Thanks all of you for being here today at the Seattle Transportation Operations Center.
As you were able to see, we have a real-time feed monitoring all of the roads and infrastructure in the city of Seattle.
We're working closely together with the Washington State Department of Transportation.
You'll hear from Roger Millard, the head of that.
Shortly, we're also working real-time with Metro.
We want to be able to watch things real-time so as things develop, we can decide what we need to do to both clear traffic, perhaps stand up an emergency bus-only lane to get police, fire, and aid.
Whatever we need to do, we're going to be doing it.
We have a very complex transportation network.
This TOC, as we call it, will be critical in helping us spot and respond to incidents quickly.
Whether it's an accident, a stalled vehicle, a bus that's broken down, we need to be able to adjust our grid accordingly and get things moving.
We will make sure that we're there as quickly as possible, that we take care of any injuries and protect human health and safety, and clear roadways so that we can keep transit and vehicles moving.
I really want to thank all the partners that are here today.
The Seattle Department of Transportation, you'll be hearing from our soon-to-be new director, Sam Zimbabwe, But in preparation for this and the run up to this, which has been 10 years in the making, SDOT has really worked very hard to be thinking about all contingencies.
and working across the region with our great partners at WSDOT, at Metro, at the Port of Seattle and the like.
We know that we've got to be able to respond quickly because this is going to be a period in the three weeks when the Viaduct comes down and then later when the buses come on the streets, when traffic and mobility is changed in the city of Seattle in ways that has never been changed before.
And it won't just be restricted to Seattle, it will have impacts across the region.
So we want to be able to keep transit moving as quickly as we can, keep other traffic.
So everything from signal timing, as you saw there, we can do it remotely, to where we may stand up temporary pop-up bus lanes to get transit moving so we can move the most number of people through the city of Seattle.
We're really lucky to have Heather Marks, who has been working at SDOT as our mobility director, to plan for this for a significant period of time.
I also want to thank all of our regional partners today as we prepare for this closure tomorrow night.
Okay, again, I want to say that tomorrow night the Alaskan Way Viaduct is closing for good.
We and our teams are really working together to respond in real time to make the adjustments we're going to need.
We know that there will be problems.
You can do all the planning in the world you want, and there's still going to be an accident or something happens that you can't foresee.
So what we're trying to make sure is that we have done all we can to prepare for those contingencies.
Again, you'll hear from Roger Millar, who is the State Secretary of Transportation at WSDOT.
Rob Gannon, the General Manager at Metro.
No one from Sound Transit or Port of here, but we've been working with them very carefully too.
Council Member Mike O'Brien, who's head of the Transportation Committee.
has been also making sure that there is whatever responses we need to make legislatively and policy-wise, Mike's been in the loop.
We want to make sure everyone knows, again, I can't say it often enough, the viaduct is closing.
And someone asked earlier, what's the big difference between the two-week closure and this three-week closure?
This is a three-way closure of the viaduct, and then the tunnel will open, but the viaduct is closing forever.
And that is a significant difference.
This will be the longest closure of a highway in this region, I think, ever.
And it is the biggest traffic adjustment that we've had in this region since I've lived here.
So everyone, please, do the following.
Make a plan.
Really get prepared.
This is going to be a long-haul project.
It's going to affect Everybody driving into, riding buses, however you get in and through the City of Seattle will be changing.
Please look for alternative ways to commute.
Biking, walking, transit, carpools, vanpools, light rail, water taxi, Ride 2. Change the method on which you get to town.
Please, unless you absolutely need to, Don't drive into Seattle by yourself.
Also, talk to your employer about working different hours.
The City of Seattle, as you know, is through this three-week period going to implement alternative work schedules for our employers and employees.
We're one of the largest employers in the region, so we want to make sure that we're making room both on transit and on the roads.
Some people will work remotely, some will work different hours.
The other thing that people can do is when your work's done, stay downtown for a while.
Shop, have dinner, enjoy yourself.
That will get you moving at a different time too.
We knew that this was going to be a really difficult time when we were searching for our new head of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
We knew that the person we were going to hire had to have a bold vision for transportation in Seattle.
and have a demonstrated track record on delivering projects for taxpayers.
We have a lot of really big, important projects in the next several years that I have no doubt that Sam Zimbabwe is the person to help the Seattle Department of Transportation and the City of Seattle to move forward in all the right ways.
He is a highly respected expert in transportation planning, tract engineering, transit, and big capital projects.
