Planning Commission

uh six o'clock let's get started uh welcome everyone to the August 1st uh 2024 joint meeting of the Bellingham Planning Commission and Transportation Commission uh Heather can you call the role for planning first here here here Mike M Scott herey here is excused and can you do the rooll for the transition I don't have all you guys um we typically have air okay let's just we should just go around add Cy commissioner pres Keith Moore Transportation Comm pres Sanchez M Wilson with the city staff Casper City staff yeah Sydney p with the planning department Chris be also with planning department Joel F Public Works uh Hayden Richardson transportation land use plan with WTA Tim Wilder WTA but also Transportation anyone else want to introduce themselves oh no I I go to Western class okay uh typically we do uh open public comment at the start of our Planning Commission meetings um I understand there's folks on Zoom from home um why don't we just get that out of the way uh if anyone in attendance here or at home would like to do public comment um please raise your hand we allow three minutes uh if you're at home on Zoom there's a raise your hand button on your screen yeah I sent a couple questions was kind of late in the day um I just asked U you put on questions two things came up one of them was the question of what's the time frame like for adding more hybrid or buses to the and then the second question was in the presentation in the powerpint there was a mention of changes in

travel behavior that probably share your option anyone on Zoom Heather okay um not seeing any other hands we'll go ahead and close the public comments and uh Chris Bey from planing do you want to introduce tonight's agenda sure uh we just have one item on the agenda are friends from WTA and what they'll be talking about I won't steal any of their Thunder but they're um plan commission has been chewing on a variety of topics related to the comp plan update the Bellingham plan as we're calling it um and in particular over the last couple of sessions where we've met we've talked about growth Alternatives and uh changes to the land use map that we're proposing a couple of those Alternatives uh deal with or encourage Transit oriented development as a key way of of accommodating growth and trans obviously plays big role in that so um to answer the commissioner's questions and also I understand that Transportation Commission has recently uh posted WTA for a presentation specifically on the bus record Transit Information um but maybe need to kind of further that conversation some good maybe some synergistic conversations going between the two commissions um related to land use uh we thought this would be a productive way of getting the two groups together and um we haven't done it in in a long time that I can remember or if ever really since since uh since I've been here so anyway um kind of an experiment but I'm hopeing hoping it works well and that we all have great conversations

tonight and that's where I'll leave it um once Tim and Hayden get done with presentation then we'll just I think I'll put it up for discussion we have a variety of staff from public works and planning here to help answer questions or um there are things specific to the the comp plan update Sydney and I can respond to those and if they're more Public Works Transportation related we got people for that so with that uh okay I'll go ahead and kick it off then again Tim Wilder the planning director at WTA um just got to say we're really excited about this conversation tonight uh really looking forward to this uh Aden started uh about six months ago and that that was one of the reasons we hired ayen at WT in order to engage better in land use efforts at the city and other communities that we work with so this is a great opportunity for us to talk about what we do with you and to see if we can establish stronger linkages between the transportation system and so the cop plan is a perfect way to do that perfect Avenue to talk about those policies and and uh how we can how we can help um so we also have I just want to recognize Les reens he's the general manager he introduced himself he's also in the audience so um just want to point that out um we're all here to tag team and and uh and provide hopefully provide you with some some information about WTA um I'm going to kick it off and then I'm going to hand it over to a who's going to talk about a little about the rapid transit project

we have a few slides on that then hopefully engage with you in a discussion we have some questions but by all means this is your meeting this is Transportation Commission meeting so we're we're open for various questions that we have them um to talk about uh wta's role in in this whole process so so thank you for that um I also want to recognize Chris and Sydney and and their team for uh early on AG WTA uh in in the process um they reached out very early on and we had some really good engagement meetings ear on to see how we've get involved so this is a continuation of of that effort so we really appreciate effort of City staff um first thing I want to uh we did got to hear about some of the questions that the Planning Commission had around WTA and I think one of the things our takehome was one of the things we heard was uh basically way had summarized is WTA going to be able to support some of the growth Concepts that uh are coming out of the Plan update um and we've discussed it at WTA and I would say absolutely the answer is yes um we want to be engaged we want to try to support any of the scenarios that you're talking about and there's one in particular you're talking about directly related to Transit uh that's the Tod concept but I would say as well that any of the concepts you're talking about would require a robust Transit Network so so it's not just isolated to that particular concept but to all of the concept CS that you're discussing so so we want to be engaged in

all of those things whether or not it's a quarter mile away from a transit route or not or it's Urban Village concept or smaller uh community centers uh neighborhood centers any of those concepts are need robust Transit service um we also want to kind of flip the question on its head and just recognize that it's not only WTA trying to help the city but what can the city do to help Transit be successful so when we look around we we feel that uh we already have some good service providing uh to to the various uh Urban Villages but we also need the help of the city to ensure that we can have even better service uh with the growth scenarios and that we deal with some of the the rights of ways issues and issues of operation and that's going to require since the city controls the street Network we depend on the city to to help us operate effectively and efficiently um if we don't then obviously the quality goes down and we're not able to provide effective service to support networks so that's the question for us as well here tonight um so with that being said um I want to kind of give you some background on WTA uh what we do uh what's important to us and and uh how we operate the service this I've got full slides so I'll start that um first off just WTN General um you know we've been around since uh I think 1981 we're not fly by night obviously we we're an established organization here to stay um we have a network that's F been built up over many years a lot of thoughts got into

into how we provide service um most of our uh revenues based on sales tax uh we're very thoughtful of how we provide service to community uh we look at uh all the public comments uh we work with our partners very hard to make sure that we have the right level of service um and we have a good reputation I think um within the community about what we do the quality of service um we Pro also provide a large contribution in uh economically in various ways uh we provide uh a good deal of well-paying jobs in the community whether you're an operator whether you're support staff um we also uh enable economic development in the community so getting people to essential jobs is one of our main functions uh we do that quite well um we enable projects to uh to lessen parking uh requirements uh to enable their customers and their employees to get to the jobs to get to uh places of of shopping and groceries and medical appointment um and then and then we also provide some direct expenditures into the community as well through uh our expenditures for local services and uh and and supplies so we we have multiple ways that um part of our service this is getting uh really relevant to the row scenarios is uh constitutes what we call go lines and we have this is we have a long history of working with City to ensure that we have the right level service for uh for the anticipates anticipated development and so one of the ways we do that is through our 15minute highfrequency service um we established

this back in 2005 and I think about that was about the same time that the Urban Village concept was developed so there was a long history of this communication and engagement to make sure that the transportation system aligned well with the land use system um so that was in 2005 and it's been very successful um it's about 41% of our Revenue hours so it's a little less than half of our service but it constitutes 68% of our boardings so the majority of our boardings um happen on our key go lines which are shown here um we have four of these currently um in service we have another one that uh used to be in place called The Red Line we had to drop that back down to 60 minutes but that could easily continue at a go line type service 15 minutes um and just some stats around the go lines um we have about 33,000 people within a quarter mile of the go lines that's about a third of the population of the city and 56,000 people are within a half a mile and that's over half of the population currently in the community uh and then we also carry a large percentage of the low income population minorities that live in proximity to to the go lines as well and like I said we serve most of the urban Villages there's a few that we don't currently uh the samish uh Urban Village is not one that we have a goal line serving we are talking about how we can provide better service but that's sort of the chicken of the egg situation where it's it's developing rapidly and it some point we think it's going

to get to the point where it could um use some some more US service um yeah and so um that's basically the goal lines so this is what we call our our frequent Network Also Serve um provide what we call our coverage service and that's everything else that's basically anything less than 15 minute service um one of the key points here is that we we have to serve the entire County so WTA is one of several uh countywide organizations most of the county um we're the only ones that provide transportation service Serv throughout the county and so we have an obligation to our customers to not only serve Bellingham but to serve outline communities as well and so we provide that in a variety of ways uh we provide uh Regional or uh Express type Services out to County areas we have a regional service that serves uh scadu County um we have U parent Transit service throughout uh the county that's aligned with where we provide fixed route service there's some requirements of from federal government how we provide that service and then we also have something called The Zone service and that's throughout the county where you can book a trip one or two times a week um in these various areas and get delivered to a Transit Center um this area constitutes about 32% of our boardings but uh about 60% of our of our service investment so uh so it is what we call cover less productive is I guess would be the term in this particular area so just the key take-home here is we have to constantly balance

our service Investments it can't all be frequent Bellingham centered service we also have to look at meeting the needs of our County and so when we talk about a fixed resource or a very fairly static resource we have to decide who gets service and who doesn't right and it has to be balanced in various ways uh next um I know there's been some talk about uh so this level of investment and uh where does wta's revenues come from and obviously most the vast majority is sales tax uh one thing that you may not know is uh we also obviously plck fairs but that constitutes a very small proportion of our overall revenues um it show shows here about 3.3% um we do also have a an agreement with Western to provide a universal pass that's a relatively small proportion of our revenues as well and um what you may not know is that um some people may think well you increase ridership you're going to increase your revenues right increase faires uh but it doesn't move the needle very far um we charge a dollar to ride the bus um and then so that doesn't generate a whole lot of dollar but the more important point is that we also provide a good portion of our providership through free pairs or discount pairs so for example Western students can ride basically for free they're paying a fee to Western which reimburses WTA for those trips um but it's a pretty small proportion of the overall Revenue so increasing ridership doesn't necessarily translate into a lot of Revenue at WTA so we're overly focused

