Through the first decades of this century, the greater Seattle area had a secret weapon for fighting climate change: it let people choose to live closer to each other.

Using a study of neighborhood-level carbon emissions, Sightline estimates that new residents to the Seattle area produced about 5% less greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020. That’s simply thanks to their metro area being better than any other in the United States at adding homes to existing neighborhoods.

The region eliminated about 1 million tons of potential greenhouse gas emissions basically for free: no government spending, no tax credits for efficiency, no carbon trading market, no carbon tax. This public benefit came just from reducing red tape and letting construction workers build the kinds of homes that people want to live in.

Key Takeaways

• By letting new homes locate in existing neighborhoods, the Seattle metro stopped some new and existing residents from being forced out of them. 
• This trend reduced those new residents’ climate impact, since people who live farther from each other tend to emit more greenhouse gases than people who live closer together. 
• Sightline estimates that new residents emitted 5 percent less greenhouse gases than they would have if they had lived in more sprawling neighborhoods. 
• This climate benefit, approximately equivalent to electrifying two-thirds of the cars in the City of Seattle, did not require a large government investment. 

Building those homes created jobs. Letting people live in them created economic growth, more location choices, and lower energy bills. The metro might have done even better, of course, if it had allowed more homes throughout the region; and it can keep improving in the future.

But for the economy of greater Seattle, this category of climate action has been better than a free lunch. It’s been a lunch the region got paid to eat.

Living closer to neighbors saves energy

In general, it’s a simple relationship: when people live close enough together, they use less energy and emit less greenhouse gases. Take it from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “compact and resource-efficient urban growth through co-location of higher residential and job densities, mixed land use, and transit-oriented development (TOD) could reduce GHG emissions between 23% and 26% by 2050 compared to the business-as-usual scenario.”

This effect comes from three main factors: less driving, more energy-efficient buildings, and less displacement of nearby ecosystems by energy-intensive objects like pavement.

1. Lower transportation emissions

Cars and trucks are the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in most states and provinces. Residents of the most compact neighborhoods—areas of apartments mixed with workplaces and shops, whether in cities or suburbs — drive much less than residents of spread-out neighborhoods of detached houses on large lots. “Infill housing reduces pollution by reducing driving,” as UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation puts it.

A Terner Center study finds that San Franciscans emit less than a third as much carbon from transportation as residents of the sprawling Bay Area exurb of Oakley, while making a similar number of trips for the same purposes. Another found that households in California’s suburban, single-detached neighborhoods drive more than twice as much every weekday as households in urban neighborhoods with high transit usage. And public transit usage increases with population density (among other factors). In places where few people live close enough to walk to the bus stop, transit can even be less climate-friendly than personal automobiles.

These emissions benefits also accrue to existing residents of a neighborhood that adds people, not just new residents moving in. When there are enough people in your neighborhood to support a grocery store or a new bus line, now you get to walk to the grocery store or take the bus to work instead of driving.

2. More energy-efficient homes

There’s no better insulation than another entire climate-controlled home on the other side of your wall. Urban neighborhoods are much more likely to have such wall-sharing multifamily housing, which one study finds uses 35% less energy for heating and 21% less energy for cooling than equivalent households in single-detached houses. (What’s more, multifamily homes generally have smaller floorplans, which further reduce energy consumption from heating and cooling.) 

3. Preserving—not paving over—carbon-sink ecosystems

It takes energy to make stuff, and spread-out cities require more stuff. One researcher at Delft University of Technology found that “urban sprawl accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions” via increased raw materials in construction, less efficient land use, and higher consumption of goods and services. Sprawl also replaces previous land uses that can sequester carbon, while infill adds homes without destroying these vital carbon sinks: forests, wetlands, grasslands, farmland, and others. 

A tale of two ZIP codes 

Consider some (hypothetical) denizens of two different neighborhoods around the metro: Beth, a resident in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, which features lots of apartments, local shops, and services, and is comparatively transit-rich; and Maria, a typical resident in the suburb of Mercer Island, which has mostly large, single-detached houses on large lots and a single commercial center on its north end best accessed by car. According to a 2014 study from UC Berkeley, Beacon Hill Beth emits 16.75 tons of greenhouse gases in a year, while Mercer Island Maria emits 25.05 tons of greenhouse gases annually — almost 50% more than that of her counterpart across Lake Washington.

Why such a big difference? According to the researchers, Maria used more electricity and natural gas, drove more, and consumed more goods and services than did Beth.

As the Seattle metro grows its population, one key for reducing carbon emissions is figuring out how to make adding a newcomer look more like adding a Beth than like adding a Maria. And the high home prices and rents in places like Beacon Hill show, via basic market supply-and-demand principles, that plenty more Beths would love to live there if they could — i.e., if there were more homes they could afford there.

In general, the metro’s more populous urban neighborhoods are full of Beths (the dotted regions below, clustered along the I-5 spine), and its less populous suburban neighborhoods are full of Marias (the wavy regions below, often along the water or east of Lake Sammamish). Over the last 25 years, strategies like the city of Seattle’s urban villages plan and other upzones across the region have channeled new residents into existing urban neighborhoods instead of sprouting new exurbs at the edge of the metro.

What was the climate impact of all those new people living where they ended up? To know that, you’d have to make an educated guess about what would have happened if Seattle had sprawled even more instead of growing inwards as much as it did.

If this were medical research, scientists might want to study twins separated at birth. It turns out that the Seattle metro has a twin whose similar origin but different destiny helps us imagine a hypothetical, more sprawling Seattle. It’s Dallas.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, especially the suburbs 

In 2000, the Seattle and Dallas metro areas were very different in the popular imagination: a tech hub of fleecy outdoors enthusiasts and an oil boomtown of truck-driving football fans.

In one way, though, they were unexpected siblings. Their populations were spread across the land in similar patterns. Specifically, if you parceled out their populations into buckets based on how close they lived to each other — their population density or concentration — and made a chart, you’d see almost the same shape. In both cases, the follow patterns emerge:

• Few residents lived in low-population density neighborhoods characteristic of more rural parts of the United States (picture a Vashon Island-like spread of detached homes separated by acres of farms and forests);
• Lots of residents lived above the median U.S. population density (picture something closer to Bothell, a mix of smaller-lot homes, duplexes, and scattered low-rise apartments); and
• A handful of people lived in neighborhoods with higher population density than just about anywhere in the country (picture Seattle’s U District, with larger apartment buildings along major corridors and plenty of small-lot multiplexes elsewhere).

Over the next 20 years, however, the two metros took different paths. Seattle added new residents across neighborhoods of all types, with both new neighborhoods and old neighborhoods growing a modest amount. Dallas, meanwhile, saw booming growth in its least populous neighborhoods, sprawl beyond the prior footprint of the metro, and a loss of residents from its most populous neighborhoods.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Dallas now live in neighborhoods that were farmland and open space as recently as the early 2000s, while already built-up neighborhoods have barely changed to accommodate the new babies, families, and workers arriving in the area. When new residents do manage to arrive in old neighborhoods across the Dallas metro, they usually replace existing residents rather than growing the neighborhood: existing residents either pass away, move out to a new exurban subdivision, or leave the region entirely.

Dallas, then, offers Seattle a useful what-if. The two metros started at around the same place in 2000 but diverged by 2020: Dallas went out. Seattle went up.

Imagining a Texas-style Seattle — and its emissions 

Imagine a more Dallas-like Seattle since 2000: Seattle’s metro area grew just as fast as in real life but followed Dallas’s outward pattern. No downtown highrises in Bellevue or Seattle. No reinvention of South Lake Union as an urban hotspot. No walkable town center in Kirkland or Redmond. No spinal cord of eight-story apartment buildings along arterial streets. No three-story walkups near suburban transit stations. No explosion of mother-in-law apartments, backyard cottages, and townhomes.

Now compare the carbon emissions of real Seattle and Dallas-style Seattle using the same Berkeley study of ZIP code-level emissions estimates, to get a back-of-the-envelope idea of the scale of Seattle’s specific growth pattern on Seattle’s specific emissions level. The main assumption: that additional residents of a neighborhood would, on average, emit the same as their neighbors.

Think of it like this, with Beacon Hill Beth and Mercer Island Maria from earlier. Say that Beacon Hill gained 100 new Beths (on net) between 2000 and 2020. At 16.75 tons of carbon emissions per capita, that’s 1,675 extra tons of greenhouse gases compared to 2000. But if instead, in Texas fashion, Mercer Island gained 100 Marias, the town would have emitted an additional 2,505 tons of carbon — far more than if those residents had gotten to live in Beacon Hill.

Like all research on the climate impact of where people live, Sightline’s analysis has its own assumptions, shortfalls, and caveats. Relying on a one-time snapshot of emissions disentangles population changes from other factors that change over time, but it also ignores how changes in population density would themselves affect per-capita emissions. Keeping the total metro population constant avoids conflating increased emissions with increased population, but it also essentially assumes that infill patterns don’t affect the number of people migrating from one metro to another, only location choices within each metro.

The question here: How much carbon do Seattleites save by being unusually good at welcoming more neighbors? The best answer Sightline can offer: about a million tons a year.

The benefit: Like electrifying two-thirds of Seattle’s cars  

Sightline’s analysis of the Berkeley ZIP code emissions model estimates that by 2020, the Seattle metro area’s slightly less-sprawling growth since 2000 was keeping 1 million tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere every year, compared with what Seattleites would have been emitting if they had sprawled like Dallas. The region’s additional residents are 5% more energy-efficient than otherwise, due entirely to where they chose (and could choose) to live.

