Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. This meeting is now called order. Welcome to the 04/20/2026 planning commission meeting. We'll begin with the roll call. Casey, will

you please call the roll? Yes. I can stop

the chair for just a moment.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Chair Quieton? Here.

Vice chair Daniel Garcia? Here. Commissioner Berger? Here. Commissioner Rafael Garcia? Here. Commissioner Grubb? Here. Commissioner Ibrahimovic? Here. Commissioner Najadi?

Here.

Commissioner Sarra? Present. And commissioner Thavius? Present. We have Quorum chair.

Excellent. Thank you, Casey. Our first order of business is approval of tonight's agenda. We have a request from staff to amend tonight's agenda and move approval of the minutes and staff announcements to after business items. May I have a move a motion to amend as requested, and can the motion maker please state their name?

This is Jason. So moved.

This is Jessica. I'll I'll second.

It's been moved by Jason, seconded by Jessica to amend the the agenda. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay? Any abstentions? Okay. The motion passes.

Then we'll get to public comments. This

portion of meeting is an opportunity for members of the audience to speak on any items related to city business, including items on the agenda, except those items for which the commission held a public hearing, but has not yet completed its deliberations and issued a recommendation to city council for where the speaker promotes or opposes a candidate public office or ballot measure. Comments on all topics will be allowed during this portion of the meeting tonight. I will identify two to three speakers, and when your name is called, the host will unmute the microphone. He will then need to unmute your microphone before you start speaking. Comments will limited to three minutes, and staff or one of

the commissioners will share account on clock.

I don't think anyone has signed up to provide comments for today. Is there

anybody online, Casey? We have one person online, and looks like it's our a report from the JOLT.

Okay. If anyone in the audience would like to provide general public comment, please indicate so by using the raise hand function. Sounds good. And we'll move on from public comment.

Sure. I believe we skipped approval of minutes.

I think we're gonna try to do That was part of the

the business at the end. Yeah. Yeah. I see. Yep.

Good catch, though. Yeah. So we'll go to business items. Tonight's business item six a is an update regarding intercity transit bus system redesign. Spencer Zieman, the stops zones and inter jurisdictional development coordinator, intercity transit tier, present on the topic. Spencer, thank you

for joining this meeting. It's my pleasure all. Appreciate the invite. Thank you, Casey. It was good connecting with you. And as soon as this pops back up here, we'll get started. So I'm not a death by PowerPoint kind of person, so I took this and trimmed it way back. There's about seven slides, and one of them is this intro. So, I want this to be really interactive. I'm not sure how much formality you sit on with this commission here, but I I much prefer that.

So if you have questions, feel free to jump in and ask questions as we go along. So Intercity Transit is embarking on its first full system redesign, and this is something that's been in the works for quite some time now. If you ask my boss, it's ten years in the making, and, it does include a ton of feedback from the community over a very long stretch of time, both customer comments as well as sampling as well as outreach efforts. So, one of my favorite my favorite part, I should say, of this service redesign is we're gonna be giving service to sections of the county and community that have not received them previously, and I think that's a really big showcase of this. We are maintaining all this with our same service levels because our budgets, like most organizations, have well, ours is static, which is a plus currently because a lot of organizations are struggling with budgets with sales tax revenues dropping, general economic trends not looking so great.

So with this mind, if we have maintained the same number of service hours, which is how we benchmark how much we're putting out there. The only difference is that we're reframing certain corridors to prioritize movement through areas and then shifting a small amount of that to expand to new developing areas where we're seeing a lot of growth in infill, specifically with residential populations as well as focusing on hospitals and schools with the service change. So that that's my favorite aspect of it. And with that, we'll just jump right to the next one. There we go.

So here's just a list of some of the things we do. And I wanted to touch on this because when I came to IT, I knew that they did dial lift and they did fixed route service. I saw a walk and roll, but I didn't realize it was associated with intercity transit. And so briefly, I'll go through some of these services and what they mean because I don't know how familiar you are with the services they provide. So fixed route is what we would consider a standard coach service.

It's the routes that you see all day long that everybody associates with intercity transit. The vanpool and the cars and the carpool service. So vanpool is one of those services that has come up through the FTA requirements. And because of that, we've been able to participate in this program where we purchase and maintain vehicles, and then they essentially get leased out to employee groups across the region so they can reduce the amount of personally owned vehicle travel that that group is taking to get to their workplace. It's a wonderful, wonderful service.

It also has a branch out called Village Vans, which is a program designed to get people who are essentially getting back on their feet, who are lacking access to dependable transportation. It's it's to get them to workplace opportunities. It's to get them specifically to job training programs, those kinds of things to really assist the community in transitioning to to a more stable footing with that. Bus Buddies, in a similar vein, is a program that's run by entirely by a nonprofit in town. And the concept of that is they help people by demonstrating and riding with them.

How do I use this system? And typical people who use that tend to be to have have some sort of disability, which may prevent them from solo riding. And oftentimes, what we've seen is an overwhelming number of the people who utilize that service after a handful of trips tend to learn how to navigate the system well enough to do it without any assistance. Similarly, community vans, it's another program where we you may you may have seen them driving around. They look a lot like the van pool vans, but they with those, we we offer specialized trips for programs only.

And then walk and roll is is the next big one. And that's one of my favorites because I I saw that for years before I came to intercity transit with my children in their school. And what that program does is it teaches children across the region about multimodal transportation methods, walk and roll. So whether that's your scooter, your bicycle, your Lamborghitis, your Shubarus, whatever you're taking to get to your final destination, it's a program that encourages lots of different opportunities and ways to get around your community. And it does through it does that through partnering with mostly educational institutions to provide that training to children and oftentimes giving them their first experiences with bicycles.

One of the things I really love about walk and roll is they have a program in the evenings where you can sign up. It's completely free, and you can learn how to fix and maintain a bicycle. At the end of this program, you will receive a full brand new bike that you have fixed. You've refurbished this through the entire program. So you've taken a donated bicycle and worked with the trained staff to learn how to maintain every element of the bicycle.

You've serviced it, and now you have a fully functional bicycle to call your own at the end of the program for no cost. And and I think that one's just fantastic. And so here's a quick GIS map of our transportation benefit area. Some of the things I'd like to highlight with that specifically is this is not the same as our dial lift boundaries. That's a big question we get a lot as people ask about dial lift, and dial lift is a ancillary program designed to supplement our fixed route service. It is derived through the ADA in the 1992, I

believe it was.

American with Disabilities Act created the onus for transit companies to provide this service. And so what we have is a three quarter mile boundary around all of our fixed route network. And if you're within that and you are not able to access the fixed route network for any reason, usually related to a disability, then you'll have access to what we would call paratransit service, which is the larger they call them cutaways. They're like the big three fifties with the tops on them. Those are specially designed to transport people with mobility challenges.

And that is an incredibly popular and incredibly high demand program, and, it's fantastic. If you've never seen it in action, it is truly spectacular. They offer thousands of rides a month. Those things are cruising at all times. And so this, just to give you an idea, is is where our taxing district is. That's what you can see in this pink outline here. All the rest of the colors are the new routes, and there's a different color for each route associated there. But don't don't let that fool you. I'm gonna show you a system map that makes a lot more sense. It's a lot more easy to digest in a minute here.

But before we move on to that, I wanna talk about some of the priorities with intercity transit because, essentially, we are the multimodal provider for the community. We are a municipal corporation, which gives us the special taxing authority to do this, to set up this public transportation benefit area, which means that we collect a percentage of your sales tax. It's 1.2%. And then that use is used to fund all of the programs there at different levels. And so with that, we're we're gonna we take that, and then we try to figure out and balance do that arithmetic or that that calculus, if you will, where we try to balance the needs of the public, the amount of ridership we can expect in certain areas, and also providing access because it is always it is a weighted scale where you have to say, is it all about ridership?

Because if we wanted to get more people on board, we could easily sacrifice some of the fringe areas and boost core ridership numbers. But would that increase the quality of life? Would that create a beneficial transit system, or would we be just getting numbers up for the sake of getting numbers? And so that is a lot of the thought process that had to come into designing this system with this current redesign. And we we've tried to build on the core of what was there that the community really enjoyed.

And I know there's been some some hot button issues around that, and feel free to ask questions, or I will address those at the end. But by and large, what you'll see is almost all of the core routes are essentially unchanged with a new numbering system, and they do have a focus on inner lines. And if you're not familiar with that concept, that's where a bus leaves a place at one route number, and then at a certain point, it becomes another route throughout that pathway. And so we see that a lot with the replacing of the 41, which, again, very hot button issue. It now yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. We are having a celebration of life ceremony for that with apparently cupcakes and maybe some other yummies and and giveaways. And so look for that in the next few weeks. It should be a fun little event there, hopefully, to get the community involved and and get them to understand that, yes, your route is changing slightly, but now you have more options. Before, you were basically going to downtown. Now you can go over to the West Side. You can stay on that bus and go downtown, and you can also go to South Tumwater. So you have more options, and that was one of the core design concepts in this. Before I continue on, does anybody have any questions on anything that's been talked about

for the ridership versus coverage? Do we do have a, I don't know, some metric for that and

you know? So there's there's a lot of competing theories about it, and one of them is by Jared Walker. He kind of wrote the book, if you will, on transportation. And that's the first chapter is that that ridership, is that what we need to be looking at? And the answer is we do have some core metrics that we're looking for, but we try to give ourselves enough leeway to be responsive to the community or understand that if there's a pocket of need somewhere, then it might be worth having service to that pocket because of the benefit from that.

And so, I can't give you I can't say that a a route needs to have 600 boardings a day to be viable in our book because that's, not every route gets the same number of frequency. Mhmm. Or the same span of frequency, meaning the same hours of operation. So we tailor that more now with this new route system to try and target those routes so that we're not sending buses down Capital Way all night long till 11:00 because that that area starts to slow down. So we're we're trying to be a little more strategic with how we distribute the service throughout the system at times.

