Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

All the biz out the study, and those flyers also had a link to the community survey. Next slide. So we had a lot of great feedback that will, you know, directly take into our analysis. Number one, we heard that parking is difficult, you know, for business owners, for employees, that customers complain about a lack of parking. So in terms of employee parking, it really varied across the board.

Some businesses have dedicated employee parking, but most don't. So for example, a few businesses downtown said, we have an employee space in a nearby garage, and there's vast this you know, who pays for that varied. So the owner might pay for it. Sometimes the owner's pathing that on to the employee. Sometimes the space comes with a lease.

In Old Bellevue, many businesses pay for employee parking in a gravel lot just off Main Street. That gravel lot is not reserved parking. It's first come, first served, but people employees said that, you know, they can always find a space except maybe during the holidays. And in the Spring District, employees of the street level businesses, you know, so not the off you know, office said parking is a real challenge there. They're getting citations.

They're moving their cars every two hours. And, you know, we heard that many times that employees are parking on the street and moving their vehicles every two hours. In terms of customer parking, we heard many customers can't find street parking. They but then they they know there's a private lot available, and they pay. Some businesses have des designated customer parking, but many do not.

We heard complaints from many businesses that both residents and then some of the larger office companies, in the office buildings are taking up street parking. That the feedback was residents don't wanna pay for parking in their building, or they only have one space and they have two cars. The second car goes on the street. So businesses are observing that pretty often. And then also that there's enforcement of the private parking garages.

This is separate from the city's enforcement. That enforcement is heavy handed. Customers are complaining to businesses about tickets. And then at the same time, parking signage for the off street parking, and this relates to we have to have clear signage and communications that the signage is confusing. So, Chris, can you go go to the next slide? This is an image here on the right from Main Street. Like, this was one parking lot, and you can see there's just a lot of confusion of how do you park, what are the regulations. You know, we found this confusing. So, you know, that's a complaint. And then we also heard that delivery drivers Chris touched on this.

On the on the right here, you'll see that this is just one observation we had where the delivery driver is parked in the turn lane. What's interesting about this is there's plenty of curb space here, and that's a fifteen minute zone for that delivery driver. And that delivery driver chose not to park at the the dedicated curb space. So what sums up the issue is one of the businesses said, I look outside and see all of the parking, but if you look out the window, everyone complains that there's no parking available. So, you know, that's something that we need to deal with.

You know, we heard that some of the feedback that businesses are open to the idea of paid parking but had concerns, like, what it did to our how would the rates be priced. We talked about validation with businesses, and, generally, we heard that validation is has an issue because it affects their bottom line. So customers often don't realize that many times the business if the validation is not part of the lease, the businesses are paying for that. So one of the businesses said someone comes in for a $4 cup of coffee, and then I have to pay $2 for the validation. So that, you know, relates to what they we heard around needing for clear signage, streamlined validation.

But overall, the sentiment was, again, Bellevue, they understand Bellevue is growing. These are they're shifting travel patterns. There isn't a lot of on street parking, and and, you know, we do need to find a way to manage that. So there's very detailed notes in the in your staff memo that you can review, and, I'll pass pass it back to Chris to talk about the community survey.

Great. Thanks, Chrissy. So in addition to these activities, the team also put together an online survey on the engaging Velvea platform that was live for about a month and a half starting January 21 and ending just earlier this week on Monday. You know, it was a pretty short survey. It took probably about five to ten minutes for most folks.

We ended up getting 281 total responses, so a pretty good cut. Go to the next slide, please. And I'll just be overviewing some of the results from that survey. So this is a question about do you have dedicated parking? You know, I think interesting here is that there's a lot of folks that have parking where they live or where they work, but there was a good chunk of folks that that did not.

You know, 13% said they didn't have parking where they live or where they worked. Just under half live or work in the study area, which was also an interesting point because just over half of respondents do not live or work in the study area, which means that if they're coming to Bellevue, they're likely coming as a visitor, as somebody who wants to shop, as somebody who wants to check out some of the destinations that Bellevue has to offer. So we're really covering a a wide range, and I will I will get into this a little bit later as well. Next slide, please. We had a question about where or we asked where do people typically park?

And again, this this survey was focused on on street. So you can see here that 47% of respondents said they park on the street. Realistically, that's not likely indicative of the total amount of people that are driving and parking in Bellevue just because the amount of off street parking is significantly higher than the on street system. But it was interesting that there was still this level of interest, specifically for the on street system. It kind of goes to show how important this is to folks that are looking at parking in general.

Next slide, please. So we asked a question about if you work in the study area, do you park on street during your shift? You can see here that the majority do not they don't work in the study area, or they don't. But about 30% park on street. So a pretty good section of folks.

And, you know, we kind of alluded to this idea before that we we currently have two hour time limits on street. So it makes sense that when we ask them how long do you typically park in the study area, that the majority, you know, 57% said one to two hours. However, you can still see here that 22% said two to eight hours. So long durations of time, and I find that interesting because it does kind of reflect what the data shows us in terms of on street parking and some of the long term overstays past that two hours. You might remember that stat that Chris Long mentioned before about somewhere between 20 to 50% of vehicles today are parking longer than two hours.

That kind of reflects that somewhat accurately. So interesting tidbit there. Next slide, please. We asked a question about how long are you willing to walk to your destination after you park. You can see here that, you know, again, the majority wanna park five minutes or less, probably about 65% of folks.

Other folks are okay walking a little bit longer, but generally, there's interest in trying to find a a spot next to your destination. And a question about how long does it take you to find parking. You know, again, we had a pretty good chunk of respondents that said that they park more five minutes or more. You know, again, 55% said they park five minutes or more, and that goes to show that parking can be a challenge in some of these districts in the study area. Next slide, please.

So last prompt here, we asked a qualitative question about is it challenging to find on street parking in this area? And again, just over half agreed, definitely agreed or somewhat agreed that it is a challenge. So more data to kind of inform that parking today is a challenge in the on street system. So with that, I'm going to pass it back to Chrissy, who's going to do an overview of the community open houses that we hosted for the project.

Yeah. That's great. So we had two community open houses, one in person at Bellevue City Hall and then a virtual open house on Microsoft Teams. And the goal of the open houses was to educate the community about parking best practices. So we had lots of boards with best practices and data. We had a presentation, and we had a Mentimeter activity, which is polling about parking, and then just a lot of time for q and a and discussions. We've publicized the open houses widely. As Chris mentioned, we sent about 17,000 flyers out, and, you know, we we leaflet it flyered all the businesses in the study dish area. About 50 people attended in total. And next slide.

The in person open house, this is a summary of the feedback. So we heard from residents attended that the one of the main concerns they had was visitor parking. They said that their friends and family can't visit them because there's never any parking available either in their building or on the street. And, you know, it came up again as it did in the the door to door interviews where there's parking near their condos, and they can see parking in a private lot, but they can't access it. Their their visitors can't access it, and the street parking is full.

So that's not an option for them or their visitors. So, you know, they surmise that people that are residents that are parking long term, on those street spaces. We also heard about the need for or more ADA parking, EV parking, just overall concerns with street safety, with vehicles traveling high speeds. Next slide. And then at our virtual open house, as I said, we had a Mentimeter activity, and we asked people about their experiences finding on street parking.

And on you can see here that most people agreed it's a hassle to find on street parking in the study area. Next slide is it shows you another question we asked. If you're late for dinner, where do you look for parking? And most people said that they park in the first open space. They're willing to walk a little bit, which we've heard somewhat in the community survey as well. But people also the next slide I said, you know, we'll go to the garage or lot that we're familiar with even if we have to pay. So themes around availability and convenience are you know, were heard here. Next slide. And then we asked about what are how important are certain characteristics to them about parking? And we heard location, price, convenience, how long they can park in the space.

Those are all important factors that people expressed. Next slide. And then we also had a lengthy q and a period, both in in the virtual open house, and some of the feedback on questions were how is the revenue going to be spent? Can we increase enforcement? You know, the general themes that have been coming up in a lot of these discussions, you know, our residents parking on the street, again, issues with delivery vehicles.

So that's the feedback we heard in the open houses, and that will take into account in our method of operation. And the there's a full q and a available on the project website to learn more about, you know, all the details, specifics of that q and a. Pass back to Chris.

Great. Thanks, Chrissy. So we have one more, one more section to review with you all, and this was the intercept survey. So, again, this was the effort that the project team conducted to literally go out into the field, stand on sidewalks, and try to approach people and say, hey. We're we're conducting a study about parking.

And just wondering if you have a minute to ask or to to give your feedback about your most recent parking experience. So we conducted these surveys in two different time periods, one in February and one last week. We got 220 responses. We got plenty more that said no thanks, and then walked on about their bay. But we did get a good amount of feedback from this intercept surveys.

Next slide, please. One of the most interesting things that the team found was that out of 220, there were over 60 ZIP codes that folks identified as their primary residence. And this span across four states. Most, however, came within the Puget Sound region. But if you look at the map, that just shows kind of the wide range of folks that are coming into Bellevue to visit Bellevue.