This happened on top of all the other climate action from people and governments in the Seattle area, from subsidizing solar panels to composting eggshells to weatherizing old buildings. And this happened essentially for free! A million tons of greenhouse gases is as much as you would save in a year by switching over 315,000 cars from gasoline to electric, or more than two out of every three cars in the city of Seattle.

As Sightline explains in a report on the Seattle metro area’s best-in-the-U.S. success at urban population growth over this period, the star of this show was the city of Seattle itself. In other infilling metro areas, like San Jose, suburban jurisdictions led the way on adding residents to existing neighborhoods. But here in the middle of Cascadia, Seattle proper was the standout performer. The average Seattle resident emits 6% less greenhouse gases than the average resident of the rest of the metro area, so every person who gets to move to (or stay in) the city instead of the suburbs shaves off about one ton of their annual carbon emissions. That’s even more than they would save by skipping a solo road trip to Dallas every year.

These findings reflect actual, real-world behavior by millions of people. Claims about immense emissions reductions often depend on immense uptake: “if every gas-powered car were replaced with an electric car,” “if the population density of a city doubled,” “if the meat substitute industry were substituted for the meat industry.” And indeed, if every Mercer Island Maria turned into a Beacon Hill Beth, we might expect emissions to drop by much more.

But in real life, where the Seattle metro added a handful of Beths to the mix instead of going all-in on more Marias like Dallas did, a 5% savings is a win worth celebrating. For the city of Seattle, which led the way, every additional resident who didn’t have to move to Woodinville is a mini climate victory.

Just one piece of the puzzle 

While this ZIP code model is a useful tool for estimating neighborhood-level emissions, it still excludes what actual emissions in the Seattle metro look like over time, which likely tell an even rosier story. In addition to the population distribution changes described here, other trends like less driving, more electric vehicle adoption, and energy efficiency upgrades are also reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the region.

Letting people live closer to each other connects communities, improves transportation options, and makes homes less expensive. To that, we can add that it fights climate change. Quite the list.

For those of us in and around Seattle, a bonus: though we can still do more to welcome new neighbors to our blocks, we can boast that to date, we’ve been doing it better than anyone else in the country. And it’s paying off.

Author’s note: Thanks to Good Measures for graphic design, CORE GIS for mapping, and Zack Subin for feedback on an early draft.

This is a crosspot that first appeared at the Sightline Institute. Find audio versions of Sightline articles on any of your favorite podcast platforms, including Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.

The post Seattle’s No-Cost Climate Pollution Cut first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sound Transit tallied a record-smashing day, exceeding 200,000 boardings on Link light rail. By February 26, Sound Transit had zeroed in on a total of 225,000 boardings.

“Wednesday didn’t just break our daily ridership record. It blew it out of the water,” Sound Transit said in a video released on Instagram. “Early estimates show more than 200,000 boardings on Link. That’s 100,000 more than this day last year. Sounder added more than 20,000 boardings, and many more took ST Express. As numbers continue to come in, we expect them to go up! Thank you, everyone!”

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The previous Link ridership record had 159,500, according to Sound Transit. That record was set May 24, 2025 during the Northwest Folklife Festival, which attracted about 250,000 people to the Seattle Center, augmenting ridership that day.

Special trips on Sounder commuter rail trains from Tacoma and Everett also saw record ridership, with around 20,000 riders, around three times average weekday usage levels.

Lime scootershare record

Meanwhile, Lime reported nearly 60,000 trips on their shared scooters and bikes, in their largest single day of ridership in Seattle.

“The numbers confirmed that the best way to navigate the parade, or the city generally, was on two wheels, whether it was e-bike, e-scooter, or Glider,” said Brent Vigneault, General Manager of Operations at Lime, in a statement. “We worked closely with the City to prioritize safety and orderliness, including deploying extra foot patrols along the route and rebalancing vehicles to make sure folks could find a ride. Beyond being a victory for the Seahawks, we see this as a proof point for transportation in Seattle as the city prepares for the FIFA World Cup this summer: the hottest trend for sports will be getting around sustainably.”

As Lime’s spokesperson alluded, the parade surge served as a stress test for the FIFA World Cup. As one of the host cities, Seattle will stage six soccer matches from June 15 to July 6. The parade day provided proof that Link can scale up considerably to meet demand, and Lime was also able to shoulder a greater load. Lime had been averaging about 20,000 daily rides this winter, before nearly tripling that figure on the victory parade day. Ridership is significantly higher in summer months, and Lime averaged about 30,000 rides per day in 2025.

The parade also demonstrated that people can still get around Seattle even if we close a car thoroughfare often deemed indispensable. Street pedestrianization does not seem as big of a lift as it has been made out to be. If you pedestrianize it, the people will come — the gridlock may not.

More ridership records inbound

In a transit system and region growing as quickly as Seattle, records are made to be broken. The expansion of the Link network continues to push system capacity and ridership potential upwards. During the World Cup, Link will almost assuredly smashes its records again, helped by a game-changing extension of the 2 Line.

The crosslake opening of the 2 Line will be a major leap forward in that regard, turning today’s East Link starter line into a 30-mile line spanning much of region. Already simulated service in preparation of the March 28 grand opening has doubled train frequencies from Seattle’s busy downtown stations north to Lynnwood.

As it stands, the 1 Line has been averaging more than 110,000 daily boardings in its best months, while the 2 Line (in its Eastside-only, abridged form) has exceeded 10,000 daily rides in its best months.

During the parade, the ridership bounce for King County Metro buses was less pronounced, but it was still up.

King County Metro general manager Michelle Allison reported preliminary figures showing at least 319,000 bus boardings at this week’s meeting of the Regional Transit Commission. The agency’s average in January was just over 270,000 daily bus boardings, Allison noted. Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer said the number for Wednesday is incomplete, and doesn’t include special shuttles and extra bus service operated for the event, nor water taxi boardings. The parade day’s preliminary total was up about 18% over the January baseline, and the final tally could push that up further.

Unlike light rail, Metro buses were caught up in the congestion and detours that the parade down caused. The parade route on 4th Avenue required rerouting dozens of buses, while rippling traffic jams later in the day continued to disrupt bus service, likely dissuading some would-be riders from boarding. Some riders reported sluggishly slow bus routes, even well into the aftermath of the parade. Metro rerouted many bus routes to stay away from the parade, and ran a special shuttle to get riders around if their original route didn’t get them all the way.

Installing more bus lanes, as Mayor Katie Wilson has proposed, would help insulate Metro routes from congestion, particularly when paired with automatic camera enforcement to catch scofflaws. It could be a necessary step to handle future ridership surges without hiccups and bus gridlock.

And let the record also show that this year’s Superbowl also set ridership marks in the South Bay Area. Valley Transportation Authority reports that ridership in Santa Clara, California hit 30,000 light rail and bus trips on Superbowl City. That qualifies as a record-breaking day in the suburban enclave, and was 5,000 rides higher than the agency projects.

If the San Francisco 49ers still played in, well, San Francisco, one can easily fathom that transit usage would have been much higher. But, alas, the Niners have relocated to Silicon Valley strip mall land and have the transit system to match. Just another area where Seattle comes out on top.

Update: We updated this piece on Friday morning after hearing back from King County Metro on their preliminary estimates. On February, we added the updated tally of 225,000 boardings, following further tabulation.

The post Seattle Superbowl Victory Parade Spurs Ridership Records for Transit and Scootershare first appeared on The Urbanist.

On a frostbitten Friday morning, a gaggle of officials and transit nerds gathered hot with anticipation for the unveiling of the opening day of the 2 Line’s “Crosslake Connection.” By the end of the event, most were glowing with excitement, warmed by the news, the photogenic countdown clock, and the spring-uary sun.

While Sound Transit board chair Dave Somers acknowledged the speeches may be forgotten by history, speaker after speaker gave it a try anyway and waxed poetic about the impact the light rail opening, scheduled for March 28, would have on the region.

“I can’t wait to start revenue service and the opportunity for the people to get out of their cars and take a beautiful rail ride across Lake Washington,” Somers said at the January 23 event. “We’re finally giving Lake Washington’s commute an option that doesn’t involve brake lights. Years from now, people will not remember the speeches. They’ll remember how much easier life became here in our region.”

The 2 Line’s crosslake connection will make the International District and Downtown Bellevue just 20 minutes apart. Downtown Redmond and Downtown Seattle will be about 40 minutes apart, shaving at least 10 minutes off the bus trip — more when traffic congestion is bad.

King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci was given the honor of pulling back the veil, but the same week she was summarily removed from two key committees on the Sound Transit board. Balducci had chaired the System Expansion Committee since 2018, and committee assignments were in the middle of their term, rather than wholly up-for-grabs. In their place, Balducci will serve on Rider Experience and Operations, which will also be busy and called upon to help fine tune a system likely to face growing reliability issues as the system grows and ridership swells.

Overcoming obstacles to build 2 Line

First elected to the Bellevue City Council in 2004 and later serving as mayor, Balducci noted she was one of the few attendees who had seen the project through from its inception, given how long it took. Voters across three counties approved the Sound Transit 2 (ST2) package in 2008, funding the expansion of the 2 Line as far east as Overlake, but hardly queuing up a smooth ride to opening day.