on sales tax um which is a good and bad thing right sales tax is generally pretty good and is increasing but it is uh maybe an over Reliance on that one one type of Revenue um and then on the other side of the Ledger U would be our expenses and this is probably something that you you do know and that is most of the expenses goes to wages and benefits in WTA um so the vast majority of that goes to wages and benefits so we're talking about increasing service really what we should be talking about is the number of of operators it takes to provide that service and the cost that it that it takes to provide a basically a living wage of those employees to work for WTA um one thing that uh we're saying is that the increase in cost for those wages of benefits is increasing faster than our sales tax and so um so that is a a bit of a concern um we do have good uh good revenues and uh good reserves uh to cover us but it is a concern over the long term as we're talking about trying to invest in more service and support the kind of goals city has around its growth um it's it's Workforce other other things okay uh so I wanted to kind of transition a little bit to some issues and challenges at w ta uh you know I I'd say the biggest area that I think there's opportunity is to increase collaboration between WTA and its Partners um like I said before I think we have very good collaboration with the city the city staff the leadership um obviously more can be done we're always looking for

opportunities to uh to enhance our efforts through those Partnerships whether it's a whether it's just support through staff or whether it's financial support we do both of those things pretty well but um but I think obviously more can be done around that area uh one of the and one of the big areas that translates into is what we're seeing is increased delays on our buses um with with congestion as and as we all know um there's no more Lane space to be created right what we have today is is most of what we're going to have in the future in terms of of our operating environment and the concern is if the buses get too delayed over time people will want not want to ride it will be more difficult to ride they can't rely on the bus uh the bus won't come at the hours that they're selecting for their trips and frequency doesn't really solve that problem corly I mean it helps but um if you can't rely on the bus of showing up the time that you need then you're not going to ride um and so that's a that's a big concern of us of ours over time and so our question is how can we work the city to resolve some of these bus delay issues over time what can we do uh through various means whether it's infrastructure changes whether it's laye space to address that that particular issue um and then I mentioned I already mentioned the cost of operations I won't talk about that again how that's increasing the expenditure costs are increasing uh changes in travel Behavior there's a question about

what that means and I think uh I think what that means for me it could mean a variety of things depending on where you're at but it could also mean expectations have changed right uh that you're no longer uh willing to wait like you did before for a bus you you expect you know better Service quicker service or you you expect a personal trip like a like an Uber to pick you up you know when you want it and so as we're seeing people change their behaviors we're see seeing how that affects the bus service so um you might have found during the pandemic it's easier to ride my bike and that's a good thing but it may take uh Che drip away from from the bus service um so that that's just an example of various things we we might see maybe the biggest thing here that I should mention is the work from home phenomenon so we know that more people are working from home um and that obviously affects how many people will be willing to write um the other thing is uh we're seeing a lot of growth in rural areas so that's putting pressure on us to try to provide that less efficient Services your people can ride it's harder to access bus stop in rural areas and so the the service tends to be less efficient fewer people ride more cost ride and then finally um I'll just address the other question um our transition to a zero emission Fleet and a carbon neutral um scenario for WTA we're working very hard to get that in place Le is taking a great leadership role to to make that happen um we do have um

eight new uh electric bus that are expected before the end of the year and I want to say hybrids 11 11 okay I got that number 11 before the end of the year as well U that will constitute a good good proportion of our existing Fleet um we're also taking other efforts to reduce our carbon footprint but I'll say it's not easy and it's very costly um each electric bus costs around 1.2 million um which is about double what you'd pay for a diesel bus uh but the more important issue is that infrastructure costs a lot too so we're talking about maybe up to $80 million just for the INF infrastructure alone we don't have those kind of resources right so we depend on grants so it's it's going to take us a while to get there but we expect eventually we'll get to a place where we can we can have a zero emission flea hydrogen is another option for us too that might be a possibility so anyhow those are kind of a list of things that uh you see are on the horizon um now just to talk a little bit about our plans uh we have a plan that we developed uh a couple years ago called WTA 2040 and that is our long long range Transit plan um we talk about um the network that we think is needed in the future Transit Network we talk about the initiatives that we're going to be tackling including zero Mission including a rapid trans system expansion of our Belling station and some other things in that plan um and how we would pay for this one of the key pieces here for us is that we decided to focus our

efforts around these three key priorities uh Equity efficiency environment and lean more strongly on Equity so as we look at the needs as we look at our priority populations such as lowincome people that's where we're going to focus our efforts that's where we're going to focus our our investments over time so this is a map showing um our uh potential service area or our our service Maps our potential service network I should say and where we provide a frequent Service as well as coverage service throughout Bellingham obviously it's bigger than this but I just wanted to zoom in on Bellingham itself here for the purpose of this meeting and on the left hand side you you see what we felt we could do with our existing resources over time by 2040 so no growth in sales tax or no new sales tax but just existing background growth and sales tax and then on the right hand side was we put out a scenario as if we had uh more resources to spend on Transit service and so we expand that frequent Network right and we expand it throughout the community and we expand our are coverage as well throughout the community so it it connects more people to more opportunities throughout Bellingham and Beyond and then finally before I uh hand it over to ayen uh the other component um of this plan talked about um different typologies of service and i' kind of been focus in on this frequent service we talked also about a rapid transit system and we had an eye to again supporting the land uses that were

out there uh we do recognize that we're going to have to get to a certain level of land use support to have these routes operate effectively and so we looked at how many people needed to be concentrated in a particular area to make that work and I think what we found was yeah we need additional concentration right um there were areas along the goal lines where we had single family neighborhoods um connected through different Urban centers and we found that we need to increase that density to to make um make that system really work and Hayden's going to talk about that a little bit more as part of the the transit study um but this was kind of a baseline for how we look at service the types of service that we apply throughout our network uh now and into the future um so with that um I think I'll hand it over to hayen to kind finish out with the rapid transit project um so here you go yeah thanks Tim um so just a reminder my name is Hayden Richardson I'm a WTA staff member um and so we talked a little bit about this uh last month at the Transportation Commission so some of this might be kind of review material but um our WTA 2040 plan goes through a few different initiatives that carries out those three priorities that it discusses one of those being the um Rapid Transit study that we've been working on for the past couple years so currently we're in phase two of the rapid transit study um phase one just give you kind of a brief overview of of what occurred during that phase of

the pro project um it was the feasibility portion of the study so we looked at a couple different corridors um which you can see on the screen and um determined is some sort of bus rapid transit system feasible in Bellingham and so the outcome of that phase of the study was ultimately yes to some extent we don't know what it would look like what kind of corridor it would run on but um It ultimately looked at these two corridors so it was broken up into a combination of the green and blue go lines so you can see those kind of in the South that the blue serves Western Washington University and then goes up Northwest Avenue to our Colorado station and then the second alternative was the gold goat line um which goes up Cornwall Alabama wurn and then Loops up to our Cordata station as well um both of these had their pros and cons uh phase one of the study um identified the pros and cons with them the the combination green and blue Corridor um it had limited RightWay and it had major constraints through Western But ultimately it was a more direct route with that go with the green line portion going up um Northwest AV and then the gold Corridor um also had limited right of way that's going to be kind of a a major theme throughout this study um it'll need substantial Street improvements um but there are trans of supportive developments along U potential along the way and the gold corridor um was just seen as a bit more circuitous there were a lot more turns which isn't very conducive

to a more rapid system um common elements of a bus rapid transit system if um you all aren't aware are um very frequent service so more frequent than our current go lines which is approximately 10 minutes or less um usually it's 60 foot articulated buses so they can um handle more Riders efficient boarding process this also include this includes things like level boarding platforms um offboarding um pay systems uh Transit Street treatments to make uh things a bit more efficient and it it would also include um bus stop consolidation so that we're not stopping typically every quarter mile it's spaced out to about a half mile stops and special branding to make people aware that it's a more rapid transit system um along with this there are characteristics that can be supportive of a bus rapid transit system so ultimately it would rely on increased ridership to support those more frequent Services um these are things like Optimal population densities along the corridor um mixed land uses employment centers connectivity and accessibility and Transit oriented development all of which we're kind of talking about tonight with the comprehensive plan updates um and the potential population and uh employment growth Alternatives you want to mention what you mean by connectivity yeah so um connectivity and accessibility we're talking about um infrastructure that supports um access to bus stops things like sidewalks Crossings you know place um aspects that make the pedestrian feel more

comfortable walking to bus stops um actually using the bus and then um moving a little bit away from the rapid transit system and more to kind of General discussion items at the end of the presentation actually after this next slide um we have a few General discussion questions that we wanted toose to the Planning Commission and Transportation Commission um but to kind of kick that off um we found a a fairly good table here that discusses stakeholder involvement in both the um Transit investment opportunities as well as um Land Development opportunities and it goes through at Federal the state um the regional and local levels and so um specifically we want to kind of hone in on um the transit authorities but also the local governments in Municipal and County governments um so obviously local governments have a large hand in in the Land Development process in the U shaping the goals and policies for the community um they also have some involvement in transit Investments um we're looking to kind of beef up that involvement in the transit Investments and and not necessarily just talking about monetary Investments but also um you know increased and ongoing collaboration between the two um with City and and WTA staff and making sure our our plans are coordinated and that we have those goals to support each other um yeah and so I'll move on to the general discussion questions and we can go through go back to slides if anyone wants to reference these but we posed a few questions

