 |
Bi-State Transportation Committee |
 |
Below is the meeting report for the Bi-State Transportation Committee meeting, held on Thursday, November 16, 2000, from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. at the Port of Vancouver, 3103 NW Lower River Road, Vancouver, Washington. An agenda for this meeting is also available.
The meeting of the Bi-State Transportation Committee was called to order by Chair Rod Monroe, Metro Councilor, at 7:35 a.m. at the Port of Vancouver, 3103 NW Lower River Road, Vancouver, Washington. Those in attendance follow:
Committee Members Charlie Hales, City of Portland Commissioner
Chris Lassen, City of Gresham Councilor
Dave Lohman, Port of Portland (Alternate)
Dave Mercier, City of Battle Ground City Manager
Rod Monroe, Metro Councilor
Larry Paulson, Port of Vancouver Executive Director
Phil Selinger, Tri-Met (Alternate)
Gail Spolar, C-TRAN Interim Executive Director/CEO
Kay Van Sickel, ODOT Region One Manager
Don Wagner, WSDOT SW Region AdministratorStaff Chris Deffebach, Metro
Dean Lookingbill, RTC
Diane Workman, RTCInterested Guests Ed Barnes, Washington Transportation Commissioner
Steve Dotterrer, City of Portland
Bob Hart, RTC
John McConnaughey, WSDOT
Matt Ransom, City of Vancouver
Thayer Rorabaugh, City of Vancouver
Karen Schilling, Multnomah County
Glenn Schneider, WSDOT
Deb Wallace, C-TRAN
Dave Williams, ODOTDAVE MERCIER MOVED FOR APPROVAL OF THE OCTOBER 26, 2000 MEETING REPORT AS WRITTEN. THE MOTION WAS SECONDED BY CHRIS LASSEN AND UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED.
Dean Lookingbill referred to the memorandum included in the meeting packet. He said Vancouver’s Transportation System Plan (TSP) process is a comprehensive citywide discussion about transportation. It is a community based planning effort examining the long-range transportation needs for all transportation system users, including motorists, bicyclists, walkers and transit users. There are a number of elements that relate to land use decisions and also bi-state elements as well. Mr. Lookingbill introduced Matt Ransom with the City of Vancouver who outlined the study process, goals, and public opinion survey results.
Matt Ransom distributed copies of the presentation along with an annotated copy of the visioning survey questionnaire. He said simply put, the TSP is open dialogue about transportation. What they get when it is done is a “Transportation Blueprint” that supports the City “Vision” and Comprehensive Plan objectives. The TSP process began with an assessment of the existing system. They are currently working on the visioning/policy discussion process. A scientific survey was done by Davis & Hibbitts, Inc. The survey started with two focus groups, with staff and residents. This was followed up by a Public Opinion Survey that included 300 City of Vancouver residents. Mr. Ransom noted that a survey is never intended to be the only answer, but a tool to provide other information. Mr. Ransom highlighted the results from the survey including questions on community growth, traffic congestion, light rail, public transit, and who should pay for new facilities. Contact Mr. Ransom if you would like a copy of the full report.
Committee Members discussed the negative and positive answer results and the fact that choices and opportunities need to be provided for multi-modal facilities. Dave Lohman said it is discouraging because there is probably a higher percentage of negative than what results show. Charlie Hales said he felt this was not discouraging but a very encouraging survey. He said the survey was fine work and it showed the citizens of Vancouver are thoughtful about what they want. A third of the folks do not want to pay for improvements, but that still gives you a positive two-thirds, which is good.
Ed Barnes asked if the presentation of the survey were to be given to neighborhood organizations, what their response would be. Matt Ransom said the survey was done on random citizens. A neighborhood organization is usually made up of citizens who are more interest engaged and have set ideas.
There was discussion of community support for projects and the willingness or not to help pay for the project.
Charlie Hales said this was a high quality piece of work, and it is a very useful tool. He said how you use it is important. Polls do not tell you what will happen; they tell you what the possibilities are. That is all. There is no safety in leadership. You cannot conduct a poll and find a safe route through leadership. You exercise leadership with some risk. Polls tell you which risks are better than others and they change over time. Examples such as Westside light rail and South/North, thinking voters will approve construction of major transportation facilities. We need to get over the notion that if we do a poll, it will pass, or we will never build anything. This poll tells us by leadership what we might do, but it does not tell us what the voters will support. We need to get over that and find ways and means to advance.