“There have been generations of effort that has gone into making this announcement possible today,” Balducci said just before unveiling the opening date. “We experienced fierce opposition to the very idea of light rail in East King County, two ballot measures, the first one failed — remember roads and transit — local political challenges, getting land use and permitting approvals, court cases, including one that went to the state Supreme Court. Design challenges, how to attach a fixed rail to a floating bridge, being the leading but not the only one, multiple financial cycles with major cost impacts — who here remembers talking about steel prices, it’s a thing — construction challenges (this is the project that taught a new generation the word plinth), a concrete delivery strike, and a worldwide pandemic.”

As she ticked off the lengthy list of obstacles that the agency overcame, it underscored how long the track ahead could be for the next round of Sound Transit 3 (ST3) projects and how important carrying forward institutional knowledge could be. Sound Transit faces a huge budget shortfall estimated at $34 billion through the mid-2040s, as it attempts to nearly double the size of its light rail network to 116 miles with the buildout of ST3.

Is Sound Transit Board ready for storm ahead?

How sidelining a seasoned veteran board member — one of the few to consistently ask probing questions or push staff to consider outside-of-the-box solutions — would help greet those challenges was unclear, but that’s how her board colleagues voted. Those machinations could portend a storm cloud ahead for Sound Transit on an otherwise sunny occasion.

Also opaque was the full explanation behind her removal from those committees. Board chair Somers officially controls committee assignments, but it’s likely that Balducci running against Girmay Zahilay for King County Executive in 2025 (and losing) played a big role in her demotion. Neither Somers nor Zahilay offered much explanation of the committee shakeup.

The drama within the board’s ranks did not come to the surface during the January 23 celebration. And speakers emphasized momentum and the need to continue opening light rail expansions as soon as humanly possible.

“It’s a very exciting day to see this, and I think it will build on the momentum that we need to do hard things in our region and continue investing in light rail and transit that works for everyone,” Balducci concluded, with a nod to the battles ahead.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who also earned a seat on the Sound Transit Board when she won election in November, stressed the importance of making transit a faster, more reliable option. She alluded to the neglect transit long faced as policymakers prioritized car-centric infrastructure, which leaves behind a growing segment of car-free households in Seattle.

“For the 21 years that I’ve lived here, I have been a transit rider, part of the more than one in five Seattle households that do not own a car. And honestly, sometimes being a transit rider can feel like being a second class citizen,” Wilson said. “But our light rail system is rapidly changing that. I know firsthand the way it unlocks worlds of opportunity when you can hop on a fast, frequent, reliable train or bus and get exactly where you want to go.”

After experiencing the transformational power of rapid transit firsthand, Wilson said she hoped more neighborhoods would soon join the party. She noted that the 2 Line would be especially important to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, which have cultural centers on both sides of the lake that will now be connected.

“I remember 10 years ago when the Link light rail station first opened in my neighborhood, Capitol Hill, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the air as people realized how this was going to change their daily lives. I can’t wait for more people to have that feeling as the light rail comes to their neighborhoods, the neighborhoods where they live and work,” Wilson said, adding. “If you build it, they will come.”

Redmond provides strong anchor for 2 Line

Kelli Refer, executive director of the advocacy group Move Redmond, was on hand for the unveiling of the countdown clock and said she expected Downtown Redmond will continue to lead the Eastside in light rail ridership after the crosslake connection turns the 2 Line into a 30-mile workhorse.

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“Redmond is the end of the line, and I think Redmond has some of the best destinations on the 2 Line,” Refer said. “Obviously, I’m a little bit biased here, but you’ve got Marymoor Park, which is the crown jewel of our King County park system and downtown Redmond. I’ve been thinking of it as like Capitol Hill too. If you look at a lot of the businesses that are opening up there, they’re amazing local establishments that are having their second location in downtown Redmond.”

Redmond is also well integrated into the regional trail network, which gives it an advantage over a number of other stations, including those on the recently opened Federal Way 1 Line extension, where station areas remain more car-oriented and poorly integrated with the bike network.

“[At Downtown Redmond] you’ve got phenomenal access to the trail system, the East Lake Sammamish Trail, the Redmond Central Connector,” Refer said. “I think it really brings more people to see what Redmond has to offer.”

Redmond has been the busiest light rail station for the Eastside-only “starter line” version of 2 Line, which opened in April 2024 and reached Downtown Redmond in May 2025. That abridged line has beaten agency ridership projections, growing to nearly 11,000 daily riders, with Downtown Redmond leading the way since it opened. The fully built out 2 Line is expected to carry 50,000 daily riders by 2030, according to agency modeling.

Originally the I-90 section spanning Lake Washington was scheduled at the same time as the starter line — before construction defects in that section forced Sound Transit to overhaul the plan. Advocacy from groups like Move Redmond and Complete Streets Bellevue helped push the starter line into consideration and fruition — with Balducci playing the role of board champion.

“Downtown Redmond has made all the right choices in preparing for light rail,” Refer said. “They’ve been building housing. They’ve been focusing on the walkability and the bikeability, which, when you have that accessible access to transit, it improves ridership.”

Statewide advocacy group Transportation Choices Coalition also had much of their team in attendance. Executive Director Kirk Hovenkotter called the 7.4-mile extension “the most beautiful stretch of light rail in the world” and predicted a big ridership bump. He highlighted that the doubled frequency along the central rail spine from Chinatown-International District north would be a huge draw for riders, providing 4-minute peak frequencies in aggregate with the 1 Line.

“This is the most momentous transit day the region’s ever seen,” Hovenkotter said. “Full stop.”

Judkins Park and Mercer Island

Beyond spanning the lake, the 2 Line extension will also bring two new stations online: Mercer Island and Judkins Park.

Zahilay’s speech stressed the value of Judkins Park Station, noting the stronger connection for the whole Rainier Valley to jobs and innovation centers.

“We’ll see Seattle neighborhoods like Judkins Park become regional transit hubs, with east-west rail service complemented by high frequency bus service on Rainier Avenue South and 23rd Avenue South,” Zahilay said. “We’ll see hubs for jobs and innovation and technology on both sides of the lake just a short train ride apart.”

Disability rights and safe streets advocates have been pushing the City of Seattle and Washington State Department of Transportation to upgrade the pedestrian environment near the station, given the increase in walking, rolling, and biking expected due to the draw of the station. The presence of I-90 ramps contribute to an unsafe environment in that area, with a long history of injury collisions. Advocates have also flagged a substandard or completely lacking sidewalk network in significant swaths of the North Rainier and Lower Beacon Hill area.

While the presence of I-90 does not make the immediate environment of Judkins Park Station (which is sandwiched in the freeway median) very inviting, the promise of light rail has helped generate a housing boom in the blocks a bit farther out, but still within relatively easy walking distance. The 569-unit Grand Street Commons complex has anchored the apartment boom south of the station.

Mercer Island, in contrast, has seen relatively little homebuilding in its station area, with City policymakers typically providing more in the way of obstacles than aid to prospective builders. As a result, the affluent island has found itself under the microscope for its growth-averse long-range plans. The state Commerce department used new powers granted by the state legislature to review the City’s growth plans and ruled it was “out of compliance” with state law requiring planning for affordable housing and middle-income workforce housing, making an example of the wealthy enclave.

So while Mercer Island’s growth boom may have been stunted and delayed, state intervention seems to indicate that it’s coming eventually.

Getting light rail right and making a successful transit system will require a delicate interplay between the transit agency, the cities it connects, and builders hoping to add housing and other amenities. Ultimately, it will require not just feats of engineering and construction perseverance, but also savvy urban planning to get the most out of new lines — placing stations where plenty of housing has been built or is likely to spring up soon.

With major housing booms in Bellevue, Redmond, and near Judkins Park, it’s clear the 2 Line’s potential is sky high. They have provided an example for other neighborhoods to follow, if Sound Transit is able to overcome financial headwinds and get rapid transit to their doorsteps, too.

The post 2 Line Countdown Milestone Points to Light Rail Battles Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

While Sound Transit has sought to reform its station naming policy, names remain an embarrassing mess that makes navigating the system challenging, especially for visitors and new users on the system.

In the wake of the University Street Station renaming debacle in 2020, Sound Transit revised its station naming policy in the hopes that it would deliver better results. The policy on paper was somewhat promising. However, as it has been translated into physical use throughout a quickly growing system, it is already showing that reforms didn’t go far enough.

Urbanist contributing reporter Ryan Packer dropped a post on Bluesky the other week pointing out that new signage at a Rainier Valley station showcased ambiguous wayfinding for a variety of key stations, but also neglected to highlight the direction for Downtown Seattle. It set off a firestorm of discussion on the social media platform.

Transit riders broadly panned the signage and station names on social media: 

• “Now you might think the ‘Downtown’ on this sign was for Downtown. But no! It’s for the ‘downtown’ of a city called Federal Way, which is the opposite direction of downtown Seattle.”

• “PNW so passive aggressive, even the transportation signage refuses to be direct, clear, and helpful.”

• “Absolutely no way that someone gets confused and reads this as ‘Federal Way, Downtown, and Airport’, right?”

When people think of “Downtown” in this region, they almost exclusively think of Downtown Seattle, and perhaps secondarily Downtown Bellevue or Downtown Tacoma. But Seattle has no station with a “Downtown” moniker attached to it because there are multiple stations serving the city center and riders are better served by identifiable station names representing specific parts of the city center anyway. 

