Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Can you hear us now? Can you hear us now? Can the person online hear us? Okay. Fantastic. Thank you for letting us know. Okay. Approval of agenda. So it all is in front of you and was in our email earlier. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Alright. Are there any amendments or changes proposed? No? Okay. Any objections to what we have? Alright.

Approved. Alright. Jumping to oral and written communications. Kevin's been good as always with forwarding us to us the written communications that he's received since our last meeting, which is all the way back in October. Oral communications, I don't know who we have here tonight.

I have two people signed up.

K. The

first person who signed up is Robert Armstead. And I don't see Robert online, and I don't see him here. Okay. So the next person signed up is Vic Bishop, who I also don't see online. Let me double check if Vic's online. Vic's there. Okay. So I will allow you to talk. Go ahead, Vic. You got three minutes.

Welcome, Vic.

Thank you. Thank you, Vic Bishop. I think most of you know who I am. I'm a a professional traffic engineer and former member of your commission and chair of your commission about a decade or so ago. I'm here to talk about speed limits.

I I just want to caution you to be extremely careful about lowering the speed limits around the city. The issue of speed limits is a long, well established traffic engineering issue that is well established in in in data. The eighty fifth percentile concept is absolutely an important issue. And if you attempt to go below, much below the eighty fifth percentile of what's actually happening, eighty fifth percentile is based upon a spot speed survey randomly done of a 100 vehicles. And if you get more than if you attempt to put the speed limit more than five miles an hour before the existing eighty fifth percentile, you will fail miserably.

And I proved that. I I spent the decade of this eighties doing traffic safety studies all over the state, including speed limit studies, and I proved in Lynnwood specifically that they had a whole bunch of streets at 25 miles an hour. And I did I did 30 or so speed studies all over the city, convinced the council to raise the speed limit from 25 to 30, and in some cases, to 35, and then got them to let me do the speed studies again, and the speeds were lowered when we raised the speed limit. You cannot force the public to go slower than they're willing to go. The parkway is a classic example, and I encourage you to leave the Westlake Sammamish Parkway at the 30 miles an hour and 35 miles an hour that it currently is and the thought of reducing the entire parkway from I 90 to Redmond to 25 miles an hour.

To me, if you did that and you recommended that, and I certainly hope that you demand that eighty fifth that spot speed surveys be completed after the speed limits are changed and not just after, but after it settles down a bit and you get the cops out of there and you let the public do what they're gonna do, and you will find that 25 is going to be too low for a lot of the streets.

Certainly, the Parkway, I think Bell Red is probably another one that same similar thing, and I just encourage you to be very cautious and use the traffic engineering information.

Your

thank you, Vik. Your your

time

is up. Sorry to interrupt you. Thanks for the input. Did the second person online show up? Okay. Then is there anybody in the room who would like to speak who did not sign up? And nobody else online who wants to speak up. Anybody online that hasn't announced themselves?

There is one person online. If that person raises their hand, we will acknowledge them and give them three minutes. Person is not raising their hand.

Okay. Thank you for checking. Okay. Moving right ahead. Communications from city councils, boards, and commissions. Well, I do not see, city council member Newnhams. Was he it says he's supposed to be here. Are we expecting him?

Council member said he might stop by to say hi and thank you.

Okay.

But, clearly, he's not our new liaison is is not present tonight.

Okay. And then probably everybody here knows who our new liaison is, Dave Hamilton. Hamilton. Okay. Are there any reports from commissioners?

Alright.

Staff reports. Kevin, do you have a staff report for anybody?

I I do not have a staff report from myself, but will invite the deputy or assistant city attorney to provide her report. You have intro comments.

Okay. Welcome. Alright. So tonight, we have assistant city attorney Heather Jones, and she's gonna take us through the required amendments to the Transportation Commission bylaws. We will review these tonight, and we will take action to approve on them on our next meeting, so our March meeting. So welcome. I could do that.

Good evening, chair Stash, deputy chair and commissioners. As, chair Stash mentioned, I am here to introduce several amendments to the commission's bylaws that will implement changes the city council adopted in September 2025, and then directed the various boards and commissions to implement in their own bylaws. So there are four, categories of amendments. The first two address, the rules of decorum. The rules of decorum are intended to provide for orderly conduct at meetings, and currently, they provide for the presiding officer officer to eject a person who is disrupting a meeting at the meeting or to exclude a person disrupting a meeting in exclude them for from future meetings for a period of up to sixty days.

The amendment would amend the sixty days exclusion to extend that to a hundred and eighty days, up to a hundred and eighty days. The other amendment related to the, rules of decorum would, clarify the appeals procedure. So currently, the, appeals procedures require the city council to consider the appeal, a timely appeal, at the next council meeting. This doesn't always provide for enough time for the council to consider the materials for the city to gather the materials. So now this would include a three day.

It's a timely appeal that allows for three days before the next meeting. If those three days don't exist between the timely appeal and that one, it would go to the next council meeting. The third item would be a change to the term limits for person serving on boards or commissions. It would limit the terms to two consecutive terms on any border commission, and then that would need to be followed by a two year break before serving on another border commission. Currently, someone could do two terms at one border commission and then proceed and serve immediately on a different border commission.

So this change is intended to broaden the opportunities for public participation and service on boards and commissions. And then the fourth category of changes are non substantive changes, cleaning up some language, some typos, and adapting the pronouns to modernize language to be more inclusive.

Any questions from commissioners? Go ahead.

On the disruption and ejection, are there clear guidelines as to what constitutes a disruption or what how would that go about?

So the the what would constitute a disruption would be what's outlined in the current bylaws for the the rules of decorum. Speak you need to be recognized by the presiding officer. Speak to something that's pertinent to the border commission. There are rules against using obscenities or, making a true threat of violence or, actually engaging in assault. So there's numerous examples outlined in the bylaws.

And, in terms of maybe your question is getting at, like, at what point would an exclusion be warranted? That's really at the discretion of the presiding officer. The way that the city council does it is in consultation with the city attorney. The mayor, discusses the type of behavior, the number of instances of the behavior, and the pattern, the level of disruption. Those are all things that are considered, and the exclusion is, you know, made with a rationale underlying it.

Other questions? Go ahead.

