Eastside Crescent Transportation Alliance

Eastside Crescent Transportation Alliance
Amazon Corporate Shuttle
Team Organizations	Amazon South King County Snohomish County
Point of Contact	Bruce Anew
Participating Municipalities	Seattle WA
Sectors	Transportation
Status	Concept only Stage
Last Updated	November 22, 2024

Summary

The Eastside Crescent Transportation Alliance provides a governance structure for a transportation management Alliance. The Alliance provides things. (1) it would line up all the public funding all the efforts for 405, Sound Transit, curved space, it is traffic light coordination, that would be they would organize themselves, but this would be the employer connection to those efforts in the geographic area of Bothell, where there's the life sciences community down to SeaTac airport. We've been wrestling and we've been working very closely with Well, we've been working with Essiac on that drainage project. They want to get in on it. They sent me a proposal I haven't looked at yet but we also talked to Karen and shard and we've struggled to try to figure out how we how we move this project forward, and Adrian will appreciate this because DKs is involved in contracts with the city of Bellevue and I'm not, you know, you don't have to tell me what's going on there. Adrian, I just tell you guys are engaging you know, what the issues are. We in our last conversation with Amazon, which is a very important conversation, because when you deal with Amazon's hardly figured out who they are, you know, they change people and there's like five people I work with at Amazon. But we got to clarify who we work with. And that's Jared Axelrod, who was their local guy in Bellevue on the chamber with me, and then there's chuck or Charles Knutson, who you guys may know from. He was the transportation adviser to Governor Inslee for many years. He's involved with Cascadia high speed rail etc. etc. Anyway, he's a good friend and likes what we do, which is important to have a friend at Amazon. So we talked about shared rides electrification, what that what the city was doing with curb space management. AV demonstration. It is improvements to traffic safety was the other there was one other thing they were, oh first mile last mile connections to transit. So that's clearly in their box. Although Amazon was complaining that did nobody from the city talks to them about curb management, you know, for building massive buildings and they need access for their their employer shuttle. So that's a set of issues but then we started thinking when we were talking afterwards with Kevin Wallace, who was a former Bellevue city council member in the lead in the chamber on all things aces. He said, You know, it's like we're chipping away at the city. But when you start looking at where the employees are coming from, it's the east side is South King County and Snohomish County, so why don't we take a look at a governance structure for this transportation management Alliance? That we've tentatively called Eastside Crescent transportation, Eastside Crescent Transportation Alliance eacta. That would would do two things. One, it would line up all the public funding all the efforts for 405 The transit, sound, transit, curved space, it is traffic light coordination, that would be they would organize themselves, but this would be the employer connection to those efforts in the geographic area of Bothell, where there's the life sciences community down to SeaTac airport. And you know, it easily go down to Canton, Auburn and all that are up to Snohomish, but we decided to start with us. And then our role the private sector would be to figure out first and foremost where these charging stations should go. Whether it's a parking garage of a new building or you know, some transit extra land or by the spring district or east gate, there were escaped parking right. This fits in nicely with what DKs has done with E mobility hubs and working with Metro and others. So you figure out where the where these charging stations should go and you lose all the data, you know, employer data, index data, etc. And then you talk about okay, what is the shared ride? initiative and one is that the public sector needs to do we can't do as a private group is to figure out how you get people on private vehicles, shuttle services to transit centers, and you know, via hopefully, Uber or Lyft, possibly, these are all companies that can do this and it makes sense that we would encourage you but we don't do it. We focus on upgrading employer shuttles and there's Kant years eight companies have employer shuttles I'll be although they're they're down because of the pandemic, but they'll they'll ratchet back up, getting them electric and getting them a safe and hopefully affordable place to pick up and drop off. There are people out in the suburban areas, and both Microsoft and Amazon two years ago so that was a huge problem. church parking lot school just you know, surplus schools, whatever, pick up a drop off for the employer shuttles.

And and that's important because employer shuttles you is basically you know, a van with all T Mobile people are all Amazon people on Microsoft people that is exempt from the monopoly that Metro Transit has that goes back to 1956 now, they do have a shared employer shuttle pilot project, but nobody because they control it too much. None of employers have used it. But that is clearly there's a pathway for helping them upgrade and and you know, that involves corporate decisions about going electric and, you know, the vanpools there. Yeah, and, you know, that's a long term thing. And then the other trickier area is point to point shuttles for specific purposes that don't run afoul of the transit monopoly. And that could be shuttles that go beyond transcends boundaries. And I'm thinking of Snohomish, for instance, is 20 miles from Bellevue, but you can't get there by bus unless you go through Everett, and Maple Valley and other places that the BRT system Sound Transit on. Four or five is delayed three years, maybe more. The funding issues. That's trickier. what I had envisioned was a combination of employers shuttled during peak hours, nine to or six to nine and three to six, and then off peak employee no shows perhaps in partnership with Metro to serve low income communities nearby which are rent and Barian to cool and SeaTac. That's a special purpose. You know, vanpools service that partners with transit but also extends the reach of shared mobility to markets that are not served well now, huge undertaking, and we can't do it. We can advocate for it. We can develop the concept paper, we can do some initial research, but it really takes political support and you know, the big 10 I call them the big 10. It's Microsoft, Amazon TMobile Mehta from the Facebook Google in Kirkland. Pack card, Puget Sound Energy. Those are the big guys. You got them to endorse the concept of developing this transportation management. So within that zone, all kinds of cool things can happen, some by the private sector, some by the public sector, but totally integrated and coordinated. That's the vision. Now, unlike the drainage project, we don't have the resources we're, we're this plan is evolving. You know, we're, we're, I can put it in a concept for open comments, but I don't have the details who's going to serve on the border. The RC W under the computer of Reduction Act allows the good news is that RTW enables employers to band together to figure out a transportation solution.