So it is a very interesting map. You know, about just under half of respondents indicated that their primary residence is within Bellevue city limits. Again, that means that just over half are coming from outside of town. So it really just kinda goes to show how Bellevue is becoming and is now currently a major regional destination for for a lot of reasons. Next slide, please. So just a couple highlights here. We asked a question, you know, if you parked or how did you get here? Did you drive? Did you walk? Did you take transit?

If you did drive, did you park on street or off street? And if you did park on street, did you need to circle the block before finding parking? You see here just over half 54% of folks actually indicated yes. They did have to circle the block one time. So pretty significant in the sense that, you know, again, the the goal of a curve pricing program really is to try to create that one to two spaces per block available at any time, reduce the amount of circling that's happening, and qualitatively, we're seeing that just over half of respondents said, yeah, I had to circle the block to find a spot.

Another question that we asked is, do you think that finding parking is a barrier for you visiting this neighborhood? And just under 60% of respondents said yes or sometimes to some degree. You know, again, there are some qualifiers in there. But it just kinda goes to show how the perception of parking, especially in some of these denser areas like the Spring District and Old Bellevue and certain parts of downtown, really folks are seeing parking as potentially a challenge coming to and from destinations. So with that, I am going to now pass it off to Kenzie, who is going to just do a quick summary of all of the engagement that we uncovered, and then we'll do a pause for questions.

Hello. Good evening. The city's really done a tremendous amount of stakeholder engagement as we've just heard. And even when we boil it down into summaries in these sections, it's still very substantial. So thank you for for hanging with us.

As consultants, we work with many cities on similar projects and programs, and this engagement exercise is really a model and a showcase of of positive intent to connect with the community. To circle backwards just for a minute, the goal of the engagement was to really understand commuter, visitor, resident needs. We ask people about their exact travel patterns, and the granularity of people's parking and travel experiences really matters as is the feedback that we've heard, and it will inform our next steps in this project. So when we consolidate the key takeaways and everything we've just heard, there are some strong themes. A few of these are presented on the on the slide.

As far as opportunities, we heard interest in management of the curb, maybe surprisingly. But, really, a lot of people said, hey. This is an issue. And we heard it especially from the businesses when we walked door to door. People have an interest in pursuing ideas for improvement. A lot of people said, oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, we're to the point where we we need to do something. And and, honestly, that's not something we always hear when we ask people about parking, but in this case, we heard a lot of folks say, oh, yeah. It's probably time to do something.

There's also fear about a pending program, so it's important to acknowledge that. One of my favorite quotes from the door to door outreach portion was a store manager who said, parking is difficult. It's gotten more difficult. It's like the wild, wild west. So that one stuck with stuck with me personally. We heard a lot of interesting customer convenient technology. As was mentioned earlier, we heard interesting wayfinding and signage. How do we make the experience easier? How do people find parking? Yeah.

Another great quote, and Chrissy kind of alluded to this earlier too. We're surrounded by parking, but people can't seem to find parking. And, of course, there there there is parking. It's just, you know, this is this is a challenge. Enforcement was a common complaint.

Inability for deliveries to load is a common issue, and so there's opportunity to review that carefully. One store owner said that deliveries find their own kind of parking, and he was, of course, alluding to drivers parking in the travel lanes or center turn lanes or other illegal places. There's also interest in reviewing ideas for using program revenues to support neighborhood improvements. Some cities elect to put parking program revenues into business improvement districts. And so that's an important bit of feedback because what we're hearing from the public is they they don't wanna see the city as as making a money grab here.

So we we took that to heart and and have included that for our coming analysis. In the challenges category, we know that employees, residents, and the city park will be affected, and so these areas will require consideration. Specifically, walk offs from the park or Bellevue Square Mall is a challenge and a focus, and I Iverson mentioned that earlier. So at this point, I wanna stop for just a moment. We've you've heard a lot. Are there questions about all these segments of engagement? Now is a a good stopping point for us before we talk a little bit about program next steps.

All right. Questions from the commission. Commissioner Ting, go for it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So thinking about your target audience, who do you view as the key constituent to the curbside parking or the curb for that matter? Is it the businesses that are on the curb? Is it the residents that live next to the curb? Is it the people that drive to the curb and wish to park at these businesses? I'm just curious on how you think about the prioritization of who should be given the highest priority to the curb and curbside parking.

That's a good question, and I think you're it it alludes to, you know, the the complexity of what we're talking about. We're looking for balance metrics that are going to to give organization to a system that creates ease and access. So in in an ideal program model, which is coming, we'll be considering all these voices that we've heard, and and they are differing. But we will be creating nuance levers for each one. So so, for example, from a resident perspective, we need to look at compliance and enforcement in the residential areas that are just outside of the paid area.

If there is an impact, we need to be prepared for that. We need to anticipate it and fold that into an operational model and also be ready to modify the plan if it doesn't quite work. When we think about delivery drivers, they're trying to do their business. They just wanna get in and out, be efficient. For businesses, they want their deliveries. For travel commuters, we they want the the travel lane to be clear, and we could do those things if we're managing some of the compliance on the curb better. For those who are running errands, they just wanna stop at the bank. They don't wanna deal with some long term opportunity in a parking lot. No. So there are short short term parkers that we can better accommodate by creating, again, some some balance rules for them.

So it's not a not a simple answer, but I I think that, this engagement really highlights a lot of voices, and then our our pending work will, hope to address and and and probably not perfectly for every single person, but address every idea that we've heard in some way.

Maybe I can ask a simpler question then.

Do you how do we

think about the prioritization between people that live near the curb and people that live far away from the curb? Is there an inherent prioritization to those that live closer to that curb parking spot or that live in that neighborhood, or do we basically think of it as a citywide resource?

It's a good question. I think, you know, a lot of what our focus has been on is how can because it is such a limited resource compared to the overall amount of parking that is downtown, that we do think more about how is it accessible to those businesses that are at the street level. Typically, people aren't parking there if they're going in to have a meeting with Amazon. They're parking there because they want to go to the sub shop that's on the corner, or they want to go to the hairdresser that's down the street. So it's a convenience for those businesses and for those patrons of those businesses.

So I think that may you know, that I think that's the the crux of this because it is such a you know, in the downtown core, we're talking about 350 parking spaces when we're when the overall parking in all of downtown is well over 40,000. So Mhmm. Try to keep that that context.

Okay. I mean, one thing that I'm trying to understand is there's a parking space, and the people that are stakeholders of that spot are going to be the people that have the business there, because you're you're parking there to go to their business, let's say. And then it's also people going to park there. And so the people that are going to park there probably don't live two minutes away. They probably live further away. So I'm just trying to rationalize how we think of that prioritization. Do we do we value the people that live close by the parking spot? Are they prone to use it? I mean, if it's, you know, maybe if it's a dining spot, maybe. But how do we think about the people that live close by to a parking spot versus the people that live further away?

And it seems like the people that live further away are more likely to use the parking spot, but the leave people that live closer by are more likely to be impacted by having lots of congestion as they say walk to their shops. So I would like to see some clarity on how we think about the community engagement with regards to do we prioritize people that live close by and businesses that are close by? Certainly, would prioritize businesses that are close by because they're directly impacted. But the people that live close by, the residents, versus the residents that live further away, I'm just trying to understand how we think about those two audiences.

What what are you looking to do with that information?

So for example, I see that we did a lot of outreach to the people that were inside the study area. And, yes, there was some study some outreach to people outside of the study area too. But I'm just trying to think, who are the people that are actually going to use those parking spots? It's most likely people outside the study area rather than residents inside the study area. But, I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just sort of going through this thought process.

Yeah. And I think that the map that we showed earlier kind of highlighted that, that we have, as Chris said, 47% of the respondents and of the people that we talk to on the street were within the city of Bellevue, at least. And then the other half were across six ZIP codes.

Yes. So it's wrap this up because I I wanna make sure other people have a chance to ask questions. I would like to get clarification. And when we look at the curb, do people that live next to the curb have a higher or lower or equal priority than people that live further away from the curb? Not only from a parking perspective, but just in general. I just don't have a good sense of how the city views that. Yeah. So I'll I'll leave it there. You can think about it. Take it offline.

Can I can I I'm gonna do a quick chime in? From a Landy's perspective, the city of Bellevue has been has done a very good job over the course of its development to ensure that parking is allocated for every development. It's a land use code. There's a significant amount of parking that's allocated to build certain spots. Residents should have a parking space.

That's not that's not a 100% true, but for the majority of buildings, apartments, condos, etcetera, the study area, and we're talking mostly mixed use dense types, there is plenty of parking on street. So in terms of residents using the curb, it does it does happen, but the amount of parking on street compared to the amount of parking off street, you know, within garages or lots next to residences is very, very small. And so I think that's something to consider. It's not necessarily a prioritization, but it's just, again, the scale of the problem and the scale of what we're talking about is is important to acknowledge.

