Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:17
Greg Spotts
A theory of the case that I had in coming. Is that the reason why there was such a big pantry full of projects that hadn't finished design and had not yet started construction in Seattle was largely political, rather than, oh, this is the one I was hoping you were going to go next door. This is our high point here.

00:00:22:19 - 00:00:47:26
Greg Spotts
This is in West Seattle. So, you know, my theory was the barriers to implementation of this whole bunch of projects were more political and social than they were financial or technical. And my listening tour was oriented around not just having me learn, but teaching the community that I'm a boots on the ground director. I'll go anywhere. I'll meet anybody.

00:00:47:29 - 00:00:51:04
Greg Spotts
You don't need to hire a lobbyist to meet with me.

00:00:51:07 - 00:01:08:15
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Town Channel. My name is John Simmerman, and that is Greg Spott's former director of transportation for the city of Seattle, Washington. And we're going to be diving into some of the things that he is most proud of. There in the city of Seattle in the two and a half years that he has been the director.

00:01:08:18 - 00:01:15:25
John Simmerman
So let's get right to it with gray spots.

00:01:15:27 - 00:01:19:26
John Simmerman
Greg, spots, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:01:19:28 - 00:01:22:05
Greg Spotts
Thanks, John. Great to be here.

00:01:22:07 - 00:01:32:26
John Simmerman
Greg, I love giving my guest just an opportunity to briefly introduce themselves. So what is like the 32nd to the elevator pitch as to who the heck Greg is?

00:01:32:29 - 00:01:56:04
Greg Spotts
Sure. I'm Greg Spotts, director of Seattle Department of Transportation. I'm passionate about helping cities become more walkable, bikeable, transit friendly, greener, and climate resilient. I moved up to Seattle two and a half years ago after a 13 year career with the city of LA, and I'm very excited to share with you some of what we've been doing in Seattle.

00:01:56:06 - 00:02:17:26
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. And I love the fact that you have that L.A. connection. You know, that I also have the LA connection and have that love hate relationship with Los Angeles. Every time I'm away from it, I miss it. And every time I'm there, it drives me crazy. What was it like for you to to, like, move from, you know, sunny Los Angeles?

00:02:17:29 - 00:02:20:22
John Simmerman
Up to, up to Seattle?

00:02:20:24 - 00:02:49:28
Greg Spotts
Yeah. You know, it was a I called it remixing my mid 50s. It was a really big change. I had just recently become an empty nester. It was the first time I could contemplate a job outside of Southern California. And, I saw this posting on LinkedIn for the Seattle, dot position, and I had visited Seattle in, 2016, 2018 and 2019, and I watched it progress during that time.

00:02:50:01 - 00:03:14:00
Greg Spotts
And I was very intrigued by, some of the sort of streetscape that was going on and the revitalization of the waterfront, this new neighborhood, South Lake Union, that have been created around the Amazon buildings and, I thought it was a very dynamic environment. So I put in for the job and, you know, I wasn't really like, didn't think necessarily anything would come of it.

00:03:14:00 - 00:03:42:03
Greg Spotts
And I became one of the four finalists who got to meet the mayor. And during those during that month long process, I was kind of immersing myself in all things Seattle. And by the time I interviewed with the mayor, in July of 2022, I really, really wanted the job. And, it's been an amazing adventure. It's not for the faint of heart to, like, leave your entire support system behind and move somewhere by yourself, for a job.

00:03:42:05 - 00:04:06:04
Greg Spotts
At this age, it's a whole lot of change to take on. On the other hand, it's kind of been like inhaling every aspect of the city, just like total immersion. And I'm a student of cities, and it's been really interesting to, like, explore every aspect of Seattle, the physical city, the politics, the communities, the social, challenges and issues.

00:04:06:07 - 00:04:13:28
Greg Spotts
It's just been, it really like, an all time, fascinating experience for me. Yeah, yeah.

00:04:14:01 - 00:04:33:00
John Simmerman
Now, we won't hide the fact that, you have, you know, indicated that you're going to be moving on. You're no longer going to be, the D.O.T., director there in Seattle. In fact, by the time this episode goes out, you will have already been, left. So let's talk a little bit about that, that decision.

00:04:33:00 - 00:04:40:02
John Simmerman
I know it must have been a difficult decision because as we're going to talk about later in this episode, you did some amazing stuff.

00:04:40:05 - 00:05:01:12
Greg Spotts
Oh. Thank you. You know, it felt like we had accomplished the goals the mayor and I had set out for my time here. And it seemed like a good opportunity to pass the baton to the next person for a new set of opportunities and challenges. I had a pretty clear direction from the mayor about what we needed to do.

00:05:01:15 - 00:05:39:28
Greg Spotts
When I got here, we were in year seven of the nine year levee to move Seattle, which is a transportation tax that provided about $100 million a year to our agency. And when I got here near the end of year seven, we'd only spent about half the money. And so the number one job was to speed up delivering on the projects of the levy to move Seattle so that we could then convince the taxpayer to vote for a new transportation levy, which, if we didn't get it, would have resulted in laying off about 130 people.

00:05:40:00 - 00:06:16:25
Greg Spotts
Wow, wow. And so it was, a very clear, mission, a mission about execution and acceleration. Nobody was particularly looking for a bunch of brand new ideas. It was more about delivering what had been promised. And when I got to the point where we put 180 projects into construction, and then we'd taken that track record and brought that to the voters and got a $1.55 billion levy passed last November, over eight years, which is about 30% more inflation adjusted than the previous one.

00:06:16:27 - 00:06:20:02
Greg Spotts
I kind of had this simple feeling like my work is done here.

00:06:20:04 - 00:06:34:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, well, I'm going to go to this, particular graph that I know you like because this, kind of speaks to exactly what you were talking about, is we've got this whole hockey stick on this graph that talks about the fact that you've been able to speed things up.

