November 2, 2020, Ballard Interbay Regional Transportation System Public Meeting, 6:00-7:15 p.m. 

>> Hello everyone.  Good evening and welcome.  My name is Jennifer and I will be your host for this evening.  We are going to give folks a couple of minutes here to get settled.  Make sure everybody's connections are working and get a few instructions squared away.

And then we will dive right in.  Chisaki do you mind posting the link now in the chat, now that we have folks in the room?

So as you are getting settled this evening, as you will orient everybody to all the features of Zoom.  I know most of you are Zoom experts at this point.  But along the bottom of your screen, you will see the chat box.  And we will post a link to a form that you can use, to sign up if you would like to ask a question or provide comment later this evening.

We will have different avenues for inviting folks to do that.  But if you would like to get your name on the list, please use the link that will be posted in the chat shortly.

And we have a few other folks coming in through the waiting room.  We had a lot of people preregister, which is fantastic.  So we will just make sure that we get everybody settled.

And Chisaki do you want me to post that?  Or you have it?  Okay.  Thank you.

We have one other person.  Diane, it looks like we have about 50 folks.  Do you want to get started?

>> I'm feeling good.  I think we should get started.

Welcome to everyone who is joining us.  It is a big day for the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation project because not only are we meeting to roll-out concepts in the record, but have submitted it to the join committees at the Washington State legislature, as well as the district 36 legislators.

So our team Nelson\Nygaard and consultants and staff have been working to get this report across the finish line.  It's over 150 pages long.  Hundreds of pages of appendix.

No one in this team has slept for days because they have been working on the record.  Kudos to them.  And I'm looking forward to the roll-out and letting you see some of the highlights of the report.

The report will be linked on our website as of tomorrow.  We wanted to legislature to have it before the public did, since they are the ones who requested it.  I'm happy to say that we have director Sam Zimbabwe here with us tonight and we will be saying a few words in just a few minutes.  Okay.

>> Great.  Thank you, Diane.  And welcome to all of you, I'm going to share my screen and get us started with a quick overview of what we are going to discuss tonight, and a few other items.  And then we will hear from Sam and the members of our interagency team.

So, all right.  The way that we are going to run our time together this evening, we will have about 15 minutes of welcome and introductions.  We will have the chance to learn who has joined us tonight and we will hear from our interagency team members.

We will focus on giving highlights of what we have heard through the course of the stud deigned focusing in on the findings of the report and the next steps.

We will have about 30 minutes, probably flexibility there for questions and answers.  Again, please do use your link that is provided in the chat window to sign up, if you would like to provide comment at the end of the meeting.

As we get started, we do want to take a moment to do a land acknowledgment

(LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT)

>> so, with that grounding, in terms of how we all can participate.

We are a large group, so folks are muted.  If you have questions as we move through the presentation, you can ask them in the chat box.  And again, what you are seeing on the screen, and hopefully on the bottom of your screen are these controls.

So the chat box, you'll use the speech bubble, that usually pops up along the right side, but it might be floating somewhere random.  If you can't see it, click it on and off.

We will do our best to address quick and easy questions as we go through the presentation and try to come back to anything elide that we couldn't get to when we move to the Q&A.  And we will provide more instruction as we head into the Q&A period, in terms of how to participate.

We also have closed captioning available.  And so in the list of controls along the bottom of your screen, you should see a little CC, which is the closed captioning button, if you click that button it will pop up this menu and you'll have the option to choose show subtitle.  Once you do that you should be able to see the captions along the bottom of your screen and you can use the same approach to turn them off.

If you're having any problems seeing that, feel free to post a question in chat and we'll do our best to get you squared away.

We would love to take a minute and learn who all has joined us.

We are going to use a zoom poll to do this.  When I stop sharing my screen, I'm going to open a poll and you'll have the opportunity to ask a couple of questions.  We are just interested the know if you joined us for a BIRT meeting, where you're joining us from and what you hope to get out of this evening's event.

So I'm going to stop sharing and go to the poll.  For those of you who joined by telephone, apologize for not being able to see the poll.  But we welcome you.

So I'm launching the poll now.  Hopefully, folks are see this on the screen.

Again, we have 3 questions for you here today.  Is this the first meeting you are attending, related to the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation system?  Yes or no.

What is your relationship to the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation interbay area?

Transportation interbay area?

And what is your primary reason for joining?  To learn about the study?  Ask a question?  Share feedback?  Comment on a specific idea?  Or something else?

So we will give folks a minute to respond.  We are a pretty good mix across the different neighborhoods in terms of who is joining us.  And a good mix of folks who are joining their first BIRT meeting.  We are always excited to have folks come back and get the opportunity to learn what has happened for the first time, as well.

I'll give this another couple of seconds and then I'll end the polling so you can see the results as well.

That looks good.  Okay.  So I'm going to end the polling and share the results, so we can see this together.  We are close to evenly split in terms of this being folk's first BIRT meeting and not.  Looks like we have a good mix of folks from both Ballard and Magnolia.  More residents tonight than business owners and employees.

And lots of folks have joined to be able to learn a bit about the study, and probably hear a bit about the key recommendations.  And also folks interested in asking questions and sharing feedback on the work to date.

So that is great.  We will try and make sure that everybody chimed in.

Just got a question about how many folks responded.  Looked like we had about 43 folks of those who are on the line, who had responded.  And those of us who are co-host and staff, aren't able to participate.

Welcome to all of you.  We are recording this meeting, so that we can make it available on the project website.  So anybody who is not able to join us live tonight, will be able to watch the recording as we move forward.

I would like to introduce Sam Zimbabwe, the director of Seattle Department of Transportation.

