AN ORDINANCE relating to the construction of protected bicycle lanes; requiring major paving projects to include protected bicycle lanes as identified in The City of Seattle Bicycle Master Plan; and adding a new Chapter 15.80 to the Seattle Municipal Code.
Please read the agenda. Item number three. Agenda item three cancel 119601 relating to the construction of protected bicycle lanes requiring major paving projects to include protected bicycle lanes as identified in the City of Sails Bicycle Master Plan and adding a new Chapter 15.80 to the The Code. The Committee recommends the bill passes amended. Councilmember O'Brien. Thank you, colleagues. This this ordinance is really directed towards safety, specifically safety for bicyclists in our city. And the ordinance is really intended to ensure that we uphold the commitments we made to the motor plans, in this case, the bicycle master plan to build the facilities, the protected bicycle lanes that have been laid out in that project . What the ordinance would do would require that in repaving projects, on arterials, major repaving projects, these are projects identified as being more than $1,000,000. If that arterial is slated in the bicycle master plan is having a protected bike lane that the the expectation is that when they do that project, they need to include that protected bicycling. A couple of things I want to speak to here. One is one is the safety issue. A lot of work goes into making and updating the motor plans and a lot of factors into how to building a network of of bike lanes in this case that allow people to safely get around the city. Not so much folks like myself who may have been bicycling most days for the last 20 years. But for the vast majority of people who are interested in cycling but don't feel safe today, we want to make sure there's a network for that. Heard Councilmember Gonzalez this morning speaks to her experience in Copenhagen, which is vastly different than ours and where, you know, depending on the day, a majority of people might be commuting via bicycle. And it's a place where from a climate perspective and human health perspective we'd like to get to, but it requires the commitment to making those safe points. If you're going to build the infrastructure, the most cost effective time to do that is when you're already tearing up the street and redoing it. And so by requiring that folks, when they're doing a repaving project requiring the department installs a facility at the point at which they're already doing the work, the marginal cost for that is minimal to make that happen. And so it's the most cost effective way to achieve the safety net where we're trying to achieve what I, I want to be clear, we're going to talk a little bit about community engagement, I imagine, in the discussion. And it's critically important that there is community engagement throughout this process. We've heard in public comment today the desire for that to be early and the expectation is that folks have those engagements. My intent with this legislation, this is a community engagement process to say, should we do this or not? Because the implementation plan, the bike master plan, has already decided that this is a place where we need this facility, but rather how do we do it? Does it make sense for the facility to on the east side of the street or the west side of the street? How do we deal with the intersections? You know, how do we make sure that in the case of business districts that they're proper loadout zones so they continue to have access. Those are there lots of very neighborhood specific questions that need to be addressed. And frankly, the city has a really great track record of doing that really well. There's a few exceptions, but in general really well. And this this the intent of this legislation is to just make sure we stick to that moving forward. So I'll pause there and I think there's some other discussions and potentially amendments. Okay. I know that Customer Herbold has mentioned and drafted an amendment. For Section one and gave us the language because for how long would you like to speak to that? I'm going to speak to that. I'm not going to move it because Councilmember O'Brien has a substitute. But I do want to speak to my intent. I in the amendment itself, I refer to the need for continued community engagement and input in the project development. And then I speak specifically, I speak generally first about community engagement, and then I speak specifically about the need for business district stakeholder engagement. The intent is not to suggest that one set of stakeholders is more important than any other. The intent is to to reflect a reality that that we see and that I have actually worked with business district stakeholders in in district one with bike lane and bus lane implementation and Avalon of how important it is to project completion, to have these stakeholders at the table because of what happens when you don't and you're at 90% design and the engagement has not been has not been deep about what those impacts are. I chair the Council Committee with Oversight on Economic Development Issues, the Office of Economic Development. I think feels really strongly as well that as it relates to Department of Transportation construction impacts, that they're the relationships that they develop in these business districts are really important to have, you know, when you're at 10%, 30%, 60% and 10% of the design phases. I mean, so that was my intent. It was if you want to get the project done. The reality is, is that if if folks who actually own property on the bike route and are doing business out of the property are on the bike route, aren't in engaged early on in throughout, it's going to inevitably delay and sometimes derail the project itself. All that said, if people feel more comfortable removing the reference to the business district, I'm okay with doing that. And you know, this this amendment is about accountability or our desire or the council's desire to have accountability as it relates to both those instances when a project when it decides that a project is not moving forward as well as those instances, and when it is moving forward and it's out of our desire, I think, to be good stewards of the council's intense in plans. And so I will if the will of the Council is to move forward with an amendment that doesn't call out business districts. I'm just going to have faith that community engagement writ large does include. Those business districts. Thank you, guys. Very well. Councilmember Suarez. I'm actually disappointed that Councilmember Herbold is pulling her amendment. I did not. I saw your intent. And those of us that have dealt with this bike lane issue understand that having the business