00:06:34:07 - 00:06:59:11
Greg Spotts
Yeah. You know, John, it's interesting because I think of myself as a conceptual person and a burly, strong communicator. But in government, I tend to be put into the football game in the fourth quarter when we're behind. I don't know why that is. I don't know if that's a common thing in government, or people see me as someone who can rally the troops, and push that ball down the field.

00:06:59:18 - 00:07:23:21
Greg Spotts
But over and over again in my public sector career, I sort of come in to accelerate a project, get something unstuck, better delivery of what was promised. And, so I actually felt comfortable with the particular situation I joined because I know how to do this. And it's often for some reason, when the coach puts me in the game.

00:07:23:23 - 00:07:24:19
Greg Spotts
Yeah.

00:07:24:21 - 00:07:42:18
John Simmerman
Now you were kind enough to, send over just a few of the milestones that you, thought of and some of them you just covered in terms of, you know, the, the mill levy trying to speed things up the projects, bringing another bond to the voters. And I think it really is important to, to hone in on that.

00:07:42:18 - 00:08:07:19
John Simmerman
Fact is, yes, you were able to put another bond in front of the voters, and in November they overwhelmingly approved that. Congratulations. I mean, that is incredibly important. And you're looking at this as a $1.5 billion local transportation funding measure. And I and we see the same thing here. I'm seeing the same thing, around the country.

00:08:07:19 - 00:08:33:21
John Simmerman
But I'm also we have seen it here in, in Austin, Texas, time and time again when we've put, two in front of the voters, the opportunity to fund some wonderful active transportation and public transit, projects, they overwhelmingly support them. And I think that kind of changes that narrative, that it's all just about cars. I mean, when you ask riders what they want.

00:08:33:23 - 00:08:35:01
Greg Spotts
They want they want options.

00:08:35:01 - 00:08:36:08
John Simmerman
Yeah.

00:08:36:10 - 00:09:03:29
Greg Spotts
No, you're absolutely right. And and, a strategy that we developed was having a very big tent coalition around the levy. It was inspired by Mayor Bruce Harrell's one Seattle branding. You know, he always says one Seattle at the end of every one of his speeches, he ran kind of a unity campaign. In late 2021, which I thought was remarkable at a time where politics was so divisive.

00:09:04:01 - 00:09:30:29
Greg Spotts
And so, you know, consistent with his vision. We set out to have, like every stakeholder possible, come in and support this levy. And we wrapped it with this branding that I'm proud of because this was one of my personal contributions called, maintain and modernize the idea that the best time to modernize our streets is when we're maintaining them.

00:09:31:01 - 00:10:00:02
Greg Spotts
That's the most cost effective time. And so we really wanted to counter the idea. Well, we can't have nice things because we haven't taken care of our assets. Yeah. We wanted to bring people together, folks who were mostly concerned with, like, paving and bridges with other folks, like the 20% of Seattle households who don't have a car, who wanted a more walkable, bikeable, transit friendly Seattle and this maintain and modernize concept is how we did that.

00:10:00:02 - 00:10:25:09
Greg Spotts
Instead of them being opposing each other, we said, this goes together. And it worked particularly well because Seattle's growing so fast. It's the it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US and certainly one of the fastest north of the Sun Belt. And it's a physically small and constrained city. It's a long, skinny North-South city. There is not a lot of room.

00:10:25:12 - 00:10:35:17
Greg Spotts
You can't widen any of the roads at this point. And so, you know, it is really essential that we move people around in more efficient ways to accommodate that growth.

00:10:35:20 - 00:10:55:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. And you just mentioned, the that the 20% of the households are without a motor vehicle and and literally this is today this is like one hour ago, you have been pushing this out on social media, which, by the way, that's why we are connected, as I've been following you on social media for, for quite some time.

00:10:55:12 - 00:11:21:12
John Simmerman
I think throughout your your journey there in Seattle. And just like with Donohoe Chang, previously there with the city very active in social media and I do appreciate that. And we all appreciate that. You know, in the world of trying to spread the word and enhance awareness about these issues. So, yeah, talk a little bit about this because this this factoid is new for you and you were delighted to share it.

00:11:21:15 - 00:11:22:23
John Simmerman
Just this morning.

00:11:22:25 - 00:11:50:27
Greg Spotts
Sure. You know, I'm one of the car free households in Seattle. I decided to live in South Lake Union, which is this ferry. Interesting community where you can both live and work. Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, all have offices here. And there's apartments here, too. It used to be a neighborhood of car dealerships and open parking lots and warehouses.

00:11:51:00 - 00:12:17:15
Greg Spotts
And when it was redeveloped in this way, the streets were narrowed and very beautiful. Sidewalks and pedestrian bicycles and landscaping and benches were put in. There was a streetcar, that helped, you know, connect this neighborhood to the downtown, to the immediate south. And as I kept visiting Seattle in 26, 28, 2016, 2018 and 2019, I kept watching South Lake Union come further and further into focus.

00:12:17:18 - 00:12:45:14
Greg Spotts
And I was so intrigued by kind of living in a multi use zip code. So I ended up renting an apartment in South Lake Union that has lots of transit options to get to my office, which is 1.7 miles south. And I use them all sometimes I walk home, I take the bus, sometimes in, summers, I'll jump on a line bike and use our wonderful protected bike lanes, to get back home.

00:12:45:17 - 00:13:00:03
Greg Spotts
And, it's been really amazing to, experience the city transit dependent by choice. And I do think it has profoundly informed my leadership, at this during this time.