>> Sure.  Thanks.  I want to thank everybody to coming out and taking, or tuning in and taking part of your evening to join us as we roll-out the final report.  For the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation study.  It's been an important project and I want to acknowledge the senator who was instrumental with the legislation.

And Strows as well.  We completed this report at the direction of the Washington State legislature, although the context is much different than we could have anticipated.

We conducted the study during a pandemic, after the closure of the West Seattle bridge.  I want to thank all of the staff consultants and partners who have been instrumental in helping this project move forward.  For those of you that have been following the issues related to the Magnolia Bridge, Ballard Bridge, this may not feel like it's moving along quickly, but the work in the study has been very quick pace in the context that we find ourselves right now.

I think it sets up all of the transportation system improvements that we know will have to make, in this overall corridor, and communities going forward.  Um, so I'll stop there.  I really just want to thank everybody who has worked on this project, acknowledging that we have a lot of infrastructure needs, both in these community, as well as all over the city, a bridge maintenance backlog, safety challenges, multimodal transportation challenges that we face.

And it's through good work that helps integrate all the needs that we have and brings them all together.  I'll stop there.  Turn it over -- turn it back I guess, to Jennifer, to let our partners say some words too before we get into the meat of the study.

>> Great.  Thanks Sam and thanks for joining us tonight.

I do want to acknowledge other folks, and then we will introduce our interagency team members.

From the SDOT project team, in addition to Diane Wiatr, we have the department project manager and Andreas.

And we have Johnathan Lewis.

We are partners and in addition to myself, we have Tom Brennan and Jerry and then we are also joined by Tonya, supporting the closed captioning this evening, along with our staff.  Thanks for everybody for.

>> So, the BIRT report closely follows the Washington State legislation scope of work for this project.

And so it was really a year ago, that we were -- for the city to develop a plan to improve mobility.  They said it must be developed with our interagency partners and you will be hearing from them in just a minute.  We must examine the bridges.  You'll be seeing the timeline, on which we have created the responsibility for that.

While this work, this body of work was handed to us by the legislature, this is also a body of work that will benefit the Seattle department of transport and all community members, because we have been able to analyze a great deal of transportation forecasting and data and growth data to come up with the report for the legislators that both fits their scope of work and also fits the needs of our community.

So our interagency members, King County Metro, sound transit, the Port of Seattle, and the Washington Military Department for collaboration on the armory site redevelopment planning.

These partner has a vested interest in the transportation system, in Ballard, in Interbay, for a variety of reasons.  And Jennifer is going to invite them to say a few words about their work.

>> We will introduce them by name and invite them to say a word or two about their participation in the process and how their agency will use this work moving forward.  So from sound transit, we are joined by Chris, and also by Dan Turner.  So let me turn it over to you.

>> Thanks, Chris from Sound Transit.  I'm one of the project managers, and we are planning to have, um, light rail in this corridor, 3, in 2035 and studying alternatives and this has been a helpful forum for understanding the future conditions and facilities are going to be, potentially.

And to understand what the future of Interbay and Ballard could be.  Thank you for having us along and I'm sure we will continue to collaborate.

>> Thanks for being here tonight.  Next we will go to Chris, from King County Metro.  And Brend.

>> Hi.  It's been a pleasure being a part of this process.

Both King County Metro and sound transit cooperate on planning, because we know it's one system to the public.  And so we really value this opportunity to do some long range planning.  And hear from the community about what they want.

It's a challenging year, in 2020 with COVID, the failure of the West Seattle bridge.  But if we don't plan for the future, we can't realized the future.

A lot of this work is going to position us to be able to do projects big and small.  So um, we are looking forward to continuing to be a part of the community conversation.  Thank you very much.

>> Great.  Thanks for joining us.  And from the Washington State Department of Transportation, we have Travis.  Welcome.

>> Yeah, thanks for having us as part of the study.  You know, 15th Elliot corridor is critical to mobility.  We are all one big system and it's in our best interest to understand what is happening and some of the longer range plans.

For example, this directly affects some of the state infrastructure, I5, it plays a big part in freight mobilities, bikes, and peds.  Looking forward to collaborating more and it's been a pleasure working with you and the team.

>> Thanks.  Our other partners, Eric is going to try and join us, so we will welcome him if he is able to make it.  They have been involved in the study as well as the Port of Seattle's representatives.  Also as Diane mentioned the Washington State freight mobility strategic investment board and the Washington State military.  And they were not able to join us, but send their regards.

I would like to acknowledge that we have staff from council member Lewis's office.  Welcome.  With that, I think we are through with all of our welcoming remarks.

I'm going to pull the presentation back up and go back to Diane to reorient us to the goals of the BIRT study.

>> Thank you.

So all of our interagency partners helped us to develop the project goals.  So, these goals are of course consistent with the legislation, they're consistent with SDOT and City of Seattle values and goals as well.

Senator Carlial likes to say that the Ballard Interbay area is a transportation ecosystem and our partners working with us have helped improve the report.

But also, the collaboration has been really important to consider, in the area, as the transportation ecosystem.

So the first goal, to improve mobility for people in freight.  So in this report we looked at both -- it's a very multimodal integrated report.

So we want to be able to improve efficiency for all transportation.  Our goal 2, to provide a system that safely accommodates all travelers.  We are looking at the more vulnerable travelers who walk and bike and use transit.  We are keeping an eye on safety for everyone.

Number 3, our equity goal.  It's intention is to build a more racially equitable and socially just transportation system.

And 4 -- for all modes, in a coordinated fashion and fashion with our partners.

>> Thank you and I just saw that Eric from the port was able to join us.  So I'll pause here before I go into our summary of public feedback.  And Eric, welcome.  Love to invite you to say hello to the group and share a couple of work about the port's involvement.

