MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE
TRANSPORTATION POLICY BOARD
Thursday, November 8, 2001

CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 9:40 a.m. by Councilmember Dave Earling, Vice Chair. (Councilmember Richard McIver, Chair, was unable to attend due to a meeting conflict.)

REPORT OF THE CHAIR
Councilmember Earling announced that there will not be a Transportation Policy Board meeting in December.

COMMUNICATIONS AND CITIZEN COMMENTS
Philip Grega spoke in support of increasing parking fees on a regional basis, and encouraged Board members to consider increasing parking fees as a transportation demand management (TDM) tool.

Virginia Gunby commented on Senate Bill (SB) 6188 dealing with the environmental permit process, which was adopted in the last legislative session to expedite the delivery of transportation projects of statewide significance. She expressed a concern for the Transportation Policy Board to discuss the process, particularly since two of the projects proposed to be expedited are from this region.

CONSENT AGENDA
  1. Minutes of the Transportation Policy Board Meeting held September 13, 2001
  2. Routine Amendment to the 2001-2004 Transportation Improvement Program
  3. Certification of Local Plan Amendments for the Cities of Monroe and Shoreline
  4. Recommend Changing Project Status from Candidate to Approved for Three Destination 2030 Projects

ACTION: Senator Jim Horn moved approval of the Consent Agenda. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION DEMAND MANAGEMENT (TDM) ROUNDTABLE
King Cushman provided a brief background on transportation demand management (TDM) in our region, noting that TDM recommendations were included in both VISION 2020 and Destination 2030. The intent of TDM is to improve the efficiency of existing transportation systems, and in 1998 the Transportation Policy Board approved a Regional TDM Action Strategy to begin to address this.

Next, Lindy Johnson discussed the origin of the TDM Roundtable. Establishment of the roundtable was called for in the 1998 TDM Action Strategy, with the intent that it would be a standing committee that would advise the policy boards and help implement the adopted demand management strategies in Destination 2030. Over the past several months, a small organizing group, representing public and private organizations, has worked with Regional Council staff to draft a mission statement for the roundtable and provide recommendations for its membership and priorities. Ms. Johnson reviewed the mission statement and the TDM priorities in Destination 2030 that the roundtable will be addressing.

Commissioner Tim Botkin, who participated in the organizing group, gave his endorsement to the proposed TDM Roundtable membership and priorities.

In response to several questions from Senator Jim Horn, Mr. Cushman clarified that the TDM Roundtable will focus on what can be done in the near term and implemented quickly on the non-capital side to enable people to travel more efficiently on the existing transportation system, at a lower cost and with less frustration. The roundtable is not expected to revisit large policy issues or look at high speed corridors. Charlie Howard pointed out that the roundtable will measure the effectiveness of TDM in order to identify which measures are working and whether we are investing in the right ones. The roundtable will also work on developing a coordinated regional response to delivering TDM services; and on "getting real" about TDM programs by taking them from ethereal concepts to real programs.

Mr. Cushman reviewed the recommended membership for the TDM Roundtable, which included 19 individuals representing public and private interests geographically dispersed throughout the region (a list was provided at the meeting as a handout).

Senator Horn expressed concern about the balance of representation, nothing that auto users were represented by only one seat on the roundtable. He suggested expanding the membership to include additional representation by auto users, and said that given a little time, he could recommend some candidates.

Barbara Culp suggested adding a member from the bicycling community to serve as an alternate to roundtable member Jim Street. She also urged that the roundtable consider low- to no-cost TDM incentives.

Councilmember Earling suggested having Councilmember McIver work with King Cushman to look at representation on the TDM Roundtable "to see how and if we would want to have a broader constituency base." Mr. Cushman confirmed that the list will remain open ended until representation needs are fully identified.

ACTION: Councilmember Pam Carter moved to approve establishment of the TDM Roundtable and its mission statement and authorize the TPB Chair to appoint member representatives as recommended, including additional members as he sees fit. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

COORDINATION OF KING COUNTY PRIORITY TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS FOR FEDERAL FUNDING
Mr. Cushman noted that Councilmembers Richard McIver, Connie Marshall, Rebecca Clark and Tim Olson were unable to attend and would not be participating in this discussion as noted on the agenda. Instead, Councilmember Dick Taylor represented the SeaShore Transportation Forum, Councilmember Pam Carter represented the South County Area Transportation Board (SCATBd) and Mark Clemmens represented the City of Seattle.

Councilmember Taylor provided background information. He explained that before approaching the federal government for transportation funds for our region, Senator Patty Murray asked representatives from King County jurisdictions to put together a coordinated, prioritized list of construction projects. In response, Executive Ron Sims asked the three King County subarea policy groups - South County Area Transportation Board (SCATBd), Eastside Transportation Partnership (ETP) and SeaShore Transportation Forum - to work together to develop a prioritized list of projects for King County. The City of Seattle has also been an important partner in this effort. The other counties in our region, and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and Sound Transit, noted similar efforts underway. The policy and technical groups in each of the King County subareas have collaborated to pull together a list of projects currently in the pipeline, in cooperation with the WSDOT. The next step will be to set priorities to narrow the list and make recommendations for investments.

Councilmember Pam Carter described the following criteria which were used in reviewing projects: 1) the projects fit within existing programs authorized by TEA-21, 2) the corridor approach would be emphasized, with projects ready for construction in 2003, and 3) the projects would be multimodal, combining roadway, transit and other improvements within the corridor for maximum impact. She said that if King County did not have enough projects ready for construction in 2003, they would combine their list with ready-to-go projects from other counties in the region. Councilmember Taylor added that King County is also looking toward the future at projects that might be ready to go under the next authorization of TEA-21.