And now all of this will be shifted slightly in the coming years as we analyze and monitor and see, you know, what is working well, what is not working, and we will be making those adjustments potentially in real time if something is drastically out of alignment, but haven't seen anything that makes me think there would be.

Yeah. I I was thinking about, like, things that you can watch as you roll out the new system. Absolutely. Yeah. Mhmm. Go ahead, Zana.

Sorry. So, Spencer, you said you're gonna figure out what what's working well and what's not working well. I guess, like, how do you what's the definition of working well? How do you how do you figure that out?

Okay. So we're we're gonna be using our previous ridership with our older model to look at that, and we do expect to there to be a small decline in the initial portion whenever there is that change over that transition. But overall, we do expect ridership to grow about five to 10% once the once the community understands, including the amount of new access that we have. So that is always the big one. That's the politically expedient solution as well ridership because then you can say, my cost per trip is down.

The community is using the service more. Another metric I would say is, are we getting people to their employment in the places they wanna be? And that's a little more nebulous. You can't just put a number on that one. And similarly, when when it comes to looking at averages, we do track down to the stop level, the time of day. We have all of that data available, and all of that can be parsed out and and distributed. But I often find that if you're not looking at it through a certain lens that you end up with a lot more noise than helpfulness. So one of the first lessons I learned was you can't take averages as truth. Because if something let's say a stop has six mornings per day. Are those six boardings at 6AM?

And then there's nothing for the rest of the day? Or are they spread throughout the day, and what trends are we looking at? Are there schools and things? So we're we're trying to make really hyper local decisions based on the trends that we're seeing in areas. And that can be challenging because sometimes there's seasonality to it. There's weather effects on it. So there there's a whole host of factors that go into it. And my definition of success is, is the community using the service? Are they happy with the service by and large? Because there's always gonna be some some individuals who it does not meet their needs, or they're not gonna be okay with that.

And then are we good stewards of taxpayer resources? And I and I think the answer is yes in this case because what we're doing with that redistribute redistribution of service is we're providing a much larger umbrella of people who can use this service, and we're trying to get them to the places where they really want to go with that. And and so I think that it iterates on what we already have with some more thoughtful design. More to be more to be discussed on that one too after the service launch.

And then I you brought up, like like, where people wanna go, like, thinking, like, the 41, like, are complaining that, you know, they used to have a straight shot to downtown. And now you're saying that, like, there's more access to other locations, like the Tumwater and things like that. And I'm wondering because, like, most other transit agencies, like, you pay, so you can see when people, like, transfer buses and see, like, where they're going. How did you figure out that people who are, like, in that route, like, they actually, there's a need to go to these other places. Like, how did you figure that out?

So we we use a computational statistical model along along with alightings. So we have automated person counters on our buses, and it's essentially just a laser system right above the door on both sides. And when you enter the bus, it says, is this person coming on the bus? Are they carrying belongings in terms of, like, strollers or mobility devices? And then when you exit the bus, it records that and at the stop that you both entered and exited. Now it doesn't matter if John comes in on stop one and leaves on stop six and Sally comes in on two and seven. We know that a person came on at one and left at six, and a person came on at two and left at seven. So we're tracking by individual. There's no recognition of that. There's no facial software.

There's none of that at all. So we use that raw data, and then we use mathematical formulas to figure out what times a day are we receiving this activity, what do we think that means based on the locations around there, but we can do surveys. We have all kinds of outreach efforts that we do to try and figure out is this is this service being utilized, and why is it being utilized, and what could we emphasize to make it more valuable to people?

Rafael? Oh, go ahead. You got more data. Go ahead.

Go for I just I just wanted to clarify. So the data sorry, Rafael. This is my last question. Sorry. So talking about where people are boarding, like like, knowing that that they wanna go somewhere differently than what the route currently allows them to go at, you're relying on, like, people responding on, like, survey cards or something like that to figure out that there are people in West Olympia who want to go to Tumwater or vice versa. We

use that for context, but we do have that raw data, which is where we find most of our truth in that. And so we look at typically, if if I was to look at, let's say, the transit center, we have quite a number of boardings anywhere between several 10,000 a day depending on traffic and such. We can say, okay. We've had that many people boarding here. Now where are they leaving in the system? And we use that to generate heat maps and hotspots so that we can figure out where are people going. And that's when we use the context of the surveys and the outreach to try and get an idea of why are people going to those places if it's not obvious.

Okay. Thank you, Spencer.

Could you imagine if you had a you had this map of hotspots and you didn't have a link between two hotspots where people seem to

be boarding or or leaving.

You would say, like, let's try

a route between these two and Absolutely. Straight there and

stuff. Mhmm.

So there's so so that would be the kind of information that we're using to inform the design methods that we have here. And similar one one of the biggest problems that we run into is the built environment. It's not transit friendly by and large. There's a lot of places where we can't take a bus. We even have a lot of 35 foot specifically, so that's a smaller than the 40 foot standard coach that you'll see, specifically to access neighborhoods and locations because there is no roadway that is accessible by a normal sized bus there.

Did Rafael still have a question? Yes.

Yeah. His hand is still on monitor.

Go ahead, Rafael.

So I know a lot of, like, I guess, what you're discussing is, like, a lot of the demand modeling in the now and the current, kind of with, like, I guess, with the state and all the updates to the required laws, housing capacity laws changing. How is kind of intercity transit updated in parallel with all that future, I guess, say, demand modeling for those housing capacity law changes and, like, say, like, new developments or projected future projects for housing developments, increase in population in certain areas, how does that factor into, like, say, these demand this demand modeling, I'd say?

Excellent question. That is one of the things that I handle directly as part of my interjurisdictional development role, whether it's a fancy way of saying that I monitor all the development requests that come through the entire county as well as in our PTBA. And if they are on or near a route or within one of our expansion zones that we have identified internally, then I comment on their project and say that, okay. Could we have overhead luminaires here so that people have greater visibility? We'd like to have connected pathways from the roadway to the sidewalk.

Could they please be six feet wide so that way we have ADA accessible pathways for people to use? And so I monitor every request that comes through the entire area and make sure that if it is within a reasonable distance that we get what I would call transit supportive frontage. If it's within something that we see maybe in a fifteen or twenty year zone, we I still put the request in, but it's a lot less compelling. And as I kept mentioned earlier about the comp plans, I appreciate how much transit supportive language has been baked into those at the three major jurisdictions in the area. That helps tremendously Because now we're not relying on the generosity of the developer or perhaps a credit offset system like we would have to in the past for them to get incentives to put those things in.

Now there's language in most of the code that says you will provide frontage that is supportive to these things, which makes it even if we have to come back and retrofit an area, it makes it significantly less costly and a much easier project to accomplish because we now have roadways that are standardized, that have ADA accessible grades. We don't have to come in and redo large sections or replace sidewalk panels. We can add in that concrete pathway with a nice landing pad so that people have a pleasant experience when they get off of the service. And those are things that we we can do to incentivize use of the service as well.

Thank you. Dana?

In addition to being responsive to, like, where people are already traveling, how does inner city transit think about, like, having values and, like, planning out, like, not just responding to activity, but, like, encouraging behavior? Like, I think of, like, Route 41, just one of those interlines Mhmm.

Where it starts as Route 41

and it goes to the Capital Mall. You don't need

Nick Nick Demeris, communications coordinator, interstate transit. Nick Demeris

has assured me, he's like, you don't have

to get off the bus.

The number just changes. Mhmm. But do you see that as, like that's, like, in, behavioral economics, they talk about, like, how, like, that creates another, like, like, step in the process to get from, like, Evergreen down to downtown. So now you don't have to get off the bus, but, like, how does the New City Transit, like, think about, like, that as, like, a changing behavior. It's like now there is one more step between here and there.

I hear what you're saying, Daniel, and I think that would be a rob question. I don't think that we're trying to induce any demand anywhere because we're we're fairly apolitical as as an agency, and we try our best not to be. And so we're not trying to, let's say, highlight the Capital Sub area triangle or or do anything like that specifically because that that gets into too muddy of waters, and we don't want to be directly moving on one thing versus another. Because then Lacey could come back and say, well, you're not prior prioritizing Midtown, but you're prioritizing the Capital Mall sub area triangle. Why aren't you doing this?

And so we're trying to be as apolitical as possible and respond to the real world demand. We did have a a philosophical debate after because that is an excellent point of where we bring transit service is going to induce demand. That is a guaranteed thing. If if if people have access there, stuff is going to infill to meet those people's needs. Right. So I I do understand that IT has a role in that, and my understanding is that we do not actively participate in that. I would have to refer that to someone like Rob. Heard. When you said political, I just

wanna be clear that, like, if I'm

in Evergreen because I did go to Evergreen. I got my master's there. I would love to see better bus service to Evergreen.

I don't think it's political to say that you want just to

have access for Evergreen students who are younger to access downtown. So, like, why would that be political? Because we have a limited number of revenue service hours. We have three hundred and fifteen thousand hours to distribute across the system. And if we were to disproportionately give them to a certain population, it could have ramifications that I can't even speculate on right now, but I know it would be really hard for the community to say, okay.

Why are you giving so much to this one area, this one population, even if it's a high ridership? What about all these other areas? What about the fact that there's now 5,000 homes in Southeast Lacey that aren't being served? Right? That's an extreme example, not based in reality, that that is the kind of mindset that we're taking when we're looking at this, trying to be as equitable as possible. I hear you, and I think limited resources, that I understand. But I think when you said political, that kinda that hit

the ear wrong. That doesn't sound limited resources, that makes sense.

