HomeMy WebLinkAbout05/01/1999 Work Session
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MINUTES OF DIRECTORS MEETING
LANE TRANSIT DISTRICT
SPECIAL MEETING/WORK SESSION
Saturday, May 1, 1999
Pursuantto notice given to The Register-Guard for publication on April 27, 1999, and distributed to
persons on the mailing list of the District, the Board of Directors of the Lane Transit District met in a
joint work session with the Springfield City Council on Saturday, May 1, 1999, from 8:30 a.m. to
12:10 p.m. in the L TO Board Room at 3500 East 17th Avenue, Eugene.
Present:
L TO Board of Directors
Kirk Bailey, President
Rob Bennett, Vice President
Patricia Hocken
Dave Kleger, Treasurer
Dean Kortge
Virginia Lauritsen
Hillary Wylie, Secretary
Phyllis Loobey, General Manager
Jo Sullivan, Recording Secretary
Sprinafield City Council
Maureen Maine, Mayor
Anne Ballew
Tammy Fitch
Lyle Hatfield
Sid Leiken
Fred Simmons
Mike Kelly, City Manager
Absent:
Christine Lundberg
CALL TO ORDER: The meeting was called to order at 8:30 a.m. by L TO Board President Kirk
Bailey and Springfield Mayor Maureen Maine. Mr. Bailey welcomed everyone and turned the
meeting over to facilitator Margot Helphand.
Ms. Helphand explained that she had met with Mr. Bailey, Mayor Maine, Ms. Loobey, and Mr. Kelly,
and they had developed what they hoped was a constructive agenda that would move the Board
and Council toward some decisions around the issues before them. Her understanding was that
Springfield and L TO were partners for the long term, committed to a good working relationship in
terms of transit and the quality of life in the city of Springfield and the community. She asked the
group to keep that in mind as they talked about more specific issues, and asked that the day be a
dialog about the concerns and issues about bus rapid transit (BRT). Staff had been working on
BRT extensively, but this was an opportunity for the policy bodies to talk and understand the key
issues.
Ms. Helphand discussed desired outcomes and workina aareements for the meeting, and those
present reached agreement about them. The working agreements included actions such as
listening carefully to each other and asking clarifying questions, focusing on solutions and
outcomes, speaking for themselves, participating, and keeping an open attitude.
The desires outcomes were to understand what the key issues were; to understand the options and
parameters the groups were working under; to understand the purpose of BRT and what it was
trying to accomplish; and to reach clarity about how L TO and Springfield would go forward: what
the next steps would be and what L TO and Springfield were in agreement on, so that they could
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leave the meeting with a clear plan. Ms. Helphand noted that consensus probably would not be
reached that day on every issue, but that there should be clarity about who would do what, and
when, regarding the issues on which agreement was reached.
Ms. Helphand then asked Mr. Bailey and Mayor Maine to talk about the shared vision. hopes. and
partnership of the two entities.
Mr. Bailey stated that the groups had had opportunities to see maps and talk about specifics and
the overall parameters of bus rapid transit in numerous work sessions. Therefore, he and Mayor
Maine wanted to begin with a policy statement/global visioning segment. He said he saw BRT as a
project for the entire community, which gave all the local jurisdictions-the county, the cities, L TD,
and the state-an opportunity to work together on a project that would improve the quality of life in
the community. He thought that the quality of life was what was at stake: how the community deals
with issues such as congestion, air and noise pollution, the competition for road space, and trying to
comply with federal and state rules about transportation and land use planning. He believed that
there was a great deal of flexibility in how BRT would be accomplished. He described BRT as an
opportunity for partnership, and said the Board was dedicated to continuing to work with the Council
on a variety of projects, including the Springfield Station, and committed to finding joint solutions to
solve mutual problems. He hoped that after the work session the Council would have a lasting and
positive commitment to BRT, a long-term approach to dealing with transportation problems in the
community, and an understanding of how there would be give and take on design and
implementation.
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Mayor Maine thanked L TD for hosting the meeting, and thanked everyone for coming. She
explained that the genesis of the meeting was in Washington, D.C., on the most recent United Front
trip. At that time, it was clear that the Board and Council had not had a chance to sit down in a work
session with everyone, Council and Board members, at the table. She said that transit was very
important to the city of Springfield; it was an economic development tool and a way to mitigate
congestion arid improve the quality of life, both in terms of the ease of using the streets and in air
quality, as well as being important for the many reasons that people need public transportation. In
dealing with other jurisdictions, she said, the Council had found that it generally did have shared
goals, and where the entities differed was in how to get there. She was interested in finding out
what flexibility there was, what roles the Council would play, and what authority they had in how to
affect the design and implementation of BRT. She thought that would help the Board and Council
go forward, which was what everyone wanted to do.
Ms. Helphand directed the discussion to the resolved and unresolved issues outlined in the agenda
materials for the meeting, which had been prepared jointly by the Springfield and L TD staffs. She
said that this was the Council's and Board's opportunity to comment on them, and reminded the
group that they should be working on the key issues at the policy level.
The discussion began with the resolved issues:
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1. Public transportation is important to the future of the community. Improvements to the existina
transit system will be needed in the next 20 years. No issues raised.
2. aRT in Sprinafield will not be evaluated in isolation or exclusive of other transportation
improvements that are needed for the community. Mr. Simmons said that he thought that BRT
and the Springfield Station were inalterably hooked together but Nos. 2 and 4 did not make that
connection, so were inconsistent. Mayor Maine thought that they referred to whether the
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funding was linked and whether one was required of the other, so that they were independent in
terms of projects, although not in terms of planning, which required coordination. No other
issues were raised about this statement.
3. The City, L TO, ODOT, and Lane County (for the Glenwood portion) are eaual partners in
makina decisions for the portion of the aRT pilot corridor that travels throuah Glenwood and
. Sprinafield. Ms. Hocken asked for more clarity, since this was a general statement. For
instance, did it mean that agencies would have to reach consensus before something
happened, or at some level would fall back on the legal responsibilities of the four jurisdictions?
She thought it probably was good as a working statement, but did not say what it really meant
for the implementation phase. There was 'agreement that NO.3 referred conceptually to "equal
partners," but that a lot would need to be filled in regarding implementation.
4. Decisions on the BRT proiect and the Sprinafield Station sitina need to be coordinated. but are
not necessarilv linked. . One oroiect could move fOlWard without the other. Ms. HeJphand
restated the understanding that the decisions were not necessarily linked. Mr. Hatfield thought
that it could be clarified by stating that the planning needed to be coordinated; however, the
funding and construction could be separate. Mr. Simmons thought, however, that as part of the
overall design of intermodal transit in the community, it needed to be part of an inclusive plan
that worked together, which he thought was the goal, so it was just a matter of stating it that
way.
5. The followina elements of BRT are supported:
o Wider stop spacina and improved stops and stations
o Prepaid fares to speed boardina
o Transit sianal priority (assumina adverse traffic impacts are mitiaated)
o Use of low-floor buses to speed boardina
o Development of Park & Ride lots at strateaic locations alona the aRT corridor
o Development of a "rail-like" imaae for the aRT line
Ms. Ballew asked for clarification about developing a "rail-like" image. She thought that assumed
that the community eventually would have light rail, and she wasn't sure there would ever be the
population to do that. Ms. Hocken did not think that statement was there for that reason. She
thought it was listed because, from a marketing standpoint, people would think of this as something
different and exciting to do only if it looked like a rail vehicle. People seemed to make a distinction
in their minds between getting on a bus versus a light rail train. This was an image issue, and
whether BRT ever converted to light rail or not, L TO would like an image change to be part of BRT.
She said that buses were equated, in a lot of people's minds, with inefficient service or people who
rode buses only because they could not afford cars, etc.-there was some negative perception.
However, light rail trains did not have that same kind of perception. This led to other comments and
questions from Board members and Councilors about perceptions in relation to vehicles and image,
and to questions about whether wider stop spacing would negatively affect the current riders.
Mr. Bailey suggested that since No. 5 had generated some issues that would require additional
conversation, it be removed from the "resolved issues" list and returned later. Ms. Helphand stated
that, in general, there was agreement on most of No.5, but there were some issues in terms of
adverse affects, the effect on the current stops, and what a "rail-like image" meant. Ways of serving
the areas between BRT stops were seen as some of the flexibility issues that L TO and Springfield
could explore together.
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6. Exclusive riGht-of-way (EROW) for buses should be used if all of the followinG conditions are
met:
o Impacts on traffic conGestion are carefully evaluated and mitiGated to the satisfaction of the
City.
o Safety conditions alonG the pilot corridor show a net improvement.
o . EROW will reduce siGnificantly transit travel time and operatinG cost and will result in an
increase in transit ridership (as proiected for the TransPlan planninG period'>
o Impacts on parkinG are carefully considered and mitiGated to the satisfaction of the City.
