Regional Transportation Council

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1:00 >> Good afternoon, it's July 7th, it is 4 PM. I'm calling this RTC Board of Directors meeting to order. Could we have roll call, please? >> Michelle Belcott. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Sue Marshall. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Will Fuentes. >> Here. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Ann McEnerny-Ogle. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Eric Paulson. >> Here. >> Masa Eschke. >> Here. >> Troy McCoy. >> Here. >> Asa Leckie. >> Here. >> Ron Irig. >> Here. >> Scott Patterson. >> Here. >> Devin Rec. >> Here. >> Temple Lentz. >> Here. >> Bill Eyal. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Brian Winsheimer. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Christine Lewis.

1:58 [BLANK_AUDIO] >> And House and Senate members of the 14th, 17th, 18th, John Lay. >> Present. >> 20th and 49th districts. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Thank you, that gives us a quorum. That brings us to approval of the board agenda. Before we get there, our executive director's gonna make a suggestion for a motion for amending that. >> Okay, directors, two items to report related to the agenda. After the agenda was posted, it was updated. I would like the board to entertain moving the report listed under Executive Director Report, referred to as Critical Urban Rural Freight Corridor View. Move that up to discussion item. The second issue is a correction made this morning. Director Eschke noted that the resolution 72626 had a incorrect term. That's since been updated.

2:56 The resolution in front of you and posted online has been corrected to reflect that mistake. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Move to approve the agenda as amended. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Okay, that'll bring us to public comments. Do we have anybody signed up online? >> No one has signed up online. >> We have four signed up in person. First one, Deborah Kalls. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you would come up to the. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'll call that. Jordan, could you turn that off? Turn the mic on.

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4:16 >> Hi, my name's Deborah Kells. I'm a resident of Clark County, Vancouver since 1971. >> If you'd hold that mic closer so the people online can hear you. >> Okay. My name's Deborah Kells. I have lived in Clark County since 1971, moved into my house in 1989, still living there all these years later. It backs on to Andreessen between Northeast 63rd and 78th. We lived there before it was two lanes. So since they widened it and put in a wall, our house, the back of our house is approximately a 20 foot drop below the top of the wall there. So traffic has grown exponentially over the years, gotten way worse. I just wanted to play something for you.

5:09 This is my house, 85 feet from the wall, okay? When there's no traffic, it's really nice to sit on my deck. However, when there's 18 wheelers, buses, trucks, people speeding down the road. [BLANK_AUDIO] I can't have a conversation on my deck. My house has become unlivable because of the noise on Andreessen. So I got a sound meter. And when it is a normal day without heavy traffic, the decibels is 47.5. Then you have 18 wheelers coming through there using their jake brakes as they come down the hill and go to the stoplight at Andreessen.

6:08 Houses along Andreessen, where you're essentially driving through our backyards. So the noise in there is unbelievable, the road noise. And you have houses that are no more than 15 feet off of the road surface. So in looking at the effects of 18 wheelers wheel and tire noise, it rated at 75 decibels at low speeds and 95 decibels at highway speeds. Now people drive through there at 45, 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. I hear it every night. So what happens with the breakdown of 18 wheeler tire noise reveals that speeds, truck tire wheel noise averages around 75 dBA highway speeds. So it increases to significantly roughly 95 dBA frequencies.

7:04 And then when they use their jake brakes, my house literally rumbles because we're below the road grade. So at a distance of 50 feet, depending heavily on the exhaust system, the decibels are between 80 and 105 decibels. So by point in bringing all of this out, in fact, it says it's comparable volume to the heavy city traffic, I'm sorry, real quick, which is a jackhammer or low flying jet. So I'm asking you when you are doing your considerations of major roads through residences that you also mitigate the noise. Thank you. >> Next up, Bruce Barnes.

7:59 [ Inaudible ] >> Good afternoon, Chair, Bruce Barnes for the record and council. I'm here to talk about the interstate bridge and light rail. I last weekend went to the fireworks downtown Portland and my girlfriend and I brought e-bikes so we could ride around and just observe what was going on with light rail and the amount of ridership which was in the toilet. It was hardly anybody riding the light rail. Riding it into the fireworks on the waterfront or riding it out after it was over. Most people, a lot of people actually rode bicycles down there because when we talked to them they didn't want to pay the parking fees. Parking down there was $15 to $25 for parking in the parking lots per hour, right, and they increased the fees along the downtown Portland area as well.

8:58 For that evening. And so a lot of people walked from their apartments down in there or they rode bicycles. The only problem with the bicycles that they rode, some of them were stolen down at the jazz festival because there was no security to protect them which I thought was ironic and hilarious at the same time, they put in these little metal racks that weren't even secured to the ground. So they just lifted up the racks and pulled their locks off and took off on their bicycles. So it was sad to me to see that but the event was thousands and thousands of people. Portland knows how to make money. Vancouver obviously doesn't. They didn't have a fireworks display. There was people down there spending money. My friend that owned seven bars down there made over $2.6 million on Saturday. $2.6 million. That's some revenue. People were drinking. People were eating. People were having fun. People were selling balloons and even the homeless were making money. You know why? Because they put up parking signs to charge people to park.

9:58 Ingenious. And then they took off with the money, right? And then the people were ticketed because they thought they paid to park and they were not paying the right parking. So my point being is this light rail thing needs to be looked at, right? And as funny as it was, it really wasn't funny. We've got a problem here. And doing a job without having a plan review, doing a job where you don't have enough money to build it, doing a job where you're going to start in the middle and go both ways and have no idea how long it takes to drill pillars or even how many pillars are going to be in the ground for this bridge. I've asked your IBR team for that information. I still haven't got it. That's why I'm here today. I'd like that information of how many pillars are going to be there because that's really going to dictate how long this job takes and if they can even hit bedrock, right? That's why they put the other bridge on wood instead of going into the pillars

10:53 into the bedrock because I think there's a lot more silt there than people think. And then you're going to have to worry about moving the homeless boats that are across the river there again. I actually called the Oregon Parks yesterday about that because I was strategic in getting those military ships moved out of there that they sunk previous to that which cost the taxpayers about $600,000. But anyways, that's what I'm here to talk about. I think this bridge is way too expensive and I think it's-- I don't want another project like the Main Street Promise because that thing is a disaster. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Bruce. Next up, Carmen De Leon-Mello. >> Yeah. My name is Carmen De Leon. Can you hear pretty good? OK. So, I go by Mello and I have so many different things. For example, we just had our 250th anniversary of this country.

11:53 They said that at the signing of the declaration on the 4th of July original 1776, 4th of July, the temperature was 76 degrees in Washington. This year, it was 104 something, 105 which means we're getting hotter. In other words, when you rely on trains because some trains have just shut down because the metal heated up, swelled up and you can't use the trains. And as we see just right over there, about 10, 20, 30 miles of unused train tracks that-- I don't know, what are you going to do with all those miles of trains on the other side of the Mill Plain Bridge. Anyways, that's just to say because of the light rail and other $3 billion project that, like I said before, the populations of the United States is 345 million. So, that's more than a million per person for a bus service that serves 900 people a day. It's ridiculous. So, just to say that, the BART system is going out of business

12:52 which has a potential clientele of 8 million people in San Francisco, San Jose area, 8 million people. And they couldn't keep their BART system working because everybody wants their own car because that's the American way. You want freedom, get yourself a Harley. When your kid turns 16, they give them a set of car keys. They don't give them a bus pass. It's our freedom to have a car. But you want to eliminate cars, great. Go find a business with some jet packs, get 90 people on jet-- 90,000 people on jet packs and you'll eliminate half the traffic because you're only getting 100,000 per day on that-- on that-- they say it needs to be replaced bridge when I'm telling you I've worked the Huskies, I've worked the Seahawks and they moved 70,000 people a day in 2 hours without a problem. What do they have? Buses. Why? Because buses, if it breaks down, you just tow them away. But if on a train it gets stopped, everything stops for days. Buses can be fixed in any weather.