I think this is maybe just a broader curb management question. But I will defer to other questions for the commissioners before I ask additional questions.

I'm going back to the key takeaway

Oh, yes. Slide, please.

So the first three items listed under the top challenges, the employee parking, residence parking, and the walk offs, how does a paid parking system help these three challenges?

So the well, what we're trying to these are the how does it help these these are challenges that we see as that could will be impacted by the paid on street parking. What we will hopefully do is find ways to create more availability. So if somebody needs to make a quick stop into that that time limited parking that it's available, we're trying so it's not necessarily intended to fix employee parking or fix residential parking. That is something that has to be looked at outside of the of curb pricing. These are the the the impacts that we are anticipating it will have on the curb.

So we are looking to fix the the address the issue of availability and accessibility of that parking that's at the curb for the people who are visiting those businesses. Does that make sense?

It does. Okay. And it makes sense that the scope is limited that, where there was a little bit of confusion when I saw these as the top challenges. But at least to me, those top three we're not touching with the Yeah.

I guess you're right. Because delivery vehicles, we hope to that that it will help.

Maybe. Yeah. But the other ones, you're not gonna solve the resident someone who's visiting a condo. My, you know, mother came and stayed for a weekend, and where does she park? Right. That she's not gonna go move her car every two hours. So No.

Probably not wanna have to yes. Yeah.

Exactly. Okay. Drew Stash. Drew's been waiting.

Go ahead, Drew.

Thank

you. Thank you. I got a couple questions. I'm just gonna ask one, and and I agree with your stash on those three points as well. But and then maybe I'll come back in the second one, but it's really about enforcement.

Then, actually, I thought it was pretty interesting in here, the data point about the library parking being full beef almost full before the library is open. That's a pretty good indicator as well. But the question is more about, do we have, data? Do we have studies or best practices or results from other cities that have looked at first enforcing? As you mentioned earlier, I think somebody mentioned earlier, I think it was one of the Chris's, that something like 20 to 50% are staying over two hours, and the target is less than 25%.

I'm not sure exactly where that target came from, but the question is, have other cities implemented more effective enforcement before they've gone to pricing for for the parking?

Chrissy or Kenzie, do you wanna start with that one?

The answer is yes. I I think that in when you look at a city, often, it it's broken into footprints or or certain neighborhoods or streets or areas where an issue emerges. So what what we're really after here is understanding the cost recovery idea of of a program implementation. So the city has had interest in increased enforcement for quite a while, And and I think that under this development of modeling, we'll be able to look at what does that really cost and and maybe some benchmarks for for what might be possible. In most cases, cities look at the revenue component as both a compliance measure, meaning that that the the way in which these mobile payments take place actually creates a pattern of behavior that is positive in terms of creating access.

But, also, that revenue feeds back into creating a sustainable model for for a program. So that's exactly where we're headed next in our in our our next chapter.

Well, is there some next is there some explanation on why, the city has not been enforcing? Is it too expensive? I think we in the notes, overstay parking infraction is something like $54 or something like that. Is it is it too expensive for the city to enforce that? Does the city not have the resources? What is what is the barrier that's preventing the enforcement?

So the the enforcement has, unfortunately, the in the budget for the enforcement has been stagnant. The cost has gone up. The budget has has not been able to stay, commensurate to that cost due to many other competing needs across the city. And that's where creating a program like this will help it, the enforcement grow with the growth of the parking. That's one of the the benefits of doing this together.

And we can address this issue of accessibility at the curb and also make this program more sustainable. We have had over the years, though, we've this is not a new problem. The parking has been over capacity for a long time. And our parking enforcement in the downtown has been although it's stretched at times, it is pretty stable in getting around ever close to every two hours. One way that we can kind of see that the demand is still there regardless of the part of the enforcement is that we actually write more safety violation tickets than we do two hour enforcement tickets.

So that's people who are trying to squeeze in into a spot that's not a real spot and are getting a ticket because there's not enough capacity. So a combination of making that space at the curb more accessible, building this program, being able to tackle some of these other issues that we have, like providing better information about where off street parking is available to the public, that sort of thing. That's all part of what we are hoping to do through building this, starting with the curb pricing.

Okay. Well, I'll yield to Florida other questions, but it just seems like we ought to be pursuing that enforcement and understanding the economics of enforcement before we go on to, you know, going onto a revenue model. If that's what our goal is here, if our goal is to to make those spots available, if the goal is to raise revenue for the city, well, that's a different goal. But it seems like our goal is to, you know, keep it under 80%. So I'll yield to other questions at this point for till a later date.

Thank you. Commissioner Kyland, I think you had a question.

Thank you. For slide 35, if you don't mind going back to that, please. And this is a little bit of a segue from that one. Thank you.

Oh, this one. Yeah.

This is a little bit of a segue for Drew's question is, do you have specific examples of other cities of similar size and scope to Bellevue? Specific examples where you can answer these questions.

We we did do a lot of we did we did do data collection from other cities, and I'm not sure if we have presented that yet. Our that's not been part of any of our documentation yet. So do you want us to go one by one right now?

Maybe something to say last time. Know what was brought up the last meeting, but

to

be able to provide concrete evidence, case studies of cities that are comparable to Bellevue to help us kind of proactively think about these things as we get further along in the process. Because as Drew mentioned, if the goal is to free up these spaces, in my opinion, the conversation shouldn't be about pricing. It should be about what are the things that we can do now that don't cost anything with other departments within the city to mitigate that?

Yeah.

I so good question. Again, we're we can we can dive into some of these as we get into the concept of operations for what this would look like, and we will have that cost, model for what we've what it will take to properly enforce the or to expand the enforcement throughout the downtown and the Spring District and the other areas as they come along to help get to that. But for the most part, none of these questions that were that came up were a surprise. This is what comes up with a lot of other cities as they as they deal with this similar issue. So I don't know. Chrissy or Kenzie, any anecdotal story you wanna share from past experience?

Well, you know, a lot of when you think about the parking system and why you create a paid parking system, it is about it's not about raising revenue. I mean, you have to pay for the the the system as a whole anyway. You know, it it really is about managing demand. And, you know, we're talking about enforcement. We need more enforcement.

We heard from when we went door to door that people were complaining that the private enforcement was too heavy handed. We're not in we we're not just enforcing we don't wanna just hand out tickets. We want it to be more customer service. And the point of paid parking is, as we're talking about, to create those one or two spaces that are available so that we can, you know, not have people getting tickets, you know, that people aren't saying we're not coming to Bellevue because the parking is challenging. So, you know, it's it's not necessarily that there's there's a there's a few all of the we we we're we'll present the peer review, but the very limited number of spaces in Bellevue, you know, all of our peer study studies, you know, they have more spaces than and they they are good peers, but, you know, there's just such a small amount of on street parking in Bellevue.

It's you know, there's not very many options to to manage all of the overstays and the no parking and illegal parking that's happening.

Yeah. And I and I think getting back to the enforcement side, you know, I I don't know that we're gonna find there's not a whole lot more enforcement we can do because we do check it every two hours. So it is we may see a small, minor change in how people behave, but we're also we also try to be accommodating in that we with our parking enforcement contracted enforcement, they keep a as they enforce, they start a every May, I think it is, they restart their program, their license plate reader program, so they know so there's no record of who was received a ticket from the year prior. And everybody gets a warning the first time. So it was intended to be that the city was enforcing just so we can have good behavior on the street, not so that we are being heavy handed and trying to generate revenue through these tickets.

So we're that's where we feel that this is gonna provide that that balance where people are gonna feel a little bit more ownership of their stay at the curb because they're they're paying for it. So that's that's the hope in how we we wanna see it transpire and and not so much having to, be standing there watching every vehicle as as they, as the time ticks by for their their stay.

Are there questions? Go ahead.

Yeah. I'm curious if you've, if you've talked or you're going to talk to some of the owners of the the paid parking that's there today. I mean, it seems like that has to be that's gonna be somehow part of the solution here because that's where the extra capacity is. And so I wonder how they kinda see this program. And in some ways, this could be like a windfall for them, but but I I feel like part of the solution might also be, you know, directing people efficiently to those to those open spaces.

And a lot of the problem could be that, you know, the awareness of the of the availability there. I I actually know in other cities, they, you know, they they do parking spot monitoring so that they can advertise, hey. There's there's 300 spaces available right here. Right. Is that part of your plans at all?

It is identified as a as a, a practice in our curb management plan. It was one of the items that we identified to to, attempt to do in the future. Seattle has a, a parking program where they have some partner lots that that are not that are private lots, and they have signage that will tell you available spark parking spaces. So that has definitely been done. It is it would be great to be able to do a project like that. Again, it's we see this as kind of the foundation and then be able to build off that with all with these other, improvements that we can do to continue to to, improve the parking management in the downtown as a whole.

What's your thing?

