Transportation & Infrastructure

Regional Transportation Governance

Regional Transportation Governance will be the primary summer transportation issue. To date, we are still waiting on the appointment of a nine member commission to evaluate transportation governance in central Puget Sound. Governor appointments are expected in the first week of June.

Grant funding:

Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program: WSDOT-Highways and Local Programs division will be issuing a call for projects beginning next week, with applications due by the third week of September.

The Pedestrian & Bicycle Safety program is to address the nearly 400 statewide fatal and injury collisions involving pedestrians and bicycles each year. The Legislature recognized this problem and included $74 million over the next 16 years to support pedestrian and bicycle safety projects such as pedestrian and bicycle paths, sidewalks, safe routes to school and transit. For more information, please contact: Paula Reeves at 360-705-7258 or reevesp@wsdot.wa.gov.

The Safe Routes to School Program: WSDOT-Highways and Local Programs division will be issuing a call for projects beginning next week, with applications due by the first week of October. This program is supported by both the Federal Government and the Legislature through recent legislation.

The Federal Transportation Act (Safe Accountable Flexible Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU)) includes a new federal funding program for the Safe Routes to School program. ESSB 6091, also includes a state funding commitment to support pedestrian and bicycle safety projects such as safe routes to school, transit and pedestrian and bicycle paths. For more information, please contact: Charlotte Claybrooke at 360-705-7302 or claybrc@wsdot.wa.gov.

Six Year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP)

As a friendly reminder, the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program development schedule is rapidly approaching. Metropolitan Planning Organizations and Regional Transportation Planning Organizations consolidate your TIPs into the respective regional TIPs which in turn is used to create the State Transportation Improvement Program.

In order to meet the regional and state schedules, please send a copy of your adopted TIP to your appropriate MPO or RTPO for inclusion into their regional TIP and to your Regional Local Programs Engineer no later than July 31, 2006. Your information is used in three very important ways:

1. determines project eligibility for Transportation Improvement Board funding,
2. meets federal requirements, and
3. allows AWC to use this information to explain to the legislature the state of city transportation funding (and our needs.)

Public Works

The Capital Projects Advisory Board (CPARB) is still on schedule to complete recommendations for the 2007 legislature. The CPARB is represented by local public owners, contractors, subcontractors, state legislators, and state agencies. The Board is tasked with the review of General Contractor-Construction Manager (GC-CM), Design-Build (DB) projects, and Job Order Contracting (JOC). The current city authority to use GC-CM and DB is as follows:

• Projects must be complex in nature and exceed $10 million.
• Cities must be over 70,000 in population. An exception is made for certain cities meeting certain financial criteria within counties that are already eligible to use this authority.

The GC-CM and DB authority will sunset in 2007. The CPARB has consensus to extend the sunset another six years. In addition to refining nuts and bolts components of the legislation, there is a proposal to create a new Project Review Board that would authorize alternative public works projects. Defining the roles of the Board is still a work in progress. The general concept would be to serve in a consultative role with public owners that currently have the authority, and would serve as an approval mechanism for new public owners. Under this proposal, all cities would be eligible to use this process if they receive Board approval for their proposed project. This could also serve the dual function of a public meeting.

The draft proposal for public owners using GC-CM is as follows:

	Current Public Owners	New Public Owners
Projects $10M or greater	Inform a proposed Project Review Board	Project Review Board Approval
Projects under $10M	Inform a proposed Project Review Board	Project Review Board Approval. A limited number of projects will be authorized for all new public owners (TBD).

A third charge of the CPARB is to review Job Order Contracting (JOC). Currently, this authority has had limited application due to constraints within the legislation.

We are seeking your feedback on Job Order Contracting. Job Order Contracting (JOC) is a systematic process for repair, renovation, remodel, and alteration of construction projects that are delivered on an on-call basis. The cost for services is determined by using a fixed unit price to for construction costs. The owner partners with the professional contractor and prepares a realistic maximum allowable scope of work with a minimum contract guarantee, and work is performed based on a fixed price for each delivery order.

The following link is a draft proposal to expand this authority: www.awcnet.org/documents/jocdraftlang.pdf. Please review and email Ashley Probart at ashleyp@awcnet.org with your feedback on either alternative public works contracting proposals or Job Order Contracting.

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