>> Thank you.  I'm so sorry that I was late and major thanks and credit to my colleague Rosi for reminding me.  You get to see the dinner preparation happening, which I'm sure many are also involved in.

I'm glad to be able to speak here, because I do want to say a major thank you to Diane at the city and the whole City of Seattle and SDOT team, along with the consultant team.  For their thorough work.  Jeri I don't think was able to join.  I think I'm here instead.

She's the one who has the institutional knowledge about the freight transportation network in the city and the importance of maintaining freight mobility, even as the city grows and maintaining the transportation system that serves our industrial facilities that built the city up in the early days.

That was our perspective going into the study.  We worked with representative Tarlton to ensure that language directing would account for the multimodal nature.  Obviously the port is special -- to support economic development.  We take that responsibility seriously.  My commissioners are elected by the people of king county and take the perspective of their constituents seriously.

So we -- in the Interbay -- in the as well as the perspective of this system functioning as an entire system, and improvements in passenger mobility can also improve the fate of freight mobility as we make sure they can all coexist on the road.  That was again, the animated spirit.

I think it's something that we see reflected in the work done by Diane and consultant team.  We submitted thoughts on the study and I think many, if not all, are reflected in the final product.  So we look forward to continuing the conversation about improvements that need to be made to this area, as the city continues to grow as we go down the legislature and receive the study.

That's my brief comment.  Thank you for pausing and letting me do that.  Sorry again for being late, and I look forward to listening to the rest of the presentation.

>> Thank you so much for being here tonight.  The question must be, what's for dinner?

>> It's is true quarantine, because I froze this sauce 4 months ago and I'm resurrecting it from the back of the freezer as we go back into phase two of the quarantine.

It's good to have something to look forward to.

>> Very nice.  Enjoy, and thank you again.

>> I'll stick on the phone, it's good to have something to do while I cook.

>> Great.  Thanks.  All right.  Well, as we move on this evening, if you would like to sign up to provide comment, Jeri has posted the link, WWW.tinyurl.com/ballardinterbay.

I do note a question related to how capacity is measured for people in freight.

We are going to hold on to that question for just a minute and as Tom gets into the findings from the study, he should be able to address that when we talk about the scenarios and when we talk about some of the key improvement opportunities.

We will come back to that in just a minute.

Just to sort of reorient ourselves all of the feedback that we have received over the course of this study, we did want to take a second and acknowledge the fact that engagement for this study has been different than a typical SDOT project.  For several reasons.

One over those, this is a technical study and the legislation was directive about who SDOT needed to work with, in terms of the interagency team and some other key partners and stakeholders.

So the format has been more virtual than anyone of us would have anticipated as we started off with the initial public meetings both in Ballard and Magnolia.  We had been interrupted by snow, that's the most extreme interrupt to our engagement that will happen.

But clearly, we were wrong.  So we had to shift things to a lot of different formats and appreciate everybody's flexibility in that.

But Diane and the project team have briefed the Seattle advisory boards, elected officials, a hand full of different advocacy groups, at many points in the project, including community councils, the north Seattle industrial association.  And we heard from many of you through comments at team meetings, public meetings and through our various online engagement opportunities, as we have gone on.

One thing we we shall we could have done is have been direct engagement with employees in some of the businesses.  An opportunity to engage with stakeholders, when we think about the industrial sector.  And that was a challenge because of COVID, but did hear from a number of folks over the course of the study.  That's a snapshot of who we have talked to at a variety of different points.

And the report gives a summary of engagement really, tying in the feedback into the report's findings.

I did want to take a second and talk through a few of the common themes that we have heard when it comes to -- when it comes to our stakeholders.  And we have posed these as questions and tried to identify ways that we have addressed the questions we heard.

So I'll hit on a few of these now.  One of the recurring themes and questions we have heard is why the study isn't recommending a preferred alternative for replacing the Ballard or Magnolia Bridge.  Because of the history of study, why not for the Magnolia Bridge.  And part of the reason for that is that it isn't exactly what the BIRT study was intended to do.

What the BIRT report does is instead, advance our understanding of the two most promising alternatives for each bridge while trying to advance the ways we think about the trade offs between them.

Part of that is captured in a social and economic impacts analysis, which you'll hear about as we move through this presentation this evening.

Most importantly what the BIRT study does is identify projects to keep people in goods moving.

And those are applicable regardless of the final bridge that's collected.

We have noted the Magnolia community preference.  We wanted to ensure that previous work and community feedback was captured in the report itself and reflected, as we talk about our next steps as well.

Another thing that we heard a lot from folks was the question around what can the BIRT study do to kick start funding and bridge replacement.

And in developing the final report we focused on next steps for bridge replacement.  And that's beyond the typical steps that we take to study replacement of a bridge.  We did try to identify, when it comes to potential partnerships, with the state, what might be needed.

And Tom is going to talk more about the need for funding partnerships and support from the legislature.  But one thing we wanted to be clear about in the report is that SDOT and the City of Seattle can't fund these projects alone and we do need state and potentially federal resources.

From some of our modal advocates we have heard comments and questions about bike infrastructure, and how we priorityize the needs for freight.

Does include key improvements by mode and corridor.

Or could be advanced separately.  So, we have tried to identify ways how some of those could be packaged differently so they could move forward.

The corridor management strategy is important for our core freight routes and our scenarios account for potential growth in the study area, to help us understand what will be needed to maintain freight mobility, no matter what the future looks like, under a variety of circumstances.

And then a final theme, although there have certainly been more comments that we have used in shaping the report, has been around questions of how we are addressing the climate crisis through the key improvements identified in the BIRT study.  As a multimodal study, BIRT does have a specific focus on access to transit.  You heard from our partners at sound transit and King County Metro.

