MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING

Wednesday, October 17 2002

Council Chamber

Present:    Rex Burkholder (Chair), Bill Atherton (Vice Chair), Rod Monroe

Chair Burkholder called the meeting to order at 10:07 a.m.

1.  CITIZEN COMMUNICATIONS ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS

None.

2.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE SEPTEMBER 5, 2002 TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING.

3.  Related Committee Updates (No Action Requested: Information Only)

•  Bi-State Transportation Committee

Councilor Monroe reported that he had traveled to Olympia, at the request of Bi-State leaders from Clark County, as part of a panel presenting the I-5 Trade Study recommendations to the Washington Transportation Committee and answer questions about those recommendations. They had requested an elected official from Oregon take part as they wanted the Washington Legislature to know Oregon is serious about the plan and that it was really a bi-state effort, and not wishful thinking on the part of Clark County. He said the majority of the committee was very receptive to the plans.

•  JPACT

Councilor Monroe said JPACT had talked about the UGB decisions and the transportation/land use interplay. He noted that Councilor Burkholder would lead the next JPACT meeting, as he would be out of town.

•  Southwest Washington RTC Board

None.

•  South Corridor Policy Advisory Group

Councilor Monroe reported Multnomah County had discussed some concerns with Richard Brandman about the Hawthorne Bridge as a possible light rail route, and now wanted to be included in the South Corridor Policy Advisory Group. He said Diane Linn would be appointing Maria Rojo de Steffey, who is also their JPACT representative, to serve. He said the group’s work is going well and is very intertwined with the work of the Transportation Task Force. He added that the Transportation Task Force appeared ready to designate Milwaukie Light Rail with the new Caruthers Bridge and with the mall alignment serving Portland State as the number one transit project identified for funding by the Task Force. He said they believed 205 could be funded without additional task force money, so that is a go assuming the EIS turns out favorably.

4.  TEA-21/PROJECT LIST DRAFT UPDATE

Chair Burkholder asked the committee to review the criteria for reauthorization earmarks (see copy of memo to JPACT from Andy Cotugno included in the agenda packet with the permanent record of this meeting) and say whether they are comfortable with them, and to name the regionally important projects on the list that the committee felt were key pieces for the lobbyists to focus on. Councilor Monroe agreed they should identify and emphasize high priority regional projects they want funded and let the local governments deal with the less expensive local projects. He also thought they should do everything they could to encourage the Oregon/Southwest Washington Regional Congressional Delegation to support efforts to grow the pot of money for transit and transportation efforts. Chair Burkholder noted other policy objectives to maintain flexibility and a variety of other things that should be brought back before they start pushing things. He asked for staff input on top transit projects and which regional highway, livability and job access priorities were critical.

Andy Cotugno, Planning Director, reviewed projects from the memo. He felt JPACT should define a higher order set of projects and add on projects. He felt there should be a mixture of both large and small projects as part of the difficulty was the unpredictability of what may happen in Washington DC regarding projects that individual representatives might want to take on, how the overall process would be carried out, and what opportunities would present themselves. He urged not being too focused. He thought the MTIP criteria made sense, with centers and industrial areas being the two key priorities. Councilor Monroe commented that the Bi-State Committee was broadening their scope because they were concerned, as I-5 Corridor recommendations are implemented and freight mobility and people movement are improved within the region, that they protect industrial lands and not allow inappropriate development at those new intersections. Councilor Atherton asked how complete communities would fit into the criteria. Chair Burkholder suggested Criteria 5 would take care of that as it mentions land use plans. Mr. Cotugno commented that the list is intentionally expansive and the next step would be to narrow it. He reviewed the Regional New Start Priorities and talked about some bus and trolley projects that were being worked on. Councilor Monroe said he had recently learned that if the Lake Oswego Trolley Project happened, the value of the right of way could be counted as part of our local match contribution. Richard Brandman, Corridor Planning, said the small starts proposal was gaining steam in Washington D.C. He said Congressman Blumenauer was championing the program and finding a lot of supporters for it. The Federal Transportation Administration seemed to be embracing the notion of a small starts program and if such a program was created, they were considering it not being a new categorical program, but part of the existing Regional New Start Priorities program. He said they were still working with TriMet and D.C. lobby staff to understand how this will or will not be a benefit to this region.

Mr. Cotugno reviewed the Regional Highway Priorities and Regional Livability and Job Access Priorities. He felt a mixture of large and small projects would be best here, as well. He was concerned about some feedback from the City of Milwaukie. They seemed to be somewhat frustrated about how to participate in this process. He said that was understandable as this process was much more political and speculative and they didn’t really have the staff resources to follow it through. Chair Burkholder said when he looked at the list he looked at projects without local advocates that would good for Metro to push, i.e. regional culvert retrofit and Boeckman Road in Wilsonville.

Mr. Brandman commented that at RailVolution there had been many sessions where members of Congress of staff from key committees came to talk about what is happening. He said there was tremendous interest at staff and congressional level of growing the whole pot and making substantially more transportation revenues available, i.e., indexing the gas tax, potentially retroactively. He said there was some talk about more local control over state highway funds in metropolitan areas. He said he had been informed that it was not even on the screen, but they were advocating for more definitive roles for CMAQ funds. He said the good news was that there were Democrats and Republicans sitting together saying they did not see transportation as a partisan issue.