To its credit, Tacoma is not arrogant enough to have a Link station emblazoned with “Downtown,” and yet it has far more bragging rights to a downtown than any suburban city to seize the mantle. 

The bedroom communities of Federal Way and Lynnwood appear to be engaging in “field of dreams” wishcasting hoping ‘if you name it, they will come.’ Back in reality, giving a freeway-adjacent patch of strip malls the name “downtown” or “city center” has yet to summon a downtown in these cities. Though the lofty aspirations may one day bear fruit, delivering major urban redevelopment projects, that day could be decades away. Regardless, wishcasting doesn’t make for good station names and wayfinding.

In isolation, it may be rational for Federal Way to refer to its core district as Downtown Federal Way in local mediums for branding just as it may be rational for Lynnwood to market its core urban area to its local residents as Lynnwood City Center. But Link operates as a regional system, passing through many small urban districts and a few larger ones. Given that reality, it is more useful to riders that station names are succinct and offer unique placemaking and geographic information rather than regurgitated branding and marketing terminology over and over again. 

Sound Transit should ban the use of “Downtown” and “City Center” in any official station names, regardless of how significant a place is. The use of “Downtown” and “City Center” should be limited to aiding riders in specific contexts in system wayfinding materials, such as understanding the direction of a train or a grouping of stations.

For instance, in New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority provides station wayfinding signs that indicate platforms and train services that are headed in the direction of Downtown or Uptown when in Manhattan or particular city boroughs (i.e., Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn). Sound Transit also has special wayfinding diagrams that group stations by geographic areas in some cases, such as Downtown Seattle and the University of Washington campus. 

Those are appropriate cases for using “Downtown” and “City Center” within the system.

In cases where cities want to highlight the primacy of a principal station, Sound Transit should look to the British for a simple solution: tacking on “Central” to the end of a station name. 

In London, the Underground has plenty of station names containing the moniker like Hounslow Central, Acton Central, Wembley Central, and Hendon Central. All of the stations have alternative community stations of the same placename, so the “Central” helps riders know that the station is likely the more prominent station for the community. What one doesn’t find anywhere on the Underground is a station name with “City Center” or “Downtown” in it.

But there’s also nothing wrong with giving the centralmost station of a community just the name of the city. Bellevue Downtown, Federal Way Downtown, Downtown Redmond, and Lynnwood City Center could just as well be Bellevue, Federal Way, Redmond, and Lynnwood. Dispensing with qualifiers is to the point. People understand it. And we know that because the Sounder commuter rail stations use this straightforward format for each city served by a station. People intuit that Kent Station is in the city center.

Part of the problem with Sound Transit’s station naming policy is that it’s a classic design-by-committee misadventure. There’s a behind-the-scenes staff process, there’s a public survey process, there’s a city influence process, and then there’s a process for busybody board members. Over the years, it’s usually been the latter two that have been most influential on what ultimately turns up on signs and materials, even upending commonsense public feedback. 

And, in a way, that makes sense: every city wants to believe that it is unique and prominent, so many smaller cities seek to evoke that in their station names with honorific qualifiers at the cost of a cohesive strategy to support easy system navigation.

But it’s not just the use of “Downtown” and “City Center” in station names that are problematic. For instance, the station naming policy doesn’t explicitly resolve how to deal with relational station naming practices, which can result in oddities and even misnomers.  

To be sure, Sound Transit has it right with Shoreline North/185th and Shoreline South/148th by placing the relational geographic qualifier after the placename. But that’s in part what’s off with South Bellevue, which reverses its qualifier. “Bellevue” should at least be the leader in the station name to clearly drive attention to a principal place. 

But the station name also breaks the agency’s basic principles in regards to using geography: the station is actually located in the west-central part of the city, commonly referred to as “Enatai” or “West Bellevue,” not South Bellevue, which isn’t a neighborhood anywhere in the city. The station name naturally can mislead people into thinking South Bellevue is a neighborhood. 

As a best practice, Sound Transit shouldn’t permit a situation like South Bellevue and instead should push for an actual placemaking name approach in similar station contexts. Seattle’s infill station at NE 130th Street, now known as “Pinehurst,” is a good example of using a real neighborhood name for placemaking. Thus, “Enatai” could be a natural choice for Bellevue’s southernmost station.

Then there’s International District/Chinatown Station in Seattle. It may be a small thing to some, but it’s a real disrespect to the Chinatown-International District (CID) neighborhood — the neighborhood in which Sound Transit’s headquarters are located — that the station name is malformed. CID leaders have urged the agency to use the neighborhood’s actual name rather than the inverted version. It’s long past time that the agency corrected the name. 

Sound Transit needs to get its station naming policy right and propose new names for offending stations. The problem gets harder to solve the longer that Sound Transit waits and installs more and more signage for poorly named stations. One idea to streamline the process: the revised policy should explicitly delegate naming decisions to agency line staff to keep boardmembers focused on upstream decision-making rather than getting bogged down in the weeds of political naming fights.

With the Federal Way Link Extension opening this weekend and Link 2 Line service finally crossing Lake Washington sometime in 2026, there isn’t sufficient time to adjust the station naming policy, propose new names, approve new names, and then replace all system wayfinding materials. It’s a longer-term project than that, but it should be a priority to accomplish as soon as possible, hopefully before the next set of expansions.

The post Op-Ed: Sound Transit’s Station Naming Policy Has Run Amok Again first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Promise of Shared Streets

Shared streets flip American traffic laws upside-down. Currently, the portion of the roadway between curbs is the exclusive province of vehicles. You can drive, park, or cycle there — but you are legally prohibited from walking or standing in the roadway, except at designated crosswalks.

Where shared streets are implemented, cars are allowed but pedestrians have priority over other users and are permitted to walk or stand in the roadway. A maximum speed limit of 10 mph governs all users.

According to the text of SB 5595, 

(2) Vehicular traffic traveling along a shared street shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian, bicyclist, or operator of a micromobility device on the shared street.

(3) A bicyclist or operator of a micromobility device shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian on a shared street.

Hold Up. Safer Streets Require Environmental Review?

Governor Ferguson signed the Shared Streets Bill into law on May 17 but implementation has been slow. Clearly, Seattle needs to pass enabling legislation — current city ordinances don’t provide legal support for this new street type — but it is less clear whether the city also needs to complete an environmental review.

Washington's first-in-the-nation shared streets bill, allowing local governments to lower speed limits to 10 mph on specific streets where vehicle traffic must yield to pedestrian, bike, and scooter traffic, is now law. app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?…

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) May 17, 2025 at 11:29 AM

Attorneys at the City of Seattle have been tied in knots for months over the question of whether an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) is required. SEPA’s stated purpose is to “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between humankind and the environment” but there are cases where it arguably does the opposite.

Councilmember Dan Strauss, who is leading the charge on shared streets at the City Council level, has said the City could simply draft a Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) and move forward. The city’s legal team is perhaps being more cautious and are keen to inoculate the new street type from legal challenge. 

Breaking the Process Logjam

Frustrated with the slow pace of progress, Councilmember Strauss attached a Statement of Legislative Intent (SLI) to Seattle’s 2026 budget, instructing SDOT to provide a legislative proposal for shared streets implementation.

Councilmember Strauss has long sought better tools to improve the streetscape and traffic operation on Ballard Avenue, a popular and historic street in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, which he represents. 

Ballard Avenue is lined with shops, restaurants, and bars — many with outdoor dining established during the pandemic — and has interim improvements using paint, posts, and movable barriers. Gaining the legal authority to reduce speed limits to 10 mph and allow pedestrians to circulate in the street can provide better options for permanent improvements to this popular destination.

The Shared Streets SLI passed the Budget Committee on November 14. The response from SDOT is due January 1, 2026, so we will know their plans soon enough, but internal documents obtained from the department reveal their thought process.

The Redmond Way

While Seattle dithers, the City of Redmond has moved to implement the law with less apparent concern for SEPA. Redmond, home to Microsoft, is a suburb of Seattle known for progressive aspirations and policy. According to their draft Street System Plan:

“In Redmond, some local streets will be transitioned to shared streets, which are appropriate on a residential, limited use, or other low-volume street, where the neighborhood desires to create a public space for social activities and play or as an alternative to building conventional sidewalk where there may be environmental or cost constraints. Shared streets are also appropriate on streets with commerce where there is a desire to create an active and attractive people-oriented area.”

Meanwhile, other cities around the state of Washington watch and wait for Seattle to guide the way forward.

What Is Enabling Legislation?

The Shared Streets Law is permissive, not prescriptive, meaning it allows cities to enable shared streets but doesn’t require them. Since most cities have traffic ordinances that mirror state law, when that law changes, city ordinances need to change, as well, and this is accomplished with enabling legislation.

City legislation to enable shared streets can consist of five elements:

1. Definition
2. Enabling Language
3. Signage
4. Speed Limit
5. Driving Regulations

1. Definition. Since this is a new street type, it needs a name and definition, which can mirror state law: “Shared Street means a city street designated by placement of official traffic control devices where pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicular traffic share a portion or all of the same street.”

2. Enabling Language. This delegates authority to the relevant body or individual: “The City Traffic Engineer is authorized to designate any non-arterial street or alley, or any part of a non-arterial street or alley as a Shared Street in accordance with Senate Bill 5595.”

