The House Transportation Committee’s decision to halt the bill to allow 75-year bonds to help Sound Transit cover the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) shortfall, without offering any alternative, shows how much work remains to be done to turn that public support into improved outcomes.

The gap between strong public support and ongoing political failure presents an important and urgent opportunity to transit advocates across the Puget Sound. Those advocates need to leverage widespread public support for more light rail to force local and state leaders to implement constructive solutions needed to build the ST3 plan that voters approved in 2016. Regional and state leaders will have to come up with more money, and they must help implement lasting reforms to bring down costs.

Sound Transit faces a deficit of nearly $35 billion in the ST3 program to build rail lines to connect our region. We have two ways to respond to this: abandon the plan to build the passenger rail our region urgently needs, or figure out how to raise the money and implement the planning reforms needed to build the system voters approved.

Scaling back the ST3 plan would be an unpopular, embarrassing admission of failure. Cities around the world are rapidly building out mass transit systems, often at a fraction of the cost of ST3. That includes big, dense European cities like Paris and Madrid, where unions are also strong and environmental laws and historic protections also make construction a challenge.

In particular, the Puget Sound region needs to learn from Europe how to build a lot more rail for a lot less money – without compromising on safety, worker pay, or the rider experience. And transit advocates can learn from other successful urbanist campaigns, particularly the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, to craft new strategies to help Seattle lead on mass transit in North America.

It’s Not the 2000s Anymore

Twenty-five years ago, Sound Transit was in a fiscal crisis. Voters had approved creation of the system in the 1990s. But by 2001, it became clear Sound Transit was about $1 billion short of the funding it needed to build from Northgate to Sea-Tac Airport.

This set off a round of political attacks at the federal, state, and local levels that nearly destroyed Sound Transit. Sound Transit solved that crisis, and a similar one in 2009 caused by the Great Recession, by delaying projects. They believed there was no public support for finding more money to prevent those delays. Perhaps that was true in the 2000s. It’s not true any more.

Light rail expansion is now one of the most popular things in Seattle, even more popular than the return of the Sonics NBA franchise. Strong public support, especially in the Puget Sound region’s urban core, is a gamechanger for advocates, and we should adjust our strategies accordingly. No longer should we accept further project delays, and we certainly should not accept cuts to the voter-approved system. Instead, it’s time to find more money, and reform how Sound Transit plans and builds the system.

Transit advocates would do well to take a page from the successes of the YIMBY movement. For many years, housing advocates ran into huge barriers thrown up by Not In My Backyard activists or NIMBYs, particularly in the form of low-density zoning and onerous review processes. Those barriers eventually choked off the supply of new housing, causing housing costs to soar. 

And that, in turn, created a political crisis. 

Suddenly, the public demanded more housing, and turned against NIMBY obstruction. YIMBY success stems from recognition of this changed reality and clever, effective, persistent advocacy knowing that the wind was now at their back.

From my experience in the YIMBY movement in the last few years, the following keys to success are applicable to transit advocacy:

• This is primarily a political problem that requires a political solution. While it’s worth debating things like whether we should use elevated or tunneled tracks along a route, or automated versus human-operated trains, these alone do not solve the funding crisis. Effective solutions require different decisions to be made by elected officials.

• Leverage public support. When the public strongly wants something to happen, the onus is on elected officials to deliver. High levels of support for mass transit should force state legislators to feel immense pressure to solve ST3’s problems – but that requires public mobilization. 

• Focus on mobilizing the broader public. Transit advocates need to focus on activating the broad base of Puget Sound residents who want ST3 projects built. That base is less interested in the technical details. They want to know who to call, which meetings to attend, and what to ask for. 

• The technical details matter, but they don’t convince everyone. Every transit advocate is a wonk at heart who cares deeply about the technical details, and rightly so. Sound Transit staff, board members, and state legislators all want to know that what we ask for is technically sound, feasible, and will work. We have to be able to defend every point we make and every ask we have. But those details usually don’t inspire the public to show up. They care about the big picture: will this help get my train line built?

• Compromises are necessary, but they shouldn’t be bad ones. At some point, we have to accept decisions that are made so we can move on to construction. The ST3 route and project list is set. I’m not wild about freeway routes, but it’s not worth the delay to go back and pursue a different alignment. Similarly, a 75-year bond is not the ideal way to finance infrastructure. But it’s better than cutting or delaying ST3 projects.

In some ways, transit advocates in the Puget Sound region have it easier than housing advocates. Public support has been on our side for 30 years. But that support has not been as strong and deep as it is today.

The political threats to Sound Transit no longer stem from voters losing faith due to financial woes. The main threat is failing to deliver the projects promised to voters. That, in turn, creates a strong incentive for elected leaders at the local and state levels to step in and provide the money and the reforms needed to deliver what voters approved.

No Way Around the Need for More Money

The $35 billion deficit facing ST3 dwarfs the $1 billion deficit Sound Transit faced in 2001 and the $4 billion deficit it faced in 2009. A deficit of that size cannot be closed without adding some amount of new money, even if other reforms are adopted – unless we agree to chop off parts of the system voters approved.