He's in town this week because even though we don't have him permanently yet, he knew how important it was for him to get briefed up on a whole range of issues, to work with me, with General Warden, who you're going to meet, with SDOT staff, to meet other members of the cabinet.
I am fully confident that Sam Zimbabwe is ready to deliver on investments that will help us create that city of the future.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
Seattle is under construction.
We right now are rebuilding our city.
We have to build it in a way that it is the best thing for the next generations and the city of the future we want.
As we get through this difficult period of time, we know we also need citywide coordination on delivering the services to the people of Seattle.
That's the reason that we hired retired Air Force General Mike Worden.
I talked to Sam about this before we hired him.
I talked to the general.
As we build this better city, we know that we have to coordinate during this very difficult time across 29 city departments.
It's not just the Seattle Department of Transportation that's implicated.
It's 29 city departments.
as well as our great partners at the Washington State Department of Transportation, Metro, the Port of Seattle, all of the transit agencies from the region, including Sound Transit, as well as community partners in the north and on the east side.
We want to make sure that we have one point of contact that can work with all those things across things so that if we see problems, we can identify them quickly and move forward.
With his decades of experience in crisis planning, logistics, operations, and fast-changing periods of uncertainty, I am confident that the General will help ensure we're meeting the challenges and continuing to deliver on the critical services like public safety, power, and water.
I think it's really good that we're going to have his mind working on this as well as Sam and the whole Seattle Department of Transportation working.
We've got almost every department in the city of Seattle engaged in this process.
Not just how we do implement our alternative work schedule, but we have a subcabinet that meets to determine how can we work among departments.
I'll give you some examples.
You know, when a tree comes down and blocks a road, That's not necessarily Seattle Department of Transportation issue.
It could be a City Light issue because it could take wires with it.
It could be a Parks Department issue because the tree was originally in a park.
There's all sorts of things across departments that we found we need to do, whether it is pre-positioning vehicles to respond to accidents or incidents in the Parks Department, at City Lights, at utilities.
So it will be a process that we're in this together in Seattle, and we're in it for the long haul.
This will be a challenging, difficult period of time.
No matter how much we plan, things will happen that are not in our control.
All we can do is plan to respond as best we can.
And I just want to say, everybody who works or drives through or lives in the city of Seattle will play a critical role Everybody's got to be part of the solution here.
And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to Councilmember Mike O'Brien.
Thank you, Mayor.
You know, as the Mayor said, this has been years in the making, and what you're seeing today is, from my perspective at least, an unprecedented collaboration between SDOT, WSDOT, King County Metro, Sound Transit.
I feel really confident that the agencies have done the work to prepare as best we can for the unexpected that's going to happen in the next three weeks.
What we really need for folks to understand now is employers, employees, citizens, how they adapt in the next three weeks is really going to be telling on how we get through this as a region.
Even if your commute or trips come nowhere near downtown Seattle, you're going to be impacted in the next three weeks because of the spillover effect of what will happen.
And so everyone in the Puget Sound region needs to be thinking about what they can do to make this better.
As the mayor said, the city of Seattle, we're adjusting some things.
The city council has adjusted our start times for council committee meetings for the next three weeks to give city employees and constituents who want to come to our meetings a little more flexibility and get them out of those rush hour windows.
We're asking employers to show flexibility.
For those of us that can work remotely a couple days a week or even a couple hours in the morning, that can make a difference.
But it's important to also remember that some of the workers in our region don't have that flexibility.
And for the worker that works retail downtown, they cannot work remotely and they may need to be there at 8 o'clock when their shift starts.
And so for the rest of us that have flexibility, the more we can do, we're helping out them and the whole region.
We're also asking employers to show flexibility for some of these low-wage workers who are often working multiple jobs.
They may get off one job and only have an hour to get to their next job, which they can do today, but next week it's not physically possible for them to do that.
So we're asking for their employers to show some flexibility to get through this.
Together as a region, I believe we can get through this together and come out much stronger on the other end, but it's going to take everyone doing their part.
Really proud to be working with a bunch of folks and had the honor to work with the appointee for the director position at Seattle Department of Transportation, Sam Zimbabwe.
Thank you, Councilmember O'Brien, and I look forward to working with you through the process.
I'm really excited to be here.
It's great to be here a little bit before my official start, but to be able to understand exactly what's going into this and help plan.