that um we can kind of pick and choose the discussion topics the first one is um is high frequency Transit service critical to Community Development um including the Urban Village idea um the second one is what is the city's commitment to actively supporting effective highfrequency Transit service so typically that would be anything you know above our go line the 15minute frequency um and will there be adequate City community and WTA resolve to address bus delay and increasing service um including making difficult trade-off decisions about right of-way allocations so last month at the Transportation Commission we um had a kind of cut our discussion short about those um right of-way allocations and tradeoffs between you know Transit facilities versus um bike facilities which the city has a a pretty robust um bicycle master plan and depending on which kind of corridor are there certain tradeoffs to look at Transit related infrastructure um and with that um I'll hand it over to you all and kind of Kick the discussion off but um we're open for questions and discussion and just looking for kind of feedback around these topics anything to add Tim no that sounds good okay open for first question Scott Jones Planning Commission of was hoping to find a little bit more about what the goals were like what is the ultimate goal is it reducing congestion is it environmental is it Equity so what are we trying to solve when it comes to a high trans a high frequency Transit service I don't

think that really has been discussed or at least answered yet I was wonder if you had an answer if it's still ongoing yeah um I there the simp answers we do have multiple goals and multiple um we trying to address multiple needs I think our our tagline now is access to opportunity so our main goal would be how do we provide robust access to opportunity meaning how do you get people to destinations they need to get to like grocery stores or medical facilities or shopping centers or schools right so I would say if you had to kind of narrow it down what's the best way to provide access to those opportunities and so so there's a couple different levels one is can they get there using bus service right is there coverage Service uh you know which which takes somebody that you know hey you can get there but can you get there when you need to get there is the other part of that and that's where the frequent service comes into it because if you have frequent service to those opportunities then you have a lot more choice and there are more people that are willing to use bus service to get to those locations so I would say that that was probably our would be our main goal um of course wt20 Bo has other goals but that's one of them some other goals are around you know lowering our our missions on vehicles and other sorts of things like that does that help hi mik calling I'm hiding over here because I was sick last week I was pretty derms it seems weird sorry um ingestion huge issue

you're not going to get more Lanes everybody knows that we're begging for on iine too so right had you had a discussion though let See's Northwest or the guy district North right what if bik Lanes aren't G is there room for more Transit service availability on those because you might uh I would say probably not on that particular case um on on guy um we've had that discussion in other areas um and I would say that this is an ongoing discussion continuing discussion that is being spurred on by our Rapid Transit project and and having City staff and beginning to engage City staff and some of what we call hot spots so we we realize that you're not going to get a lane every right it's not going to be a uh an exclusive bus L Comm we there's no space for that right uh the other hand we we do know areas what we call hotpots areas that we experience Delight right we can see it we can measure it um and and those are the areas that we're going to focus in on and and they they could take a variety of forms right um but we're just initially talking about those areas it could take the form of like Q jumps which allow us get around signals uh but I think more importantly Joel and I have had this conversation a number of times there are some things that WTA can do to help and I think we want to kind of do some of that low hanging fruit first and some of those things would be um consolidating stops right and making the stops a little further apart because that will help our run times uh it

will help reduce delay uh speed up our boarding process that's another thing that we can do as an agency um and then the other thing we've talked about doing is uh improving the as a signal priority system so we have a system in place today that is of questionable effect of this where we have we activate the signals at times the signal so buses could get through an intersection more efficiently um but we think there might be opportunities to improve that system where it's a corter based system so we we can continue operating and not have so much delay at the intersection themselves so those are kind of like low hanging fruit items um but again we're just initially talking about this I think I I think our team realizes it's going to be really challenging there's no going to be simple fixes and in some cases we're going to have to make some trade-off choices um we don't think it's absolutely bikes versus Transit but in some cases there may be maybe the bikes will have to share a lane with Transit uh wber maybe that's one of the situations wber between Alabama and and Hagen maybe we'll have to shering in that situation where we experienced a lot of delay I don't know um so that's the kind of the conversations we want to have city is is what we do are are there opportunities to address some of those Hotpot issues and I just to kind of takey back off of that um part of phase two of our Rapid Transit study um what one of the main goals is is to shape a locally preferred alternative

which ultimately if if successful will be adopted by wta's board as well as um you know a recommendation from the Transportation Commission Planning Commission and approval at the council level and so part of that you know after we shape that locally preferred alternative we'll be looking at um kind of a 15% design um which will look and and dive a little bit deeper into those hotspots and look at potential um outcomes that you know the the city can uh essentially sign off on and would ultimately increase that efficiency I follow up real quick one of the things you mentioned consolidating stocks roughly half mile apart a lot of land use regulations that we looking at right now require more density right uh you need to be a quar mile high speed route so physically a quart mile from a route half mile from stock right so connecting those two things has to happen or the land use the land use rules that say we need to be qu M high frequency route work right even at the 33% of the people in population right now now they have access to that we want even more it's a really good point you know because we realize that the old Circle the bubbles of cter mob they're not really real right you can't you can't crossy like uh we have Maps uh true accessibility based on streets based on sidewalks and so we we have a pretty good sense of where those access points are um and so you're right you know if you if you reduce that you reduce if you increase the distance then the access will go down

right inevitably go down um but we're hoping that with the access part of this project that we could continue to increase access whether it's through development whether it's through uh City construction projects engineering projects and and through this particular project we can we can close some of those gaps um and then so people will have an effective quarter mile because basically half milees quarter mile between you're effectively a quarter mile from a stop right either way so um but we do have a lot of areas where the stop is closer than a quarter mile it's an eighth Mile in many cases right and so even if you don't get a half mile we still have the ability to consolidate these really close stop spacing Cornwall is a perfect example of some really close spacing that it just gets developed over time that way and uh and we wake up one day and we realize oh gosh you know there's a lot of stops in this in this quarter we could could do something about it and help most people's travel by S politics but and I I would add that the city um from a city infrastructure perspective you know we've been talking WTA and very involved in all those conversations and how and are continue be more involved in you know not only from um just how we allocate the right of way but how we um build the street so that it is the most provides the most efficient locations and provides the best opportunities for um you know provide for bus bus stops so that they can operate with you know they can

remain for example remain in lane and um and not have to navigate you know getting in and out of traffic and those kind of things are some of the things that we've been talking about as well as identifying those hotpots where there is a when we're looking at those trade-offs where do we get the biggest impact from keeping those um buses on you know on schedule and reliable so that they're a active option yeah have you had any discussion about as when you move further into the rural areas but if they had a high population that actually comes into the city you you thought anything about putting some Park and Ride Lots out in the county or in the other cities and stuff that would um parallel with one the goals yeah absolutely um yeah and that we do have a few parking rides like that um notable examples would be Ferndale there's a parking ride in Ferndale uh there's one in Lynden um there are parking rides owned by scg transit down at SC County we use and throughout the quarter uh our regional service uh Lincoln Creek parking ride it's one there's there's several parking rides that we connect like that um interestingly that we found that those were underutilized um which is interesting and and that's the reason that we we're looking at those and we think you know um what's the reason that those underutilized and and the honest truth is that if you live in Lyndon driving to a park and ride is just as easy to continue driving into Bellingham there there very little resistance to

doing that right and so there's there's very little friction right unless you're going to Western and that might be a little bit different where there's parking but um so those aren't working as effectively as what we expected what we're trying to do is repurpose those areas now and and provide a little value so in lendon and and Les can address this more directly we're talking about a a affordable housing project Farm worker type type project on that land so we're trying to use that land more effectively I know that didn't directly answer your question but um yeah if we try but again um it seems that most people accessing our service are walking or getting or riding their bik or getting to stop in a different way they're not driving much um sort of in line with your your first question here is um you talked about the Chicken and the Egg um with Sam mentioned thinking about um how do we create s like what does successful development look like that increases ridership and at what point like we've talked at Planning Commission about reducing parking standards and um increasing densities in certain areas and I'm curious what you've seen that's been effective like what are what are like land use tools um or legislation at the state at the local level that's been effective to increase ridership and make WTA more successful yeah so um especially because we're kind of right in the middle of this Rapid Transit study um there there's kind of a a Target when we talk about the the mix

uses and and incentivizing mix uses along those corridors for higher frequency um routes and that Target number is typically three different types of uses you know whether that's residential commercial it could be some you know light scale institutional use whether that's a doctor's office you know a gym a farmacy things like that and so those um those uses and those densities obviously just help support those higher frequencies and so there's there's a lot of accepted practice and Theory along um supporting those higher frequency routes and that's I think what we're talking about when um the Bellingham PL is going through those growth Alternatives is um what kinds of population and employment numbers are we looking for along those higher frequency corridors and one what can can our current system support but also um what sort of densities or what what frequencies and we support with the densities if that makes sense if I if I could add to that I think there's few key principles that we look for uh density obviously one of those but it's not the only principle that's important right um it's the type of project type of housing project makes a big difference it's a low income that's going to generate a lot more ridership um in in the service there's no question about it um the other thing we look at is a mix of uses is really important it's not just housing it's just not not just Cur commercial but a mix of uses and that's that's the traditional definition of to is you have a

