Mid-Year 1998 COP Performance Report

Introduction

In going before the voters of the region in November 1996, the Sound Transit Board promised to be held to the highest standards of public accountability. As part of that promise, the Board committed to appointing a Citizen Oversight Panel (Panel or COP) charged with monitoring performance and reporting regularly on potential areas for improvement. Within two months of voter approval, the Board moved to begin a selection process for the Oversight Panel.

The Board specified that the Citizen Oversight Panel should consist of fifteen volunteer members, of whom at least two should live or work in each of the five Sound Transit district subareas. Panel members were to broadly represent the demographic make-up of the Sound Transit district and to include a wide array of skills and experiences necessary to perform its function. The Board appointed fifteen citizens to the Panel. Initially, Panel members were appointed for either a two-year or a three-year term and may be re-appointed up to a maximum of six years.

The Panel met for the first time in April 1997 and has met every month since then. It elected Steve Goldblatt as chair and Reid Shockey as vice chair and reelected them for a second term in May 1998. The Panel moved promptly to develop operating principles and learn about Sound Transit. Some of the operating principles agreed to by the members include:

The Citizen Oversight Panel is independent of Sound Transit management. While accepting logistical support from the Sound Transit staff and reporting to the Board through the Finance Committee, the Panel has its own staff person. The Panel enjoys an open and cooperative relationship with the agency, however, it holds to its belief that an independent, arms-length status best ensures a meaningful role in the fulfillment of its mission.

This is the Panel's third report and covers Sound Transit's performance in meeting its commitments from January through June 1998. Our previous reports are available upon request and on the Sound Transit website at www.soundtransit.org. Brief biographical summaries of the Panel members are provided in the attachment to this report. Panel members welcome comments and input to their work and may be contacted by calling Susan Hellein at 206-684-1348 or by writing to Citizen Oversight Panel, 1100 Second Avenue, Suite 500, Seattle, WA 98101-3423.

Citizen Oversight Panel Mission

It is the mission of the Citizen Oversight Panel to ensure that Sound Transit succeeds in meeting its commitments to the public by monitoring its performance and reporting to the Board on potential areas for improvement. Areas to be monitored will address:

It is worth noting that the Citizen Oversight Panel feels its responsibility extends to highlighting the good news and accomplishments as well as the criticisms and areas for improvement at any given time. The Panel's work on behalf of the citizenry of the Central Puget Sound region is intended to help ensure the success of the plans and investments in improving regional transit through vigilance, continuous feedback and constructive suggestions.

The Process Used to Prepare the Performance Evaluation

The Citizen Oversight Panel is an unpaid body of citizen volunteers who meet once or twice a month to conduct their business, receive briefings on Sound Transit's efforts, and to prepare semi-annual reports on Sound Transit's performance. As Panel members met to discuss how to synthesize the volumes of information available and arrive at a concise set of findings and recommendations for improvement, they quickly agreed that a very focused and efficient process would be needed. They wished to remain focused on their mission of reviewing performance and avoid digressions into the Board's domain of setting policy or the staff's domain of running the agency. They wished to use the resources and knowledge of the Sound Transit staff while maintaining an ability to be independent and objective in assessing its performance. Finally, they wished to operate as knowledgeable citizens, not as technical specialists or as auditors.

To meet these objectives, the Panel took a number of steps. First, it retained the services of an independent staff person and facilitator to help conduct outside research, prepare independent briefings and reports, act as liaison with Sound Transit staff and facilitate meetings as needed. Next, the Panel agreed that it would use three different sources of information in conducting its reviews:
 

To remain focused on evaluating Sound Transit's performance, the Citizen Oversight Panel developed an evaluation framework of key benchmark questions that are based on the commitments made in Sound Move, the ten-year plan that was approved by voters. The framework consists of four main topic areas:

1. citizen involvement and public process;
2. finance and budgets;
3. general implementation;
4. modal commitments related to commuter rail, light rail and ST Express Bus service.

Within these four topic areas there are key questions such as, "Do participants feel they have had meaningful opportunities for input at all stages of planning and development?" or "Has Sound Transit adhered to its financial policies?" Then, within each of these key questions, there are detailed additional questions such as, "Are citizens involved in community-level environmental review?" or "Has Sound Transit adjusted annual subarea budgets to ensure that equitable distribution of revenues is maintained?" An appropriately abbreviated framework, adapted to this early stage of Sound Transit's work, was used in this evaluation and is provided as an attachment.