Thayer Rorabaugh said it is important to engage the community in discussions of projects and facility options. Chris Deffebach asked in regard to the importance of the concurrency issue in Vancouver (i.e. Mill Plain), if this information would be cause to open the debate of LOS concurrency standard limits. Matt Ransom said they have approached this a couple of ways. It is likely that they will use some of this information to have that debate with the policy makers. Additionally, this opportunity also provides a reason to reengage in the debate of other options in the corridor, such as measures based on transit line service to allow development to continue under certain circumstances, under some guarantee of transit supported development, and other ways to integrate the land use component to maximize the capacity.
John McConnaughey said studies have identified two key conditions in regard to public willingness to pay:
- when conditions are intolerable, and
- there is absolutely no other alternative for money, so new money is necessary.
He said in the context of the survey for the I-5 Trade Corridor, the second condition does not seem to be what the public thinks. They think that the governments of Washington and Oregon have the money to do something.
Dave Lohman said he agreed about the values and teachings of polls. This information reinforces his thought that for this group the challenge is large. We need solutions with all aspects that people are looking for and creative ways to get funding.
Rod Monroe thanked Matt Ransom for the presentation.
Rod Monroe introduced Phil Sellinger, Tri-Met and Deb Wallace, C-TRAN. Phil Sellinger said the two corridors to be discussed are the I-205 corridor and the Airport Max stop and the I-5 corridor and the Interstate Max project. He said they are looking at how to best take advantage of utilizing the investments that have been made in the two rail corridors in providing transit service in the near-term. Tri-Met and C-TRAN have been working together on these discussions.
In the I-205 corridor the Airport Max project is scheduled to open next September. There are two facilities in the I-205 corridor, the Gateway Transit Center and the Parkrose Park and Ride just off Sandy Boulevard. Currently, the Gateway Center is overfilled and Parkrose is used very little. They plan to take advantage of the Parkrose park and ride. The Airport Max line passes under that park and ride on its way to the airport. Changes are planned for Parkrose Station to make one end of the lot into a transit center to provide Tri-Met and C-TRAN service. The Station has good freeway access to I-205 and there is a new flying fish pedestrian bridge that will allow access from the station across the freeway down to the train platform in the median of I-205. The planned design will have 13 bays available for buses.
A question was asked if C-TRAN connections across the I-205 bridge would only be going to Parkrose not to Gateway or downtown Portland. Deb Wallace said this will go to the public to decide. Currently, C-TRAN has one route that goes from Fishers Landing Transit Center, which is about three miles east of I-205, to Gateway Transit Center. This carries about 225 passengers average daily. C-TRAN will go out to the public to talk with them about the mix of service that goes to Parkrose rather than Gateway and the mix that goes downtown and what that combination is. Currently on I-84 they have two additional routes that go to downtown with an average of about 1400 passengers a day. This shows that most passengers on I-205 are going directly downtown. Last July, CTRAN had a large service change and they revised their service based on efficiency and effectiveness. At that time they surveyed the public and had extensive public meetings. The public said one of the top issues was service to the airport as well as what is the mix that will take them to Parkrose and to connect with MAX. They are getting ready to start a public process to discuss these issues. Gail Spolar added that even though Parkrose and Gateway are a short distance apart, the way you get in and out of Gateway is so congested with the trains so full. It really makes Parkrose look like a good option to save time, but this will be put before the public for their decision. Another issue to look at is that not everyone at Gateway transfers to a MAX train. There are bus transfers as well. C-TRAN and Tri-Met will be looking at the whole system. Deb Wallace said that Tri-Met has been very good to work with on this project. She said that effective Transportation Demand Management policies are an important part of this project because the airport is a very important infrastructure to the entire region, Portland and Clark County.
A question was asked about restrictions on overnight parking. Phil Sellinger said they are monitoring the Washington vehicles at the park and ride. At both Gateway and Parkrose, there is a 24-hour maximum limit on parking, so people will not be tempted to use the park and ride for airport long-term parking. Charlie Hales said this is a partial solution and may need to consider making people pay for parking in the future. Mr. Hales said this run is to start out with single train vehicles. He asked if this was set up for double vehicles in the future and if there were vehicles available if it really takes off quickly. He also asked if they had looked at the ODOT property on the other side of the freeway for additional park and ride spill over. Phil Sellinger said that at this point they do not have two-car trains (at $2 million each). Given projections, they should be able to handle the ridership need with one-car trains till about 2005. Mr. Sellinger said they are talking with ODOT about the land. Being on the other side of the freeway, it will be more of a challenge to make pedestrian connections to get down to the platform. This is still under discussion. Deb Wallace said with a lot of the people coming from Clark County, C-TRAN has property for additional park and ride area so people coming from Clark County will have the option to park in Clark County.