Can you please elaborate on the pronouns?

Sure. So it changed where it said his or her. It changed it to their.

And what does this have to do with the transportation?

This was an update that was made across the bylaws because all all of the boards and commissions following the city council's action, all of us have been updating our, the bylaws for our respective boards and commissions that we advise. And, so that change is happening across the board to be more reflective of the city's, goals for inclusion.

Any other questions? Go ahead.

Just one minor question. So this is for boards and commissions. It's not true for the city council member, though. City council, or or is it?

It is. They they extended their they they made these changes, and then the changes are flowing down to the boards and commissions.

Okay. But city council members are elected, and they can be elected for more than two years. Right.

Right.

Okay.

That's so that that would apply.

It just did. So Okay. Did you have a question?

Yeah. Just wanted to clarify. So two four year terms and then a two year break Mhmm. And then going back to two four year terms. Okay. Did did did you get any do you have any other just since we're talking about it now, we probably won't talk about it again. Any kind of thoughts behind what what led to that?

The the only thing that I found was to broaden the opportunities for the community to participate

Okay.

And serve on board their commissions.

Okay. And so I take it this is rolling through all of the commission's bylaws. And that that also applies to the pronouns as well. And okay. Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

And when do these go into effect?

Well, after you adopt them at your next meeting, I am not sure off the top of my head if there is a delay or how we would proceed. If we can do do it on consent. Could I draft?

We have to take a vote, but it would become effective immediately upon the vote.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. And you're, right now, actively talking with the other commissions, kind of all in the

same time frame? So, we've coordinated across, the departments that we advise. So the, for example, the parks department and utilities, I believe they already, adopted these changes. And I modeled, the proposed changes to the transportation commission bylaws off of what they had already done. K. So we're being consistent across Okay.

Other questions from commissioners? No?

Just real quick. What is I'm not familiar with the whole pronoun thing everybody's talking about. Could you explain that again? What what are we doing with that?

Sure. Wherever in the bylaws, sometimes it would say he or she must x, y, and z do something, then it's changed to they must do. Yeah. Good.

Okay. K. Thank you very much. Alright. Thanks for coming.

Alright. And any other staff reports? June of any? Nope? Okay. Perfect. Alright. Number six, public hearing we do not have tonight. So that's a quick one. We'll jump right into our study session. So the first one and on the agenda seven a is John Murphy is here to talk with us about planned arterial speed limit reductions. He's with the neighborhood traffic service he is a neighborhood traffic services manager. Tonight is for information only. We're not voting on anything. We're we're not being asked for any particular directions, but, of course, we can ask questions. So welcome to John.

Thank you so much, chair Stash, and the rest of the commissioners. Happy to be here to talk about speed limits. Go and share my screen. Okay. We're rolling.

So, yeah, this effort to evaluate our speed limits on our arterial network is what we're calling safe speeds Bellevue. As the chair mentioned, tonight's presentation is for your information only. We'd like to share today a summary of the outreach that we've conducted to date through this initiative, the results of four corridors where we did initially lower the speed limit and measured the results. And then, really, the the meat of today's presentation will be about how we're approaching our speed limit setting and show you a draft of our proposed speed limits. Our agenda, we'll go over the background, the why of the the need to evaluate our speed limits in the city, looking at the results of those evaluation corridors, discussing outreach, and then pivoting to, those proposed lower speed limits and then an eye toward our continued outreach on this project.

So Six Speeds Bellevue launched with our city council in May 2025, and the charge was to evaluate all of our posted speed limits in Bellevue that are at 30 miles per hour or higher. Essentially, speed limit setting in Bellevue, has been kind of set it and forget it to a large degree. The city has changed dramatically from a population perspective, land use perspective, modal choice perspective. So some of these speed limits have been set for fifty years, and we haven't really done a comprehensive evaluation. So that's really at the heart of this work.

At that May date, council did direct staff to begin outreach and then also on consent come back with the proposal to lower the speed limit on those four evaluation corridors, which we did and provided an update to our council in January. And we're anticipating going back for a final recommendation for proposed speed limits in June. I'll have a more concise timeline for you toward the end here. So the the need I articulated about our our speed limits have been set, and we haven't really done much evaluation. But, more importantly, setting safe speeds and and encouraging people to drive slower is a cornerstone of our city's Vision Zero effort.

And this is our initiative to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities on city streets by 2030. We use the safe systems approach to Vision Zero. There's not a one size fits all approach to trying to solve this pandemic of traffic fatalities and serious injuries. So the safe systems approach kind of divides things up into safe vehicles, safe people, safe streets, and safe speeds, different strategies therein. So thinking about speed limits, setting appropriate speed limits is really a cornerstone of that safe speeds strategy within our safe systems approach.

And the the need for this work, couldn't be more timely. This is perhaps a a chart that you've seen in in other presentations that looks at our fatal and serious injury crashes that are occurring on on city streets. And the data for 2025, though preliminary, is unfortunately showing a high point over the last decade. So in addition to we haven't done this body of work in, well, ever, despite all these major land use population and and modal changes in the city, we really do have a call to action with the number of fatal and serious injury crashes on on our city streets. So the the focus of this work is on, our higher speed streets, our 30 mile per hour or higher streets.

These streets comprise just a quarter of the total street mileage, but nearly 90% of the locations where a person is killed or seriously injured in in a crash. And we're through this effort, we're really trying to approach setting speed limits by recognizing that the faster you go, the more likely you're going to be in a crash and the more likely that crash is going to be severe. So when we're looking at our street context and looking at what speed does from a safety outcome, we're really trying to look at our speed limit setting to set it at a a level that is is inherently safer. Slower is is inherently safer. And that that's at the core of how we're approaching our speed limit setting here.

You want questions now or at the end?

Let's hold off till the end if that's okay. Yep. I might answer it as as we go along. Thanks for the the prompt. So how does this work in practice?

As I mentioned, the council did direct staff to test this concept of of lower speeds on our arterials. In June, we identified four corridors across the city that were all posted at 35 miles per hour. And we, used our our speed limit setting approach, which I'll go into in a slide or two, and arrived at a 25 or 30 mile per hour speed limit on each of these four corridors. These are streets that are near schools, that have bike lanes, that have sidewalk, that don't have sidewalk, that are near homes or near businesses. It's a real mix of street context here.

