek out about that, the nitty-gritty operational details.

Colleagues, that is some of the more routine, kind of frequent flyer items that are going to appear before us.

So really, really, really important.

So pairing that with our important work on potholes, we have a lot going on in this committee.

So I want to thank you all for sharing your insights with us today.

Colleagues, you know, I do acknowledge that we kind of zipped through, especially this last portion a little bit.

And so...

I ENCOURAGE YOU TO TAKE THE TIME.

I KNOW YOU ALL HAVE READ AND REVIEWED ALL THESE ITEMS AND MATERIALS BEFOREHAND, BUT TAKE THE TIME TO KIND OF BETTER, YOU KNOW, MAKE SURE YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THIS PRESENTATION IN LIGHT OF THE PRESENTATION.

AND DON'T HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO SDOT FOR FOLLOW-UP OR, AND I'D BE HAPPY TO bring them here again for another version two, a slightly more deeper dive, if you all think it makes sense.

But in any event, yeah, thank you all.

Adjournment.

We have reached the end of today's meeting.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

No, but thank you for coming.

And I love alleys and sky bridges.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth, any comments, questions?

Chair Saka, I have none, but I definitely appreciate this first meeting, committee meeting on the calendar and for you all coming here at 9.30 a.m.

in the morning on a Tuesday to present this information to us for the first committee meeting of the year.

So thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Yeah, second that.

Really appreciate you all again.

And I'm looking forward to continuing and growing our partnership together in this important work that we all have, this important opportunity we all have together.

So here and no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.