FINAL MEETING SUMMARY Terminal 91 Neighbors Advisory Committee October 22, 2014

Transcription

1 FINAL MEETING SUMMARY Terminal 91 Neighbors Advisory Committee October 22, 2014 Terminal 91 NEIGHBORS ADVISORY COMMITTEE Magnolia Community Club Queen Anne Community Council Port of Seattle ATTENDANCE: Magnolia Community Club: Fred Rapaport Nancy Rogers Tom Tanner Queen Anne Community Council Jim Smith Glenn Avery Charles Bookman Don Harper Ellen Monrad c/o Rosie Courtney Cruise Public Affairs Port of Seattle P.O. Box 1209 Seattle, WA Wk Fax Chair: John Kriese POS: Rosie Courtney, Public Affairs Hilda Ballard, SoundEarth Strategies, Inc., Environmental Consultant Mike McLaughlin, Director of Cruise and Maritime Operations Christine Wolf, Regional Transportation Program Planner Guests: Marni Heffron, Heffron Transportation The regular meeting of the Terminal 91 Neighbors Advisory Committee (NAC) convened at 4:30 PM on Wednesday, October 22, 2014 in Conference Room 2D East, Pier 69. PREVIOUS MEETING SUMMARY Nancy made a motion to approve the September 2014 meeting minutes and Ellen 2 nd the motion. The motion was approved with corrections made to the minutes. T-91 LIGHTING UPDATE Rosie Courtney discussed the status of the lighting installation at the terminal and referenced the she provided to NAC members letting them know that Port staff would conduct a test of the lighting during the early hours of the morning on October 15. Staff chose the early morning time to disturb the least number of people. A follow-up meeting with subcommittee members Nancy and Don is scheduled for Friday morning. The purpose of the subcommittee is to share project information, review test measurements and other information on the lighting between the Port and the neighbors. Mike McLaughlin said he directed staff to turn off all light fixtures that weren t necessary during the initial period of construction. As of today, the fixtures are all installed but there is still work to be done north of the bridge. The lighting fixtures north of the bridge have only one orientation

2 The test that Rosie referred to earlier was conducted at 4:00AM and all lights were turned up to their full intensity. A plot diagram of the test shows the areas of illumination through the facility and that there is a need for adjustment to achieve the goal of lighting area as determined by industry standards and L&I requirements. The fixtures that are the floodlight design are still waiting on the deflector shields. The contractor that is providing the fixtures is waiting on the back order of shields from the vendor and no reorientation will be done until those shields are in and ready to be installed. He doesn t know when they will arrive. The Port will continue installing fixtures north of the bridge (with only one orientation) while they wait for the rest of the controls and shields for the floodlight fixtures. The new controls will allow the Port to dim lights similar to motion sensors in buildings that activate lights. He thinks the Port will be able to achieve a desired outcome and maintain light needed for industrial activities. Mike advised that Jim Anderson and Greg Englin from the Port will join Nancy and Don at the meeting at the terminal on Friday. Rosie said that Greg is meeting with the distributor tomorrow and they may know by Friday when the shields will arrive. Nancy asked if some of the cruise parking lot lights are installed. Mike said they were and Nancy said they are much brighter and are pointing down with no shields. She received an from someone who was concerned that there was a light that was installed that was not pointed to the ground. She asked if the Port is waiting for the shields before readjusting the lights on piers. Nancy asked if there may be potential not to have to add lights if the existing ones can be altered when the shields are added. Mike said that could happen, but right now there are areas that are darker than the range as seen on the plot plan and the Port has to adjust to meet the requirements. Tom said there are two protocols that were previously discussed. 1) How to control the new lights with written standards or protocols on how to manage the controls depending on what is going on in the area. 2) How to control lights from the boats/ships. Tom said the Port staff was clear that the Port has no control over the lighting on the ships but has some influence in terms of dialogue. Tom asked if the Port could include lighting guidelines to ship captains to minimize lighting impacts to the neighbors. In regard to the first point, Mike said that the Port has had high pressure sodium lights with an on/off switch and no controls for the last 30 years and still has terminals with those fixtures. As the Port s lighting gets more sophisticated, it s good to have written guidelines for staff, especially because many are contracted security guards that come and go. There will be a written manual that comes with the controls on the lighting for the staff to use. In regard to the second point, most of the requirements for berthing vessels are more concerned with environmental issues and he does not recall anything in the requirements about the impacts from vessel lighting. He described why more lights are needed on fishing vessels in terms of potential drowning and safety issues. There may be times when the vessel is not in full operation and they could turn down the lighting and the Port will bring that up and see if there are ways to address that concern. Nancy noted that it seems that the fishing vessel lights are on when they come into port and then go off. Mike said the first week or two they are offloading their catch and then they are getting ready to change their ship down to harbor status. Nancy said it would be great to have protocols for both situations. Don said that Jim Anderson called him a couple weeks ago asking about installing the lights in the north area of the parking lot cruise terminal and Don suggested that he wait until all the controls are in to avoid the bright light impacts to the neighbors prior to the controls and completed installation. Don asked what Page 2