Much of these rising costs are outside Sound Transit’s control. The Covid-19 pandemic caused years of delay, which meant added cost. So, too, did the inflation that followed the pandemic. That was before Donald Trump returned to power in 2025. His inflationary policies, including his tariffs and his targeting of a significant portion of the construction workforce, all exacerbate the cost problem.

Other causes of rising costs are within the control of Sound Transit and Washington State’s leaders, and we’ll discuss those below. But no credible analysis suggests there is any way to reduce project costs and also keep ST3 whole without more long delays. 

Transit advocates should leverage strong public support for light rail expansion and push state legislators to approve some significant amount of new funding for ST3. Elected officials who oppose this would find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion, giving advocates a real opportunity.

The question is what form new funding would take. Sound Transit had been pushing legislators to allow it to float 75-year bonds. That bill failed to pass by Monday’s deadline, though it could be revived as part of the final transportation budget. Long-term bonds are controversial, and other advocates have pushed higher taxes on large vehicles, commercial parking taxes, or simply taxing wealthy individuals and large corporations.

Whatever the solution may be, elected officials need to understand that their failure to act puts them on the wrong side of strong public support for completing the ST3 project list.

Money Isn’t Enough – Reforms Are Needed Too

New funding, or even a scaled back ST3, does not solve the underlying problem of soaring costs. Even if Seattle voters somehow allowed Sound Transit to cancel their city’s new rail lines, the “spine” to Everett and Tacoma would still be many billions of dollars over budget. It would still face the same ongoing cost pressures, absent reforms.

It costs more to build mass transit in North America than in Europe. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s take Madrid as an example. The Puget Sound region has a higher GDP than Madrid, yet Madrid tripled the size of its subway system for a fraction of the cost of ST3. One researcher estimated that the $185 billion total cost for ST3 could build nearly a thousand miles of subway if Seattle’s construction costs were the same as in Madrid.

One cause of higher costs is endless delay. Voters approved ST3 in 2016. Nine years later, the core elements of that system, including rail to West Seattle and Ballard, still have not yet begun construction. Environmental reviews are incomplete and so is permitting work. Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell caused nearly a year of delay on the Ballard line when he pushed Sound Transit to investigate a consolidated station in South Lake Union, at the behest of Amazon.

Recent cost estimates show that in 2025 dollars, rail to Ballard will cost between $20 billion and $22 billion, up from $12 billion. But construction isn’t slated to begin until the 2030s, when costs will be even higher. In “year of expenditure” dollars, when Sound Transit actually has to pay contractors to build the line, the cost estimate soars even higher, to $30 billion. In other words, every year of delay means higher and higher costs.

International experts have made a series of recommendations to Sound Transit to reduce its construction costs without scaling back projects, harming the environment, or compromising worker pay and safety. Sound Transit has adopted several of these proposals. But there is more it can do.

A revealing moment came earlier this year when, as The Urbanist’s Ryan Packer reported, Sound Transit staff revealed that changing the design of the proposed Seattle Center station (on the Ballard Line) would shave nearly $500 million off of the construction cost. That’s about the same amount of money saved by deleting the Avalon station on the West Seattle line.

Sound Transit should do more of this kind of sensible redesign work. It’s time to standardize station designs, design shallower stations and tunnels, and preserve right of way well in advance of construction. 

Sound Transit should have the ability to conduct its own permitting, rather than have to go through the permitting process of every city it serves.

These and other reforms can help bring down construction costs without giving up on the system voters approved. Without these reforms, costs will continue to soar, no matter how much we scale back or abandon parts of the ST3 plan.

Some transit advocates are calling for more substantial changes to ST3. Last year, Scott Kubly and Claudia Balducci each called for a study of deferring or eliminating the second downtown tunnel. The Sound Transit board threw cold water on that idea. But others persist. 

Some advocates are exploring automated trains, or elevating the proposed routes rather than use tunnels. Those ideas are worth considering, as long they can be proven to work – and can be shown to achieve the core goal of delivering the voter-approved ST3 plan with a minimum of delay. That should be our guiding north star as transit advocates.

Abandoning pieces of ST3, or accepting years more of delay, would be an admission of failure. It would be giving up on our region’s ability to move people, address traffic, and reduce climate pollution. Instead, the Puget Sound region should step up and lead by obtaining more funding, as well as showing the country how to build excellent mass transit at European prices. 

Robert Cruickshank is a Seattle resident who regularly rides Link light rail with his family.

The post Op-Ed: Finding Smart Solutions to Sound Transit Budget Woes first appeared on The Urbanist.

Seattle is a city full of bright possibilities — and in recent years, voters have made clear they want a transportation system that reflects that. In 2024, Seattleites overwhelmingly approved the Keep Seattle Moving Transportation Levy, with more than 250,000 votes (67%) in favor! The renewal of Seattle’s transportation levy marked a historic level of investment in building a safe, sustainable, and accessible transportation system for everyone.