00:13:00:05 - 00:13:24:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I'm really glad that you, posted this earlier and gave us the opportunity to to not only just talk about the, the data, the statistics, your calls coming in at number nine on this list. Of course, New York City and Washington, DC and Boston are the top three. But this does remind me of my conversation I recently had with Anna Ziv Arts, who's also up there in Washington.

00:13:25:01 - 00:13:49:13
John Simmerman
And, and she, as a non driver because of her, her visual, disability in not being able to have a driver's license. She can ride a bike. She uses public transit primarily as her means of getting around. But she talks about the fact that, you know, of individuals in our population, anywhere between 30 and 40% are non drivers.

00:13:49:19 - 00:14:17:07
John Simmerman
And I think this is really reflected in this data of saying that about 20% of the Seattle white population, the households are there's no no vehicle there for them to, to utilize. And and so I think it really kind of exemplifies the fact that we have to think about a fairly significant percentage of our population that does not have access, it does not have easy access to a car, a motor vehicle.

00:14:17:10 - 00:14:48:12
John Simmerman
And so it gives us the ability to think, oh, wow, if we're going to try to try to create a city for everyone, that makes it even more, of an imperative that we have transit, that we have walking and biking as being a viable choice, a viable option. You mentioned the protected bike lanes. That's one of the things that I remember from my last visit to Seattle, for the, CNU, that took place in 2017.

00:14:48:15 - 00:15:24:08
John Simmerman
And, whenever I travel, I basically travel, with my folding bike, my Brompton folding bike, and, and transit, public transit. And so that's what I did when I was there. In fact, all my visits to Seattle, I've never been in a car when I've visited Seattle. I always have had my Brompton with me. And so, that the protected bike lanes that were going in and some of the wonderful, vibrant all ages and abilities, facilities that are really transforming Seattle and especially in, in the, the urban kind of core of Seattle.

00:15:24:10 - 00:15:34:18
John Simmerman
I mean, kudos to you guys for keeping that momentum going, because I know some of that momentum was happening before you came on board. You just accelerated that process.

00:15:34:20 - 00:16:01:04
Greg Spotts
Let me share a particular interesting wrinkle about it. When I got here, there was an excellent network of protected bike lanes in the downtown, and there were some projects underway to harden some paint and post bike lanes with concrete barriers to make them even more all ages and abilities. And then, you know, there's some very good connectivity. Oh, this is one of my favorites.

00:16:01:06 - 00:16:25:29
Greg Spotts
This is, Dexter and Thomas. This is the first protected bike intersection in Seattle and probably in the state of Washington. I'm actually really thrilled. I also helped build the first protected bike intersection in Los Angeles on seventh Street in downtown. I was, I was at that read the other groundbreaking for that in my previous job. And that got built.

00:16:25:29 - 00:17:07:21
Greg Spotts
And then this got built around the same time. This is a really special spot. They're actually Apple's offices are in the, upper left of this picture. And this is a very, very important intersection because looking left to right, going left takes you from South Lake Union, that neighborhood I've been discussing to the Seattle Center, which is where we have our basketball arena and multiple concert halls and theater places, the Science Museum, the Space Needle and the thing that was some perplexing to me when I moved to South Lake Union is there wasn't a pleasant street to walk or bike, west to get to Seattle Center.

00:17:07:24 - 00:17:36:19
Greg Spotts
Like self like Union should be like strategically connected. And it wasn't there all the I'm various ways to walk were kind of unpleasant and uncomfortable. And so we had this Thomas Street project to make a wonderful walking bike oriented corridor. And that kind of foundation stone of that, is this protected bike intersection here. And by the way, another cool thing about it is we planted trees in those medians.

00:17:36:21 - 00:18:03:01
Greg Spotts
And in L.A., I was in charge and part of the urban forestry folks, and I so much wanted to plant a tree inboard of the curb line in L.A., and nobody would let me, like, I tried so hard to do that. I came back from scouting trips in New York and saw protected bike lanes where there are islands like the ones you see, at the edge here, creating like that nice pedestrian refuge across the street.

00:18:03:03 - 00:18:26:19
Greg Spotts
And there's typically a tree in those islands in Manhattan. And I was like, why can't we do that in LA? And people gave me a thousand reasons why we couldn't. And so not only did we get to do the sort of Dutch style intersection here with those gray, kind of teardrop shaped islands that protect the cyclists as they make turns, but I think we planted 14 trees.

00:18:26:21 - 00:18:54:13
Greg Spotts
And, you know, we're all familiar with trees planted in a center median, but not just like, you know, 6 to 10ft inboard of the curb. So that was another dream realized. However, what I wanted to tell you about was there was a perception that we hadn't built excellent bike facilities in South Seattle, which is, some of our historically redlined communities.

00:18:54:16 - 00:19:22:02
Greg Spotts
And about in my third month on the job, we had a meeting with various groups, that represented cyclists of color. And they told me at this Mexican restaurant over drinks that they didn't think we really wanted to build all ages infrastructure like infrastructure in the South End, that there were projects that had been promised, there were designs that had been circulated for community input, and they never seemed to get built.

00:19:22:05 - 00:19:48:17
Greg Spotts
And they actually asked me, is it possible that your staff doesn't want to build the stuff, and they build it in the affluent communities in the North End, but not in the South End? And I knew that wasn't true. I had gotten to know some of the staff and I knew how passionate they are. We have a transportation equity framework for sort, and they really, really did want to invest in these historically underserved communities.

00:19:48:19 - 00:20:15:06
Greg Spotts
So I clustered four projects in the South. And as one director special and started, I picked someone from the executive team and had this woman, Jessica, be my kind of ambassador to those projects. And I said, I need to know about every possible delay that might be occurring on any one of these four, because at this point, delays are interpreted that we don't care.