3. Signage: “Upon approval, the City Traffic Engineer will install and maintain appropriate markings, signage, barriers or other devices to clearly indicate the speed limit and shared street designation.” Since true shared streets are new in the United States, local authorities will need to glean guidance from existing authorities like Federal Highway Association and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), and perhaps exercise engineering judgment to ensure clarity until nationwide standards are developed.

4. Speed Limit: “A Shared Street has a maximum speed limit of 10 miles per hour.”

5. Driving Regulations: Lastly, the key clause that redefines rights and responsibilities on shared streets, again mirroring state law: “Vehicular traffic traveling along a shared street shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian, bicyclist, or operator of a micromobility device on the shared street. A bicyclist or operator of a micromobility device shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian on a shared street.”

Once All Streets Were Shared Streets. What Happened?

A century ago, American streets were shared public spaces. People walked freely in the roadway, children played in them, vendors sold from carts, and perhaps a streetcar threaded a slow-moving mix of pedestrians, carriages, and early automobiles. Horses did their business in the street, as well, so it wasn’t all roses but American streets functioned more or less the same as they had around the world since the invention of cities.

That changed starting in January 1925 when Los Angeles passed its traffic ordinance. Cars were proliferating — and killing pedestrians at an alarming rate. The solution was to relegate people to the edges, require them to cross at crosswalks, ticket them for jaywalking, and then to launch a propaganda campaign funded by the motor industry.

LA’s new law propagated quickly across the country and that spread accelerated when it was adopted by the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety as the blueprint for the 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance. Soon, every state in the Union would ban shared streets and effectively prohibit speed limits lower than 20 mph.

Only now, 100 years later, has Washington State lifted the ban on shared streets — the first in the nation. So the race is on to build the first fully legal shared street in America in a century.

The SDOT Team Set to Bring Shared Streets (Back) to Seattle

Interviews and public disclosure requests reveal that SDOT staff members are enthusiastic about the new powers the Shared Streets Law will grant them, once enabled. Responsibility for shared streets will fall to Ashley Rhead, SDOT’s Pedestrian and Neighborhood Projects Manager, working under Director of Project Development Jim Curtin and Deputy Director Brian Dougherty. Rhead’s group deals with neighborhood greenways, home zones, safe routes to school, school streets, and sidewalks.

City Traffic Engineer Venu Nemani has been deeply involved in developing a strategy for implementing shared streets, while longtime neighborhood greenway champion and Neighborhood Projects Manager, Summer Jawson, tracked the bill and reported progress to SDOT Director Greg Spotts, and later Interim Director Adiam Emery.

It is important to note that the shared streets law is a tool that cities can use to improve all kinds of streets. It is a legal designation that changes the rights and responsibilities of users and opens new design possibilities. A neighborhood greenway, for example, can be a shared street and allow pedestrians into the roadway, or it can remain a typical neighborhood street where pedestrians are expected to use sidewalks. Transportation departments implementing SB 5595 will have a choice.

Let’s take a look at the ideas brewing at SDOT.

Home Zones and Other Circulation Plans

Documents obtained via public disclosure request reveal robust internal discussion at SDOT around shared streets. One of the more intriguing examples is the opportunity to create better home zones.

A home zone is an area of neighborhood streets bounded by arterials where diverters are used to make the zone less attractive for cut-through traffic. The result is a reduction in traffic volumes in the interior while maintaining full vehicular access. Once traffic volumes are reduced, there are opportunities for traffic-calming and the provision of additional public space—ideal places to flip the modal hierarchy to favor pedestrians, consistent with SB 5595.  

This approach is most similar to London’s Low-Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) but uses techniques similar to Barcelona Superblocks, as well as larger city center traffic circulation plans like those found in Ghent, Brussels, Paris, and Groningen.

SDOT staff are internally proposing what they call “Home Zones 2.0.” Currently, Seattle’s Home Zone program provides spot improvements to reduce speeds, typically requested by residents, but generally doesn’t decrease volumes. 

Home Zones 2.0 would take a more comprehensive approach, to measurably decrease vehicle volumes and speeds and increase walking, biking, and playing. Home zones would be “physically identifiable by drivers, walkers, bikers” when they enter the zone.

SDOT staff illustrated how a new and improved home zone might work on Seattle’s Crown Hill, a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood that generally lacks sidewalks. Diverters, shown in red, prevent cut-through car traffic while allowing people walking and rolling to pass. Gateway treatments, shown as yellow circles, let you know you’re in a traffic-calmed area. 

The chronic lack of sidewalks in much of South Seattle, as well as vast areas north of N 85th Street, make this kind of traffic-calming imperative. At the current pace, it will be as many as 1,800 years before the city finishes building sidewalks in Seattle. In the meantime, these are de facto shared streets. Children walk to school on them, mixing with vehicular traffic in a shared space, but lacking the rights and pedestrian-compatible speed limits they need and deserve to travel safely.

Where Are Shared Streets Going First?

Neighborhood Greenways present the prime case for shared streets treatment in Seattle, which has a loose network of these streets across the city. Neighborhood greenways are non-arterial streets with lower traffic volumes that have been enhanced with traffic-calming, wayfinding, and improved arterial crossings. During the pandemic, to provide space for people to gather outdoors, Seattle converted several of these to “Healthy Streets,” with the addition of “Street Closed” signs, which was, as the time, the only tool available under state law to permit pedestrians to walk in the roadway.

According to internal documents, Healthy Streets are likely to be the first to receive shared streets designation, along with festival streets and school streets. Neighborhood greenways could follow. The changes are likely to be modest at first — with the addition of signage — paving the way to more robust treatments in the future as budget allows and SDOT standards develop.

SDOT also hopes to roll out what they are calling the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Program (NISP, sometimes playfully called “nispy”) in 2026 that lets residents nominate areas for traffic-calming, possibly merged with the Home Zones program. That would be a welcome development. Since the Your Voice, Your Choice (YVYC) and Neighborhood Street Fund (NSF) grant programs were discontinued, there has not been an accessible outlet for neighborhood organizing around safer streets.

SB 5595 will not transform Seattle overnight — that much is clear — but shared streets represent a generational opportunity to reclaim safe space for walking, rolling, and community life. Cities around the world already treat low-speed, pedestrian-first streets as routine public infrastructure. With enabling legislation on the horizon and SDOT laying the groundwork, Seattle has a chance to join them. The question now is whether the city can cut through its own red tape and deliver the kind of streets residents have long said they want.

The post A Sneak Peek at Shared Streets Coming to Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

Much has been written about the negative effects of urban highways in the U.S., but they mostly focus on neglect, displacement, and gridlock that are consequences of completing the projects. Local author Emily Lieb’s new book, “Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore”, shows that you don’t even have to build a highway in order to scar a city; you only need a map and some patience. Automobile proponents’ persistence pays off, literally, because their friends are able to make an obscene amount of money along the way.

Despite the book’s title, the 10-D highway, the East-West expressway that was supposed to revitalize downtown Baltimore to better serve its suburban population, plays only a supporting role in the story. The main character is Rosemont, a middle-class neighborhood in West Baltimore. The book begins with Rosemont’s transformation from an exclusively White working-class neighborhood into a Black, but still middle-class neighborhood thanks to the city’s segregated school system. 

The author dives into all aspects of the neighborhood’s deterioration and stagnation over almost 40 years while it was held hostage to constantly changing highway plans before the project was eventually canceled in 1981. Finally, she describes how Baltimore officials made an insincere attempt to restore the neighborhood to its pre-expressway-imagined state with the help of federal money. During all three stages, fortunes were made – not by Rosemonters, but by real estate speculators, money lenders, contractors, and politicians – while Rosemont itself didn’t see much investment.

Together, this makes “Road to Nowhere” a good introduction into how local and federal policies and interests shaped not only this part of Baltimore but many other, usually non-White neighborhoods in other cities across the country. The sprawling ramps of I-5 and I-90 in Seattle’s International District would not have been possible without the Federal Highway Act’s generous funding, the same federal program that made Baltimore’s politicians look seriously at the plans for 10-D. 

On top of bad transportation policy, the Federal Housing Administration’s Section 235 program, which guaranteed mortgages for low- and moderate-income homebuyers, became a source of financial ruin for many Rosemonters who were lured into unknowingly buying condemned houses after the highway project was put on hold. The fiasco was a national scandal in the 1970s.

There were many factors that led to the eventual withdrawal of the highway project, including an oil crisis and the concurrent rise of environmentalism, but it was the loss of funding that proved decisive. The city’s tax base had declined, the state was getting less money from its vehicle excise tax, and the federal gas tax was too low to continue building at the pace of the 1950s and 60s. At the same time, highway costs were rising, in part due to environmental regulations and the new road design standards requiring a larger footprint.

Rosemont’s story also serves as a sad reminder that activism isn’t always enough. Even though, on paper, opponents of the highway won, their fight dragged on too long, and the consequences have lasted to the present day.

As dismal as the account is, the book ends on a positive note, reporting on a future light rail project, the Red Line, which, after some drama of its own, is in its planning phase. It is intended to reconnect the neighborhood and breathe new life into Rosemont, this time for real – that is, if funding comes through.

Elliott Bay Book Company is holding a discussion of “Road To Nowhere” with author Emily Lieb on November 20 at 7pm.

The post Book Review: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore first appeared on The Urbanist.