That mandate felt far-fetched 15 years ago when Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (SNG) was founded on the simple idea that people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds should be able to walk, bike, and roll to where they need to go. Our earliest campaign was to bring our namesake street design, “neighborhood greenways” — traffic-calmed residential streets designed for walking and biking — to Seattle.

That early work succeeded. Neighborhood greenways are now an official city program, with 55+ miles having been built in neighborhoods across the city. But our mission didn’t stop there.

In the years that followed, we heard from community members across the city that we needed to focus on all types of projects to make neighborhoods great places to walk, bike, roll, and live. From those conversations, our focus expanded beyond “greenways,” into a holistic vision of a safe and accessible city with crosswalks, sidewalks, protected bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and safer streets that create a world where kids can safely walk and bike to schools and parks, elders and people with disabilities can get around to their daily needs, and where people have safe, comfortable, and convenient options for getting to where they need to go.

Over the past 15 years, SNG has helped deliver real, on-the-ground change across the city:

• Improving safety by winning safer speed limits citywide, giving pedestrians a head start at crosswalks as the default policy, and holding the city accountable for transforming our most dangerous streets. 
• Making more walkable communities by securing record investments in sidewalks and crosswalks through two transportation levies — including the largest sidewalk expansion in Seattle’s history, starting in 2024.
• Creating a bikeable downtown by envisioning and successfully advocating for protected bike lanes that encompass the city center and connect to surrounding neighborhoods. 

• Partnering with community leaders in South Seattle to bring safe streets for walking and biking to historically underserved communities, like the Beacon Ave safety project on Beacon Hill, the Georgetown to South Park Trail, and the MLK Jr Way S safety project connecting the Central District and the Rainier Valley.
• Laying the groundwork for future projects, the new People Streets program at the Seattle Department of Transportation is tasked with transforming our streets into community places for people, like pedestrianizing Pike Place Market.
  

That’s why, in our 15th year, we are proud to step into a new chapter as Seattle Streets Alliance.

As a city-wide nonprofit with full-time staff supporting an alliance of neighborhood groups, this rebrand reflects who we are now and where we are going. 

“Streets” signals that our mission is not limited to one type of improvement, but encompasses all the aspects that make for great streets — accessible sidewalks, protected bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and more. 

“Alliance” captures our grassroots model: a collaborative community of neighborhood groups, partners, and advocates working together for systemic change.

This is more than a new name or logo. It’s a clearer expression of our belief that mobility — the ability to get to where you need to go safely, comfortably, and conveniently — is a fundamental human right. It affirms our values to create a city with equitable access to safe, sustainable streets for all. 

Seattle Streets Alliance has always been a people-powered movement, and there has never been a more exciting time to get involved! If you care about creating more walkable neighborhoods, closing the gaps in our bike routes, and making safer streets for everyone, join us or stay in the loop by visiting streetsalliance.org

The post Op-Ed: Why Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Is Rebranding as Seattle Streets Alliance first appeared on The Urbanist.

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.

Highways have a profound impact on the health and wellbeing of our city. If you think about a part of Seattle that is particularly unsafe and hostile to pedestrians, it’s probably adjacent to highway infrastructure. Not only is this infrastructure unsafe and unpleasant to live next to because of air and noise pollution, urban highways actively make it harder for transit to compete with the time it takes to get somewhere driving. 

Take, for example, my weekly trip from Rainier Valley to bring my kid to language classes near Northgate. Best case scenario, If we were to bike to and from the nearest light rail station, it’s a one-hour-and-15-minute trip. Driving would take 20 minutes. This disparity is why Seattleites drive for most non-commute trips. 

Despite our relatively extensive and frequent transit access, our urban freeways make driving almost always faster. When Commute Seattle’s Survey respondents were asked why they drive alone, the top response was: “It makes my trip significantly shorter.” One of the reasons Canada has higher transit ridership in all their cities than the U.S. is that they didn’t build urban highways to the extent we did. Transit remains more competitive.

What do I mean by “urban highways” in the context of Seattle? In this definition, I’d include I-5 and I-90, as well as state routes like SR 99 (Aurora Avenue), SR 522 (Lake City Way), and SR 513 (Sandpoint Way). City-owned routes that restrict crossings to speed car traffic also function as urban highways: this would include the West Seattle high bridge  Spokane Street Viaduct, and 15th Avenue NW in Ballard. 

I’d go as far as to include some of our legacy state highways as well — like Rainier Avenue, which includes many quarter-mile long stretches between traffic signals, encouraging higher driving speeds and more crashes for pedestrians, bikers, and drivers alike. 

So what can we do? First off, as Kadie Bell Sata suggested in her recent Urbanist op-ed, “The multi-year maintenance project known as Revive I-5 should have been a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shift trips away from single-occupancy vehicles and toward transit, walking, rolling, and biking.” As Bell Sata suggests, it’s not too late. There’s still time for our city to use these closures as an opportunity, but it will require clear leadership and focus. 