00:20:15:09 - 00:20:44:04
Greg Spotts
Right? Right. And I'm so proud to say that in December we broke ground on the last of those four. I love it. We've already opened one of them through all of the other three are in construction. They will all be completed by the end of 2025. And, one thing I plan to do is return to Seattle this fall after I probably moved to California or New York and ride those projects with the community, because I'm so proud that we got that done.

00:20:44:06 - 00:21:03:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. And you just you, you shared just there that you're not really sure where you're going to land on this next roll. It might be back in California, might be in New York. You've got family in both locations. Now, I don't know if this photo is a photo that illustrates, the area that you were talking about, but it does tell the streets.

00:21:03:19 - 00:21:41:15
John Simmerman
Oh, good. And but it does also illustrate. Something I want to talk about is that y'all were not tentative or afraid of moving quicker through, you know, lighter, quick or cheaper materials or modular materials. And this is a great example of, you know, adding some hardening, you know, a bike lane and adding some protection using, you know, very quick to install, types of concrete, bollards and curb stops and things of that nature which I really applaud for cities to be able to look at the, you know, their landscape and say, hey, how can we do this faster?

00:21:41:18 - 00:21:54:10
John Simmerman
Because, yeah, it's it's super cool to have that beautiful, beautiful landscape that we saw with the protected intersection takes a lot longer, a lot more planning than doing something like this.

00:21:54:12 - 00:22:25:24
Greg Spotts
Definitely. This is part of our Better Bike Barriers program, which is hardening existing paint and post, bike lanes with barriers that are more effective, and that decrease traffic discomfort for the riders. So it was really interesting because the council member who represents the South End had brought this thing that we call in Seattle, a proviso meaning up, sort of spending constraint in the budget for 2023.

00:22:25:26 - 00:22:56:25
Greg Spotts
That said, within the bike program budget, 1 million of it could only be spent on hardening paint in post bike lanes in our district. And it was interesting because my staff at first were annoyed by that. They thought, well, we have all these bike projects that we've already planned on how we're going to spend this money. And they took it as sort of like an incursion into the professionals spending the money the right way.

00:22:56:28 - 00:23:20:16
Greg Spotts
And I convinced them that this was an opportunity that nobody likes. Those dirty, broken, missing floppy bats. And often we see many cars in the bike lane in those places, and we see the trash trucks making pickups there. They don't care about those. I said, I've been wanting to harden our paint and post bike lanes. Anyway, let's embrace this.

00:23:20:16 - 00:23:48:20
Greg Spotts
Let's like, let's make this an installed initiative and the cyclists will love us for it. So while we were completing the designs of those four projects I was telling you about in the South End, we were installing $1 million worth of curb stops, plastic armadillos and, Toronto barriers. I think you might be able to draw up a photo of the Toronto barriers.

00:23:48:22 - 00:24:12:24
Greg Spotts
And these became very popular. And it was, something we've learned during my time here is when you have a long lead time project with a lengthy design period, and then you have to hire a contractor to build it. Bringing early deliverables in and around that project gets people excited. So as Steve does have 300 field crew members, here's the Toronto Barriers.

00:24:12:27 - 00:24:37:11
Greg Spotts
And so we've started doing things we can do with our own crews to show the community that we're already getting going, even as these other slower moving projects will come later. So we use this better bike lane money in part to put the first Toronto barriers that have ever been installed in Seattle. It's something I had seen in other cities and always aspired to try to use, and these are very popular.

00:24:37:17 - 00:24:55:04
Greg Spotts
They're precast and they click together. They're sort of a smaller version of that jersey barrier that you see, you know, freeway construction. And we have built in money in the new levy to be dropping these all over Seattle. And what were our painted post bike lanes.

00:24:55:06 - 00:25:01:19
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. Yeah. What do you think the height is on that. Is that like about 18in or something like that.

00:25:01:19 - 00:25:21:18
Greg Spotts
It's about 18in. Yeah. Somewhere a while back I tweeted a schematic of that or I put that on LinkedIn. And yeah, that was very widely viewed. Everybody was really interested. I guess that's where the civil engineers live on LinkedIn. They all really like to see Ematic. We have to, you know, it's hard to find when you want to buy them in quantity.

00:25:21:18 - 00:25:42:15
Greg Spotts
You know, you try to find somebody reasonably local who can make them for you because they weigh a lot. And so they're very expensive to transport. But one thing we like about it, you know, we have such a wet winter, it rains like an average of 155 days a year here, which is like unfathomable for me after 25 years of living.

00:25:42:15 - 00:26:01:21
Greg Spotts
And so go okay. And I mean, people have like eight different jackets for the different types of rain that we have here. So we do a lot of our construction in the dry season. We have like a 4 or 5 month dry season in the spring. It's summer and this bike lane hardening is work we can do in the in the rain.

00:26:01:24 - 00:26:15:07
Greg Spotts
Nice. So like the same people who are like doing thermoplastic installation, you know, signs and painting and things that are, weather sensitive in the dry season. We can be dropping these Toronto barriers in the wet season.

00:26:15:09 - 00:26:21:24
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. You know what else I love is this,

00:26:21:27 - 00:26:48:10
Greg Spotts
Yeah. I'm really passionate about zero emission, construction and maintenance vehicles. I believe that their time has come. When I first got here, the mayor was preparing an executive order on climate, and I inserted in there a provision that thought would lead or co-lead at least a half a dozen pilots of zero emission or reduced emission work vehicles.

00:26:48:12 - 00:27:09:21
Greg Spotts
And so this is our Schmidt, East Wing Co 200, all electric mini sweeper. This is a bike lane sweeper. A narrow bike lane sweeper. When I was at, the Bureau of Street Services in L.A. Us, and, I think Boulder were the first two cities to buy electric mini sweepers in the US. So I really wanted to do that again in Seattle.