Because that comes back to your ridership versus coverage. Right?

Mhmm. So you have I

don't know.

Even a really high ridership line, you may have to sacrifice some coverage, and that's some balancing, which that does seem like a a trade off of resources that you wanna match with plans in different cities and Mhmm. Whatever those desires are.

But And and something that may not be immediately obvious is is a fair amount of our route funding comes from various grants, which come with restrictions that we have to meet. So sometimes there's routes that don't always make they are not the way that we would just design them specifically, but we have typically FDA requirements that we would do that we operate at certain capacities or certain ways. And this primarily affects the June and 06/10, but there are some local routes like our coming our new nine x is gonna be one of those that is partially grant funded. And because of that, we have to have certain levels of service, certain frequencies of service, certain coverage low or span rather, and to meet that grant funding to make that work. And so there are a number of routes that have those things attached to it.

Like, the 13 was an example of that too. And so we we are balancing a lot of different constraints and and regulations while we come up with most of what you see.

Any other questions? You wanted to interrupt? Yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. The access to services, like, how do you take into account how like, there's different populations in different areas. Right? Like, so around Evergreen State College, there's gonna be more students who might not have cars yet or might that might be a steeper barrier for them. And there's also Panorama. There's senior citizen areas that might also need more access because they can't drive anymore. How do you take that into account when you're planning your routes?

So we do look for populations of need. One of the things we we use the census block data constantly throughout this. And within our own title six program, which is is is an equity document that we have, we talk about different types of services, different types of service changes, what require what meets certain thresholds. And, specifically, we if we are serving certain minority populations or disadvantaged groups, it comes with, again, a whole host of requirements and regulations that we have to follow with those. And so, typically, what you'll see is that, we service a lot of those populations, and we can't easily remove service from them because that would trigger an FTA requirement that we offset it somewhere else of equal need.

So, typically, when we have decided that we're gonna serve an area that has a high, let's say, lower income population, when we have that, we recognize that we are committing to that indefinitely because it's unlikely that that population is going to shift radically to somewhere geographically different. But if that were the case, then we would have to justify why we're taking service away. So though there are a lot of protected populations that we try to emphasize service to. Specifically with people who have disabilities, that is one of the programs where we refer them to the dial lift.

Thank you. Mhmm.

Circling back to one of your earlier points really quickly, I at what point at what size of development are you usually jumping in with comments?

So it's gonna depend on a a whole host of features. But, typically, if it's on a line and it's a high value area that we've been looking for, I if it's my mind, so we have one in Tumwater on Little Rock Road called Velcomen Duplexes. It's only 12 duplexes. Now they have a separate lot behind it with a whole bunch of other homes, but I asked them to put in a pad because of it's a strategic location that really needs a pad. And we were able to work with the school district to have it be a co mingled area for that.

And the developer, once I talked them through the process and showed them pictures of our shelters, he said, oh, that's great. My residents will love that. Absolutely. But at first, they were not interested. In fact, they were outwardly hostile, because they didn't understand what that would entail and what that would look like. And when they realized that it was a piece of concrete next to the sidewalk, a lot of their fears went away. So so that hopefully gives you an idea of what on the small end. And on the big end, you better believe that if there's a large development that comes through and it's anywhere near major corridor, I am requesting that they flip the bill to make that a transit supportive environment.

For sure, Taylor. So I I on the city of Olympia, our distribution list for plats, basically, nine, lots or more or multifamily. Those basically go out to all of our, partner jurisdictions, including, inner city transit. So Yeah. I would say the the bare minimum threshold is if it's if it's a plat, a a long plat, or if frontages are triggered, we'll likely send that on to IT as well. That includes district IT, the school district, that covers that. If it's near Tumwater or Lacey, they'll also receive that. So there's a an entire distro list, I would say, that you probably get a lot more of our applications to look at than you really want to.

Mhmm. There there's a lot of single family developments or single family developments. Excuse me. Single family homes that are coming up for they that they're having a deed change, whatever that may be. I don't talk to homeowners. I'm not asking them to foot the bill for that. I specifically look for multifamily and or large single family communities because that's where the they're bringing the infill that's going to require or the service is going to be desirable there because there's so much density because of how many homes or res or units they're bringing into the area. Yeah. I I don't ask homeowners to to do that.

Commercial redevelopment probably as well. I know at least on the West Side when I was still doing current planning, there was a a relatively small commercial redevelopment. We still kicked it over to IT, and I I recall that there even was a request at the time to include an IT shelter stop area. So Mhmm. So

one of the things that you can expect with this

Sorry. I was I was gonna back to when you're talking about, like, how do you measure success, and you were talking about you guys expect to see it increase a decrease initially and then an increase in ridership following that. Like, how often are you guys reassessing these routes? Like, when you say, like, you expect to see the ridership to increase, like, above what I would take I would call, like, what you have now is, like, the baseline. Right? Increase about your baseline. Like, how long are you waiting for it to reach that point before you maybe, like, think, like, hey. Maybe this this wasn't quite the right choice, and we need to revisit this route. Because it doesn't seem like routes change very often.

That's that's correct. Because historically so we have three service change periods a a year. Most often, they're what we would consider a minor, which is small tweaks to the system. So stops are shifting, a few things like that. Very rarely do we have a major service change, and a major service change would be, like, in January '25 when we relaunched the route 13.

So with that in mind, our internal conversations, we're looking at between twelve and twenty four months because we expect with the learning curve of the drivers learning new routes, with our ridership learning the new routes, that is where we're anticipating a small ridership loss in the beginning. And to put that in context for you, when we went into COVID, we had about 5,000,000 rides a year. Just last year, we returned to that service level. So ridership across and not just here, this region, across the country and the world took a massive hit and is really only now returning back to those pre pandemic levels. And so, one of the things is we want to we want to be thoughtful and recognize that people are building their lives around this service.

And if we come in and we're changing it every four months and we're upending people's lives, that's a problem. So we wanna be very thoughtful and make sure that when we're making a shift that's going to affect how someone gets to work or home or the next time they need to go to a doctor's appointment, that that is being as calculated and thoughtful as possible. And so, again, internally, our metrics, we're looking at about twelve months at the bare minimum, probably twenty four months. That way, we can really assess the seasonality of it. We can assess how the weather's impacting things. Are people responding? Are they finding the value that we thought they would in this? And then we can do some more thoughtful analysis of it versus being, as reactionary as we could.

Okay. So just so I understand. So so, like, maybe, like, up to two years or two years is, like, the the the long end of, like, how long you would wait to see how the ridership numbers increase. And then there's still, like, how long does it for, like, a major change, like, how many more years does it take after that?

So we'll we're gonna be implementing that service change based on that information, and and I can't give you a specific time frame for that. That's really gonna depend on the data and what we're seeing. If we're seeing some we're seeing a route that is incredibly poor performing, meaning we've lost all the ridership and nobody's using it, we're more likely to make a a quick or immediate change to that versus if it's maybe 10% below. Again, I'm just throwing out a number here. That is something that we would have a lot of deliberation over and really look at the data and do some deep dives into before we make any significant changes like that.

But, realistically, you're looking at the the planning process takes between one to two years for a major service change because there's so many second and third order effects that need to be factored into that. Amenities is one of them. I mean, all the stops and the zones are do we have the right amenities for the right locations, etcetera? And so and then there's a whole host again of FDA requirements and other things that we have to do to comply with that. So, I mean, in reality, you're probably looking at three or four years.

Okay. And then you keep bringing up the whole, like, ridership versus coverage and, like, trying to balance the two. If I wanted to read more about that and how Intercity Transit, like, approaches that and, like, what kind of things feed into that, like, what document would be best to read?

Intercity Transit's document?

Yeah. Oh,

yeah. I got a whole

bunch of those on our website. So if you go to the the about us and then the plans and documents, we have all of our published documents on there that talk talk about our methodologies and how we come up with this. I would look at the title six. It's it's not gonna tell you how we determine our service, but it's gonna tell you a lot of the constraints that we're using when we're developing it. Another one would be our transportation improvement plan. And all of these are posted on our website, and they're they're right there under the the about section. And and so those are our great launching point. And then I'd be happy to refer you to anything else from that point forward if you want.

Did you say the current transit improvement plan or transit development?

Well, the improvement plan. That'll show you what are we thinking of investing in. And then development plan is is useful as well, but there's gonna have a different mindset. So, like, one of them is really gonna be more of a financial document. That's gonna be the improvement plan. Cool.

Mhmm. Thank you.

And then the development plan is gonna be based off of what trends are we seeing in the county as well as with the jurisdictions and how are we working with them to do that. And those documents are going to be updated in the next two years. All of them have a statutory requirement, and they will need to be updated. So what you may see on there is 2023 for some of them, '24, '25, And, typically, they have a three to six years shelf life on those. And we are as soon as the service changes over, we are going to be going into actively updating most, if not all, of those because this service design is going to change the way that we have looked at things. Will you have time

to collect some data before you do the updates? Or

Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. It's gonna depend on which one you we're referencing specifically. Like, we have one on the horizon that's it's not a easy read or a fun document, but it is an FDA requirement. And so that one's basically how do we count people. But how are we getting our data, and what are we doing to safeguard our data? Not from hackers, but to make sure that the data we're getting is good data that can be relied upon. And so it gets fairly technical in there.

Are we gonna have the opportunity to get into the weeds on '41 or at least just an overview on what what's gonna get changed about '41?

Sure. Sure. We'd happy to

talk about that. So the

forty forty one is being replaced with two separate routes. So we have the 32 and the 34. They're going to be going to essentially what you can see there on the map, and you have every oh, good. My cursor's up there. Excellent. And so you're gonna have two opportunities now. You're gonna have one that's gonna go down division, and then you're gonna have the 34, which is gonna come down to the point here. I don't know why it's not on this. But what what that's gonna do is it's gonna give you two opportunities. So you're gonna you're gonna have the ability to go down. Let me pull up the system map. That's easier than

So is the 48 going away?

