A Five Agency Collaboration to Overcome Seattle’s Congestion

Alex Kiheri

King County Metro,Speed and Reliability Engineer,

Seattle, WA

• An Hourglass City

• Current Boom

– People & Construction

• Challenges for transportation

– Increased Congestion

– Regional (Freeway) Impacts on Local Streets

– Moving People

Seattle

Traffic in Seattle

Seattletimes.com

Growth in Seattle

seattleinprogress.com

Seattletimes.com

Transit in Seattle

Metro routes which travel to/from

or through the Seattle City Center

• King Count Metro

– 170,000 Daily Trips

• Sound Transit

– 40,000 Bus

– 35,000 Link

– 9,100 Sounder

• Community Transit

– 7,000

• How to accommodate regional growth

• Congestions impacts on transit

• Construction impacts

– Private and Public

• Disparate Planning

• Investment

Problems Begin to Take Shape

• Five Key Stakeholders

– SDOT

– WSDOT

– KC Metro

– Sound Transit

– Community Transit

Working Towards A Solution

• Develop a forum a where:

– Common issues can be discussed

– Knowledge and data can be shared

– Investments can be mutually agreed to and implemented

• 2014 - Formation of the Downtown Seattle Transit Coordination Committee

Working Towards A Solution

• Keys to successful collaboration

– Participation at all levels of the agency

• Executives, Management, Staff

– Strong facilitation

• In our case we hired a consultant

– A willingness to understand

• Respect for other viewpoints and priorities

Collaboration

• Fundamentals of Understanding – Agencies have differing priorities

– Some agencies have more priorities

– Individuals sometimes have their ownpriorities

– Priorities can’t be ignored

• Strong facilitation– Allows for open and honest discussion

of priorities

– Helps get past old disagreements

Collaboration

• Collaboration without data is not collaboration

– Data establishes needs and challenges

– Sharing data establishes legitimacy

– Collecting, summarizing and preparing data can be expensive

• 2015 DSTC Dashboard

– An example

Sharing Data

• Direction from executives

– Create a tool which combines every agencies data and tells the story of transit within downtown Seattle

• Creation of a data subgroup

– Staff and resources from all agencies

– Development of a common format and goal

– Telling the story together

DSTC Dashboard

DSTC Dashboard

DSTC Dashboard

DSTC Dashboard

• Collaboration and Data have guided smart investment.

– Downtown Transit Improvements

– Mid-range planning for major construction efforts

• Link Light Rail expansion

• SR 99 Tunnel

– Planning for the end of joint Bus and Rail operations in the Downtown Seattle Tunnel.

Investment and Shared Planning

• Benefits of Process for Shared Investment

– Decision Framework (Executive Level)

– Cost Sharing

– Shared Project Delivery

– Accountability

Investment and Shared Planning

A Five Agency Collaboration to Overcome Seattle’s Congestion

Alex Kiheri

King County Metro,Speed and Reliability Engineer,

Seattle, WA