The city of Seattle needs a clear mayoral directive that ensures that every project that touches our city encourages a mode shift away from single occupancy car trips and reduces gross (not just per capita) vehicle miles travelled (VMT). This needs to include City of Seattle projects, which must be required to demonstrate how they reduce VMT, and projects where city streets and state highways meet. 

In 2008, Washington State set a goal to reduce per capita VMT by 50% by 2050. This was followed by a report released 2023 that looked at strategies for how our state could meet these targets (the only time we did was during the first year or so of the pandemic). Unfortunately, since the report was released, there’s been little forward momentum and insufficient funding for meaningful VMT reduction work. 

HB 2134, which died in this legislative session, was a step in the right direction, giving Regional Transportation Planning Organizations in some of our more populated regions the ability to monitor the plans of local jurisdictions to ensure they are working towards meeting carbon pollution and VMT reduction targets. 

We’ve all seen plenty of well-intentioned climate, transportation and public health policies that look good on paper, but lack the political will or structure for implementation. For example, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) released the Climate Change Response Framework in 2023 , which set the goal to reduce the number of vehicle trips that use an internal combustion engine from 65% to 35% by 2030. We are nowhere near meeting that target, nor the projected increases for the percentage of transit, walking and biking trips defined in the SDOT framework. 

Re-allocating street space is a powerful tool that can be unlocked with a mandate to reduce VMT. But without a well-designed and implemented mandate, projects that maintain the status quo will continue to coast through our planning process. 

Here’s an example of how that works: a WSDOT-led Judkins Park workgroup planning a ramp reconfiguration design for I-90 and Rainier got stuck debating whether we could reduce the number of general purpose lanes on Rainier Avenue S. Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan cites 2045 Puget Sound Regional Council traffic projections that show that while projected population for the area increases and the percentage of car trips is reduced, the total volume of car trips will not decrease. 

Because of these projections, which are codified in our comp plan, WSDOT was arguing for the need to maintain all six lanes. As of February 5, WSDOT seems to be walking back from this assertion after models show that, with both current and reduced traffic volumes, four lanes should be sufficient. 

What’s clear from this process is that we’re designing our streets backwards. The expectation that we must move the same or more cars through this burgeoning area limits the possibilities of what is feasible for a redesign. Sound Transit is opening a new light rail station and developers are building dense housing around it. Instead of a design that prioritizes how the station area will grow into a community where people want to spend time, we are designing for anticipated car volumes. 

If we design a road for current car volumes, we are inducing those volumes to exist, and we’re actively working against our mode shift goals. Add a lane, and it will quickly fill with cars. Only by designing for reduced car capacity can we manifest a reduction in car volume. And only when we design for less car volume can we improve the experience of movement for everyone outside of vehicles. 

Fundamentally, we can’t ignore the context in which urban highways were built: often with the explicit intention of displacing non-White and low-income communities. Preserving infrastructure that maintains the current volumes of trucks and cars only perpetuates the public health costs of automobiles in cities, costs that continue to be disproportionately borne by low-income, non-White and immigrant residents. As communities across the U.S. are starting to take steps to address these harms, Seattle can be a leader in this space. 

In addition to a directive to reduce vehicle miles traveled, our mayor should convene a project team to take the lead on highway mitigation projects. We need safer and more frequent crossings on Lake City Way in North Seattle, safer and more comfortable crossings of the I-5 ramps at the 45th Street in the U District, and on Albro street in Georgetown. And we need to reconnect South Park by removing Highway 99 and rebuild Aurora Avenue to prioritize local, non-car movement. 

All of these will run into the same barrier we’ve encountered with the Judkins Park work: if vehicle volumes are to be maintained, then vehicle throughput has to be maintained, meaning our options to remove slip lanes, ban right turns on red or reduce the number of travel lanes won’t be allowed.

Highway lids are one tactic, and do decidedly make communities adjacent to highways less awful (my kid is fortunate, as advocates in the 1980s fought for a lid on I-90 in Judkins Park; his school sits on the lid instead of next to the freeway.) But lids are the proverbial band aid. By allowing the same volume of cars (and often more cars, as we saw in the Rose Corridor Project in Portland) to travel through the area, all the other harms of vehicle miles travelled still accrue. 

As Allison Sant notes in a recent Bloomberg CityLab piece about urban highways in New York: “While capping can have positive impacts in local communities, it will not limit the number of vehicles flowing through the neighborhood or fully mitigate their effects.” 

We have to tackle the public health harms that vehicles themselves create. Only then will we be able to have a city with vibrant public spaces and a robust transit network that everyone uses. That means mandating that all road projects must be designed to reduce the overall volume of car trips through and in our communities.

With a clear mayoral directive around achieving our VMT reduction goals, we can start looking seriously at other policies that would help us reach our targets. Where should we create bus-only lanes and traffic diverters to make transit, walking, riding and rolling more appealing travel options? Where can we pedestrianize public spaces, creating play streets and places for all of us to connect with our neighbors, especially in neighborhoods that are being upzoned to include more people?

The post Op-Ed: Nobody Wants to Live Next to a Highway first appeared on The Urbanist.