Councilmember Carter raised the point that in competing for future federal funding, Washington state could benefit from developing broader definitions of corridors. Currently only I-5 and the FAST-Corridor appear on the federal list of corridors for our state. However, the list could be expanded to include a broadly named "Tacoma/Seattle/Everett corridor," which could further include east-west linkages and parallel routes such as SR-99.

Councilmember Earling said, "There has been a very clear message from Senator Murray that we, as a region, need to pull our act together. What she's asking for is a coordinated list of regionwide priorities."

Commissioner Connie Niva noted that the WSDOT is also putting together a list of projects that are ready to go and can be completed by the end of 2003 or earlier. She asked if this was part of that effort and was advised that it was. Commissioner Niva indicated that a larger effort should be taking place within the state, pointing out that Senator Murray has indicated many times that a state that comes together with a list of proposals that everybody agrees to fares better, and she would like to see our state be among those."

Loren Sand, Chair of the Regional Project Evaluation Committee (RPEC), said the RPEC received a briefing on October 26 about Senator Murray's request for projects. He reported that RPEC thought it would be best to have a project list that would be representative of the entire region, and that the four countywide chairs were asked to meet over the next couple of weeks to discuss how to develop such a list.

King Cushman offered that if the Policy Board would like to pursue a regional approach, the Regional Council could ask the countywide groups in Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties to put together similar project information for each of their counties and report that information to the Policy Board to see if there is the potential for a regional picture.

Commissioner Botkin said that "not knowing how much money we're going to have to spend on transportation, at the state, federal or local level, keeps us from being able to know exactly where to go." He indicated the need for "all of us to come up with our own priorities, and then work together to make the hard choices about what the regional priorities are." He stressed the need to establish criteria in advance and then develop a flexible list of projects that respond to the criteria.

Councilmember Earling asked Loren Sand to convene the RPEC to see what progress could be made for the 2003 TEA-21 cycle. He also suggested asking King, Pierce and Snohomish county executives and the Kitsap County Board of Commisioners to get the four counties together to begin to address the bigger policy issues and how we could prepare for the next reauthorization. Mr. Sand will report back to the Policy Board at its next meeting.

MONITORING CONGESTION - REGIONAL CONGESTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS) AND WSDOT TRAVEL RATE INDEX (TRI)
Karen Richter was absent due to illness, so King Cushman joined Charlie Howard in this joint presentation on the regional Congestion Management System and the Washington State Department of Transportation's (WSDOT) Travel Rate Index.

Mr. Cushman briefed the Policy Board on the region's Congestion Management System (CMS). The purpose of the CMS is to monitor and provide information on transportation system performance and to help identify alternative strategies to address mobility. Mr. Cushman explained that information from the CMS is used to identify strategic corridors for setting priorities in the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), to support the Regional Council's performance monitoring program, and in model validation. He talked about what is being monitored, the kinds of data that are being collected and where, and how the data is reported. The 1999 System Performance Report will be published in December 2001, and data collection will begin in spring 2002 for the next report. Looking toward the future, the Regional Council is working to expand data collection and improve sampling techniques, and to refine performance measures in coordination with the WSDOT and local agencies.

Next, Mr. Howard presented information about the WSDOT's Travel Rate Index (TRI). He explained that TRI is the proportion of delay in relation to free-flowing travel (e.g., a TRI of 2 means it takes twice as long to get from place to place during average congestion as it does during free-flow). TRI is used as a diagnostic tool for identifying the most severe points of congestion. Mr. Howard also discussed Travel Delay, which is the total hours of delay encountered by all vehicles in one mile of highway segment. Whereas TRI is focused on congestion during peak periods, travel delay is a 24-hour measure. Mr. Howard provided lists of the top 21 freeway corridors and top 20 arterial corridors ranked in order by TRI; the lists also showed travel delay for each of the corridors. (A more complete list was also provided as a handout which ranked all state highway arterial corridors.)

Mr. Howard said that "as we work through the congestion management system it's important that we look at these measures, and we'll be working with the Regional Council to make sure that these types of measures are reflected."

[Councilmember Earling had to leave the meeting at 11:10 a.m. and called on Commissioner Botkin to serve as Acting Chair for the remainder of the meeting.]

Following the discussion, Senator Horn presented information on a proposal called Reduce Congestion Now (RCN). He presented a chart prepared by Dr. Bill Eager that showed added lane-miles for the RCN proposal in comparison with Destination 2030. The chart suggested that by 2015, the region could reduce congestion further than is shown in Destination 2030 by adding more highway and arterial roadway capacity. Several members of the Policy Board asked staff to contact Dr. Bill Eager to obtain the assumptions for highway improvements and costs behind the RCN proposal and to report back to the Policy Board at its next meeting.

OTHER BUSINESS
Councilmember Mark Foutch announced that a Public Transportation Improvement Area Conference will be held in Thurston County on November 13, 2001, at which one of the proposals will be to greatly reduce the area served by Intercity Transit (IT). He pointed out that the proposed cut in IT service is a direct impact of Initiative 695, passed in 1999, which eliminated revenues that transit agencies formerly received from the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax.

ADJOURN
The meeting adjourned at 11:32 a.m.