13:51 Trains get stopped in both the hot and the cold. It's a huge waste of money. How much time do I have? And we cannot trust the powers that be. As you see, the city of Vancouver-- oh, this is what it was. You guys want people's communication? Then stop shutting us down because the city of Vancouver illegally lets me speak now that she took away my ability to speak freely because I disagreed. You can't shut down people that disagree. You have to find a place where you agree to disagree, not shut them down. That's tyranny to threaten me with jail just for speaking like I'm speaking to you here today. Some of these officials should be in jail for racketeering because the Fremont Bridge, the Ross Island Bridge, not one cost a billion. Even Astoria Bridge four miles long didn't cost that much. We can build four bridges with a billion dollars that they've already secured. It's a joke to replace that bridge. Make 205 wider and add a third bridge, if not four, because you have the money. >> Thank you, Carmen. Next up, Ron Rasmussen.

14:51 Sorry about that.

15:03 >> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ron Rasmussen. I reside at 7806 -- excuse me. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ron Rasmussen. I reside at 7806 Northeast 69th Street inside Vancouver City limits. Some thoughts today about several things. May I ask if this body could really increase its credibility with the public by publicly declaring the intention, publicly declaring the goal of extending light rail from the Columbia River all the way to the 99th Street Transit Center. I understand that things happen over a period of time, but if you declare that goal, then eventually it'll get there. Then the public will be much more willing and ready to accept the goals that you've outlined. I understand the bridge is going to be funded and built in phases. That's to be understood. But please do consider also, please look at the bridge being built between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, being run by the other ODOT, Ohio Department of Transportation.

16:02 And it's Kentucky equivalent. Their costs apparently are substantially lower than -- I'm sorry, their cost estimates are substantially lower than the cost for the I-5 bridge. Do please consider that on a comparison basis. Also, do be sure to tell us how many lanes the I-5 bridge will be each way. We're seeing very little information on that, a lot of happy talk in the various emails, but not much in terms of how many lanes. And also, ladies and gentlemen, what percent design complete is the I-5 bridge? I'm seeing very little information on that as well too. So a little bit more information. Also, I do recommend the design-build method of contracting. That has worked very well in many of the cities and states around the country to really decrease the cost, decrease the construction contractor finger pointing. Do please consider that as well. And ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Ron. That concludes the public comment portion of the meeting, which brings us to consent agenda items. Board, what's your pleasure?

17:00 >> I move to approve the consent agenda. >> Second. >> The motion is second for approval of the consent agenda as presented. All in favor? >> Aye. >> Could we also reflect the minutes to show two people, Mayor Ann and Bill? Thank you. We missed them on roll call, but I see them online. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for coming. That brings us to a congestion management process summary report.

17:48 >> Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mark Harrington, and I'll be providing an update of RTC's congestion management process. The congestion management process, or CMP, is a federally acquired planning element for MPOs with a population of over 200,000 people. The process includes the monitoring of congestion on the regional transportation system. Here, locally, we track 31 regional corridors that include state, interstate, state facilities, as well as many regional arterials. Our data focuses on volumes from traffic counts as well as some travel speeds from GPS phone data from a big data service provider. We use TomTom here locally.

18:47 This year, we've also undertaken the goal of moving the travel speed data and measures onto an online dashboard that is still under some work, but it'll increase the temporal and spatial detail of some of the congestion data that we are collecting. The second portion is to identify and evaluating strategies. A regional CMP identifies many strategies for managing congestion in more detailed plans such as the Urban Freeway's Corridor Operations Study. It evaluated options for projects for implementation. The UFCO identified many of the transportation system and management operation projects that WSDOT has been implementing over the past number of years along I-5, I-205, and the SR-14 corridors, including variable speed signs, ramp meters, and revised lane striping and others. Of course, one of the things we really like to see is the implementation of projects

19:46 of these strategies, and we also do monitoring the effectiveness of these strategies. I think last month, you saw some results of the monitoring of the Regional Signal Timing Plans Project and the effects of that pilot project on congestion within the region. So we look at those detailed results as well. RTC's process serves as a foundation for monitoring the regional transportation system for congestion and is designed as an informational tool to be used by decision-makers in that process. Today we're gonna look at RTC's 2025 CMP summary report, and I find it valuable to kind of go through and provide some context of what's been happening in the region between 2024 and 2025. The county's population has continued to grow. The growth rate has moderated a bit to about 1.1% over 2024. The population growth estimates here come from the state's Office of Financial Management.

20:43 Job growth has slightly outpaced population growth at 1.4%, adding about 2,600 jobs to the county in the past in 2020, during 2025. I will note that that's from the State Employment Security Department, and that 2025 employment data has not been completely finalized. It's still provisional and subject to review, even this late in 2026. Telework has decreased slightly. The latest data comes from the census ACS data, which is published 2024. 2025 data, I think, is gonna come out another three, four months from now. But it's remained high at 17.5% of commuters, of workers in Clark County using telework as their mode of getting to work. And finally, bridge volumes, these are Columbia River Bridge volumes, average weekday,

21:43 have increased from 2024 to 2025 by about 2%. So just to look at what's been happening in the region, both in terms of population employment growth and just overall vehicular traffic growth. Some key findings that we've had from our look this year is the work from home rate continues to be high. It's been falling slightly, but it's considerably higher than it was in 2019. Our AM congestion and bottlenecks are mainly in the southbound direction on interstate and state systems. Not much surprising to anyone else, it's been for at least a decade plus. But we do see WSDOT's work with the active transportation management strategies in these corridors on the interstate system have been appearing to mitigate increases in congestion during this time. Regional signal timing plans show improvement in those corridors and from our big regional look, and we'll look into that a little bit more

22:42 as we look at some more details here. So I'll back out to freeway congestion. This is sort of a high level of summary of freeway congestion, and here we're looking at times when travel speeds in these corridors over the length of the corridor are under 45 miles per hour for the length of the corridor during the AM and PM peak periods. What we see here is I-5 south section southbound. It's a slight decrease in one hour from four hours below 45 miles an hour to three hours. I-205 southbound, down from two hours to zero hours. SR-500 west westbound is a decrease in hour of its span of congestion below 45 miles per hour in the morning.

23:36 SR-14 west there right by the, as it approaches I-5, dropping stains consistent at two hours. And then I-205 centrally southbound dropping from two hours to zero hours below 45 miles per hour. The PM peak also sees some similar reductions of an hour. Now, I want to speak to here, we've been measuring things in hour increments, and part of this work, I mentioned moving to a dashboard, we're looking at some different bits of data, is moving to measuring speeds in one hour increments into 15 minute increments. It'll give us a better temporal understanding of travel times and speeds. Can we use a 45 mile an hour cutoff in an hour? One year it says 44.9, next year it's 45.1. Over that hour, we get the swing, and I just want to say it's an hour, but that might be only 15 minutes.

