Transportation Committee reconvenes, revisits curb management policy
The Chamber’s Transportation Committee started 2025 with a bang (or perhaps a honk?) at its January 9 meeting, continuing talks with City officials as they prepare to investigate new curb pricing policies, and identifying the key touchpoints for the Committee in the new year.
While the City is now gearing up their public engagement efforts on curb management, our Committee has been involved from the get-go and plans to continue its involvement as we move into identifying specifics of a potential curb pricing program. A formalized Curb Management Plan was released back in 2023, laying out the major issues leading to congestion in Bellevue, notably legacy policies like free two-hour parking and limited enforcement capacity.
The City thus is going to enact a phased study approach to explore the feasibility of curb pricing, starting with data collection — which recently concluded — stakeholder engagement, and evaluation of potential implementation models. As of now, their goals are to reach a target occupancy rate of 80% per block, with an overstay rate of 15-20% or less.
Currently, data showed that most blocks in Bellevue are either approaching or already over capacity in the afternoons and evenings, and a whopping 20-50% of vehicles are overstaying their curbside time limits.
“No decisions are being made, but we're looking at a possible methodology with the goals of reducing the congestion and increasing accessibility, safety, and compliance,” said Kenzie Coulson, a consultant for Walker Consultants that is working with the City on this project. “We keep saying [that] what we really want is to make your streets vital and easy, instead of people saying, ‘Oh, I don't want to go to Bellevue because it's too hard to park.’”
“And these kinds of things do happen,” she continued. “I don't know if any of you have seen the media about Park City lately, but the ski patrol went on strike, and it's the same thing: Vail has oversold. They've kind of ignored the fact that their demand is so high, and now their stock is down 20% and people are saying, ‘I'm never going there.’”
“That's really the gist of what we want to avoid for these areas.”
In the coming weeks and months, the City will be doing outreach via surveys, door-to-door canvassing, and hosting open houses (including a February 6 in-person meeting and a February 10 virtual) and are seeking partnerships with neighborhood associations, small businesses, and residents concerned about a change in local parking policies. Learn more here.
In other news, the Committee’s other large items-of-concern for the next few months include the …
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Cost of Grand Connection: Now that the preliminary design stages of the Grand Connection project are completed, the City will now have a more accurate figure of the funds necessary to bring it to fruition. They are expected to release these figures in early 2025.
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MIP Update: Now through June, the City’s Transportation Commission is preparing a recommendation to update the Mobility Implementation Plan, focusing on the networks for those walking and biking.
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TFP Finalization: The Transportation Facilities Plan is the city’s 12-year, intermediate-range, transportation planning document, and is undergoing an update that will cover 2026-2037. Those wanting to share their input can join the in-person community forums on February 25 and 26.
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K Line to Council: Planned for service in 2030, the RapidRide K Line will provide fast, reliable and consistent transit service between Totem Lake in Kirkland and the Eastgate Park-and-Ride, with stops at key hubs such as Bellevue College and downtown Bellevue. Adopted back in 2014, the King County Metro is now set to present the K Line project vision to Bellevue and Kirkland City Councils.
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Traffic Mitigation Efforts w/ T-Mobile: As part of the City’s and T-Mobile’s commitment to Project Zero, 2023 marked the launch of a joint project that uses network-based Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology and T-Mobile 5G to provide near real-time communications between cars, traffic infrastructure and vulnerable road users. Now, they have enough data to revisit and report back on their innovative work.
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AV Mandates: There is a bill floating around the state senate regarding AV requirements, SB 5872, which would require a human safety operator to be physically present inside an autonomous vehicle when in operation to monitor performance and intervene if necessary. Stay tuned as we look into this legislation further.
… and the next meeting will feature a presentation from WSDOT on the effectiveness of stream restoration and fish passages, as well as our first legislative session update of the year.