. ... 0 Impacts on businesses are carefully considered and mitiaated to the satisfaction of the City.
o Impacts on nearby residences are carefully considered and mitiGated to the satisfaction of
the City.
o An environmental assessment for the proiect yields a findinG of "no siGnificant impact. "
Mr. Simmons quoted from page four of a programmatic document from the previous year, regarding
street conversion: "Streets are suitable for conversion to exclusive transit uses only if they are not
necessary to provide routine access to buildings by general purpose traffic." He said that when
talking about exclusive rights-of-way (EROWs) as part of that process, they needed to reflect on
what happened in the Glenwood conversations about the resistance some of the adjacent
landowners had about the loss of the left turn or access to their businesses. Mayor Maine asked
what "considered and mitigated to the satisfaction of the City" meant, in terms of roles-theoretically
it sounded good, but how would it play out in terms of some of the other issues?
Ms. Hocken asked how the safety condition showing a net improvement fit into the EROW. She
wondered how safety would be degraded or improved by this particular project. Springfield Traffic
Engineer Brian Barnett replied that the concept was that the introduction of signal priority, curbed
lanes, exclusive lanes that may be contra-flow to theone-way grid that was presently in place-all
of those were uncertainties in terms of how the existing traveling public would see them, including
auto drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, goods-movement vehicles, and how they would all work
together. He said that all of those were significant issues in terms of violating the expectancy of the
existing users of the facility. Ms. Hocken said it seemed that the standard that BRT would be held
to would be a net improvement, rather than what was happening there currently. Mr. Barnett
thought that was correct. Ms. Hocken wondered if that was an appropriate goal, or whether the
appropriate goal was to not cause any additional degradation. Ms. Helphand asked if the group
was in favor of a gain in safety. Mr. Hatfield said he thought the issue was whether it became a
presumptive veto if they did not get that gain, and that was an issue that the group needed to
discuss. This safety question was added to the list of continuing issues for further discussion.
7. The aRT pilot corridor process should include a hiGh level of meaninGful public involvement
early and throUGhout the desiGn process. provided that "conceptual level" fatal flaws are
identified before the public is asked to identify a preferred option. No issues were raised about
this statement.
8. Where feasible. the BRT proiect should allow for "non-transif' improvements in traffic flow, traffic
safety. and bicycle facilities and pedestrian facilities to be implemented as part of the proiect (a
"win-win" result). Ms. Maine stated that this language was taken directly from the goals and
objectives of BRT. There were no issues regarding issue NO.8.
9. Throuah the initial public review process. the aliGnment on 14th Avenue appears to be the
preferred BRT option for the Glenwood seGment of the pilot corridor. It can provide improved
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bicvcle access throuah Glen wood, eliminates buses makina stops in Franklin Boulevard travel
lanes. and addresses Glenwood Boulevard business concerns reoardinq access prooertv
acquisition. Additional technical analvsis, includino the followino issues, are still to be resolved
and must be resolved in order for the 14th A venue alionment to be fUllv suooorted bv the City:
o Desion of 14th Avenue to adeouatelv accommodate local traffic, emerqencv vehicle access,
resident access, bicvcles, and oedestrians.
o Acceptable access routes throuqh private oropertv at the east and west ends of the seoment.
o Access to and from Franklin Boulevard is desioned not to cause substandard traffic
conqestion or traffic safety problems.
o Other technical issues may be identified.
Ms. Maine asked how final the 14th Avenue decision was and what preferred option actually meant,
and what would move that to final. Ms. Loobey replied that at one point there would be an
. alignment for the corridor that still would have to go through major approval processes by the cities,
MPC, OOOT, the FTA, etc., before contracts were signed. Ms. Maine said this was a process
question raised by others, about how a preferred option would go forward. Ms. Helphand said that
the group would get to that process question after moving forward through the bigger issues,
including a discussion of how the group would agree to make those decisions.
10. Throuoh the initial public review orocess, Altemative A-1 (the one-lane ouidewav throuoh the
downtown area, with solit bus lanes on Main Street and South 'A" Street east of 1dh Street) is
the oreferred BRT aliqnment for Downtown Sorinqfield provided additional technical analvsis,
includino the followino conditions. are satisfied:
o . The oroiect does not. cause proiected traffic conqestion alonq this seoment to reach
substandard levels.
o Imoacts on businesses are carefullv considered and mitiqated to the satisfaction of the City.
o Bicvcle access can be accommodated.
o Acceptable traffic safety conditions are maintained.
o Needed oarkino is not eliminated.
o Other technical issues may be identified.
Mr. Bailey pointed out a language difference: In No. 10, line 3, the words "preferred BRT
alignment" were used, and No.9, line 2, used "preferred BRT option." In his mind, that language
was equivalent. Others read it the same way, and it was agreed to use the word "option" in NO.1 O.
Ms. Helphand stated that the real issue for the group to get to was how to go from preferred
options to final, through the process they needed to follow.
11. The BRT oi/ot corridor oroiect will not require additional fundinq from the City ofSorinqfield.
Agreement.
12. The Transit Sional Priority Aoreement between the City and L TO will be honored. Agreement.
13. If the pilot proiect does not meet the orioinal aoreed uoon performance obiectives, the City and
L TO will exolore ootions to achieve comoliance with the obiectives. If these are not successful,
other transoortation imorovement alternatives for the corridor may be considered. If the City
determines that it is necessary to remove BRT-related imorovements. L TO will bear the cost of
doinq so. Anv decision on removino improvements will be done iointlv with the City and (for
state hiQhwavs) with ODOT. The soecific obliqations and orocess for determinino what
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constitutes failure and subseauenl response to that failure will be enumerated in a bindina
. interaovemmenta/ aareement between the affected parties prior to final appro va/ of BRT.
Agreement.
Ms. Helphand said that there was a lot of agreement about the resolved issues, and there were
important questions about process.
The discussion about unresolved issues occurred next. Ms. Helphand asked Mayor Maine to
provide a synopsis of the key questions for that day's discussions. Ms. Maine said she was not
sure about timelines and drop-dead dates, what had to be done by when in order to satisfy L TO's
federal funding requirements. She said the City of Springfield was not interested in jeopardizing
funding that was to be used for obvious regional benefit, but they needed to be clear about the
timing and the specific goals to be achieved. She said the goals were stated in terms of
percentages, and she was not sure what those numbers were.
Ms. Ballew stated that BRT was a very good idea, but that, percentage-wise, until L TO reached 50
percent of the traveling public, it really was a minority. She said she would like to see BRT, but in
such a way that the driving public was not unduly disadvantaged by it.
Mr. Hatfield said that, looking at Springfield in general, and predominately at the eastern leg of
Phase 3, there were four lanes of traffic going east-west through Springfield, with a median in the
middle. He considered the demands on those facilities, especially as Springfield grew; the
conceptual bicycle plan for bike lanes on Main Street; and BRT, which he thought had to have
dedicated lanes if it were going to be effective and gain a speed advantage over the traffic queues.
He did not think that BRT was needed for travel times from the Thurston Station to the Eugene
Station, because an express bus could get there just as fast on the freeway as a single-occupant
vehicle or as a BRT bus making stops along Main Street and Franklin Boulevard. He said the
concept was not an issue for him, but how it was carried out, especially in the east Springfield area
where there was limited right-of~way to work with. He said he would almost like to see Phase 2
done before going beyond Phase 3, to see what West 11th or the western part of BRT worked or
what impact that would have on traffic, because in asense, East Main was West 11th with about a
third of the traffic: four lanes, center left-turn lanes, businesses along both sides, and curb cuts
every 30 feet.
Ms. Maine asked for a definition of the three phases. Ms. Hocken said that the proposed phasing
was Phase 2 in West Eugene and Phase 3 in East Springfield, for discussion that day. Mr. Bailey
stated that currently L TO had been planning for two phases, which were downtown to downtown
and then everything else. However, a proposal of downtown to downtown as Phase 1, then West
11th as Phase 2 and east Springfield as Phase 3 also was an option.
Mr. Simmons said he looked at the overall process, from Bertelsen and First to the Thurston
Station. The impact on South A and Main Street had been stated well, and he reiterated his original
suggestion of having alternative routing along the old Booth Kelly Haul Road, and working a joint-
use agreement with Weyerhaeuser. He thought the downtown station in Springfield was important,
but his concern was how to serve the growing population in the Jasper/Natron area with BRT-type
facilities, and how BRT would be used to encourage both economic development and meet the
long-term gains. In looking at the numbers in TransPlan, he said, the bus commuter numbers
dropped from 5 percent to 3 percent, so some inroads had to be made into those categories outside
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the conventional corridors. That was why he thought they had to look at how BRT was done very
strongly.