mix of of uses u in an area kind of like what you would have in Urban Village which um that tends to be very effective there's multiple reasons person might want to go to that destination right so so that helps a lot um and very importantly is the environment that we're creating these areas right um obviously Auto oriented type environment is not going to help trans very much if it's hard if it's uncomfortable to walk to a stop most people are probably not going to want to do it um Sunset perfect example very uncomfortable to walk uh Sunset Square I mean it's uh feels up safe so so I think that environment and plus what the development can do to um enable people to get to the transit service effectively is also important right so they're not walking through large parking lots they're they're close to the street they can get to the stop effectively Street trees you know is it uh shade in the summer protection from the elements is also very important so there's there's a lot of there's some key elements that I think look for to supporting Transit service that answer your question I'm curious what percentage of writers ship is like education based versus employment based and um what do you see is like employment commute flow these days like obviously it's changed a lot in the last five years uh with work from home is that is that stabilizing like we don't really have downtown isn't necessarily a very high employment center with a lot of inflow and outflow at 9 and5 or something

like that like how do you how do you view the the flow of of needs for work that's a good question um I just off the top uh 40% of a writers uh of Western students so throughout the year about 40% of our overall r 3.5 3.7 million is is Western writers ship uh all education or Western just Western yeah so all education is it's a few percentage points higher not much um wome Community College used to be much greater but now they're pretty small percentage because most of those classes are remote so we don't we don't carry a whole lot like we used to um so that's changed quite a bit so that's gets to your question it's not just work from home but also um education from home right that's changed a lot um and you can see it from the activity on the campus it's really gone down over the last five years um as far as uh Community trips um yeah I would say that's always been a a smaller percentage of our ridership population uh compared to a larger City like uh like Seattle King County Metro uh just naturally because again um you know it's easy to drive it's pretty easy to drive and and Park free parking your post employment so so there's there's not that friction uh to not drive it's really easy to get around community so we don't see that as much and but I would say it's probably gone down with uh the pandemic and then then work from home increasing um I don't have statistics on what that number is but I think that's probably taken one of the bigger hits in terms of our our a

decrease from 2019 our writers ship decreases the there fewer people commuting by a bus um I want to get back to the shared corridors um if they're getting more crowded and they're getting more crowded that's going to slow everybody down not just buses so if buses are late people in cars are going to be late too so I don't see I see that as a wash not V that's really making a big difference I think the real big difference is how we plan for parking to go into a transportation mode that will solve the problem of limited Corridor space that's plan and that that uh I'd be interested in seeing in hearing more about how you guys are thinking about that Stace and maybe I don't know um some point di Point here um I mean but we we've we've we've offered you a a a a a transportation plan for bicycles and pedestrians uh what you think of it um does that fit with your visions and how does it fit with your Visions um you've got a larger uh view of the world of of Bellingham of watom County because I think we need to think that way um you know the those that are working are coming from County um what what is the the vision more globally that that you have for that will that we can think our transportation Visions within which well one of the things I was thinking about with my question now if we invest more in urban Villages a well done Urban Village think think Barkley but significantly more built up of Housing and and employment or downtown or any of our Urban Villages if people are

many more people are living there and they're able to find grocery and Recreation and a library and Commercial and uh do their shopping and work either at home or or in office uh in the same Urban Village so maybe they're not commuting daily but they're but they're using a bus to get to some area other area of town to go to the airport go to the train station to go to that um off-hand medical appointment but they're not daily commuting because their their their neighborhood is blockable and they can access many of the common daily things on foot that's one idea is you know Urban vill aren't built up enough yet to truly support that but you can start to see where that would go in a decades um I go all over town for my medical appointment well yeah that's what I think your medical appointment those types of things probably AR in your neighborhood whereas ideally like a grocery store is in your right in that case we're talking about reduced writers ship if the rilles are successful well it's a well potentially in some Dimensions like like Dimensions but um if if you're able to if you live in an Urban Village you might you might feel um the ability to have like left cards for house rather than a person hous three cards you maybe have one zero because most of your daily needs are met not with a bus or a car but then what do you do for that medical trip or for that vacation or for the more sporadic thing uh you're less reliant on a vehicle for daily needs but but you still

obviously still have many other GRS for a vehicle or yeah I would say studies shown that shown that pattern where you're able to create a community right where you can walk a lot bike a lot and that that helps the transit system it actually increases writers ship it doesn't decrease it so we don't see that as zero some kind of situation we see that as a positive situation for Transit uh because then people aren't depending they don't have to depend on their vehicles to get around they can get around in different ways maybe they don't need two vehicles for household maybe you can get by with one vehicle instead and so they would they would they look forward to using the transit system in that case right it doesn't I don't think we see as a problem that they're not using transit for for work trip that that's I mean the reality is we most of the service probably provided the people who aren't using it get to work they're using it for other purposes right whether it's uh shopping medical appointments or school when it comes to your question I was orally speaking with a gentleman in the medical field he was hoping to find a small office and he's downtown right now he doesn't want to be there and he's trying to find something like G mcy and he finds that our zoning isn't working for us because the investors are all looking for res uh rents because that's where they make their money and so city is I believe and I can be corrected here is forcing of course mixed use in a lot of these

go ones and those mixed use are a lot on the first floor which is where they should be but they don't really want them there the investors don't want that first floor to be mixed use because there's not a lot of money in it and so making it very difficult for mixed use doctor offices small shops things like that to find spaces that are actually useful so they're stuck in their original zones downtown where they don't want to be and not able to balance out on a go line where they could find themselves in a more open facility that would work for their business and so that zoning isn't working for them because our zoning allows that investor to make the uh the mixed use first floor not useful to them whether it be because of various reasons like how they laid out the the square footage or things like that or how useful they're finding making it very difficult to put in HVAC having a doctor's office put in a $30,000 facility for HVAC just doesn't work for his budget but we aren't building those buildings in a successful way that allow those types of businesses to go into those areas that I think would diversify these areas other than just the urban villes themselves but along the guy where they they go continues on in between the urban Villages so I think our zoning is failing us at some level just like that as an example question either Tim or Hayden um you had a slide I think that touched on it and then you mentioned the kind of responding to like what Rose Rose's point about

what's the there's the mix of uses and then there's the kind of just having higher residential densities I guess knowing what you know about Urban Villages like thinking about like maybe the fountain District profile versus maybe a little bit more intense one like sish way or something what's the is there some kind of balance that you've seen either in on certain parts of the routes that are in Bellingham now that seems to work as far as like is it to three stories or more and then maybe what the the distance from a corridor are we talking like you know just just the actual properties that front right on a route or a few blocks off like you know just is there some kind of sense of scale about what sort of would be optimal if we were looking at like a you know like a to P or what what might be realistic to expect yeah I I think um maybe there's not a simple answer to question I think the one about about the proximity to the quarters and I've looked at studies about uh attractiveness of those quarters and how far a person's willing to walk to to the corridors and there's a bit of a Decay right period where close to the corridor obviously it's easy right so people are riding you know it's frequent service they're they're hopping on and then it decays as you get further out right but most studies do agree that if it's frequent service very frequent service like talking about here is about half a mile quarter mile is better I mean but there's between a quarter mile and half mile

um so but beyond half mile it then it becomes a lot less there are a few people that are willing to walk that far but but the percentage is pretty small right so so we you know rule thumb we use is half mile from a from an enhanced High frequence service right is a pretty good rule thumb um a goal line pretty reasonable think quarter mile is a better measurement um I think a half mile is pushing it within 15 minute service because again it's it's uh you know there's various uh you have to you have to calculate it out like you calculate the length of your trip using the transit you calculate the amount of time you have to wait for a bus calculate the time that you takes to get to the bus right and so people are doing these calculations um you know mentally and maybe without thinking of it thinking of it and and realizing oh this is the length of my entire trip and so if we can reduce any of those parameters then it gets more effective right people don't have to think about it as much right so so that adds to the length of the trip the walk time of course it's balanced by Pleasant walking environment people walk further downtown because it's nice right it's it's the sea there's trees and you know there's people out and stuff like that but a walk along Sunset well they probably not going to walk as far you it's just not as pleasant um so those are the kind of some of the things we look at um I think there was another part of your question too right um I'm just I I I guess I

think there was the number like something like was it 15 people or 15 units per acre we we measured like persons per acre that's like jobs and housing yeah um and that's just a rough little thumb um you know basically we want to see uh just in general a lot of destinations they can access on a route the more the better right um that's going to drive a lot of ridership um on that quarter um it's gets really really awkward if trying to provide service that's off the pathway of a Transit it's called a deviation and that's a killer for Transit you know we spend time going out someplace and coming back and people hate that as writers they hate going out of their way for travel so we like to see a destinations along a corridor um multiple destinations uh we like to see uh we don't like to see empty space right so to speak we like to see consistency of of uh intens intensive development although it you know if you have enough basically Pearls of destinations you can make it work right we realize that you can't always have density everywhere it's just Notting so um Ru thumb it's it's hard to say I'm sure there's measurements about how much specifically but it does vary um by Community you know by tolerance level and sorts you back on that answer the go lines seem very uh like a circle even though of course they're Jagged how did you set their original go lines was it based on trying to disperse throughout the community or was it based on population demographics things like that and