00:27:09:23 - 00:27:32:11
Greg Spotts
And it's funny, because they'd had a, contest to name the fossil fuel, mini sweeper that we had, and people had called it. Okay, Boomer. Like, okay, Boomer. And so we call this one rumor, but it's so cool to think of doing zero emission sweeping of a zero emissions mode.

00:27:32:13 - 00:28:01:16
John Simmerman
Exactly, exactly. I also want to pull up this other, photo that you sent along of, of this particular, bike lane and again, another form of hardening to try to create a safer environment for, for people who are riding through this area. And I always like to emphasize that earlier we were talking a little bit about non drivers and, and and, and especially people with the challenges and disabilities.

00:28:01:18 - 00:28:29:24
John Simmerman
I also emphasize that in many environments that do a really good job with active transportation infrastructure that is truly all ages and abilities, these also become lanes that people in wheelchairs and electric scooters and mobility devices may find this environment much more comfortable than than sidewalks, which can have many different challenges to them, including being broken up and not as smooth.

00:28:29:27 - 00:28:42:23
John Simmerman
And so whenever I see a protected bike lane, I look at it and think of, you know, this is an all ages and abilities lane that really is conducive to all types of wheeling.

00:28:42:26 - 00:29:13:18
Greg Spotts
Thank you for saying that. This is one of those four projects in the South, and I was referring to this as our project in beacon Hill on 15th Avenue. And these are cast in place barriers. And it's funny, the, the social media community is very active about mobility in Seattle. My views on Twitter before it was renamed, went from like 70,000 a month to a million a month when I moved up here.

00:29:13:20 - 00:29:41:29
Greg Spotts
That's how interested people are. And there's some sort of inside jokes among the, like, urbanist community on social. And one of them is calling these precast barriers loaves. So people will, like, see one and tweet a picture of it and say, fresh loaves, you know, have just been baked. And so I started like teasing everybody that the skinny ones should be called baguettes, you know, so people also, you know, refer to them as baguettes.

00:29:41:29 - 00:29:56:22
Greg Spotts
I don't know if this is a loaf or a baguette, but, that's been part of the fun. It's just kind of like learning the lingo of, folks here who are super passionate about any multimodal, elements that get added to the streetscape.

00:29:56:24 - 00:30:24:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. Now, earlier you talked a little bit about, you know, you're you're making the decision to be, you know, sort of carefree in your environment as, in your new role and being able to be close enough to be able to get to the office by walking, biking and transit. Talk a little bit about, the community walks that you, you know, launched when you first made it up there to Seattle and why you did that.

00:30:24:07 - 00:30:27:19
John Simmerman
So describe it and describe why you did it.

00:30:27:21 - 00:30:56:05
Greg Spotts
Sure. So I had worked for the city of LA for 13.5 years plus, you know, going to grad school there and having a fellowship with Mayor Vargas, his office during grad school, and LA has 99 registered neighborhoods and I'm pretty sure that I've worked in every one of them. I had like a sort of encyclopedic knowledge of the streets, the communities, the little, walkable downtown areas or walkable villages.

00:30:56:07 - 00:31:30:15
Greg Spotts
And I thought it was, like, critical to how I practice my craft. My family used to tease me that I never use the freeway, because I would always drive surface streets and check out my streets and what's happening. And so it was some novel for me to drop into Seattle and not know the neighborhoods. And I felt like knowing the people, seeing the streets, understanding what each community valued in their neighborhood was kind of like an essential part of how I practice my craft.

00:31:30:18 - 00:31:50:03
Greg Spotts
So I told the staff in month before I got here that I'd like to do a listening tour, and the way I'd like to do it is put up like a web form where people can invite me to take a walk, a bike ride or a transit ride in their community, and they could show me what's working and what needs improvement.

00:31:50:05 - 00:32:17:28
Greg Spotts
And different members of the staff had different opinions about whether this was going to work. Some people thought not enough people would want to take me on a walk, and some people thought way too many people would end, right? Why not deal with it? Oh, this is a very important spot. We'll talk about it in a second. And, I ended up getting 200 applicants of small groups that wanted to take me for a walk.

00:32:18:00 - 00:32:28:25
Greg Spotts
And in the first six months I did 100 community walks. I pretty much started every day in community. Rain or shine. Should I tell you what this is?

00:32:28:27 - 00:32:45:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I just pulled this up. Could another recent, you know, post of yours, out on LinkedIn, and I believe blue Sky as well. And, I definitely want you to, to queue this up and talk a little bit about, what this was all about.

00:32:45:09 - 00:33:11:02
Greg Spotts
So this is Aurora, which is one of our state highways. That's not a super pleasant place to be. And it needs a radical revamp, which we're starting to plan. And in that same time frame where I was not yet arrived in Seattle and asked the staff to set up a listening tour for me, I was getting a lot of, messages on social media about this place.

00:33:11:02 - 00:33:36:03
Greg Spotts
This is Aurora between 80th and 85th, and these are some of the only healthy, mature street trees on Aurora. And this area had cracked up sidewalk. This car dealership was encroaching on the sidewalk. And, the original plan was to remove these trees. And I looked at Google Street View and I was like, on 60 blocks of Aurora.

00:33:36:03 - 00:33:59:26
Greg Spotts
These are the best trees in the whole place. And I had, you know, been the street tree, overseeing the Street tree group, among others in LA. And I asked staff, I said, I'm not the director yet, so I can't tell you what to do, but I'm asking you to pause this project until I get here, because I would like to collaborate with you to try to save these trees.

00:33:59:29 - 00:34:26:10
Greg Spotts
And this is the end result. We did save these trees. And as we're walking here, one of the trees is bridged by a thin metal plate that is not concrete. To make room for the roots underneath here. This project requires really close coordination between our urban forestry group and our concrete group. And they hadn't previously worked this closely together.