Mr. Bennett said BRT could be discussed in phases, but the reality was that L TD thought the
density would continue to increase in the proposed corridor. He said that as soon as they started
considering some corridor with no current density, they would lose the opportunity to be
accountable and meet their objectives to get people on the vehicle. BRT may be able to travel from
Thurston Station around on the freeway back to downtown Eugene, but there were not any
passengers there; there was no one to pick up. Even though the idea was to spread out the stops,
there had to be a sequence of stops and a certain timing in order to pick up people.
As an aside, Mr. Bennett said that the vehicle was very important. . Those talking about "function
over form" were correct;, but the image of the. system and how,the people.felt,aboutgetting on, the
seating arrangement, the lighting, the amenities on the vehicle all made a.difference in terms of
convenience, efficiency, and the ability to market the system effectively. . A different image was very
important.
Ms. Fitch said that the idea of planning for the future having a BRT system was very exciting to her.
She had some concerns, however, about whether BRT could be done incrementally or with queue
jumping, so that maybe there would be a carpool lane at first, and then a dedicated lane with
ridership. One of her concerns was the degradation from five stops in a mile to two, in a population
that was heavily dependent upon the bus. She wanted to be sure that BRT would not cut out part of
the population.
Ms: Wylie addressed the issue of bus design. While in Washington, D.C., L TD representatives
spent some time talking with FTA about bus design. Currently, the American bus manufacturers
. . were building buses as they had been doing for a long time. The FT A officials told L TD that buses
that were 10,000 pounds lighter could be built, but the American companies would have to retool.
Several cities besides L TD had begun looking at BRT, and, in order for them to meet federal Buy-
American requirements, the FT A was willing to loan money to bus manufacturers to retool if several
cities could create a market. Secondly, she said, she was a Springfield resident and understood
the issues around Main Street. She said that L TD certainly had an option of other routes, and Main
Street could be taken out of the equation. South A, a three-lane road, could be broadened, and
south of Main Street could be developed more. Some of the places being considered for the
Springfield Station were on South A, and the design could consider a one-lane, two-way BRT lane,
as in Glenwood. She stated that the design had a lot of flexibility, and that could be part of the
future discussion.
Mr. Leiken said that one of the questions he had was about the current corridor location. He noted
that light rail in other cities was along the freeway, so it seemed to him that BRT, as a less
expensive form of light rail, should use a corridor where BRT could use speed, such as Highway
126, instead of eliminating the buses going along the corridor currently. He added that revitalizing
downtown Springfield was a long-term project.
Mr. Bennett said that Mr. Leiken had raised technical questions, so wondered if a staff person could
respond to those for clarification. Mr. Kleger said he wanted to know what the community would
end up with if BRT were not done, given the expected growth.
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L TO's BRT Project Engineer Graham Carey responded to the suggestion to use 1-105 as a BRT
route. He explained that L TO currently used 1-105 as a route and it was a good test case. He was
not sure how good ridership was, but it carried fewer riders than the direct Main Street line. The
Route 11 Thurston service was very successful for L TO. In terms of other cities, he said, there
were a variety of operations where light rail transit operated. He was somewhat familiar with Tri-
Met, where it operated along the freeway on the east side, and through mixed land uses on the
west side. He said that the east side had not been as successful as people had hoped, being about
30 percent short of projections.
Ms. Wylie. asked Mr. Carey to explain some of the reasons that the corridor choice went from
Thurston to West 11th, instead of 1-105. Mr. Carey said that one important reason was the success
of the current route as it linked the University of Oregon, Sacred Heart Hospital, and a lot of other
major passenger points along the route. He said that staff had always thought that, when selecting
a pilot corridor, it was important to link the two communities.
Ms. Hocken wanted to check an assumption. Shewondered if the Council did not-want to make it
possible for people who lived in east Springfield to get to downtown Springfield, or for people who
lived in Eugene to be able to get to east Springfield easily. She questioned if they really wanted
people to get on a bus that took them into downtown Eugene and did not take them into downtown
Springfield. She wondered if that was the other side of getting the buses to downtown Eugene
really quickly from the Thurston station.
Mr. Simmons thought that travel from Thurston to Sacred Heart was one issue. He said he was
involved in the corridor project on the Eugene/Springfield highway from 1-5 to the juncture at
Highway 20 in Santiam Junction. Enhancements of the use of the corridor would serve a
population not just along Main Street, but on the north side, as well. He said that the 11X bus that
traveled on Main Street was a case study in how efficient express actions were. He did not think
anyone was saying that they wanted to deny access to transportation along that corridor. Whether
or not BRT replaced that service and denied frequency access to those riders was another
question. He thought that there was a lot of work to do, and that a lot of evaluation of alternatives
had been pushed aside for the guideway process. He said he was a strong supporter of BRT, even
though he did not have the same route in mind.
Ms. Hocken said she was not sure how the BRT project could assist with the revitalization of
Springfield, which was one of the goals that she had heard, if it did not go there.
Mr. Hatfield said that no one was trying to disconnect anyone from anyplace. His experience in
Seattle was that routes using Park & Rides to get to work quick and efficiently, from the population
center to the employment center, was similar to the Thurston situation. One issue was to look at
what volume BRT would carry and how that was best handled, and another was to look at Main
Street very carefully, and if 95 percent of the people were going to drive cars somewhere, they
needed to be careful what impact was put on those two major corridors. He said Springfield clearly
was not opposed to connecting the cities, and that he fully agreed with the goals and targets that
L TO was trying to accomplish, but "the devil was in the details."
Ms. Helphand said she was hearing that, in content, people understood and had shared goals of
why to proceed with BRT, and their issues were about getting to the specifics of where and hoW it
would be implemented.
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Mr. Bailey said he appreciated the comments that had been made about the issues, and he did not
hear anything that could not be worked through. He offered an observation about a fundamental
concept that he thought needed to be addressed, in terms of how things were done in other
communities and how those ought to provide guidance about how things should be done in
Eugene/Springfield. He said that those systems did not work. They captured 3 percent of the trips,
maximum, in any given community. He stated'that L TD was one of the best transit systems in the
country-one of the top ten in its peer group nationwide, and in the top twenty of all transit districts
in the country-and L TO got 3 percent. He said that was not because L TO was doing anything
wrong; it was because the concept itself did not work. He said he believed in transit, but if it was
going to get up to 4, 5, or 6 percent of the trips, the community had to think a little outside the box.
He wanted everyone to understand that the difference was between how transit was done in Seattle
and how it was done in Curitiba, Brazil, where they got . morethan..50.percenLof the population to
use a transit vehicle. Thinking outside the box included engaging in the process the Board and
Council were in currently, and recognizing that the community needed to take a slight step away
from the idea that they could have the existing transportation structure and something that was a
little new. He was not saying to do away with the independence of the automobile, but he was
concerned that people were worried about threatening the automobile without realizing that
something had to give.
Ms. Helphand drew the group's attention back to the unresolved issues listed in the agenda
materials.
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1. What is the pumose and need for BRT? Does this iustifv the expense and possible adverse
impacts the proiect may create?
Ms. Helphand said she had heard from the group that they basically understood the purpose that
L TO was trying to accomplish with BRT, but the concerns were more in the details of the flexibility.
She asked if there was more discussion about this before moving on to a discussion of the
parameters of implementation. Mr. Kortge said he was not sure it was a matter of flexibility. He
thought he heard Mr. Leiken making a suggestion about using 1-105 rather than traveling downtown
to downtown, which Mr. Kortge described as a fundamental difference in purpose rather than an
issue of flexibility. He thought that issue had to be on the table, as a real gap in very fundamental
issues. He did not see BRT working on 1-105. Mr. Kortge said that flexibility was more along the
lines of traveling on Booth Kelly Haul Road or South A., and purpose was whether BRT traveled on
1-105 versus going through downtown Springfield. Ms. Wylie talked about the vision of BRT as a
transit system moving smoothly, not a bus, but something that was sleek and moved fast, was.
clean and neat and very accessible, which took people where they were going very easily: It was
not an express bus; it was a transit system.
Ms. Helphand asked if others on the Council had the same issue as Mr. Leiken or if the majority
could live with the downtown to downtown idea and were more concerned about working through
the other issues. She asked if there was a shared vision that BRT essentially was a transit system
that took people through the developed areas.