3 happened to that suggestion. Mike said he wasn t aware of that suggestion but that there is a difference in what is happening post cruise season and the only time that the parking lot needs security light is if there is an afterhour s event held at the cruise terminal. He doesn t know of any events scheduled there until late February of The plan was to continue with installation with materials and work crews here but not have them operating. Nancy said they are on and are very bright. Don said what is nice about the new lights is that you can dim them and you can also shut off more of them individually so it would be prudent to wait to operate them instead of having people suffer under the current installation. Mike encouraged Don to discuss this concern with Jim and Greg on Friday morning. He was told they were moving forward with installation but not using them because the cruise parking lot is not in service right now. Jim asked if the lights could be dimmed on the long shed type building on Pier 90 that faces Queen Anne. There is a whole string of lights on the gutter of the building. He asked if the Port intends to upgrade those to LEDS. Mike s understanding is that the Port s current lighting investments are only the lights on the light poles. The ones on the shed were probably installed 25 years ago. The building is leased and the tenant controls lights on the exterior of building and are not tied into the pier lighting system. Mike will find out from the tenant if there is a period of time that lighting can be reduced. John asked if Labor & Industries specifies the sensors to use when measuring light and the differences in types of lights. Mike said the engineering consultant took the measurements with the latest meters and the Port wouldn t hire someone who didn t know what the current standards are so they should be accurate and in accordance with all regulations. T-91 TRAFFIC REPORT UPDATE Marni Heffron of Heffron Transportation provided the draft T-91 Traffic Report to the NAC members for review and gave a summary of the results. Tom asked if the count of vehicles was directly associated with the cruise terminal. Marni explained that the report records everything through T- 91 even on non-cruise days so that includes general industrial traffic that enters/exits that terminal. Christine added that the count includes all the people who work on the terminal and drive themselves to work. She said the category for automobile also includes shuttle vans and shuttle express passenger vans. Fred asked for clarification on the threshold levels. Marni said that the Port exceeded the thresholds for a long time even before the cruise terminals opened. She has been involved with the reporting long enough to know that those thresholds were originally established when there was traffic coming through Galer Street and the queues were long in the morning so she doesn t know why the threshold in the morning was set at 395 and PM at 612 because they are not proportional to the times you get there. She suspects that the congestion in the morning that used to exist crossing the railroad tracks was extreme. Marni said that the 2009 reports show the threshold was exceeded but she didn t show 2009 in the charts in this report. Tom asked Marni if she has a sense of the trends in the traffic reports. Marni said she s been looking at trends for years and tracked volumes over the Ballard Bridge since the 1980s and they haven t changed. She discussed capacity issues and factors that could impact capacity such as weather or the number of people using alternative forms of transportation. The group discussed changes that have occurred including Ballard. It was a bedroom community in the 50s and people who lived there worked downtown so it may not be as prevalent of a commute any more. There are many things that contribute to capacity changes. Nancy said she s lived in Magnolia for twelve years and her commute has gone from 16 minutes to an average of 25 minutes. She asked about the potential reasons for this because her experience doesn t match the report. Marni asked about her route and said she thinks the delay may be going into Denny or Page 3