We know that in particular, south transit, the 3 stations in the area are going to have the biggest impact on reducing single occupancy vehicle trips and reducing carbon emissions.  So, the report does focus in on this.

Being thoughtful about how freight with move smoothly.  And then as Diane mentioned when talking through our goals the plan's key investments reflect SDOT's and cities priorities of safe, equity, mobility, climate and implication.

Ensuring that the projects advance racial, social and environmental disparities.  Those are not all of the comments we heard, by any STECH of the imagination.  But hopefully as you have a chance to review the report over the coming days, you'll see your feedback and comments reflected throughout.  And in the way that we have framed the findings and next steps for the report.

So with that, I am going to bring Tom Brennan back to talk us through some of the key findings from the final report.  So Tom, can I turn it over to you?

>> Good evening.  I'm going to do my best to talk through an extensive amount of work in a short amount of time.  Some of you have participated in previous meetings so may have heard these topics in greater detail.  The goal is to -- speak about the key findings from the BIRT report.

So let's jump in.

It's important to recognize that the under pinning of this effort is extensive analysis of the transportation systems in the Ballard Interbay study area.

The report looks out to 2042.  As we do this type of transportation analysis, it's important for us to think about um, not only the land uses in place today, but those that may come or develop in the future years.

So we conducted a number of scenario analysis that took into account, um, various land use growth projections.

Took into account both of the bridge alternatives that Jennifer spoke to, for the Ballard and Magnolia Bridges.  And then also, accounted for a sum of the major transportation projects that we know are coming to the district, probably the most impactful or beneficial, I should say, of those being the West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions project that Chris spoke about.  Which will bring 3 light rail stations with connections to up down and downtown Seattle.

To the study area.  A little bit about land use, because there are some really important interactions between this study and um, other efforts, under way.  So our analysis looked at um, a couple of scenarios that were largely based on what the Seattle comprehensive plan projects for land use growth in the Ballard Interbay area, which was essentially to say, something similar to um, what the zoned land use is or allowable by zoning today.

There have been and are some planning efforts in the study area.  Including study of redevelop of the armory site and sponsored by the Mayor's office, some potential change to Maritime.  That is not completed but provided important insights to our work.

A couple of our scenarios did look at those land use options to think about what a more specific change to land use in the district would look like, in terms of transportation impacts.  That's important because it means we're planning for the scenario that has the most comment and making sure that the system is able to carry the people that are needed but also, importantly for this industrial Maritime district, carry the freight movements that are necessary to key the economy humming.

We know that this is one of two critical Maritime and industrial centers for the City of Seattle.

So all that work really under pinned everything we did, including our detailed analysis.  Some of the higher level findings, one just confirming that both Ballard and Magnolia Bridges are critical to regional travel for people and goods.  And that if we continue to plan and implement the investments in this study, the system can accommodate the future travel demands.

But it requires a system approach.  When we think about keeping people moving on buses, our goods and freight moving on road ways that means we need more people on transit and bikes to make that road way available.  So it is really a system approach.

We know that 15th at west, including the Ballard Bridge, are the most critical transportation spine in set of facilities, so the plan does put forward a number of um, investments in terms of what we call corridor management strategies, signal operations, as well as specific capital projects, to support those corridors.

As I mentioned, really keeping people safe and keeping the system moving efficiently in this area, will require robust multimodal network.  As we expect more people to move on foot, in a bicycle, something we know will happen, particularly as transit increases and sound transit light rail comes to the district, we need to ensure those folks can move safely, in a district with a lot of ingress and egres.

That means need for investment for bikes and peds.

As I mentioned, we did modal a few scenarios that looked at what might happen if zoning was changed to allow more intense uses, such as mixed use, residential uses, or different types of light industrial or commercial uses.

What we did see was that while the system could likely handle those types of investments, it would put more pressure on a couple of corridors in particular, 15th at west, and west Dravus street.

In terms of the bridge alternatives, we did modal scenarios with comparable land use and looked at the armory way alternatives to that bridge replacement.  And for the Ballard Bridge, the low level rehabilitation, which keeps the bridge at the same height.

And in terms of mid level, replacement, which is a higher span, which reduces the required bridge openings, what we saw, not surprisingly, is that the higher costs alternatives do tend to perform better.  Generally that's the case in life.  Good things cost more.  We will talk about what that means as we move along here.

So we had an economics consulting Firm, Community Attributes, heavily involved looking at economic and social impacts in the Seattle Maritime and industrial sectors in Seattle as a whole.

Working throughout the study.

They did a social and economic impact assessment of the various bridge replacement alternatives.

This is a quick summary graphic of the 6 core areas they looked at, which included travel time.

The costs of clinicians or what we call safety.  Operating costs, which was a look at the net increase in vehicle miles traveled, created by specific alternatives and the cost and maintaining and operating the system.

Housing accessibility, which looked at whether different bridge alternatives had scientific impact on access to housing.  Market desirability.  Would any bridge alternative have a significant impact to desirability of property or housing.

And then the costs of those alternatives.  Just to point to a couple of things quickly, in the travel time category, probably the most significant I think result of this work, which has been out in previous work in the Magnolia Bridge as well, is that the armory way bridge alternative, in comparison to baseline, is projected to increase travel time to portions of Magnolia, particularly for folks coming to and from the south, by up to 12 to 13 minutes.

So those are you know, fairly significant increases in travel time for certain portions of the Magnolia community.  And you know, those are results that we wanted to be clear about, in this study.  Just to say more about that, the Armory Way connection, unlike the current pathway of the Magnolia Bridge, does require more at grade movements, as folks know, moving through signalized intersections is certainly more time consuming.