Yep. So just to follow-up with vice chair, Miguel, then the the goal of this program, I think, to be clear, is to get that magic percentage of open spots so that people aren't circling. This is that is the goal of the paid parking program, correct?

Yes. That's the number one goal.

Okay. What are the other goals?

Well, the other goal is to be able to then improve the management overall. We have this curb management plan with a lot of other ways that we can address the operations of the curb. So having this foundational program in place will give us the resources also to be able to tackle some of those other programs within it. And that's what we'll present as part of our the financial side of the of the curb management of the curb pricing is is this going to provide us resources to be able to also tackle the other like, improving the amount of load zones in the downtown, in dealing with the signage and directions to other off street facilities, building more ADA accessible parking on the street, all these other critical elements that we want to get to in the downtown.

Okay. And a quick other question. On your third attachment for this, you mentioned the Bellevue Downtown Association street level focus group. The entire group thought it was that paid parking was a great idea. But then also, earlier, the old Bellevue Merchants Association had expressed concerns that paid parking could drive traffic to other areas. So I'd like to reconcile how we got different feedback from somewhat similar groups. Can you speak to or the consultants speak to why the opinions were so divergent?

It was just a different group of people. I mean, these were very similar in type of business that they run, different some of them are different parts. Old Bellevue Merchant Association, I mean, it was just businesses in Old Bellevue. The other group had businesses. For example, the children's museum was represented in that group. They actually have been dealing with a parking issue at their site as well. They recently implemented paid parking in their parking lot that's adjacent to their building. So was you you're absolutely right. We did get a little bit of different feedback from the two groups. It was just two different groups of people.

And once you get one voice that starts to speak in one direction, sometimes others follow. And so that was the

part of it as well.

It would

be interesting to know if it's the character of old downtown versus the other parts of downtown Yeah. Very different. In the varying

Yeah. They are they they have a very different feel, so that could be part of it too. Okay.

Thank you.

Did you have a question, council member? Anyone else?

Thank you. I don't think it's been asked, but it has. I apologize. What do we currently spend right now per year on enforcement, and what is the revenue taken in by the city each year on the enforcement?

I don't know the revenue. We do we pay right now, it's about I think it's up to about $180,000 is the is what our contract that is the Diamond Parking enforcement. That does not account for the support that we get from police. So diamond parking is is currently contracted to do the downtown, and then they do occasional enforcement over in the Spring District.

Okay. So 180,000 a year to do that portion of the stuff, but we don't know what the total

We the revenue because the the revenue from the tickets when the tickets all get processed through the or the district the King County district court, and so there's a lot the court fee ends up eating a lot of that the the revenue from that ticket process. So and then it goes into the general fund. Whatever's left, we don't see that in transportation.

In transportation, but the city does.

City does.

Yes. I think it'd be helpful to see that number at some

point.

We can follow-up with Yeah. With with FAM.

Total expense as well Yeah. Of enforcement.

Mhmm. Okay.

For the people you surveyed that stayed the longer time, four or five hours, do we know what they're doing? Do we know are they shopping and just spending the time downtown?

Good question. Chris, you were the only one that actually was doing those of this group. Did you get that sense?

The Intercept survey did not ask about the details of their visit. Some offered them unsolicited, but it was one of the questions was, how long are you staying in the area? How long do you plan on staying in the area? So we just got a general sense on time.

Will will the future what I'm thinking about is the situation where someone comes down. They they wanna do an hour and a half lunch, and then they wanna stroll the street for an hour or two. You know? So they're spending money. They're they're they're contributing to downtown. Will the future parking fees is it something that they can re up on the fly, sitting in the restaurant, you know, do the Mhmm. Extra hour?

Yeah. It is that is a that is something we can consider. So we don't we don't need to stay at two hour parking. We can change it to something else. It's cert there certainly are models for that in in a lot of other cities where instead of limiting to two hours, instead you increase the price after two hours and and use that as a as a way to encourage the the turnover and someone not parking all day there because they work downtown or they have an extra car. So we still wanna think about how what's what's gonna be best for the businesses that and the those patrons that are trying to get there, but that is something to consider. Yeah.

All right. Right. Other questions? Go ahead, Commissioner Conlon. Just a little

bit of feedback, because I know that we want patrons to come back to Bellevue. And so I think when I hear some of these things and when I read some of these bullet points up here, being mindful of cost, whether it's increasing the cost after two hours, almost seems like a punishment to the patron versus incentivizing them to stay. So I don't know how you solve that, and this may be a discussion later on down the line, to where parking is not the only ROI in that cost.

So I can jump in just with some food for thought. And a reminder, when we're talking about the on street parking system versus the total number of off street parking that exists in the study area, we're talking about quite literally 1% of the total parking supply in the study area of Bellevue that is on street versus what's off street. So if you do want to come visit Bellevue, and you want to stay for a long time, many parking lots and garages today actually have a pricing model that incentivizes longer stays. This is actually pretty common for a lot of cities where the first twenty minutes, the first hour, it's actually pretty expensive. But if you stay all day, those prices actually decline.

Now when we're thinking about and again, this is details for future meetings, so don't want to get too far down the line. But when we're thinking about the on street system, we don't necessarily want to punish folks for staying longer. I think it's just a recognition that we are trying to adjust travel behavior for these 1% of parking stalls in the study area that maybe folks can start thinking about other parking facilities to use if they do want to stay longer. Whereas the curbside can be more or less reserved for shorter term shorter term stays in a certain level of capacity. So just some food for thought there.

Okay. Just one sorry. One last follow-up. That 1% of parking, though, is a 100% of the consumer experience. So I I just ask, for old Bellevue, to be mindful of that because the feedback might be a different type of patron depending on where you are in the city. Sure.

Yeah. Commissioner McGill?

Yeah. That's a really good point. Another point, and I think Jonathan sort of was going down this path, but, as you mentioned, there's tens of thousands, and just to this point here, of of parking spaces, paid parking. Can this problem be solved by finding a better way to utilize that those spaces or making them available? I mean, with the combination of enforcement and somehow getting higher utilization of those paid parking spots, it sounds like that would that would unlock a huge amount of supply of parking spaces if people knew where they were. What are your thoughts on that?

So, I mean, based off of the feedback we heard, and we reflect on this earlier, there was interest in improving the concept of wayfinding and technology to help identify parking both on street and off street. So as we're thinking about, you know, coming up with a method of operation that includes costs and revenues with a potential paid program, you know, we could also look at how much it would cost to implement a a wayfinding system or partner with businesses or or parking facilities in trying to identify where the parking is. Because I think, you know, again, relaying one of the of the quotes that Kenzie mentioned from a business owner that there's you know, I look out the window, and I see plenty of parking, but we constantly hear complaints about there's no parking. And I think the reality is parking does exist. It's just a matter of where you where you seek it.

Chris, thing?

One piece of feedback. I have heard that some of the surrounding neighborhoods are concerned that there's going to be overflow parking from paid parking policies to the surrounding communities. Have you had a chance to talk to them, and do you have any data that can give them an understanding of what you're trying to do and also address their concerns?

So we have reached out to all the the neighborhoods in and around the the downtown area. We did not get a lot of response back. We've reached out to their community associations, and we've we've not been invited to present. So that's the but we know this is a known issue. It was it came up during the curb management plan that that they are concerned about impacts to that area.

So our intent is to include that data collection in our regular data collection that we'll be doing as part of this project. We know where those those hot button areas are. And so because that we've it we not only do we have an R B C RPZ right next to you know, just adjacent to the mall in the neighborhood, but there are other neighborhoods where we have considered RPZs before because of concerns. In the past, it's mostly been construction traffic. When we were at the height of construction downtown, you know, pre pandemic and during the pandemic, we got a lot of complaints about overflow.

So we will our plan is to have that data so that we can be ready to to react and then reconsider RPCs or increasing enforcement and build that enforcement cost into the model for what we're we're doing with this program.

Build the enforcement cost into the mall. So using some of the funds gathered by from paid parking to enforce RPZ parking? Exactly. Okay.

Would like to be yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off, I was just gonna be mindful of the time.

That's exactly what I was on. Okay. Great. I was gonna say unless there's any burning questions with this topic, we'll come up again. Is there anybody thing else that anybody really get wants to get answered tonight?

Alright.

Great. So I just We've got one hang on.

I wanted to say one thing. That was amazing outreach, like, that those intercept surveys, the door to door. Like, I've I've just wanted to commend the team for doing that amazing job on it.

All right. Shall I introduce the next

one?

We Or do you

had one last slide about the method of operations. So we've kind of covered this. We are going to dive into these elements as we move forward over the next or we've already started and as we get into the next few months, looking at the the capital cost, the revenues that we anticipate, what changes in enforcement we wanna do. These are the the elements that we'll build and what does operation what the operations will look like based on the feedback we received and a lot of the comments that you raised today. So that's what will be coming in May, and and then that's it. So yeah. Great.