So city crews lowered the speed limit in July. Early early July is when the work occurred to the speed limits shown on the screen here. And when whenever we look at speed limits and and if we change them and, we really wanna measure the the impact and see if behavior actually changes. So after about two months, we wanted traffic to normalize and get adjusted to these lower speed limits. We went out and and remeasured speeds.

And the key metric that we found, was a a substantial reduction in high end speeding. I shared earlier that as speed increases, so does the the severity of the crash. So when we're looking at kind of metrics to evaluate whether this is effective, seeing and evaluating that high end speeding, the number of people going 40 miles per hour or higher significantly was reduced on each of these corridors between 1942%, and this is just through changing the speed limit. We didn't do any other street design changes. We did increase the number of signs, so there were a few more reminders.

But this is and there's no additional police enforcement. This is just through the signage along each corridor. So concurrent to the evaluation corridors where we were testing the the lower speed limits, we were really out in the community trying to share information about this effort. We had two community surveys that yielded almost 500 responses, and, a tenant of our outreach was really trying to be where the people are. And during the summer, we could capitalize on events like Family Forth, the International Festival, Farmers Markets, trying to be where there are already a lot of people congregating and sharing information so they don't have to come to city hall and learn about about this initiative, trying to intercept them.

And then we relied, like most projects, on our robust digital and print communication portfolio that we have available. Some of the key findings through this outreach, an overwhelming majority of survey respondents recognize that the speed of cars has a direct, influence on the safety of people walking, biking, and driving. There's that understanding of that link between high speeds and and safety outcomes. When we ask people where are you most concerned about speeds, there is specific concern around schools and commercial areas, where people are walking and biking and, you know, where a fatal serious injury crash has occurred. There are some people that don't think speed limits alone, will will do the trick, which, spoiler alert, we agree with, and we'll share how we are planning to approach that down the line.

But there's an interest in recognition, harkening back to that safe systems approach. There there isn't a one size fits all to to solve this pandemic that we need to couple it with engineering solutions, street design changes, police enforcement as well. And the majority of folks, support reducing speed limits when they're presented with the safety benefit that it can yield. So getting into how we're actually setting speed limits, I alluded alluded to this earlier, really trying to set this, the speed at, the highest speed that a person should drive based on a street's context, and we're really trying to minimize, the risk of a person being seriously injured or killed. So the key attributes that are feeding how we're identifying the speed limits are that comes down to to two attributes, conflicts and activity.

And as the when we look at conflicts, we're thinking about the number of crosswalks along a corridor, the number of driveways, the the number of opportunities for how people get around can mix. So if you're, biking in a bike lane and there are a lot of driveways, there are a lot more opportunities for turning vehicles to potentially, come in conflict with a person walking on the sidewalk or a bike lane, for example, or if there are a lot of crosswalks along a corridor. There are more opportunities, along that corridor for for kind of our all of the modes to mix, which gets us to the second explicit piece of modal mixing, which is really the separation between our modes. So think of a residential street, for example, that has no bike lanes or sidewalk. Speeds are relatively low in in that type of context.

But as we get onto these 30 mile per hour streets and higher, not having having all of that mixing, can be a little more problematic from a safety perspective if you don't have dedicated facilities for people to walk and bike and are mixing with the area where people drive. The second component is, activity. This is primarily a land use attribute looking at kind of the the volume of people in a certain area. So think our downtown core here is going to be a very different environment from, a a residential neighborhood in the Somerset neighborhood, for example. So we took our arterial network and, looked at the number of conflicts and the activity level for each and, put it into this matrix to identify the appropriate speed limit.

So where there is a high number of, crossings and and people mixing together and there's a lot of activity, it would be described as having high conflicts and a high activity, and we're suggesting, for the most part, a 25 mile per hour speed limit. On the other end of that spectrum, there's relatively few crossing opportunities, pretty good off street path for someone biking, for example, and it's going through a forest, we're looking at a higher speed limit. So there's less opportunity and less safety risk based on the the street context. So when we apply this to our city network, this is what we are left with. On the right is a map of proposed speed limits.

Again, this is just on the speed limits that are currently posted at 30 miles per hour or higher. At a high level, this results in about 60 of our streets seeing a five mile per hour speed reduction, about 20% seeing a 10 mile per hour reduction, and about 20%, not seeing a change. The bottom doughnut chart is the proposed speed limits by mileage. So, I didn't share this, but you you're probably aware that we do have a few 40 mile per hour roadways. This proposal would eliminate those 40 mile per hour roadways, and we'd have about 12% of our mileage at 35, almost half at a 2540% at at 30 miles per hour.

So there are a few additional considerations, that we're we're looking at. As a whole, in our downtown, given the robust activity, we are proposing a 25 mile per hour speed limit with the exception of Old Bellevue, where we are proposing a 20 mile per hour speed limit just given the the fairly drastic difference in in the character that we have in Old Bellevue. And then additionally, as this moves forward, there's careful consideration with the city of Redmond. We have some streets that we actually share with the city of Redmond, 1 48th Avenue Northeast, for example. They operate the northbound direction, and and we own the southbound direction.

So coming, to alignment on a speed limit for both directions is the same is really important. So we've already initiated discussions with Redmond staff on this, and we'll need to continue that conversation to more make sure that we're synced up with, what we're proposing and what Redmond is, comfortable with as well. So connecting I know the mobility implementation plan is a body of work that is near and dear to this body, and just want to recognize the influence of speed limits on the level of traffic stress for pedestrians and and bicycles, recognizing that, the posted speed limit has a direct link to the LTS for, bikes and peds. So where is this going? Should counsel consider approval of these, speed limits?

We are likely looking at an implementation plan that is phased. We're we're hoping to increase the number of signs, and and the size of the signs on multilane roadways to provide that reminder, that we that we you know, emulating what we did on those evaluation corridors that yielded those, strong results in in reductions in high end speeding. An example implementation plan might look like focusing on reducing speeds first in our urban core, then branching out to streets that are on our high injury network and then going to the remaining streets. We do actually have some, outreach that we we just launched yesterday to inquire with the community about kind of that phasing and see if we're on the right track, and we'll use that feedback to to refine our implementation plan. So I I mentioned the kind of what sometimes described as the Swiss cheese model or trying to solve speeding.