24:33 And so we want to go into some greater temporal detail of these 15 minute increments. So to help us better understand this and not look at, we had an hour improvement where it may have been more of just a 15 minute or 30 minute improvement. So that's here looking at the interstate system. Next, as I noted before, the regional signal timing project had previously come here before this body, I think it was just last month. They were looking at seven retimed corridors. This is just sort of a quick look from these seven CMP corridors that are covered by those signal timing plans and that we see from our regional level congestion monitoring data that we've looked at for 2025. Now there were seven corridors in the east county. They're covered here. The SR 503 north and battleground is not here on this map. The red circles, they indicate the 10 highest volume intersections

25:30 within the county minus the 503, 502 intersection up there to the north. So phase one of this signal timing pilot project included seven of the highest volume intersections within the county were on the corridors included in that work. Here I'm just looking at the PM peak period. These were average travel speeds during the weekdays in October. This table shows the increase in the average weekday PM travel speed for each of these, for these corridors. So as an example, SR 503, the southern section southbound, it had in 2024, an average harmonic speed for vehicles traveling in that corridor of about 17 miles per hour during a three-hour PM peak. We saw in 2025 that increasing by 3.4 miles per hour harmonic average

26:26 up to about 20.4 miles per hour. We have here in other corridors an increase in Mill Plain Boulevard east westbound of 1.1 miles per hour, in the eastbound direction 1.6 miles per hour, Fourth Plain Boulevard east section westbound of 1.4 miles per hour, and then finally on 162nd, 164th Avenue, the north section southbound increase of travel speeds of one mile per hour. This, I guess, gives another data point looking at the impact of retiming those corridors. We see that there is the decrease in the stopping and the delay at intersections. It's raising the average travel speed for the throughput through those corridors. Overall, our regional partners, they continue to deliver and plan projects that align

27:25 with key regional congestion management process strategies that we've identified. Signal corridor timing that we've done in the regional plans there. TSMO and TDM, that's Transportation Systems Management and Operations, as well as Demand Management. WSDOT's been deploying a lot of ATM projects on the I-5 and 205 corridors. Arterial improvements, bringing things up to urban standards, as well as following complete streets policies. The high-volume intersections, a lot of the signal timing involved are high-volume intersections, and then delivering the I-5 bridge replacement project. I just wanted to mention here, we've been working on a new CMP dashboard. It's still under construction. Dylan Gilberto, he's a PSU grad student who worked as an intern from us

28:20 from the Metropolitan Urban and Regional Planning program there. He just regionally graduated. He was working with some APIs to pull data from this big data source, TomTom, getting into some finer temporal and spatial data, a lot of Python scripting. I'll let him do all his details. He's going to present sort of his work a little bit here at the end. I don't want to steal his thunder. I just want to acknowledge the work that he's done. The backside of data processing and automation is not something that presents really well, but there's a lot of work that went behind a lot of the stuff that he's put into developing the basic bones of this dashboard. And I just want to publicly acknowledge his work that he's done to help RTC in this developing a more detailed and refined process in our congestion management.

29:17 So we're here looking for the board to accept this year's congestion management process summary report, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. >> Not seeing any questions right now. Go ahead. >> And so for my information, this is great process. Thanks for presenting. How do you use this data in the future for probably decision making for future projects? Or in which area do you use this data? >> So the data that we collected is used across multiple fronts. One is just a monitoring process. One, are we seeing new areas of congestion emerge? Are we seeing places where we've had evaluation part of the monitoring?

30:13 As we've developed and deployed various projects, how have they performed in managing congestion? It's not something we're -- the notion that we can eliminate congestion, but can we manage it, the duration and the severity of congestion? That data then informs often more detailed project and implementation work. As I mentioned, the urban freeways corridors operation study used this type of data to then for WSDOT was developing more detailed analysis around where ramp meters would be effective, what kind of a priority of what should go in first. And so that goes into that type of work. So we try to keep it as a broad collection of data both for monitoring progress and for helping our regional partners in their development and implementation

31:11 of congestion mitigation projects from identified regional strategies. Does that help clarify that? [ Inaudible ] >> Seeing no further questions, I'd entertain a motion for approval of resolution 72627. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Bill. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor? >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Resolution passes. Thank you for the presentation, Mark. Next up, Jennifer, we're on to discussion information items and the 2026 project obligation status report.

32:03 >> Good afternoon. I'm here to give you a project obligation report update. And if you remember, at the end of last year, we kind of initiated a new process where we were going to start bringing quarterly reports to the board just to kind of keep you up to date to where we're at in the process, how things are going. And I think that was partly helpful for all the kind of whirlwind process that we went through earlier this year in terms of all the changes that we need to make. So I'm just here now that kind of the dust has settled a little bit in terms of everything that's gone on the last couple of months just to give you an update. So this is kind of the first quarter update, but it goes into June of this year as well. So as you're aware, RTC is responsible to make sure that agencies are obligating their funds. The funds are going out and getting spent and done in a timely manner.

33:02 All of this is really outlined in the programming guidebook, which we brought a lot of kind of policy information to you this year already. So we have as of -- so it was two weeks ago, about June 26, I think. We've had $9.3 million obligated so far with these 13 different projects. So a lot of good progress this year. And again, appreciate your patience and your understanding as we brought all these kind of different policy sections and new policies for you guys to look at and approve. It really helped us try to meet our obligation target. So it's $12 million is our obligation target for this year. So we're a little bit -- still a little bit behind on that, but I've got some more information on that. But thanks to all the agencies that worked with us to get these projects obligated and moving forward. A kind of a shout out to C-TRAN, there was a lot of kind of little things that we had to work with them on changes, a couple hiccups. So appreciate their patience in working with us. And then the city of Vancouver as well in terms of just the 18th Street project and kind

34:01 of all the things that we've had to do with that project to keep it moving forward. And then really just all the agencies on here that have gotten these projects obligated before our June 30 deadline. So we still have a few projects. It's about $2.7 million for some projects that are still in process. So with the C-TRAN projects, those are just working with FTA to get those transferred. We know that's happening with the RTC projects. We just have a process with WSDOT. So we usually can't get ours approved until the very end of July. That's just how things kind of settle, but they're working to get those approved a little bit earlier. And then 18th Street, the policy change or the exception that we brought to you last month. So we have that issue with Washougal and the 32nd Street overcrossing project. And we had identified last week as the date or two weeks ago as the date for Washougal

34:58 to be able to provide some information to us that they were going to be able to obligate or that there was some process starting with the obligating of those funds. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of back and forth between WSDOT local programs and FRA, Federal Railroad Association administration. So that's still kind of a huge mess. So we just decided to go ahead and give the go-ahead to Vancouver to obligate. We had talked about with you $1.25 million, but seeing how potentially Washougal could still obligate their funds by the September 30th deadline, so that's like kind of the last deadline that we have to be able to be in this year's federal fiscal year to be counted for our obligation target. So we wanted to give them a little bit more time. So instead of the $1.25, we just asked the City of Vancouver to do $1 million. That would get us really, really close to hitting our target and then would also leave a little bit of wiggle room in case Washougal came

35:56 through with their projects. So we still have four projects that have yet to be obligated or even submit their obligation paperwork process. So I mentioned the 32nd Street project. It's just an ongoing conversation between all the different agencies to try to figure out who wants it, who's going to do it, and how we're going to get that project moving forward with the PE and right-of-way for both of those. And then we've got two Vancouver projects that have run into some right-of-way issues, and so they did not meet the June 30th deadline, and they also did not let us know. We have a March deadline that if agencies are going to have a delay with their projects, they need to let us know by then. That's in the programming guidebook, so we just ask agencies to let us know. There's quite a few projects that did come in with that request, and so then that allows us to plan and come to you and make some of those changes like we did this year.

36:53 So we've got those projects that did request for a delay before March. That was C-TRAN with the BRT project, Ridgefield project, and Vancouver and then Washougal project. And so that was, again, something that we had to kind of make a quick pivot to ensure that we could cover that amount of funding with some of the expected obligation that we had with those projects this year. And then we did have the one project from Clark County. They did resend that grant application and return that. So again, that was another kind of big hit for us in terms of how we planned out the programming of funds for this year. And then we still haven't heard from the state, so I don't know if that's a good sign or maybe a bad sign, but I know that they were going to have some meetings to talk about whether they hit their state target for requesting additional obligation authority at the federal level. So we still haven't heard from them, but like we shared with you, it was 18th Street.