A cheaper line is a buildable line

The Bellevue-to-Issaquah corridor is one of the most straightforward segments in ST3. Most of the alignment can run at grade in the I-90 median, within the existing right-of-way owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). That means lower land acquisition costs, simpler construction, and a fraction of the expense of the tunneled and elevated segments elsewhere in the system.

Our proposal starts with cutting parking garages. Structured parking is among the most expensive and least effective ways to generate ridership – a single garage can cost as much as an entire station. Eliminating garages from the project scope would free up substantial capital while producing a better outcome, because what replaces them (housing) matters more.

We are also prepared to partner directly with Sound Transit on project costs, including sharing the expense of land acquisition for construction staging. We have already begun working with Sound Transit staff, WSDOT, and the Puget Sound Regional Council to evaluate station area options, prioritizing cost and feasibility over perfection.

This is the approach Redmond took with its 2 Line stations: settle the route early through transparent engagement, do the hard work upfront, and be ready when the money is available. The result was stations that opened under budget and ahead of schedule, surrounded by new housing and jobs.

Housing, not garages

Here is the part that should matter most to this readership: Issaquah is serious about the land-use changes that make light rail worth building.

Central Issaquah today is dominated by big-box retail and surface parking. It was planned decades ago around car access. But the bones of the area are good: it is flat, centrally located, adjacent to I-90, and surrounded by major employers. The vision for housing is already in the plan. What has held it back is a development code with outdated requirements, costly standards, and permitting processes that make building impractical.

We can’t speak for every member of the city government, but the direction is clear. At the city council’s recent public retreat, housing in Central Issaquah was identified as a top priority for 2026. The mayor’s office has echoed that urgency. A station surrounded by walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods rather than parking structures is not just a compromise, but also a better project.

This is the piece that critics of the 4 Line consistently overlook. Ridership projections for the corridor are based on moderate extrapolations from today’s land use and ridership areas: the big-box stores, the parking lots, the office parks. However, infrastructure is generational. The question is not what Central Issaquah alone looks like now. It is what the Eastside overall looks like in 50 to 100 years with this connection versus without it. 

Bel-Red was an industrial district before Sound Transit committed to running the 2 Line through it. Today, it is one of the fastest-growing urban villages on the Eastside.

A node, not an endpoint

A station in Central Issaquah should not be thought of as the end of the line. It is a hub where bus rapid transit from Sammamish, Snoqualmie, North Bend, and Maple Valley could connect into the regional light rail network. For families, workers, and students in those communities, there is currently no realistic transit alternative to driving.

By 2044, Issaquah’s major employers, including Costco’s world headquarters, REI, and Swedish Hospital, are expected to add thousands of jobs. Many employees at nearby Eastside companies already live in Issaquah. The demand is real, it is growing, and the 4 Line’s value extends far beyond the riders it serves on day one.

Trust is fragile

Issaquah’s precincts passed the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) ballot measure by just 50.5%. We do not take that support for granted. Deferring voter-approved projects to a hypothetical ST4 would erode the public trust on which all future transit measures depend. We recognize that once trust is gone, winning it back is extraordinarily difficult.

Every month of delay makes costs higher and the political case harder. But Issaquah is not asking Sound Transit to keep the line on the schedule and hope for the best. We are offering to help solve the problem: cheaper construction, shared costs, and the land-use commitments that make the investment worthwhile. If Issaquah can show that cities and transit agencies, working together, can deliver projects faster, cheaper, and better, that model strengthens the case for transit investment across the entire region.

The Sound Transit Board will hold a retreat on March 18 and make key decisions on the ST3 system plan later this year. If you believe the Eastside deserves this connection, now is the time to show up.

Let’s build the thing.

Mark Mullet is the Mayor of Issaquah. Kelly Jiang and Kevin Nichols serve on the Issaquah City Council.

The post Op-Ed: Issaquah’s Plan to Build Its Rail Line Faster and Cheaper first appeared on The Urbanist.

King County is staring down a fiscal cliff that threatens to dismantle the services our communities rely on most. We are facing a projected General Fund shortfall of roughly $150 million for the 2026-2027 biennium, and this is not a result of mismanagement or a temporary glitch. It is a structural failure that has been manufactured by the state.

For decades, the arbitrary 1% cap on property tax revenue growth has strangled our ability to keep up with basic costs. While inflation and population growth have soared, our revenue has been artificially suppressed. We are being asked to run a 2026 county on a 2001 revenue model, and the math simply does not work without new tools.

This is why the state legislature must pass House Bill 2442.

For over a decade, local leaders have been asking for the authority to do more than the incremental 0.01% tax increases we are currently limited to. We have been asking for the toolbox to fix our own house. HB 2442 grants us that authority and allows local governments to explore new revenue options, such as utility taxes or expanded excise taxes, that can actually keep pace with the cost of providing services.

As a Port Commissioner and a candidate for King County Council District 2, I see clearly that our values of equity and justice are facing a mathematical reality check. To the readers of The Urbanist who understand that density and transit must be paired with robust public services, I want to be clear that HB 2442 is not a silver bullet. It will not solve every financial woe overnight. But it provides the one thing King County has been begging for, which is flexibility.

