MYNORTHWEST NEWS

New SDOT head: ‘Absolutely no war on cars’

Sep 18, 2014, 5:54 AM | Updated: 8:34 am

This week, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved Scott Kubly as the city’s new director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.

The veteran transportation leader came to town this summer after serving as former deputy commissioner of the City of Chicago Department of Transportation and former associate director of the District of Columbia Department of Transportation.

Kubly has had plenty to keep him busy since his appointment in July by Mayor Ed Murray, overseeing the department of over 750 employees and its $400 million budget.

He’s drawn plenty of praise and a fair share of criticism, most notably from KIRO Radio hosts Dori Monson and Jason Rantz for the department’s handling of a new protected bike lane on Second Avenue and changing driving restrictions near the massive Mercer Avenue overhaul.

In a far ranging interview with MyNorthwest.com, Kubly addressed the controversies, congestion, the battle between cars and bikes, and a number of other key issues facing the department amid the city’s unprecedented growth. Here is an edited recap of the conversation:

MyNW: In your previous jobs, you led development of a bike share program, an ambitious program of protected lanes and other bike friendly initiatives. Is there a war on cars as some have argued?

SK: There’s absolutely not a war on cars. What we have is a very big complicated city that has a lot of different needs. We have people that travel around the city a lot of different ways and they need choices how they get there.

Sometimes that’s going to mean they’re walking, it can mean they’re taking the bus, it could mean they’re driving, and sometimes it’s going to mean they’re taking a bike. And our job is to make sure all of those modes works as well as they can work. It’s also making sure they have choices so they don’t feel trapped taking one mode or another.

MyNW: But what about those who say we’re spending a disproportionate amount on bike lanes and bike programs around the city?

SK: Whoever has their modal preference is always going to argue that they are getting less than everybody else is getting and it really doesn’t matter which mode you pick. What we need to do is try to figure out how to give people as many choices as they can recognizing that it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.

And a lot of times what might get branded as a road project or street project is also a bike project and vice-versa. The bike project on Second Avenue is just as much a transit project and auto project as a bike project. On Second Avenue, we had 61 crashes in four years. Those were crashes between bikes and cars. Nobody wants to be in that crash whether it’s a driver or bike rider

MyNW: Speaking of crashes, Seattle police have been visibly enforcing traffic laws on Second Avenue since the most recent fatal accident. Bike riders are frequently criticized for failing to follow the law. Should police be doing more?

SK: What I would say is that you hear from everybody that the other people aren’t following the rules. So you’ll hear from people driving cars that people on bikes or pedestrians aren’t following the rules. You’ll hear from people that are walking or biking that the cars aren’t following the rules.

Everybody needs to recognize that at one point or another most people have made a mistake while navigating the city, whether it’s jaywalking, or going a little too fast over the speed limit or rolling through a stop sign or if you’re on a bike riding without lighting or rolling through a stop.

Most people are not without flaws, so rather than focusing on us versus them, I think we all need to go back to our driver’s education training and try to move through the city responsibly

We have in a very short time that we’ve both been in town, me and Chief O’Toole, met numerous times to talk about how our departments can coordinate better on safety. And I think what you see on Second Avenue is a great example of that, where you have police out there issuing the warnings to people on bikes and not complying with traffic signals, people that are walking and not complying with them, but also people that are driving. So the effort is really to make the street safe for everybody.

MyNW: Critics like KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said the implementation of the Second Avenue bike lanes was rushed and ill-conceived. You moved quickly to adjust lights and signs after the first several days. What does that say about the project and your leadership?

SK: I think the worst thing you can do as a leader is put something in and then say ‘You know what, we did this, it’s perfect, now there’s nothing we can do to improve it.’ So absolutely I want to be nimble.

If we’re following good engineering practices, as we were with Second Avenue, but by going out there and watching it immediately after it goes in we say that sign, even though it complies with the standard, there’s an alternate way of righting that sign that also complies and may be more effective, we need to be nimble like that.