All of the old routes are going away. Everything but the 600 and the six ten.

Alright.

They're all

they're again, they're they're most of them are being renumbered because we don't want people to be confused. Because if we have the 48 today and then we have the 48 after May 3 and the 48 looks different, everybody's gonna be confused. So we made the choice to retire all the numbers of the routes that are having significant shifts to reflect that.

It's not sharing. Bear with me a moment.

So for the instance of the 41, So we have our 34 coming down Cooper Point here in the 32, which is much more akin to what you see today. And then the 34 is coming here to the Capital Mall and becoming the nine x, which goes down through OTC and through downtown. And the nine x of note is this deep, thick, orange line here. And the nine x the reason we called it the nine x is because it's our our express line. We are launching into what is called bus rapid transit.

It's been something that's been in our in our design for a long time. Problem with bus rapid transit is it's expensive, and it requires a lot of coordination with the jurisdictions in terms of bus priority, transit signal priority, sometimes dedicated lanes. That can be really challenging, especially when we're going through the downtown core because of the historic nature of a lot of the development there. It makes things challenging, but this is our first attempt at that. And so what we're having here is is I call it our backbone, if you will.

And it is going to be rapid, limited stop service, east, west, all the way through our entire service zone. And what I really like about that is there's a lot of routes now that are going to interface with that at many different locations along the way. So it's gonna be a lot easier to hop on that nine x and say, that west to to either the transit center or the Capital Mall. Yes. You said it's bus rapid transit, but you said it doesn't have dedicated lanes or so what makes it bus rapid transit?

So bus rapid transit has a few defining characteristics, and distinctive locations or stops is one of them. So what you'll see since we are fare free, normally, having an advanced payment system is one of those defining characteristics. What you'll see is on 4th And Washington, we have that temporary bulb out, that yellow and and black one there. That's going away. That area is being improved, and, eventually, that's going to be our first BRT terminal, if you will. It's gonna almost like a little mini transit center. It's going to have upgraded amenities. It's going to have lighting. It's going to have real time signage. It's going to have distinctive branding, and that pad's going to be right in the lane.

So the bus can pull right up to it, service both doors, and be gone very quickly. And there we have identified a few other candidates for that, in the Boulevard Road area as well as east of that. We're currently in the process of working through that right now. We have identified that 4th in Washington is a guaranteed spot that we want to invest in because it is going to be the main way that people get onto the 9x to go east. And the other two, we're still in the process of working through.

So what makes the 9x rapid? It's like, what I don't I don't So it's gonna have a minimum of four buses an hour. So you're gonna have fifteen minute service minimum. On top of that, you have limited stop service. So instead of hitting every stop along the way, we we pulled out I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but a fair amount. We have 17 stops from the east to the west on on both ways through the system. And it's going to a pool cord model, so we're not stopping at stops in the way we would previous or excuse me. It's not going to a pool cord model. We're going to the opposite of that. Because it is limited stop, it is only stopping at certain stops.

And if there's nobody there and there's nobody getting off, we're gonna stop and then go immediately. There's no dwell time there. So that's what you'll notice is one of the biggest defining characteristics. Eventually, our hope is that, especially with the Martin Waite corridor, is that we can get a little bit more of what would be called signal priority. So sometimes that's called queue jumps, lane jumps, those kinds of things.

And what you'll see is that traffic lights, there's a special sensor up there similar to the emergency vehicles. And then when the bus comes up to it and flashes it, the bus will have the ability to go through that intersection ahead of normal traffic. And so the developments like that are in progress right now, and it does require, again, a significant amount of time and work with the community, all the different jurisdictions to get the priority there. If you were to go to somewhere like Seattle, it's a lot more apparent. Yeah.

So when will when will with all those changes, when will 9x be rapid transit? May 3 is when we're launching that. Yes. The stations, we are actively building that station right now. It it well, the construction's already been approved for the fourth in Washington.

It is going to be done later this summer because it does require a significant amount of asphalt work as well as concrete pad and infrastructure underneath the pad. Unlike our typical stops where we can put down a concrete pad or a shelter pad, this is going to be a much larger station. It's probably gonna be something like 18 by 32, and it'll have additional seating again. It'll have pedestrian icons on the ground, boarding zones. You'll you'll have all of that thing all those things that will be very different than a normal bus stop where you just pop on and off. Cool.

Do you have any plans to do the kinda temporary quick as, like, as it is right now? The I think that's mostly plastic or something, the the kinda temporary stop that

was put there for the The temporary bulb out. Yeah. So we're we're going to be redeploying that, hopefully, north of Lacey Transit Center to create a on the on the route stop so that we can bypass Lacey Transit Center with some of our routing to to speed things up and save some time. Because one of those metrics that we do is if a if a bus service takes three times or more what a personally owned vehicle travel time would be, we would consider that not as advantageous as we'd like it to be. So that's one of the metrics is less than three times what it would take to get in your car and drive somewhere is is what we shoot for when we're designing this as well.

And I know you've asked about resources. If you do wanna know more, there's a book named human transit by Jared Walker, and that is the book, if you will, when it comes to transportation theory, specifically for transit. And and with this nine x, you you might see here oh, okay. It's not on that. Excellent.

So up in the Hawks Prairie area, you're gonna see that there's now a whole host. And I know this you're all from Olympia, so this may not be what you're interested in as much. But you have a whole host of new lines that are gonna be going there. So we're gonna be having people get have the ability to transfer from their work up here right onto the nine x and go straight across town to where they live on the West Side or on the East Side. So that that this is the main corridor that we are focusing on with that service, and then we are building an ancillary service with things like the 50, which mirrors a lot of what the nine x does, but it hits all the normal stops.

So that if you wanted to pop off at one when you're on the nine x, let's say you go over here to to Martin, but you need to get up to Ensign, well, you you pop off here and you hop on the 50, it'll take you up to Ensign or up to the 74 here. Because now you're gonna have a lot of opportunities to go places because you're gonna have so many routes crossing through the 9 X at different points. And similarly, we're trying to we're looking at North South corridors throughout the community. It's a little bit harder. We have the obvious one on College Street and Lacey, and then we have Capital here, which I'm really excited for the Capital Way Road diet when that gets done.

I think that is going to make that a wonderful street to be on no matter what you're doing. So really thrilled about that, and I think that the service that you see on there is gonna get only just better whenever that's done. Yes. For bus driver transit,

you talked about dedicated lanes. Mhmm. Why not make some dedicated lanes?

I was gonna say that's our problem.

Yeah. We ask for them. We ask for signal priority. We ask for we ask for traffic revisions when it comes to which signals and what do they look like. Specifically, that's really challenging for us is what we call an unprotected left, a blinking light, and we're trying to make a left.

It's fine in your vehicle, not fine when you're driving a 40 foot bus that doesn't have the Gojuice behind it. So, things like that really do limit what we can and can't do with it. I continue to ask for it, and I do have a conversation that will be happening later this year about better coordination and how we can start to move on those things. But, ultimately, your council needs to prioritize it and be willing to put funding behind it. And

I was on on that topic, I was wondering if because you all have the a ton of data on this. Right? Do you have a sense of, like, where you're losing service hours to delays and and things like that? Absolutely.

Yeah. We we have real time modules for for tracking this, and we also do look at that. And so that is a great transition to when we're doing minor service changes, it's because of that information. So you'll see that top time points or stop times will shift, and that will be entirely based on what are we seeing in reality there. Because we we can look at it and say, well, Google Maps says eighteen minutes, but I drive that every day, and it's twenty five. That means it's probably thirty in the bus. So we are trying to use that information to inform that decision making.

Do you have one, is there public data on that? And then do you have any idea of, like, what percent of the service hours are basically being, like, wasted to difficult infrastructure? That

is an interesting one. Now I I don't have an exact number for you off the top of my head, but I know the last time we looked at it, it was a lot less than I anticipated. It was about 3% of the service was being be either chronically delayed or was running into other operational issues like that. So it it was it was quite small by national averages. And so our on time performance is quite good comparatively.

Is there any chance that some of that is, like, your your expected on time is already taking into account some? So we do try to bake in some leeway, but by and large, so that's where without getting too deep into the the weeds, that's what our time points are there for to ensure that we get back on that track. Mhmm. And so, if you're unfamiliar, a time point is simply that we're going to be at this place until a certain time. So if we get there early, we wait. That way, you don't get watch your bus drive away because, well, I was five minutes early. That can absolutely be a thing. So so we use that data, and then all of the stop points is, again, boarding and exiting all along the whole line. We have access to all of that. You mentioned publicly available.

I don't see why it's not. I I would ask that, any data requests come through a city staff member because it can be fairly and time intensive to pull all that. Unfortunately, we have a myriad of different systems. Nothing is is centralized into one. So so sometimes downloading those different reports and then putting them together can take a minute. But, yes, we have a dedicated person who does that. Mhmm. Okay. Well, I I mean, I don't have too much more for you on that. I I did wanted to do a more interactive versus just showing you a bunch of pretty pictures.

So if you have any further questions, go for it. Rafael?

Yeah. I don't mean to put too much of a curveball and things. Guess, because you talked a lot on the infrastructure

side

of things. I guess, what steps has, like, intercity transit taken with this being such, obviously, like, a very transfer based system? Expectations would be that a lot of people would spend more time at the transit centers. So in terms of, let's say, instead of infrastructure more on the staffing and security partnership with the Olympia Police Department, What steps are being taken there to ensure that the facilities are able to support these, like, say, increased dwell times, particularly, say, for women, seniors, or riders with disabilities in these areas?