I've been here this week.
meeting with SDOT folks, folks in the community, General Warden, understanding our preparations and making sure that SDOT is ready for what is going to come in the future.
This is about building the city of the future, about building the new Seattle and building everything out that is needed for the city.
As I've sat with members of SDOT, we've already got staff in the Transportation Operations Center, in our Department Operations Center, working 24-7, ready for what's starting tomorrow.
And everybody is ready for this challenge.
To echo Council Member Bryan's point, everybody else has to also, in the community, is going to have to work with us as we get through this over the next few weeks.
General Warden and I have had a chance to sit down.
We already have a collaborative working relationship.
It's been great to hear his experience, and I think he's going to be a great asset for the city, bringing his skills and experience into what's to come over the next three weeks and over the years to come as well.
As we work on the viaduct closure and the Seattle squeeze, we are also working to build out other projects and deliver things for people who are walking, biking, taking transit, driving through the city, into the city, to do all of their daily needs, get to work, get to school, do everything they need to do.
That's all part of what we're doing in the operations over the next few weeks, but on into the future.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to Secretary Roger Millar.
Thanks, Sam.
It's good to be able to work with you once again.
It's going to be going to be fun.
Good morning, everyone.
As the mayor indicated, we're closing State Route 99 in downtown Seattle tomorrow at 10 o'clock.
The highway will be closed for three weeks, but the viaduct will be closed forever.
One of my friends was driving over the viaduct just this morning for the last time with daughter and our friend and saw as he was doing this REM came on the radio it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine or at least the Secretary of Transportation I feel as fine as I could be at a major milestone at a 3.3 billion dollar project in a major urban area going on while people commute to work and while goods and services get to and from the market so I All of our agencies have been cooperating and coordinating on this for years.
We've been getting ready for this, and I think we're as ready as we can be.
That said, stuff will happen.
It always does.
We have 60 incidents a day on I-5 between Marysville and Tumwater, and we respond to those, and we learn from those incidents, and we incorporate that into what we do.
We work closely together as a team.
We're closing the viaduct the highway for you know the highway for three weeks the viaduct forever because we need to move The connections from the viaduct to the tunnel and that takes a little bit of time the contractors are set up and we're looking forward to them finishing their work, but this disruption is is unavoidable.
It certainly affects the city of Seattle as the location of the project, but the disruptions will affect the entire region.
So it's time for all of us to be creative.
And here at WSDOT, we're asking travelers to plan alternate routes, alternate ways of getting around, try a bicycle if it works, try walking if it works, take the bus, take the train, take the water taxi, and maybe when all of this is over, those ideas continue to be good ideas for how you get around, and we can get one more car off the road, not just for three weeks, but for the duration.
So we're providing a toolkit of suggested travel alternatives, and all that information is available on our website, the city's website, there's lots of places you can get information, But that said, there are no easy solutions, and everyone's going to have to do their part.
When the tunnel opens, it's going to provide a direct route between the stadiums and the Space Needle.
It's going to forever change the way we get around, which is one of the differences between this closure and previous closures.
One of the reasons I feel fine is as the individual responsible for the agency, which will deal with the eventuality of a large earthquake in this region, Our most seismically vulnerable structure will be off of our inventory, and I will sleep much better knowing that.
So I guess it's my turn to turn it over to Rob to talk about how we're going to be doing stuff with buses.
Thank you, Roger.
First, I just want to start by saying that Metro, for everyday service, is here to serve the region.
Metro, for next week, is ready to serve the region, to serve the city, to serve the riders, to be as flexible as we possibly can in support of all the challenges we might face, but also just all of the opportunity that will come in these next several months and the years ahead.
This is about mobility for the region that helps connect people to place Metro is a key component of that, but we also know that we do that with and through our partners.
Whether it's Sound Transit, the City of Seattle, WSDOT, or the 38 surrounding jurisdictions, that continues to be our focus.
How do we help keep the region moving?
We are very grateful for the partnership that we have now with Mayor Durkin, but certainly with the City of Seattle as a whole, and specifically the Seattle Department of Transportation.
The partnership there is as strong as it's ever been, and that is fundamentally what we will rely on in the weeks ahead especially.
Not just me working with Sam or the general, but really at the staff level.
How do we continue to adjust our plans and make them effective in the days that come?
How does staff providing actual service, whether it's on the street, driving a bus, interacting with the traffic engineers, all of that, it really happens at the staff level.