district stakeholders in there doesn't mean that one group of stakeholders is more important or more hurt than the other. However, what we've learned and lessons learned in bike lanes and communities in what we've watched and I've learned since 2000, 2007 with the bike master plan that has gone through five iterations, that each time we have paused when we looked at safety, ridership, equity, infrastructure, race and social justice issues when we first passed the bike master plan . Customer Brian, please correct me if I'm wrong. The first two ideals were in 2007 were safety and ridership, and from that five more important values became integrated. They became integrated because community came together and said, You passed a law. It's working now. There's some other ideas that need to be folded in. In this other council's agreed and passed it. One of the ones that was most important to me, besides safety and ridership, was the whole equity race and social justice issue and that we needed more bike lanes south, the ship canal in districts one in District two. So when I read Councilmember Herbold amendment, which I would have supported, it made complete sense to me that if you have and we cannot pretend that the business community is not impacted and Casper O'Brian, please correct me if I'm wrong again, but my understanding, too, is that bike lanes are also exempted from from the Environmental Impact Statement Review from ISS. And somebody made that decision somewhere. And that's not neither here nor there, good or bad. But my point is we make these decisions all the time, and that doesn't mean that one stakeholder group isn't more important, but it's recognizing that community is also includes and should have teed up the issues that business districts are concerned about in. A lot of them go beyond just parking. And I think we heard that loud and clear. So. So that's what I wanted to add. Thank you. Customer awareness. Any other comments? You think Council Member Brands can address some of the pending comments? Sarah One quick one. Bree, if you're still here, I want to say thank you and acknowledge what you had said about genuine community engagement early on. And that's something I know Cascade Bicycle Club has been advocating for, as have all of us up here. So I want to support this. I really believe that that real community input also will result in what we've heard from Copenhagen and what we know that the Bloomberg studies found in New York City is that getting community stakeholders involved and local businesses involved is that their businesses do do better when they're there giving a thumbs up . They've got places where people can come and park their bikes. That just based upon what we have seen in New York City and Copenhagen alone, we know that economically this this work. So I'm going to be supportive of this. Frankly, if you want to keep the language in that identifies business districts, I'm fine with that. Councilmember O'Brien, if you prefer your amendment, I'm going to support it either way. So thank you for the good work. And and again, I just want to acknowledge what you're saying is that the community engagements got to be early, often and real. Thank you. Katherine Bagshaw. Before we proceed, if I to consider Councilmember O'Brien's amendment, we don't have any amendments on the table right now. We're going to have to suspend the rules because of the time deadline a little bit, because of the lateness of the amendments. So Lester's objection, I'm going to suspend the rules to be able to consider any potential amendments made by Councilmember O'Brien. So, Councilman Brian, you want to take it from there? Yeah. Thank you. Council president and colleagues, I I'll just send to the public. I want to just acknowledge we're back from two weeks in recess. And so I apologize that we're we're playing a little catch up here after our deadlines. And so I appreciate the flexibility. Councilmember Herbold, I appreciate your work on the language, and I agree with everything you said. I know that the intent is absolutely there to ensure that that we do a stakeholder process, including the business districts. One of the challenges I think we heard from folks in the community in public comment today is the language chose to single out business districts as an area to do it because those are critical areas. They said business districts, not businesses. So anyone that's along those lines would be included. And I also hear from community members that we want to make sure everyone's included, including folks that are historically left behind. And I think that's important. At some point, we start to get into a series of not to exclude, but including these types of folks. And the list gets really long. And so what I'm proposing here is kind of broader, higher level language that as Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Wise said, it's absolutely critical that businesses in business districts are consulted along with other folks. And what the amendment would do is in under the requirements where it currently says under a whenever the Seattle Department of Transportation constructs a major paving project along a segment of the Protected Bicycle Lane Network, a protected bicycle lane with adequate directionality shall be installed along that segment. And the amendment would add, just extend that sentence to add with an expectation that the final scope and design of the project reflect continued community engagement and input in the project development on how to implement the protected bicycle lane. It doesn't specifically mention businesses, underrepresented communities, residents, but the intent is this. This inclusion and stakeholder engagement should be broad and inclusive. So I will propose that amendment. You have a copy in front of us. I think there's a few copies on the podium if folks want to see in the audience. Again, I apologize for making this up in response to real time. I know this is not the ideal way we do business in full council, but I appreciate your indulgence. Council President. Thank you, Castro and brian for what appears to be inclusive and expansive language to meet the needs of meaningful community engagement. Are there any comments? I'm going to need a second. A second on the amendments because of I will the second and any other comments or questions. Councilmember Gonzalez, you have the floor. Thank you. Council President. I appreciate the attempt to reconcile. What. Seems to be conflicting language, but not necessarily actually conflicting in the sense that I think the intent is the same here. But how will this is an ordinance, not a resolution? So this is actual law that the agency will presumably referred to in the course of its work in implementing the