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Mr. Hatfield said he had no objection whatsoever to essentially, give or take a few blocks, a
Thurston Station to Main Street and out to West 11th type of an idea, because there was a purpose
for that particular corridor. He thought that, in Thurston especially, that was a highly used bus route
because it served two purposes. People drove their cars to the Station, which gave them the
flexibility to make trips such as going to day care or the grocery store on the way home, and it gave
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them the benefit of going from there to the Eugene Station, so it served the best of both areas. He
agreed with Mr. Bailey that it would be wonderful to get to 10 percent, but he thought that how they
got there was the issue. He thought that BRT stopping every half-mile or mile through downtown
Springfield and the University district, which would mean about 12 or 14 potential stops, would not
accomplish that.
Ms. Helphandasked the group to give a one-sentence answer to whether they could live with or
support the vision of the BRT transit system that would seNe the populated areas. usina the
qeneral concept of the populated corridor. qiven that there were a lot issues to work out.
Mr. Kleger said that, provided it could be done in a way that allows comparable time to automobile
commute times, he supported the existing proposals.
Mr. Simmons said that in Curitiba, the bus line had been built and then the city had been built
around it, and he thought that there was a way to do that here. He said that 1-105, west of 1-5,
Eugene/Springfield Highway east was a transportation corridor that had value to move people from
the north side to downtown that BRT could not touch, and it provided an alternate route, so it was
not bad to say 1-105. He said there was a lot of support for the concept, and there were some
specific objections about the loss of things.
Ms. Fitch said that in general she supported the concept, and thoughtthat there were many issues
to work through.
. Ms. Wylie said that she was very supportive of the BRT transit system. .
Mr. Kelly said that he supported the concept, that someday this would make a good system, but that
several pilot projects and several phasings needed to take place before the concept was
implemented.
Mayor Maine said that what she thought was missing was a multi-modal corridor study, or at least
that information was missing to the Council. She said that the concept of providing better transit in
Springfield was very important, but they had not evaluated what other alternatives could meet the
goals and objectives stated in the BRT concept. She referred to the FT A's proposal that "the need
to undertake an analysis of alternatives is not driven by a predisposed modal solution such as BRT,
but rather is predicated on the identification of transportation needs for a given corridor or desired
area." She thought that was why the 1-105 idea came up, in terms of how this particular option
could work and whether there were other options. She was in support of the concept, but there
were other alternatives that had not been explored, at least by the Council.
Mr. Bailey supported the BRT system as envisioned.
.
Ms. Loobey thought that part of the conversation mixed up what the Board and Council were talking
about. She said that what happened today would not be what would happen in 15 years. L TO was
looking toward the future, with greater density and land use issues, in the TransPlan process. What
L TO was trying to do today was prepare for that future. The community had had years of building
up the system around the automobile and had not built a system at all around alternative
transportation. BRT was only a little attempt to move toward that. She said she kept hearing the
statistics about how badly L TO did in trip-making, but in the peak hour, there were corridors where
L TO already was carrying 15 percent of the trips. She said that 60 percent of L TO's riders already
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 11
were employed or were going to school so they could become employed. She said that all of the
questions had answers, and she hoped that L TO would have an opportunity to provide those
answers, so they could start painting a fuller picture about the value of L TO to the community.
Mr. Bennett said that he was for the corridor. He thought it was good to go around the table as they
were doing, but he thought the Board and Council were going to have to spend some more time on
this discussion, because he did not want to leave without knowing pretty clearly where Springfield
stood.
Mr. Hatfield said he agreed that BRT would be successful if it could compete with automobile travel
time. He was happy that L TO carried 15 percent along some corridors. When talking about
reaching 10 percent or 50 percent, how to get there was a very important question. He agreed with
Mayor Maine that the Main Street corridor necessarily would shift a lot of people from their current
traffic habits. He did not think that this corridor would get ridership to 5 percent or 10 percent. Also,
a dedicated, limited right-of-way on Main Street would impair automobile traffic, and there would be
more when Jasper Road opened and there was more growth in southeast Springfield. He thought
that 95 percent of those people would be traveling by automobile and would need to be
accommodated somehow. He said he was very supportive of BRT but had some concerns about
how it would be implemented; his concerns were in the details, not in the concept.
Ms. Lauritsen thought that the accomplishment of the morning was that everyone was speaking
about what was on his or her mind. She said that she supported the transit concept. The
community lay east-west; that was where the people were, and one way or another the system
would be east-west. She said it did not sound very likely that it would be right down West 11th or
Main Street, but it would be east and west.
Ms. Hocken said that she was very supportive of the corridor as it had been proposed. She did not
want to offend the people there, but felt that she needed to say that L TO and Springfield had a
partnership, with different roles. She said they did not know exactly what all those roles were, but at
a very basic level, L TO was the bus company and Springfield was the City. At some level, she said,
the bus company should decide what would work for the bus company, and the City needed to
decide how that affected Springfield and the responsibilities the City had. She said that L TO did not
have the responsibility for the cars; it had the responsibility for the buses. In terms of flexibility,
there were places along the continuum where accommodations could be made.
Ms. Helphand paraphrased Ms. Hocken's comments by saying thatL TO and Springfield had core
missions and some overlapping concerns in terms of their missions, and that was why they were
meeting that day, and the issues for Ms. Hocken were figuring out where those overlapped and how
they worked together.
Mr. Leiken said that he supported the concept of BRT, and was lukewarm toward the corridor. He
thought that when gas hit $2.50 per gallon, L TO would wonder what hit them, but he was only one
vote on the Council. Ms. Wylie clarified that L TO was paying less than fifty cents a gallon for diesel.
Mr. Kortge said that he supported BRT.
Ms. Ballew said that she had difficulty with the corridor and giving 20 percent to 25 percent of the
right-of-way to less than 10 percent of the users at the expense of 90 percent. Ms. Hocken asked
to clarify that it was a right-of-way issue for Ms. Ballew, rather than where the corridor was located,
.
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
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and wondered if that problem would go away if L TO bought additional right-of-way. - Ms. Ballew
replied that it also might go away if the corridor moved off Main Street. The issue was one of
capacity. Mr. Bennett stated that BRT would add capacity.
At this point, the group took at ten-minute break. Mr. Hatfield left the meeting following the break.
After returning from the break, Ms. Helphand summarized the discussion before the break. She
heard issues around the need for the Thurston to downtown corridor, and she stated that one thing
did not preclude the other. As a group, the Board and Council could look at a broad range of
solutions, and may have other things they wanted to have work done on in addition to the concept
they had just talked about (the east-west BRT corridor), for which, in general, there was a shared
vision.
She directed the discussion to the aoa/s and time/ines, to learn where-the"f1exibilities might be.
Mr. Bennett was concerned that the group had not finished the last discussion. He did not want to
get stuck on the fundamentals of the technical issues, just because the policy boards did not know
enough about those. When Ms. Maine talked about. needing a multi-modal corridor study, he
.. 'thought that L TO already had done the basic work. When others talked about different routes than
L TO had selected, he said, he had picked that route because the technical group from Eugene-
Springfield had done the work and were on board with that. He said that if L TO were going to reach
the next level of ridership, this was the route that would do that. He wanted to know if people were
willing to give up something in order to give the transit system a chance to compete.
Fundamentally, that was what L TO was asking for: a major change in the way public transportation
competed. Although on some routes L TO carried more, generally it carried 2 percent to 3 percent
of the trips. He wondered if that was the future in the Council's minds, because he did not believe
that L TO would get any further by doing things incrementally. He thought he could see what was
coming for this community by looking at what happened in other cities, such as Portland and
Seattle. In order to buy into BRT, they had to believe that the crunch was coming, and if they did
not want to have the problems of those other cities, they should be willing to give up something to
get there. He stated that L TO was heavily subsidized, and the Board was trying to improve its
business position, so that was why they talked about market share and attracting a different kind of
clientele. He said it was not reasonable to ask L TO to be accountable in terms of the money it was
spending unless they gave the District a reasonable chance to compete. He hoped they could
agree on what route would give L TO the best cost-benefit chance to win. He said that the District
thought that it was South. A and the proposed routing. He wondered if staff could give some
perspective of why the District thought its technical information was right.
L TO Planning & Development Manager Stefano Viggiano referred to a large map showing the
system as envisioned in 20 or 30 years. The map showed that BRT was not intended to be express
. routes overlaid on the system; rather, BRT was intended to be the L TO system, fully integrated into
a system like a backbone that everything else (Park & Ride facilities, connector buses in
neighborhoods, etc.) supported. Essentially, BRT would not work if it were just adding service to
the existing system, because it would be tremendously expensive to do that. If L TO were to operate
on 1-105, it would still have to continue operating buses on Main Street, so essentially that would
double the cost of providing some of the east-west connections. Instead, if L TO could replace the
Thurston route and the buses out West 11 th with the BRT service, L TO could reduce its costs,
because buses operating more quickly would cost less to operate than the current service. Not only
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 13
was BRT intended to achieve the ridership goals, it also was an important component in reducing
operating costs.