Alright. Thank you.

Oh, go ahead.

Just wanna get back to the cost that I mentioned earlier because I just pulled up, some of the, estimated costs for implementing a plan, that we're discussing here. Right? 1,700,000.0 in terms of upfront and onetime implementation costs, and then about 1,100,000.0 per year operating costs. Substantial increase.

Per paid on street parking?

Per paid well, that's the curb manager and support staff, the enforcement operations. The enforcement operations alone, you have 325,000 dedicated towards that. Then data collection, mobile payment providers, permit management system, parking signage, etcetera. K. So we're looking at some significant jumps here. So that's why I'd like to see what the what we're currently paying to enforce right now and then what the revenues are gonna look like compared to what the costs are going

to Exactly. That's what's coming in May. Yeah.

Okay. Great. So

Great. Alright. Thank you.

Chris Chris Christine Hensey. Alright. Moving on now to our second study session, the mobility implementation plan. So this is one where, staff is seeking our concurrence with two things, and this will make more sense when when they go through it. But the two ones are, is an amendment to the primary metrics to include a speed limit factor. That's the first one. And then the second one is an amendment to the supplemental components to include actual speed when considering prioritization. We'll go through it, and I think it'll make more sense. So, those two. Kevin and Chris, take it away.

Thanks. Excuse me. Thanks very much, chair staff. Hi, Chris. Welcome.

Good evening, Chris. This Chris.

Yes. I'm I'm happy to bring the mobility implementation plan back to you tonight, our continuing evolution of of this, plan update. We'll continue tonight with a couple action items as the as as the chair mentioned and some information items as well. Okay. How about if we change slides here?

How about if we change slides here?

Don't know how to change slides other than the way I've been trying. Let me stop the share and try again. There we go. There I go on my screen. It didn't happen on yours. Hang on. Sorry for the weird technology share. It's not the right sharing. We were doing so good on technology tonight. There we go.

Alright. And I'll go to slideshow mode. Alright. So here's our agenda topic for tonight. As always, I'd like to to take you on a a trip back in time to to talk about what we talked about the last time from February 13.

And as Church Stash mentioned, we have a couple items to talk about with respect to the pedestrian level of traffic stress primary metrics, which we'll seek concurrence on tonight. And then we'll walk through, the results of the application of the primary metrics onto the existing conditions, on the arterioles and then do a quick intro into the volume to capacity ratio performance target gaps. Both those last two items are for information only. So at the last meeting, the the commission approved the pedestrian level of traffic stress matrix with the, the combination of arterial characteristics and sidewalk characteristics to yield a, outcome of pedestrian level of traffic stress. Oops.

And we also talked about how that level of pedestrian pedestrian level of traffic stress is assigned to arterials in the city, looking at PMA 1 having a pedestrian level of traffic stress of one, and then p l PMA two having a a PLTS two except in Factorio and Crossroads Eastgate, and in PMA three, looking at pedestrian level of traffic stress two or or a three, depending on the arterial that you're on. So looking at at the application of pedestrian level of traffic stress on the arterials, the color coded arterials on the map relate to the pedestrian level traffic stress performance target on those arterials. So you can see in Downtown Bell Red, it's it's a kind of a light green, so that's PLTS one and corresponding to the other colors on the arterials. And there was there was a question. I believe commissioner Kyleman asked the question about the the definitions of arterials, and I had those in the, agenda memo for tonight.

The, the, definitions of the arterials I excerpted from the comprehensive plan. So you can see the difference between a major arterial, a minor, and a collector. So one of the primary metrics that the commission approved was traffic speed, and not not typically the the way we measure traffic speed, which was the speed limit, but actually trying to look at actual travel speed or the eighty fifth percentile travel speed as a more, you know, realistic measure of how stressful the pedestrian feels along a sidewalk. And we claimed at the time that we had cell phone data that we could use to get the eighty fifth percentile traffic speed along all the arterials in the city. When we began to look at that data and then translate that data into pedestrian level of traffic stress on the arterials, we can't we began to find that some of the cell phone data was unreliable, which led to sort of unrealistic, unreliable pedestrian level of traffic stress existing additions along the arterials.

So we we recognize that, we may be may not be able to deliver on the product that we offered, a couple months ago, and we took the dilemma to staff. And we talked about it in in staff meetings and in our consultant team and sort of did an analysis. And we we will probably we will recommend backing away from the eighty fifth percentile on traffic speed as a primary metric. And then instead, using a posted speed limit factor, which which sort of averages the the the speed of the higher speed drivers along those arterials. Our our consultant team has has recommended that we use a 20% factor so that the the the metric would then be, if it was a 30 mile per hour speed limit, we would increase that by 20% and end up with a a primary metric of 36 miles an hour for that that that arterial speed, which we would then use as a as our primary metric to determine the pedestrian level of traffic express on the arterials.

But we don't wanna give up on the eighty fifth percentile speed. We we do have sort of sort of not citywide reliable data, but corridor or segment reliable data on the eighty fifth percentile speed. And so we wanna be able to use that data, and the the way we recommend that we use the data is to help prioritize the performance target gaps. If you've if you have identified a performance target gap and there's there's a 100 of them around the city, how do you decide which ones to to address with a higher priority? Those ones that have a really high eighty fifth percentile vehicle travel speed.

Karen, if I, if you will, I'll just just briefly get into that. I don't wanna get too deep into technical weeds, although I'm happy to answer questions. When we looked at the act the the cell phone collected data on aggregate, it looked pretty, pretty accurate. So when we looked at it across the entire city, compared it to the, dozen or so actual effectively, we how that speed's collected manually as we lay two tubes down on the road and we measure how quickly a tire hits each tube, you can calculate how fast the car is going based on that. So when we compare it to that, very reliable, it's been around for decades technology, the at a citywide level, we are seeing a pretty common pattern on some key arterials.

When we then said, okay. Let's break it out to every single arterial in the city at a block by block level, we saw variations that we couldn't explain. So some streets in downtown had some cell phone data that said the the eighty fifth speed was 20 miles an hour, pretty reasonable downtown, and then it jumped to 40 miles an hour on the next block. And so we got a lot of oscillations, in the data that we came to question, well, what what does that tell us? Should we we, doesn't make sense for the PLTS be varying that level when the speed is not likely at that level.

So we rolled it back to say, what is the speed data when we look at it at that aggregate level where we're collecting thousands upon thousands of cell phone, data points across the speed limits across the city, we came to identify that the average speed limit is about 2020% excuse me. The eighty fifth percentile speed is about 20% higher than the posted speed limit on the typical streets, which is also representative when we ask staff what they're experiencing when they're doing, that the the manual data collection. So I just wanted to provide we didn't make the number up. We went back to a data driven approach to the data that we found to be most reliable at the scale that we're doing the planning for, which is the entire city. With the note that Kevin had that when we wanna drill down to when we see performance target gaps, we know how to collect collect the the data.

Data. It's just not affordable to collect speed data across all the many miles of city streets on a regular basis. We can do it at a targeted, level. So that's why we're we're proposing to shift this to a supplemental metric to say, where where we see the target gaps, how do you prioritize? We'll go out and do the actual data collection to know where the biggest speed differentials are. So I just wanted to, identify why we pivoted a little bit from that.

And, Ken, can we do questions now on this before we or did you wanna get just to the next step?

This this is the step where I'd like to pause Okay. Take comments and questions and turn the amber check marks to green.

Okay. Alright. Did you wanna explain it? Just that, and then we'll ask the questions just Yeah.

Get us to them. So when the when the commission approved the primary and supplemental metrics, they you approved them with the actual travel speed, and staff is proposing that we use the posted speed limit factor of speed limit times 20% for a primary metric. And we propose to add the actual travel speeds as a supplemental component type one to help prioritize those performance target gaps that we need to address.

Commissioner Marciante has a question.

Yeah. I just had a question. I mean, I'm now really curious about that. It could be just bad data. Right? But it could it also be, like, attributed to congestion and the flow. Right? Like, you're waiting on eighth And 8th and 112, and then you get through, and then you are able to move very quickly through it because of the posted lights, and then you hit again traffic, and so you kinda slow down. Could could that be part of the story, or

is that that

Absolutely. No. When we talked to Darcy Acres, who's one of the ITS specialists here at the city, she noted that that was a known issue because when we place the actual devices to collect the data, the the devices are put in there's a whole textbook of how to collect speeds in the area where the speeds are not encumbered by the traffic signal and queues and all those other things. Cell phone data is collected at large. We cannot control the precise location the speed is collected. So that is certainly affecting the outcome. And the bigger the segments, the closer we get to the observed when we Right. Lay the the the hoses down. So that's we are trying to be, I think, too granular and outside of the range of the technology right now.

So the only thing, if that's the case, I would look for the anomalies where you have really high blocks with really high average speeds, which means that usually no congestion and cars are speeding up because that might require like, it just for pedestrian comfort, it might require some treatment to actually, like, make the speeds lower. I'm just thinking you're normally navigating long, like, amateur, whatever. And all of a sudden, you start speeding without even noticing. Right? So and so I'm kinda curious now with that level of detail.