The state should understand the need to plug a critical funding hole, as they’re fighting right now to pass the Millionaire Tax in order to help fill their own deficit. It is long overdue that the wealthiest among us pay their fair share to fund our schools and statewide infrastructure. But, a state wealth tax fixes the state’s budget deficit; it does not automatically fill the hole in King County’s General Fund. We cannot wait for a trickle-down solution from Olympia to save our local clinics, our public defenders, our transit operators, and the vital services we depend upon. 

We need both solutions: We need the state to fix its own regressive tax code, and we also need it to pass HB 2442 and let King County save itself.

If the legislature doesn’t pass HB 2442, the county won’t just face trimming fat. It would mean scaling back public health services in a post-pandemic world and the loss of vital jobs supporting our most vulnerable residents. The status quo, one-size-fits-all tax cap is suffocating the economic engine of Washington State. We have the solutions, and we have the political will locally to make hard choices and invest in our future and workforce. What we lack is permission.

I urge the legislature to move HB 2442 forward immediately. Let us build a budget that reflects our values, protects our workers, and ensures that King County remains a place where working families can not only survive but thrive.

Send public comment to state legislators and track bill progress on the HB 2442 page.

The post Op-Ed: Why HB 2442 is a Lifeline for Cash-Strapped King County 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.

Senate Bill 6347 and House Bill 2725 are clearly titled, “Undoing recent changes to the estate tax.” By reversing the increases in tax rates on the very wealthy, especially the billionaires, this proposal would result in a revenue loss to the state of almost $200 million a year starting this July. That revenue is supposed to go into the Education Legacy Trust Account – a crucial funding vehicle for early childhood education.  

Last year, the Legislature’s actions exempted almost 45% of estates that would have been taxed from paying the tax altogether, and reduced the tax on another 40% of estates. The loss was made up for by increasing rates on estates valued at more than $15 million. That is literally a couple of dozen estates each year.  

By reversing these rate increases, SB 6347 and HB 2725 are simply a gift to the children of the uber wealthy, children who did nothing to gain this wealth – a bow to the intergenerational and antidemocratic transfer of income, power, and political influence.

This isn’t a proposal from a right-wing corporate backed backbencher. It is sponsored in the House by Joe Fitzgibbon (D-Seattle, 34th LD), the Democratic Majority Leader, along with other Democrats (and no Republicans) and in the Senate by Vandana Slatter, who ran and won a special election as a progressive Democrat in Legislative District 48. 

This estate tax cut just passed 38-11.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 5:52 PM

SB 6347 was voted through the Senate Ways and Means Committee, with support from Chair June Robinson (D-Everett, 38th LD) and Vice Chairs Derek Stanford (D-Bothell, 1st LD) and Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma, 27th LD), and all Republicans. The only Democrats who voted no in committee were Noel Frame (D-Seattle, 36th LD) and Bob Hasegawa (D-Seattle, 11th LD). On Monday, the legislation passed the full Senate in a 38-11 vote. 

The tally.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 5:52 PM

How do the Democrats, allegedly trying to fill a multi-billionaire deficit in the state budget, decide to relinquish half a billion dollars every biennium to billionaires? It really doesn’t take much – a phone call, an aside at a celebration, a quiet visit to elected officials. It is hard to track – but it happens. 

The result is that the legislative leadership is rewarding the billionaires and centimillionaires, including those who covered up their relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. Our state leaders are more comfortable stooping to these billionaires and begging them for money, for services like early learning, rather than actually taxing them like the rest of us.

After George Bush and the Republican Congress pretty much leveled the federal estate tax in 2002, Bill Gates Sr. helped to develop our own estate tax, understanding that wealthy individuals have an obligation to pay back into the society that provided them with the infrastructure to succeed. This is especially true in our state, with wealth accumulating over decades without paying one dollar in state income taxes. The people understood this. In 2006, Washington state voters endorsed the estate tax by a two-to-one margin.

Regarding the proposed giveaway to the already wealthy – there is a solution for Democrats: Don’t do it. Don’t vote for it. Don’t fall for it. If you do, you are doing the biddings of the ruling elite, not the children and the people of this state.

The post Op-Ed: Washington Legislature, Don’t Reverse the Estate Tax first appeared on The Urbanist.

Transit in Pierce County is at a crossroads. Everyone in Pierce County deserves to be able to take transit to get quickly and reliably where they need to go. But Pierce Transit’s service does not meet the needs of those who live or work in Tacoma, Fircrest, Lakewood, Puyallup, Gig Harbor, Parkland or Spanaway. 

Only two buses run every 15 minutes most of the day. The rest of the routes run infrequently and stop running early in the evening. And too many bus stops lack shelter or adequate lighting.

The lives of Pierce County’s youth, seniors, disabled riders, and working families have been made harder by infrequent buses, insufficient service, and undignified bus stops. People are stuck waiting for buses to arrive, or risk running late to jobs and appointments. This is because of previous County leaders who didn’t champion transit or invest in the system.