We can't just change the speed limits. That is the the the focus of this initial phase is identifying and setting safer speed limits. But we do recognize that there's likely to be more work needed to, further reinforce the speed limit. So looking at tools like speed safety cameras and radar signs, lane widths, and things like speed cushions and and medians to reinforce the speed limit is really going to be an important, future effort for us as we move through Safe Speeds Bellevue. So we're visiting with you, in February, hot in the heels of our council date in in January.

We're right in the middle of of this process. We are looking to go back to our city council in June and ask for, their consideration to approve our proposed speed limits. And if should they approve that, that'll be our signal to go begin phasing in these these lower speed limits. And part and parcel to this work is continued outreach. I just mentioned that we have a survey that opened yesterday, to share out these speed limits and and get the feedback on the strategy.

Through that, we'll refine the implementation strategy, make sure that we're answering any questions the community has about lower speed limits. And we're really trying to reproduce the success of the first phase of Outreach and trying to be in the community, and reaching out to our community network and spreading the messages on our digital and print communications. So with that, happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Anybody wanna start with questions? Go ahead.

Sure. And thank you for sharing this. I I know you're not looking for a recommendation from us. Right?

Correct. Happy to take any ideas, though.

Should. However oh, gee. No. I just have a question. It's kind of a fundamental question about metrics. I think, you stated earlier in your in your presentation that, generally, people are willing to take a reduction in speed limit if they see a safety benefit. So but then when I was looking at the material, it seemed like the metrics being used were a reduction in speed. I didn't see a reduction in fatalities or or is that a so it's a question about the metric that's being used to measure success.

Yeah. You're you're dead on. It's kind of a a yes and proposition when we think about metrics, but the difference is the time frame at which we can be confident in the data. So for example, there's four corridors that we lowered the speed limit. What would can we measure immediately?

We can measure the speeds. But the trends in especially fatal and serious injuries, though though a high point in 2025 is still fairly scattered and they're they're and pocketed across the city. So to see the the results bear out in fatal and serious injury data is gonna take a little longer to realize. But if we make network changes, big changes can yield, results a little faster. So, if as this gets phased in, the first piece will be looking at the speed metrics, and we know lower speeds is inherently safer.

But as time elapses, we'll look at the the number of collisions and especially the severity of those collisions over time.

K. So just following

up on

Go ahead. So is the long term before you make changes permanent, would you be looking at safety data, or would you be using the reduction in actual speed as whether you know, the information that you need to decide whether to proceed or not.

Well, generally, when we make speed limit changes, they are done with a fairly high degree of confidence that we're not going to whiplash the community with 25 and then thirty and thirty five. So we're we're pretty confident with this this overall approach. But if it's not effective, if we're not seeing the the change that we need, that's where we need to go back to. I'm just gonna flip back to, slide 19. It's stuck on the screen.

It's it's a call call to action on doing more. So the speed limit is the starting point. And if we're seeing reductions in speed, but we're still not seeing changes in collisions, we're gonna need to approach it from a technology traffic calming crossing approach too.

Okay. I'll I'll follow-up later. I wanna give other leads.

Okay. Other questions? Yeah. Carrie. Yep. Go ahead.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. So it sounds like we're not using data. We're using we're using data in more of an ambiguous way versus specific. So if I look at Bell Red Road, for example, because that's a major arterial road and a good option for a lot of people to to take it in lieu of five twenty, what I worry about there is the speed reduction as far as where does that traffic now go. If there's already traffic at the current speed and you reduce the speed, where does that traffic go?

Will you see it more back in the neighborhoods? We already see a lot of road rage there. How is that going to impact road rage? And what is the existing data that shows that that what's the number of accidents that happens there now? What's the number of tickets that are given there now for people that are exceeding the current speed limit?

And then and then make a decision based off of that data versus reduce it and then see. It seems like the businesses and the neighborhoods there and public input in general for anyone that's commuting through that route would like to have that input, I think, first before making a decision. So looking at what what accidents, what how many accidents, what are those accidents being caused? Are those car versus pedestrian? Really getting into the grains of that.

I know on slide six and slide eight, there were specific areas that were suggested, but and this is not to say it wasn't included, but I would just like to see BellRed or or all of these areas kind of use that data into the grains of it.

You touched on a lot. I'll just quickly respond and and say that the diversion into neighborhoods has definitely come up as something that especially in the neighborhoods group, we will definitely be on the lookout for. I think in areas what we saw on Northup as a as a way to maybe talk about BellRed, we didn't identify a huge change in the the speed of travel for most people that were traveling. What we noticed was a a substantial reduction in the high end speeding. So that's to say, it likely doesn't take you that much longer to travel along that corridor, but the most egregious dangerous behavior, that high end speeding, that is the metric that was severely reduced.

So that could be the case on BellRed as as well that you may not notice it for the most part, but it's really trying to get the attention of the the folks that are traveling at a higher speed. Number of crashes and tickets, do know as a slight aside that is kind of being incorporated in as part of the speed safety camera initiative as well that's looking at some of the the metrics such as number of citations in addition to other things to prioritize where to place those cameras. Feel free to get me back on course if there's something you want me to try to drill into a little better. Better.

No. That's that's great. And just to further that thought, so wouldn't it make sense just in a kind of start at the lowest level and then escalate to maybe focus on enforcement of the current speed limit versus reduction as a first response?

That that's already happening for sure, but that's clearly not quite enough to get us to to reduce, you know, the most dangerous of speeding. So BellRed, I I would imagine, is on our enforcement team's radar, so to speak, for enforcement. So that'll continue to happen even as we lower the speed limits. It'll be coupled with with enforcement down the line, and we're we've been coordinating with our police department about these proposals too.

Yeah. I think data from from the police department that's enforcing that area would be great to have. Thank you.

And I'll jump in with two questions. I might not have the the statement correct. It was something that for those areas greater than 30 miles an hour, they were twenty five percent of the accidents? What was that statistic? Know it was eighty eighty eight percent was the highest. Eighty eight percent. Crashes were billed or serious.

So it's about a quarter of our street network and almost ninety percent of the serious injury and fatal crashes.