Mr. Viggiano said that the origins and destinations where people travel in the community were very
much dispersed. He used a map to show boardings along Main Street, and explained that there
was more ridership along the center part of Main Street than in the Thurston neighborhood. None
of those people would be able to take advantage of an express bus on 1-105. He reiterated that
BRT was intended to be the main system, so it needed to serve the heart of that corridor, which
currently was Main Street.
Mayor Maine asked for clarification that the BRT line would replace existing service. Mr. Viggiano
said that was correct. In response to earlier questions about what would happen if stops were
spaced farther apart, he said that L TO would try to reduce the impact by choosing the stops that
currently were the busiest. It also was possible that the people between the stops would have
alternate service available to them that would operate near Main Street on neighborhood routes,
and then make connections to BRT buses. In terms of flexibility, he said, planning work on the east
portion had not started. There had been assumptions that the only way BRT would work was if it
ran down the center of Main Street, but that was unknown until further study was done. For
example, during the Glenwood. neighborhood process, it was determined that it made the most
sense to travel off Franklin Boulevard. He did not think that assumptions could be made about
exactly where BRT would operate in that east section.
.
Mr. Simmons said that he could appreciate that view in the sense that L TO had been developing
along that part of the corridor for years. He thought that the origin and destination data currently
being worked on was important in terms of where people came from who used the Thurston
Station. . However, he thought that to decrease the frequency of service along Main Street,
considering that a good many of those people were transit dependent, would result in unintended
consequences. He thought that the goal around the table was consistent, but that there were
alternatives outlined in the original solicitation document that required a more inclusive look. He
said there was a lot more to it in the human sense of the passengers who were the constituents of
both groups. He wanted L TO to be open to look at those alternatives as part of a grander
transportation scheme for the 21st Century for Eugene and Springfield.
Ms. Helphand asked to check out the statement that Main Street was the only corridor under
consideration. Mr. Bailey said it was not. L TO was not looking simply at the dimensions of that
street. He hoped that the experience of the Glenwood process would show that L TO was not
committed to any particular street, but was committed to a corridor, a swath of area, that roughly
represented that line through the community, whether it was 200 yards north or south. He thought
L TO was flexible to exploring the options; however, if it became a half-mile or mile away, then there
were problems, and that did become a fundamental shift in the type of corridor being considered.
He noted that the map showed other routes to address the other areas in the community.
Mr. Bailey stated that during the early conceptual discussions with the cities and county, a number
of different routes were discussed, including which should be first. At that time, every Springfield
and Eugene representative said that the east-west swath should be first.
.
Mr. Kleger asked Mr. Simmons to clarify whether he had been talking about reduced frequency of
service or of stops. Mr. Simmons said he was talking about reduced accessibility to the stops. Mr.
Kleger wanted to make clear that the Board had never talked about running less-frequent buses,
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 14
and that every time they talked about spreading the stops out, they also talked about neighborhood
service, although not necessarily on the same street, to close those gaps, to make it practical for
people to get to the BRT stops.
Ms. Maine said that planning for the future was important, but she was not sure that the 20-year
solution needed to be implemented tomorrow. She was troubled by the statement that phasing
would not work. She said that one of the things that Springfield was very open to was an
implementation that would lead to BRT, but did not mean full BRT right away. She said the
Council would like to encourage L TO to take some different way to phase the corridor. One thing
that troubled her about the full BRT concept was that it was a full 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week
proposition with regard to exclusive right-of-way, and yet the goal was to increase peak-hour, peak-
direction market share along the corridor by at least 40 percent within five years. Therefore, L TO
was talking about a measurable, favorable impact in a short number of hours in a day, with a
system affecting everybody 24 hours a day. That was why she wanted to look at phased
implementation until the densities supported more.
.
Mr. Bennett asked where Ms. Maine stood regarding the route. Ms. Maine said she knew it was
one route of many. She stated that she supported express service, because when you don't have
critical mass, you get critical mass in other ways. She said that her neighborhood was not critical
mass for ridership, but a Park & Ride was. She liked to gather critical mass, find out where they
were going, and get them there. What she did not understand about the Main Street corridor was
that it was the highest-ridden route, but that did not tell her anything about potential. She said she
would support it if there were the potential for another 200 percent increase to be obtained there.
Mr. Viggiano said that when the corridor was selected, L TO looked at population and employment
along the optional corridors. This corridor had the highest population and employment. Mr. Bennett
said that the question was whether L TO could attract people who did not currently ride,. and what
Springfield's sense of the growth of that area was. Mr. Bailey thought that L TO should provide
those kinds of statistics, but for the sake of some sense of agreement at the end of the day, he
would observe that they were talking about a hypothetical section of the corridor that was years
away. He asked to discuss the timelines. What the group was discussing in terms of phasing was
the downtown to downtown section, involving several hundred yards from the river into the
downtown part of Springfield. He said that the process had not even gotten to the design segment
that would run from downtown Springfield out to Thurston, so it was unknown what that would look
like.
Mr. Bennett thought that this discussion was very important. He said that the issue about phasing
involved needing to know a high probability about where the corridor was going. The question was
whether to obtain the right-of-way in the beginning and phase in the use of it, or not getting the right-
of-way in the beginning and hoping to obtain it later, when the money might not be available and
density increased and caused the land to be more expensive, more intensively developed, and
much harder to acquire. He asked what Springfield thought about this.
Ms. Helphand said she thought Mr. Bennett was asking where people stood on this issue at the
vision level, and she thought they needed an answer to the givens and options within the goals and
timelines.
.
Ms. Wylie said she had talked with Ms. Maine earlier and was hearing that day, also, that her
questions were about how to delay the impact on downtown Springfield versus the user and
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 15
ridership. Ms. Wylie asked what impact it would have on ongoing traffic if L TO could design the
downtown to downtown section so it did not impact Main Street through the downtown area.
Ms. Maine said that this was the data that Springfield had always been asking for.
Ms. Helphand suggested looking at timelines, parameters, and some other specifics, because there
still seemed to be some guessing around these issues that made people uncomfortable.
Ms. Hocken stated that there were many different timelines. Obtaining federal money was one.
There was a lot of competition at the federal level for the money that L TO hoped to use to build the
corridor, so there was a real impetus for L TO to get to the stage where it knew what the design
would be and to show that it could be implemented, in order to receive the first level of funding and
go on to receive other levels of money. She stated that the administration 'of the Federal Transit
Administration (FT A) was very impressed with L TO's project at that point because it was a project
that was very different than anything that had been done in a medium-sized city that would not be
able to afford light rail for another 50 or 75 years down the road. She stated that the federal funding
was critical, and one of the things that made the federal agency interested in L TO was the exclusive
rights-of-way. Another timeline was that the longer the wait, the harder it would be to acquire
exclusive rights-of-way. In talking about east Main, there currently were large undeveloped
stretches, so it could be done now with less disruption to the community.
Mr. Bailey pointed out. a timeline on page 2 of Attachment C that showed the decision schedule for
phase 1, the downtown to downtown segment. He said he was willing to consider what happened
with the other two ends of the pilot corridor. The timeline indicated final jurisdictional approvals in
January to March of 2000. Ms. Fitch asked if this was geared toward requesting additional federal
funding in 2000. Mr. Viggiano replied that staff believed that L TO could build phase 1 with' the
money that already had been earmarked for the project; however, the project was still being
developed, so it was still a little early to say. L TO still had to apply for the earmarked money-the
$8.8 million, which, with a match, totaled $11 million-but that was basically a formality. For phase
1, L TO would not necessarily have to go back to request additional money. Staff expected that the
District would need to request the funding for phase 2 during the next United Front trip, in early
2000. According to the current schedule, phase 2 would lag about a year behind. phase 1.
Ms. Helphand wanted to be sure that people understood what the fixed rules of the game were, and
what aspects were open to discussion. She 'returned to Mr. Bennett's point, which was, in general,
what the big picture looked like. She hoped that the participants could work out, conceptually, the
phasing and location of the corridor, so that they were comfortable with the concept. She thought
that the group had done that earlier, but it sounded as if some were not quite there, so she wanted
. "to step back to check on that. It was too important of a concept to pretend to be in agreement.