Pierce Transit is also facing the same cost pressures that transit agencies are facing across the country. Buses cost significantly more today than they did before the pandemic, and operators deserve to make a fair wage. Those cost pressures mean that Pierce Transit’s bus service faces cuts if we don’t win more funding for the agency. 

Reliable and frequent transit will put more opportunities within reach of Pierce County residents. It can connect people to education, comprehensive whole-child initiatives, and the jobs that sustain families and communities. Compared to other counties in Puget Sound and across the state, Pierce County is falling behind when it comes to delivering the equitable transit service its residents deserve. 

Snohomish County’s sales tax rate for transit is at 1.2%. Pierce County’s is just half of that. While Community Transit in Snohomish County has invested in new bus rapid transit lines and frequent bus service, Pierce Transit runs substantially less bus service than it did 15 years ago and has stretched its dollars to maintain the service it has.

This year, we have an opportunity to fix that. The Pierce Transit Board is considering a ballot measure in November 2026 that would expand funding for local public transit. Pierce Transit has publicly unveiled a long-range plan that would expand bus service, make routes more frequent, and create new transit connections to light rail.

Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC) and Tacoma On the Go are partnering with a broad coalition to advance a major ballot measure in Pierce County that will fund the urgently needed public transit investments that Pierce Transit has proposed.

Piece Transit has not asked its voters to fund better service for nearly 15 years when a measure failed in 2012 by only 600 votes. We know this next attempt can succeed. 

A poll TCC conducted last October found that 54% of voters would support a sales tax increase that would expand transit to new neighborhoods, extend how long the buses run, implement new bus transit lines, and connect to light rail. And that was before Federal Way Link light rail opened at Pierce County’s doorstep. This ballot measure will need a strong campaign to win, and transit champions are ready to do the work.

The political landscape has also changed: Pierce County has grown by over 10% since the last attempt. It has elected leadership and a Pierce Transit Board that are transit champions. And the need for reliable, efficient transportation options has never been more urgent. 

It’s past time to win better transit for the residents of Pierce County. One of the most important actions we can take to further mobility justice in this state is to get Pierce Transit’s buses running more often. Let’s make it happen this November.

Please join us. Sign up for newsletters from Tacoma On the Go and Transportation Choices Coalition to follow along with the campaign as it comes together and take action.

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Transportation Choices Coalition brings people together to advocate for safe, sustainable, and equitable transportation across Washington. 

Founded in 1993, TCC is Washington State’s only statewide policy and advocacy nonprofit dedicated to making transportation accessible. We work to expand equitable access to transit, walking, rolling, and biking — by advancing policy solutions, funding strategies, and building cross-sector coalitions that improve how people get to jobs, school, services, and opportunity. We pass policies that support more transit, bike, and pedestrian improvements at the state, regional, and local levels.

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Tacoma On the Go envisions a Tacoma where everyone can walk, ride, bike, and roll with dignity. We are Tacoma’s resource, convener, and advocate for safe mobility for all. We do this by:

• Advocating for transportation equity for all, regardless of background, ability, or circumstance
• Educating about transportation choices other than driving alone.
• Encouraging use of transit, ridesharing, biking, walking, and flexible work arrangements.
• Championing transportation choices and policies that promote community livability.

The post Op-Ed: Pierce County Must Run a Transit Ballot Measure in 2026 first appeared on The Urbanist.

The new sports field is an opportunity to reimagine the park for a denser community. Not only will Lincoln athletics be located in the park, but the areas east and south of the park are soon to be upzoned. To keep up with demand for athletic events in the park, the western side near Aurora needs positive activation to better distribute capacity during events.

Unfortunately, SPS has chosen a plan that prioritizes parking over accessibility and events. Their preferred ‘Option A’ plan would scrape the recently rebuilt Soccer Field #2 along with historic trees to cram two fields into a footprint that’s too small for them. Sidelines will be shrunk to the legal minimum and every side of the fields will be up against dangerous conflicts: BMX bike jumps to the west, the skate park to the north, a retaining wall against Green Lake Way parking to the east, and fencing to a baseball diamond to the south:

Athletic events will not be able to be hosted as there won’t be room for seating or safe space for visitors. SPS says Lincoln varsity games will be at other high schools as a result. Overcrowding will generate dangerous conflicts. As a local coach named Patrick says: ”I have coached and officiated games at the LW fields for 20+ years, and have seen the current over-use and limited parking and open space around the existing fields evolve into a crisis. Build new fields in Woodland Park – DO NOT put more density / use on the LW complex!!”

The design also blocks access to the park from the popular pedestrian crossing at 52nd street. Walking paths are eliminated and SPS has said people should walk on sidelines instead, including people that are walking their dogs. We can’t complain about dogs (and pet waste) on athletic fields if we let our designers plan our parks to be used that way. For safety, it is also likely the athletic fields will require fencing on all sides, further turning the park into a walled compound rather than an integrated community asset.