And can create more delay, than a facility that is largely connected by ramps and doesn't have that type of interaction.

I think the other thing I point to here, is that under the safety category, which is a critical part of the work of the economics team, was to look at the collision history.  And really, we found that the Magnolia connection, there's a fairly low rate of collision, so the team didn't find safety benefit.

That's not the say that those facilities wouldn't be designed to improve in pedestrian safety.

There are more collision in and around the Ballard Bridge, so we saw higher potential benefit with the implementation of both of those, but those facilities are relatively similar.  So no differentiation between the two bridge alternatives.

So the recommendations chapter in the report, um, lays out a broad range of recommendations.

And is organized to describe each of the individual modal systems.  So if there's folks on the phone who are interested in what BIRT has to say for cyclists, or freight or transit, I think you'll be happy to find that there's a clear description of our modal priorities.

But this map focused on what the highest priority investments are for the study area, across all modes.

And I think I'll point to a few things here.

One, in the 15th avenue and Elliot corridor, this is one of the most critical corridors.  We have laid out a range of improvements that include enhancements for freight and transit.

Again, as more people move by foot to and from and along this corridor, there's need for specific enhancements to the pedestrian experience and crossing experience.

And we are looking to improve signal operations and provide additional right of way for transit, at places like 15th avenue, northwest and Northwest Market Street.  You'll see a number of opportunities for, um, improvements for pedestrians and cyclists.  Accessing the 3 new light rail stations.

In Ballard there was a particular level of interest, in improvements along 14th avenue and northwest, for people on foot and biking, to 15th for people, moving north south and accessing that station.

Important corridor for this study area.  One of the key corridors that provides east west crossing of the Burligton tracks.

The report provides a couple of potentially incremental options for improvements, the most specific of which would lead to the replacement of the two bridge decks, to provide sufficient bike, pedestrian and transit facilities along that corridor.

And I think, um, also important, one of the really critical things that we heard from the community is the need for all ages and abilities cycling facilities east of the tracks.  One of the projects that the plan supports is the Elliot Bay Trail extension, which Jennifer is pointing there to.  East of the tracks to create a high quality facility, and in the future, connect the Smith cove and Interbay systems.

I'll stop at that.  A lot more in the report.  But some of the key recommendations.

Now as Diane mentioned, one of the key elements of the BIRT legislation is that the team provide recommendations on a timeline, for constructing new Magnolia and Ballard Bridges.

The approach in the report is really to outline a typical project development, phasing.

In the estimated time to complete each of those -- each of those key phases.

As any bridge engineer would tell you, it's challenging to provide an exacting timeline for a major capital project, without understanding um, the full funding condition, and given some of the current funding challenges, particularly the additional pressure that has been put on the city, and many of its potential funding partners, with the West Seattle High Bridge emergency and effort to generate funding to reopen that bridge, as soon as possible,

has necessitated to look at the timeline in a typical fashion and develop a strategy that allows SDOT and partners to think about funding those elements incrementally.

One thing I will point out is that SDOT and the City of Seattle completed a bridge maintenance audit, and found that there is a significant backlog of bridge maintenance and operations costs.  So again, in a difficult funding time, you know, more challenging news -- for SDOT, that even the maintenance and operations on their vehicular bridges is stretched.

Next two slides walk through the description of both the Ballard and Magnolia Bridge timelines.

These -- for each of the bridges, the planning study is largely complete, the Ballard Bridge planning study is being published this week for folks that may have been waiting for that.  But as SDOT would move forward, next step would be to develop a type size and location study which really does what it sounds like.

Identifies the type size and location of the preferred bridge alternative.  And work through various design and engineering phases as called out here, moving towards the finalization of design.

Bidding that to a contractor and construction of the bridge.

Now, that could take, um up to 8 to 12 years.  All that relying on the notion that funding would be available as each of these major milestones is reached.

Currently that funding is not at hand.  But this set of incremental steps lays out how the city can think about generating the money needed to advance to the next step, rather than try to fund the whole thing at once.

You can see there's a fairly significant difference in cost from low level alternative.  Up to mid level, which could cost, um, from 680 million upward to a billion.

Next slide is similar timeline for the manage bridge.  I know we have had questions in the past about haven't we already done a type size and location study and environmental review on Magnolia Bridge alternatives.

The answer to that is "yes".  Those are quite dated at this point and generally, dated enough that the city would have to, um, repeat those activities.  But may be able to generate benefit from having done those.

You see that the replacement alternative, from 304 to about 420 million.

And the Armory Way, about 200 to 350 in estimated cost.  You may ask why the ranges are large.

It's typical at the level for cost estimates and engineers developing those to use fairly wide range representing the sort of potential unknown costs of savings that may arise, during the design and construction process.

So what are opportunities for funding these important bridge infrastructure projects and how do we get there?

The city has continued process to determine what the final bridge alternatives are for both of these bridges, that will be um, a process.  Through which the community and businesses -- are provided transparency and input in the decision process.

I think it's really, um, critical to say that the BIRT report stresses that there is no funding currently available to advance bridge design or to replace or rehabilitate either of these bridges.  That's important in that it sets up a number of steps that both the city can take to consider local funding options, but also, stresses the critical importance of regional, state and federal partnerships in developing funding.

Certainly a critical aspect of delivering this report to the state legislature is to obtain support for both of these facilities.  You can see there are a number of important aspects to legislative support, from our legislative delegation.

And could also be supporting other key methods of funding or financing that might require action from the State Transportation Commission.

So key actions, to finalize the bridge alternatives decision and continue to identify funding.  Establish the priority of bridges relative to other critical Seattle bridge needs.  The West Seattle bridge is the top priority for the city now.  There are a number of other bridges in the system that have critical needs.