You might be able to pinpoint high blocks that are an anomaly, is that cars are just speeding all the time. There's never any congestion. There's never anybody turning. And they're just more likely to have the speeds in ways that we couldn't do that before. So it it might just still be useful from that perspective.

It's a certainly useful supplemental data point that I think the city has at its disposal, particularly where we know that the sidewalks are fairly deficient to begin with.

Other questions? Commissioner Ting?

To follow-up on that question, are you saying that the data is anomalous in the in that it's not representative? Or are you saying that the the segment is anomalous in that it gets high speed traffic? So I'm I'm just trying to understand. When you're saying it's anomalous data, what does that actually mean?

The anomalous data is that it's not reflecting the, more accurate ground truth data that we see, and it's primarily it's it's both high and low. In certain segments, it's high. In certain segments, it's low when we compare it to the actual, collected data. And it's our assumption that it has to do with where the data are collected and, in some cases, sample sizes. Just to provide a bit more detail, we can't, sample the data.

We don't sample the data for the, the cell phone day based data in the, in rush hour. That's gonna give you a a biased low traffic speed compared to what the data collection manual say, which is the prevailing speed throughout the entire course of the day. So we have to, basically sample the data in a way that we're trying to mirror what we would get with the, actually collected data. And so we saw it in both both directions, and therefore, we thought that the data was just fundamentally unreliable compared to if we were to lay out data collection devices in all those locations, what we would call what we would be collecting.

So you think, basically, you have bad sensors or they're put in the wrong spots or something along those lines. So it's actually bad data. It's not that you're seeing data that's anomalous. You're actually seeing bad data. Is

that correct?

Yeah. That is that is correct. And it's the it's the algorithm that is used to summarize the data over very short distances. It's not does not provide reliable results compared to what we would see if we were to collect it manually. It's bad data.

Okay. That's interesting. I guess I I mirror commissioner Marciante's point to that. You know, maybe we should see if there is actual interesting speeds that are occurring at various points and whether that's really just a bad sensor that we need to replace or something that we need to move.

Or

These aren't sensors. This is cell phone collected

data that we're data or the tube data that's anomalous?

The cell phone data. Cell phone data. Data is accurate.

So the tube data It basically contradicts the cell phone data. That is correct.

Okay.

And the tube data is highly accurate. Yeah. Go ahead. Commissioner Kurtz? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I used to work for a company that produces this kind of data. The the the points are spaced out farther than you think. Right? Like, the so the problem is partly that you don't you don't you're you the the vehicle might have been stopped at the traffic light or it might have not. And and the points are spread apart so far that you have to kinda average that altogether. And so that so that so it's actually not that accurate when you get down to that that level. Yeah. They're they're farther apart than you think. So it doesn't it typically doesn't go that fast.

Okay. I find it interesting that they would put tubes down with an intersection in the middle. That just seems inherently wrong. Bad design. Is that done?

I'm talking about the cell phone data.

Oh, cell phone.

Okay.

Alright. Alright. Got it. Got it. I was gonna say the tubes

When the tubes are done, the city staff say, here's the parameters of how to lay the Got it. Okay. Done

per our

industry suite. Accurate.

And so they have to they massage the the cell phone data to match, like, what the tubes tell them at known locations, but it's still not you know?

Got it. And we don't have enough tubes. It Right. So we have to rely on cell phone data to try and give us a broader

Yeah. We have a data set. Like, speed.

Bit of insight, we have a unique opportunity where the city is undergoing a full citywide tube data collection effort. So that's high cost, and it's being done for for safety and speed work that you that the city's undergoing right now. So we'll have a unique way to test the cell phone data at a full citywide scale. We don't have that right now, but the cost of collecting that data is significant and is being paid for sort of as a onetime grant piece. So we'll have a lot more insight coming up, probably in about a year, than we do right now, and I'm sure that other companies will be getting better at all this.

Go ahead. Follow-up. Are we using any camera data? Is that something that we're looking at to figure out, traffic speeds?

The, camera data so the city has a bunch of cameras, and they right now, they are not all equipped to, pull speed data down because that takes additional processing. And, again, part of this safety grant that the city has, the city is leveraging, significant outside resources to grab that data from a lot of cameras, but it won't be a continuous data processing piece because that requires a lot of resources.

Okay. And if I looked at the graph of the we have the eighty fifth percentile. What does that graph actually look like? Are most people going at the speed limit and then it suddenly, like, jumps up at a certain point? I mean, I'm just trying to think of the profile of what the if you if you plotted on the x axis the number of, people driving, and on the y axis, you plotted speed. Is it, you know, kinda like a like a nice curve? Or I'm just trying to visualize what that would look like.

I don't have that off the top of my head. I think we can and I it's gonna vary by street, but I bet you we can talk to the to staff Yeah.

We can talk about offline.

Some distributions because that that that is collected when the the details Perfect.

So. Thank you.

Other questions on this proposed change?

Please go on.

Oh, I see you, commissioner McGill.

Yeah. Yes. It's a little bit more about how the 1.2 factor came about. It's I just wanna understand that a little bit more. Is that a conservative estimate, of the 85? I understand the idea, which is kind of philosophically interesting, but regardless, let's keep it practical. The 1.2. So you so you looked at all of the data for all of Bellevue, and you found that 85% every every 85 percentile equated to roughly 1.2 of the speed limit. Is that how it came about? I'm just curious what the what the thinking is behind the specific number 1.2.

Yeah. So we exactly that. We looked at all the data collected across the entire city and compared the the speed on that segment versus the, the eighty fifth percentile speed versus the speed limit, and it was about 20% higher. And when we talked to city staff who routinely collect these sorts of data, they said that that was in you know, right in sort of the middle of the range of the actual tube count data that they also see. So it came to a consensus that we should move forward with that 1.2 factor based on the cell phone data and the staff's observation of of the tube collect data.

Okay. Thank you.

Other do we have other questions? I'll come back to commissioner Singh, but others to go. Okay. Go ahead.

Thank you. So in attachment five, is that data from tube data, or is that data from cell phone data or some combination?

Attachment five, when it says hold on. Let me pull that back up. The there's a bunch of data in there. The the the what says actual speed, eighty fifth percentile, that is from the cell phone based data.

Okay. So that's suspect data.

That is suspect data. And, again, if you scrutinize that, you'll see that some of the the variations that we would see short block to blocks that we thought was highly anomalous.

Ah, I see. And do we have a similar chart that shows the tube data?

We don't have extensive tube data collection. We only had about a half a dozen locations on some of the bigger streets that were of available at the time of this. So we don't have extensive tube data.

Okay. But does the tube data also reflect that the 1.2 multiplier makes sense for the eighty fifth percentile?

Based on the input that we got from city staff, yes. That's that's correct. Okay. Alright. Thanks.

Other questions for this one? No to Drew? Okay. All right. Then I will be seeking a motion from somebody to give concurrence to the city on this amendment that changes the primary metric to include to to a speed limit factor of 1.2 added onto what the posted speed limit and to use that in part of their PLTS calculation. So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

Alright. Any disagreement with this motion? Seeing none, you've got concurrence on the first issue. We'll go to the second. Do

you wanna have a separate motion on the supplemental component, or was was both of those changes embedded in your motion?

I think I thought I said both.

Okay. Then we'll move on.

Okay.

And as a result of the using the factor 1.2, the the consultant team did a recalculation of the pedestrian level of traffic stress existing conditions on the arterioles. And it's a the the interactive map, which can be linked from this site. I'll I'll share that with you later. When you click on any segment of arterial, it pops up a dataset that looks all that looks like this. It's a little little small to see, but when you when you click on it, you can blow it up and and and read the the dataset that goes into the calculation of pedestrian level of traffic stress.

The vehicle travel speed at 1.2 times speed limit, the the vehicle volume, the buffer width, and the sidewalk width are the factors that go into making a determination of the actual pedestrian level of traffic stress. And then that actual trough pedestrian level of traffic stress is compared to the performance target for the area, and then that that shows, what the existing conditions are relative to that target. So the this is just a clip from from the downtown area. But on the website and and in your packet attachments one through four, the city is is broken down by quadrants just so it's a little bit easier to to sort of pick out your favorite segment of arterial and see if the existing conditions make sense. So we've got a Northwest quadrant Northeast and a Southwest and Southeast with the PLTS existing conditions.

So this is for your information and discussion, but we don't need any any action on this particular topic. It looks like commissioner Ting has a question.

Oh, go ahead, Commissioner Ting

and Commissioner, what's your answer?

Commissioner McGill. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. The hands are going up.

Okay. Here we go.

Okay. Commissioner Ting, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So is there a way for me to also look at the supplemental data? In particular, the datum in question is whether there are driveways and the number of driveways.