Well, our director of operations, Dino Winthrop, is has developed a relationship with officer Clark here at OPD, and that is one of the biggest things that I'm I'm proud about in the last six months. It's been development of that, and they're seeking to mimic that relationship with LPD as well as Tongue Water Police Department. And what that's allowed us to do is more effectively enforce the no loitering. What we it's called it's all lumped under unlawful transit conduct. It's an RCW.

When I say enforce, it's it's only done for the real troublemakers, the people who spread out camp in a shelter or prevent access from others to using it. Typically, we don't have a lot of violent issues on our service. I know that there's a public perception that transit is often unsafe. My personal experience is not that, and I would say, by and large, I think most people who ride the service our our satisfaction surveys when it comes to I feel safe on transit is incredibly high. And and we have to that effect, we have ambassador program in place, which is dedicated staff that ride very busy lines to help with passengers locating where do where do I get off from my stop.

They deal with, people that are having difficult days. They provide that extra level of personal touch to smooth things over, and, that program's been incredibly well received. And they are looking at that was a pilot. They're looking at expanding it. That's going to depend on budgeting in the next year, but I know that it's going to be retained at minimum with the six six full time employees doing that because of how effective it has been.

Similarly, we are at or I think we just exceeded pre COVID staffing levels. That was another challenge that we were struggling before. We did see demand, but you can only hire so many people, and then you have retirements and attrition that come normally. And so it is a con it's been a constant growth effort to get enough operators to run the routes like we used to. So these are all operational challenges that we've been pushing through to try and get to this point where we can start to offer that level of service that we used to.

Cool. Where do we find this map in particular? Do we have that?

I can send it. It should be on the website. If not, I can send it

out to you guys. I'm struggling with that. Yeah. Okay.

CTO. And there it will be.

But Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Looking through all the publications. Yes. Going

to be on the

transportation. There's change summary for the system redesign.

Karen, if you Google, like, bus system redesign, and then on

that web page, it says maps and schedules. Mhmm. And

it's, like, a few maps. Yeah. So if or if you go

to the website, you go

to plan your trip and then May system redesign. That's another way to get there. And then this this map is here. And then, additionally, you should see every single route with its own independent map.

Yep.

And and these these I'm very pleased with these maps. They're they're very clean and easy to read. Cool. Yes.

Much better.

In the transportation in transit improve transportation improvement program, it says that there's a million dollars for a West Olympia transit facility. Mhmm. What is that?

That is a placeholder because, eventually, we do want to have a Western Terminus transit center. Similarly, we are in the process of adding money for the Hawkesbury Park And Ride or a similar style depending on how development proceeds on the the Martin And Marvin area. We are looking at having an Eastern Transit Center. We we fully intend to maintain service to Lacey Transit Center, but because it is off of the main corridor, it's probably not going to be as relevant in the next few decades as it is now. So so by budgeting a little bit now, we are building up money so that when we have the ability to find a parcel that meets our needs, we will have that money already set aside.

That's cool. Mhmm.

Same thing. There is an item that says BRT Light corridor. So I think that's

what I was Correct.

Yeah. So it's BRT light. Yes. So when would it become BRT plus?

It will become BRT. We already have signed memorandums of understanding with each of the jurisdictions providing us dedicated lanes, tran signal priorities, or the ability to build out enhanced stations. We'll all we need all three of them, realistically. And and so that's going to require the political will of the community to say that this is a priority.

Mhmm. And on the on this map for the, quarters that are every fifteen minutes or for an hour

Mhmm.

Is that mostly, the nine x in the capital way?

So so one of the things about that is we're using a concept called shared frequency Mhmm. Because we're it it might look kinda silly why we have two or three routes going down some of the roads. But when you stack the schedules and you look at it, oh, now we have a bus every twelve or fifteen minutes. Doesn't look silly to me. Well, okay. Well, so so some people, they they don't see that. And it may not be immediately obvious when you're looking at the map that that's what that is too. And so we're trying to take advantage of the fact that those routes are gonna be going through those really high traffic areas to overlap that frequency to create more buses going through there so you have more opportunity. Even if you're just riding it to the end of the street Mhmm. You're gonna have a lot more frequency through those main main areas because of that.

Was any of that developed in concert with the jurisdictions as they were updating their comprehensive plans and setting up things like major transit corridors that have incentives for multifamily developments?

So the any incentives would be provided by the jurisdiction Yeah. To the developers? Yes.

Part of kind of the conversation behind which ones had the requisite number of trips per hour. So there's

a regional planning council Mhmm. Does a lot of the comprehensive county wide analysis for that, and we use that data when we're looking at it. And that's typically been agreed on with the jurisdictions ahead of time, And that's that's all driven through that reporting. And so that is what we use when we develop these as well.

And then East Bay and West Bay have just been kind of cut off from people in mass transit for a long time.

Mhmm.

And I maybe it doesn't matter to Tom Water and Lacey and other members of the inner city transit usage. But but is there, I guess, is there a rationale for that? Or are there what are the internal deliberations around park access? Because, like, Squaxin Park is a significant local access point that and, I mean, you can do dial a ride, I guess. But for most people, it's they're not even gonna think to do that, are you?

Most people probably would qualify for that as well. Okay. Yeah. So, yes, we we it is an ever present thought. So West Bay presents operational challenges with the hill and a lack of maneuvering. It essentially means that we, short of that road being redeveloped significantly, probably not gonna receive fixed route service. Just the reality of that situation. Yep. East Bay is a lot more forgiving, but what we didn't see was enough demand that was justifying that route at that time. Now that may have changed since then, but based on Rob coming up with this, using our trends, using our data, using our feedback, it doesn't seem like there is enough at the moment to justify it there versus elsewhere.

Boston Harbor continues to be hidden little playground. Lost in

the storm. Mhmm. Yeah. It's a beautiful area. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a church out there that, by Gold Harbor that requests service regularly. Mhmm. It's like they have it on a schedule, and it's an auto sentence, like, every few months. Wonderful people.

Yeah.

You know? It it's it's always hard to say, like, we wanna give you. I mean, I'd love to give service to everybody.

Do

you have any planning with, like I know the the Amtrak schedule has increased recently and I think has at least some long term hopes for increasing. Do you try to I mean, I think I think the buses dwell a little bit there for train arrivals. Is there

any other Yeah. So so we do plan the there's gonna be the 90 that's gonna be servicing that, and we do plan that around the tentative arrivals. Now Amtrak is not always the greatest for on time performance. I use it all the time. I love it. But, there's sometimes where regularly, it seems delayed. But we do plan around those schedules with it as much as possible. Absolutely.

Okay.

To that oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Okay. This is more of a complaint. Okay. So this is the redesign. Why can I like, why did you guys decide to make it? Because it used to be the '94, which is, the one that I ride and I love, is now gone or to be gone. And so now you can no longer get from the Olympia Transit Center, like, directly to the Amtrak station once it the service, but you can get to the Lacey Transit Center. So I guess, like, why why was that, like, decision made to make it to Lacey Transit Center instead of the Olympia Transit Center?

Our ridership data show that very few people use the 94 to go from the West Side or Olympia Transit Center to the Amtrak station. Surprisingly, it's not a high ridership destination just across the board, and so that is why. And now we have the ability to make those transfers and those connections. And, yes, while slower, they that service has been redistributed elsewhere.

I was just the one person keeping your numbers up now.

I'm with you.

I actually really need it next month, so if you could just wait.

That's awesome.

I looked through this at the as or through this through a couple different lenses. One, the unique geography of this region. Like, I come from an area where everything is an x y coordinate grid. The entire town is built that way. It's very easy to widen the road, build BRT, for example, through it. I wonder like, it not that the city is designed inefficiently. I'm not going to say that. But how much does like, when we talk about West Bay, for example. Right? Like, there's pockets. Like, West Olympia, you have to reach it through a couple bottlenecks essentially. Right? To what degree like, talking about, West Bay do we think things will hit a point where, like, okay. This area is worth trying to get to or redeveloping. You said local political will.

Is there, surveys, other outreach you're doing to determine in certain areas will be reachable, I guess. I look at, what's the hill to the south, kinda like where Western Meats is. Like, that's a very steep grade area, for example, Rochester? Yeah. But it receives service, it looks like, along Barnes from the sixteenth.

Yeah. So at what point,

I guess, are decisions made to trigger, like, okay. This is worth exploring. Is is local political will entirely?

Do you get enough feedback from the

community to say, like, okay. We're gonna figure something out?

Intercity Transit does not have the authority or the resources to redevelop a road independently. Yeah. I'm sure that jurisdictions would love if we had a couple $100,000,000 to throw at it. On that topic, though, we are I am looking to partner with the jurisdictions on sidewalks where specifically in a radius around bus stops. So that is a conversation I'm gonna be starting in the next few months to try and I know that the city is just on a sidewalk inventory as well as Lacey.

And so we're trying to take advantage of that and see if we can prioritize those areas where pedestrian mobility two stops is lacking. And that is one where I am working on getting dollars assigned internally to IT, a matching fund, if you will, to try and work on those. That is a pet project of mine, specifically. I can't promise it yet, but I can tell you I'm persistent and annoying. So, it tends to work pretty well, because I can't stand I mean, I got a email today about stop nine six six, and there's a lift that's this tall right off the shelf.

And it's like, how many people are gonna trip on that before somebody does something about it? Right? And and and so, having those sidewalk surveys is the first step. And, similarly, this year after the redesign goes into effect, I'm gonna be doing a stop inventory across the entire system. I'm gonna be grading all the stops based on a lot of different characteristics. I'm be putting that together and then prioritizing our future upgrades based on that information.

