MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING

Tuesday, July 20, 1999

Council Chamber

CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL

Vice Chair Bragdon called the meeting to order at 3:30 PM.

1.  CONSIDERATION OF MINUTES OF THE JUNE 8, 1999, TRANSPORTATION PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING AND THE JUNE 14, 1999, JOINT METRO COUNCIL TRANSPORTATION PLANNING/JPACT PUBLIC HEARING.

Councilor Atherton requested consideration of the minutes be postponed until Chair Kvistad could be present. Vice Chair Bragdon suggested considering the June 14 joint public hearing minutes as Chair Kvistad had been away on Metro business during that time, and postponing consideration of the June 8 regular meeting minutes until his return.

2.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2808, FOR THE PURPOSE OF AMENDING THE METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (MTIP) TO PROGRAM THE JOB ACCESS AND REVERSE COMMUTE GRANT PROGRAM BETWEEN CANBY AND WILSONVILLE.

Vice Chair Bragdon commented that JPACT had approved this resolution the week before last but several concerns had been raised. He said Mr. Cotugno would explain the technical revisions that had been drafted to address those concerns.

Andrew Cotugno, Director, Metro Transportation Department, explained that although Metro did not actually disburse the federal transportation dollars, in order for the funds to be disbursed in the Metro region, Metro must authorize disbursement of those funds. He said this particular program involved a grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to the Oregon Department of Energy to develop a reverse-commute access-to-jobs program. The money would come from a discretionary fund category the FTA had made available nationally through a competitive process. The program aimed to help move people from welfare to work and emphasized low-income people’s access to jobs. He said this particular application focused on jobs in the Wilsonville area; Tri-Met received a separate award last month that dealt with access to jobs in the rest of the region.

The Department of Energy had proposed to work in partnership with Wilsonville’s South Metro Area Rapid Transit (SMART) and the transportation-consulting firm of Aegis Corporation for this application. One of the aspects of the proposed program was a real-time ride-share program whereby major employers would access a large pool of lower-end workers through a dispatching service which connected people who could offer rides with those who needed rides to and from work. He noted that no one was certain this type of program would work, but thought it would be worth testing. Wilsonville would be a good place to test this idea because SMART could provide the dispatching service and back-up with their own SMART vehicles in the event no ride-share was available. He said in addition, SMART had been looking for a way to develop regular service to low-density areas such as Canby and Newburg. He felt this could be a good beginning.

Mr. Cotugno said safety was one of the issues raised at the JPACT meeting. They wondered who would be providing the rides and what assurances people would have about their safety. He said his amendment required that the safety issue be addressed before the program was implemented.

Vice Chair Bragdon commented that the safety issue was a two-way street involving not only who would be driving, but also who would be riding.

Mr. Cotugno said another issue that had been at JPACT were what seemed to be very high start-up costs. He felt those high costs suggested that the program would not be cost-effective given the anticipated number of riders. To address that concern, he proposed requiring an audit of expenses at one- and two-year milestones to distinguish start-up from operating costs.

Mr. Cotugno said the FTA had selected this grant and wanted to award it but could not unless Metro approved an amendment to the TIP to include this program. He reminded the committee that Metro was being asked to approve the amendment, not the program itself which concerned a contract between the federal government and the Oregon Department of Energy. He said this resolution made it known that Metro had specific concerns that required answers, as the program moved forward, to help Metro decide whether this type of program should be embraced in the future.

Councilor Atherton agreed with the recommended amendments. He asked about governmental liability. He thought it should be addressed in the Safety and Security and Liability Plan.

Mr. Cotugno thought the liability would rest with SMART but did not want to answer legal questions.

Vice Chair Bragdon said he had been among those at JPACT who had been concerned about excessive overhead. He thought it was worth a try because the point of an experiment was to monitor the results and understand where the money was going. He noted that more than two-thirds of the $300,000, $216,000, would go to administration, project management, or administration systems integration, all of which appeared to be overhead. He said part of the appeal of a program like this should be offering a service at lower cost than a conventional service. He felt Mr. Cotugno’s proposed amendments addressed his concerns.

Councilor Atherton saw this as a glorified hitch-hiking service and suggested it might be more efficient for SMART to offer on-call jitney services.

Vice Chair Bragdon asked if any communication needed to go back to JPACT in consideration of the two concerns. Mr. Cotugno proposed sending a letter back to JPACT with a final copy of the resolution with amendments, indicating what had been changed as a result of the JPACT discussions.

Chair Kvistad will carry Resolution No. 99-2808A to a meeting of the full Council.

3.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2809, FOR THE PURPOSE OF AMENDING THE METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (MTIP) TO PROGRAM SECTION 5309 FUNDS FOR REHABILITATION AND EXPANSION OF THE POWELL BUS GARAGE.

