The One Center City advisory group is meeting at King County Metro. This meeting was officially announced on the website this morning. I am the only member of the public here.
Conversation
There are some heavy hitters here from various government departments, including Director Sparrman at SDOT.
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Head of the meeting is now telling people where to get their parking validated.
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One of the first slides shows projects in the "period of maximum constraint"... Center City Streetcar no longer appears in this timeline.
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Now the board members are officially being told that almost no bus restructures are being considered to improve throughput because they "didn't have the time" to implement. (This idea came up early last year.)
Talking about improvements around King Street transit hub. SDOT is getting ready to launch a new wayfinding network and is thinking of a pilot at this hub.
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Peggy Martinez starts a discussion on disability access, asking that issues around access be elevated to the same level as mobility in the project level discussions. Goran Sparrman touts the disability improvements SDOT is doing, mostly by consent decree.
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Mike Harbor of Sound Transit also jumps into the discussion on this topic, touting new light rail vehicles and Rainier station as being more disability friendly, apparently.
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Now talking about the 5th and 6th Ave transit pathway, which adds capacity for 66 buses per hour by relieving pressure on 4th Ave for northbound buses.
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$5.3 million will be spent on Montlake triangle bus stop improvements. Brie from asks why it's in One Center City when only the 255 *may* be rerouted to this station.
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Goran Sparrman basically says Montlake is being improved as an *emergency contingency* in case traffic is so bad downtown that more buses need to be rerouted.
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The 545 isn't being considered for rerouting at time, to clarify, but might be down the road.
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Here are some additional things that we are spending money on that might "improve" traffic around freight.
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Here's the breakdown of how the money will be allocated:
Montlake triangle $5M
Traffic and curb management $3.7
TDM Program expansion/ marketing $3.4
5th/6th Transit Pathway $3.2
2nd/4th Signals $1.4
Pedestrian Imprvmts $4
Intl District Imprvmts $3.9
3rd Ave $3
Public Realm $.8
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That means $1.3M left over. For those keeping track, no funds will pay for any bike projects.
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Now discussing the delay of bike projects. Brie says 20% of people on Pike Pine in the AM are on bikes and they are most in need of protection during the construction of the convention center.
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Goran Sparrman defends delay for 4th Ave PBL as necessary to maintain our bus system. Says SDOT is moving forward with Pike Pine as soon as possible as a result.
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Now we're going to spend some time talking about bike share parking problems. Scroll around in your timeline right now because that's what I'm doing.
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Of course, no one could identify any actual issues around mobility & looked at the floor when we were discussing that topic a half hour ago but now it's a Very Important Problem.
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Now talking about how Key Arena isn't included here. The answer here is of course: there's a whole *different* mobility action plan for that. Probably having another secret meeting now too.
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My phone is going to die so I'm going to tweet the big reveal now. One Center City is now Imagine Downtown.
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Look for any big takeaways from the last half hour of the meeting later. Sorry.
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Okay, I'm back. The meeting ended predictably. The "long range plan" gets another whole framework of meetings ending next year some time. Brie: "Very ambitious!"
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There was a question about the streetcar & Goran said there will be news within 2-4 weeks, mentioned plan being formulated for what to do if there's no money for streetcar.
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I felt obligated to speak during public comment so I reminded everyone that vision zero is something we've committed to. Won't happen unless we reprioritize who we are moving.
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Oh, one more thing: SDOT is apparently committing to a tangible goal of 1,200 fewer peak hour SOV trips in downtown this year and an additional 3,000 in 2019, via STBD investments, the controversial contracted transit pilot, and improved 1st/last mile bike and ped improvements.
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Not clear exactly how those last mile connections will be improved. It also includes a new push to encourage telecommuting.
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