# Transportation Commission Navigates Growth, Training, and Technical Planning The Bellingham Transportation Commission convened on July 8, 2025, for what would prove to be a comprehensive exploration of open government requirements, housing growth impacts on transportation, and detailed technical planning for the city's comprehensive plan update. The meeting, led by Chair Addie Candib at the Pacific Street Operations Center, brought together veteran commissioners and two new members for nearly two hours of substantive discussion. ## Meeting Overview The evening began with welcoming two new commissioners to the seven-member body. Jonathan Huegel, a home inspector who navigates Bellingham by bicycle, shared his interest in helping immigrants in the community navigate transit systems. Andrea Reiter brought expertise as associate director of active transportation at Western Washington University, along with personal experience as both a bike commuter and someone who had relied on transit during extended periods following leg surgeries. Their introductions set a tone of practical, lived experience that would inform much of the evening's technical discussions. With Aaron Miller and Cindy Dennis excused, the remaining five members joined Riley Grant (Public Works communications), Blake Lyon (Planning and Community Development Director), Mike Wilson (Assistant Director of Public Works), Sarah Chaplin (City Attorney's Office), and Dylan Casper (Transportation Planner) for an agenda that touched on legal compliance, housing policy, and long-range transportation planning. ## Open Government Training: Navigating Transparency and Compliance Sarah Chaplin from the City Attorney's Office delivered the required annual training on the Open Public Meetings Act and records management, compressing typically lengthy material into a rapid-fire presentation that nonetheless covered essential compliance requirements. The training proved timely for the new commissioners and served as a crucial refresher for continuing members. Chaplin emphasized that Washington's transparency laws emerged from the 1970s-era recognition that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" following scandals like Watergate. The Open Public Meetings Act, she explained, is "supposed to be liberally construed to effectuate its purpose," meaning when in doubt, the law favors transparency over secrecy. For transportation commissioners, the most practically relevant guidance centered on email communications. "It's almost always inadvertent when I see it," Chaplin noted about violations, "but it's really easy for an email exchange to cross the line from that passive receipt of information to then discussion of the board or commission business." The critical warning: "Be careful with reply all. It can be really easy to reply all, and then you have an OPMA violation there." The training addressed scenarios particularly relevant to a transportation commission. If commissioners want to travel together to conferences or take group bike rides, Chaplin explained they need to be cautious: "If you have a quorum of you in a van together, it could potentially be an OPMA violation if you're then transacting the business of the Transportation Commission." Commissioner Tim Wilder raised a practical question about field trips, asking about bike rides to examine infrastructure. Chaplin clarified that while commissioners could theoretically ride together without discussing commission business, "in practice a lot of times that can be more difficult to do." She recommended issuing a "notice of potential quorum" as a safety valve for such situations. The records management portion proved equally practical. Since commissioners use personal email accounts for commission business, they must maintain separate folders for transportation-related correspondence. "Keep all of your Transportation Commission stuff in that folder," Chaplin advised, "so that if anybody were to request it, you would be able to easily find it and provide it to city staff." Commissioner Quinn asked about the frequent advocacy emails they receive: "Every once in a while there'll be a hot topic, and we'll get a chain of emails from different people. Are we supposed to save those and send them to you?" Chaplin clarified they should save them in their transportation commission folders but don't need to forward them unless specifically requested during a public records request. The conversation revealed the practical reality commissioners face: "I find hundreds, sometimes of emails on the topic that we're going to be discussing at the next meeting," Quinn noted. "A lot of times you don't even know half the people that they include." For new commissioners, Chaplin recommended either setting up separate email addresses for commission business or at minimum maintaining dedicated folders. "Just have a folder where, if you get transportation commission stuff, be dragging it into that folder so that it's all stored separately from emails from your mom or things like that." ## Housing Policy and Transportation Infrastructure Blake Lyon, Planning and Community Development Director, provided an extensive overview of Mayor Kim Lund's Executive Order 2024-02 and the resulting interim ordinances addressing Bellingham's housing shortage. The discussion revealed the complex intersection between housing policy and transportation infrastructure—a relationship that would prove central to much of the evening's technical planning discussion. Lyon began by contextualizing the state-level pressure driving local action. House Bill 1220 from the 2021 legislature established housing targets for counties, with Whatcom County facing a requirement for over 34,000 new units through 2045. Bellingham historically accommodated about 48% of county growth, though officials are considering whether the city should take on a larger share given its role as the regional urban center. The 2023 legislature added additional requirements through House Bill 1110, the "middle housing" bill, which requires cities over 75,000 people—Bellingham qualifies as a "tier one" city—to