You’ve likely heard the caricatures drummed up by the campaign professionals working for Harrell and his surrogates: Wilson is an ill-prepared college dropout who took financial help from her parents to cover child care expenses. Her résumé is paper thin — albeit the same decade-old one Harrell supporters twice mailed across Seattle.

“For the entirety of this campaign, Katie Wilson has sold herself to voters as a working class person struggling to get by – but, at the eleventh hour, it took just one hard question from a journalist to reveal the truth: Katie Wilson has never had to struggle because her parents are still paying her bills at age 43,” said an unnamed spokesperson for the Harrell campaign in an press release dated October 23. “We cannot risk handing over the reins of the city to someone who has never managed an employee, doesn’t track her personal finances or those of her one-person non-profit, and who lives off their parents’ paychecks. Bruce knows what it means to work hard for opportunity. He and his family have lived the challenges that Katie Wilson claims to understand, but has yet to experience.”

Bruce Harrell’s net worth is listed $15 million at his most recent disclosure, including his $4 million 7,000-square foot mansion on Lake Washington. With wealth like that, affording child care was not a big concern for the mayor.

Blowback potential

In response, Wilson has noted her parents only began providing financial help after she launched her mayoral campaign, which increased her need for child care. Her campaign has highlighted affordability issues, including lowering the cost of child care and housing. Harrell’s barbs do risk only underscoring the fact that his opponent is more in touch on cost of living issues, living through them now.

An incumbent with a strong record to run on doesn’t lose a primary by nearly 10 points, like Harrell did. Without results to point to, tearing down your opponent becomes a much more enticing proposition. The Urbanist Elections Committee (on which I serve with 13 other members) endorsed Wilson, citing her coalition-building chops and inspiring vision for the city.

Going negative underscores that the “One Seattle” uniter that Harrell ran on in a vibes-y 2021 campaign that swept him into office was a farce — built on overpromising what he could deliver in office and the kind of mayor he would be. When pressed, the good guy vibes disappears, and the abrasive bully comes out.

Wilson has not returned the bully treatment, and has remained focused on policy disagreements, rather than personal ones.

This is despite ample opportunity to mine Harrell’s past for foibles, including his 1996 arrest for allegedly brandishing a gun during a dispute over a parking spot in a casino parking lot. Harrell also exhibited a pattern of defending abusers over the course of his career, from former Mayor Ed Murray to former police chief Adrian Diaz (who apparently oversaw rampant sexual harassment under his tenure) to his former external affairs director Pedro Gomez, who stands accused of rape.

Before he married and had three kids, Harrell fathered a child that he avoided acknowledging publicly and apparently rarely saw. This came up in Harrell’s first campaign for office in 2007, when the boy, Evan, went unmentioned on his campaign website. “It adds insult to injury for him to act like Evan doesn’t exist,” the boy’s mother Deborah Johnson told Seattle Weekly that year, adding that Harrell has been diligent in paying child support over the years, but has had minimal face-to-face contact with her son. She estimated they met three times between the ages of 7 and 15.

The turn of events turned out to be ample fodder for The Needling, a news satire site run by Lex Vaughn.

“After confirming to reporters that he would never use his more than $15 million net worth to help his adult children or grandchildren lest they immediately be like Wilson, Mayor Harrell and his campaign staff were seen brainstorming their next attack on his opponent from his waterfront, three-car garage glass house,” The Needling wrote.

Lashing out on homelessness

Another line of attack Harrell has recently pressed is the Wilson supposedly would let people who are homeless set up camp in parks, seeking to capitalize on her refusing to give a simple “yes or no” answer during a recent debate.

“Our parks define our quality of life. They are where families, kids, and neighbors without backyards can play, gather, and enjoy our city together,” Harrell said in a statement on October 30. “Unfortunately, with less than a week before this critical election, my opponent is signaling she’ll roll back progress by allowing tents to return to our parks and leaving people to suffer outdoors without shelter or services. We can’t go back to where we were in 2020 and 2021, we’ve got to keep moving forward.”

The conceit of Harrell’s claim is that he’s succeeded in clearing encampments from parks across Seattle. Anybody who has spends significant time in parks knows that’s not true. Many parks have seen sweeps, but the encampments form again, often dispersed into different areas or neighboring parks and green belts. In 2022, Harrell celebrated his team’s clearance of encampments at Woodland Park. However, since the City doesn’t have enough shelter and supportive housing, people who were swept (but not housed) did not simply disappear. Camps reconstitute and visitors to Woodland Park and other parks still encounter them on a routine basis.

Seattle’s shelter bed capacity actually shrank under Harrell’s watch and he fell well short of a campaign pledge to build 2,000 units of emergency housing in his first year. This helps explain why Harrell’s policy of aggressively ramping of encampment sweeps have been largely ineffective and often a quixotic quest. The encampments move, but the City and its partners have struggled to get people inside and connected to the services they need. The population of homeless people remains stubbornly high, well above many peer cities.

Ironically, another Harrell attack is that Wilson is proposing to allocate too many resources to sheltering people experiencing homelessness. Wilson has set a goal of 4,000 units of emergency housing and shelter in her first term. Wilson has even suggested converting vacant housing units at City-subsidized nonprofit buildings — a growing problem, particularly at higher rent bands — to serve low income tenants where the need is still high.

“Sustainable solutions to our housing and homelessness crises require stable leadership and meaningful action, not false promises and dangerous proposals that will set our city back,” Harrell said, apparently with no sense of irony after failing at his own 2021 campaign pledge.

Even his spotty record on homelessness has not stopped Harrell from declaring victory — especially when he’s speaking to more affluent crowds.

Speaking at the Woodland Park Zoo’s big “Jungle Party” high-dollar fundraiser on July 11, Harrell seemed to take credit for cleaning up the zoo, apparently referring to his campaign of encampment removals on Seattle Parks property next door at Woodland Park in the first year of his administration.

“When I took office about nearly four years ago, it was a disgrace what I was seeing out here — that it was almost desecrated in so many spaces in this entire campus,” Harrell said. “I want to thank all of you for helping me restore this zoo to some of its greatness, and we need to do. You are here because you care. You are here because you are passionate about conservation.”

How this related to a secured and gated zoo property where encampment had not really taken root is unclear. While the encampment sweeps were a plank of his 2021 campaign, the clearance were often a temporary condition. Woodland Park camps popped up again, with a similar story sweeped sites across the city. The City has sometimes achieved temporary relief, but the overall pattern is toward dispersing the problem rather than truly alleviating the issue and bringing people inside, as was a key part of the promise.

Harrell seemed to be off-script as he made remarks at the zoo’s biggest donors and staff. But it previewed a turn his campaign would soon make following its stumble in the primary — increasingly inhabiting their own warped version of reality. Harrell saved the zoo from homeless vagrants and the encampments never came back to Woodland Park. Who cares that it’s not true!

As the attacks fly, voters have a clear choice before them. A progressive challenger with a clear and hopeful vision for the future or an entrenched incumbent focused on lashing out at opponents and plodding along.

The post In Last Stand, Harrell Intensifies Negative Attacks on Wilson first appeared on The Urbanist.

Emily Pike, who works at a bookstore in the market and helped organize the event, said Wilson’s story resonates with them, and connects with the spirit of Pike Place Market, a tight-knit community of laborers, independent local merchants, and Market advocates.

“There’s a kind of camaraderie that you feel when you spend your days down here,” Pike said. “Because every day in the market, you see neighbors helping neighbors. You see neighbors looking up for each other and supporting each other. It’s the community; it’s the people that make the market special.”

Pike Place Market workers call themselves “market rats” — a nod to the humble professions they ply and their sense of resilience and belonging in the alleys of the market.

“That ethos of communal resilience through communal caretaking is embodied in the work that Katie does and the way that she does it, the way that she leads,” Pike said. “Which is why I trust that when Katie Wilson’s mayor she not going to fight for a handful of millionaires and corporate interests; she’s gonna fight for us little rats.”

Last night, at Candidate Survivor, I had the opportunity to break out some very rusty harmonica skills. See, campaigning is fun. Campaigning is fun? Campaigning is fun.

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— Katie Wilson for Seattle (@wilsonforseattle.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 10:47 AM

Sticking with a message that propelled her to an upset win over big-business-backed incumbent Bruce Harrell in the primary election, Wilson said Seattle must become a more affordable place to live.

“The city is so hard to afford, and the fact is, like, Seattle should be a city where you can busk at Pike Place Market and afford to live here,” Wilson said. “What we lose when it becomes this kind of pressure cooker, where you have to have a tech job in order to survive, is so profound, right? It becomes a city that’s more sterile. It becomes a city that’s more alienated. We lose that community. We lose that feeling of just like you can be here. This is your home. And what I want more than anything as mayor is to make the city into a place where we can all live. This is all of our home. And that’s not going to be easy, right? That’s not going to happen overnight, but I really believe that we can make progress.”

That message also won over The Urbanist elections committee, who enthusiastically endorsed her. (Disclosure: I am on that 14-member committee.)

Former mayoral candidate Cary Moon was among the rally attendees. Moon lives next door to the Market and long advocated for a people-centered waterfront, arguing a highway tunnel and car-choked surface-level boulevard was not necessary as Seattle tore down the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Moon lost her mayoral bid, as Jenny Durkan instead prevailed in 2017.

Moon said she saw some familiar themes, as Harrell and his centrist allies sought to portray their progressive opponent as a lightweight without enough relevant experience.