5.  TRANSPORTATION INITIATIVES TASK FORCE UPDATE

Mr. Brandman distributed handouts to facilitate the discussion (see copies of Suggested Freeway Projects, Suggested Community Transportation Projects, Option 1 – TriMet Doesn’t Sell 1994 Bond, and a memo to Revenue Sub-Committee Metro Transportation Finance Task Force from Mark Ford re: Funding Ideas included with the permanent record of this meeting). He gave a general overview of the projects that the subcommittee had been discussing to narrow the set of things that would be considered by the full task force so they would have a somewhat realistic list. He said the subcommittee and the full committee had tried to establish a general rule that anything that moved forward had to be popular and supported by the voters, had to be able to be accomplished in a reasonable timeframe, and had to fit within the themes of livability, economics, and/or movement of freight. He said the work had been broken down into categories of big highway projects, big transit projects, and smaller road and bicycle projects. He noted that some, but not all, of the projects on the list had been on ODOT’s list and in the RTP for a period of time. He said this was suggesting that $250 Million of those projects were at least worthy of being tested in a survey that the task force hoped to conduct to determine whether they were popular projects.

Chair Burkholder said he had recently seen a summary of the Let’s Talk conferences which, while not a scientific survey, showed a preponderance of opinion was not towards large scale project, and specifically that a lot of people feel that regional highway projects were enough to keep them away from large scale projects in general, including rail and transit projects. Mr. Brandman said they had shared the results fro the conference with the task force and it had been quite helpful because the general mindset on the project subcommittee had been the other way. Mr. Brandman noted that the last project on the freeway list was not actually a freeway project, but was on the list in response to a letter Mike Burton had received from Representative Bruce Starr about an I-5/Highway 99 connector. He explained the bus rapid transit (BRT) projects and the community transportation projects. Councilor Monroe commented that many of the revenue sources fell under constitutional limitations of the use of funds for highway and road projects only because they were vehicle related. He said finding a revenue source for transit is more difficult.

Councilor Atherton asked if there had been any discussion of “road rent”. Mr. Brandman said tolling and variable pricing had come up, and the committee had discussed those, but there were limited opportunities for road rent.

6.  SOUTH CORRIDOR EIS UPDATE

Ross Roberts, Corridor Planning, presented a PowerPoint update about the South Corridor Project (see hard copy of PowerPoint presentation, South Corridor Project Update, included with the permanent record of this meeting). He noted that Metro and TriMet had been going door to door asking about people’s views of this project. A lot of public concerns are focused on noise and vibration, security, traffic, etc. He said the South Corridor continues to be a strong corridor in general for transit ridership and demand for park and ride in the Milwaukie and I-205 corridors are very high. Chair Burkholder asked about how the efficiency of I-205 was affected by the very few pedestrian/bike crossings and part of the ridership was on the other side of the freeway. Mr. Roberts said it would obviously be ideal to have a line with development all the way around it within the walking area for the line, but the interesting thing about I-205 is that the existing radial bike and pedestrian connection gives really good access to the side of the freeway that the line is running on. He said there was a pedestrian over crossing at Main Street that you can get from a neighborhood to the Main Street Station from west to east pretty easily. The rest of the crossings would have to be on existing overpasses, which was not ideal. There is such a high level of bus service on the radial lines, i.e. Hawthorne, Division, Holgate, Burnside, Glisan, etc., that helps mitigate that issue. Councilor Monroe said the stations are where there are freeway crossings. He added that the right-of-way is still on the east side in the area of the Adventist Hospital where there is new high-density development that would be served.

Mr. Ross reviewed capital costs of the projects and some design options that would save some dollars. In response to a question from Chair Burkholder, Mr. Ross said the Caruthers Crossing concept fit into the Downtown LRT Capacity Study as one of the things they are looking at. He said they were wrestling, in the EIS study and with the downtown business community, with whether the Hawthorne Bridge is acceptable given its challenges, which could push them back to the notion of a new bridge if they did the Milwaukie line. He felt the Caruthers Crossing was a pretty good idea from the beginning. Mr. Brandman said, with respect to the Hawthorne and Caruthers crossings, that they would be able to share information on all the crossings when they come back to the committee. He said the downtown study work would get blended into the EIS results so all the facts will be available for the committee to consider. Councilor Monroe noted that it was common knowledge that the Caruthers route was superior to the Hawthorne, and that it was a matter of dollars whether or not they went that way. He noted the Task Force recommendations they had discussed earlier had assumed the Caruthers and downtown mall alignments.

Councilor Atherton asked if there was any interest in weight-mile charges for vehicles. Mr. Brandman said various means had been discussed at the Revenue Subcommittee, such as the weight-mile for heavier autos, emission standards, and fuel efficiency. He said there had been many different points of view, and they finally decided that going away from the present format was a very controversial notion that might be better addressed at the state level. He said getting away from the gas tax to some mileage based tax was coming in the future.

7.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS

None.

ADJOURN

There being no further business to come before the Transportation Committee, Chair Burkholder adjourned the meeting at 12:09 p.m.

Prepared by

Cheryl Grant

Council Assistant

Attachments to the Public Record for the

Transportation Committees Meeting of October 17, 2002

Testimony Cards:

None.