The complete evaluation process thus involves ongoing staff briefings, review of agency materials by Panel members, personal contacts by Panel members with a variety of constituencies, and a group evaluation in which Panel members evaluate Sound Transit on each key question in the evaluation framework. The last step involves group discussion and identification of accomplishments, issues, concerns and areas for improvement. The body of this report discusses the findings, conclusions and recommendations in each of the topic areas evaluated for this period.

General Summary of Sound Transit Performance

The Citizen Oversight Panel found that in the first half of 1998 the agency began to build rapidly upon the foundation laid in its first year. Sound Transit management and staff have exhibited a sense of urgency and focus on meeting the commitments made to the public. While it is still early going and many significant decisions remain to be made, Sound Transit appears in all major respects to be on budget and on schedule. The Panel found that Sound Transit staff continue to improve their approach to working with citizens, stakeholders and local jurisdictions. Channels of communication with all interested groups are open and the agency is accessible to all who wish to interact with it.

The following examples illustrate our findings:

• General Implementation. The agency is close to being fully staffed and the major project management and engineering consultants have been co-located with Sound Transit staff and have begun working closely to design the system. Working relationships with most cities, transit agencies and other partners have been negotiated and spelled out in agreements. In a highly competitive real estate market, the Board and staff moved expeditiously to secure historic Union Station as the permanent headquarters for Sound Transit.

• Sounder Commuter Rail. The federal government issued a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the south commuter rail corridor, allowing property acquisition and station design to begin as planned. Despite receiving only one viable bid for rail cars, Sound Transit was able to procure them for a lower cost than had been estimated and within the very tight timeline spelled out by the Board's Implementation Guide. A proposed agreement to share a maintenance yard with Amtrak shows a commendable partnership approach to facility development and will save time and money for the region's taxpayers.

• Link Light Rail. The scoping process for light rail alignments elicited great community interest and Sound Transit responded to public input by adding alternatives for consideration and analysis. Detailed technical analyses are underway on retrofitting the downtown Seattle tunnel and on accommodating both buses and trains in the tunnel. Sound Transit has done a good job of communicating early with stakeholders on alignment and other issues which are characterized by concerns about impacts on local communities.

• Regional Express. Sound Transit has concluded the critical first stage of a regional agreement on fare integration with four other transit agencies. It has further expanded its support of the Tacoma-Seattle express bus route on which rider demand continues to exceed expectations. Additionally the agency is proposing to support expanded operation on the busy Bellevue-Seattle express route this fall. Sound Transit has initiated the HOV/TSM Task Force as promised and has begun preliminary engineering and environmental analysis on major HOV and transit center projects in Bellevue, Federal Way, Lynnwood and Mercer Island. Finally, Sound Transit has conducted a risk analysis of its major HOV and Community Connections projects and identified a number of projects with a risk of having insufficient budgets. Staff are to be commended for anticipating and communicating these concerns to the Board.

• Responsiveness and Communication. For the most part, Sound Transit staff continue to receive good marks from stakeholders and the public for being accessible and open to suggestions and concerns. Even where people acknowledge differences of position, they credit staff with being willing to listen, to meet and to consider their views. In response to earlier comments by this Panel, staff have instituted a number of improvements, including increased outreach to non-station communities, creation of a position dedicated to outreach to constituencies not directly affected by station sites and creation of a cross-departmental communications team.

A few areas have emerged in which the mandate of a regional agency and the interests of local communities have begun to clash. There is room for improvement in how these issues are handled. If Sound Transit is to succeed in it mission, it must not only bring Sound Move in on time and on budget, but do so in a manner that leaves citizens feeling satisfied with their investment and with the services purchased. The issues that need improvement fall into three general areas: 1) evaluating alternatives, 2) balancing regional and local needs, and 3) system integration.