intent and the actual letter of the law. How will the intent that we've been discussing for the last few moments be articulated to Sudan in terms of the characterization from the dias that the intent here is to do community engagement in the broadest, most inclusive sense, which would include those business owners and residents within our business districts. So in in my recent conversations, I say conversations over the last six months with staff at Ascot on what community engagement should look like around implementation of the bike master plan. I would say that what I have heard is their intent is completely aligned with what we've all discussed here today, that they want to do engagement early . They want to do it at a point where there's still opportunities to influence the actual design. They want to be broad and inclusive. That includes the obvious stakeholders that that may own businesses or live right along a corridor, but also folks from the broader community who may want to have access to that corridor, whether it's they want to access the businesses or other facilities along that corridor or they commute through that corridor, and that's the route they go to. So I, I feel very confident in the folks at Ascot that their intent is to implement this. And I think they have examples where they do this well. And like anything of the city, there's also examples where they're falling short. And so I'm not sure what other language to put in at this point. But I think what it will require is a conversation, probably multiple conversations to ensure that we understand what this looks like . And the good news is that there are projects that meet this criteria that will be happening in the near future, that we can start working on this together and say, let's come back with a model of what your engagement will look like on a project, say like the Rapid Ride Corridor on Eastlake as an example. And how do you plan to engage stakeholders along that community on how to implement the bike master plan? I just I think that I appreciate that and I don't you know, I'd like to believe that all of the agency employees and leaders are watching us on the dais now and have a full, robust understanding of our legislative intent as we are having these debates. But I know that that is not necessarily a reality. I think there's an opportunity to potentially communicate in a more formal way to Ascot and the mayor's office about the intent around this community engagement piece. I do think it's an opportunity of improvement for how we implement many of our infrastructure projects, including bicycle infrastructure. And I think that's where we can lose the most in terms of credibility and trust in advocating for ongoing development of a bicycle network and infrastructure that works for everyone, primarily for those who are using them, of course. But I do worry that excluding excluding a call out of stakeholders in this area can be interpreted as us wanting to exclude engagement of those very individuals. And one of the things that was really impressive to me on my learning trip in Copenhagen is having a mentality and a culture around these infrastructure projects that really is centering the concept of going somewhere as opposed to passing through a place. And and that is really sort of essential to creating true public space and livability within our city. And so I want to challenge us all urbanists, to really think about how we are creating infrastructure, not just to pass through something safely, but to get to that place as well. And that, I think to me includes our main street businesses within our neighborhoods that are essential to the vibrancy of the city. So I, I accepted Councilmember Herbals language with that intent in mind and hope that we can find a way to effectively communicate that to the department and the mayor's office. My preference would be to leave it in the ordinance because it is an ordinance and not a resolution. But if that is not something that we can find agreement to at this moment, then I hope there will be an alternative way for us to make that communication and that intent clear to the agency. So, colleagues, I don't have I believe what we're discussing here, the distinction our intent distinction is is doesn't exist. I think we're trying to go the same way. And I'm flexible to go either route. I have my agenda before me. But if colleagues want to do something else, what I would suggest, because of your comments come from Gonzales, which I really appreciate, would be a committee sometime before the end of the year to, you know, work with the director of START and the team that's leading the outreach and have them come do have a discussion with us about what what their interpretation of this is, what our intent is in a public forum where we can actually talk through that and hear how they plan to do that. And include also economic development as well. To do that. That sounds great. So. And that probably won't happen before budget, but we can do it shortly after budget and be my guess on the timing on that that may my amendments out there and it has a second but if folks feel strongly about going in a different direction, I'm happy to consider that too. So I don't think we're actually arguing. What I'm hearing is we can proceed with the amendment. It has been seconded, but there is a need legislatively perhaps to clarify and strengthen the intent of our language. And we have some opportunities this year to still do that. So that's what I'm hearing at this point. I don't know where the votes will fall, but I don't think one excludes the other. So I think we could at least I could support the amendment knowing that we may take further action to legislatively articulate our our intent. So we haven't a live amendment on the table we're going to vote for. Is everyone ready to vote on the amendment? Okay. It's been moved in. Second it an amendment number one is proposed by councilmember and then the number two as proposed by Councilmember O'Brien. You have it in front of you. All those in favor of the amendment, please say I. I opposed. The ayes have it. So that amendment passes. They were ready to vote on the amended legislation. Is there any further need to talk about the Bass legislation as amended now? Councilman Brand, do you have any closing words you wanted to say? We're good. Okay. We're going to vote on the amended legislation. Make sure. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please call the role on the passage of the amended bill. Major Gonzalez Herbal, Juarez Mosquito. Hi. O'BRIEN All right. PACHECO So on President Herrell. High. Nine in favor not opposed. The bill passed. And Cheryl, sign it. Please read the item. All right. Please read agenda item number four.