And I think this is just an appropriate moment to thank them for the work they've done leading up to this moment.
All of us as civic leaders can talk about how we have begun to plan and how we're ready to go, but fundamentally it is the hard work of all of our staffs at WSDOT, City of Seattle, and at Metro who are really putting all of this work into motion and they're the ones that will be called on to respond on the actual event.
So I want to thank them in advance for the hard work that they've put in to date and for the work that will come in the weeks ahead.
I'm very pleased to be working with Sam Zimbabwe.
He and I have had some great interactions thus far.
I've also had the chance to meet with General Warden and think that that relationship is going to be very strong.
Worked with Secretary Malar for a number of years and all told, to the extent that we are a leadership group trying to address this challenge, the relationships at the highest level are present and functioning and we're as ready to go as we possibly can.
So with that, I'll turn it over to General Warden.
Well, given what everybody's already said, you've had plenty of content, you've had plenty of appeals, and you've had plenty of recommendations.
I just want to focus my short time on two things and then hand it over to the person that really deserves the credit here, representing the people that really deserve the credit in leading this effort, which is Heather.
First, I want to thank the mayor for letting me join this team of very dedicated people facing a big challenge.
And I came on to this position for two reasons.
One is her vision of the city and the challenge that's in its face right now on a long journey of challenges to transform to become that model city of America.
And that's exciting to be part of that.
And a second reason is family.
My family are from Seattle.
They're from out here.
And finally I'm coming home to be with them and to work a problem that I've heard from them about from afar.
So I'm very glad to be here.
And I think my experience with coming together on the eve of a crisis with a bunch of strangers who are arriving from Different locations, different countries facing a crisis, and the ability to work with them, to build relationships, to get everybody on a common frame of reference to achieve the objectives may come into play here.
As a city to transform itself into the model city that all of America looks towards, it's going to have to negotiate these necessary obstacles that are due to infrastructure transformation, construction, and everything else that a dynamic city has.
So we've got to do this, and it's my job in partnership with Sam, who's got a great team and a great plan that I've seen for all of six days, and also our external partners.
I think the plan is solid and they've thought through the contingencies, right?
And without saying anything that's already been said, I want to make my final few seconds here to appeal to you, the Seattleites, the people, the citizens and businesses here in the city.
You can become part of the solution by listening to what's been said today.
And I found that whenever we bring a bunch of Americans together and we face all these challenges, we will find a way.
And we find a way by communicating.
We find a way by being responsible for our own actions and not trying to second guess or game the system.
But just listen to your city.
It's plugged in.
It's made that information available on websites, phone numbers, and everything else on social media.
Engage in that dialogue responsibly.
And we'll get through this first iteration of the challenge before we hit the second, third, fourth, and fifth as we transform like a butterfly into the city that everybody wants to be in.
Thank you.
I'm going to hand it over to Heather.
Thank you so much, General Warden and everyone.
You guys, it's almost here.
It's almost here.
The viaduct is closing forever at 10 p.m.
tomorrow.
This is gonna kick off a three-week closure of SR 99 before the new tunnel opens.
We have spent months, SDOT has spent months in partnership with King County Metro Transit, WSDOT, the Port of Seattle, Sound Transit and the community to prepare for this.
We are all committed to making sure that we maintain mobility and access to and through downtown, not just in the next three weeks, but through the next five years that we're affectionately calling the Seattle Squeeze.
We're excited to have Sam Zimbabwe join us and we really look forward to his leadership.
We know that his leadership and knowledge are going to take us in the right direction.
We've also already begun working with General Warden and are looking forward to his ability to coordinate the entire city's response.
We're working hard at SDOT.
to make sure that the transportation system and our city are ready for the upcoming changes.
We are monitoring and managing the transportation system.
We are investing in transit in partnership with King County Metro Transit and thanks to the good graces of Seattle voters in the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.
We are excuse me, we are reducing driver loan trips downtown by partnering with our largest employers and we're managing the public right away as never before.
We are fully engaged.
We are staffing our transportation operations center.
All day, every day, 24-7.
Our Department Operations Center, responding to the incident of the Viaduct Closure, is staffed 24-7.
We're communicating closely many times a day with WSDOT, with Metro Transit, and with the other agencies in the region.
We have a nimble and flexible mindset, so if we see something that needs to change, we're ready to change it.
This is going to be challenging for all of us.
It's going to be challenging for the people who are tasked with managing the challenge and it's also going to be challenging for the traveling public.