Yes. Just real quickly on on that note. So like you mentioned, Spencer, we've got the sidewalk report. This body will actually be getting a briefing on that and an update and next steps on the sidewalk reports at our next meeting on May 4. The other thing to be mindful of is that we're we should be starting our transportation master plan update in the next year or so. So, if you're wanting to see, street infrastructure, the TMP is where that conversation definitely needs to happen.

Yeah. That's I was thinking towards the transportation master plan with the if

we have data of, like

Absolutely. Very busy stop. Yes. We can look at

the sidewalks nearby and say, like, please. Like, if you have anything, if you need any information about that, I would be happy to either give it to

you or get someone to give

it to you because that historically has been a challenge for inner city transit, has been jurisdictions haven't always been as friendly as they are currently. Don't believe names or anything out of it. But by by and large, we are have working in a much more collaborative environment now, and it seems like there's a more unified vision for the region, which is excellent. And so I think it's gonna make a lot of these traditional pain points less painful as we move forward. And I I'll just say, anecdotally, my experience working with the staff of all the cities has been excellent.

Yes. You said a second ago that you worked

with some of the jurisdictions on things like sidewalks. How about land use? Like, the Olympia Transit Center downtown is trying to buy parking lots. Mhmm. Does Intercity Transit try to work with jurisdictions to be like, hey. And maybe it's not the best land use.

I don't think we take a a stance on that one. I think that's a city issue.

I like the path you're on, Daniel, with BRT Pro. I'm I'm not just looking at this as like, okay. This is this is cool. This is what we're doing now for the next five, ten years. Like, this is the backbone of what's to come for the next forty to sixty years to this region. Correct? And accompanied with that is rezoning. Accompanying with that is displacement and eminent domain use through Yes. Eventual sound transit permitting. So I'm thinking also equity impacts of when this land is bought up adjacent to it.

And and to be specific, so, like, there's, like, the transit oriented development bill Mhmm.

Which Sameer Sameer is alleged to ask you. Correct me

on this. But, like, there is

a transit oriented development bill. Right? Which was, like, within a certain number of

feet, whatever, half mile of, like, transit stops, you can have, like, certain denser development. Right? But I think that it was also tied to, like, being bus rapid transit stops. So it wasn't just like any bus. It was like

I don't know. Was it was it BRT specific? No. Can't recall. It's major For

for the the state ledge, they did have rapid transit, and it was based on whether you're a tier one or tier two city or tier one. So when we did the the housing parking amendment, we came up with a rapid transit light of our own. It is frequent transit. Anyways, free transit.

Guess my question is, I know interstate transit is not political, but it does feel like if that does become a political decision because if that's BRT light and not BRT full, then that limits being able to build higher density development. Mhmm. So then that that you didn't make a decision. You made the decision to say that that's BRT light, and then you don't maybe have the density ability the ability to build denser around the transit stops. So So I guess why? Like, how does interstate transit think about that? Because, like, you are kinda making

a decision that's influencing the policy. Well, I think that we do most of our work on the staff level with our interactions with people like Casey and myself where I I get requests for my opinion on stop locations, development constantly from the jurisdictions. And so through that process of bouncing ideas off of each other, those things do come to light. And I know that IT as a body could work with those jurisdictions if there was enough will and money behind it. But currently, I don't think that there is. That's just my personal opinion on that. What? To eminent domain enough territory to provide Yep.

Okay. There's not No. Wait. Wait. Do not eminent domain. So now

I'm I'm not saying I'm

saying that if there's a state bill that is design defining transit stops and saying around these transit stops, you can have denser development. Mhmm. Right? What is inner city transit thinking of, like, if it's like, if you made bus route transit, that suddenly would open up a lot of denser development and in impact the bus routes because then it would have a lot more a lot more people living around the Olympia Transit Center. It would be good for the people living there and be

good for that route. It would have dedicated ridership.

That's a quarter mile, by the way.

Quarter mile. Thank you.

Mhmm. There there there are good examples of that. You can look at C TRAN in Vancouver as an example of that where they've done several transit oriented development projects. And those were private public partnerships that were a long time in the making, and they essentially look like very large apartment complexes built around a mini transit center. And so IT is willing and interested in engaging in any of those projects.

I'm not sure there's the demand for that, or at least if there is, I haven't seen it come through yet. But I know that IT is absolutely interested in that. Now when it comes to the state legislature, especially with all the mandates they've pushed through in the last few years, it's really taken zoning and and taken a lot of the zoning out of the hands of the local community, which is challenging. And I'm interested to see how that plays out in terms of it because it is requiring a lot more increased density, which is great for transit. But I haven't really seen that language get interpreted yet and what that's going to look like in practice.

Because I understand. Trying to figure out how what works in practice. So so all the mandates that came through, like, increasing having mandatory ADUs in the backyard, plot density, etcetera, all that stuff that's come through in the last few years, I haven't seen how that language has been interpreted into municipal codes and how that's going to play out in the terms of what that's gonna be built out. Yeah. Just because we allow all these types of housing now and this density doesn't mean the market's gonna bear that in my mind. And so I'm interested to see what is going to happen with that. Will the developers take advantage of this, or is this something that's gonna be living in the code mostly? Understood.

Respectfully, I'm not asking about ADUs. I'm focusing on transit oriented development, which is, I think, in inner city transit's purview. And I just guess that, like, I feel like it's interesting that I feel like interstate transit doesn't like, you're saying, like, you're, like, apolitical. It does feel, like, political if you're making decisions not to, like, not to think about these bills as things that could increase the density that would be good for

the ridership and be good for people. I I would just point out that, like correct me if I'm wrong, but, like, the bus rapid transit requires, like, things from the city to get that to bus rapid transit. Like, if IT is not building a road, like, we need to build the bus lane

I to get there. Naval Road Diet is a perfect example of this, not to cut you off, but what it is doing is it is a partnership. I was consulted. Rob was consulted. Several other people were consulted on how do we best incorporate a bus into this? What is this stop in a good position? Right? So, similarly, we're gonna be working through those processes when it or if or when it does come to that. So we will have input that way, and we will be partnering that way.

I guess, I when I'm listening to this, like, if the leadership comes from Olympia to get more Yes. Transit oriented density and a bus rapid transit, it seems like IT would be a willing partner Absolutely.

For that. But which which side

is the point, I guess? It's the chicken or

the egg.

The challenge is the infrastructure. Sure. The city manages the roads.

And

if the roads aren't wide enough or, you know, if the land doesn't allow for three, four lanes, you can't build a a rapid transit lane with that.

I hear you. I hear you. But I'd also say the goal the city does have goals of, like, reduced vehicle miles traveled, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, housing goals. So, like, I don't think like, I hear you of, like,

there are challenges, of course,

but the the city does have goals to do these things. So it's not like I'm, like, making up, like, oh, the city should do that. Like, the city, in theory, has stated goals that would support these things. I just feel I feel like sometimes it feels like there's, like, two fingers pointing at each other where it's, like, the bus is like, well, we don't build the roads. And the city is like, well, we don't want the buses. And it's like, well, then who I don't know. It feels

So a lot of this coordination is done through tRPC at a higher level, and we we do work together on all of these road projects and improvements. And as I referenced previously, relationships haven't always been great in the past, but the relationships I've experienced since being in this role, they're excellent. And it seems like we all do have a unified vision for that, and I'm excited for when they do come up because we will absolutely be a partner in any and all of that.

I'll also just point out that some of the challenges, you want the housing and you want the transit. But if the housing comes first, then you're getting into the frontage improvements, which a lot of times will get pushed back. Well, I don't wanna bill four lanes if the minimum is two lanes. I can't pencil a multifamily complex if I also have to do four lanes of roads. So does that mean that the city then fronts all the funding for that?

That that gets challenging. That that's what kinda comes up, like, when when we get into the capital facilities plan, stuff like that. So it really does come down to who's paying for the infrastructure and who has the means to do that, and that's that's challenging. So if housing if we want housing to be built, we have to reduce the infrastructure costs. But then if we're building the housing of the of the infrastructure, then we end up with narrow roads that have 300 homes but no access to transit. So I don't think it's trying to point fingers. It's trying to be like, where do we get the money? Is the major hurdle for 9x the number of lanes or something major? What what's the major reason why 9x isn't PRT?

BRT because it doesn't have transit signal priority. It doesn't have dedicated lane. And, I mean, we are building distinctive stations and rapid entry stations, but, there's gonna be three in our initial program, and we're going to upgrade others along the way. One of the things that came out recently is the Martin Way corridor study, and so that's informing where we're going to be placing them. The lack of crosswalks as well as pedestrian infrastructure along Martin Way makes it really challenging place to operate even though it is the main East West Expressway.

So those are some of the operational constraints that are going to make the nine x not be a true BRT line for some time to come. And, ideally, if we could get the county, Lacey, and Olympia to partner on that and put you money and standardize the road across the way, that would solve that issue for us very quickly, but it's expensive. And and I know that Lacey is trying to annex the last bits that the county has on Martin Way, and maybe that'll be helpful. Maybe it won't. Hopefully.

But these are all those challenges that we're running up against where we don't have the ability to directly influence it. And we do have conversations regularly kind of saying, like, hey. Just a reminder, we'd love to have this in this region if possible. And and, ultimately, a lot of that is just done at a macro level, the tRPC level.

Go, Phil.

It might be more of a city staff question, but say when a new bus stop is, say, sited in front of a parcel with, say, missing or noncompliant sidewalk, who essentially foots that building of it, the city, inner city transit, or, say, the property owner under Olympia Municipal Code Enforcement?

So the the sidewalk sidewalks are gonna be built at the time of application. So if there's something already there and and, IT is putting it in a new stop, the sidewalk might not be built until redevelopment occurs. Is that is that kinda getting to what you're asking for?