then also Planning Commission in tanon with that has voiced concerns that go lines of course are not physically permanent and we were worried that if we set up quarter mile radiuses that go line moves then that density won't be nearby the next Ro line route yeah yeah that's I I welcome that question I think it's a valid question can you depend on wta's commitment uh that and and history about where we created the go lines I think that's kind of the question can you count on that for supporting you know the the growth scenarios that you're talking about and um yeah I think there was a lot I I obviously wasn't around when the go lines were created back in 2005 but uh there was a lot lot of thought put into where they were creating again there was consistency with the city development the urban Villages uh some of them are obvious Western Blue Line it's it's obvious where you know where that that demand is coming from um the other ones are based again on those specific destinations so the Gold Line is connecting bar it's conting downtown Alabama Big Driver rers ship uh Mark with Village right and a so a lot of these are trying to find the best ways to connect the dots together the major dots um the the green line connecting downtown with Birchwood birchwood's an important center um up to Baker view up to for a right so these are quarters that I think are probably not surprising um they're they're fairly obvious in terms of where we would serve and so I don't see those changing

there's honestly we don't have a lot of opportunities to change where we provide service so just we we had a limited number of arterials that we can operate right on and so I think these were selected based upon where we felt the demand was and then and to be as consistent as we could with the Ci's uh growth models so um we are committed to these I don't see these going away um I think the bigger question is um what level of service can we expect in the future right can we continue to provide a high level service and even increase service to support the growth scenarios I think that's the I think that's the main question that we have um and that you should have as part your service and I think um part of the rationale of of including um these service maps from our long range Transit plan is to um just kind of assure the city that you know these are our um our plans for the future and the the map on the left is kind of the status quo as um our Revenue kind of stays the same over the the next you know 25 years or so uh and the the map on the right is if there's you know increased Revenue if that's or um tax based things like that and so these corridors um are planned to be the same if not increased service increased corridors throughout the CI so um I'm curious what the what the range of physical needs are you see for a brt type service like I've seen in bigger cities you might have like um platforms on the medium that are raised up and the bust on Lower you kind of come on at

like a six foot height um that can be on the on the side of the road you know like are the are the doors on the left of the bus the doors on the right of the bus um is it it's you seem to indicate it's physically different bues um like articulated um are the stations more permanent and of a different form like today you could have a station that's very minimal infrastructure you know sign and a bench or a sign alone maybe um do the stations have more investment in the the sidewalk and and the race platform or or stuff like that like would a brt system physically look like a more permanent investment where those stations end up being built so in in theory yes um that's part of what the phase two of the rapid transit study is trying to figure out is um what level and what thresholds we want to um or we we think are realistic in Bellingham and so phase one um kind of discussed a three- tiered approach so it was kind of a sliding scale of higher frequency service so it discussed things like U tier one had just spot improvements kind of that loow hanging fruit that Tim talked about a little bit previously um tier two was increasing frequencies and then tier three was a fullblown brt system which is kind of what you're talking about where you have those level boarding paths um off off Payment Systems um fullon branding for a brt system but um those costs are significant and they they take more than just local dollars and so we're talking about with this rapid transit study about um

opportunities that we could get Federal funding which are absolutely not guaranteed and so um we're kind of exploring all of our Alternatives in terms of from kind of the the status quo you know what the goal lines look like today to a fullblown VT system that could be you know upwards of a 100 million so I I think at at this point in the study we're exploring all ofro I would just say your the answer your question is yes absolutely the Rapid or bus Rapid Transit does give a bigger sense of permanence right because even just with the stops themselves there's a lot of investment that's made into those stops and so you don't it's kind of like railing Wheels obviously um the stops stay they don't they don't move around you know because you've you've invested $500,000 or something into a stop right so I I see those those moving around my experience was with the the city of Fort Collins developed a a bus rapid transit system in Colorado and um what we found was there was quite a bit of investment and it was permanent investment what we saw was a lot of development following um that investment that public investment it was an $80 million project and soon after you had multiple developers along the border that built project in relationship to that project so it can be very successful and that that does help spur on econ economic investment from the private sector um because they see that as something they can be guaranteed to having you know long term it's not just a perception that

the bus service is going to change at some point right they know that that that bus is going to stay there and they can rely on that for for the transportation needs when you say something like 500,000 to improve a bus stop like we're talking about reducing the number of bus ups but investing in those Buss That Remain is that like the infrastructure of the Shel of the station the stop or is it also like the connectivity sidewalks like maybe there's a crosswalk that didn't exist before that access to the station is enhanced yeah and typically these projects will include access improvements so good example if you want to do a field trip sometime down to Portland they have their FX2 project which is along division Corridor um and you if you go down there you'll notice um there's a variety of improvements they've made as part of that rapid transit system one of the key things is they've improved areas along the corridor not just at the stops themselves and so there are um they're truncated domes there are better Crossings there are sidewalk improvements um there are bik bicycle improvements so in certain cases they have uh the bike lane going behind the station in some cases goes through the station and they have a whole variety of different improvements they've made as part of that project so it's a good example if you wanted to you can see it online too if that's easier but that'll give you a good example of the range of things that you could you could see as part of a project

like this another example here is King County Metro's rapid ride so you can see the the bike lane over there on the left behind the stop and then you can also see that reader board which has real time information about um when the next bus is coming and so with with a brt and high frequency line it's more of a feeling of just walking to a bus stop and you know the next bus is going to come in the next you know eight or or 10 minutes rather than looking at a schedule and seeing that you know next bus isn't coming for another 45 minutes or so and you can have the federal government help pay for the Improvement yes too so that's a key right at this scale it makes more sense and that there is a pot of money that agencies like WTA go after it's called small starts that allows allows those agencies to pay for extensive improvements like that and they want to see those improvements too it's they want to make sure that you're you're connecting people to the stops it's not just the stops themselves and they are really flexible I think the rapid ride lines and in that King County's put in are very different than if you go just north of there to snow homish County they have the Swift lines which are have a different treatment that works for them that have been very successful but it it's one of the benefits of rap rapid Transit is that um you know and I think it's why it's been so popular is that you can kind of tailor it to whatever level kind of works for your community um you know

from a house perspective and a right of way perspective and you know and but get the benefit of something that's more robust than you know just a you know sign on the side of the road and service excuse me I have a few questions from the zoom land if you could recognize Mr chair number one uh to those who were speaking about watom uh Western I didn't hear any aspect of BTC be Bellingham Technical College are you saying that that is also synonymous that the writers ship count has gone down at that campus as well um I I am not absolutely sure um of that um that's something that we could we can certainly look into the writers ship there um it's always been fairly low at that location um certainly we're something we could we could take a look at okay thank you the second question while I have the floor um concerning the issue of uh when you were taking the they call the articulated buses is that what you said someone said it the Artic okay um I know the ones in Seattle with Metro are I think the company's called man and they're made in Germany do we have any aspects of articulated buses that are manufactured here in the US I.E up in Ferndale or electric or hydrogen to your knowledge okay I'll try to answer that um there is there are several companies that make AR ulated buses in the United States I think there might be two companies um one is called New Flyer it's a it's a it's a big uh a big company in the US there are no local companies that make those kinds of buses although

it's funny there's a field somewhere out by Ferndale that has a bunch of the old I think it's old Community Transit are taking bus and sitting in a field there must be like 12 of them and I always have to laugh every time I go by there on my bike but um but uh there are only a couple manufacturers um that that make these in the United States and and as a recipient of federal funds we we have to use uh we have to use uh those buses made in in the US we don't have the option unless we use just local funds to uh to buy buses elsewhere but there's just a couple manufacturers of these of these buses currently might you also hint hint talk to our current Port Commissioners about maybe chatting with those folks about maybe looking at other areas for manufacturing IE walking County yeah I mean the honest truth I I don't think we have a big enough demand local market for that but we would love to see uh local production I know there's a a company uh INF for the one that you mentioned that uh had the intent to provide to produce electric I think they were electric mini buses and to our knowledge they haven't started producing those yet okay um we're waiting for that because we'd love to test those out in our system uh but we they they have not uh they have not revealed to us when those are going to those are going to be ready and then the last question that I'll get out of your hair the aspect of I know it might be not the goals tonight but as we talk about the Bellingham plan and

growth I'm concerned and want to hear some maybe some answers or ideas about the security of the ridership and uh the local drivers or operators of WTA as you know as our community grows we do have some challenging concerns on the buses so um I don't know but you going to correct me if I'm wrong that you have your own security team as well and if that is so uh do they respond to incidents or do you rely on the Bellingham PD to rely uh on them for incident controls on the WTA buses thank you yeah let do you want yeah yeah watch um this Les Rens uh with WTA uh we do have a Transit safety officer program that we started uh about this time last year um incidences have been driven down um by that um uh I will say that uh they're not Law Enforcement Officers so they're more eyes and ears they called BPD um the uh BPD is Staffing is is coming up you probably see more frequent uh BPD officers down town uh which is help helped uh quite a bit and our t Transit Safety Office ERS and BPD have a regular sync up on those things so sharing information on trespasses and Intel on folks that are there um but our folks are not not Law Enforcement Officers so they have no powers to arrest or those things one thing I will say that they have been very successful at though is getting to know people and it's really fascinating right along with them that uh they they know people and when they ride up to the stop it's it's just amazing to me they'll say the people will say oh hey Charlie good to see