37:51 We have that kind of set up to ask for an additional $8 million in obligation authority. And then we also talked with the city of La Center. And because the transportation alternatives program, a lot of agencies typically don't ask for additional obligation authority with transportation alternatives. So this year we were set up where we had one where we could ask for construction funds for that. So we thought it might be a good idea to submit for that. So it's $700,000, and so we'll do a TIP amendment for that in order to be able to potentially accommodate that additional request. So we'll continue to work with those agencies that haven't submitted any of their obligation paperwork yet and try to get those done by September. So that's the two projects for the city of Vancouver and then Washougal as well. There have been some conversations between WSDOT and FRA and local programs

38:44 with the Washougal project that potentially we might -- or they might ask for a delay into 2027. So we might come back to you at the next meeting or the meeting after and ask for another policy exception for their project to allow them to go into 2027 with a delay for their PE and their wider way funds. If that does happen, we will have -- it'll impact some of the program or the projects that we have programmed for next year. So we might have to do a little bit of shuffling around. And then we also have kind of the loss of the carbon reduction program hanging over us as well. It's been confirmed that that will go away when there is a new federal bill, but when that happens, we're not sure. And yeah, so thank you again, and I know a lot of exceptions this year is really unusual, but we appreciate kind of your understanding and working with us on that. And hopefully -- so we're about $100,000 over our obligation target,

39:40 so hopefully everything moves through, and we stick with that, and we're okay. So really, really close this year. So any questions at all? >> So for the four projects that haven't obligated yet, if they are not able to obligate by September 30th, what is our situation? >> So our policy is that they would lose the grant funds. So we're trying to work -- I know with Garrison, they just got the last property owner to sign on that they need a right-of-way for, so there's good progress with that. Unfortunately, with Hazel Dell, that -- because it's a joint city-county project, there's a property in the county that won't agree for the right-of-way, so they're going to have to go through the condemnation process, so we're not sure how long that'll take. And then Washougal, yeah, they, you know, would essentially lose those funds, and that's what we've been communicating to them and really pushing them,

40:38 so that's why we would come back to you and ask for another potential exception to bump them out to next year. >> And if we miss our obligation target by that much, what impact does that have on RTC and future funds? >> So if we miss our obligation target this year, we wouldn't be able to request the additional OA, so for 18th Street and for the La Center project. And then we would be -- at the statewide level, we'd be kind of put on notice because we didn't meet our target, and then if next year we didn't meet our target again, then we could lose potential funding, so kind of like what happened with Yakima County. They lost about $1.7 million, I think, and that was redistributed to other MPOs, so definitely some challenges. >> And if Washougal pushes, do those funds for 26, are they considered us not meeting the obligation target for 26?

41:37 >> No, because it's the $12 million target, that's just like our high-level target that we're working at, and because of the increases that we did to STBG where we increased the caps on projects and things like that, that and moving some things around and allowing those other exceptions, and then really that last thing that we did a couple weeks ago with 18th Street and the city and that last million dollars, that got us over the $12 million, so assuming all that goes through fine, we're just about $100,000 over our target, so we're okay. And with those projects not being in this federal fiscal year, so does that make sense? And so that money would come out of next year's projects that are programmed next year, and so that's the discussion that we would have to have is the impact of carrying over that $3.25 million into next year and how that would impact projects that are programmed next year. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yeah.

42:32 >> If directors, if I could just make a comment about the 32nd project in Washougal, just for clarity purposes, I think the board is committed to funding that project, and so as Jennifer described, we're seeking ways to first extend the obligation award through September 30, if that can't be accomplished, then come back to the board and ask the question, should we extend it further? So the policy is lose on September 30, but I think the board's interest may be, consider an extension, and that would then have the ripple effect, as Jennifer described, into next year's tip, and we might have to shuffle some things around. We expect that there could be project delays next year, and so the shuffling would become easier than if everybody was on time, but the history would suggest not everybody's going to be on time. The issue with the Washougal project is not one necessarily of Washougal's making.

43:28 What it is is the $3.25 million listed there are federal highway funds, and so the purview that we have is both federal highway funds, and then one of those pieces of funds is congressionally directed spending. It's an earmark approved by a member of Congress, and those are FHWA funds. The intention was to transfer those funds in a similar way that FHWA funds, and C-TRANS example, transfer from FHWA to federal transit. The intention here is to transfer those funds from FHWA to federal railroad administration. The federal railroad administration has to consent to receive those. That's where the mismatch is. Federal railroad administration right now is saying they're not sure or not fully committed to receive those funds for whatever reason. It could be staffing. It could be just there have been a lot of departures at the federal level, and they don't have the people with the knowledge to receive.

44:26 It could be as simple as that, or it could be some disagreement in terms of who the lead agencies should be. At this point, WSDOT local programs director who oversees this issue has intervened in this project to make contact directly with federal railroad administration to encourage them to overcome whatever administrative hurdles they have to receive those funds. And the reason for that is federal railroad administration is the primary environmental review agency, and so if the NEPA environmental review was completed and approved by federal railroad, they're considered for federal purposes the lead agency. They should administer the funds. So if that sort of provides any clarity, I think our goal overall is they've been awarded these funds. They should receive these funds, but we have to just go through the steps. It should be transparent. We should comply with our procedures, which is this, and then federal railroad,

45:25 if I could encourage them publicly, they should consent to receive the funds because they've been awarded the funds. So we'll be back with more information to the extent there's another step we need to take. >> I appreciate that explanation. It made things more opaque, but no, I do appreciate that, and I think, yeah, the Washougal project is incredibly necessary, and the federal twister that they're playing is not something they have any control over. A concern that I have is just making sure that we are able to meet these obligation targets so that if our goal here is to push money out and get projects done, that we actually retain the ability to do that. So just if this Washougal project continues to be playing some Parker Brothers game, I'll come up with a different name another time, I don't want

46:25 that to impact all the other projects that we want to support. >> I would agree, I guess I would like to see if we're going to extend it past September 30th, some sort of movement, like if we're still stagnating and there's no movement, then I wouldn't be in favor of moving the deadline personally. >> Okay, and then when we do, if we do come to you for that, we'll definitely have, you know, next year's projects, and then it would potentially impact projects years after that, too. So we would have that kind of lined up for you so you could see that what those potential would be. >> Any further questions? Yeah, Washougal. >> Thanks for all the information. Something, I'm trying to refresh my memory, obligation in end of July versus obligation end of September has some negative score for agency, is that right?

47:21 So that affects their future eligibility for funding. >> Yeah, so agencies that don't submit their obligation paperwork by the June 30th deadline, we do have the project delivery scores that we calculate every year based on their project performance, and so yeah, it will be a negative, additional negative score that goes into that, and we look at those project evaluation scores when we're evaluating the grant applications. >> And just a follow-up question to that. That negative score, it does not impact RTC in a negative way, right? It just stays with the agencies, those -- >> Yeah, that just stays within the agency. That's a policy that's specific to RTC in the process that we have. The impact would be is we didn't meet our obligation target, our regional obligation target because of the project delays. >> Even if we can obligate it by the end of September for RTC, would that be impact?