Ms. Hocken asked to say something else about the timeline. She explained that L TO's plan as she
understood it was to subject phase 1 to all the decision steps (the environmental assessment,
preliminary endorsement, and final approval), while continuing with design of the other four
segments of the pilot corridor. As part of that, L TO would be developing more and more information
on what the new Springfield section would look like. When the Council would be asked to give final
approval of phase 1, they also would have some idea of what the east Springfield segment might
look like.
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 16
Ms. Helphand had heard people say that there was a lot to be gained as partners by proceeding
with BRT, but it would take some "give." She said that it was defining that "give" that the
participants were not yet clear about.
Mr.Kelly commented in response to Mr. Bennett's earlier statements about giving the concept a
chance. He thought that said it well, and the idea of making the vehicles look different and have
different schedules to attract people representative of all the populations in Eugene/Springfield and
increasing ridership made sense. He thought that the issue for the policy makers in Springfield was
how to accommodate that; how to take a chance and let that happen without alienating the other 97
percent of the driving public, the people who were not taking the BRT vehicle. Ms. Hocken had
spoken to the issue of authority or different roles, and he said that what Springfield did not want to
have happen was that in several years L TO would be holding celebration parties because ridership
went from 3 percent to 4.5 percent, but City Hall would be hearing .fromangry motorists, property
owners, and others who were not happy with that 1.5 percent increase in ridership. He wondered
how to accommodate the desire, ,with Springfield having some ability. to alter some things so that
ridership could be increased within the wishes of the majority of citizens who were using the
roadway, so that things were not done to alienate other motoring groups or people to be unhappy
with the total transportation system. Ms. Helphand asked what each person needed in order to feel
successful in this effort.
.
Mr. Bennett replied that eventually, assuming L TO could get Springfield the information it needed,
the Council would have to make a decision whether to take the risk with L TO, based on the belief
that no community would be successful in the long run unless it had a balanced transportation
system' of which the public transportation portion was competitive. He said that if the Council did
not believe that there would ever be a need for that, the community would not get there.
. Mr-. Kelly's;response to Mr. Bennett's comments was that he hoped it did not come to "either/or."
He hoped it could come to a point where L TO could implement phases, or what Springfield called
"BRT Lite," or some aspects of BRT to help grow the concept compatible with the wishes of all the
motoring public.
Mr. Bennett said that the reality of that was that BRT would have no chance to succeed without an
exclusive lane. Whether that lane was needed 24 hours a day, or whether it was phased in, he said
he was trying to absorb those possibilities. But eventually, he said, it would not work; it would not
get one other person out of the car. He said he hoped that no one thought L TO thought it would
replace the cars; L TO was just trying to get in the game, with a reasonable chance, with a new
marketing concept, over time, to actually increase ridership significantly to reach. the next level.
L TO did not think that this would happen overnight, either, but if they started ten years in the future,
Eugene/Springfield would be like every other community, with gridlock, and then it would be much
more expensive to try to do anything. He hoped that the group could come to some agreement on
the basic fundamentals of what it would take to improve transit's competitive position. He said he
was absolutely convinced that, as an example, queue jumping alone would not work; it would be
very helpful and it would be better to have it than not, but it would not get L TO where it needed to
be.
.
Ms. Maine said she had heard Mr. Bennett say that doing certain components one at a time,
incremental implementation, probably would not work, but it was the Council's desire to consider
incremental implementation leading to a full BRT line.
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 17
Ms. Helphand asked L TO to summarize the parameters that L TO thought were core to success.
Mr. Kortge said that, in addition to exclusive lanes, L TO needed the game plan of where that line
would be. He said L TO had to start obtaining that property and locking that in, whether it was built
out today or in ten years. L TO needed a long-term plan of where the corridor would be located.
Ms. Hocken added that a "can do" attitude also was needed, an attitude that said that the City would
help L TO identify where the problems were and find solutions to those problems. That is, rather
than pointing out to L TO all the things that would not work, Springfield would be a real partner and
help L TO find ways to make it work. "
Mr. Simmons said there was a piece of real estate that ran from 28th to 48th Street that was
purchased with road tax dollars for future transportation uses. He said that there was a right-of-way
available there, and that with the proper encouragement the Council would be willing to participate
with L TO in offering that as a positive contribution. He said that he would be willing. He said that in
looking at the '98 document, the other issues.about traffic management improvement, faster
boarding, the integration of traffic, incremental development, etc., all were bullets of equal weight.
They did not seem to be stacked up in an exclusive basis, although the FT A people seemed to
have given credence to the exclusive lane process. He said there were other factors there that
could be done to make this system function quicker, more competitive, and better in the process,
and those had to be part of the discussion. He said that they could not just focus on exclusive
guideways or exclusive lanes; there was more to it than that, because if you built phase 1 from
Eugene Station to Springfield Station, you would be all dressed up with nowhere to go.
.
Ms. Hocken said she thought so much time was being spent on exclusive right-of-way because that
was really the nutof the discussion. She thought that the Council was fairly supportive of most of
the other elements of BRT, but exclusive right-of-way would have the most impact on the
Councilors' constituents who drove their cars.
Ms. Simmons suggested exclusive right-of-way along the Booth Kelly Haul Road as a supportive
option from Springfield.
Ms. Helphand then asked what Springfield would need three years out to feel that BRT was worth it.
She asked for the Council's drop-dead parameters.
Ms. Fitch said that one of the problems she had on .the BRT Steering Committee was that
Springfield was being asked to give up exclusive right-of-way at the beginning of the project, before
there were any indicators that there was necessity for it. Just talking about the Springfield Station
and the alignment that occurred along South A, it meant giving up one of the three lanes, or 33
percent of the capacity, immediately for the project. She said that this was of concern, because that
meant giving up capacity for 3 or 4 percent of the ridership, but losing 33 percent of the capacity for
the rest of the people, and that would be permanent. Ideas about carpooling in that lane had been
rejected. In essence, she was asking L TO to not take the space until it was needed. Ms. Maine
added to not go from zero to fifty; incrementally there were things that could be done in the
meantime that could lead from queue jumping to an HOV lan!3, then to exclusive; not just from
nothing to exclusive.
Mr. Kleger asked if she was saying that she was willing to designate the area or the location, but did
not want it committed immediately and totally. Ms. Maine said that was correct.
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Minutes of Joint L TD Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 18
Mr. Kleger said that, speaking for himself, he would take anything to get the foot in the door, as long
as he had an assurance that he would get the rest in the future. Getting there was one of the things
that needed to be worked out, and he said they needed to work out a staging plan to do that before
he agreed to that kind of transitional process. Ms. Wylie said she felt the same way about this
issue. Mr. Kleger stated that Springfield would lose to L TD two lanes of this corridor sooner or later,
no matterwhat anyone did. He explained that six years ago; L TD was running two buses an hour
out to Thurston, but now was running six because of ridership increases. In six years, the service
on that route had tripled because of demand. He said he had asked Mr. Grimaldi to let him know
how many new dwellings would be built along that corridor during the next five years. Mr. Kleger
thought it would be a rather large amount and, in addition to what the community already had,
would cause additional problems in the future. He commented on the increased number of cars
stopped behind buses in every part of the urban area. In Danebo, there would be 3,000 new
dwelling units in 18 months, and the trail behind buses was as least one block long and up to three
blocks long. He was saying that the community already was reaching critical mass, or choke point,
for buses in the stream of traffic that were stopping at 10-minute frequencies. When ridership
forced additional buses, they would be running every five minutes, and those queues of cars behind
the buses would not clear. In essence,sooner or later, L TD would own the curb lane in each
direction, which he thought was bad traffic planning and would cause additional accidents. He said
that the communities either would address this issue now, or would address it in much worse
conditions in the future. L TD would "own" those two lanes, and everyone would be moving slower,
which would mean much worse complaints from the driving public.
.
Ms. Fitch agreed that the communities were getting to that point of congestion. Her question was
whether the solution was in taking a lane of traffic that currently existed out of the inventory for
vehicles, or creating something new to move the buses along. Mr. Kleger said that in his view, if
there were any way to build another lane, it should be done. Ms. Wylie agreed.
Mr. Bennett said that the Board was under the impression that there was no way to create another
lane along this route. Mr. Simmons had brought up the issue of land east of 28th that Mr. Bennett
did not know about, but his understanding was that west of that, there was not a big enough right-
of-way to create another lane without putting a bunch of people out of business. Mr. Simmons said
that this was wrong-the south side, east of 5th Street, to the Booth Kelly site was in public
ownership, and the right-of-way along the south side of the railroad tracks. Mr. Bennett said,
. however, that he was talking about Main Street; L TD's proposed corridor, although he understood
that the discussion might broaden.
Ms. Hocken wondered if anyone had looked at that stretch and determined that there was no way
anyone could buy more right-of-way so that nothing would have to be taken from the lanes of traffic.