And so when it's the network that's the 30 miles an hour and above that have this eighty eight percent, what percentage is 35 and above?

I don't have that with me. We could definitely look into that though.

Okay. Because I think that's a big difference. If we find that most of them are in the 35 and above, then I would say that's where we should be focusing. So I think that would be one comment. And then the second one is tying in with police data, where tickets are given first of all, there's the human factor. A police officer can only pull over where it's safe or where it's shady in the summer. I mean, there's all these human factors in. You're only going to get tickets in the logical places for a police officer to be most of the time. I know I know they can also get them moving, but has that been that bias been built in with the thinking of where the most dangerous areas are when you're looking at tickets given?

I don't know personally, but it's a it's a good observation and definitely something that I'll take back to our police department folks. I know the areas you know, think about Bellevue Way or Coal Creek Parkway or Lake Hills Connector. These are 35, 40 mile per hour roadways. I I do know that those are areas of emphasis for police when we communicate with with them. So they they can, but it it's a good point to think about the ability for them to do it safely.

K. Okay. Thank you. Others? Go ahead.

Could you go back to the slide that showed the areas where you did the trial, speed reductions?

I just missed it. Yep.

So my question, first is the data that you pulled, like, you you you chose these areas, and then you went back and you measured speed. Is that the only thing that was measured? Was there any data versus, like, we've had so many collisions or accidents or what have you versus how it was when you lowered the speed? Did did we track that at all?

Yeah. We we have the number of collisions for each of those corridors. We pulled that as just to understand what

Like, historically or during the the time that you lowered the speed limit? I guess you

would have that.

Historically, but to, commissioner Miguel's earlier question and about the the time frame. You know, a Village Park Drive, for example, I think over a decade, there were this isn't don't quote me on on this. I probably shouldn't say it as part of a public meeting, but Mhmm. 10 crashes. Compared to Northup Way, there was about 10 times that.

So a very different scale. So we're not gonna see on a Village Park Drive over the course of a few months a confident Yeah. Change. So I I think that's where we need to let the data and the time kind of elongate a little before we go back and and revisit that metric. I think on Northup, we're eight months or so post installation. We're getting close to, maybe when we get to a year looking at the number of collisions because there are just more frequent collisions along that corridor.

Okay. Another question I had as far as, the outreach, can you talk a little bit about maybe, you know, the number of number of the, the public that you engaged with? Did you go out to talk to any groups, any, like, the rotary or the Downtown Belvieu Association, things like that?

Yeah. The we invited conversations with all of our neighborhood registered neighborhood associations that we have on on file. Our neighborhoods group has a list, and we we did not get any takers to discuss this project. The in person events, I mentioned that we are really trying to, be out in the community in in front of where people are already attending. So through through those events, hundreds, if not thousands of of interactions, maybe not thousands of conversations, but I stopped by the booth, pick up a flyer.

And then we did brief the Bellevue network on aging as well through this phase. So we are staff are very amenable to to having this conversation, and we're trying to make ourselves as available as we can. So K. Trying to continue that moving forward.

And then just my final question would be I know some of the feedback was concerned around schools. But right now, schools are when they're in session, right, they're 20 miles an hour. So

I think there's just inherent recognition that our children are especially vulnerable, and that's, I think, what what jumped out on the survey, why people selected that if I had to guess. But most of our schools are 20 miles per hour, especially during our our bell times in the morning and the the afternoon.

Are they more concerned with maybe the speeds that are outside of that 20 mile an hour? That's what I would be maybe thinking about. Because you had kids walking, biking to school that are outside of that. Mhmm. So that would probably you know, when I think about, say, school speeds, that's what comes to mind.

Other go ahead. Thank you

so much for this presentation. I I found it, really helpful. It's I'm gonna just walk you through a little bit of my progress in thinking about this, which might be similar to what some others have. I'm not sure. But when I first was hearing about Vision Zero, I come from an engineering background.

And my my first thought honestly was, that's not realistic. And it's, you know, it's not realistic in 2030. And it it's it's not to I it's not to say it's not, you know, worthy that we should that that we should reduce, but it just like, from an engineering background, it's like, you can't you can't really get to zero unless you're talking about we don't have cars anymore or something. You know? So so that was the first thing I thought.

And then and then I read some more about it, and I gave myself some time to, you know, just get more informed. And I felt a lot better about, you know, what all is encompassed with Vision Zero and the safe systems, and I got a better understanding of of safety feeds. And, you know, and those things got me, you know, feeling like, okay. I'm I'm following this. And then the next thing where I was finding myself hung up, which you definitely have heard from a couple of other people here was, well, shouldn't we still be starting with the places where we know there are issues?

So it's the data driven kind kind of approach. So that was my thought. And then I sent off mail to Kevin and said, do we have information about, you know, where and some other people were asking this to us, you know, where where are our our biggest issues? So that was my, you know, my second thought in thinking about it. And then the third question I had, you know, even once I'd once I'd immersed myself in the sort of the different speed levels and 20 miles an hour is a is kind of the the highest speed at which there can be a collision where, you know, someone can survive, a collision.

And so then it makes sense to target that. And and then also the the concept of the conflict zones. And if there are fewer conflicts, then speeds can be higher. If they're more, then speeds are lower. And and all of that was making a lot of sense to me.

And then I just I just so was thinking about and this is because this is a because of where I live and one of these impacts me, then I started thinking about that particular street more. And so maybe I can maybe we can kinda walk through that one, and you can, you know, tell me you know, help me help me think through it. So the particular one I'm thinking of is the Lakemont Boulevard. And that one is a street where there's a very long and this is between I 90 and up to kinda just ahead of the village park. And through that whole section, there there there's no intersections, through any of that.

And it's a, you know, it's a very long stretch, and part of it, there are two lanes one way and one lane another. And it's on a hill, so people kinda naturally pick up speed as they as they go down through that. There are some pedestrians, not a ton, and there is a sidewalk, and there's some bike bike there are bike lanes. Not a ton of bikers, but bike it. So, you know, I recognize and I even recognize when I'm biking it that sometimes it'll feel like both I'm going fast and the cars are going fast, especially going downhill.