Mr. Cotugno said this amendment would allow Tri-Met to begin expending local general funds on the bus garage expansion and be reimbursed by federal funds if they were received. He said anything under the transit fund categories in the TIP could incur local costs and receive reimbursement if the grant came through. He said Tri-Met planned to expand the garage regardless.

He noted that Metro had endorsed getting discretionary federal funds as part of the region’s federal priorities program adopted last February. One of those priorities requested more money for this bus garage and this amendment allowed it to be included in the TIP with the local funds so Tri-Met could begin incurring costs now. He said the grant might not come through for a year or two but with this, the engineering work could begin now.

Vice Chair Bragdon verified that this was in the federal position paper adopted by the Council and JPACT.

Councilor Atherton asked whether this was bus money or not.

Mr. Cotugno said bus money had been requested and remained a request. This amendment would allow Tri-Met to use general funds to begin the garage with the hope of being reimbursed later. It would put the bus garage expansion into the TIP so that when and if the bus money came through, it could be used to reimburse Tri-Met for the general funds already spent.

Councilor Atherton asked if it came through, could the bus money be used to reimburse the flexible funds. He asked for clarification as to whether the bus garage would be using strictly local money.

Vice Chair Bragdon responded that the money could not be used to reimburse flexible funds because flexible funds had not been allocated to the bus garage. He said it would be Tri-Met local money.

Councilor Atherton was concerned about the bookkeeping.

Vice Chair Bragdon responded that it was an accounting issue that had already been approved as policy. He said it had been discussed and approved at a JPACT meeting two weeks ago.

Mr. Cotugno said Metro and Tri-Met had asked for an appropriation of discretionary bus money to do the garage which might or might not come through. He noted that by putting this amendment into the TIP, Tri-Met could start incurring costs and get reimbursed if the bus money came through. He said because Tri-Met would do the expansion regardless, they could face spending all $16,500,000 of its local funds and not get reimbursed at all. He felt Tri-Met should go ahead and spend $500,000 for design work now, with the chance of getting reimbursed if the bus money came through. He said this money was requested of the FTA for this purpose only and the decision to grant the money was theirs.

Vice Chair Bragdon will carry Resolution 99-2809 to a meeting of the full Council.

4.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2810, FOR THE PURPOSE OF AUTHORIZING RELEASE OF THE 1999 UPDATE TO THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION PLAN FOR JURISDICTIONAL AND PUBLIC COMMENT.

Mr. Cotugno said this resolution would allow the public outreach and adoption process to begin. It said the work drafted to date on framing a policy chapter of the RTP and defining a set of projects needed to implement that policy chapter, was sufficient to write up into the RTP. He said the RTP would then go out for public review, jurisdictional comment, and hearings as part of the adoption process this fall.

He said the policy framework for the RTP had undergone several iterations before finally being adopted by the Metro Council in 1996. Aspects of that policy framework were amended by the Regional Framework Plan and Urban Growth Management Function Plan, particularly those components that addressed highway level and transit level service, non single-occupancy-vehicle (SOV) targets, connectivity, and street design standards.

He said this document took the work adopted in 1996 and added the refinements that had since been incorporated into the Regional Framework Plan and the Urban Growth Management Function Plan. He commented that this document assimilated all the past work and gathered the whole policy direction for transportation in the region in one place.

He said two rounds of modeling had been completed to assess the travel demands created by the 2040 growth concept and what was needed to service those demands. He said this set of improvements met those needs and the policy direction set forth in the Chapter 1 of the policy framework and the 2040 Growth Concept.

He said the meeting packet included comments received from MTAC and TPAC. MTAC and TPAC had recommended adoption of attachment “B” by consent as had JPACT and MPAC. MTAC and TPAC had singled out two issues they thought were substantial enough for discussion rather than simple adoption by consent. He said those issues were reflected in attachment “A” and included 1) the characteristics of TV Highway through Washington County, and 2) the entire Damascus area and its impact on Powell Boulevard as it entered the Metro area. He commented that those areas represented major changes from past direction.

Councilor Atherton expressed concern about the Table of Contents. He requested a section in Chapter 1 that addressed financing this plan, to be marked “in progress”. He felt that would help focus attention on this issue as the document moved through the public review and comment process. His main concern was for that issue to be highlighted.

Mr. Cotugno recommended that financing the RTP be a component of the implementation chapter. He agreed with highlighting the fact that this issue was in progress. He said the policy chapter was intended to present a vision of what the system would look like and the implementation chapter had been planned to include a financing component.

Vice Chair Bragdon thought it was a good idea to make people aware of the costs and the consequences of the plans.

Councilor Atherton said implementing his suggestion would require a bigger change than that. He said he was recommending a policy statement.

Vice Chair Bragdon asked for a motion.