allow up to four units per lot in former single-family zones, with potential for six units if at least two meet affordability requirements. "So it increases the amount of potential capacity that exists throughout the city," Lyon explained. The city already had tools in place through its "infill toolkit," adopted starting in 2009 and updated over the years. The interim ordinance applied this toolkit citywide, ahead of state deadlines. "We've already kind of started to be a little bit more proactive than the State's timeline requirements," Lyon noted. However, commissioners immediately focused on transportation implications. Commissioner Wilder raised concerns about current development patterns: "Most of the new development in Bellingham that's not redeveloping older neighborhoods is cul-de-sac winding streets, not walkable hard to serve with transit, and things tend to be further apart, less bikeable." Wilder pressed on specific barriers: "You've talked about infill development to try to address that. There's also the city street improvement standards and other things that tend to be barriers to building neighborhoods the way they might have been built in the early 1900s, with a grid pattern, with parking on one side and a shared travel lane on the other." He pointed to zoning restrictions that prevent small-scale retail integration: "You can't today build a roam coffee in a residential neighborhood or a Letter Street Coffee House in a residential neighborhood, even though those tend to be some of the most valuable neighborhood businesses from a transportation angle." Lyon acknowledged the challenge, explaining that while the comprehensive plan would set new goals and policies, implementation would require substantial work and resources over time. "We're not gonna re-grid streets and go back and do that kind of stuff," he admitted, but noted they're working toward "traditional development patterns that predate some of the zoning requirements that really we saw popularized kind of post-World War II, which were a lot more auto centric." The discussion revealed ongoing work to address street improvement standards, with Lyon and Wilson noting they're "actively looking at our street standards" and trying to coordinate housing and transportation policy. However, Wilder pressed on the timeline: "They're pretty old. They're probably not what we want them to be. We're still making people build those roads that probably aren't what we want them to be." Wilson acknowledged the complexity: "None of this is easy. So these are heavy lifts. That's why it hasn't been done." He described efforts to update standards that currently see mismatches between code, guidelines, and actual implementation. The conversation touched on transit proximity requirements in state law. Lyon explained that while some provisions tie additional units to transit access, they don't apply to Bellingham because "we don't have a transit service that meets that definition in the State law." However, he noted the city could choose to implement such requirements: "The State laws are minimums. You cannot go less than that. You can go greater than that." ## Bellingham Plan Update: Technical Requirements and Implementation Challenges Dylan Casper, Transportation Planner, guided commissioners through the most technically complex portion of the meeting: the Growth Management Act checklist for transportation elements in comprehensive plans. The 2023 legislature significantly strengthened transportation planning requirements, creating an 11-item checklist (Items A through K) that cities must address. Casper presented a detailed overview of each requirement, from basic facility inventories to complex financial forecasting. The city's arterial network includes 289 lane miles across principal arterials (109 miles), secondary arterials (111 miles), and collector arterials (61 miles), supported by 126 signalized intersections, 9 multimodal roundabouts, and various pedestrian safety features. The discussion of multimodal level of service standards revealed Bellingham's sophisticated approach. Rather than traditional vehicle-focused metrics, the city uses a person-trip methodology that calculates available capacity across five modes: sidewalks, multiuse trails, bikeways, WTA transit, and automobiles. "By using person trips rather than vehicle trips alone, this approach supports multimodal network planning and prioritizes investments that improve walking, biking, and transit accessibility," Casper explained. However, commissioners quickly identified disconnects between this multimodal approach and regional modeling. The Whatcom Council of Governments travel demand model, Casper admitted, "is an auto model. They do not include multimodals levels of service." This created what Commissioner Wilder termed "2 different methodologies that we're trying to square." Commissioner Wilder pressed this point, noting that while the city has adopted a modal hierarchy that prioritizes pedestrians, bikes, and transit over vehicles, "everything we should be doing should be decreasing our vehicle LOS intentionally while increasing our LOS for every other mode." Yet the regional model focuses primarily on vehicle performance. The 20-year project list revealed another source of commissioner concern. The document identifies $215 million in secured funding against a total need requiring $437 million, leaving a $222 million gap. More troubling for Commissioner Wilder was the project timing: "So we're kind of banking on building the entire everything we're gonna build into the BMP is going to be built after 2032, in the last 13 years of the plan, or after the end of the plan." This scheduling reflected what Casper called a harsh reality: "The reality of it is, we're not going to be able to construct all those projects, all of the BMP projects in the next 10 years." He explained that funding limitations are the largest barrier, though the city's approach allows for five-year updates to reassess priorities. Commissioner Quinn raised concerns about the generality of transportation demand management strategies: "Everything