That’s the scene from the first half of last night’s transportation forum presented by the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce — the first hour was open-house format, so attendees could get information on virtually every major transportation project that’s about to affect West Seattleites; the second was Q/A moderated by CR Douglas. WSB contributor Evan Baumgardner covered the Q/A session — we thought that you might like to know exactly what was asked, and exactly how it was answered — Evan’s transcription follows:

Six panelists:
Stuart Goldsmith, Project Manager, Spokane St. Viaduct and Surface Project
Gary Wollander, Port of Seattle East Marginal Way Grade Separation Project
John White, representing Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Project
Chris Arkills, County Councilmember Dow Constantine’s office/King County Ferry District
Karl Otterstrom, King County Metro
Jack Lattemann – Metro RapidRide

CR: Briefly tell us what the community is in store for with the Surface Spokane St. closures next week.
SG: The lower roadway of Spokane between 1st and 4th Ave Eastbound, will close to traffic Sept. 16th and stay closed potentially up to 2 years as the new Eastbound off ramp construction begins. Westbound remains open for the first year.

CR: If someone uses that every day what are your plans?
SG: You can take the upper roadway, or you can take the detour route. Basically you go up 1st Ave and then down Lander

CR: In terms of the upper portion of Spokane St. when does that get closed if ever?
SG: The upper roadway does not get closed, that’s the good news. The bad news is the lower roadway will have to be closed for construction.

CR: What is the point of doing anything to elevated Spokane?
SG: We are widening it 41 feet to the north, adding lanes and shoulders, adding a new eastbound 2 lane exit ramp east bound which will give better access to surface streets and SODO. Better flow to and from West Seattle. The new ramp is going to be sort of an overload lane that people will use when I-5 is congested.

CR: Gary, the East Marginal Way Grade Separation Project, when is it going to be done?
GW: At the end of 2010. We are waiting for City Light to move their grid to the side and then we will carry on with our construction. The schedule for that is May 2009, then we will continue with the main structure. Right now we are continuing on smaller projects, such as utility relocation and column relocation underneath the Alaskan Viaduct. This work will likely carry on for another 6 months in that area.

CR: Fast forward to completion what will that do?
GW: By elevating Duwamish Avenue it will eliminate 3 blockages from rail traffic by having that elevated structure.

CR: On to John, in terms of the south segment, how much of the viaduct either north or south will have to be closed?
JW: Our plan in the south end project is to replace the existing viaduct between South Holgate Street, in the middle of the rail yards up through King Street, that is the length. It is roughly 40% of the entire length of the viaduct we are looking at replacing. It will be 3 lanes much as it is today, but more of it will be at surface grade and the only part where we elevate is when we cross the railway and at the stadium district.

CR: I know this is primarily a safety project because of the fill, but beyond that fast-forward to the completion, how does that help West Seattle?
JW: I think in the end what you will see in terms of getting to and from downtown will be very similar to what you see today. An intersection allowing getting off in the stadium district, a connection into central downtown at King Street. In those ways it is very similar. The big question will be what ultimately are we connecting in to?

CR: Once the decision is made of what to do with the Central Waterfront section, will this new south segment at least help get in and out of downtown once the central is closed?
JW: The strategy is to get the south end in place so people going to and from have access, we are working with metro to provide supplemental service during construction. We are doing everything to give people the best options when the central waterfront section closes.

CR: Chris, let me ask you about the ferry. As all these projects happen, a lot of people want more ferry service. What have you got to offer?
CA: Well, last Nov. King County set up the King County Ferry District in response to the state looking to discontinue the Vashon Ferry; the second was to provide a permanent funding source to the Elliot Bay Water Taxi. It is countywide to keep property tax low, and the plan is to take over and expand the Vashon ferry, to make water taxi year round with better boats and docking facilities beginning in Jan of 2010, and establish 5 demo routes and establish permanent routes, one is Kirkland/UW, other from Renton, Des Moines, Kenmore. West Seattle to Downtown ferry service, year round, full time will begin in 2010. We are looking at expanding shuttle service to and from the ferry as well. It will take a couple of years to build a dock and purchase boats. The current dock at Seacrest, the float that is there is not very stable and we will have to replace it. It would not survive the winter even without the ferry docking there.

CR: How much extra bus services does West Seattle get immediately and in the near future?
CO: Three things, working with state and construction mitigation, buying busses early, 2nd is RapidRide, 3rd working on state regarding long term solutions on the viaduct. On the first note, what we are looking at is a few major objectives, 1st is mitigate the impact of congestion, 2nd is advancing things such as rapid ride and implement them earlier, 3rd is building ridership in other corridors and meeting demand that exists. In our conceptual service plan, we had better service on the 54, every 15 minutes, elongating the peak on the 56 and 21 Express. First routes will be in 2009, add service that September and focus it on the worst congested periods, 2011, 2012, as commuting gets worse we will ramp up.

CR: Jack, in terms of BRT that sounds more like a more permanent policy.
JL: Yes. Where this is really headed is a better transit network in West Seattle. Given the increase in gasoline prices and record setting ridership. Ridership normally July and August is the lowest of the year, and July we carried 407k annual riders, which is 8 or 9k more than in may. It has actually gone up this year not down for the first time I can remember in 20 years of working with Metro. We have to build more perm transit capability, make it more useful, to more people, at more times of the day, seven days a week. And the rapid route line is but one line we call it line C, will be lettered routes, will run until at least 10pm 7 days a week, faster loading and unloading. Get off at any door; the idea is to keep the service moving. 1/3 of the stops the 54 currently makes. The other routes are part of the 2nd phase, in the middle of this construction, we are going to look at all service around rapid ride and determine how to make use of the resources around this route which does get new resources, so in 2011 when the first phase of viaduct construction is done, we will be able to take advantage of that access and have an improved network in West Seattle.