00:34:26:12 - 00:35:01:14
Greg Spotts
There's another picture in that set of large trees and sidewalk being constructed. And that's the next one. Okay. That came forward after this. It was really fascinating. Once valuing the mature street, trees became more salient among our staff, and once the concrete people felt more comfortable lifting off the old sidewalk panels and letting the our tree arborist take a look and come up with a design, you know, based on what they're observing in the field around those roots.

00:35:01:16 - 00:35:27:12
Greg Spotts
The staff brought forward another location in a historically underserved community in South Park called, Dallas Avenue. So I'm pointing to where to the right of the tree line, the sidewalk used to be. It was a totally cracked, wrecked up sidewalk. For some reason, when I was in there, like my friend, my colleagues at the Bureau of Street Services used to call the biggest uplifts Mount Vesuvius.

00:35:27:15 - 00:36:15:03
Greg Spotts
So it was a mount Vesuvius type situation. And this is a neighborhood, a small pocket of residential in an otherwise industrial neighborhood. It's very near Boeing field. Planes fly overhead, very low. The Duwamish waterway that goes by here is literally a Superfund site. This is an area with tremendous environmental challenges and environmental justice issues. And the staff brought to me, could we explore preserving in place these trees by creating new sidewalk where the roadway currently is basically widening the non roadway portion and taking, what used to be parking and flipping the sidewalk from the right side of this picture to the left side.

00:36:15:03 - 00:36:38:01
Greg Spotts
This is what the finished product looks like. It took about a year to find $1 million to be able to do this project, and during that time, that dual mesh river, there's the construction of it right there. You can see the old sidewalk has been removed to the left on the new sidewalk and curb and gutter being stalled to the right.

00:36:38:03 - 00:37:00:10
Greg Spotts
While we were trying to find the money, the Duwamish River had a king tide event and flooded this neighborhood. The mayor got very involved. We were really concerned about, folks who had to leave their apartments for a while. And so it was a moment where the mayor was looking for investments in South Park, and here we had it ready.

00:37:00:12 - 00:37:23:13
Greg Spotts
So this is one of my prouder, moments in the job. And it was also just it's really intriguing. As a leader, you must be doing something right. If you lift something up, a solve a problem there, and then the staff starts finding other opportunities to do the same thing and elevating them to you instead of going, oh, well, you know, our regular funding, we can't do it.

00:37:23:15 - 00:37:27:03
Greg Spotts
So the staff is now very, very proud of that Dallas project.

00:37:27:06 - 00:37:38:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well you just said elevating. And so I this next photo, reminds me of that. This is an elevated, shot of, folks, writing what's what's going on here.

00:37:38:05 - 00:37:57:24
Greg Spotts
So, you know, something I just absolutely adore in LA is the sicklerville the, like, open streets bike events. And my younger son, Eli and I rode the first five cycler villas, and he had, like, a bike with 12 inch wheels and training wheels. And he was going up and down these bridges and hills. I couldn't believe his commitment.

00:37:57:24 - 00:38:37:04
Greg Spotts
So I'm very, very fond of those open streets events. Seattle doesn't have a publicly sponsored one, but we have this wonderful group called Cascade Bike Club, and they mostly sponsor rides in between cities like the really hard one is called Seattle to Portland, and over two days people ride all the way from Seattle to Portland. So they came to me and said, Seattle, the Cascade Bike Club, we want to do a ride over the West Seattle Bridge, a ride to go from the main part of Seattle over to West Seattle, and we want to see if you would permit, taking cars out of there for part of a Sunday morning.

00:38:37:06 - 00:39:01:13
Greg Spotts
And I, you know, just they were speaking my language and we worked it out. We had some very complex safety issues. My, the professionals in my department felt we didn't want anybody anywhere near the, the edge. So we actually kind of took the edge lanes out of service. And we had all these volunteers making sure nobody was going to the edge.

00:39:01:15 - 00:39:24:10
Greg Spotts
Yeah. You can see that right there, that the edge is clear. And so this was I ended up writing it with my e-bike, and it was a very cold morning, but it was one of my most joyful, times that I've had in the job as riding over the West Seattle Bridge. People were taking pictures of the themselves like a selfie with the road sign in the background.

00:39:24:10 - 00:39:39:01
Greg Spotts
Because no human is ever on this bridge. This bridge has no sidewalk and has no pedestrian or bike connections. There's a a low bridge over the same thing that does have the pedestrian and bike facilities. So it was a super rare opportunity to get up there on a bike.

00:39:39:03 - 00:40:00:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. One of the reasons why I love open Streets events, school views and such is that it gives residents the opportunity to really reimagine what our streets are for. You've probably noticed my coffee mug here. Streets are for people. I try to emphasize the fact that, you know, I've gone on a.

00:40:00:18 - 00:40:07:07
Greg Spotts
Rock and roll water glass I like to see. Or did I like seeing streets for people? And I raise you electric guitar.

00:40:07:09 - 00:40:50:11
John Simmerman
That's right. And that's very, apropos for, Seattle and the music scene there. But one of the things that I love about those events is it really does help reframe what our streets are perceived to be for, and the connectedness that we can have as we as we look at what the future is going to be, you know, in Seattle, in Los Angeles and other cities around the nation, I think it's imperative that we we do start to reimagine what our streets are for so that we can hopefully make that process of transformation city transformations, a little easier, as I'm sure you will, are well aware of.

00:40:50:13 - 00:41:22:22
John Simmerman
It we get resistance whenever there's a change to the status quo. We see it here in in Austin, we see it in cities, you know, around, you know, around the globe really. But specifically in car centric areas, there is a vigorous resistance by the status quo of drive everywhere for everything. And so when we start transforming or built environment, into active mobility modes, we get resistance.