But all of those things together made me as I was sort of looking at the safe speeds, my thought was, well, maybe this should be more of a 40 mile because it doesn't have as much conflict as opposed to a 35. And I'm not trying to second guess, you know, you the the Yeah. Both to make those decisions. But, you know, I just was curious on that particular one. Maybe because there's more traffic there is why that one ended up being because I know you were doing both traffic and conflict. So maybe though the conflict is lower, there's high activity there, and that's what brought it to that. So so anyway

Yeah. I I think as a general rule and on this slide, I did share that we are not proposing any 40 mile per hour speed limits just as kind of an overall approach you referenced, the 20 mile per hour speed and the much lower likelihood of of death if you got hit walking. The often cited rate is ten percent chance of death at if you get if you're walking, you get hit at 20. At 40, it's ninety percent. So even a a five mile per hour, difference has a real influence on survivability, which is one of the reasons why, we wanted to really look closely at our 40 mile per hour streets.

And most of Lakemont, Coal Creek Parkway, Bellevue Way, Lake Hills Connector, these are currently 40 that would go to 35, kind of similar context. They're all a little different, of course, but that's the the general philosophy here.

And 35 rather than 40 just because it's slightly slower and greater survivability.

Okay. Yes.

Oh, go ahead.

The follow on question. So did I understand you right? So for Lakemont, that little blue section goes down the hill, that was 40?

It it's current currently 40.

Yeah. I mean, currently, it's 40, and there's gonna be no forties at all. Right? Is that what I heard you say?

That's in the proposal. Correct.

Okay. So that one was taken down to 35 because it was a 40, just out of, like, carte blanche. You you can take everything out of 40 and put it to 35 at least. Right? I'm just trying to also understand the rationale on that one as well.

Yeah. That so this this model is based on, a lot of success across the nation, and it is a a best practice to try to identify the the safest speed at which we want someone to travel. This we adopted this for the Bellevue context, because the model, that is the national best practice is is would suggest a lower speed on most of our corridors, and we were trying to be, a little more responsive to our Bellevue context.

Did that answer your question?

Well okay. Yeah. I think so. I mean, sorry. We're we sometimes get into the the detail there, but I was thinking about Lakemont. There is a multiuse path on the West Side. If you're on that multiuse path, feels a lot safer, and you can ride your bike there. A lot of times I ride my bike on the street going up there, and if it's go you're going up, so you're going slow.

Mhmm.

There could be a perceived conflict from that standpoint. But I I don't think that went into the analysis here. So that's what I we're I think we're just asking these questions to, a, understand, and, b, hopefully, prep you for some of the questions you might get in the community.

Yeah. I'd have to go back to exactly how we there's, unsurprisingly, a spreadsheet behind all of these lines on the map that do quantify the the conflicts and activity. I don't have that in front of me. I'd have to see kind of what what the decision point was because even within each attribute, there's there's a little wiggle. Right? And we did do a little massaging based on the output to make sure it was the appropriate speed for the Bellevue context. So Lakemont in particular, I'd have to dust that off and dig into it a little more.

And I'll I'll add on to that with with my question is, as you go forward, it would be nice to understand the definitions, for example, of conflicts. Is it x number of driveways per mile? Because what hits me as kind of off the cuff is a 25 mile per hour speed limit in downtown where we know there's a driveway or a delivery truck or something every 10 feet compared to a Bell Red or Northeast 20th, significantly fewer conflicts per mile. So how did those end up in the same bucket? Know, was one on one extreme end, one was the other?

Just I think as you go forward, I think we all would agree that driving through Downtown Bellevue has a very different feel than driving on Northeast 20th. And especially if some of these roads are never gonna have a multimodal. So if you if you look at the the factors that went into it, if they have fewer conflicts, not a future multimodal, and I'm forgetting what the third piece was. It it's it's still kind of just, like I said, knee jerk is kind of like, oh, they don't seem to be in the same bucket. So and I know on these models, there's always couple on the edge each way, but that's one that definitely hit me.

Yeah. No. And and there is a a a range within each for, you know, zero to four four to eight, for example, eight to 12. Those aren't the exact ones, but we did there are those buckets and ranges within each of these attributes. So there probably is a little bit of gradation, but we also can't have a 27 mile per hour speed limit or a 32 mile per hour speed limit. So It

it gets quantum narrow, but but yeah.

It's we we'd have to dig into the data a little more into that.

Okay. Yeah.

So it was my thoughts. I think you had also had further question.

Mhmm. So two quick questions. One, a lot of times when we're looking at projects like this, they talk about other cities that are similar to Bellevue that have instituted this. Do we know of any that have kinda gone through this process that are similar to our situation and and what the results of that might have been? Yes

is the short answer. The the most probably visible approach is our neighbor, Seattle. They took a more blunt approach to speed limit setting, and set most of their arterials at 25. And that was that was that. They've refined that approach.

They they kind of took a similar approach to the the sign density, though, along a lot of their corridors increasing the number of signs. And they did also find reductions in high end speeding. So that's the most approximate example. We didn't care for that one size fits all approach to setting speed limits at 25, which, again, kind of the national best practice does indicate. We wanted to have this type of more granular decision making on our speed limit setting.

But there are countless other examples where, speeds have gone down as a result of lowering speed limits. And Seattle has the data on crashes as as well, because they implemented their speed limit change in 2016. So they have that runway to look back at the data, and see collision rates change over time, and they have seen reductions there.

Well, I get a little concerned because Seattle's not to me, Seattle's not I was thinking more like a Kirkland or a Redmond or a city that's more similar to Bellevue. Seattle's kind of its own little you know, it's got much bigger population, much more stuff going on over there. The other question I had is just escaped me. I'll come back to it if I

Okay. Go ahead.

Just a clarification question. So I I see on Bell Red Road and 148 that there is a camera there, and it says cameras and violation sensors monitor that specific intersection, but not the intersection that's suggested on Bell Red Road. Does violation sensors include speeding?

I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you're referencing right now.

It's the bellevuelaw.gov website. It lists where the red light cameras are. Or the cameras it lists specifically cameras and violation sensors monitor for red light locations. And it lists Bell Red Road and 148th. And I I don't I'm speaking specifically on that Northeast Bell Red Road section that's that's marked green. So I guess I'm wondering if that area specifically is not covered by the red light or the camera and violation sensors, one, would that be a good point of enforcement for that specific section if the violation sensors include speeding.

