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Inside Scoop from Councilmember Jan Drago
Jan with Councilmember Tom Rasmussen and Karen Daubert at the South Lake Union Park Bridge Opening.
Transportation News
2007 Bridging the Gap Annual Report
I am happy to see real improvement taking place as a result of Bridging the Gap, the property levy that passed in November 2006. This annual report is the first annual progress report. The progress is evident as you look around the city and see sidewalk construction, street paving, sign repair, and bike lane striping.
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Next Transportation Committee Meeting:
Tuesday, April 1
9:30 am
Council Chambers
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On February 22, 2008, the City Council received the annual update on the progress of the Bridging the Gap work program. I was very impressed that the reports showed the Department of Transportation was meeting most of its goals. A sample of Bridging the Gap projects completed in 2007 include 13 blocks of new sidewalk, countdown signals at 26 intersections, two bike trails, 21 miles of bike lanes and sharrows, 789 remarked crosswalks, 27 miles of paved roadways, and 681 planted trees.
I serve on the Bridging the Gap Oversight Levy Committee and will continue to do so in 2008. We are on the right path to continue to see on-the-ground improvements for an additional 8 years of the levy!
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Aurora Bridge Safety Barrier
At the end of last year, the City Council designated funds to conduct outreach and design facilitation for a barrier on the historic Aurora Bridge. My office took the lead at working with a consultant, EnviroIssues and a steering committee. I felt this project was important because suicides on the Aurora Bridge impact not only the families of victims but also the people that live, work, and recreate underneath the bridge. A safety barrier will prevent suicides from this location and have a profound and positive impact on the thousands of people who can view the bridge from their home or office window.
The Council’s process included a public meeting to gather input, a design charette with professional and stakeholders, and an open house for comment on the designs. I am happy to report that the safety barrier received $1.6 million in 2008 and a $6 million proposal for 2009-2011 from the state legislators. I want to think Governor Gregoire for proposing the funding and Senator Kohl-Wells and Representatives Dickerson and Sommers for helping secure the funding!
The Washington State Department of Transportation will now move the project along. Find out more information on the City Council’s process.
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Scooter Forum
On Tuesday, March 11th, Councilmember Clark and I hosted a Scooter Forum. We had about 90 people at City Hall voicing their concerns and issues about Seattle’s scooter environment. Both Councilmember Clark and I plan to address some of the issues from the forum including parking ticket theft, moving of scooters, and I personally plan to work with the business community to see if we can better accommodate scooters in private parking lots and garages. I learned a lot from the forum and I think scooters and motorcycles can play a role in our transportation system as we become a denser city!
Click here to view the scooter forum on Seattle Channel.
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Beacon Hill Tunnel
On March 5, Sound Transit’s "Emerald Mole" boring machine completed its second pass through the Beacon Hill
Tunnel, clearing the way for the next phase of Light Rail tunnel construction. The event was attended by a number of Sound Transit and public officials, with plenty of onlookers as the 21-food diameter tunnel-boring machine broke through into the sunlight. Light Rail will be up and running by the end of 2009, and its 11 stops in Seattle will provide residents with yet another viable transportation option! I am truly looking forward to riding the Link Light Rail throughout Seattle and to the airport in 2010.
You can view Sound Transit’s Light Rail project here.
Jan poses in front of the 21-foot diameter Emerald Mole tunnel-boring machine after it broke through the eastern side of the Beacon Hill Tunnel.
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King Street Station
In my Pioneer Square front yard is one of the most beautiful structures in Seattle – the King Street Station. Even in its current state of benign neglect, the station is an imposing figure at the south end of downtown. It was designed by a group of New York architects who helped design the Grand Central Terminal Station in New York City and who modeled the depot's 242 foot tower after Campanile di San Marco in Venice, Italy, making it the tallest building in Seattle when it was constructed in 1906.
Despite her not-so-attractive state, King Street Station is still an extremely busy station, with Amtrak ridership approaching 600,000 annually and Sound Transit’s ever-increasing service now approaching 1.5 million annually. But both the beauty and functionality of this magnificent building will be restored now that the City of Seattle has obtained ownership from Burlington Northern Santa Fe for the princely sum of $10. This purchase will free $19 million of state and federal funds to be used for additional restoration begun by WSDOT. The City is adding $10 million from the Bridging the Gap levy funds for a total $29 million.