feels very generalized. You're making statements 'the city supports outreach programs that encourage walking and biking.' But it doesn't really... there's no real meat. It's not saying how we're doing it." She wanted more specific strategies and success measurements. The funding gap discussion revealed multiple strategies under consideration. Beyond pursuing grants and adjusting impact fees, the city is considering increasing its Transportation Benefit District rate from 0.2% to 0.3% of sales tax revenue. A more novel approach involves automated speed enforcement cameras in school zones, which Casper acknowledged might generate revenue despite the primary safety goal: "In a perfect world, we'd put those up, and we'd give no funds. We would make no money off it. But I think the reality is that there is going to be some revenue generation from that." Commissioner Wilder expressed serious concerns about bicycle and pedestrian project prioritization: "To the extent we're looking for feedback on this document, I have serious concerns that we don't have any plans to build any BMP projects other than James Street in the next 8 years. That would be concerning to me, because that's what the BMP was intended to do." The timing disconnect particularly concerned him given past performance: "Last year we built half of what we thought we were gonna do. Seems like for this next 10-year plan, it's like maybe we build some of it in the last few years, but probably not much of it." Casper acknowledged the challenge and suggested the commission could help reprioritize: "This is definitely something I can look at before this is all finalized... doing an analysis of which of those BMP catalyst projects are most likely to be completed." He noted that the comprehensive plan structure allows for updates: "Maybe it's not every 5 years. Maybe it's every 2 years we revisit this list." ## School District Coordination and Community Safety The evening's final agenda item addressed coordination with Bellingham School District, though given time constraints, Casper provided only a brief update. The city has re-established a Safe Routes to School committee and identified key challenges around educating families about new infrastructure, particularly roundabouts. Casper shared an example of the educational challenge: "We got complaints from some of the neighbors close to the roundabout worried about their child safety crossing the roundabout. And from our engineering standpoint, you've got a refuge in the middle of the road, so you really only have to look one way to get across." The disconnect between engineering intention and community perception highlighted the need for better outreach. "The families are seeing it as safety measure," Casper noted, "but I don't think the families are seeing it that way. So that becomes that educational component." Commissioner Reiter, drawing on her experience as a parent of a six-year-old learning to bike, emphasized the importance of partnerships: "The education and outreach is very needed... It's also a lot to put on the schools and the principals who are managing a lot of things. So I just have curiosity about how do we lean into some of the NGO partnerships, Cascade Bicycle Coalition, Walk and Roll, getting some of these other groups to really be bought into that process." ## Staff Reports and Future Work The meeting concluded with staff reports that revealed several ongoing initiatives. Wilson reported that the Commute Trip Reduction program is being revised, with staff working with the legal department to update ordinances. Four goal options are under consideration, with the city leaning toward a 60% drive-alone rate target. Several agenda items from the commission's work plan remain behind schedule, including updates to TRAM (Transportation Report on Annual Mobility), speed study work, Holly Street updates, and bicycle master plan goals. Casper explained that comprehensive plan requirements have necessarily taken priority: "The tram will be happening directly following the Bellingham plan work." Chair Candib reminded commissioners that no meeting is scheduled for August, giving staff time to advance several initiatives before the commission reconvenes in September. ## Looking Ahead: Balancing Growth and Infrastructure The July meeting revealed the complex challenges facing Bellingham as it simultaneously addresses housing shortages, transportation infrastructure needs, and state planning requirements. The tension between ambitious multimodal goals and constrained funding emerged as a central theme, with commissioners pushing for more aggressive prioritization of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The introduction of new commissioners brought fresh perspectives, particularly around equity and accessibility concerns. Their experience—Huegel's immigrant community advocacy and Reiter's transit dependency experience—suggested future discussions may place even greater emphasis on ensuring transportation investments serve all community members. Perhaps most significantly, the meeting highlighted the growing sophistication of Bellingham's transportation planning, even as it revealed implementation challenges. The city's person-trip methodology for level of service represents an innovative approach to multimodal planning, but commissioners' probing questions revealed gaps between planning frameworks and actual project delivery. As the city moves toward adopting its updated comprehensive plan later in 2025, the Transportation Commission's feedback will prove crucial in ensuring that technical requirements translate into meaningful progress toward the community's transportation goals. The challenge, as the evening's discussions made clear, will be matching ambitious planning with realistic funding and accelerated implementation timelines. The commission's next meeting, scheduled for September 9, promises continued focus on these implementation challenges, with updates on commute trip reduction goals, speed enforcement policies, and the ongoing effort to balance housing growth with sustainable transportation infrastructure.