So if I'm understanding correctly, you're referencing an existing red light camera that we have at BellRed in January.

Correct.

Those four that we have across the city have been there for quite a while, and they have not been expanded, as part of the speed safety camera work. It is looking at additional speed safety cameras, so there could be consideration down the line for other corridors, essentially.

So let me just offer that, staff would be very happy to go through the details of any specific corridor or any intersection, any decision making matrix that they've had, in developing the recommendation, but we should move on.

K. Yes. Go ahead. Absolutely.

Broad question, Ken. Broad question.

Back to the metrics and, just, you know, trying to understand. So you know that if you reduce speed, and I think to your comment, if you get all the way down to zero, you're not gonna have accidents. Right? That's not practical. Do you when you're looking at this, do you optima how do you optimize it? So how do you make that decision in terms of lowering the speed limit's gonna have some adverse effect on something else, like perhaps volume? Right? It might lead to more congestion. Do you have that balancing view that you're looking at as well? I mean, how do you, say, okay.

Here's here's the the benefit is gonna be potentially, more safety. And, of course, you should use I would suggest you use safety data for that, but the cost would be more congestion or something like that. Do you do you have a balancing mechanism here?

I I think part of our check and balance here is that we are this may not directly answer your question, but our signal timing, across the city has a pretty large role in in metering the the flow and speed of traffic as well. So as part of this effort, we will be looking at our signal timing to make sure that it is synced up with the speed limits to try to, not you know, further add additional delay that they're kinda speaking in harmony. So we're getting the reduced speeds on the the corridors, but, trying to, you know, maximize efficiency too at our signal system.

K. Any last burning questions that we wanna deal with tonight? Okay. Thank you, John, very much. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. Yep. All right. We have a second topic for tonight, study session, and we have Christie back again here. She will be introducing to us the 2026 annual update to TIP, the transportation improvement program. And she will take us through that, and we all got it in our notes a week ago. So welcome, Christie.

Tilda? Good evening, chair Stash, vice chairman, gill, and commissioners. I'm Christy Ostervin, capital, projects facility planning manager and the implementation, planning division in transportation here for my annual visit, with you. I don't know why there is, never mind. There was there was just some, some why where's that Zoom one coming from? Where's that one coming from? Because the weather just popped up. So did that go? Not that I'm not interested in the weather. I'm here for my annual visit to go through the update of the transportation improvement program plan, better known as one of our lovely acronyms, the tip.

So this year's update is for 2027 to 2032. The transportation improvement program plan is a six year, plan. So, this is, for our agenda tonight, we'll go through what our purpose of the TIP is, how it kind of fits into that whole big scheme of the different, other planning initiatives that I come to you, share with Mike, and do other things with the recommended changes that we have from the current 2026 to 2031 TIP, which were included in your packet, and the action that I do need you to take tonight so that we can move on with our process. So this, graphic should be something that's somewhat familiar, to you. We use this to kind of explain what our transportation, you know, planning process is, where we start with that really large view, that long range view of the comprehensive plan, and how from the comprehensive plan, we also have our long range facility plan and other functional plans that go into that.

From that, we have our mobility implementation plan, which you are very familiar with and has helped us to be able to prioritize those project concepts that help go into the transportation facilities plan, which was something that we worked the last year and a half on quite arduously to be able to get adopted at the end of last year. Projects from that plan go into the capital improvement program plan, so our funded capital plan, which then inevitably lead to projects being able to be implemented. What goes into the local transportation improvement program or what we call Bellevue's transportation improvement program are all of those. Those functional plan projects that are in there, projects from the transportation facilities plan, capital improvement program projects, as well as a few others. My little there we go.

So we also have some sec a section that shows us other programs or initiatives that we may want to enter into. We also have a section that our other regional or outside agency led projects that the city would want to be able to participate in if we had the opportunity. One of the unique things about the TIP is that it is totally unconstrained funding, so you could put anything that you would want to. It is kind of our big wish list. If we had the resources, the personnel, and the ability to get them done in the next six years, this would be what our ultimate was if all of a sudden a big swath of money dropped down on us that we would like to do.

The other thing that the TIP helps us with is it helps us to be able to, apply for grants. So it's a common question on a grant application. Was, is this in your local TIP? And we can answer yes when we can see the different projects that are actually in our transportation improvement program plan. Once we have actually put the plan together, it goes to two different locations.

We report it to the regional transportation improvement program that is managed by Puget Sound Regional Council known as PSRC. It also goes to the state for the state's STIP as they call it, the state's transportation improvement program, which is managed by WSDOT. Before we get into the fourth section, it's another thing about the Transportation Improvement Program plan. It is mandated to be completed and into both of those agencies by June 30 of every year. So we start this process with you typically at the February.

We try to finish it by May because we do have to go after your approval, we go to council for their adoption so that then once we can put the final plan together, it then goes to those two agencies. So for our transportation improvement plan, it is separated into four sections. So we have, section one, which are all of the projects that are included in the currently adopted twenty twenty five, two thousand thirty capital. Oops, sorry, that should say improvement program. I'm still on my old vernacular.

This means that any projects that are in there are in as they read in the capital improvement program plan. They are because it is a currently adopted plan. Section two has the projects that are then included in the recently adopted twenty twenty six-two thousand forty five Transportation Facilities Plan. So when you're looking at Section one, you may see projects that have references to the Transportation Facilities Plan because that is inevitably where we want our projects to go. The remaining projects from the Transportation Facilities Plan are in Section two.

Section three has those other unfunded local projects, that we have identified, that we've scoped. Lots of them have been to you or to previous commissions for discussion, whether it's about the mobility implementation plan or any of the other, plans or sub area plans that we have done in the past. Section four, which is the purple section, are those regional or outside agency led projects. So you'll see a lot of the corridors, four zero five, five twenty, I ninety on that list, as well as some of our transit. So all of the detail of the changes that are recommended for the TIP from the 2026 version to the 2027 version are detailed and outlined in your packet.

So I'm not going to go through every single one of those details. I'm just going to share the, summary here. So in section one, we had six new projects, and we had one project that was, that was removed. In your packet, you'll see the detail of exactly what those projects were. In most cases, those were projects that were that are sub projects to other program plans that are going on.