MyNW: How are we going to keep people moving around the city as we keep adding people? We’ve got thousands more people in South Lake Union alone thanks to Amazon’s non-stop growth.

SK: I think a lot of those folks are going to be walking. It gets back to choices, creating choices. So we want to give folks ways to get around, whether it’s walking or biking or transit or driving.

If you look at Car2Go as an example, Car2Go has 40,000 members. And our customer data shows that 1,200 of their members have sold their cars. So having Car2Go out there is making it easier to park because there are fewer cars on city streets.

If you look at a city like Washington, D.C., it’s growing at about the same rate as Seattle. And it’s easier to get around by car now than it was 15 years ago because more people are choosing to walk or bike or take transit.

MyNW: But what about all of us who can’t or don’t want to give up our cars?

SK: Our goal is to give people choices. You may have to drive for whatever reason, but there’s a lot of people that don’t have to. I walk to work everyday because I can. By virtue of me walking into work I’m making it easier for somebody else that has to drive in to drive. The more choices we give people, the easier it is for everybody to get around.

MyNW: What about all of the development downtown? Should we be making developers pay more for their impact on the system? If they’re bringing in thousands more people, shouldn’t they do more?

SK: I think that’s a really big city-wide conversation that we need to have, how do we pay for infrastructure and how do we make sure that we get all the benefits of growth but also learn the best ways to mitigate some of the challenges that come along with it.

MyNW: Some projects like the Mercer Corridor seem to take forever. Is there anything you can do to speed up work?

SK: On a big project like Mercer it’s really hard. It’s re-knitting our street grid and fixing transportation issues that were created 50 or 60 year ago and it’s a hugely complicated project.

What I think we need to do a better job of is refreshing in people’s minds this is why we’re doing the project, this is when it will be done, these are the things you are going to be seeing over the next couple of months as it relates to this project.

But I think you can look at the Second Avenue bicycle lane as an example of how you can do things differently. The mayor rightly observed we have a high-crash corridor going right through downtown, and we’ve had 61 people hurt or killed over the last four years. We need to do something and we need to do something quickly. And so our marching orders as a department were how do we make this the best project possible but recognize that everyday is critical when it comes to putting forward this safety project. And I think that kind of urgency is something we can bring to projects.

MyNW: Many areas like West Seattle and other neighborhoods often complain of neglect. What do you say to neighborhoods who feel like the city is ignoring their needs?

SK:I think what we need to do is a better job of communicating and listening out there if that’s the way people feel. It may not reflect the reality of the investments we’re making. We’re making investments all over the city, but if there are portions of the city that feel neglected, that just means we need to double our efforts to make sure we are listening.

MyNW: Are there lessons you are bringing from other cities?

SK: I think one of the things that I feel like I really bring to the table from a city like Chicago or DC is a responsiveness to operations. We have a lot of big capital projects going in now, but that doesn’t mean that we can let the core operations take a back seat.

So I’m really focused on how do we respond to an incident quickly. How do we provide clear information, concise information to travelers so that they know how that incident can affect their trip.

You know if we have an incident at three in the morning, I think six or eight weeks ago we would have waited until folks had woken up to put out a travel alert. But Marybeth Turner (SDOT communications) put out a travel alert at about 3:30 or 4 in the morning about a crash that had taken place in the Battery Street Tunnel. And that’s what I mean. It’s really about going above and beyond the call 24 hours a day to make sure that we’re getting information to people when we can.

MyNW: How do you respond in general to critics like Monson who seem to find fault with everything the department does?

SK: I think that’s kind of the cost of doing business when you’re in the public eye, that there are going to be people that are critics. And I think that the important thing is rather than getting upset that there are critics or ignoring critics, is trying to figure out where is there legitimate critique where we can do our job better, because there’s always room to improve.

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New SDOT head: ‘Absolutely no war on cars’