Really developing a plan for coordinated plan procurement.  So once SDOT has identified a project as a priority it works to apply for and hopefully receive the funds for the incremental steps that we talked about.

Looked to include the initial project development phases in future transportation funding measures, which could be both local, as well as at the state level.  And really continue to evaluate all possible local revenue streams, which could include things like facility tolling and broad range of other options that are laid out in the report.

As the city moves forward they will be looking at these bridge projects but also, thinking about how potential packages of project could increase the viability.  Many of which are highly competitive.

Do have a number of specific criteria and may compete better as a package of projects, that is delivers on, um freight interests, economic need, social needs and environmental needs for the district.  So there will be an opportunity to think about and use this long range plan, as a way to guide those investments.

The city continues to explore funding and learning a lot from the West Seattle bridge process.  Continued coordination with the Mayors Maritime and industrial.

Agency partners are a core part of the funding plan and SDOT will continue to work with them and continue to further research and explore ways that redevelopment could fund direct public benefit.

>> Great.  Thank you for that.  That was a lot, very quickly.  Thanks for moving through it.  So Diane, let's go right to you.  And give us instructions for how to provide comments in just a second.

>> Thanks, the next step, really Tom laid these out.

The first is to follow up with the Washington State legislature.  They have received the report this evening and particularly to follow up with the state legislature, as they develop new transportation funding packages in the future.  And to figure out how we can include some of the Ballard Interbay projects in that funding.

Advancing area transportation movements.  So we do have um, modal plans, we have plenty of transportation improvements and enhancements that happen every year.  Now a lot of these investments are in the BIRT report.  And so they can get elevated within SDOTs financial and program structure.

As Tom spoke to the bridge asset strategy management study, that will be happening soon.  And that will really provide us the ability to evaluate and prioritize the 77 bridges.  And um, in Seattle, as in all older cities.  We have a great deal of aging infrastructure.  And we need to figure out how to best prioritize and be prudent with our capital spending.

After that we'll be able to advance bridge planning, and alternative decisions for the Ballard and Magnolia Bridges and develop the type size and location studies and then explore a variety of funding opportunities.

And in the BIRT report there are many pages of funding opportunities.  This whole presentation has been high level and if you dig into the report, you will see that there are many, many details.  So if you are transportation nerd of some sort, you will really enjoy this study.  And we will get to your questions.

These were just some ideas for questions to consider.  We imagine that you came up with your own.  Do you have questions or comments about the final report?  Do the priorities and key investments reflect what you have shared?  And are the next steps clear?  With that, I'll turn it over to Jennifer and to a conversation with the community and our stakeholders.

>> Great.  Quick reminder for folks in terms of how to participate, if you've got comments to share, a question that you want to ask, for those of you who have been filling out the comment form, we are tracking and we will call on you in a second.  For others of you, if you would like to ask a question or make a comment, raise your hand in the Zoom app.

You click on the participants tab, so that's the people tab.  And then at the bottom you will see the opportunity to raise your hand.

If you are dialled in by phone, you can hit *9.  And that will raise your hand for you.

And when it is your turn to speak, we will unmute you and if you're on the phone, we will ask you to press *6 and then you would ask that you state your name before speaking.

I'll stop sharing my screen now, if everybody has this.

As I mentioned in the chat, we are running behind, which I take responsibility for, because I didn't do a good job of moving us through the introduction fast enough.  We do have flexibility to go a little bit long on our end and so if folks do need to leave at 7:15, drop a note in the chat, when you are raising your hand and let us know.

You think also indicate in the chat box that you would like to speak.

So, I have a few folks signed up and I see a couple of hands going up.  So we will do a bit of back and forth.

And so the first person is Daniel Hepner.  It looks like you also have your hand up, so I'm going to unmute you.  There we go.  You should be able to ask your question.

>> Thank you.  My name is Daniel.  I'm a 22-year-old, and I'm -- I live sort of close to the area.  Not directly in the BIRT area, but I pass through it a lot.  And um, we continue to be concerned with the lack of climate analysis in these sorts of studies and we are worried that BNSF is not at the table.  We would like to see a zone created that is nice to walk through.  You know?

The south side of the Ballard Bridge appears to have um, sort of freeway interchange on all the proposals.  And that's something that's concerning to me.  Um, it seems like we should be prioritizing pedestrians and biking and transit over cars.  And um, fossil fuel burning freight.  Thank you.

>> Great.  Thank you for that.  Tom, do you want to say a word or two about some of the elements of climate analysis that were included around the prioritization area?

>> Sure.  We didn't dive too deeply into the evaluation framework that we use to prioritize projects.  But we did take all the recommended projects and others that weren't recommended through that detailed evaluation process.  Impacts on, um, carbon emissions were one of the key evaluation metrics that we looked at.

And were used in the weighting of the process of the projects that were put forward.  Um, you know, Do I think that that certainly is one of the most significant things happening in this area that can help to, um, address climate as the construction of sound transit light rail, which will get a lot of people on transit.

>> Thanks.  Next on the list.  John Ware.

>> You mentioned if there's no funding but I was curious if there's overlap to mitigate costs through any of that?

>> Good question.  That is one that has come up several times, hoping for ways to be able to connect the two.  Tom I know you spent a lot of time writing that funding chapter.  Do you want to talk about opportunities there?

>> Sure.  The short answer is, there's not really much opportunity.

I think, the, you know, the sound transit project will help to fund some other critical transportation elements, in particular, um, some of the you know, access improvements in the immediate area.  If you're referring to ideas of shared major infrastructure, like a shared bridge, that's not part of the, um, part of the plan.