“The punching down sexism is so ugly,” Moon said. “I hope the voters see through that, because Katie is fantastic, and she’s brilliant, and she’ll surround herself by good people, and she will do a great job.”

The Seattle old guard’s dismissive, condescending attitude toward Wilson, a progressive woman from an organizer background, was encapsulated in the campaign mailer that the pro-Harrell political action committee (PAC) sent out this month, and the expensive television ad it ran during Mariners playoff games. Run by Senior Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess — Harrell’s right-hand man and political attack dog, the PAC has raised more than $1.6 million from bigwigs from big business and real estate — many from outside the city.

The labor union PROTEC 17 and other progressives launched their our PAC, Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle, to try to counter that spending. However, Harrell’s business-backed PAC has raised at least four times more, raising more from Medina (the ultra-wealthy tiny suburb across Lake Washington) than the pro-Wilson PAC has overall. That fundraising advantage has bought an advantage in advertising reach.

The pro-Harrell mailer featured what apparently is a decade-old résumé that Wilson submitted to the City for an application to an advisory board. The TV ad included clips of Harrell badgering Wilson about her purported lack of management experience during a debate aired on Seattle Channel.

The sneering derision that Wilson had worked a smattering of low-paying jobs (rather than efficiently climbing the corporate ladder like Harrell) dripped through both campaign communications. But to many Seattleites, like the market rats who threw her a rally, Wilson’s varied experience is more relatable and resonant than Harrell’s corporate pedigree.

Around the time Wilson was busking in the Market to make rent, Harrell was buying a 7,000-square-foot mansion next to Seward Park for $1.4 million. As Seattle’s housing crisis has festered throughout Harrell’s two-decade career in politics, the value of his home has jumped above $4 million — appreciating at twice the rate of inflation.

A growing majority of Seattleites (if not odd-year voters) are renters, unfamiliar with the comforts of owning a million-dollar home. Wilson’s primary win indicates voters have grown disillusioned with leaders who haven’t lived their struggles or grappled with Seattle’s affordability crisis firsthand in a very long time — and who have been pushing failed policies for decades.

While Harrell’s attack ads were right that Wilson hasn’t personally managed million-dollar budgets through her work or personal finances, she was instrumental in passing the largest progressive tax reform in modern Seattle history, leading a coalition that passed the JumpStart progressive payroll tax on large companies in 2020.

That victory shifted more of Seattle’s tax burden away from overtaxed working families and toward big businesses, raising hundreds of millions in annual revenue that spared the city from deep program cuts in the midst of the Covid pandemic. It also provided a major new funding source for affordable housing — at least the portion that was not swiped by Harrell to fill holes in his budget.

Wilson also fought and won campaigns to raise the minimum wage, improve transit service, and make transit more affordable to workers and poor residents. To many, that body of work would seem relevant mayoral experience.

Seattle’s next mayor will be tasked with keeping diverse coalitions together, setting a bold agenda, assembling highly-capable teams, and motivating action toward a positive vision of Seattle’s future. Looking back on Harrell’s time in office, his record is mixed on those fronts, with some concerning red flags. On the other hand, that is the kind of leadership that Wilson has demonstrated time and again.

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Transportation has been far from one of the most prominent issues over the past few months, as Harrell finds himself in the fight of his political life against Transit Riders Union founder Katie Wilson, who beat Harrell in a surprise upset by nearly 10 points in the August primary. But the topic has been coming up more and more, as Harrell tries to point to successes that he’s been able notch since taking office in early 2022.

At a climate-focused forum at the Bitter Lake Community Center last week, hosted by Harrell-friendly orgs including Cascade Bicycle Club and Transportation Choices Coalition, he pointed to the $1.55 billion transportation levy voters approved last fall as just such a success.

“When I inherited the job and I won the job, we still lived in a city by which cars are fighting with bikes and bikes are perhaps competing with transit, and people looked at the different forms of transportation and they didn’t talk to each other very well,” Harrell told the crowd. “And what I tried to do is change the conversation and negotiating a package of 1.55 billion, leading with safety first, and then reliability, and then connectivity was the package we put together.”

That levy, which is heavily weighted toward investments in road and bridge maintenance, was initially set at $1.35 billion but later revised upwards by Harrell’s office after transportation advocates pushed to go bolder, pointing at public polling showing support for a more transformative $1.7 billion. The added funding included more dollars for sidewalks, transit, and bike projects, though the only concrete goals (so to speak) were on sidewalks. The Seattle City Council added another $100 million in spending, but rejected an amendment to go further after the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce balked.

“We put over $430 million for these types of safety mechanisms. We’re very proud that we had a drop in pedestrian deaths. Our death count was below 10. It was half of what it was in 2021. In 2024 we had no bicyclist deaths. And so we if we invest in the right way and we connect in the right way, lives are saved,” Harrell said, repeating a line he used the previous month at a Fremont Neighborhood Council forum.

Here’s the part Harrell got right: in 2024, initial data showed a significant decrease in the number of people killed while walking on Seattle’s streets, though the total was later revised upward to 11 fatalities, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s collision database. That was a big drop from 2021, a year where 20 people walking were killed.

With decreases three years in a row, the trend line appeared to be continuing to fall throughout Harrell’s term. But so far in 2025, 15 pedestrians have been killed in traffic crashes, with over two months left in the year. Overall pedestrian deaths remain much higher than they were a decade ago, when Seattle committed to eliminating all fatalities on city streets by 2030.

And while 2024 was a year of encouragingly low pedestrian fatalities on Seattle’s streets, it was the deadliest year overall on Seattle’s roads since 2006, with 32 people killed while driving cars or motorcycles, riding scooters, or walking. Among the lives lost last year was Chandler Gayton, who died while driving a motorcycle on Lake City Way on July 20, hitting a Honda minivan after reportedly going through a red light. Gayton had worked as a strategic advisor for public safety in Bruce Harrell’s office.

Compared to the four years of Harrell’s predecessor, Jenny Durkan, overall traffic fatalities in the city have actually increased by 13.5% since the start of 2022 with time left in the term. Over that time, there has been a 6.8% drop in pedestrian fatalities, a far cry from Harrell’s portrayal of them being cut in half.

The big question is: how do those numbers relate to the traffic safety strategies that have been employed under Harrell’s leadership?

His term has largely been marked by a continuation of initiatives that were started before he took office, as the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) worked to finish a slate of “deliverables” approved by voters with the 2015 Move Seattle Levy that expired at the end of last year. Those included an ambitious mileage goal for new bike facilities, and a commitment to build Safe Routes to School upgrades at every single public school in the city.

Harrell did tout one new initiative that started on his watch: a new SDOT policy to implement no-right-on-red restrictions along with any other major street upgrades, with the onus on the department to find a reasonable justification not to add signage. Announced in mid-2023, the idea to make this change came directly from the city’s Vision Zero team.

“When I directed our department to prohibit right turns all around the city, my email box was full because people don’t,” Harrell said, cutting himself off. “But we’re saving lives, and that’s how we’re going to have to do it. We have to adjust with the new forms of transportation. We have to look at the technology is changing, and we have to make sacrifices. And these are the decisions that an executive has to make. These are tough decisions, but they’re the right decisions, and that’s how we lead.”

When Harrell hired Greg Spotts, an assistant transportation director for the City of Los Angeles, to be his SDOT Director in mid-2022, Vision Zero was at the center of his transition into city government, coming right on the heels of that deadly 2021. Before being in office a full month, Spotts joined cyclists to mourn the loss of Robb Mason, who had been killed at the foot of the West Seattle swing bridge in July. At the event, Spotts told attendees that Vision Zero wasn’t going to live in a “pocket” of the organization any longer.

Spotts launched a 90-day “top to bottom review” of the Vision Zero program as one of his first major moves in the job, but that review was met with mixed reviews when it was released late in early 2023.

“The review, a 37-page report supplemented by a graphics-heavy 22-page ‘overview,’ includes exactly 100 recommendations—a nice round number that suggests padding,” PubliCola’s Erica C. Barnett wrote at the time. “And indeed, almost a quarter of the strategies the report suggests are things SDOT is already doing—for example, ‘[c]ontinue to clarify and measure desired outcomes of educational programs.’ Many others are vague to the point of abstraction.”

One of the most prominent actions to come out of the top-to-bottom review was the appointment of Venu Nemani, the city’s traffic engineer, to the new role as Chief Transportation Safety Officer, a move that signaled an elevation of the issue of safety up to SDOT’s top leadership group. But these days, Nemani is serving double-duty in both that role and as head of the Traffic Operations Division, suggesting safety isn’t important enough to have a dedicated point-person anymore.

When Spotts abruptly announced he would step down from the role of SDOT Director in early 2024, Harrell appointed Adiam Emery, who had been serving as one of his Deputy Mayors, as the interim pick to replace him. While Emery’s term so far has been marked by more butting of heads with transportation advocates — over projects like Aurora Avenue, Denny Way bus lanes, and a rushed attempt to remove a bus-only lane on E Union Street — there have been some through lines between the two directors. One of them is a major reluctance to tackle some of the city’s most dangerous streets and, as the Vision Zero report recommends, “be willing to reduce vehicle travel speeds and convenience to improve safety.”