So we are working around the clock to make it as easy as it can be.
We're relying on you.
the traveling public, the people of Seattle and the Puget Sound region to be prepared and get ready because you're going to need to have a plan.
It's not too late.
Give yourself some extra time.
Make sure you're informed and prepared.
Every single one of our agencies has a website and multiple resources for you to access.
Practice patience and kindness.
We really all have to come together as a community.
to make sure we get through this.
And also make sure that you're making space for emergency responders.
Move right for sirens and lights.
If you're in an incident where no one is injured, please steer it and clear it.
Move your vehicles to the side of the road.
We need to come together as a community to face this as a community together.
Thank you very much.
I think we're ready to take some questions.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that was in the context of a longer conversation.
Of course, we are encouraging people to bicycle, to walk, to take transit, to take the water taxi.
All modes are on the table and we want everybody to do what works for them.
And there are lots of people who are already cycling and we want to encourage them to continue to do so.
If you are the hearty sort that wants to take up cycling during this time, we absolutely encourage it.
Get a buddy and make that part of your move.
All bike routes will remain the same as they are now, so you shouldn't have any changes.
There may be some changes underneath the viaduct when they start doing demolition.
Just watch for the detours and we'll keep folks posted on that.
I'll take some questions.
I just want to add to that is, in preparation of this, I think if we look at the period of time, We were very conscious of making sure, for example, we got the 7th Avenue protected bike lane built, that we had the signaling right on the 2nd Avenue bike lane, that we had Pike and Pine corridors improved.
So all of those improvements were in light of knowing that we wanted as many people to take alternative bicycling and walking and everything else.
We will continue to adjust, as you saw in the command center.
We are able to respond in real time to every kind of incident on our streets.
And if you look, I've been watching some of the cameras up here.
We've got a spaghetti system.
Any roadway that gets impacted impacts the whole grid.
A really interesting thing is in previous closures, previous accidents, it's not just I-5 that's impacted.
One of the most impacted roadways becomes 405 because people's plan to get through the city of Seattle is, I'm just going to take 405 and catch the intersection.
So there is no part of the regional grid that will not be impacted, whether it is the way people walk and bike to work, or whether people in the region are not even coming into Seattle, but depending on that same roadway system.
I've got time for a couple more questions.
We want to take it.
Yeah, Mayor, just as you look behind you, and we've heard about the credentials of everyone behind you, and it's very impressive.
Should incidences arise, something big, drivers aren't getting it, travelers aren't getting something, who takes the lead?
with so many different agencies involved?
It's a really good question.
So it's one reason we have General Warden here, because I think the one thing that people should take away from this is, you know, I was born and raised here.
I have never seen such strong collaboration across all transit agencies and transportation agencies, regardless of what city they're in, whether they're the state, the county, metro.
working together to say, how do we collaborate?
And you see the leaders here, but the same collaboration is happening at the staff level, which is critical.
So we will continue to have connections between our command center and those command centers, so the entity that is in the best position and it's their job to respond will be able to respond, but none of it will be done in a vacuum.
That's why we have everyone together, because sometimes, and it's a reason why the general is going to be so important, if you have, for example, a bus breaks down, on a highway that causes then a bumper to bumper accident behind it.
You have to have multi-agency responses.
Metro has to get another bus there for the traveling public.
You have to have the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Police Department, sometimes utilities respond depending on the nature of the accident.
So this kind of coordination, it is everybody's responsibility is a short answer, and we will scramble the right resources to clear things up.
I have a question for Roger Millar and the General both, which is that where has your analysis been in terms of, I think people tend to think of this as a Seattle problem, and you guys have kind of addressed that saying this will have an effect on I-90 as we saw in 2016, probably people taking more 405. What has your analysis been so far in terms of what you're prepping for, saying this is not just a Seattle, it's a Bellevue, it's Snohomish County, it's Pierce County, it's everywhere?
This is a regional project.
A major shift in a regional project is going to have regional impacts.
We're fully aware of that.
We've been communicating that.
We're obviously here in Seattle because that's where the project is located, but we're having conversations throughout the region.
We're pushing information out throughout the region.
My role as a leader when an incident happens is not to put a hard hat on and jump out into the street, because I'm going to be in the way of somebody that's been trained to do that.
My job is to make sure that they have the resources and the training and the skills to do that work, and that we've tabletopped and foreseen the scenarios that we can foresee.
The team has been working together for years.
