Two items of note from today’s meeting of the Seattle City Council Transportation Committee, chaired by West Seattle resident Councilmember Tom Rasmussen:

SNOW RESPONSE: The committee quizzed the leaders of SDOT and Metro as well as a WSDOT rep about what went wrong during last month’s snow/ice road/transit woes, and what will be done differently next time. Among the toplines:

–SDOT will change its “brine” mix (which is reported to have diluted and frozen, causing some of the icing problems on November 22nd) to magnesium chloride

–The city needs up to six more spreaders for rock salt and sand and is looking into getting them ($25,000 each)

(November 23 photo by Katie Meyer, taken just west of The Junction)
–Why did Metro keep using its articulated buses, which don’t seem to function well in such conditions? Boss Kevin Desmond says if they would have grounded them all, they would have had dramatically reduced capacity to get people around. He says articulated buses were 57% of all stalled/stuck buses that week.

–Why did some West Seattle roads including Admiral Way seem somewhat neglected, particularly the western section (photo above is from midday November 23, courtesy Vanessa Fox)? SDOT’s Peter Hahn admitted, “We were a little slow getting there,” blaming factors including the fact it was Thanksgiving week so a lot of regular drivers were off and some of the fill-ins didn’t know the area so well.

–Why was the online bus tracker turned off? Desmond said “maybe” they should leave it up in future cases, but he reiterated that it would have had no “predictive” capability, and stressed again that within a couple years, Metro buses will all have GPS. And he once again urged all bus riders to sign up for text/e-mail alerts (go here), saying the number of people signed up has doubled since they began a promotional campaign (which includes WSB advertising) in early November – from 11,000 signed up, to 22,000.

SOUNDWAY RIGHT-OF-WAY ‘VACATION’: This has been six years in the making, as Seattle Parks‘ Donald Harris noted when the committee got to this item (with a big community backstory, explained here, also as noted in comments on one of our earliest stories a couple years ago; here’s a media-coverage archive). It involves 33 acres of the West Duwamish Greenbelt near South Seattle Community College that technically is on the books as city right-of-way, even though it was never turned into streets (except for one service road, seen in city photo at left) – or housing, as was discussed before community leaders put up a fight. The acreage known as the “Soundway Property” will be transferred to the Parks Department, and West Seattle-based Nature Consortium will have a major role in overseeing it as part of the city’s largest greenbelt. NC leader Nancy Whitlock was at the committee table for today’s pre-vote discussion, pointing out that her organization has already planted 10,000 native conifers and 13,000 other native plants in the WDG. As noted earlier, a $500,000 state grant, which will help provide for stewardship of the site, is also linked to this. “This has been a long road,” smiled Whitlock just before the committee’s unanimous vote to “vacate” the longstanding right of way. Here’s the ordinance, which won’t be finalized until a vote by the full council next month. Want to get a closer look? It’s usually part of the NC’s monthly eco-hike route, and their next one is scheduled for 1 pm this Friday (e-mail lisa@naturec.org to RSVP).