48:20 >> If we meet it by the end of September, we're okay because it's the federal fiscal year. >> Okay, I got it. Thank you. >> Anybody else? Thank you, Jennifer. >> Thank you. >> Next up, we have the Clark County Regional Transportation Plan Performance Dashboard. >> Good afternoon, board. My name is Jordan Hayman. I'm an associate planner at RTC. The Clark County Regional Transportation Plan is part of the required federal and state transportation planning process and is the collective 20-year regional strategy for developing a transportation system to provide mobility and accessibility for person trips as well as for freight and goods movement. Chapter 4 of the RTP focuses on federal and regional performance measures identified

49:18 to track progress and/or achieve the implementation of each RTP goal within the 20-year horizon. The RTP Performance Measures Dashboard is a tool that provides a high-level summary of progress towards established performance targets for the transportation system in the Clark County region. The RTP Performance Measures Dashboard includes measures that are currently reported in Chapter 4 of the RTP. All measures reported track or advance the RTP implementation progress. The Dashboard is organized around four goals, safety and security, economic vitality and quality of life, accessibility and mobility, and sustainability and resiliency. So now I will give a brief walkthrough of the Dashboard.

50:18 It's looking a little strange because it's on Microsoft Edge. But in Chrome, this fits. Here we see the four primary chapters and on the homepage we have some basic information for what the RTP is and links that can take you more directly to the other chapters. This map here illustrates the extent of the regional designated transportation system, current as to when this was published. And if we go to the top and click on safety and security, we have these different performance measures that we receive either through WSDOT or other transportation agencies, mostly WSDOT. Yeah, I apologize for the formatting.

51:17 It is not opening very well here in Edge. But as you can see, there are charts that report fatality rates, performance targets, quality of pavement and bridges, et cetera. We have maps of bicycle and pedestrian level of traffic stress that you can toggle around and view, look at the bike LTS. As you can see, the majority of the regional designated transportation system currently rests at a LTS 4, which is the highest level of traffic stress, which signifies that most people would not be comfortable riding a bike or walking along these roadways. Whoa, my apologies.

52:16 Trackpad's a little -- let's do that. Okay. But as the regional designated transportation system changes over the years in time, we will be making sure that this stays up to date. So that is an overview of the safety and security page. Now looking at the economic vitality page, we have a series of other measures that are used to determine or to track the overall health of the transportation system. Here we see the throughway level of travel time reliability, which is the measure as the share of roads where travel speeds drop below 70 to 80% of the posted speed limit

53:14 for two or more hours per day. And there are various different options that you can toggle on or off to make it easier for you to look closely at what you're most interested in. And I'm going to try to not go into too much detail for everybody, but this is available on the RTC website, and as you can see, we included quite a lot of measures to try and tell the story the best way. Here in accessibility and mobility, we deal with pavement conditions. This data comes to us straight from WSDOT, transit information. We made a few maps in house that detail things like proximity to pedestrian and bicycle facilities

54:10 for roadways on the regional designated transportation system, which, as with many of the other maps, are partitioned between bike and pedestrian facilities. We also have proximity to transit included here, where this map was developed to give a proper estimate of where people most likely actually live within the county to get that population estimate. We did the same for schools, and we've included some information of currently approved RTP projects. In the last section, sustainability and resilience, and this one deals with vehicle miles traveled,

55:04 and we break it out into a few different perspectives to hopefully make it easy to understand and see how well the transportation system in the area is working. So with that, I will return here to the slides. Any questions from the board, and this dashboard is available on the RTC website if you want to look at it more, hopefully in Chrome. It's a lot of data. Thank you. The RTC used to have annual numbers for I-5 and I-205, and then they disappeared a couple years ago. Is it possible we could get that on this performance dashboard with updated numbers?

56:03 Yes, I believe that there were a few metrics that included I-5 and I-205, but is there a specific one that you're remembering? I just might not know it. So it was the vehicles crossing Glen Jackson Bridge and the Interstate Bridge. That is definitely something that we could add to this dashboard as an additional dataset. I don't think that one specifically, at least specifically for the freeways, is included on its own, but that is definitely something we can add in the future. We intend for this to be a living document, if you will. So yeah, there will be updates as new needs are identified. Thank you. Can you talk a bit about the next steps and how this will be? I think it's a really great tool and it's wonderful to see it all so visual and accessible and zooming in, but what's the ideal way for this to be used?

57:00 This is intended to be used as a resource for the agencies or for members of the public. If they want to track these numbers, the idea is that we could provide that information and they can do with it what they need to do. The hope is just to get that out there in a hopefully more accessible and understandable way. Yeah, I would just add a comment to say we're in this phase at RTC right now where we're trying to bring our data from behind the scenes to forward-facing, and this is an example of a dashboard that we recently deployed, we're working on publishing our dashboard of data related to the household travel survey. It's ready, but it's been being refined. This is a big body of work that was done jointly with the state of Oregon a couple of years

57:56 ago and reported to the board previously. You'll see a report just on the next agenda item from one of our interns and trying to bring our CMP data forward. There's a wave of work here, and I think the evolution is it should become what it needs to become, and then as a resource to agency members and, as Jordan said, the public. Thank you. Let's see if we can get a digest there. The next agenda item, I'd like to make some introductions before the report. Certainly, Dylan, you're welcome to sit down. This last spring, I guess beginning in January, the board as part of the annual budget had approved just some resources for internship.

58:55 It was a goal, I think, of mine and the agency staff to try to identify opportunities for interns, those people that are students either at a baccalaureate program or master's program that are interested in public policy or urban planning. We sent out a solicitation last year, and there were two applicants, well, several, but two that were granted the position of internship at RTC. To begin with, Dylan Giliverto joined us from Portland State University, just graduated, as Mark said, in a master's in urban and regional planning. I happen to be an alumni of that program, so great work. Dylan in doing his master's program at Portland State also has a bachelor's of science in computer science from the University of La Verne in California, and I think when we interviewed Dylan, if I remember this, and this is just sort of a simplification, I think he expressed

59:53 to me, "You know, I wasn't sure what I was going to do in computer science, but I also liked, you know, urban planning," and I think the observation around computer science was just the evolution of the trade now. You know, a lot of AI, a lot of different ways people are joining that field, and so given his interest in urban planning and urban policy, he was admitted to the program at Portland State and coincidentally has a unique set of skills, those skills being very technical, things like dashboards, which he'll present today, and computer coding, how to pull big data, which we have, but we haven't brought forward, just all those attributes, and I think quite honestly is going to carve a unique niche for his skills as his career develops over the next several decades, and Dylan has accepted a position down with a consulting firm down in Sacramento, California. We offered him employment, but I was a little bit late to that offer, and so he'd accepted the employment offer down in California.

1:00:49 I think it's going to be a great opportunity for him at that firm, get a lot of hands-on experience. I've told him if he ever gets tired of the sun and wants to get back in the rain, just give us a call. Again, I think his skills for this kind of work are in high demand, bringing the technical into the urban policy arena, and the last point of just fun fact, Dylan worked for a period of time for what was then the Boy Scouts of America, now it's called Scouting America, and is an Eagle Scout, there are a few of us here on the RTC staff, including myself, that are Eagle Scouts, so when I saw his application, I thought, well, that's a good set of skills right there. Anyway, this is an Eagle Scout, usually I can vouch for some degree of, at least they did a lot of camps, a 50-miler hike, and so on and so forth, but anyway, Dylan is here to report on some technical work that he's done related to the CMP process that you just heard about this evening and a dashboard that he's created, and Dylan, I'm not sure if there's

1:01:48 anything else to say other than thank you for your work, reiterating Mark's point, excited for what you've done for us in just a little over five months, so the floor is yours, thank you. Thank you very much for that amazing introduction, yeah, I don't think there's anything else I need to say about myself there, and I won't spend too much time talking about what the congestion management process is 'cause Mark already gave a great introduction to that earlier in the meeting, so I'll just talk more about what I've done at RTC since February of this year and where the project's at now and what that might look like in the future. So the current process, this is some of the work Mark has been doing and maybe some other staff members in past years, he mentioned the TomTom data, which is a online resource that has very detailed congestion data, traffic data, all sorts of route data, and RTC has been manually querying that data and downloading it from their website, doing some analysis

1:02:47 on that and then creating a very detailed PDF report. You can look at all those reports, I think going back to 2000 or 2001 on the RTC's website, and that gives you a great amount of detail on the information for how the congestion has progressed over the different years. My project, and Mark mentioned this a little bit, has been to update this process and transfer it from a static PDF that is updated each year into a dashboard pretty similar to what Jordan was just presenting, although this one will be a little bit simpler, there's just fewer data points to look at, so only a couple of pages. So I think Mark mentioned that the behind the scenes has been the main part of my project. I've only recently started working on the dashboard, so that is very much still a work in progress, hopefully it can be made available to the public and published on the RTC website very soon, but it's not quite at that point yet.