At this point, we we don't have that. We would we would wait till we identify the performance target gaps and then use the supplemental data to get more data on those locations

Okay.

Where where then that would help to prioritize the the project concept.

Would that data, be available, on the website at some point, or how would we actually look at that?

We we we would look at that when we are using the mobility implementation plan to develop project concepts that inform the transportation facilities plan. So it would be in the next update of the transportation facilities plan where you see that.

Is it I guess what I was asking, is it available online? Is that something that people can look at?

This that's one of the reasons why it's a supplemental is that we the city does not have, driveway data, across the entire city. So, that data is just not available. Right.

Once we start looking at actual prioritization, then we would start to

gather collected. Yes.

If It would be nice, and I'll just leave it as a it would be nice if we were able to publish some of that information. And I do wanna say thank you for adding driveways as a supplement number of driveways as a supplemental factor for prioritization because I think that is very important. And in fact, I would encourage us to look at how that impacts cyclists too in the BLTS in the future simply because I think cyclists as moving faster than pedestrians probably have a greater risk of people turning left and right into and out of driveways. Agreed.

Commissioner McGill?

Yeah. Hey. I had a question and just looking at the results of the PLTS. And I'm just wondering if you can help me understand, and thanks, Kevin, for sending me some maps today. I appreciate that responsiveness. I was trying to figure it out. Like, for example, Bellevue Way down to I 90, which is four lanes. It's a major arterial. It has a PLTS of three, and Belle Red has a PLTS of one. So what are the key differences between those two?

And maybe it'll be something we can dig into on our own. But to cause BellRed to be PLTS one and Bellevue Way to be PL test PLTS three.

So the and I can probably pick this up. But, off the off the cuff, the the Bellevue Way section, you you can kinda see on the map there. It's PLTS three sort of down to where a hundred and fourth peels off, and then it shifts to PLTS 2. That's driven by the presence of, the a landscape buffer south of that location versus a curb tight sidewalk north of that location. And Bell Red Road has if you zoom in on that map, it's all over the place.

Parts of it are are PLTS two. Parts of it are PLTS three, and that's predominantly, again, driven by whether or not there's a lands landscape buffers are very influential. As as someone pointed out last time, we have these I think they're called valleys or troughs in that that that matrix. It's driven by the landscape buffer presence or not, and that's based on the research that people are, more comfortable when there's trees or something to give them a little bit of space off of those vehicles, even though the the the speeds on, those quarters, like, Bell Red Road, speed limit's 35, which means it has a 42 mile an hour, sort of, 1.2 factor, and that's probably the what the prevailing speed is out there, quite honestly.

Yeah. Okay. Did that address your question?

Well, I noticed a difference too between this map and, actually, the one you sent me, Kevin, which might have been older that had Bellevue Way as PLTS 3 down to I 90, and here, I see it's PLTS 2. But thank you for the explanation.

Yeah. There there there's been lots of iterations. The one the one that's on the screen here, is the the most current. Some data has shifted. Like, for example, in an initial dataset, we didn't have the sound transit improvements on Bellevue Way where they built a wide landscape separated pathway along the light rail alignment down there. It used to be a curb tight sidewalk, and so it's kinda just trying to catch up on all these data refreshes that we're picking up from the city.

Okay. Got it. More scan? Oh, go ahead.

Few things. I thought we're gonna add transit stations to the map to be able to see where they are.

I think that was a request and I think something that we had not followed through with. Right. So we can certainly add

You're talking about this map of the the performance targets and the pedestrian destinations?

And well, yeah. But I've had the transit, like, dots to the trans so we could see where people would be starting to their walks.

Right. We we would do that.

Yeah. But

Yeah. You yeah. To these maps. Yeah.

Accomplish that. Yeah.

That that was one of my questions. And then just because I that you it's my walk. So between on West Sammamish Parkway between the French school and which one is this one? This is my street. Southeast 38th. Right?

Yeah. So we're

So but on cement, that all that's all green? You have all that green on one side, and there's a portion. I'm always wondered why it's that way. It's a portion that it doesn't actually have a sidewalk, but it's it's got, like, the whole spay like, a big sidewalk space. It's you've got a big sidewalk built, and then it just goes down onto the street, and it's asphalt painted, and then it goes back up to a sidewalk. And it's now and the map is being considered as a sidewalk. So I'm wondering if it's, like, misnomer or if you're considering that to be be a a sidewalk when it's not, like, a like, an asphalt sidewalk, I guess, or something like that.

We that's likely a data gap. We've run into a few of those. And so it's like the map's as accurate as the city's sort of data data collection is, where it's a a walking shoulder, which that might be defined as such. That wouldn't be but sometimes those are classified as a a separated separated path, and so that's what's reading in separated paths

It's like the mic.

A good yeah. ELTS of one.

I think

other medications needed at this point? Commissioner Thing?

I think it might would it be possible to understand the the quarter mile and half mile walking distances from some of these major transit stops on the map? Because it occurs to me that there's a potential coming down the pike of having a lot greater density in some of these areas and really understanding if we've got enough sidewalk infrastructure built out for sort of these fifteen minute walkable city visions. That could be kind of interesting to see where those net out. Do you have any thoughts on that?

The the intent is for for a a frequent transit network stop is to have quarter mile walk distance, not a half mile. With with light rail stations, it's typically a half mile walking distance from from a station entrance, and and we've we've used that in the past. We would use that in consideration of performance target gaps and project concepts and priorities to fill those gaps. But but, yes, access to transit along the arterials is is an important consideration for this.

Go ahead.

Yeah. I want to, like, support that as well because I think it's an important prioritization component to think about. We should be prioritizing the sidewalks close to a transit. So that's why I wanna see it there. Right? Because that segment in itself should be a higher priority than the segment right next to it that Right. Is not within a quarter mile of that transit stop or something like that. So that's I think that that's part of the reason I think it's important to see it.

We see that the the pedestrian level traffic stress target changes by frequent transit network stations.

But that's at a quarter mile, not a

half mile. That's FTN for bus is a quarter mile. If and if it's the light rail station's half mile from a station entrance. Because, you know, station entrances can be a quarter mile apart, and so you wanna measure from the station entrance, with that half mile distance.

Oh, I'm sorry. So so you're saying that that's all it's just not shown on the map, but it's already considered?

It's considered along the arterials at frequent transit network stations. You get a higher level of pedestrian traffic stress target near those frequent transit network stations.

Oh, the frequent trans so not all. Just Not all. But FTN

stations and light rail stations.

Oh, FTN. Okay. Frequent transit network stations. Okay. So it would just be good to see where they are. Is that is

that Yeah.

We we I think it's we need to add those to the map. And those the all the those buffers, and we've got some input from folks in the city who work at, like, the the routes to school program have provided Uh-huh. Some of theirs. We just we have not mapped all those layers in yet because we just have been working on that that piece. But Right. The the description is there such that the intent is clearly stated.

Yeah. Even if you just put the dot, you might you at least you get a Yeah.

No. I think that's that's an omission given that we have all the schools and the other

pieces in there. Yep. Yep. Question.

What what distance did you decide was a segment? Like, how that you're evaluating these at? How did you make the breaks?

For, like, on these maps here?

Yeah. On the maps or through the evaluation. Right? Because how, how far are you going?

It's it's based on the sort of the granularity of the data that the city has collected, which typically is the the segment lengths are often in this the hundreds of feet length. They're pretty short. Yeah. So Okay.

So you can see the segment lengths are various depending on the the the actual frontage improvement.

Okay. So it's each segment length gets evaluated.

We did.

And the you didn't have to combine them on any

We did not do any combinations.

Cool. Yeah. Commissioner Ting?

Sorry. Just a clarification. When you say quarter mile or half mile, is that walking distance, or is that as the crow flies? Walking distance. Yeah. Walk. Walking distance. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Let's move ahead. We still have time for questions.

Sorry. There there's one sort of supplemental work program that that we are tasked with doing in this project is to look at the, volume to capacity ratio performance target gaps identified in the twenty forty four final environmental impact statement for the comprehensive plan. You you all had you all had some input on the policies of the comprehensive plan back last year. And when we did the environmental analysis, it was it was discovered that based on the assumptions that we know or knew at the time, about 16 intersections would not meet the performance target for v over c in 2044. So we were asked to take a look at those intersections and see what, if anything, we could come up with in terms of project concepts to address that v over c performance target gap.

So this is this is the table from the environmental document that shows the intersections that would not meet the performance target gap based on the assumptions of land use and transportation in 2044. It's the growth alternative column that that you see. And it's it's broken down by PMA because each PMA has a different performance target. And then we you you can see on the map barely that the the the amber colored intersections are the ones that wouldn't meet the performance target in 2044. In the table, you see that I I sort of highlighted some of those intersections with a slight amber shade.