In section two, we had one new project, and we had six projects that were removed. So we had one project that wasn't one of our other candidates that were in another section when we did our transportation facilities plan process. We had six that during our process last year were removed from, the from the plan itself. You'll see a lot of movement in section three, because that's where we had housed all of our other, candidate projects for the transportation facilities plan. We also have three new projects in there.

You see that 23 were removed, and then there are 19 that are transferring sections, which basically those 19 are going into, section number two because they, are now a transportation facilities plan project. And then in section four, after some conversations with our, regional, policy manager, there is no change needed in that section at this time. So I am here for two things this evening. One is that you approve the recommended list that I have put before you to be able to come back to the public hearing. At the public hearing, that list will no longer have the red, the green, and the blue colors on them.

It will be an actual list. It will still include a I will have another separate spreadsheet that will show all of the projects that have been removed from the transportation improvement program, but it will be basically the final list. And then I would like if you could approve a public hearing date for May 14. Typically, we've tried to come back to you in April, but what we found with the April date is it typically will run during spring break, and we end up needing to cancel because we don't have quorum. In order to not run into that issue, we're going to go ahead and pivot to the first meeting that you have in May.

That will still give me enough time to be able to get to the city council, on their consent agenda for them to actually adopt the, to actually adopt the plan and get it to the state on time. So to kind of give you just the timeline, again, we're here kicking this off wanting you to look at what that compiled list was that was in your packet. We'd like to have your approval for the list itself moving forward. Approval for a hearing date will come back in May with that finalized list. Take any, host that public hearing at the beginning of your meeting.

Take any comments that might come from, any of the community members. Ask for you to approve and or amend should there be any changes that come forward, the list and also a recommendation letter. And then we now have actually a tentative date for our, June council adoption, and that would be on the ninth, which, again, will give me enough time to be able to get it all finalized and packaged up for that June 30, deadline. So at this time, I am asking for, again, approval of the list and of the the date. And then as you can see on this slide, these are my next steps, and I'll entertain any questions about the list as well.

Okay. Opening up for questions. Anybody have any? No? I had a few. Thank you for addressing mine before the meeting. You're welcome. The only thing I can say I'm I was confused was at the very beginning of the meeting, I had just kind of were casually talking, and I mentioned to Molly, I said, well, it seems like more of the safety, vision safety projects have have bubbled up on that that long spreadsheet of of the tip. And she had said, well, after our meet after our retreat in January, that they were just she wanted to have more transparency with what was going on in other activities, the Vision Zero specifically. Right.

That doesn't quite make sense to me because we see the tip all the time. So the the the safety projects from that should have been built in even if we weren't getting as much exposed into the day to day updates of Vision Zero, we still should be seeing those projects reflected in the tip. So her answer almost confused me more than than where I was. And, unfortunately, do you I don't know if you're able to

I'm kidding. So maybe I

maybe I misunderstand understood you, but that's that's what I understood before the meeting.

So I think that there's a couple of things. The items such as, like, what John brought to you, and some of those other things aren't haven't necessarily been capital, projects. They've been operating side, initiatives. Some of the things that you saw that were added to this time are, projects that we, feel are really great grant candidates. So we want to be able to have them stand alone and almost for lack of their re showcase themselves on this list so that then the powers that be in the granting world don't have to read the nuances of the descriptions to kinda find out, oh, what was it that you were applying for by having that generic.

Our our capital, improvement program description sometimes can be very generic so that they can include lots of things. Yeah. We like to try and get down to a little more specificity when we're going to put a candidate on the list. So, I'm not sure any more of the nuances of the conversation that you had with Molly, and she's free to I will move my bag if she can come up and and respond.

Alright. Because I know we had a generic one added, safety related, which I when which I can understand for for for things that come up that would be good to address safety. And then we had a couple of the, other more specific ones, which I know said in them also potential grant opportunities. So okay. That makes sense. I have to admit I'm still a little confused on the previous comment, but that was outside the meeting.

So I can follow-up with you later.

Okay. Other questions on this tip? No. Go ahead.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the project list in our packets in the for the 2027 to 2032 tip project list and to approve the recommended, let's see, the recommended public hearing on May 14.

Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Passes unanimously.

I tell you, I am your easiest one that comes.

I appreciate it. We all studied that spreadsheet for the

whole last piece.

'd like to make sure it's something that you know. I thank you for I thank you for your time. When we come back in May, we'll have more of the dollars also settled as I had mentioned in the memo. We're in the middle of that budget process and things that we'll have more of, you know, the the grant dollars and things like that that we already have had secured as well in that. So we'll come with that final list to you. So thank you, and I will see you in May.

Yeah. And thank you always for giving us adequate time of keeping us on schedule with the February, the May, the June. So thank you. Okay. Item number eight, approval of minutes. Amazingly, the last meeting we had was October 9. Do I have a motion to approve the meetings from the October 9 meeting? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion?

Oh, if I may, there's one small correction to the minutes, which that that that should be October 9 not October 10.

K. Noting that exception, is there any, disagreement with approval of those minutes? Okay. You approved unanimously. Thank you, Kevin. Alright. Is there any unfinished business that's that I don't know about? Nope. Any new business? No? Don't wanna go back to speed limits? Okay. Alright. I know what. Alright. Let's get to the review of the commission calendar. So, Kevin, you're on.

Well, we had some time in March for the TIP, but because the commission and Christie were efficient with that tonight, we do not need to have that topic in March. We will have Heather to come back to us to to seek your approval of the changes to the bylaws. But that's not the only thing that we can do on March 12 because that wouldn't be enough to get a meeting together. So we're we're offering, based on commissioner's prior requests, to have a tour of the traffic management center on the 7th Floor. The staff is available, on the evening of the twelfth.

If you'd like to do that, I will have that part the major part of our agenda for the twelfth.

K. Is there interest in this?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay. Looks like we're yes.

You got it. Alright. Okay.

Excellent. Anything else for calendar you'd like to talk about? Okay. Sounds good. Alright. Any objections to adjourning this meeting? Seeing none and only happy smiles, we're adjourned. Thank you, everyone.