CR: The line for the BRT is the 54 or basic footprint?
JL: The basic footprint of Rapid Ride is 54. There will also be elaborate shelters, real time stop time info at major stops, and it requires more lead-time than just putting out a bus service. The BRT is due to start in 2011.

CR: You mention mitigation in terms of the viaduct, are you not worried about the Spokane St surface and elevated projects or just the viaduct?
CA: The idea is to add immediate bus service as construction ramps up. It does take a little while to build dock facilities. The same thing with Rapid Ride, you can’t wave a magic wand and have all those things appear immediately.

CR: Have you been modeling how much traffic backup the Spokane St. projects will cause? Since it sounds like the service never closed.
SG: We have done some modeling fairly recently, of course we are displacing traffic from lower roadway, but that does not affect Metro transit.

CR: Gary, how often do those roads have to be closed or blocked for trains?
GW: The train blockage is primarily on East Marginal. There are more blockages at night, 1 or 2 times a day, but it seems to be every time I go down there. That’s not really the truth. If you stay on Spokane St. surface you would stay on and take a left on East Marginal going northbound. That is awkward as you go into downtown. There is the Spokane St. Viaduct, which does allow you to go northbound, that would be the more preferable route to go downtown.

CR: Are there any plans to have larger ferry boats?
CA: The plan is to go to smaller boats but have them more frequently.

CR: Ok, we will give people a chance to comment. (The Q’s from here are from attendees.)

Q: The figure 30 million for extra bus route service, can you give me a sense of how many routes is that, how many new buses will be operating in West Seattle, and given this period how many people would choose to do more business in WS and are you considering more routes that would make it easier to move around within West Seattle?
CO: 30 million is broken into sub pots, which is a conceptual service plan that it is to serve West Seattle, Burien, Ballard, North Seattle, all these areas affected by viaduct in one form or another, not just West Seattle. No idea on how many busses for conceptual plan, but an additional 76 trips during peak periods. We are looking at one of the lanes on SR99 being a dedicated transit lane. It depends on how the phasing works out. We have a conceptual service plan as a placeholder since we don’t know when the worst congestion is going to be, or which routes will see the greatest ridership increases. There are a list of candidate routes, not only ones that come from West Seattle and go downtown, but also ones that handle internal circulation such as the 128, helping move around in the community. So the money could go to internal WS transportation, but it is not targeted at this point.
JW: There may be some misconception here, and I think the concern here is the timing of sequence. When you talk about replacing the south end of the viaduct the difficulty is when it goes from 6 lanes to 4 lanes, our plan retains 2 lanes in each dir throughout the construction, but that will not get down that low until 2011. You talk about finalizing a plan for bus service, and those things will be in place and done and operational, ahead of going down to less capacity on 99

Q: How many busses feed into the water taxi, is there a parking facility in around or nearby, and is there a plan for improving the ramp for physically disabled people?
CA: I have looked at adding more shuttles a possible one running down Fauntleroy, Morgan Junction serve the south end better than we currently do today, another one that would reach the P&R under the WS freeway which does have a lot of excess capacity, Delridge and to Pigeon Point. We would like to expand the ability to do that, we do have the ability under state legislation to supplement ferry service with existing Metro Service. We lost the 37 on Alki, but it may be more economical for us to help fund additional metro service to reach the water taxi. Parking is a huge problem. There is not much parking at Seacrest. The average cost to build a parking lot or structure runs from 30-60k per stall, and requires a lot of land. We need to do a better job of getting people to the ferry. There are a lot of people who believe that a site at pier 1 or pier 2 on port property would make a good long term solution, but we could not have that in time for 2010. They will be making some ADA improvements to the ramp and lengthen it. It is too short and at low tides it becomes very steep. They are looking at extending it.

Q: All these projects are affecting bicycle commute, this has seen an increase like it has never seen before, do any of you have anything specific to say about the route between here and downtown for bicycles
JW: When it comes to viaduct replacement, all planning retains bicycle and pedestrian routes. When it comes to south end, when it is done and central waterfront, in the end product you will have much enhanced bicycle facilities.
SG: The main route downtown will not be affected. The bike lanes will remain as they are.

Q: I am under the impression that the upper Spokane viaduct will be down to one lane when you try to marry the off ramp to the main lane?
SG: I am glad you asked that. At an earlier part of the projected it looked like we had to do that, but since then we have figured out how to do that without going down to one lane, aside from a couple of short weekend closures. We know that going down to one lane would not work, and fortunately we do not have to do that.

Q: You are going to adjust as you encounter situations but that sounds like something where we will be suffering, will you be able to shorten the timeframe of adjustments?
CO: We already have a process in place with Metro. Every other week we get together and talk about things that need to change, things we did not expect, construction coordinators, helping reroute busses when we need to, we will be working closely with WADOT. We anticipate six months before, if something we do not foresee happens we will change it as fast as possible. It will be a matter of weeks instead of a matter of months. We will anticipate as best as we can.
JL: We have had some experience with this. Last summer, I-5. This is no different than what we had to do last year with I-5, but it is a longer period of time. We made changes daily, we changed routes daily in order to keep things running smoothly, so we have experience with this. This is no different than last year, other than it is for a longer duration. The process last summer worked pretty darn well. The key was we were geared up and prepared to monitor the situation, and we had good communication with other agencies. That was like a dry run for this project.

CR: Great conversation, great questions. Give yourself a hand and give the panelists a hand.
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More on the individual projects in a WSB followup later today.