Yes. And then, I guess, more so preexisting already built on, parcels that or not parcel built. Land specifically that doesn't have sidewalk that was already built even though I know it tends to fall on the property owner because it's supposed to be part of that in code enforcement?

Well, the code enforcement's gonna be on whether the sidewalk is there and in up to code. If if there isn't one, the sidewalk there's nothing for us to enforce, and we are only gonna require sidewalks at the time of redevelopment, if at all. The other thing that might come up and, again, it's gonna be a at a building application is, safe walking routes. And that's something that comes up, when we consider development. And safe walking routes refer to, being within a mile of a school, essentially, the school bus system.

If you're over a mile away from the school, you have to provide and then this is state law. You have to provide a safe walking route, and it doesn't necessarily require sidewalks. There's an interpretation that you can have a a path as long as it has, I won't even say, certain safety features. It just has to be wide enough and not immediately adjacent or essentially a part of the road. So that's that's a little bit wonky.

But if the sidewalk doesn't exist, there's not much for the city to enforce. But I would say that when we talk about the sidewalk conditions report at our next meeting, part of the conversation is whether or not the city wants to create sidewalk connections between existing sidewalks and infilling where sidewalk does not exist. So I think there's a lot of, I would say, political will to create those connections. Again, it comes back to the capital. How do we how do we how do we pay for that?

And when we look at the sidewalk conditions report, that's been the real challenge of we're finding it difficult to maintain the sidewalks we have. So between the city and private property owners, how do we balance maintenance of the existing before we even start looking at those connections? That's a that's a really non answer, mister Garcia, but that's kind of the reality of where we're at on on those those sidewalks or where those sidewalks don't exist.

No. I appreciate it. I know it's a complex issue. It's just nice to see transparency on where we're currently at with it. Thank you.

Absolutely. And and from IT's perspective, so similarly, we have a bus stop enhancement project going on right now, and you may or may not have seen some of the stops. We have replaced sidewalk panels. And the reason for that is because the FDA funded these. And because of that, they're required to be ADA compliant, which means they have to meet certain slope and grade requirements and accessibility.

And as part of that, what we've seen in the eighteen months it took to start the project till now when we're starting to build it is roots from trees have upended and shifted the landscape. So what we came in and bid eighteen months ago is not exactly what we're finding, and it's resulting in a lot more sidewalk panel replacements or sometimes even removed removed stops because we can't get within certain distance the critical root zone of trees. And so that that's one of the things that we are working through. And, typically, the way that the bus stop funding comes through specifically for bus stops, it's mostly gonna come from the FDA. So it's gonna have that requirement that anything be ADA compliant that's there, which is great, but it doesn't give us enough money to build out from that location very far, if at all.

And so, typically, it's going to be just enough funding to put the concrete in the ground and not make any of the what I would consider needed repairs to make the stop more useful or friendly. And and so that's just a little more context for you.

And was it usually just enough funding at the time of funding and not at the time of construction? Correct. Yes. Yeah.

So Even with the contingency, we're We're already pushing it.

Yeah. Spencer, I guess I probably don't question. But with the national trend of gas prices increasing, is there a concern about feasibility for certain routes going forward or operation operating expenses for IT? Believe it

or not, fuel is not one of our significant expenses. Labor is. It's our by far, our most significant expense. And, yes, our buses get about five miles to the gallon. And but, typically, when you average that out over the course of the daily use, that's about the same as as most three fifties, four fifties, heavy duty trucks like that.

And when you're when you're talking about vehicle miles traveled versus passenger miles and all that, it comes out to be incredibly cost effective. Yes. It's going to be a challenge is probably gonna result in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars more of expenses. But by and large, I don't think it's going to be unless things continue astronomically, a significant constraining factor, and that is a great segue to we are currently piloting several green programs right now. I don't know if you've seen, but we have five hydrogen buses that we are working on readying and doing road road testing and road trialing to see, what their effective range is versus what they're advertised to be, what are the operational constraints because we know that similar to battery electric buses, sometimes in the winter with the heater on, you don't get the fuel economy or the mileage that you expected.

So we are working through the practical applications of those right now, and we are also planning on looking into electric buses as well as electrifying our fleet. That is one of our priorities. But, again, we have to balance the reality that, specifically with the battery electric buses, there's a lot of safety concerns. It's gotten much better in the past few years, but there's still we don't have the space to store them to the safety requirements that's necessary. So we are looking into how do we restructure our facility or how do we find off-site storage for these things so that we can have these services safe.

I'm a big fan of battery electric buses personally. Took a UW course on that and, toward King County Metro's facilities. And I personally think that's the way of the future, but we are actively exploring those opportunities, and we are trying to get those into a more wholesale usage. And and, realistically, once we find one technology that's going to make sense and work for us, we will begin transitioning over. I don't have

a date or a time frame for that, though. I'm hoping to increase at least I don't know about all you, but my feed has been filled with people who are, like, realizing that public transit exists, not that they don't wanna pay for gas. Yeah.

So

I'm hoping that the extra demand from that at least helps, maybe trial a way of trial by fire for where more service gaps exist or where people experience issues that can then be addressed.

That would be wonderful.

Yes. Yeah. What kind of outreach programs do you have to teach people about the new routes?

Oh, boy. We have so many different marketing efforts going on currently. So we have people doing tabling at the transit centers as well as Evergreen and several other places at various schedules. We we have multiple online campaigns via Reddit, Instagram, Facebook. There might be a few others. They're on Instagram now. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's been a push. There's been a push internally to get our yes.

Thank you. To to get our social media presence and our online presence to be, more robust. And so that has been something that I I know that members of the planning team have been advocating for because communication to the public and transparency is really important. And so I I know that we are making active steps. We are working on a new website that is more modern and more user friendly.

We are working on a lot of technological systems to help people with not just the rider alerts, but every aspect of the transit experience and make it a little more friendly. To communicate the service redesign, though, we are we have clings up on large on businesses around town. I don't know if you've seen them talking about the service redesign with QR codes on them so that people can find more information. We have a boards. We have signage at the transit centers. And then we do have multiple social media campaigns going on with advertising to

But then the in person tables would be at, like, Evergreen or at the downtown tran or the transit centers, places where the buses already are Yes. And the riders who already go to those places.

Mhmm. Mhmm. And so and so our our strategy, and I'm not the on the marketing team, so bear with me a moment, is is that we are focused right now on educating our current ridership as much as possible to make them ready for this transition so that come May 3, they're not freaking out and going, what happened to my route?

Probably gonna happen.

It's gonna happen. Yes. By Sunday, it's already in shambles,

and it hasn't happened yet.

I I joke. And with that, we are also then going to move into what the next phase is, what they're calling is, like, new choice riders, if you will. Those people that can now have access to the system that didn't previously and why you should use it. Oh, look. We have this new express corridor, etcetera, etcetera. And we have more shared frequency, so you're gonna notice there's more buses coming through and trying to get those people to to think about using the system that maybe don't need to. I mean, that I was in that category before I

came to IT. I could have used

the bus. I lived on College Street, and I would use it occasionally, but it just didn't didn't always line up. The route didn't always go where I wanted it to. But I I think that with this, I think we're gonna have more more a broader catch, if you will, a larger net to cast.

Do you have print materials that, individuals, we can type and share?

Oh, certainly. Certainly. So on that on that web page, on the system redesign page, we have every single route map individually as well as the system map. There's also information about timeline and implementations on there. And if you need something more specific, please feel free to reach out, and I can get you in touch with our marketing team who has way more of that than I do.

I'm I'm curious and interested about the onboarding or, like, the announcement kind of things and and

Oh, okay.

Yeah. I I can put you in touch with my colleague who does that. Would you have a specific question? He runs the tech on all the buses.

Not yet.

Okay. Okay. So that is one

of the that's one of those weird little things that takes up a tremendous amount of time Yeah. Is we have thousands of announcements that are all triggered geo by geofencing around the environment. So fine tuning all of that, there's just so much that goes on behind the scenes. And anytime we get suggestions, we absolutely do take that. And so we you may hear some of the rolling announcements, the, you know, know, please take a seat, those kinds of things. There's gonna be new ones in there for to include vaping and certain other behaviors because people were saying it's not technically forbidden. But, so similar so all that to say that we are updating that information as well. And you should hear the announcements on the bus currently.

I don't have a route to my booking. Yeah. Oh, okay. Thirty three soon.

Excellent. Excellent.

What did the colors on the map mean? We lost the map, but I was actually wondering that for a while.

Okay. I agree with that. That that's a nice thing.

Sorry. No worries. So the orange is specifically to denote the nine x. What you'll see is it's gonna look like an a normal pull stop sign, and then there's going to be a flag. It's what we call them. It's gonna be a rectangular piece with nine x and orange on it. So that's we're reserving that for the nine x specifically. And then the ones that interline with the nine x, like the 34 So you brought that. Push it down. In the 35.

Yeah. So I did something. Oh, that pin on the top left of screen just pushed the share count. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry about that, everyone.

And then what what you'll see is these darker, thicker colors are gonna denote frequency. So the thicker the line, the more frequency that route's going to have, whether that's shared or individual. And then similarly, you'll see side by side lines like this, and that denotes that they're going along the same pathway here. It gets a lot more complicated once you get to a transit center. So somewhere like this where start to see that we have a lot of routes that are overlapping.

Mhmm. I mean, is there a difference between the green and the blue routes? That's what I was kinda wondering. No? Okay.

It's just for aesthetics and to make it distinguishable. Just wanna

do a quick time check. We're at 08:07. Spencer, you've been with us since about 06:30 talking. So I just wanna be mindful of your time. That's great. Yeah. We do.

Rafael, you have another question? We can unless there's anything else specific Yeah. For this.