And really not, um -- not an opportunity, or likely a cost saving, given the complexity of trying to merge the two, the sound transit design, is really set to create a crossing that is uninterrupted.  Which means elevation from the waters is critical.

Some of the costs of trying to merge that with vehicle facility are significant and would also probably reduce it's effectiveness for bikes and pedestrians, given the height of the facility.

>> Thanks for that.

Next person on the list is David Moring.  David.  I am looking for you, so I can unmute you.

Here we go.

>> Great.  Thank you so much.  And um, I guess my big question is, as you mentioned, there's a lot of public comments that were received um, how many of the public comments in a general speaking, helped to inform the current plan?  Are there specific comments that steered the multimodal transit in a certain direction?

>> Well, let's see, I'll start on that and then Diane and Tom, you can chime in as well.

So you know, part of what we shared in talking through some of the comments were some of the themes that we heard over and over.  I will say that particularly when we were at the stage of shaping projects, and really hearing from folks about priority projects, what should be combined, what trade offs, that was a place where folks were able to provide specific notes for us.

We worked hard to weave the comments in the report.  I hope that you will see the feedback from the public and interagent team members integrated into the ways that we talk about the social and economic impact analysis, the results priority projects and ways we tee up the next steps for the decisions that need to be made.

Those are so critical and critical to moving forward, with a lot of the recommendations in the BIRT report so we tried to be specific about the feedback that had been shared from the communities and what people were hoping to see in terms of next steps.  Diane, let me invite you to chime in as well.  And then Tom, if you've got anything you want to add.  Or Jeri you as well.

>> I think you covered that nicely, Jennifer, honestly.  I think there's a number of communities who view the transportation network through certain lenses, and we met a couple of time with the Ballard free Mont representative and they spoke about a biking system and pedestrian improvements and safety and also they had a strong emphasis on accessibility, for people with disabilities and they helped elevate that in the report as well.

So everything that was said may not be reflected.  But the broad sweeping generalizations of popular opinion, will certainly be reflected.

>> Great.  Thanks.

>> We did do an extensive online survey.  Got good response.  Part of that was asking the community to identify and rate specific projects.  So, the idea of cycles facility east to have railroad tracks, that was something that we saw reflected in our key investments, that was one of the projects that the community was most interested in, through that survey.

Some of the pedestrian improvements along 14th and Ballard.  That was another project that was specifically called out, with a high level of interest.

Some of the interim cycling improvements, acrossing the ship canal, that was another important focus from community.  So I think there are a number of specific projects that came out of that survey effort, and other input.

>> Great.  Thanks Tom.  Thanks Diane.

So we had a couple of other comments and questions pop up.  And I'll summarize because they are folks that didn't indicate an interest in speaking.  We have a couple of notes and questions on how we used evaluation criteria, about how capacity is measured and whether there is data available on how we are assessing the climate impacts of various projects.

In the final report there are two appendics but there's one that focuses ton methods which identifies the approaches that we used for analysisment.

And there is another that shares all of the evaluation results and the project scoring, that would be another valuable one for folks to look at.

I don't want to over sell the depth of the climate analysis because these are conceptual projects in many cases.  We didn't do an extensive climate analysis as the way it would be done as they move into their environmental impact statements as they move to other phases.  But there is good information there, available.  So there's a couple of other pieces that we will come back to.

I see that Sharon, Lavine has her hand up.  Let me unmute you and we'll go to you next.

>> Thank youment I know that the issue of a carpal tunnel to replace the Ballard Bridge has been raised and I don't understand why there's no mention of that or part of the study that looks at a tunnel replacement.

>> Tom, can I turn that to you?

>> Sure, this piece of work builds on the Ballard Bridge planning study as for the foundation for assessing the full range of alternatives for repairing or replacing that existing piece of infrastructure.  Um, the tunnel option was not, um, one of the options looked at in detail through that study.  It may have been considered.  But there's a number of significant challenges to creating a tunnel.  Um where that facility connects currently.

Among those are you know, development of the portals, so the design requirements to create a tunnel portal for a modern facility are incredibly significant in trying to bring a tunnel up on the south side of the ship canal, let alone on the northern side where you have a developed urban neighborhood, are very, very significant.

Also significant challenges with providing pedestrian cycling infrastructure in a tunnel.  If you built a vehicle tunnel they would have to build an above grade crossing for bikes and pedestrians, which is a significant cost.

>> Thank you for that, Tom.  So we have, I have a question that came in online that I'm going to turn to Diane.  And then, um, I see another question in the chat around the Magnolia Trail Project so we will get to that.

So Diane, there was a question for someone that had to leave but I would love it for the record.

Who has the ball on finalizing the bridge alternative decision for Magnolia Bridge?  So could you speak to that?

>> Who has the?

>> Who has the ball.

>> Who has the ball?  Okay.  That will be up to the city council and the Mayor, at some point, after we get through the city's bridge audit analysis.  But yes, it's -- that will be up to the city.  Because those are infrastructures that are owned by the City of Seattle, and not the state.

>> Great.  Thank you, Diane.

Tom, can I put this question about -- so there was a note, there's mention of the Magnolia trail project in the plan, will that be included in the BIRT recommendations.

>> Yeah, that project is in the plan.

>> Thank you.  I was hoping that was an easy one.

Pat Kaufman, I see your hand up.  Let's go to you next.  I'll ask you to unmute yourself.  And then Sharon we can come back to you again.

>> Thanks.  Yeah, so I'm wondering about the decision on the different options, as far as um, like a walk score or how this grade elevation changes are proposed.  Has there been consideration to you know, the attractiveness of a walking path to the public?  When COVID first hit I tried to walk to work a couple of times, downtown from Ballard and it's not a pleasant walk.  The grade is great.  But it was just so intense.