King Street Station has four floors with enormous square footage which could be converted in the future into office, retail and restaurant space, most likely in partnership with a private developer.
I have long dreamed of making King Street Station a multi-modal transportation facility, a beautiful south gateway to Seattle – and having the tower clock reflect the accurate time on all its four faces! I look forward to that dream coming true in the not-too-distant future.
BNSF representative Andrew Johnson, Councilmember Drago, WSDOT representative Ron Sheck, and Mayor Greg Nickels with the $10 check that bought King Street Station.
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Other News:
Drago Office Trip to Portland
On January 24th and 25th, my staff and I rode the train to Portland where we conducted our annual staff retreat while learning about transportation projects happening there. Our two-day journey was packed with a site visits and meetings. We took a tour on the South Waterfront Streetcar, which opened in August of 2007 and Aerial Tram, which opened in early 2007. The Tram was quite fascinating and while we were there it was heavily used by medical employees, students, and patients traveling between the Oregon Health and Science University campuses. We met with Michael Powell, of the famous Powell Books and who also serves on the Portland Streetcar, Inc Board of Directors. Mr. Powell enlightened us on the positive economic impacts that have occurred in the Pearl District since the streetcar began there in 2001. He also said Portland is working on a “carbon footprint” report and the streetcar will show a positive benefit.
We also had the pleasure of meeting with Commissioner Sam Adams, who is currently running for Mayor of Portland. He shared Portland’s plan for funding transportation improvements, modeled after our Bridging the Gap Levy! He also provided us with information on “bike boxes” and Portland’s plan to have a bike-share program. My office is going to take a further look at how we could implement these programs in Seattle.
We also met with a Portland Department of Transportation staffer and toured neighborhoods with traffic calming devices, bike boulevards, painted intersections, and in-street bike parking. I learned a great deal from our neighbors to the south and I look forward to evaluating what we can do in Seattle!
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Disaster Preparedness and Home Safety Center
Will you know what to do when the “Big One” hits? Is your house bolted to its foundation? Would you know what to do with a grease fire in your kitchen? Do you have a fire extinguisher? Do you know how to use it? Did you know what to do in the 2006 windstorms when the power went out?
Last May I was part of a 72-member group on a Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce international study mission to Fukuoka Japan where we learned the answers to these and other questions when we visited a unique place – the Fukuoka Disaster Preparedness and Home Safety Center, a hands-on, experiential learning center where children and adults learn how to react in the face of disaster. We were all so impressed that we determined to see if such a center might be useful here.
Since early January, Council President Richard Conlin and I have been working with officials from the Chamber of Commerce, the Pacific Science Center, and project consultants Arai Jackson Ellison Murakami, and various emergency management service providers and stakeholders in this region to study the feasibility of and needs assessment for such a safety center here. At a March 7th “envisioning” workshop, the group concurred that all current efforts lacked any sort of real hands-on, experiential learning center, and that their individual programs could all benefit from adding this new “tool” to the toolbox of currently available services.
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International Visitors
February and March marked several visits to my office by international groups! In early February I hosted a delegation of Iraqi Women in elected office and business for a lively luncheon, and then introduced them to Seattle’s Full Council meeting process. That same week I welcomed a group of Finnish Ministers of Parliament who work in transportation to Seattle, and spoke to them about some of our current major transportation projects. Also, Councilmember Richard McIver and I met with 12 government officials from African countries to talk about transparency in government. Earlier this month I met with Belgian Prince Philip and a number of Belgian dignitaries at an Economic Reception. And just last week a delegation from China and Taiwan came and met with me and discussed economic issues and our Seattle-Chongqing Sister City relationship.
Sixty-eight cities in Japan have some sort of disaster training center; the United States has zero. Our plan is that when this project contract ends in late June we will have substantive ideas for both siting and programming so that we can develop on a true public-private funding partnership to improve the abilities of our citizens to react properly during a disaster, whatever the cause.
Councilmember Drago with members of an all-female Iraqi Delegation to Seattle. Back to Contents
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