Seattle
Streetsblog Basics
The Case for a Tax on Parking Lots
Parking lots make cities less walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly. They crowd out space for housing. But with a parking lot tax, incentives change and using parking as a placeholder becomes a lot less attractive.
January 18, 2017
Seattle Just Canned Its Bike-Share System. What Went Wrong?
If Seattle is going to give bike-share another try, it will have to learn from this experience. The Pronto system started off small and never scaled up. And that mandatory helmet law really didn't help.
January 17, 2017
Seattle: America’s Next Top Transit City
Seattle is making bold investments to ensure most residents live within walking distance of frequent transit, and its efforts are paying off. Both bus and rail ridership have seen huge gains in recent years, and 70 percent of trips to downtown Seattle are not in private vehicles.
January 4, 2017
Is Seattle’s Helmet Law Killing Its Bike-Share?
Bike-share in Seattle should be doing great, but it has floundered -- and a big reason may be the city's mandatory helmet law.
December 20, 2016
Transit Vote 2016: Seattle’s Huge, Imperfect Transit Expansion
We continue our overview of what’s at stake in the big transit ballot initiatives this November with a look at Seattle. The first installment of this series examined Indianapolis.
October 17, 2016
Seattle City Council Approves 20 MPH Speed Limit on Residential Streets
20 is plenty for Seattle.
September 27, 2016
With Big Levy Vote, Seattle Is Ready to Lead the Nation on Bike Infrastructure
Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.
November 6, 2015
Seattle Policy Honchos Look to Parking Reform to Make Housing Affordable
Buried under headlines about Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s plans to battle “economic apartheid” are little-noticed reforms that would reduce or do away with parking quotas that inflate the cost of housing.
July 15, 2015
Washington Republicans: Put Seattle’s Highway-Borer Out of Its Misery
If nothing else, the politics of Seattle's deep-bore highway tunnel fiasco keep getting more interesting. With Bertha the tunnel-boring machine stuck underground and "rescue" efforts literally destabilizing city neighborhoods, a pair of Republicans in the Washington State Senate introduced a bill to scrap the project before any more money is wasted.
January 30, 2015