“The single most important thing the city can do is redesign dangerous streets,” the transportation advocacy group Seattle Neighborhood Greenways wrote in its own review of the Vision Zero program during those long 90 days. “Reducing the number of lanes and converting the extra space to widened sidewalks, protected bike lanes, bus lanes, or even planting strips for street trees is the most effective strategy. The West Seattle bridge repair project demonstrated that SDOT can still do big things, well, and quickly. SDOT can deliver on safe street projects with a similar proficiency if it has mayoral backing.”

While the new transportation levy includes a commitment to redesign 12 high-injury corridors over the next seven years, many of those projects remain in planning, with the full scope of those redesigns not yet known. The levy’s biggest tests lie ahead, including the question of whether the city will finally get bold enough to implement the type of changes needed to make streets like Rainier Avenue safer for everyone.

If Seattle does see an overall drop in traffic collisions in 2025, that will be part of a statewide trend. Initial data collected by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission showed a 25% drop in total traffic fatalities through September, with 450 lives lost over those nine months compared to 604 in 2024.

In Seattle, the campaign rhetoric doesn’t align up so easily with the actual results. Harrell’s true legacy when it comes to making the city streets safer may not be known for years.

The post Cherrypicking Data, Harrell Paints Misleading Picture of Seattle’s Traffic Safety Progress first appeared on The Urbanist.

In a recent slew of press conferences and public appearances, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has said he expects the City to complete its labor negotiations with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) by the end of the year. 

Harrell first mentioned this possibility at a press event on September 3, following the hearing during which U.S. District Judge James Robart granted the motion to terminate Seattle’s consent decree. 

“I’m very confident here, in a matter of weeks or within this year, we’re going to have another finalized negotiations,” Harrell said. “[SPOG] understand[s] the accountability issues. They understand the growth of the CARE [Community Assisted Response & Engagement] department, which again, is a bargain for condition of employment. So, we’re very optimistic.”

The timing of the expected end to negotiations with SPOG is interesting. Harrell is currently running for reelection, having landed 10 points behind opponent Katie Wilson in the August primary. While Harrell isn’t technically a lame duck since it’s possible he’ll prevail come November, the outcome of the mayoral race is mired in uncertainty. And a new SPOG contract is expected to have a huge impact on the future of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), alternative civilianized crisis response, and the perennial budget deficit. 

How we got here

The City’s negotiations with SPOG typically take longer than those with other labor partners. 

The City ratified a new SPOG contract in November 2018 and then did not do so again until May 2024, five and a half years later. In addition, the SPOG contract ratified in 2024 only ran through the end of 2023 so was already out of date by the time of its passage. 

In 2018, about four years after signing off on the previous one, the city council approved a new SPOG contract resulting in a 17% pay increase for SPOG members. This contract failed to incorporate key pieces of the accountability ordinance passed by the council the preceding year. The issues around accountability were egregious enough that Judge Robart ruled that this contract threw the City out of compliance with the consent decree. 

Lorena González and Teresa Mosqueda, then Seattle councilmembers, voted in favor of the contract but later said they regretted it. The sole vote against the contract was cast by Kshama Sawant.

At the end of 2023, the City and SPOG signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) providing SPD officers with a special event premium and higher overtime pay in return for allowing park rangers to operate in more of the City’s parks and signing off on a two-year alternative response pilot program to be run by the Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) department.

The MOU allowed the CARE department to test a dual dispatch system that meant CARE responders had to be dispatched at the same time as police officers and wait for officers to clear the scene. The MOU also limited the size of the alternative response unit to a maximum of 24 responders and limited response to two 911 call types: person down and welfare check calls. In cities where civilian crisis response programs have been implemented most successfully, the departments respond to more types of calls and are not required to bring a police officer. In these cases, civilian responders rarely need to call for police backup

In 2024, the city council voted on a new SPOG contract that provided police officers with a 24% pay increase covering the period of 2021-2023. The City paid a $57.1 million one-time lump sum in officer backpay, and the estimated ongoing additional annual cost for the raise was $39.2 million. 

They also signed a new MOU with SPOG allowing civilians to carry out additional duties within SPD. 

This new contract contained few gains in accountability and continued to prevent the 2017 Accountability Ordinance from being entirely put into practice. In a hearing in front of Judge Robart in 2024, ​​Assistant City Attorney Kerala Cowart said this new contract was necessary due to SPD’s staffing shortage.

All councilmembers voted in favor of the contract in May 2024 except for Councilmember Tammy Morales, who has since resigned.

Strategy going forward

One of the most concerning strategic implications of last year’s SPOG contract was the perception that the City had given huge raises to officers without receiving meaningful accountability gains in return, potentially ceding leverage in future contracts. 

Any contract negotiated now would include raises for 2024, 2025, and potentially beyond, carrying an uncertain price tag. 

These budgetary woes are exacerbated by SPD’s new, unprecedented pace of hiring. SPD says they’re on track to hire 172 officers this year for a net officer increase of 91. Next year, they expect to hire 168 new officers with a net increase of 86. This projection of 177 new officers in two years means any negotiated raise will take a larger bite from the City’s budget, eating up even more of the General Fund.

On the other hand, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched a TV advertising campaign aimed at poaching SPD officers to serve in ICE instead. “You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city safe. But in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free,” the ad states. 

ICE is offering hiring bonuses and student loan forgiveness for those who sign up. It’s uncertain if this offer will sway police officers who would have otherwise joined or been retained by SPD. 

Also at stake is the fate of the CARE first responders. Harrell has announced investments in his proposed budget, paid for by a new 0.1% public safety tax, that will double the number of CARE first responders operating in Seattle up to 48. But without progress away from the dual dispatch model, as well as permission to have more CARE responders answer 911 calls, CARE’s mission could be hampered. 

Finally, a new contract would be an opportunity to institute several long-desired accountability measures, including the use of arbitration in matters of discipline, the standard of evidence for misconduct, and civilianization of and subpoena power for the Office of Police Accountability. 

Harrell is under some pressure to complete SPOG negotiations before the end of the year, due to the MOU stating that the CARE pilot is only meant to run until the end of 2025. If Harrell were to complete negotiations before the mayoral election, it might give him another accomplishment to tout before the voting public in what is shaping up to be a tight race. 

Whether a new contract boosts Harrell’s chances or makes his path to victory more difficult will depend on the details and whether they contribute to the perception that the City negotiated a good deal.

A contract before the election would also mean SPOG is locked in before we know the election results. SPOG might prefer to negotiate with Harrell as opposed to Wilson, who could prove to be tougher when it comes to police accountability. She has also placed greater emphasis on expanding the CARE department.

“The current mayor negotiated a police contract that overrides accountability legislation passed in 2017, hamstringing the Seattle Police Department’s ability to discipline or fire officers for serious misconduct,” Wilson wrote on her website. “With the $57 million in retroactive salary payments and additional $39 million for 2024-2026, we should have gotten more for our money.” 

Harrell’s administration has been reluctant to take a SPOG contract to interest arbitration, with Senior Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess telling The Urbanist last year that he thought the City only had a 50% chance of a favorable outcome should they take that route. Wilson might be more willing to take the gamble in order to push for real accountability gains.

It’s possible Harrell could use the perception that he will be more beneficial to SPOG members to his advantage to pressure a faster resolution to current negotiations. If, on the other hand, negotiations drag on past the election and Harrell were to win, he could lose some of his leverage to come to a quicker deal. 

The majority of city councilmembers, most of whom ran on public safety platforms, might also welcome a new SPOG contract sooner rather than later. 

Regardless of when the contract negotiations are finished, the council is unlikely to vote on the issue until after budget season concludes on November 21. A December vote means that the new District 2 councilmember – either frontrunner Eddie Lin or his opponent Adonis Ducksworth – will have assumed their council seat and will have a say in the matter. 

Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck will be able to vote in December regardless of the outcomes of their races, as they wouldn’t cede their seats until January. 

Competing narratives

Speaking before Judge Robart at the closing of the consent decree, Harrell said, “I believe that the contract negotiations, relative to all of the aspects of accountability, will be fruitful and productive because I believe that they see what we see now, that accountability cannot be sacrificed in the name of efficient or effective policing.”

When Robart questioned him further, Harrell continued, “In our current negotiations, we’ve done a pretty good job of getting as much as we can get, and now I think what it’s going to hinge upon is the people on the other side of the table, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, to recognize where we must go in modern policing, and I’m convinced that they get it.”

Mike Solan, president of SPOG, seems to have a different outlook on the matter. On a recent episode of his podcast, Hold the Line, Solan said that, especially given Judge Robart’s comments, the City is continuing to press for more accountability.

“The police department in the city of Seattle is the most accountable agency in the nation,” Solan said. “So why is it that they keep on pressing for more of this? Is it because of the financial connection here where there’s a lot of money to be made or is it more based on ideology to push an anti-police narrative or is it a combination of both?”

These don’t sound like the words of a union leader who believes more accountability is necessary for SPD to transition into modern policing.

“It’s like [Judge Robart is] talking about the contract, SPOG, and making sure that the then-2017 accountability ordinance gets put into collective bargaining, and I’ve been in that process in terms of opining on it in this podcast,” Solan continued. “We’re currently bargaining that at the table.” 

With time running out before the mayoral election and the end of the year, we’ll soon find out if Harrell delivers on his promise of a new SPOG contract… and exactly how much it will cost the City. 

The post Harrell Pledges Police Contract by Year End – Adding Election Wrinkle first appeared on The Urbanist.