Our team, SDOT, Seattle Fire, the police department, the utility companies, the port, Metro, Sound Transit.
We tabletop likely scenarios.
We tabletop worst case scenarios, so we all know when that happens.
This is how we respond.
This is who's in the lead, and this is who gets out of the way.
If something comes up that we haven't foreseen, we have a protocol for that as well.
So we've fought this through.
The impacts, the regional impacts, again, we're communicating that.
We're hoping we can adjust, just as the city has a traffic operations center up in Shoreline, we have a traffic management center.
We control a thousand traffic signals throughout the region.
We control our variable message signs throughout the region.
We control our active transportation management system around the region, ramp meters, you name it.
We'll be able to react on the fly and in partnership.
and you're working closely with the general on that, because that's how it is true.
Mike and I met this morning, and we're gonna have lunch together and talk about that situation.
But again, it's agencies working together.
We have new leaders here at the agency.
We have dedicated, experienced staff here at the agency.
New leaders will lead that staff.
I'm looking forward to the relationship.
A question for General Ward.
In your remarks, you mentioned you urge people not to second-guess the agencies and game the system.
What specific types of gaming behavior do you have in mind either here or that you've seen in Washington, D.C.?
Well, I've been around a lot of crises with a lot of people where a crisis kind of shows up on their doorstep or they've been deployed into a crisis arena.
So in this context, so people will react emotionally and they will react rationally.
And I said in my remarks, react responsibly.
And what I mean by that is that there are plenty of complexity and moving pieces in this and opportunities to find solutions.
And so the citizens of Seattle need to be part of the solution, I think.
And they can do that by becoming informed with all the things that Heather and the city and the region has put up on websites and elsewhere, and then communicate and give feedback so that you're not dealing with an entity that doesn't want you to achieve your objective.
You're dealing with an entity that aligns with it.
And so what I meant by that was to basically act responsibly.
Did I not answer the question?
Sorry.
Mike, we've all got to go.
I'm asking for an answer, though.
We'll let you follow up, and I want everyone to get a chance.
General Warden, I had a question towards you, too.
So a lot of people might think, oh, a general and a traffic expert.
How does that two things tie together?
What do you think that you can bring to the table that may be unique?
That's a good question.
Fresh eye.
I'm not a Seattleite, right?
I've been outside the city.
So, but I've seen a lot of complexity, and I've seen people behave under crisis conditions or under stress conditions, and how to work together with coalition partners, or in this case, the regional partners.
So, I think I breathe a fresh eye.
I bring a lot of experience of people under stress who get frustrated and get emotional, and how to have everybody focus on a common goal, which is what I'm trying to be, I probably answered in the previous response and in my remarks.
Can I just add to that briefly and then unfortunately I think we have to shut down is, you know, both Sam and the General came up through the Seattle Department of Transportation search And both of them enthusiastically supported by the search committee who said, either one, you're going to get a winner.
And I said, why does it have to be an or?
Why can't it be an and?
Because right now the city of Seattle has unprecedented challenges.
We know the Seattle Department of Transportation has a body of work that is significant by itself.
And Sam has great experience in each of those components.
And those will keep him busy full time.
And while his staff is working on this, it is working with partners across the region.
And we realized that just in the planning for this, we wanted to make sure we didn't have silo responses.
And we saw a couple of incidences where it was very unclear which parts of the city were supposed to respond and how did they communicate with the rest of the city.
We felt we needed one point of contact for collaboration and communication who also was used to dealing with crisis situations on the long haul on number one, how do we immediately pre-position things?
How do we work with coalitions?
Who's responsible?
You know, I'll end on a humorous thing.
When I was talking to people, and Sam and Mike Worden and others, one person remarked, they said, you know, this should be not as difficult as what the General files because there'll be no enemy fire.
And I said, Welcome to Seattle.
So I think that we've got everyone up here says we've got a great challenge, but people have been preparing this for almost a decade before I became mayor.
And in the last year, we put that preparation on steroids to make sure that we're really thinking about incidents.
Every time we've had a significant incident, we do an after-action report.
What could Seattle have done better?
What did we not do with Metro?
What did we not do with WSDOT?
What would we not do with all of our partners on the region?
We have thousands of people who live in the city of Seattle who commute to the east side and then come back again.
So there's no part of this region that won't be touched by these challenges.
And what we're saying today is look up here, we think we've got all the people in place to get it right.
Thank you very much for your time.