1:03:44 So some of what I've been doing is creating a tool for RTC staff to use that automatically requests the most up-to-date data for all the different corridors that RTC monitors from TomTom, and then I've created a tool that will automatically combine all that data and store it in a database, as well as do some additional analysis on high-level corridor data for each year, and then I've started the work to put that into a dashboard that can be made available online. So going into a little bit more detail on that, the first tool is something that allows you to very quickly go in and submit that request, so rather than having to manually copy all the reports from the previous year and update the data, which is maybe just a little bit of a time-consuming process, and that's something that could be done more easily by a computer, there's not any analysis or professional insight needed there, so this

1:04:40 tool automatically does that and then downloads the data. Secondly, the tool is able to go in and store about 850,000 records, so this is looking at the TomTom data splits every corridor into very small little segments that are maybe a couple hundred feet long, and then we're looking at 15-minute periods for the entire day, so that's 96 windows of time, so you very quickly get into the hundreds of thousands of data points, but it's storing that all into a database, which makes it more easily accessible for RTC staff who want to do mapping or further analysis, or maybe look at a corridor before and after a project that took place in a previous year. And then finally, I have started work on the dashboard, that's something that other RTC staff will be continuing on, it's definitely a work in progress and there's more to do, but I think it's coming along well so far. So I'll just include a couple of screenshots here for what the dashboard is looking like so far.

1:05:39 This is the main page that a user would be presented with when they clicked on the link. This is sort of including some of the information that's already available on the PDF version of the report, it just gives a user or a policy maker or anyone from the public who's looking at this kind of a high-level overview of what the CMP is and explains to them what the purpose of the dashboard is and why it is that RTC does this program. This is the second page here, this is looking at the corridor as a whole, so if you just wanted to look at I-5 and say how has I-5 changed overall from one year to the next, you'd be able to select your year in the top right, so far it's just 2025 but you'd see more years there in the future. And then on the left side you could select the different measure that you wanted to look at, whether it's planning time index, travel time index, or reliability, and then you'd get a map here that would show you just how each of those corridors is looking, and you could click on a corridor and get the specific numbers for each of those things.

1:06:39 And then finally, this would be the third page, this is the one that's more of a work in progress, you'll see some grey boxes there, we're envisioning some future features that will give you quick facts or statistics about each corridor, there'll be a smaller list of projects that are relevant to each corridor, so if you select I-5 South you'll see that there's maybe some ramp meters or some lane improvements or anything like that that might have gone on that could relate to congestion and could hopefully result in some improvements. And that'll all show up there, and then on the right side you'd be able to see down to the specific segment where traffic has accumulated or where there's issues or improvements over past years. So that's pretty much all I had as an overview of what I've done over the past few months, like I've mentioned and Mark mentioned, still a work in progress, I'm excited to see where it can go from here, and yeah I just wanted to say thank you very much to all the RTC

1:07:37 staff for everything they've done for me, this has been a tremendous experience over the past few months and has been a great resource for my professional development and I'm very grateful to have been a part of the RTC team, and yeah if there's any questions about my project I'm happy to answer those. Well I'd just like to congratulate on multiple job offers, that's probably the highest praise you can get. Thank you very much. Congratulations on that, I'm just curious if this tool can be used for the previous question, and choosing the segment right before the bridge for bridge crossings. Yeah, so this screenshot I took here, I selected five north, that might look, looking back on it that probably wasn't the best example, you can kind of see here this light blue I should have picked one that had a little bit more purple in it so it stood out, but yes if you looked at a segment like five south you would see purple leading onto the bridge,

1:08:32 especially in this top left here there would be a scroll bar for going through the different times, that's something that wasn't working at the time of the screenshot but was working a little bit earlier today, so yeah you would be able to scroll through and see in the morning looking at five south people going to Portland, you'd see some purple there and year to year you'd kind of make a comparison and see if any changes have happened. Anybody else? Just want to say great work, I'm very impressed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, good job. Thank you. It's really hard to take a lot of data and make it manageable, that's probably one of the greatest skills one can have. Yeah, thank you Dylan, and again trying to bring the data that we've had, we've been purchasing this TomTom dataset for about three years, the board reauthorized a contract for another three years, it's been being used by, I think we have ten seat licenses and

1:09:32 so each of the agencies to RTC can use the data, I know several agencies use it for special studies and other projects, so it's always been a resource but finally we're trying to push it out for public use and interest, and I think Dylan may have just found his first consulting assignment back to the agency and it worked at an intern's so he could finish the dashboard but no, tons of work and you can see why his skills are in high demand. The next introduction is Julia Cruz-Jones, Julia also a recent graduate to the Masters in Urban Regional Planning program at Portland State University, Julia also in her credentials has a GIS graduate certification from Portland State University, she might be responsible for finishing this GIS dashboard and also a BA in community development from Portland State University, Julia's career prior to joining RTC as an intern included working

1:10:27 for a consulting firm in Oregon doing marketing and then also planning and then also for regional transportation management association out in west Washington County which was a group that was trying to promote alternative community options and fun fact, Julia, Julia at one point was a professional dancer for the Oregon Ballet Theater so any of us that need dance lessons might be able to get a tip or two, Julia's here to present some work that she's done, this is just among one of the projects where Dylan was really doing a lot of work on the technical and that was a lot of effort, almost singularly focused, Julia's been supporting the entirety of the team on an array of things including some graphic design work which she is expert in and some of the tools that are used for that as well as plan development, policy development, so has been getting a taste of experience and Julia accepted a job

1:11:26 offer from RTC, started at RTC as a full-time employee July 1st, super excited to have her join the team and that's part of just the conversion of staff here, we have one long tenure staff, Dale Robbins who will be retiring early next year and so we're in the process of just backfilling and cross training and joining new or welcoming new professionals to this organization, so Julia is going to present her report on Safe Routes to School Program Toolkit. Thank you for that introduction, Matt, good evening everyone, as Matt said, my name is Julia Cruz-Jones and as of this month I am an Associate Planner with RTC and I'll be telling you a little bit today about the Safe Routes to School Toolkit. So if you're not familiar, Safe Routes to School is a national program that provides

1:12:23 education, resources and funding to improve safety and mobility for kids who hope to use active modes of transportation such as scooting, walking or biking to school and RTC is part of a regional working group in Clark County that promotes Safe Routes to School strategies, programs and events, this working group includes the City of Vancouver, Clark County, Washington Traffic Safety Commission and Safe Kids Clark County which is led by the American Medical Response. So getting kids safely to and from school using active modes has many benefits for students, their families and the community, these include healthier students by helping them reach activity

1:13:18 goals for their daily needs, reducing congestion around schools, especially during drop-off and pick-up time and others. So in beginning this project we turned to RTC's members to ask them a little bit about their level of interest in Safe Routes to School, any anticipated challenges or challenges that they already experience in delivering these programs and then what would be most helpful for RTC to provide. So in speaking with the Regional Transportation Advisory Committee and the Transportation Policy Committees of the Gorge, we heard that many agencies are interested in Safe Routes to School programs, that a lack of funding and resources is the biggest challenge that