00:41:22:22 - 00:41:47:25
John Simmerman
And so that's one of the reasons why I love, you know, events like this that, you know, help people reimagine what streets are for. I mean, obviously, we're not going to transform the entire realm of, automobile realm. Like this, but trying to make it safer, trying to create those all ages and abilities, mobility options so that people can, can move forward.

00:41:47:28 - 00:42:06:23
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit to your experience of of what that was like. You wanted to move fast, you wanted to get projects done, but sometimes you can only go as fast as the speed of trust of those neighborhoods to be able to implement them, because you don't want the neighborhoods to feel like you're doing something to them.

00:42:07:00 - 00:42:20:24
John Simmerman
You need them on board with these transformations, and they may not think that that's what they want or need is fixed sidewalks and, enhanced mobility options with protected bike lanes.

00:42:20:26 - 00:42:44:13
Greg Spotts
Yeah. You know, a theory of the case that I had in coming, is that the reason why there was such a big pantry full of projects that hadn't finished design and had not yet started construction in Seattle, was largely political rather than, oh, this is the one I was hoping you were going to go next to it. This is Alki Point here.

00:42:44:15 - 00:43:09:23
Greg Spotts
This is in West Seattle. That that bike ride actually passed this place. So, you know, my theory was the barriers to implementation of this whole bunch of projects were more political and social than they were financial or technical. And my listening tour was oriented around not just having me learn, but teaching the community that I'm a boots on the ground director.

00:43:09:23 - 00:43:28:07
Greg Spotts
I'll go anywhere. I'll meet anybody. You don't need to hire a lobbyist to meet with me, and you don't have to come to the Seattle Municipal Tower and come up to my conference room to meet with me. I'll turn up and within a few days and walk the place with you. So if you can only move at the speed of trust.

00:43:28:07 - 00:43:56:21
Greg Spotts
I was trying to build trust that I'm accessible, that I care, that I'm a good listener. And then I wanted to expend that political capital on actually implementing the projects. This one is very important and special to me. This is kind of a super unique water viewpoint. And there's like at low tide, there's all of this, these sea creatures and birds out there.

00:43:56:21 - 00:44:27:28
Greg Spotts
It's a very special spot in a spot where seals come up. You can see some of the orca whales going by sometimes here. It's called Constellation Point in Alki Beach. And this lane you see full of people used to have parked cars. Right. And a community group wanted to do what we call a healthy street here and take out the parking that was closest to the water, leave the parking on the other side, and use curb stops to make a walking and rolling lane.

00:44:27:28 - 00:44:53:19
Greg Spotts
As you can see, the sidewalk is very narrow, so this is like a major tourist attraction. And in the summer it's within a short walk or bike ride from the main beach in West Seattle, where we have just thousands of people out having a good time. And, you know, if there were some, there was some real passionate opposition to this project among a couple of groups.

00:44:53:21 - 00:44:57:27
Greg Spotts
But we ended up, putting it into construction. And we've just.

00:44:57:27 - 00:44:58:25
John Simmerman
Published.

00:44:58:27 - 00:45:25:07
Greg Spotts
A statistical report about how it's being used. It's doubled to triple the number of people walking, biking and rolling, and the parking availability is still quite good. So it's it's exactly I mean, you just picked the perfect picture to illustrate the point that you made so passionately, just a moment ago. There are places where there are better uses for that precious space than car storage.

00:45:25:09 - 00:45:32:20
Greg Spotts
Yeah, and this was such an obvious one, right? Why would we want to look at a bunch of cars when we came here to look at the orcas?

00:45:32:22 - 00:45:33:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah.

00:45:33:19 - 00:46:02:17
Greg Spotts
This is so cool. This is our new waterfront. This is the overlook walk. That is like a giant pedestrian bridge helping you, you know, traverse a 100ft elevation difference between our waterfront that's basically at sea level and the Pike Place Market, which is up on this cliff. And this is what happens. This is opening day. But we've been seeing tremendous crowds in this space here.

00:46:02:20 - 00:46:23:27
Greg Spotts
This is what happens when you build to the desired path, like the two things tourists want to do the most in Seattle is they want to go to the waterfront and they want to go to Pike Place Market. You can see one from the other and there were these dingy, hard to find stairs and uncomfortable crossings of arterials.

00:46:24:00 - 00:46:46:05
Greg Spotts
In fact, there used to be a double decker freeway in this very place that we're looking called the Alaska Way Viaduct. And I was so impressed when I was pursuing this job that they had torn down the viaduct and they were just starting construction on this overlook walk. It's part of a $600 million collection of projects to upgrade the Seattle waterfront.

00:46:46:07 - 00:47:04:06
Greg Spotts
I kept visiting every day. I've been visiting all the time, to see how people are using it. Because even now, during our winter time, there's a ton of people on it. And it's just so interesting. If you build a direct solution to the desire path, so many people are going to show up.

00:47:04:08 - 00:47:21:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I hear that. Well, because I know you don't want to shy away from big challenges and big projects. What do you think of the idea of, you know, making a car free Olympics in Los Angeles actually happen?

00:47:21:04 - 00:47:48:21
Greg Spotts
Right? It's really intriguing. And, you know, I'm looking at opportunities to possibly get involved in the Olympics. That really, really intrigues me. The, the strength of LA's bid is that L.A. already had all the facilities. You know, there's so many stadiums and conference centers and basketball arenas that there really isn't a lot of permanent facilities that would need to be built.

00:47:48:24 - 00:48:12:21
Greg Spotts
But connecting all that is a real challenge. There's currently a sort of $3 billion vision for that car free Olympics, and a very small amount of that so far has been funded. And so it's we're in a very critical time right now. I hope that the federal government will decide to invest, in mobility around the Olympics.