Those are the ones that we would exempt from from consideration for developing a performance target gap because of a number of factors, such as we already looked at it, and we've determined that it's not reasonable or feasible to do a project dislocation due to environmental constraints, top topography, East Trail, etcetera. So 115th And Northup, we're we're not going to touch. Three other intersections are in WSDOT jurisdiction, two of which are in various stages of project design, 1 24th And Northup and the I 405 Southbound ramps. So we won't bother to do a project concept for those locations, and we have created a handy map to show where those are on the city. So that's all I wanna say about this tonight.

Just as a teaser to to stay tuned till next week or next meeting to see the performance target gaps project concepts that we developed.

Okay. Commissioner Marciante. Go back one.

Yep. I'll try.

I don't think I understood the difference. What was no action, preferred, and growth?

No action is is is if the comprehensive plan hadn't been adopted and the existing zoning stayed the same.

Ah, okay.

The preferred alternative is the absurd notion of build out on every single parcel in the city and the resulting

So no action is like the before the comprehensive plan.

No action

is just conditions, basically.

Got it.

Moving you know, no zoning changes, but moving ahead to 2044.

So why is the no oh, because it's the no action but fully built out.

The preferred is no action no. Preferred is

No. The no action is no action fully built out. Because it's higher than the growth alternatives, I was confused. That was what I was confusing.

And then the growth alternative is based on the reasonably foreseeable land use forecast for 2044, which is vastly less than full build out. It it takes every parcel in the city and builds it to the maximum zoning capacity and then generates the traffic from that build out to plop it onto the arterial network, and that's the result for the intersections that you see. So we're not that is just a hypothetical what if happens kind of scenario. So the more realistic scenario is is the 2044 growth alternative.

Why did we need the comp plan then? We seem to be fine.

It's it's awful. Well, I mean, it's interesting because the the comprehensive plan is more than transportation, of course, and it's land use. And the comprehensive plan is intentionally designed to make sure that the land use and transportation kinda sorta sync up so that it doesn't overwhelm the system by putting growth in places that can't be supported by a multiple number of modes of transportation. Okay. So Let's

make sure he's finished before I'm Is this a good time for questions?

And finish with that topic.

Okay. Go ahead, Krishna.

So I have

a question on that topic. When we look at the different alternatives, how does that relate to the new middle housing plans that are coming down the pike? So when we think about HB eleven ten and the updates that the Planning Commission is looking at with regards to middle housing density on units, Which of these call or if you go back to the Yeah. Oh, yeah. The slide here. Which of these columns most closely mirrors what is currently being considered on the planning side for land use?

The the land use side represents the legislation in place last year related to middle housing and and also to single family lot development. So it does it does include some redevelopment of single family lots. It does include a lot of redevelopment of of sort of smaller scale commercial into higher density mixed use type projects. So sorry. Let me reframe the question.

Are these columns here based on meeting the minimum requirements of h b eleven ten, or are they reflective of what is currently coming down to the planning commission with regards to increases in density?

It does not reflect anything the planning commission is currently addressing. It it it is a snapshot from last year based on the legislation at that time.

Okay. So purely if h b eleven ten went through. So I guess my question is, is there a way for us to have an understanding of the impact of the transportation system once the alternatives are presented to the planning commission with regards to going at required density levels for Hb eleven ten versus going above and beyond density levels. So really what I'm trying to ask is it's very interesting to try and predict out in the future and see what is the impact on the transportation system. I'm hoping there's a feedback loop so that as the planning staff and planning commission decide on land use policy that then impacts transportation, that we are we are able to provide feedback so that they can sort of iterate and decide, does this make sense?

Doesn't does this not make sense? Should we do more? Should we do less? Otherwise, I'm concerned they might be making that decision in a vacuum, and then it'll get thrown to us, or it'll be it'll be thrown to you. And then someone's gonna say, hey. Can you please make sure that we don't break concurrency or the performance metrics?

Let let me speculate that there would be at least environmental documentation for any proposed land use change that would be in a in a SEPA checklist. It'd be an environmental documentation, and it would include impacts to the the transportation network as well as all the other built environment impacts related to a land use change.

I just I just have to say that, like, our whole entire policy framework in the whole country is completely, woefully inadequate, and transportation is always supposed to just serve whatever land use does. Never land use considers is there transport is there the possibility of the transportation growth? So it goes first. It goes land use. You decide that. And then later on, transportation has to deal with whatever land use decided. So what you're saying makes absolute sense. When you're making land use decisions, somebody should check what does that do to transportation, but it never happens that way, so maybe one day.

So I would say that may be the way that it happens, but I think in our neck of the woods, at least in the city of Bellevue, it's something that we could try. And I guess if there is a way that staff talks to each other and does provide that feedback loop Mhmm. I know this is a complicated problem. I just wanna make sure that everyone has the full facts when they walk in the door and start making decisions. Same.

That's perfect. Okay. Okay. Other questions? Our did you

our our our task is is to to not do that. It's to to be very focused on on the outcome of the the comprehensive plan. So we will share that those project concepts with you next time. So last last I I just wanna talk about the the open houses that we've had. The green check marks mean we have had them, and I appreciate that commissioner Keilman attended our our open house here in City Hall on the twenty sixth.

You you can see the the entirety of the attendance that we had at our open not not exactly. They they were minimally attended. Most of them were there for Mike's TFP project. A couple people came to talk about the local networks, but we we did end up talking about the the local street networks. We have an engaging Belvieu online survey happening right now. It closes on March 27, so the amber check will turn green next time you see this. And we will have some recommendations on the local street networks for pets and bikes on April 10. Just to let you know that that we we didn't quite do as robust to open houses Chris Iverson did with this

this this

current pricing. That. Now it's it's the the bar has

The heat is on.

He did, like, poke him with something that's really controversial.

Chris doing intercept service out there.

Alright. So so we've we've already done clarifications and questions. We've already done concurrence. If there's any other clarifications and questions, I can take them now. Here's our here's our trajectory going forward. We'll see you again on March 27 with, some bike mobility implementation plan recommendations and the project concepts that I promised. Still still moving forward to, June, recommendation from the commission. And that's what I have.

Questions? Anymore? Seeing none. Are people already thinking about heading home? Alright. Thank you guys very much. Alright. Let's move on to agenda item number eight, approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from the 02/13/2025 meeting?

I I have a motion for an amendment to the I'm sorry. You're talking about the meeting minutes. Right? Yes. I have a motion to amend the meeting minutes. I sent them to Kevin. How do you wanna proceed with the

Do we have a second to discuss these?

Well, I I want to show what the motion is first. Do you have Oh, fair enough. Okay. I move

So I had I had thrown out a motion to approve, and you're throwing out an emotion to amend. Correct?

So we'll deal with the first motion first. I would second your motion to approve the meeting minutes.

Okay. We have discussion. Discussion?

Yeah. I move to amend the meeting minutes.

K. So your motion is we can read it if it's easier.

You wanna read it? You wanna read

it? Sure. Okay. So I I I have it on the record in my email so I can make sure the minutes accurately reflect commissioner Ting's amendment.

So, the motion is on page eight, first paragraph, second sentence. It says, similarly, a project on the high injury network automatically receives the highest equity score. And the, changed text is, similarly, a project on the high injury network and one with the highest equity store would also score eight. Little wordy, but I can explain the so the original minutes stated that if a project is on the high injury network, that it automatically gets the equity score, and that's not what I stated. It was if a project is on the high injury network and it also happens to be getting the highest equity score, then that is the same priority as a PMA one project, all else being equal.

Yep.

I second your motion.

Thank you. Discussion? I think it makes sense to me from my memory from last time. Other inner other thoughts, discussions on this? Okay. So is there anybody that disagrees with the amendment? No? Then now we go back to the motion, the motion to approve the amended minutes. Do I have a motion for that?

So moved.

Second? I'll second. Any disagreement to approve the amended minutes? Alright. They're passed. Thank you. Unfinished business, as far as I know, there is none. Anybody have anything to add? New business, I have nothing. None. Okay. Review commission calendar, and Kevin was kind enough to print it out in front of us.

Yeah. So you you you have March 13 is the beginning of a sequence of four rapid fire commission meetings every two weeks. Next next March 27, I'll be back with the mobility implementation plan. Chris, Dee, and Mike will be back for the transportation facilities plan, and a a newer member of our staff, Akshali Gandhi, who was here last time that provided some spontaneous input, will be here to talk about some code amendments for, micromobility type vehicles.

K. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Is there any objection to adjourn the meeting? Yes.

Go ahead. For that April 10 commission meeting, do do you need any votes during that meeting? I have a work trip, so I won't be here. But I can accommodate a virtual if if there's a vote that's needed.

Please send me your request for virtuals up to the day before the meeting.

Thank you.

I'm sure we can accommodate.

Okay. Be here. You won't be here? Okay.

Let me ask.

And I am out as well. So we'll we'll we'll talk afterwards. Okay. Alright. Any objection to adjourning the meeting? Hearing none. We're adjourned. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thanks, George Stash. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, everybody.

Safe travels to you, Drew.