1:14:09 they face and having ready to use materials and funding resources would be most helpful. So in learning about this valuable information we put together the Safe Routes to School Toolkit which is found on the RTC website by clicking on the studies tab at the top of the page, the link is also shown here on the screen. The Safe Routes to School Toolkit includes ready to use resources that can be used to start a basic Safe Routes to School program, links to additional resources with more information, ideas and funding resources that can help an agency take a basic Safe Routes to School program to the next level. So elements of the toolkit include a ready to use school commute survey, sample graphics

1:15:05 and messaging, information and tips about starting a walking or bike bus or a Safe Routes to School event, links to statewide and national funding resources and a few more links that have some very valuable information such as the Washington Traffic Safety Commission's E-Ride Guide which helps Washingtonians understand and pick the best electric bike or scooter for them and their family. So instead of taking you through the website I have a couple of screenshots on the next page but I encourage you to take a look at the RTC website and this toolkit, we'd be very happy to get any input. This is a living resource and we want to make sure that it's usable and used so input from our members is greatly appreciated.

1:16:00 So as I said if you navigate to the RTC website and look under studies you will come to the RTC Safe Routes to School Toolkit which is shown on this screen right here. You can expand each of these different categories at the bottom of the screen which are shown in purple to see what types of resources are available within that category. So shown here the top one is the school commute survey which was very graciously shared with us by the 4J School District in Eugene, Oregon. This is a ready to use resource if you'd like to get more information about how people are getting to and from school to know the best solutions to improve that. Shown here are some examples of the links provided for starting a bike or walk bus or planning a bike or walk event which is probably the most common way to start a Safe Routes

1:16:57 to School program at least in the education and encouragement side of the program. So funding resources, sample graphics and messaging and we really want to thank our partners in this regional Safe Routes to School group that we're a part of for providing many of these resources for us to share. We view our role as helping to disseminate the hard work and resources that many agencies have already put together to make sure that these are accessible to anyone in the Clark County region but also to member agencies of the RTPO which includes Skamania and Click Attack County. Especially big thanks to the City of Vancouver who provided many resources. They have an ongoing Safe Routes to School program which is really improving and seeing a lot of great results.

1:17:51 So with that I will stop here and answer any questions you may have. Otherwise I hope that you will take a look and give us your feedback. >> Well I think Matt you should sell a book on how to hire people. These two interns are amazing. Great presentation. Yeah, just amazing presentation. Great work. Really impressive both of you but that was very well done. >> Thank you. >> And welcome to the team. >> Thanks. >> And you got up with the questions. >> Thank you. >> Who's given this one? Okay. And then per the agenda change we'll move on to discussion critical urban rural freight corridor review. >> Thank you.

1:18:51 My name is Adam Fiss and we wanted to use this opportunity to provide insights into the work RTC staff has been completing this summer to position the region effectively to receive federal investments should it become available to support freight investment projects in Cliquedads, Comena and Clark County. This discussion is a continuation of the board discussion held in February where we discussed the national highway freight program. The project seeking funding across the region for freight investment work. The conversation tonight represents that next step in the discussion. I apologize for all of the acronyms on some of the slides tonight. There aren't many slides. There are a lot of acronyms but I'll hopefully break them down and if you have any questions just let me know.

1:19:48 So the conversation that I want to have today is an insight into some of the work that we're doing around the national highway freight program. So the program receives funding from BIL, the bipartisan infrastructure law and that supports projects selected as part of state's freight investment plans. So the projects that we brought forward in February were submitted to the state to be included in the freight investment plan, the FIB. Those included the 32nd overpass as well as Everett Street in Camas in addition to Dallas Port in Cliquedads County. WSDOT in selecting projects needs to position them to receive those funds to do so. The projects need to be included in the national highway freight network.

1:20:48 That can be done in four different ways. It can be included on the primary highway freight system. So that includes in Clark County I-5, I-205 and Mill Plain east of I-5 as well. It could be on a critical urban or critical rural freight corridor and that's what I wanted to expand a little bit more on tonight. Per BIL, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the state of Washington has 150 critical urban freight corridor miles and 300 critical rural freight corridor miles across the state to designate and that is a cap set by BIL and to receive the national highway freight program funds a project must be on either the critical urban or critical rural freight corridor or the primary highway freight system.

1:21:47 So the objectives of this process are essentially to position freight projects over the next four years for funds and that can be either done through receiving national highway freight program funds or through other grants such as the nationally significant multimodal freight and highway project program or infra and these are included on this slide that I've included both of them essentially to receive funds for projects that support the movement of freight. So WSDOT has designed for us a process that is very similar to the 2022 process. This work is done every four years and they have asked us to support this effort. They've asked NPOs and RTPOs across the state to support this effort and we have been doing

1:22:42 so I'll share the end of the slide by the August 10th deadline. Our hope in bringing this to you tonight to share some of the conversations that we've been having with member agencies including counties, cities, ports and the Cowlitz nation have the timing of it is such that we won't be able to bring it back to you in August because there is no board meeting in August so we just wanted to share that with you tonight. These discussions are ongoing we haven't completed them but essentially we are working to identify the corridors in the region that we need to promote. Those are the projects that were submitted and we discussed in February as well as to reevaluate some of the corridors that are in the system and on the network but are not seeking funding.

1:23:38 A good example of that is Jefferson Kaufman in the city of Vancouver, a project that has received federal funding and is now complete. So in order to support the state system and state process we are working with the city of Vancouver to submit the necessary paperwork, I say paperwork but it's an Excel spreadsheet, to pull that segment to free up additional laneway miles so another project across the state or in our region may be selected and may actually receive that funding in the future. That is the, I guess the long and short of it, we're working as I say and continuing to work with cities, counties, ports and tribes to understand what their needs are.

1:24:32 This is an opportunity to add urban and rural laneway miles for projects that may be seeking federal funding in the next four years so we're just trying to get a sense of what that looks like. I've included on the next few slides what those are and I can share that with you but perhaps I'll just pause right now for questions if you have any. If you could explain maybe the funding source, you said federal but where is this coming out of? So it's a tricky question. The program is funded through the bipartisan infrastructure law, that law, the funding

1:25:28 for that expires this year so we're anticipating a new federal funding package that would support these projects but as of now, this is an unfunded mandate essentially. The State of Washington as well as other states are required to develop a freight investment plan and submit projects to be supported by the National Highway Freight Program but right now it is unfunded. The other avenue for funding would be through other federal investment things like infra I mentioned. You know just looking ahead at these projects they seem like true key ones in our area. I mean I'm not seeing any ones that are just not issues we've all talked about on this

1:26:25 board before so I'd really encourage if any lobbying efforts we have to encourage a renewal of the BIL. So a little bit of bureaucracy but it's important to have the corridors designated for eligibility and consultations are ongoing. How much of funding are we normally expected for this kind? You know I'm not sure the exact amount on a project to project basis. I can't say for sure, I'm sorry.

1:27:19 Yeah for the state federal or the state call for projects for the NHFP funding which was the projects mentioned 32nd, Everett and Dallasport and Clicqueville County. So those are our submissions. I think the state call for project was known for more than 10 million total statewide. It is hyper competitive which is why I think the first predicate for us is to have a project application but then also make sure that the project application coincides with the designation as either an urban or a rural freight corridor and we just need to synchronize the two recognizing that there's not that much resource. So yeah I look forward to continuing to meet with staff over the next month.

