City of Tacoma “Mayor Marilyn Strickland March 9, 2010 Ms. Marina King PSRC 4011 Wester Avenue, Suite 590 Seattle, WA 98104 BY FAX AND MAIL (Fax to 208-687-4825) RE: DRAFT TRANSPORTATION 2040 PLAN (DRAFT PLAN) Dear Ms. King. ‘The City of Tacoma is pleased to submit these comments on the above referenced Draft Pian. We appreciate that the Draft Plan does explicitly address the comments we set forth in cur fetter of July 27, 2009 on the Draft EIS (associated with this Draft Plan). We also appreciate that the Draft Plan moves the region forward on many of the issues that we consider most important. Specifically, the Draft Plan: (1) identifies capacity improvements that strategically expands not just roadways but also transit and nonmotorized facilites; (2) explicitly addresses improving air quality and stormwater runoff, (3) includes a specific strategy to address State greenhouse gas (GHS} goals and vehicle miles travelied (VMT} reduction benchmarks; and, (4) focuses on incrementally building community support for the expanded use of toling to address projected funding shortfalls. However, itis our considered opinion that in the very near term: (1) the proposed roadway capacity improvements need additional scrutiny, paricuarly given the limited funding available; and, (2) the proposed GHG and VMT strategy needs to be fully developed and incorporated into TRANSPORTATION 2040, The Draft Pian does contain "Pian Amendment and Priontization” language that is explicitly designed to provide the mechanism to address these issues but currently does nat include an explicit implementation timeline, We recognize that we cannot give conditional support to adoption of the Draft Plan. So, we will support adoption of the Draft Plan as currently drafted: it does move the region forward in the Tight direction. However, we will continue to advocate that the "Plan Amendment and Prioritization” process called for in the Draft Plan be fully implemented by 2013. Thank you for considering these comments. Marilyn Strickland Mayor Ce: City Council and City Manager 747 Market Street, Room 1200, Tacoma, Washington 98402-3766, (253) 594-7848, FAX (253) 591-5123