I was just wondering if there was thought given to that, as far as the pleasantness of a walk.

>> Is your question related directly to the bridge alternatives?  Or --

>> Was it considered?  I've not been engaged in the process very much.  So I'm wondering does the pleasantness of the walk feed into this at all?

>> Yeah, I would say absolutely.  We typically look at that more in terms of the level of you know, safe sidewalk infrastructure, protection from traffic, street lighting is really critical to people's experience and safety when walking.  Part of what this study has done and certainly the sound transit to this is spend ago lot of time on and thinking about where do people walk today and where do we expect more people to walk in the future.

And certainly, a number of the key pedestrian recommendations are to look at wholistic corridor improvements that would improve sidewalk, make sure there's safe barriers from traffic movement, on those corridors.  Improve crossing facilities in some of those key corridors.  Yeah, that's a great question and something we look at.

>> Great.  Thank you for that and thanks for the question.

Sharon, I see your hand up again.  Let's go back to you.

You should be able to unmute yourself.  There you go.

>> So I'm back to the tunnel alternative.  And I wonder if there were any discussion at all of retaining the Ballard Bridge as a pedestrian/bike means of travel and building the tunnel.

The tunnel seems to make the most sense.  It's the worse thing to have to sit with the back up, when the bridge goes up.  And I do it almost every day.  I just can't see it in the future.  If we are talking about 2040, was there ever any consideration?  A lot of cities have kept their bridges and turned them into pedestrian and bike pathways.

>> Yeah, I believe that was an idea that some folks had had, for sure.  I just wanted to say another challenge with the tunnel, is that 15th avenue and Ballard is a freight route.  And if there were a tunnel, then, um, trucks carrying certain kinds of materials that are considered hazardous or dangerous, would not be allowed in that tunnel.  So they would have to -- they would be prohibited or find other routes.

So the other thing about tunnels is they are incredibly expensive.  And um they just provide so many other challenges.  But the Ballard Bridge planning study is going to be released tomorrow, publicly.  And in that report, you can read about all of the different alternatives that were studied.

And you can also see why certain alternatives rose to the top, both from a technical standpoint and from a community standpoint.

>> And Diane, when we send a link to the BIRT report tomorrow morning, we can include the link to the newly released Ballard study as well.

There was another question that I saw in the chat related to the ability to sort of segment different portions of the Magnolia Bridge cost and understand the differences in certain portions.  I'm butchering the question.

Seems like these costs should be separated.  Some or Diane, do you know if we have looked at those costs separately?  Or if the Magnolia Bridge study provides that break down that we could share with people?

>> If I understand the question correctly, um, the Armory Way alternative is really a multiple part investment.  So part of that would be a new bridge.  Over the BSF tracks via Armory Way connected to Thorndik.  But other avenues do include connection to the area, as well as um, new road way, kind of along the low end side of the Magnolia Bridge.

So I think you can find some of that information in the Magnolia Bridge study.

>> Great.  Thanks for that.  We are coming close to 7:30.  So just want to take a quick look through other comments that we have received.  There are a few notes that have come in online around opportunities to engage with people more broadly and ensure that we are reaching a broad representation of people and a broad representation or perspectives, including folks who don't typically participate in planning processes.

That has been a challenge through the course of this study.  We talked a little bit about trying to reach some of the workers in the project area who represent slightly different demographics and ensure that we are hearing from the diverse communities.  And so we feel like, we can continue to do better on that front.  And we will continue to reach out to folks as those projects move into their next phases.

Definitely a hand full of comments and questions related to you know, continuing to focus on how we advance the city's climate goals and get clear about moving folks to transit, opportunities to increase transit ridership.  Seattle is one of the nations leader in terms of ridership.  There's an opportunity to continue that focus as we move forward.  Certainly, many of the projects included in the BIRT study should advance those goals.

I think we have at least touched on, maybe at a high level, a lot of the comments and questions.  Jeri, is there anything, as you look through all of this, that you feel like we missed?

>> I'm just doing a final scan as well.  I don't think so.  I think that we have covered most of the direct questions, certainly we have um, we are capturing all the comments that are being included in the chat.  So, thank you for submitting those and we will have those on record.

>> Great.  Thanks Jeri.  So Diane, can I turn it over to you to say a word about sending out the report, how folks can review that and what happens next?

>> Absolutely.  So, um, we will, tomorrow, we have a list and we have your e-mail addressed so you are part of it.  And we will send a link to the report, where you can read through it.

You -- one step you could take is if there are projects you would like to see pursued, you can contact your elected, both city council and your legislative district electeds, there's an election tomorrow.

And so things may -- could change, in terms of federal infrastructure funding and future opportunities.  I feel there are so many unknowns in front of us.

However I want to thank the people who came to this meeting, who haven't been to past BIRT meetings.  And I want to thank the people who have been coming to BIRT meetings and giving us their opinions and participating for about a year.

We have integrated your comments.  We want to serve the community, stakeholders and businesses as well.  So we appreciate all of your participation and look tomorrow in your e-mail boxes for more information on both the Ballard Bridge planning study, as well as the final BIRT report.

And thank you.  Thank you.  Everyone who has participated in this.  I has taken a huge amount of labor to pull this project off.  And I thank every person that has been involved.

>> Great.  Thank you, Diane.  And thanks to the project team on SDOT and consulting side.  Thanks to all of you who have joined us, not only this evening but over the course of the last 11 months as we have worked through the technical study together.  Please, drop your ballots off or stick them in the mailbox.  Stay safe and healthy and look forward to continuing to work with you in the months and years to come.

Have a good evening.  Take care.  Bye-bye.

>> Thanks, everyone.