1. Evaluating Alternatives

Need for clearly-defined decision processes
Citizens need to be able to understand fully how decisions will be made. Sound Transit has committed to open and collaborative processes, in addition to technically correct ones. Key to allowing the public to participate fully and feel that decisions have been made openly are understanding what criteria will be used, what role local preferences will play and what timelines will apply. Lack of clarity on these points contributed to the feeling of some citizens in Kent that the decision process for selecting a station site was not fair. The agency should work with communities at the outset to make clear the process itself so that all those involved know how and when their input will be best made.

Need for high quality comparative information
If alternatives are to be compared in a fair and objective manner that can be understood by all interested persons, there must be clear, objective, factual side-by-side comparative data on each alternative. Especially where a decision in favor of one alternative over another is likely to be controversial, Sound Transit must ensure that its comparison of the alternatives leaves no room for doubt about the facts. As evidenced by the evaluation process in Kent, which was viewed as unsatisfactory by some in the community, inadequate information can lead to confusion and feelings of mistrust.

Improved process for changing Sound Move
One of the challenges for Sound Transit is to remain relevant while fulfilling the commitment to voters. Situations do change and sometimes there is a need to re-direct dollars or system design. Sometimes dollars may become available from other sources for projects which originally had Sound Transit dollars allocated to them. The funds freed up in this way by alternative funding may then be reallocated to other Sound Transit projects. The Panel is concerned that Sound Transit dollars may be viewed by some communities as an opportunity to finance long-standing project wants for which funding was not available prior to the adoption of Sound Move.

In keeping with the need for objective data and a well-defined process in evaluating project alternatives, COP members found there is a need for a similar openness and rigor in decisions regarding changes or fund reallocations in Sound Move. The criteria adopted by the Board for amending Sound Move appear to be loose and to allow much room for selection of favored local projects rather than for a careful selection of the best projects for the system as a whole. COP recommends that the Board develop a tighter process for selecting projects that support system goals and increase transit ridership, to be used in cases where existing Sound Move projects no longer need Sound Transit funding.

2. Balancing Regional and Local Needs

Representing regional interests
Sound Transit was created by the voters to tie together existing disparate public transit elements and to provide increased capacity to move riders to their destinations. Sound Transit was also required to work closely with individual communities and with local transit agencies in achieving its mission. Those local entities, who are responsible for implementing local land use and transportation plans, rightfully expect Sound Transit will assist in implementing those visions. This balancing act between regional imperatives and local self-determination is a very difficult one that Sound Transit has performed well so far. But some of the most difficult decisions are yet to be made and local groups and entities can be powerful and vocal in favor of their local rather than regional interests.

Panel members heard of emerging issues that will require careful negotiation. Some communities feel that their preferred route alignment or station configuration should prevail, even though it costs significantly more than Sound Move allocated to that segment. Similarly, some communities are eager for local development and feel that Sound Transit should assist them to achieve their local development goals. While Sound Transit is highly supportive of opportunities for transit-oriented development (TOD) and, in fact, this Panel has urged Sound Transit to seek out those opportunities, it is nevertheless important to note that local development is a side benefit of regional transit, not its end.

While the Citizen Oversight Panel fully expects Sound Transit to meet its commitment to work collaboratively with communities, it reminds Sound Transit that it exists to bridge individual localities and represent the interests of us all. The Panel urges Sound Transit to be clear and explicit in communicating what its role, obligations and financial constraints are when speaking to local communities and governments.

3. System Integration

Integration across lines of business
The Panel continues to be concerned that Sound Transit's three modes operate as separate planning and implementing entities and that communication and coordination among them is inadequate. COP members heard of examples in which each department is separately negotiating with local governments and duplicating efforts with another department. Stakeholders are not seeing clear evidence that the agency's structure reflects the seamless system it is attempting to create.

Service integration
As new regional transportation services are added via commuter rail, light rail and regional bus routes, it will be critical to ensure that the local feeder services and the regional services mesh with each other to create seamless and efficient transfer connections. The Panel is concerned that Sound Transit may be relying on local transit agencies to deploy service hours in support of the regional system and to close any gaps in the system. The Panel urges Sound Transit to place high importance on integration across all modes and all transportation operators, to encourage local agencies to redeploy their hours in support of the system and to seek input from local jurisdictions and from the public as well as from transit agencies.

Who is the Citizen Oversight Panel?