1:28:17 We have until August 10th to complete this work and submit it to WSDOT. I think what we should do Adam is we should report back to the board just with a status report after we're done with that process. - Thank you Adam. That takes us to our other business, anything from the board? - Thank you Mr. Chair. We've now received the record of decision on the IBR and if my memory serves correct either in November or December the body took a position that once we got the record of decision we would begin moving forward with planning for a third bridge and corridor and

1:29:12 so I would like to urge this body to move forward with utmost haste in that and it seems logical to me that we would at least start with the 2008 visioning study that provided corridor options for both west and east of our two freeways and then see would we want to modify that, would we wanna add locations or whatever but clearly in a 20 year plan it seems to me that we all know we are swamped with congestion and part of that is adding vehicle capacity with new bridges and new corridors over the Columbia River. So thank you on that and number two is I had asked about a year ago for a financial update

1:30:10 on TriMet and most recently because they are tied to the IBR most recently TriMet is slashing a lot of their service and routes and some of their people have said they will run out of money by May of 2029 and so the IBR is supposedly planning to have them ask for federal funds for the transit light rail component in 2029 so if TriMet's financial situation is that dire that they're gonna be running out of money I believe it is incumbent upon us to get a briefing on what their financial plan is so that we can fulfill our fiduciary obligations and potentially make input as one of the eight major signatories on that plan. Thank you.

1:31:08 >> Matt, just a clarification. My understanding is the first phase of the bridge doesn't have light rail in it. >> Yeah, so the, as the board has heard the reports from IBR in May, Interim Director Francis was here to provide a full report on the scoping of the project and the scoping is terms of how it's gonna be built is broken down into two ways. What's funded fully, which is the matter that was subject to the TIP amendment last month, what's fully funded right now is the bridge replacement itself and the adjacent interchanges and design of the light rail system to waterfront station and I think those are the funded phases that the departments of Washington and Oregon, departments of transportation are proceeding with.

1:32:05 The intention is to apply for a federal transit grant and I must say I'm just in this moment forgetting the year of the application but the intention is to apply for a federal transit grant to build the transit infrastructure that would be the bridges, the track way, the stations and so forth and that that grant if awarded would then be the funding to support construction of the project to waterfront station as proposed. How you would operate it is then also probably tied up in the application. I think it's my understanding that to make application to transit agencies or the primary applicant on behalf of the transit agencies would have to make statements in an application relative to the financial viability of the proposed and the financial viability would be both if you could construct it and operate it and so those determinations of financial

1:33:04 viability specifically the operations are forthcoming. I don't know when those are to be made but I think those are important questions that should be subject to public review. I don't know if there's anything else to add to that in terms of when that application could occur but I think it's in the future. Anything else from the board? Yeah just a few updates we presented and I'm not going to present this evening just in the interest of wrapping the meeting up an annual report of traffic collision data. There's both a presentation that will be published as part of the presentation materials tomorrow

1:33:58 but then also in the board packet itself is a written report and this report just presents the current set of data through year 2025 and the traffic collision rates both fatal and serious injuries as well as some other contributing factors. This is part of publishing this report as part of RTC's commitment just to continue to daylight the issue given the significance of public traffic safety and the policy discussions both of this board but then also of member agencies I believe it's among probably the highest priority issues that each of us routinely discuss. If I could make just an additional observation RTC and our commitment to doing what we can to promote traffic safety. This evening the board adopted the gorge safety action plan which was brought forward by support of a federal safe streets and roads for all application of which RTC was the primary applicant

1:34:56 I think it was last year or the year before the board saw and approved the Clark County safety action plan so within the three counties we have safety action plans and those safety action plans guide local agencies and the development of projects RTC continues to support the development of applications for grants through the federal highway safety program those are grant applications made to Washington DOT on an every other year basis cities apply and then next year the county earlier this year RTC supported application development for a series of applications made by cities and here in Clark County and I think grant award determinations are pending we'll keep the board apprised and we paid for that work I think that's how we allocate the resources of this agency to support local agencies and their work and then the final comment I'll make about RTC's sort of involvement in the safety and implementation because we can report as much data as possible but the question

1:35:54 is are you doing anything to implement or improve the conditions and the last one is we reported to the board and we did make application through the federal safe streets and roads for all implementation program we had two applications submitted one was in support of the gorge safety action plan the priority project was Carson safe street improvement through the city of Carson going north up into Wind River area and then there was a multi-agency application submitted for projects from the safety action plan at Clark County so application determination for the safe streets and roads for all is indeterminate but cross our fingers we hope that we can land some awards and we'll continue I think programmatically I think the agency agency should continue to support through the data process through the planning process and so I think there's a early commitment that we

1:36:50 would support Clark County next year and their application and and Skamania click it out through the state federal program it's federal money run by the state and and I think again I would I would say that's a good allocation of resources just to get those applications in the queue so that's my safety report and then the last thing just to celebrate a project completion and success this is right outside so after this meeting members of the board and the public could certainly drive this roadway it's a pretty significant enhancement for a roadway referred to as Jefferson Kaufman it's a realignment south of Mill Plain so if you go a Mill Plain and Jefferson Street and go south it's a realignment of the roadway a full complete street improvement and it was designed in part and I happen to know a little bit about this given my prior tenure at Vancouver to be both a freight access improvement because there is some amount of industry and freight on the west side of downtown Vancouver

1:37:49 distribution facilities and so forth but also a relief alternative route into the Vancouver waterfront and also connects the Vancouver renaissance trail as it goes through the waterfront then this is the north connection to then the waterfront excuse me the renaissance trails that connects at Mill Plain boulevard and then out to the port of Vancouver and Vancouver lake etcetera so congratulations to Vancouver on completing that project the text is so small I can't see it how much was RTC's investment I have a sheet here that says what it is Jordan can you zoom in on that so we can show what RTC invested at the bottom 3.5 it was a couple million dollars of RTC 5 excuse me 5 million dollars also this project was partially funded

1:38:41 by freight mobility strategic investment board FMSIB which Director Lents and Mayor McInerney Ogle said on the FMSIB board and they provided a tranche of funding as well in addition to city funding so congratulations Vancouver that's a final connection into the waterfront and an important freight access because all the freight trucks the 52 foot trailers were driving over the corner of the street so this realignment helped sort of smooth that flow in and out of west Vancouver. The last thing I'll mention and this puts Director Winchimer on the spot I know there were a few big traffic diversions in the Portland region this weekend starting this weekend on major projects that ODOT is advancing Director Winchimer I'm not sure if you wanted to make any comment about those but there's one on I-5 and on 205 and we have a little graphic here if you wish to speak to it that reflects what those changes

1:39:40 might be in scope to the traveling public. Thanks Matt yes and I posted into the chat for those of you who have access to that but yes the Rose Quarter project is going to be closing I-5 and it's between where 405 diverts so the good news is that there's an opportunity to just use I-405 as your as your t-tour but they're going to be closing both directions of I-5 for up to 14 hours starting 10 p.m. Saturday until up to noon on Sunday in order to install a sign bridge so that's going to have to be constructed across all the lanes they have to have cranes on the on the roadway in order to do that so for everybody's safety we're closing the facility and detouring people around. There's oh and so you can see the detour there and then there's also a northbound closure of I-205 down here at the

1:40:40 Abernathy Bridge but that's the day before they're not both happening at the same time so if you're headed north or southbound on I-5 it won't affect you but if you're trying to go northbound on 205 you'll need to take a detour there. I hope this information is helpful and always happy to answer any questions or you know be accessible if you have questions after the meeting. And directors that's my report thank you. All right thank you for that what I heard was stay home this weekend. Well there's going to be a bunch of good work that's happening this weekend is what you heard. That too. There is no meeting in August therefore the next RTC board of directors meeting Tuesday September 1st 2026 at 4 p.m. the time is 5 40 p.m. this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.