I'm leaving I know how this goes um and so we've seen that and then we've also seen with a number of Youth Riders uh that those have gone down because they're out riding the buses and they know which frequency we deploy them based on number of incidences on routes at locations that we track that are high level and suddenly deployment that's so hopefully that answered your question sir yeah it does and uh that that's a key factor of building relationships uh of the writers ship and certainly those who you might say um might cause some issues from time to time that's an effective program so I'd like to see more of that thank you so um I want to know if you guys have been you know if you're up to date on the new zoning changes you know that we are you know having to deal with and I want to know what how that is changing your perception of what you've been doing with the year year look at that stuff and and start to figure it out I want to know how you guys are approaching that's a great question for you Hayden yeah and uh I mean I'm I'm relatively new here WTA and actually um spent the last eight or so years down in the Portland area I went to Western about 10 12 years ago now it's crazy it's been that long but now I'm back and um it's it's funny kind of being in the perspective of advocating for you know WTA and um having these increased discussions with the city and um harboring this this communication and um just in general we've had a lot of discussions with the I've been to

two or three of the city's open houses and and I've been involved in multiple comprehensive plan updates and I think this has been the most robust comp plan update process that I've ever witnessed and and even heard of so kudos to Chris and his staff um and Sydney's done a great job in in the last um open house we played a game that Sydney had made so if you haven't played the the Bellingham plan board game Library I I really encourage that it it um flushed out some great ideas and um uh had had a lot of discussions that I don't think would have had had been had otherwise and um just in general with the potential growth Alternatives um I think that's kind of why we're here and why we're talking with you guys and and not only how can WTA support um the city's growth alternative and ideas in the the Bellingham plan but how can the city support WTA services so that um you know we have both of our um ultimate not both of our ultimate goals but all of our goals um seen in the future with WTA 240 and ultimately the Belling so did that answer your question um sort of okay I the thing about the the new zoning laws is built to increase density which means that our problems with the WTA and cars and bicycles all sharing the road is going to increase problems that we're having right now aren't going to go away and our roads aren't going to get any bigger and I'm wondering if you guys have started maybe spitballing some more radical ideas like maybe making changing the way that our roads

currently are today and make making some of the roads that go through our town bus only um or car you know and then and separate the cars from the buses because I'm I'm hearing that you know it's The Chronic problem is cars and buses and bicycles all sharing the safe space and there's enough blocks in the downtown area maybe change route you know and and go to a less car populated route um or maybe divert cars away from a route that would be a must more bus friendly route um I see these routes I went to Western as well but I I graduated in 1999 and I see these routes and these routes are very similar if not exactly the same as they were when I was going to college and um our density has changed and I think it's might be time for a radical relocation of the routes um or I mean I know you're talking about doing these these rapid lines these frequent lines and and and that's great and I swear I remember go buses when I was in college and I was back in 1990s so um I think the very first one I was on the red one I lived in Fair Haven so um it might have been a pilot program at some point that I had got to participate in but I don't anyway but it just seems like um the only answers are going to be to to just come up with some new radical ideas the other thing I was going to ask is have you considered the other thing that increases density is we have majority of what we're doing with planning is working with private developers private developers they have money plans they they want

to maximize the amount of money that they could do and I feel like we should be requiring them to put mixed incomes in all units every building built from now on should be divided up between the income levels um I know that's a tall order but when you increase the density when a house goes down and an apartment building goes up and you increase the density you're increasing the pressure on our infrastructure you're increasing the com um the pressure on schools on buses on on Ser on you know Emergency Services all of that and so for schools they require a development fee in order to help them deal with the extra burden of having more density in their student body as well and so I was thinking development fees maybe being requested by um you know private developers something that we could also use as a bargaining chip to help them come to the light of having mixed incomes and their um see what was was something else I was going to ask um no I think that that covers it sorry well I'd love for a lot of your questions to be answered by the city's staff because I think a lot of it goes to some of the some of the work they do right let me try to answer some of the stuff that WTA is working on so your question of I think embedded in your question was um are we are we flexible adaptable are we able to change based on the changing of the community right I think that's at heart of your question right as you look at the goal why Haven they change right and I would say that we with less

leadership have a renewed Vigor around what we do as an agency and looking at Beyond just fix drop service um you know which is fairly prescribed right um it's fairly it's fairly constrained in terms of of how you provide the service but there are many more things that I think are important to a transit system and one of the things we talked about is can we help grow writers ship more naturally right um what that means is kit how can we encourage people to use a bus use alternative m in a different way and so so our renewed focus is around some key initiatives to how we we get there right uh Transportation demand management we we provide resources that we provide support for the Cog and we do things on our own around um looking for alternatives to driving single ENT vehicles um we're investing in transit oriented development I mentioned the one in Lyon um we're also looking at expanding our bellan station and potentially doing a Transit oriented development project there as well so that would help get people to the core service right and encourage them to ride make it easy for them to ride supporting the city City's efforts around Tod and trans supported deel development um uh is U access to Transit is a big one we have funds to enable local governments to pay for improvements to get to who are are bus stops right and we're we're providing funds to who are bus stops so we have many different initiatives like that to to go beyond just what we do with fix service Rapid Transit

we see that as Innovative it's not a New Concept but it's new for Bellingham um on demand we've we've experimented with on demand service in in lyen um and so these are examples of of ways service still takes the same routes what's that the on demand service still takes the same routes right no well what I mean by On Demand is like if you think about how Uber provides service right somebody requests a trip using an app and then the the vehicle picks you up and drops you off um WTA was offering that service to lynon for about two and a half years um where somebody could request a trip and from their home and then they could get to a destination and get picked up and dropped off right I'm sorry I was thinking about specialized yeah that's parent Transit right we do that too um only so many ways you can do that as well it's very prescribed in terms of the rules right um but we we are trying to be flexible we're trying to be Innovative it's tough It's challenging we've got Workforce rules we've got federal law we've got these different conditions that we have to operate within and so it's this prescribed environment that we're operating within and trying to do things within that prescribed environment as best we can right um sometimes it's it's time to start questioning some of the rules and moving past them yeah yeah for sure these are rules that have been around you know since I was in college yeah and and Les can speak to some of these that he's been he's been experiencing

like purchase of land it's not as as simple as you would think rules around that so um so anyhow yeah but um you know in terms of the goal lines themselves I think we feel pretty good about where they go I don't think I don't see those Chang I I see that that has been if anything over time those have got solidified right uh We've we've made those more permanent they we have more support there's more activity in those corridors um if anything what we're talking about is how do you expand the network right where else do you go beyond those quarters where can you expand what what supports that expansion plus you mind on that yeah yeah go for it on from a policy standpoint um one of the things I'll say is is super encouraging is is this um because I think so many years uh we've been siloed and so things decisions are made and then it's like oh that's a transportation issue or that's a this issue and we do that these kinds of discussions are breaking that out so that it's okay hey if we talk about parking okay well if we reduce parking Vance how are we GNA give people an alternative to get around oh hey Transit we need to bring you in to talk about this how can we do this and those are the things that uh I lived here since uh the late 9 worked at the city and uh I see us breaking out of those and how do we then leverage our strengths uh and how do we leverage those those uh U whether it's resources whether it's uh service whether it's uh planning things yeah I think about uh some

of the other areas that can be successful and more urban there's there's carrot you know the frequency the nice stops those kinds of things have encouraged but there's also the stick part ter traffic it's congested it's uh parking is is very expensive it's hard to get um and so those kind of change of behaviors um to Tim's uh Point under under his uh leadership as well as looking at um how do we get ahead of behaviors as opposed from a Transit perspective uh rather than reactive so rather than waiting to see if a development goes in two years from now then we think about can we do that can we even though it's a steel business term a loss leader can we get out in front of that even though we may not have a ton of writers ship but as people are moving into those areas in Mountain Waterfront those kinds of things people are forming behaviors based on service that's there as opposed to the informed Transportation behavior and then we come in later and ask them to stop that and do something different that may be a little more inconvenient um and so those are some of the Innovative uh things and so I I see this discussion as super encouraging because we're breaking down those Cs and leveraging how can we work uh together to enhance and and we recognize as Transit you come in as a supporting element to this the city's policies and how can having mixed incomes uh spread more out through counties seems like it would increase ridership in in some places yeah the the problem is there's