In the I-5 corridor Phil Sellinger said the focus is on two MAX stations. Originally a transit center was looked at at the Expo station. They realized that the connections into that station off of Marine Drive were just too challenging. They are now looking at retaining a park and ride at the Expo Center as overflow for another transit facility at Portland International Raceway (PIR). Mr. Sellinger had large schematic display maps of the project and explained the design. Kay Van Sickel said this project is a good example of many players working together to come up with the solution of the facility at PIR.
Chris Lassen asked when airport MAX is completed, what the travel time would be to travel from Gresham to the airport. Mr. Sellinger said an estimate would be the time it takes to get to Gateway (+/-15 minutes) plus 8 minutes. Coming from Gresham, you would transfer to get to the airport. Coming from Portland, it would be a direct trip to the airport.
Dean Lookingbill said for Washington transportation initiatives, I-745 was the initiative that would spend 90% of all transportation money on roads was defeated. This is a good indication statewide of endorsement of the fact that people want to have choices. Gail Spolar said 58.2% voted it down with all counties having a PTBA voting it down. Mr. Lookingbill said at this point a US Senate race is still up in the air. Regarding the Legislature, Don Wagner said with some very close races, it looks like we will have a Democratic Governor, a democratic Senate by one seat, and a democratic House by one seat. Initiative 722, which is a rollback of I-695, had a direct tie to transportation in that from the local community standpoint some of the transportation dollars come out of property taxes and roll back the property taxes to 1999 level (2% maximum increase) and this passed. Two other initiatives relating to schools, one dealt with the pay for teachers that requires that they get cost of living raises annually to keep up with the cost of living and that passed. The other initiative that reduced class size in schools passed also. Both of these will be a burden on the State General Fund and in the state of Washington, transportation generally has a fair share coming out of the general fund. With no increased revenues, this means the share that was going to transportation is on a downward slide. The significance of that is that he is working on a budget reduction for his area.
Rod Monroe said the Oregon legislature, both Houses will be under Republican control. Statewide officials are all Democrats except one and a Democratic Governor. Measure 88, which cuts income tax revenues, passed. Measure 91 was defeated. Measure 7 passed taking land and paying property owners for any zoning or land use regulations that somehow diminished the value of their land. That will be tied up in court for quite some time. Charlie Hales said Hillsboro, West Linn and Bend were cities that had civic leaders that were pro growth for quite some time. This election threw them out and replaced them with anti growth leaders.
Rod Monroe said there was previous discussion of the channel deepening. He introduced the possibility of a meeting of transportation leaders and legislative leaders from both Washington and Oregon to discuss how to get the channel deepening approved and funding for high-speed rail. Larry Paulson, Port of Vancouver, said in regard to funding from the Washington side, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation (BRCT) Report is due out in December. This could impact transportation funding plans over at least the next biennium or longer. This will be a challenge to raise the additional matching funds. There is a concern on the Washington side to maintain the momentum and not let it fall off so we can remain in line for the necessary funding. We need to do this either by letter or by the meeting with the transportation leaders. He encouraged that once the transportation chair is established for each respective committee, contact them through the Bi-State Committee or from both RTC and Metro/JPACT. Rod Monroe said we could do both. He suggested a meeting in January because it will be early in the session and easier to get all together. He suggested the meeting to be at the Port of Vancouver (half way between Olympia and Salem) and see if we can get legislative leaders such as transportation committee chairs of House and Senate, Speaker of House and Senate and local legislatures from both Washington and Oregon that represent the area of the I-5 corridor. Ed Barnes said that the House Revenue Chairs should be invited as well. It was noted that the Ways and Means Committee would be more appropriate from Oregon, which is a joint House/Senate Committee. It was also noted that both Governors should be invited as well.
Dave Lohman said that they are getting some very encouraging support from the Oregon congress and the Governor himself in taking a more active role on this project.
There were no citizens wishing to comment.
The next Bi-State Transportation Committee meeting will be on January 25, 2001, at Metro.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:12 a.m.
Dean Lookingbill
Transportation Director, RTC
360-397-6067Andy Cotugno
Transportation Director, Metro
503-797-1763
       
|