By Frank on September 8, 2011
I’m glad to see that King County Public Health is talking up“healthy places to live” as part of its messaging: “we can work together to make sure everyone has the opportunity to move more with parks, sidewalks and bike paths in all neighborhoods.” Walkable, bikeable communities are a public health issue. There’s only so much [...]
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By Frank on August 18, 2011
Well, I guess it’s all over but the shouting. Barring a major upset, Referendum 1 is going to be approved and the deep bore tunnel will happen. At least we’ll get a new waterfront out of it. I’m sorry we couldn’t convince our neighbors here in Seattle that this project was a poor use of [...]
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By joshuadf on August 8, 2011
I ran across the Austin Contrarian’s “Three strategies for driving families with children out of Austin’s urban core” when searching around for ways to use the Census 2010 Summary File 1 (SF1) for Washington, released this past week, which includes more detailed demographics down to the Census Block level. The regulations are of course different [...]
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By Frank on August 3, 2011
Alaskan Way Viaduct 4 by Sean_Marshall When the decision came in 2009, somewhat out-of-the-blue, to replace the Viaduct with a deep bore tunnel, I was skeptical. Still, I realized that the State was holding all the cards here. Seattle could complain all it wanted, but at the end of the day it’s a State highway, [...]
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By Matt the Engineer on July 28, 2011
SDOT is trying out new smart parking meters. Besides spitting out parking tickets, they also have maps and “wayfinding”. Now if we could only get them to dispense and recharge ORCA cards we’d really have something.
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By Frank on June 29, 2011
Amtrak 505 by KDavidClark Having recently made the case for blowing up the long-range plan and starting over again on the Amtrak Cascades, let me offer some time to a more incrementalist vision. In the current Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman cites Cascades as a winning example of “not-quite-so-high-speed rail.” This principle is also illustrated by [...]
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By Frank on June 8, 2011
New video from Sound Transit: Sad how many of these stations have poor or nonexistent TOD opportunities. It’d be worse if the B7 alignment had gone through, so I guess that’s a bright side.
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By Frank on June 6, 2011
Glad to see (via STB) that Metro has released a final recommendations report (PDF) in favor of keeping the electric trolleybuses. The report is fairly unequivocal in recommending the electrics over diesel hybrids, which is great to hear, especially after the talk last year that Metro could realize some short-term savings by switching to diesels. [...]
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By Frank on June 2, 2011
Mayor McGinn, the man who’s (unfairly) been labeled in the press as waging a “war on cars” in Seattle, today announced lower parking rates at the city-owned Pacific Place garage. The Mayor’s critics might expect him to be raising the cost of parking downtown, so this move might throw some off balance. Plus, it’s good [...]
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By Frank on May 18, 2011
Recently, I was chatting with a friend who works in government, and the topic of density and growth management came up. We were discussing whether or not growth management leads to increased home values, and I made a point that I think doesn’t get discussed enough: growth management and density need to go hand-in-hand. You [...]
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