Councilor Atherton moved to change the table of contents to include a sub-section under Regional Transportation Policies about paying for the system, and in place of a page number, put “in progress” or “incomplete.”

Vice Chair Bragdon said he agreed with Mr. Cotugno that this belonged in the implementation section, so he did not plan to support it. He added that he agreed the plan should highlight the fact that these things have price tags.

Councilor Atherton asked about the time considerations for this resolution. Mr. Cotugno answered that they had hoped for action by the Council on August 5. Councilor Atherton offered to move this forward without recommendation.

Chair Kvistad will carry the resolution to the full Council.

5.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2811, FOR THE PURPOSE OF APPROVING THE SOUTH WILLAMETTE RIVER CROSSING STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS.

Chris Deffebach, Senior Transportation Planner, Metro Transportation Department, said this resolution was a request to approve the recommendations from the South Willamette River Crossing Study. Those recommendations included 1) keeping the Sellwood Bridge as a two-lane bridge; 2) mitigating traffic where it conflicted with other land-use goals; 3) increasing transit services; and 4) focusing investments on regional facilities such as Highway 99 and McLoughlin. She said the Ross Island and I-205 bridges would be studied as regional problems and not as substitutes for the Sellwood Bridge. She noted that other long-term studies would look at jobs in the I-205 corridor and Clackamas County areas. She commented that the recommendations recognized Tacoma Street should not be a major arterial, and that its designation should be changed in the RTP from major arterial to minor arterial accompanied by a change in design standard from a regional street to a community boulevard.

She called the committee’s attention to the agenda packet which included the report, the documents, the recommendations, a staff report, and a summary of public comments on this issue. She noted 70% of the comments favored the recommendations with a request for more transit service in the area and more attention to the Ross Island Bridge. She said 30% of the comments had expressed disappointment that more capacity had not been recommended for the Sellwood Bridge.

Mr. Cotugno summarized that the Council had originally approved a study of several alternative river crossings from the Ross Island Bridge to the I-205 corridor. Those results were taken to JPACT who asked the affected jurisdictions (the cities of Portland, Milwaukie, and Lake Oswego; the counties of Multnomah and Clackamas; ODOT, Tri-Met, and Metro) to study the alternatives together and collaborate on a solution. He said that group recommended a new Milwaukie oriented bridge rather than either enhancement or replacement of the Sellwood Bridge. That recommendation was then taken to JPACT who asked for public comment. A public hearing was held in June and the only major change from the JPACT’s recommendation was the change in the functional classification of Tacoma Street, downgrading it to a minor arterial to match a two-lane Sellwood Bridge rather than a four-lane Sellwood Bridge. He said related to that would be a change in the street-design classification from street to boulevard which emphasized non-auto uses consistent with a local main street.

Mr. Cotugno said in response to a question from Councilor Atherton, that if substantive changes were made, the document would have to go back to JPACT, but if they were editorial, it would not.

Councilor Atherton expressed concern over the reference to Clackamas County in the statement “...efforts should focus on bringing more jobs to Clackamas County to reduce the need to travel across the river for work trip.” He asked why the Clackamas County border was important in this context.

Mr. Cotugno responded that this was not meant to speak to a jurisdictional boundary, but to refer generally to a geographic location east of the river area from Milwaukie to Oregon City. He said the area exported a lot of workers, many of whom headed west across the river via the Sellwood Bridge. He said if more jobs were developed on the east side it could reduce the need to commute across the river.

Councilor Atherton thought most of the people who crossed the Sellwood Bridge were headed to downtown.

Ms. Deffebach said less than 1% of the 30,000 trips each day went downtown. She said travel was largely in an east-west pattern with traffic going to John’s Landing and Marquam Hill, but said most of the downtown traffic used the Ross Island or other bridges to downtown.

Councilor Atherton said he classified John’s Landing and Marquam Hill as downtown.

Vice Chair Bragdon noted that according to a chart in the meeting packet, 70% of the travel was suburb to suburb.

Ms. Deffebach noted a map on page 15 of the report illustrated the Sellwood travel shed. She said a table on page 13 showed the length of the trips for those crossing the Sellwood Bridge was as great as that for those crossing the Ross Island. She said this indicated that the bridge functioned more like a regional connection than a local one.

Councilor Atherton expressed concern over the need to bring more jobs to Clackamas County.

Vice Chair Bragdon suggested making it clear that this meant bringing more jobs to east Clackamas County, not to Wilsonville or Lake Oswego. He said he would ask that the resolution be amended to so read.

Councilor Atherton questioned the usefulness of county boundaries.

Vice Chair Bragdon will carry the resolution to a meeting of the full Council.

6.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATION

None.

ADJOURN

There being no further business before the committee, Vice Chair Bragdon adjourned the meeting at 4:30 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Cheryl Grant

Council Assistant