4 Broad Street. She said that some corridors experience substantial increases of delay but not volume. There is speculation that this could be caused by an increased number of incidents. One crash or one stalled vehicle creates an exponential change in delay that affects commute time even if the crash is cleared by the time you get there. Nancy said there hasn t been a reduction in capacity since 2013 or 2011.Christine said that the area around Mercer, 5 th and Dexter has changed dramatically with so many more people living and working in South Lake Union. Marni said these are only three intersections. This section of the Port influence isn t changing much and she doesn t think it will change much but what is beyond Port influence is changing dramatically. Fred said he thinks coordination of lights is different and is a problem. Marni said she heard from SDOT staff this morning about the new system they installed in Mercer Street. They said it works pretty well but it s getting out of sequence so if something happens, the whole system gets out of sequence and it takes them a long time to get it back into sequence. They are working on it but she doesn t know if that issue extends to the system installed on 15 th. She said SDOT is aware of the issues and are working with vendors. They are also doing internal upgrades in the traffic management center. Ellen said that QACC has been told that the City needs $1M to put the correct software in and the City doesn t have the money. They have the sensors in but nothing is working. Marni said that is correct. SDOT is operating it with old-fashioned protocols and they have to reprogram it manually. Tom said that QACC and Council Member Rasmussen suggested they should get the money in the budget to fix this problem. MCC is interested and he said the Port has an interest in how traffic flows for port operations and may want to weigh in with the City. All three entities have a vested interest in making sure that Mercer Street works as effectively as it can. He thinks the Port s influence would carry weight. Ellen said that QACC sent a letter to the City asking that they find a million dollars to buy the software and Ballard and South Lake Union are both supporting this. Tom said that the City and citizens of Seattle and the Port have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and he doesn t want a million dollars left to finance be the reason that the problem is not solved. Marni thinks that letters of support help and SDOT may be pursuing a federal grant. Tom made a request that the Port support this effort and Christine said the request was duly noted. Marni asked if she wanted a copy of the letter and it was agreed that would be helpful. Glenn asked for an electronic copy of the traffic report and Rosie said she will send that out to members. Tom discussed concerns with commute times. He said the observation of the MCC is that they support buses and don t believe the capacity of that bus lane is being fully utilized. Fred said that if you are on a bus and going down past Mercer St, you ll notice that there are bicycles in front of the bus. Buses will move out of the bus lane to avoid bicycles. It s not working the way it s supposed to for buses. A couple of bicycles can muck up the entire gear. The city ought to rethink the idea of using combined bus/bike lanes. There was continued discussion of bus lanes and bicycle lanes. Marni concluded by saying that writing this traffic report felt like déjà vu because not much has changed and that is a good finding. ANNOUNCEMENTS Tom asked for more information on the draft 2007 Magnolia Bridge emergency access document. Rosie said she would it to the group. Dan Burke from Port staff is the person that had Page 4

5 conversations with the City staff and this draft is as far as they got and it was never formalized. It was an agreement that if something did happen to the bridge, the two groups would actively engage. Dan is retiring from the Port in a week. Tom said that two small simple grant applications were made by MCC. One was for $25,000 to begin preliminary planning with community members for the park. Another is in parallel for a small and simple grant for another $25,000 to complete the trail that goes from the marina to 32 nd Avenue in Magnolia. Both are pending for funding consideration. Rosie said that everyone should have received an invitation to meet the new Port of Seattle CEO next Tuesday and RSVP s are needed. The guest list is at about 200 right now. Mike Burke from the Port staff has offered to join NAC next month to talk about the Seaport Alliance. Fred Chou would also like to visit next month to give a brief update on the tank farm clean-up project. ACTION ITEM UPDATE Amgen Property Rosie talked with Joe McWilliams about what will happen at the Amgen property. Joe said the specialized construction of the buildings is such that the only entity that will be interested in that kind of building will be an industry similar to Amgen. A company interested in lab space will not be interested in the T-91 property because they need specialized building construction for their operations. There was discussion of the permitting for the Amgen property and Nancy said the permit goes with the building if it is sold. New Tenant Rosie said there is a new tenant that signed with T-91 for the building where the First Student operation was running. The company is Optimar USA Inc. out of Norway and fabricates the equipment that goes on fish processors. Manufacturing will occur within the building. They have automatic robotic production lines and will use the modular structure for office space and staff break room. She said this company is currently in eight other countries but this is their first presence in the United States. Discussion continued about what items should be removed from or added to the Action Item update. Action Items Action Item 1. Information from SDOT about the data used for the traffic model. NAC members want to push harder for this. 2. The subcommittee has formed. They will draft a charter for themselves and set a schedule for meeting until the issues are resolved. 3. Mike McLaughlin will talk with NAC about improving the system for informing NAC about light, noise and traffic issues. 4. Roque DeHerrera will provide data to the group about changes in travel time due to road diets on Nickerson Street and Dexter Avenue. Rosie will ask Christine Wolf to request this. 5. Rosie will get an updated traffic report with charts to NAC members. Meeting adjourned. Schedule When available from Heffron Transportation Page 5

6 Upcoming NAC Meeting Schedule April 15, 2015 November 19,2014 May 20,2015 December 17, 2014 June 17, 2015 January 21, 2015 July 15, 2015 February 18,2015 August 19,2015 March 18, 2015 September 16, 2015 Page 6