not a lot of writers so you have so Everson Sumas uh even Lyndon uh there's what 16,000 folks that live in Lyon most of them are single family homes there's just not ridership uh even if you put more service out there there's just not a lot of people because of like what Tim said it you get car I was thinking you know more along the lines of the development that we've got going that single family BS are going to be at the palous um the majority of the the properties the new zoning laws are not going to be single family homes it's going to be apartment buildings and if we have more apartment buildings going up spread out through the city and even somewhat Beyond then um and those are all mixed income you will have increased ridership yes in that SC count I was thinking no I was thinking I was thinking throughout like I mean if you if we have a blanket rule that all new construction is got to be mixed in income then um you know or hit certain you know income rates then you're going to have increased bership you know which is done any more St even I don't know if that helps or hurts I I can address I know Tim addressed I think and Les I think the first few questions you had um the other two things I heard you talk about Barber were the again like the mixed income requiring that and then the other one are the um different impact fees um and I think maybe public work for to talk about the traffic impact fees but on the on the mixed income pieces um I mean we're in the midst of

looking at like the multif family tax exemption as as an incentive Beyond maybe the areas where you currently offer that in um but but the thing that we're struggling with is we look at the economics of that um and there there's been some recent work that's uh I don't think it's it's not public yet but the sustainable connections has done some work with Eco Northwest um to look at the multif family program in particular in Bellingham and the economics of that and there's some definite challenges in our current economy with interest rates and you know the cost of construction but trying to find that balance point between requiring like what you're describing like mixed incomes or or units affordable to something below the median income in every project um finding that balance point of if you require that will developers choose to just not build the project at all or can you have to make it so it's still a marketable project for them that they can break even on and and get the amount that they need to get out of that project so that's that's the tricky part is trying to figure out is it possible to do that I Know It's Tricky change doesn't isn't easy and it requires some sacrifice absolutely yeah so that's trying to figure out how much of that how much of that is possible in the economy that we find ourselves in right now POS of land and everything else goes into it I think if we make it a requirement doesn't matter people won't build it they didn't build it I would rather

build it and then do we know that they won't build it have we ever given them a chance we do when we have the studies that show and people are not building now their permits have decreased because construction costs and and interest rates have gone up that is a fact yeah but not because this specific situation that barart ising exactly well yes that would play into the economics of it which we have a study that we just completed that show that that's true so we have the we have the data more than just what you guys think about it so there's this opportunity for us to look at how we can leverage because I truly do think we should find ways to create uh mixed income buildings we have to do it in a way that's going to be productive both in terms of getting things built so that there's projects that are mixed income that Transit Riders will go to that will ride because we we're doing it in the right spot and in the right way and so there's there's a strategy for us to get there um I'm I'm excited to hear that there's um WTA is looking at you know the the finding innovative ways and and increasing ing the right like increasing your transits so that we people feel empowered to use it and and that's going to make the decisions that we need to make around density and where where we should put density and how much and where we should put the multif family tax exemption those are all going to layer together and so knowing that these things are are part of the the equation helps me

think that those projects will be more successful that people can reduce their parking that will reduce the cost of construction and we'll get more of those projects done so if we can reduce parking if we can have incentives for mixed use and we know that the transit's going to be there and that there's potential for it to be even more frequent I feel like we're we're putting the right recipe together and so it's encouraging to hear um all of the work that you guys are doing now and I'm look forward to kind of the outcomes from phase two of the rapid track study is there a possibility of getting those studies sent to Planning Commission so that I can actually get behind those facts that have been stated yeah I think I think that the the intent is to have this conversation more broadly with with Planning Commission certainly with city council um it it's information that you know we've been wanting to get our hands on for a long time and I think it I think it will help in these conversations I don't know that we'll get to the point Barbara of requiring it everywhere but I think that the the data that this kind of study produces and further conversation with you know like these bodies like this will help us fine-tune what what tools we do have access to that will work in the market and to make sure that we're using those wherever we can um just in the interest of time I also wanted to ask either Dylan or Joel or someone to talk about traffic impact piece Andress the other

question you had yeah so the the city does um as part of the application process with developers we do have a transportation impact Fe where it can it it's based off of the um it land use codes and it can range from anywhere from couple $10,000 to couple hundred, based on the land use type and through that process there is an opportunity for developers to um get discounts on that oh maybe discounts isn't the right word to say uh but um reduce that fee based on if that um development is you know um about a 15 20 minute go on service or um if that developer is um providing free Transit passes to um the it's the residents that live there and recently we have started mean the city and W WTA have started collaborating bit more on that front um where I've been keeping hating up to date on any developments that we come in and how that impacts the WTA service so these these discounts or or credits only happen when they are on a go line so we're only encouraging these credits right along those corridors not specifically only on the go line Sorry that was just the example that I used um so it it's also along their 30 to 60 Minute lines it's just a different it's a smaller percentage reduction so there's more of an incentive um for developers to be along those go lines um but there is also an there's also an incentive for them to be near awta line in general um yeah sounds a little like putting the cart but a horse if we're trying to increase ridership and potentially decrease traffic

along these roads but we're giving incentives to developers who build on these roads which that's may not be an option I guess the difference there is um if those developers were to go and build elsewhere outside of outside of those areas um there's there's less opportunity for those residents to to use these Services therefore they're going to be pushed to St La Vehicles it's going to increase the overall traffic so we want to we want to decrease the density on our roads and we're increasing the density throughout the city see there's a puzzle piece missing one thing I wanted to ask related to Barbara's question on how density effect WTA is like how do you see the capacity of your ridership today if there is density in a reasonable walking distance to existing Transit lines at what point is increased ridership from density draining the system causing you trouble at what point is it making your current Network more efficient like are our buses full and you would need to add more buses or are we under like what is our ratio of capacity to population and how do you see population growth over a 20 30 year period like when do we get to an optimal balance point and are we there today and when do we get to an over subscribed uh level for the network um there's really only one area where that's the case today a load so that's obvious Western where we have uh large Flows at certain times right not not always but at certain times of the day 9:30 in morning everybody wants to ride the

same bus at 9:30 in the morning so you have you have a lot of loads and and so yeah that could be a problem for that particular area but everywhere else you don't you don't we don't really have a capacity issue and we don't foresee getting to that point anytime soon there's there's plenty of capacity in the system um and part of the way you accommodate capacity well a good way to Comet capacity is through increase frequency right so more frequent buses more options and then that that will handle that any any needed capacity we're never going to get to a Seattle situation right we just we're never going to be that that's right where you're running articulated buses every five minutes it's just I I don't foree us I I just speak up about this but I don't see us getting to that point right and so our level is our level is a lot less um our level Service uh can be a lot less and still accommodate the the growth that that occurs so I would say just any any amount of demand is good um we don't foresee a situation where yeah we want to prevent somebody from or resist somebody getting on a bus sometimes we complain about Western like why can't those students just walk and why you know why are they sles like they can just walk the campus but outside of that situation right it's not it's not an issue for us to decide you know yeah this is a problem for us um so um that answers your question there's a little bit of an opportunity for a positive fly whe of today's Transit writer might be

better served by higher writers ship members because you could provide a better true absolutely absolutely yeah to yeah it it helps right the more people writing the more it's going to help the system right it's it not necessar like I said earlier not necessarily financially we talked about that already but it will definitely help support the system right it'll it'll help support uh show us where the need is and the demand and it could then attract those resources to provide that additional service right I think that's the concept um that we're talking about here right if you don't it doesn't if it's not self-reinforcing then it stays the same or or it could even decrease in certain cases it's decreased like um our former goal line to Fair Haven we were operating that 15 minutes just didn't get the WR ship and it still is not at the level that we could support a go line it just hasn't gotten there right and we ask ourselves what what occurred and it just never got to that level there's just not enough demand um along the corridor to support a go line hopefully in the future there will be uh but today part of the problem is with that situation you have Fair Haven is a big driver and you have downtown but you don't really have anything in between you have some multif family but it's higher end you don't the demand in the corridor and so you're not growing that ridership right and so yeah so there could be situations like that where you just you invest and like it's just not

there and it's not growing but I think that's that's less less usual than actually increasing demand as a result and then I'd like to add on to that kind of positive flywheel example too is that we you know our transportation plan is very much about you know moving people you know we're not particularly concerned about moving you know chunks of sheet metal or whatever it's really about providing mo mobility to people and that's regardless of however they choose to move around the city and so however we can do that the most efficiently if we have um you know we you know we've talked a lot about tonight about you know limited right of way and but there's a we can be really thoughtful about that and it's not like we don't have any right of way you know we've got parking we've got bike Lanes we've got all those types of things we got travel vehicle travel Lanes but one thing that would change you know changes that thought process is if if if we're we have a dense Corridor where we have a lot of buses traveling traveling very frequently then um then it may make a lot more sense to be like we need to allocate much more space to dedicate to make those buses oper more efficiently so that they Transit can make their service hours go further and we can get more you know more frequency and so that's very different than if we have even 15minute service where you're taking a lot of real estate within a in a within a limited rideway and dedicating it to maybe a or you know more extreme

example like a 60-minute service we wouldn't of course put in a Transit lane or something like that but that's I think another example of where density of allows us to move a lot more people more efficiently whether it's on a bike Boulevard or in a Transit Lane um and that's where that you know that can really work positively um quick time check it's saying that Transportation Commission typically around eight um so coming up about 15 minute warning so I want to get everyone who hasn't had a chance um hand up so I was just wondering if there are other opportunities for the city to off offer significant incentives to developers to want to do the mix use first Flor or even other enhancements um to increase to improve walkability to Transit areas and maybe it's an increase in some fees but if they put this in then it's kind of a lot I don't know what other kinds of regulations you can put in place where it's not creating a requirement but the incentives make it so that of course they're going to choose that are there other opportunities for that or is that I'm thinking outside the box beond traffic I would say the there is somewhat of an incentive um just due to the um the traffic impact bees are calculated based on a person trip rate based on the land use code that's used whereas oftentimes those those land use that person trip rate is lower for those uh those first story commercial uses versus um if that was an additional I think there is a bit of an incentive there and I did

