New articles on Seattle

Politico has published a great account Has Seattle Found the Solution to Driving Alone to Work? Seattle voters made the decision to put their money into transit, on a big scale. It has paid off handsomely. Bay Area voters were cajoled instead to throw more money at highways. That will not turn out well. Streetsblog digs into solutions to the housing crisis with Seattle and Minneapolis: A Tale of Two Upzones.  As these articles make clear, Northern California is not a center for innovation in the fields of transportation and housing.

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Amazing changes in San Diego

San Diego used to be the most reactionary of the State’s large transportation agencies. No longer! It’s amazing what losing a few environmental lawsuits can do. Now, the San Diego Association of Governments, SANDAG, is leading the State in responding to the climate change crisis. SANDAG’s new Executive Director, Hasan Ikhrata, made headlines when he announced that San Diego Can’t Hit State Climate Goals Without Major Transportation Changes. While TRANSDEF has been saying that for decades, it’s different when it comes from an agency head. State reports indicate that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles are increasing, despite efforts to reduce them. This…

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Holy Grail found in Minneapolis & Seattle

Streetsblog has produced another policy great: the article “Minneapolis and Seattle Have Achieved the Holy Grail for Sustainable Transportation” describes two cities that are reducing their Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT). The following chart by Yonah Freemark illustrates how Seattle is increasing bus ridership while most cities are seeing losses in ridership. The Bay Area’s bus ridership is stagnant, reflecting the sector’s lack of prioritization by MTC. Perhaps most striking is that these two cities have enacted strategically-based investments in their transit network, leading to their effectiveness. MTC, on the other hand, is uninterested in regional strategy. Instead, it confines itself…

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The backstory of Seattle’s success with buses

CityLab offers more details about how Seattle succeeded in accommodating a large increase in population with an expanded bus system. A good representative quote: The first lesson for any transportation planner looking to reverse-engineer Seattle-style success: Make room for buses. Seattle is one of the few cities to escape the transit death spiral, where budget cuts lead to reduced service hours, which leads to lower ridership. Seattle has created a virtuous circle, where good bus service leads to higher ridership, which supports better service. The article also mentions that the Nashville, TN transit measure mentioned previously here was defeated in…

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Seattle leads on parking, too!

In Seattle’s latest act of transportation greatness, parking minimums were eliminated in areas with good transit. Councilmember Rob Johnson, the legislation’s lead sponsor, said at Monday’s council meeting: Fundamentally I come to this because I believe it’s unfair for us to have parking that’s abundant and free and housing that is scarce and expensive. I’m working hard to change that. The measure unbundled parking fees from rents, thereby creating an economic incentive to reduce or eliminate household automobiles. It also authorized the renting of surplus off-street parking to non-residents of the building in which it is located, thereby reducing the need…

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Massachusetts Learns from Seattle

In an interesting article, representatives from Massachusetts visited Seattle and found useful lessons. The contrast between Seattle and California are instructive. One striking takeaway: Plan for growth. The Seattle area has enormous demand for housing, and, like Boston, struggles to ensure affordability. We learned that the State of Washington’s  Growth Management Act (in law since 1990) compels a forward-looking plan at every level of government, so that the region’s housing, transportation, land use and service delivery have a framework for success. Does that sound anything like the Bay Area? Lots of taxpayer money is going into transit projects that enable people to leave…

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Seattle Far Ahead of Bay Area in Protecting the Climate

Half of Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) come from passenger vehicles, similar to the Bay Area. However, Seattle is far more committed to acting on climate change than the Bay Area. In a far-reaching plan released recently, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan “announce[d] that the City will develop and release a strategy to address congestion and transportation emissions through pricing, coupled with investments in expanded transit and electrification in underserved communities.” This is strikingly important, as no other jurisdiction in the U.S. has considered using pricing as a tool to control climate emissions. As the plan states: Research suggests that the most effective…

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Seattle Gets It!

Seattle voters approved a Transportation Benefit District in 2014. The first year’s Performance Report contains the statement “… the City of Seattle is working … to identify projects, like One Center City, that will improve the quantity and quality of non-automobile transportation options and accommodate this projected growth in travel demand through non-SOV [Single-Occupant Vehicle] travel.” By adding bus service, Seattle has succeeded in changing the trend of Single-Occupant Vehicle use. In this graph from the Performance Report, solo driving has already declined, and is projected to drop even more in the future. MTC has failed to do this for the Bay Area.…

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Seattle’s effectiveness in getting people on transit highlights how badly the Bay Area is doing

A recent story in City Lab entitled How Seattle Bucked a National Trend and Got More People to Ride the Bus provides compelling on-the-ground evidence of the efficacy of transportation planning in reducing regional congestion. Seattle’s strategies are clearly working to reduce the share of solo commuting by new residents. The Bay Area, in contrast, is projected to have the same proportion of solo drivers in 2040 as there is now. The strategy here isn’t working at all… Adding a million more solo drivers to already congested roads is a formula for gridlock. Regional Measure 3’s defeat in June will help influence MTC to…

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