Don't don't mean to take up much more time. I guess last question for me is about how many fixed route trips tend to get canceled or dropped due to, say, mechanical or maintenance issues? And kind of with that, what is inner city's transit's, like, spare ratio to the fixed route fleet in terms of balancing these new service routes? Is that gonna change too?

Yeah. So our our spare ratio that's defined by the FTA is because we are now considered a large urban agency is 20%. And so we're we're in the process of making that transition from what was it, a a two, but I can't remember the exact designation, which had a 40% spare ratio. And if spare ratio is how many extra buses above the maximum number we need to utilize in the community at our peak service point can we have? And it's implemented as a way to try and prevent people from boarding buses, if you will, which I don't know anybody who would do that.

But, so all of that, what that means is this is one of those operational difficulties that we're growing through right now because we have been upgraded to a a larger area, and so that that clamp has come down. We are going to be our peak pullout currently is going to be somewhere between sixty seven and sixty nine buses, means that we have a spare ratio in the low eighties, and we have 88 buses currently. Although several of them are going to be sunset because they're early two thousands hybrids, and they're past their useful lifespan, and and the technology is just not there to repair them any longer. To your point of addressing the issue with maintenance, I don't know the exact number of issues that take buses out. That's more of an operations thing that they track.

But I will say that we do have a business analyst who does predictive maintenance. So what they do is they go through and they use formulas and algorithms to look at our maintenance records, to look at what breakdowns we're experiencing, to develop those trends, to try and tighten up our maintenance routines. And and by and large, I I believe that we have a very good track record with that. I mean, it's but that is something that does happen, and we are trying to be very proactive about addressing that ahead of time. Thank you. Cool. Any final questions? No. I've talked enough.

Mhmm. Thank

you. Thank you very much, Spencer. Yeah. Been great.

Well, agree. Yeah.

You get off.

You. Good day. We're all.

Great. That was the only business item for the day, so we will get back to the pieces that we pushed in and do minutes. Moving on to approval of minutes for the 04/06/2026 planning commission meeting. Is there a motion?

Yeah. So moved. Is there

I'll second.

So moved moved by Aaron and seconded by Jessica to approve 04/06/2026 planning commission meeting minutes. All those in favor, say

aye. Aye. Aye.

Any opposed, say nay? Any extensions?

One extension.

You're with me, Rafael. Okay. I'm with Katie too.

Rafael and Zane abstain. The minutes are approved, and then staff announcements. Casey.

Okay. I will try to be brief. Twenty five minute talk. It'll be a lot bigger than that. I wanted to follow-up to start by follow-up, on an email that I sent to all commissioners last week, that the city of Tumwater will be hosting a Department of Commerce short course on local planning, government planning.

I would encourage any commissioners that haven't already taken this course or those looking for a refresher to please consider attending this course. It is in person or will also be available online. It will be held on May 6 from 5PM to 8PM at the City Of Timorah Council Chambers. Training is designed for local government staff, planning commissioners, elected officials, and community members interested in understanding how local land use planning works in practice. Commissioners, please do let me know if you plan to attend this in person or remotely.

If we have a quorum of commissioners who attends, I must publish a quorum notice. It's not a big deal, but I just need to make sure that that gets published prior. So if you're interested in attending, please let me know. I actually will probably attend for my own sake. So if you go, I'll see you there.

I will be next announcement is I will be emailing you this week with a copy of the vacant vacancy study that has been prepared by the city of Olympia economic development team. The economic development director, Jenica Machado, is presenting this study to the land use and environment committee later this week on Thursday. This study has been a topic of discussion previously at planning commission, and I wanted to share it now that it is available. I'm pulling it directly from the land use and environment committee staff report, which is available online if you'd like it, but I'll go ahead and send you that, vacancy study directly probably by tomorrow. I will so Jennica will also be presenting to city council in the coming weeks.

I think she's scheduled present to them in late May or early June. I can't quite remember. Once she's gone through that, I will invite her to present to you here at the planning commission. Basically, just waiting on her to get additional feedback from Lanny's environment committee and council on where to take that report from here. So I will invite her to come and discuss that with you here in the near future, but I do wanna make that report available to you.

If have questions on that, you can reach out to me or Jennica Dorick. And then finally, I wanted to share that the annual touch a truck event is coming up on May 3 from one to 4PM. This is a family friendly community event for hands free hands on look at the city's big rigs and public safety vehicles. I also wanted to share that there is a sensory friendly time available at the beginning of the event from one to 01:30. This event will be held at Garfield Elementary School. So what day? That is May 3. So kids and kids at work. It's a great event.

So very popular in our house anyway.

So lots of vehicles to come take a look at. Fire engines. They got, like, digger trucks, all that kind of good stuff. So Garfield Elementary. And that's what I have for announcements, Jerry.

Thank you, Casey. Reports. Do you wanna have anything to report? Meeting? You're happy c o two concrete?

That's happy with those things. Okay. I was gonna if you're on. May

is bike month. All of the jurisdictions are doing proclamations. I believe City of

Olympia says April 28. I'll find out.

I

know. Bike Thurston is a local advocacy group, and they are doing a bike ride with Interstate Transit to ride a group ride from Heritage Park Fountain to City Of Olympia, City Hall, and Yep. Come out, group ride. It's just by show support for biking.

Then for other topics, Casey and Daniel and I have been talking about planning planning commission retreat sometime on some topic. But if pope folks have comments on dates, we'll probably try to get out some sort of survey that kind of, you know, big things that get in the way of that. Let us know. And then if you have topic ideas, I think the last

well, the two I've been

a part of, one was very housing focused, and the second one was a little more downtown business folks. We're up through here. Housing is still a big topic. I think the Plum Street area of interest, we'll call it, is a a big topic coming up. So we've got a couple ideas rattling around. But if

if folks have other ones, we

can talk about it now or we can go ahead, Casey.

No. I just wanted.

I was gonna say we can we can talk about some now or or send send notes,

and we'll we'll flush it

out here in the next at least a month. So You'll probably see

a doodle poll from me here this week. I think we're looking towards July, August time frame. We'll avoid June because people are getting out of school, graduating events happening. Understand that, folks travel during the summer. If nothing works, just let me know. But we'll probably look at the July, August time frame to hold an event. The reason we're kinda looking at that, and I'm hoping to book something now. Last year, we did it at city council. We've done it in the past at, like, the coach house up at South Capitol neighborhood. We can look for other venues, but we likely need to be booking sooner than later.

So, look for that doable. Let me know what does or does not work. Or if you know that there's a window where you plan to travel, just send me a message, and I'll try to read that out, and we'll just plan around that accordingly. So we'll look for that, and we'll try to get something to work. But nothing's gonna be concrete. Just looking kinda for general ideas at this point so that I can start looking at venues. And then topics, we'll definitely work on, as we get closer to it. But, yeah, I think I think we got a number of topics that will likely come up. Plum Street corridor is very likely. I imagine that, with sidewalk conditions report coming out, that's also a very possible topic of, discussion for our retreat.

So You sound so exciting.

It it's a lot of I mean, they're they're big topics Yeah. That have a lot of information. What what comes next. So I'm sure counsel would love some additional input on where to go with some of those. So I think that's kind of the intent.

Yeah. If I don't know if anyone has ideas off the top of their head, but, also, shoot us a note, and that helps us kinda figure out what's coming up for council and and staff and everything too so that we

can be somewhat on topic.

Cool. Anything else? No. I think it'd be

really approval. A joint for a treat with Lacey and Tom Water planning commission. Is

that an idiot?

Sort of the plant that seed.

That sounds both very fun and hard to pull together.

Yeah. It's hard

enough to get this group in a hurry.

Yeah. Is. I will run that up the management. Yeah. So we can see what they have to say.

Do Let's we come up with?

Yeah.

Some things. And be like. Exactly.

Why are we going to go ahead? Say that.

Or maybe Do have any questions, Anne?

No. I just I just wanna say the Palm Street, topic would be interesting, especially in light of, like, Thurston County moving everything down there. So

I I did present to land use and environment committee earlier this month. I think there's some discussion on where to go with that. I I would say that I'm not bringing it to you folks yet because I'm still sounds like we may be moving that to a study session at the council level. Mhmm. I think land use environment committee members had some ideas.

I think the other city council members would like maybe a little bit further discussion. But I I think there's something sort of starting to shape up. I would say that, realistically, any actual action on that probably won't be until the next, work plan year. So we're forming things up basically in anticipation of this being on the work plan in the next year or two. But, yeah, it it's it's definitely it's definitely coming up, commissioner.

So I I I agree. I think if we did it at did have that on the discussion at the retreat, that might help form some of that work plan item going forward. So I'll try to I'll I anticipate bringing that to you to at least bring up dispute on that conversation. I'm hoping by June, July. It just needs to get through some council things first. That's the only reason you haven't seen it yet. I'm not sure what we're going with yet. There's a lot of very big ideas.

We'll see. Planning commission. You know? We're planning

stuff. Yeah.

Oh, cool.

Anything else? I see everyone from

Yeah. Yeah. Mostly successful hybrid for the folks online?

We didn't leave you out too much? You don't wanna respond? Rafael? No. That would Oh, great.

Yeah. And how how is the how is the sound and interaction with the hybrid?

No no issues.

Cool.

And I got the out camera. I was gonna lie.

Yeah. Just move around.

If that's a problem, just please do let me know because I can shift how we have that camera set up. So there are options there. If it's really distracting, by all means, just tell me, and I'll I'll work on it.

Yeah. Big bigger close ups when you're speaking, you know, right up in the face.

More Zoom. Okay. Cool.

Alright. The next scheduled meeting is 05/04/2026, and the time is 08:23. Two. 08:23. It's gotta round up. Something.

Meeting's adjourned.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Erin. Thank you.

Have a day.

Good night.