00:48:12:23 - 00:48:46:08
Greg Spotts
There are quite a lot of mega projects that are coming online between now and 2028. The Purple Line, a subway extension under Wilshire. I helped work on that during preliminary engineering. You know, more than ten years ago that's about to open. There's a number of other projects that are opening, but there's going to be some real rewiring of the existing street assets that is necessary in order to have the right kind of movement of the athletes, the spectators, the workers.

00:48:46:10 - 00:49:21:27
Greg Spotts
Paris obviously offered some really incredible examples of what can be done. Although Paris is a city with smaller streets, right? It's historical and prix car, but this is really a huge challenge is not only how could Le handle the transportation for the Olympics, but could that be catalytic for a more multimodal LA in the future? And these fires now have added a whole nother dimension to how do we balance the rebuild effort with the Olympics prep effort?

00:49:21:29 - 00:49:27:26
John Simmerman
Yeah, I just pulled up online here, the, festival trail.org website and the festival.

00:49:27:26 - 00:49:29:04
Greg Spotts
I'm so glad you did.

00:49:29:06 - 00:49:54:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, this is a fun little vision, that is being proposed to trying to connect, many of the, venues, via what would be determined, festival trail and trying to lean as much towards active mobility and transit to be able to facilitate, that dream of a relatively car free Olympics.

00:49:54:17 - 00:50:20:20
Greg Spotts
I saw a presentation on that, in November at promotion in LA, and I thought it was really fascinating and something you can't entirely tell from this map. It's designed to connect some of these transportation projects that are in progress that don't all exactly connect with each other. It's just so intriguing to think about, you know, catalytic transformation and what's possible.

00:50:20:22 - 00:50:32:18
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. We're coming to the close of, of our time here today. Greg, is there anything that we haven't discussed that you want to leave the audience with?

00:50:32:21 - 00:51:05:10
Greg Spotts
I think I'd like to share an even stronger point of view. I have at the other end of this experience is that there's a pathway to being an effective practitioner for active transportation and, activation of our, of our towns and villages. That involves shoe leather and listening. It involves getting out of the office, visiting with people, meeting them where they're at.

00:51:05:12 - 00:51:44:26
Greg Spotts
We talk about it, start bringing the table to people who don't know there's a table. Right. And doing that in language, in a way that's culturally relevant in places that are convenient, for those participants, there is a, a whole emerging way to practice this craft that is out of the office on the streets and really seeking out voices who don't have the social capital to come to a community meeting, at 7 p.m. at the rec center, you know, people who have a language barrier or people who have two different jobs, folks who are transit dependent.

00:51:44:29 - 00:52:12:23
Greg Spotts
There's just so many opportunities to connect, to learn, to listen, to engage and include. In my job interview, I told Mayor Bruce Harrell that I love to co-create projects with underserved communities, and I really, really do. I love to co-create projects with all sorts of communities and identify stakeholders who maybe haven't felt welcome or safe to express their views as well.

00:52:12:26 - 00:52:25:26
Greg Spotts
I'm going to keep practicing my craft that way, and I'm available to talk to anybody who's who's interested in their own career development in this very, very important time. As we look at a carbon constrained future.

00:52:25:29 - 00:52:39:19
John Simmerman
You know, earlier you had mentioned healthy Streets, and so I pulled this one last image, that I'd like you to, to talk a little bit about is, of a healthy street, you know, facility that data is, is in place here.

00:52:39:24 - 00:53:02:25
Greg Spotts
This is one of our greenways, you know, where we, do, like a narrowing, and we're we put up signs that suggest this isn't really a through street anymore. It's, you know, we prefer people drive there if they're going, right to an address along there. It's sort of a, you know, a traffic calming as a format of traffic calming.

00:53:02:28 - 00:53:35:24
Greg Spotts
And what's started to happen with the acceleration of projects that we've done under my leadership is a bunch of the greenways are now connected and there's like a network of greenways. And, you know, moms are saying they can like, ride their kids in a car, go bike to multiple different neighborhoods and to the kids activities and extracurriculars and to school and to, kids, friends houses and other little village neighborhoods where there's other retail and and restaurants and ice cream places that they like.

00:53:36:00 - 00:53:52:24
Greg Spotts
It's really intriguing to take this sort of non arterial grid and then prioritize certain streets for, walking, biking and rolling. You know, some of it started a long time ago before I got here. But the it's kind of reaching critical mass in a new sort of way I love.

00:53:52:24 - 00:53:59:12
John Simmerman
It I love it, Greg, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:53:59:14 - 00:54:13:02
Greg Spotts
Thanks, John. And I want to come visit you in Austin and see what's going on. I used to go to South by Southwest two years ago. It's been many years since I've been in Austin. I find it really exciting that you guys have built enough housing that rents are going down.

00:54:13:05 - 00:54:32:28
John Simmerman
Yes, and I have to give a plug here. You know, for the fine folks, here in the city is that, they are well on their way to building a comprehensive all ages and abilities and Dutch inspired, you know, protected and separated, cycle network. So, yeah, I'd love to give you a bike tour of the city.

00:54:33:00 - 00:54:34:23
Greg Spotts
That sounds awesome. Let's do it. So.

00:54:34:25 - 00:54:49:11
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Great Sports. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up! Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you! Subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.

00:54:49:14 - 00:55:10:20
John Simmerman
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00:55:10:27 - 00:55:29:11
John Simmerman
Again, thank you so much for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and a huge shout out to all my Active Towns ambassadors supporting the channel via YouTube. Super! Thanks! Buy me a coffee! Patreon. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit.

00:55:29:11 - 00:55:33:04
John Simmerman
I could not do this without you. Thank you all so very much.