She asked whether, if there were a way to buy the right-of-way, the problem would go away for
Springfield. Ms. Wylie added that the guideway only needed 11 feet.
.
Mr. Barnett said that in talking about Main Street east of where the couplets came together, the
right-of-way was in the order of 120 feet in width, with five travel lanes and sidewalks. There
potentially would be additional width to add more lanes there. On the South A section, he did not
have a number, but the right-of-way was not much larger than what presently was built out, so more
right-of-way there probably would have to be purchased. Some of the businesses in some areas
would be impacted, but there were other areas along the South A corridor where L TD could buy
right-of-way and not have a tremendous impact on people.
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 19
Ms. Maine asked if the guideway actually would not be exclusive all the way; for instance, on the
bridge. Ms. Hocken said that the long-term plan was to build another bridge, and that this might be
the only place along that corridor where exclusive rights-of-way were not envisioned.
Mr. Bailey wanted to check an assumption that he may have created a problem by using the term "3
percent of trips." Now it seemed that people were talking about L TO being responsible for 3
percent of the traveling public (3 out of every 100), but that was not who L TO served. There were
statistics that showed that within the last month, probably half of the population had taken the bus
within the past year. He wanted to be sure that people did not think L TO was planning for three
people out of every 100, and the cities and county were planning for 97. That assumption was
. wrong and was affecting the discussion. He thought the issue was how to get to the capacity issue
for the number of people who moved through a .corridor.usingall :sortsof:different options. He
thought that L TO was flexible in how the alignments were done so that they were not making it
harder for people hcars to get by, and did not want them to makeitharder:for buses to get by, so
that people would have a choice.
Ms. Wylie clarified that in a year, up to 65 percent of the population would use the bus at least once.
L TO provided nearly 6 million rides a year. It was not 3 percent of the population.
.
Ms. Helphand asked the group to look at page 1 of Attachment A. She thought there was
agreement about many issues, but it was the adverse impact, specifically on the right-of~way, that
was troublesome to Springfield. She wanted to use the last half-hour to try to reach agreement that
if certain issues could be met, the policymakers would be ready to move ahead with allowing the
staff to take BRT to the next level.
Ms. Maine said that they had this agreement in 1997, that if all the information~ came forward,
Springfield was more than willing to look at the alternatives. That was the piece that had been
missing. She said that if that was what was coming to the Council in June, then she thought they
should get that in June, with the acknowledgement and agreement that Springfield was willing to go
forward and find a way to make this work. She said the Council continued to be asked for its
support, and it gave its support always conditioned on the absence of the technical data.
In response to a question from Ms. Helphand about what information Springfield would need in
order to move forward, Ms. Maine said that Springfield had made, the request and Ms. Fitch had
made the request at the appropriate places, but they just hadn't received it yet If that information
was going to be available on June 7, she suggested that the Council and Board meet again after
that time. Ms. Helphand said that the Council and Board almost needed to step back as a group.
and understand the problem they were trying to work through together. With a better understanding
of where each group was coming from and the data they needed, they might be able to work
through the issues.
Ms. Maine said she was not positive about all the requests that had been made, but one request
the Council had made consistently was that other alternatives be considered in order to be
supportive of BRT, so they could compare them rather than just evaluating one. Their request was
to not just prove BRT in some modeling, but compare it with other alternatives.
.
Mr. Bailey asked Ms. Maine to clarify what she meant by alternatives: light rail, BRT, bus only, no
option, etc., or also alternatives within a loose definition of BRT, such as left side of the street
versus right. She said both, because she thought that was what the public questioned, as well.
I .
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Minutes of Joint L TO Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 20
In trying to understand what Springfield needed, Mr. Bailey asked if L TO needed to provide, in the
course of the technical advisory review and the steering committee's work, some commentary on
why light rail would not work, and/or why the existing bus system did not quite meet the goals, etc.
Ms. Maine said that was not what she was asking for. Ms. Hocken thought that Ms. Maine was
asking for a much more detailed study than L TO might have done. She thought the group had
agreed that the BRT project was the project that L TO should be doing, but it seemed that they were
going back to that issue again.
Ms. Helphand said that at the beginning of the meeting the group had started with resolved issues
and agreed that they were not looking at light rail or doing nothing, that they considered BRT and
were looking at the alternatives within BRT that could make it happen.
. .Mr.Simmons referred again to the demonstration grant document from last year. He said it should
have been apart of this discussion early on, and the need for analysis in the document said, "If
stakeholders in the .metropolitan planning process, including local planners, decision makers,
interest groups, and the general public, believe that bus rapid transit might help to address the
problems and needs in a cor.ridor, then it should be included as an alternative to be evaluated within
a multi-modal corridor analysis." He said that this did not happen during the Glenwood segment
. discussions. They talked about the preferred alternative and staff proposals, but the other
alternatives, including bus queuing, etc., needed to be part of that whole process.
Mr. Bennett said that queue jumping was not a major, fundamental answer for getting more people
on a bus. Ms. Maine said it might be a way to get incremental support for more than just potential
right-of-way.
Mr. Bennett said he was under the impression that the technical group had been meeting on a
..regular.basisand that the technical information was available to answer the questions that each
policy making body had. In the end, he said, there would be questions that would not be answered
by all the studies, and one question to ask when asking for more studies was whether a person
would never be able to get on board philosophically, or whether those studies really would make a
difference. Ms. Maine said that they would make a difference to the Council, and she assured him
that the Council discussion had always been about trying to find ways to make it work.
Mr. Bennett said that this was an example of a situation where. people might just have to finally
believe in something. L TO was saying to the Council that this was how it wanted to be accountable,
and there was no data that would tell the Council that until it actually had a chance to work. Ms.
Maine said, however, that the Council needed reasonable assurance from a broader perspective
than just a transit rider's perspective.
Mr. Bennett said that L TO had a package of fundamentals (lighting, bus appearance, prepaid fares,
etc.) that it believed to be a product development marketing approach to public transit that L TO
thought would make a very significant difference over time.
Ms. Hocken said that the Board accepted the fact that the City of Springfield, and Mayor Maine in
particular, felt that they needed more information. She said she would really like a list for staff of the
alternatives that Springfield thought L TO should have considered or should consider now, whether
in general terms or not. The community had been working on TransPlan for five or six years, and it
was at some level a consideration of many alternatives for transportation for the entire area. She
.
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Minutes of Joint L TD Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 21
was not sure what else Springfield needed to help them make a decision, so that was why she
asked for a list. Ms. Fitch said that that list had been prepared and presented.
Mr. Kelly said he would provide the list of the kinds of information that the Council wanted, in terms
of broad alternatives, as well as more information on the technical alternatives. Mr. Simmons said
he would like to have an opportunity for the Council to review that list.
. ... Ms. Helphand said it might feel that the group was stepping back in some ways, but she thought
that if they got the list, they could quickly get right back to where they were. She thought the two
groups needed a little more dialog with each other in order to feel comfortable moving forward.
Ms. Hocken said that L TDhad gone through a public process in the downtown Springfield corridor,
. on potential alignments, and she did not know.how.much the CounciLitself..had.participated in that.
Ms. Fitch replied that the Council had participated in all three meetings. Ms. Hocken said that the
. : public .had told L TD.one thing about alternatives, and she wondered if the Council had something
totally different to tell LTDabout corridor alignment alternatives, as a Council.. She wanted to
receive some feedback from the Council as a whole if they had a different option for that corridor.
Mr. Simmons said thatitwent back to what he said about solicitation, that during those discussions,
the predicate for response was based on the narrow vision of the plan rather than the alternatives.
He disagreed with Ms. Hocken's statement that the Council was a stakeholder for the District. He
said that the Council was a partner in this process, and being a stakeholder in the community, it
might be looking at BRT inconsistent with the viewpoint of the District, but not inconsistent with the
. goal. He thought they could get there, but there was a necessary process to get the information in,
digest it, suggest some alternatives, and work within the scope of what BRT in the global sense was
all about.
Ms. Helphand wanted to be clear about what the Council needed for the next steps: they needed a
big picture of what led this process to BRT; they would receive information on technical alternatives.
When asked to clarify what that meant, Ms. Maine said that they had been bringing those issues
forward for some time.
Mr. Viggiano asked to clarify the status of the technical review. He said that L TD had done
technical analyses as they had gone through the planning, and a, spreadsheet in the packet was
provided as an example of what had been done... He had asked what. other. technical information
the road authorities needed in order to make a decision from a technical standpoint on the project.
Staff had asked for that but had not received a detailed list. The previous Thursday, an inter-
.jurisdictional staff team provided more information about what might be needed, but it was still not
specific, such as whether the traffic model used was acceptable to develop the data. He said that
the June 7 date would be contingent upon L TD receiving the request in a specific enough format in
order to prepare the data.