want to say that although we do provide these incentives um as far as you know being near a go line or things like that we still do see quite a few developments that happen outside of those areas um so there are other areas of the city that are consistently um developing and I've only been in this position for about three months um and I've seen I think the majority of applications I've seen come through have been um in other areas where we've had a few that have been you know have really got those reductions so the development is still Happ happening this s but to your point to those are the the idea of tailoring uh reductions to fees is certainly a tool that the city does use one example just related to the Tiff fees is um there is the option for reduction for projects that do have a percentage of units that are affordable housing units and that's something where there's the planning director or the city council depending on if it's in the Consolidated plan as the option of reducing those fees for projects by affordable affordable housing a so there are that's a tool that the city does use and and could use in other other ways too in addition to that there are also credits for 3 SL uses so if a developer is replacing um something they they do get a credit for what what the impact of the transportation system was of that previous land use to what they're building now um so a couple things um my understanding is in in most of our Urban Villages and like a mixed use building

or like for most of the urban Villages it it's required to have commercials on the main floor in a lot of cases there yeah there there are some exceptions to that but that is a very common thing within the urban areas and then for WTA this is a something I've been saying like somebody told me at one time and then I've been repeating it for a long time so um is that people don't do mode changes um based on incentives but they'll do mode changes out of when there's um when it's inconvenient and so inconvenience is what actually makes people change do Behavior change around transportation and so when I'm think about like there's this chicken egg heart horse how how do we create land use changes um that support WTA and and to here let's say you know we're talking about you know the you're thinking how do we get ahead of it in some scenarios so that we create the right kinds of behaviors from the get sounds really great um but what what's am I am I wrong I think you need both I think you need to have you can't just have that resistance without providing a system that's effective right you've got to have the bike lines you've got to have the transit system so you've got to have those in place first right as we talk about eliminating minimums well that's great but we also need to have a robust transportation system that supports people that you know may choose not to have a vehicle may not choose to to so I don't know if consider that in set but I considered in Sedum in the sense of

you have an ability to choose the mode that you want to choose for that for the purpose of that trip so if we don't have good Transit service right but we eliminate parking minimums then that's just defeating that's defeating that's only inconvenient and not helpful and not helpful exactly right so so I think you need that if you consider incentives being the ability to move around right the option to move around I think you need that too just equally as much as as the barriers but I don't I don't know if that's person can you flip the slide to the 2040 here we [Music] go so a concern that I've had for a while is that I don't believe it's a chicken and I think the WTA is an amenity that has to be in place before Le said it or maybe maybe you said it that that when when the amenity is there then the density Ares later right and I think we've seen that with the with the new Rail lines going in down in um you King County and sish County right so the the the EOD development that's happening there is because they're neutralizing right now we're seeing even more D development around that so I don't think that's a chicken Ori I think you have to be in front of it right so what I'm seeing though is that c here isn't really I don't think it's going to be a thing anymore because we've taken the entire city and change the building so it's not just spot Zing for build we the entire City's changing right so if in 2040 there's not a huge change in the amount of service to reach that quarum

mile you know that magic Four Mile sort of um walk right then we may have to think of how we're going to decouple our land 's choices and our density decisions based on the amount of available Transit that we explo but I I think that if there's a way to incentivize you you need twice the money what's $18 million be a check right because if you had double your budget do you get do even more service you get to 8 8% of the city with that qu mile BL right but if even 108 million doubling your budget doesn't get you there then our land use recommendations based on what WTA can provide given budgets are available and I think that there may be a disc think one add Mike is the zoning changes are talking about middle scale everywhere but we still have a lot of choice and a lot of the growth options are around like Urban Villages is where the apartment go Apartments AR going everywhere where which urban villages we invest in and has actually high density interex with where Transit line like where you'll have high writers ship mbers maybe coming out of it's it's slow we get it right I mean I think the the multibillion dollar investment for the light rail you saw I think we've all witnessed it because we all drive or visit um I think that accelerated I don't think we see that kind of accelerated growth more intensity but I think if you look at the population growth numbers here they're still pretty static in a small percent questions anyone on this side so but with the new laws with the

midle well the middle today is not the middle tomorrow so I mean I should go there but it's like you change but you're going to have to change every year because the first guy that comes in and builds that project then the next one is going to be twice six or or three and that's just why so I think that middle how you going to keep it really middle because if you look around the world yes it was a middle but now it's not I'm not from Washington I'm from California and I work heavily with every developer in the world in with Urban Villages and it starts out and it's not that the mle doesn't benefit from but if you building a project because of the cost of materials now it's going to be very difficult for the city to maintain any kind of un thought so I'm just is you have you talked about that it's Capital we don't have a lot of those areos when it comes toost but I think if you look around in other places there's a lot of examples and I know through the training F they can sit down and say that there's a lot of for credits and stuff that maybe you don't even know so is that Chris that we don't do we know about all the credits that are possible to make sure that we take advantage of every opportunity we have when it comes to affordability yeah I mean we're we're pulling every lever we can with you know different different funds that are available for the we we get um the city gets Community Development block grant dollars and we get some State funding uh mainly Federal funding

and then of course Bellingham has chosen the tax itself for with the housing Levy and then there's a countywide affordable housing sales tax so we kind of pull all those things together um and use that about 60% of that in the last on average over the last several budget Cycles gets allocated for production of of affordable rental housing with you know Community Partners like the Mercy Housing or Catholic Housing Services or the Housing Authority different different you know nonprofit groups in town um so we're using you know a large amount of that for production of Housing and then and then the remainder goes largely for kind of the the wraparound Human Services to go to support those projects and for other others in the community um I know the county did um a project want to say six years ago maybe where they looked at the bill they had paid credit at the county level um and I know they found a lot of areas where they could uh inove on and or they could get their Developers more money for building and stuff I represented the board of realtors on that committee and um it was really interesting they had a I don't remember who it was from the city that was part of that committee but it it's those types of committees that um I worked in one city in California where they looked at every um dollar that a developer had to pay from the purchase like even fire heyens I mean it was just amazing but um and that might be something that the city needs to think about looking out because

um you can really um usually find a lot of of hidden costs that you don't have to pay but again with the supply and demand and the you know the cost of building is so much more now than it was even like five years ago yeah but you know yeah it's a huge challenge you know being here in with the different um missions and stuff that city has I think that really pull everybody together and think about what there probably are a ton of things you can do eventually that have and when you change something like all of the land use SS that just is going to be cans for L thank you are there incentives that don't rely on tax incentives that don't relying what tax um density bonuses yeah I mean there's you can you can increase yeah increase height you can you can um you expedited permitting there's I mean there's a wide variety of things you can do to make development easier reduce reduce developer fees um you know I mean some of the things like what we've talked about tonight like the you know Transportation impact these can be discounted if a if a project has a certain percentage of units that are affable so if I can follow up on on the tip if the if the if the tip was originally a number that was related to the actual and a builder is Project that's close to it the go line okay does that mean that there's a a recogn ation recognizing that theyve got less impact and then per reduction is based on small imp what is the impact so I think I mean I think in the case of like TI reductions

for in proximity to Transit that's exactly what that is is aligned with this there's you know there's the idea that there's this Nexus between between being close to a Transit amenity and the likelihood that a percentage of the residents are going to um choose to to take transit in that case would there be a reduction requirement yeah that's me with that would be an example of a non tax yep burning thoughts well I I think that that that you know as Transportation Commission we we've provided a bike plan and Tim has been working with us on on talking about the WTA plans and so there's lots of incentives there I just I just think that parking restrictions need to be put in place to to help on the other side what what do you mean parking restriction uh well if you're going to get people out of cars which is the cultural change that we've been not talking about but implicit in what we're talking about um we're going to have to to do that restriction you have to have to stop cars moving around that's what blocks up roads not a bus blocks up the road certainly it's not a bunch of bicycles but pedest it's cars single use single occupancy that's hard in a lot of families a lot of people yeah yeah and the gate economy yeah yeah it is that it's a cultural change too a way of life and if we're moving forward Transportation Commission from what I'm hearing you haven't got any criticisms of stuff we passed on to you um is created all sorts of opportunities um I'm just you know you guys

could be the bad guy that is on the the parking conversation is on the agenda for this fall so be definitely something that's discuss well that's all the time we plan for um any other notes to close us out staff thank you for thank you for having us yeah yeah great great discussion yeah great questions and discussion look forward to contining this discussion yeah thanks for transportation Commissioners for being here tonight too it's great to might be something we can do more on uh when do we Mo next we know when we Moet next uh we have not finalize the agenda but it will be um we have a variety of Bellingham plan topics coming forward to you pivoting from our engagement to our policy development so okay we'll be in front of you soon we'll get you you agenda well uh we'll go ahead and join this meeting thank everyone