Ms. Fitch asked Mr. Kelly if that information could be compiled and given to L TD during the next
week, and he said that it could.
Ms. Helphand, remembering that Mr. Bennett's comment that additional information would be
helpful but may not answer every question, asked where they wanted to go after they received the
information, as policy boards wanting to solve the issue before them.
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Minutes of Joint L TD Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 22
Mr. Bailey said that there was a process in place that he had not heard anyone object to, which was
that the BRT Steering Committee and the technical advisory group would do their own review and
present that to the councils according to the timeline that had been discussed earlier. The Board
and Council might want to have another joint work session, and within the next two or three months
they would have the opportunity to review all that information. There would be a preliminary
decision point, an endorsement without final approval, at that point. He saw that as the next step.
Ms; Loobey explained that there was a technical-advisory committee in place that had staff from
both organizations, as well as a steering committee with representatives from both organizations.
Information wentto the technical group and then to the steering committee, and then to the policy
boards.
There was agreement that it was vital for the two groups to get together again. Ms. Hocken said
she did not know if the Council was saying that until they. received a certain level of detail they could
not allow the environmental assessment process, which was a process of studying more detail, to
go forward.. She did not know at what point the Council would have enough data or how difficult
that data would be to gather, so it was difficult to say when the groups should meet again.
.
Ms. Maine said that the environmental analysis was another drop-dead point. She asked if it
required the preliminary engineering to be basically set. Mr. Viggiano said that they would need
enough detail to be able to do traffic studies and those types of things, so it was more at the
detailed planning level. However, Ms. Maine said that it would need to review alignment and
functions, so she sensed that the environmental assessment could not go forward until the groups
got together again.
Mr. Bailey said that the Board was slated to do its approval of phase 1 preferred alternative in July,
so itseemed that the Council and Board needed to meet again before July.
Ms. Lauritsen said what she heard breaking down around the room were express service along the
freeway, a parallel route to Main Street, and phasing in the project. She thought those were the
stopping places, so the detail needed to address those issues. That might not be the engineering
data, but it should be a sufficient amount of detail in order for boards to make policies on.
Mr. Kleger observed that there were some things that would not be available in a set sequence, and
sometimes there needed to be some general decisions before iLwaspossible to get an analysis
that would answer another question that needed to be answered. He said that part of the reason for
the corridor location and public input process was to help narrow the field before doing some of the
very expensive calculating.
Ms. Helphand added that part of the process was talking together and listening to each other
respectfully and having the trust to consider each other's issues.
.
Mr. Bennett asked about the issue of Springfield asking L TD to fund an engineering position. He
wondered if that was part of getting the information that Springfield needed. Mayor Maine
explained that this came up during discussions in Washington, D.C., about what it would take, since
Springfield staff had not been able to participate as fully in the technical advisory committee as they
would like, since it was not the most important issue on the City's docket and they had a lot of
transportation issues. As part of the request, Springfield wanted L TD to slow down a little and, as a
way to help Springfield catch up, backfill a traffic engineer for Springfield to assign to this project
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Minutes of Joint L TD Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 23
full-time. She said that this would make a significant dent in having Springfield's participation go up
to the level where the Council would get the information it needed in order to go forward and
evaluate alternatives, make the decisions, etc. It was agreed to at that time.
Mr. Bennett asked if based on L TD's current staffing levels the staff should be able to provide the
information the Council asked for. Mr. Viggiano replied that they could.
.
Dan Brown, the Springfield Public Works director, said he understood from his staff that L TD staff
had not provided them with the kinds of information that they believed their Council needed in order
to understand and ultimately endorse the concept. Therefore, their feeling was that if L TD staff
were not going to do it, Springfield staff would have to do it. If they had the staff person, that person
would work with L TD to generate the study and analysis to answer all the questions that the Council
had, presuming that L TD staff would not be willing to start providing it.
Mr. Viggiano asked what specifically Mr. Brown was referring to. Mr. Brown referred the question to
. the traffic engineer, Brian Barnett. Mr. Barnett said that it would include some of the things that
Mr. Simmons was talking about, looking at other alternatives, ridership, how to meet goals without
exclusive bus lanes, impacts on businesses and access to side streets, how signal priority would
affect the signals, etc. Mr. Viggiano again referred to the spreadsheet showing the type of analyses
that had been done, which included some of the things Mr. Barnett was talking about. He said that
those analyses might not include the type of detail that Springfield felt it needed, and those were the
specifics that L TD had asked Springfield for. For instance, if the traffic models that L TD used did
not meet Springfield's needs, then what model would meet those needs? He said it was difficult to
respond to Springfield's request without a greater level of detail about those requests.
Mr. Barnett said that the spreadsheet did talk about different technical analyses. He described the
depth of the technical analysis as skimpy, andsaid.that Springfield had not had the staffing level to
review it to the level of detail that they knew their Council expected. Secondly, he said, the
spreadsheet did not consider any alternative other than full BRT from day one. He thought that
HOV lanes and queue jumping had potential, but he did not know how good that potential was until
he received some kind of analysis. He said he could not promote to his Council to go with BRT or
with HOV lanes until he saw a lot more than a spreadsheet like this. An L TD-funded engineer could
be used to evaluate L TD's analyses as well as the tasks that had beenmentioned'before..
.
Mr. Bennett said he wanted to know very specifically what the City-staff wanted, and then work out
who would do that, how itwould be paid for, and when it could be reviewed in a timely fashion. He
said that the objective was to be accountable in terms of increased ridership over time. It was not
whether a bus couldget-to the next light or even to the same speed with queue jumping; that may
be an important factor in the whole equation, but the issue was more one of who would be
accountable for essentially getting a significantly increased percentage of ridership, particularly
during the peak periods, but also as a whole on the system. He hoped that others agreed with that
objective. Ms. Maine'said that she did not agree with it at the expense of everybody else on the
road. Mr. Bennett said it was not at the expense of others, because L TD would be increasing the
capacity of the road. But Ms. Maine said that a big "if' was if people would choose to ride.
Mr. Bennett said that this was why he was listening very carefully to the Council about phasing, but
at the same time was trying not to give up the fact that if certain of those package issues were not
available together, BRT would not have a chance to work at any time. In other words, he said, if
there was not enough of a competitive change, the project would be doomed from the beginning, so
they needed to find the right balance.
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Minutes of Joint L TD Board/Springfield City Council Meeting, May 1, 1999
Page 24
Ms. Hocken said she would hope that in the Springfield staff re\liew of the information that L TD
would provide them, that information would be shared with the Council in such a way to say that the
information did not tell them conclusively one way or the other what had to happen. She thought
she was hearing that the Springfield staff felt they had to make a recommendation to the Council
based on technical information. She wanted it to be understood that there was a policy decision
that would override the technical decision. If there were no technical guarantees, she hoped that
would not be a reason to throw out the project. As Mr. Bennett said, the Board was asking for some
accommodation so that L TO could make this project work, not that L TO could guarantee all the
impacts 20 years down the road.
Mr. Simmons suggested reading the document he had been referring to that morning, and he
thought the Board would see that the comments and suggestions were a part of that process that
the FT A put a great deal of time and energy into. He said that it may not be consistent with
particular viewpoints. but maybe they would. reach a hybrid project that worked well for the people of
Eugene and Springfield.
Ms. Helphand directed the discussion back to the purpose of the meeting, to lay some of the issues
on the table, to look at options, and to leave the meeting with specifics about how they were going
to go forward.
Ms. Maine thought that the fundamental reason for the meeting was accomplished. That was to get
together and get the issues out, because' even though there were technical and steering
committees, until the two boards got together to understand the issues, they were not really
understood. She thought that meetings of that type should have been built into the process, and
she suggested that the Council should r:neet with its own technical staff and then meet again with
the L TO Board. She thought it was a useful meeting, so the groups could get to a place where they
were taking some issues on faith, but they would know what those issues were and not have things
that were just plain missing because they didn't look.
Mr. Bailey endorsed Ms. Maine's cOmments. He thought thE(two groups had come a long way in
terms of identifying the issues and having a chance to get all the issues on the table and build some
trust. He thought this would help them take a step forward, and he felt healthier about the process.
He thank~d everyone for the hard work and for not giving up.
ADJOURNMENT: There was no further discussion. and the meeting was adjourned at 12: 1 0 p.m.
J(.; WlOl~
~oarJSecretary
Adopted by the Springfield City Council this 21st day of June 1999.
-
~~~
Mayor
Attest:
. WL.Q.~
~son
City Recorder
/