Additionally, the district’s plan would replace seven to nine large, century-old trees along Green Lake Way with synthetic turf and a retaining wall. These trees form a continuous line along the Green Lake Way walking path and are a clearly established design element of this Olmsted park’s character, visible in aerial photos dating back to 1936.

The plan also destroys recent investments made in the rebuild of Soccer Field #2, including the expensive lighting system, concrete visitor platforms, seating, and turf. The scope and budget of the project could be most severely impacted by Option A’s legal risks. By choosing a design that severs pedestrian access, generates hazardous user conflicts, and destroys historic resources, SPS is opting itself into a mandatory, multi-year Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process.

There is a better alternative: Option C

SPS first presented their Option A to the community on November 6, 2025. They looked at developing the gravel lot at 50th and Aurora as “Option B”, but they included a new parking lot and said the design was too expensive and impactful. The community responded with concerns and an alternative called “Option C” by the end of November.

Option C incorporates low impact versions of Option A and Option B. It adds a new soccer field where the gravel parking lot is now at 50th and Aurora. For football and events, Option C would upgrade Soccer Field #2 to a hybrid field with a grandstand.

Option C Part 1: At the athletic complex

Option C adds a north-facing grandstand to the upgraded Soccer Field #2, adjacent to recently renovated bathrooms at 52nd street. Paths and intentional spacing around the field are preserved so visitors can safely circulate and people walking into the park will not be blocked by field users or fencing. Trees, lighting systems, concrete platforms, and the recently installed synthetic turf of Soccer Field #2 are all preserved.

The upgraded central field would be given sufficient space away from dangerous conflicts with the skate park and BMX bike jumps. In case certain events require two fields, SPS could also utilize the nearby Soccer Field #7, located across from the Green Lake Pitch & Putt. To increase capacity and in case a third field is needed by another sports league, a new field at N 50th Street and Aurora Avenue N has its own parking and restrooms, preventing overcrowding.

The end result at the athletic complex would be a spectacular location for hosting events. The grandstand looks out over the upgraded Soccer Field #2, the softball fields, Soccer Field #7, the Green Lake Pitch & Putt, and will possibly have glimpses of Green Lake:

The way Option C avoids all the negative impacts of Option A are apparent when you overlay the impacted areas of Option A and Option C. Infrastructure, trees, access paths, public safety, and space for visitors are all preserved.

Option C Part 2: Developing the gravel lot into a soccer field

To add capacity and prevent overloading of the athletic complex, Option C develops the gravel lot near N 50th and Aurora into a soccer field. Spacing and trees will buffer the field from busy roads. The site and the adjacent picnic loop with 170 parking spots and bathrooms need positive activation. Removing vehicle access to the lot also allows for the addition of green space along the sidewalk, including rehabilitation of sidewalk trees.

The proposed soccer field added for Option C is only 300 feet long, which is a bit shorter than the 330-foot ideal. There are at least five soccer fields in Seattle or Bellevue that are 300 feet long: Whitman Middle School, Bobby Morris Playfield at Cal Anderson Park, Queen Anne Bowl, Marymoor (Field #5), and Grass Lawn Park (Field #1). Additionally, there will still be two fields in Lower Woodland Park at 330 feet — the upgraded football/soccer hybrid field, and soccer field #7.

SPS studied the gravel lot location, but for an alternative they called “Option B” that included a brand new 38-spot parking lot and space for a full sized football field at 360 feet long. That required destroying 78 trees and rerouted the paved picnic loop.

If you overlay the two options, you can see the much smaller scope of Option C on the site. By limiting impacts to the gravel parking lot, the scope of the project becomes manageable. Tree impacts are cut to a fraction of what Option C impacted, and no existing infrastructure is destroyed.

The only reason SPS offers for refusing Option C: The gravel lot parking spots are essential

When asked why they don’t consider Option C, SPS has either directly said the gravel lot cannot be removed without adding parking elsewhere, or they have hand waved “cost and scope” as a reason. SPS studied Option C sites with Option A and Option B, so Option C is firmly within the project’s geographic scope. In terms of cost, they point to their own Option B as why Option C will be too expensive, but Option B was expensive due to its massive footprint, which is because of the parking lot they added, which brings their reasoning full circle back to the issue of parking.

So is the parking in the gravel lot as essential as SPS claims? Is it so important that we should be sacrificing public safety, public events, the environment, park accessibility, park history, and recent infrastructure investments in order to save those parking spots?

There are 170 parking spots in the picnic loop directly adjacent to the gravel lot, and that number is plenty for a new soccer field. Regional events like cross county meets and cyclocross can move event hosts out of the picnic loop and onto the new soccer field, freeing up parking in the loop. Those events can also start taking advantage of the 120 spots and two sets of bathrooms towards the north end of the park near Aurora, locations that have been neglected up until now.

So who actually needs the gravel lot parking spaces? SPS has claimed that the gravel lot parking is important to the zoo, but the zoo has not used the gravel lot since it moved its primary entrance to N 59th Street and Phinney Avenue and enlarged their parking lot there. The gravel lot has also been shut down for years at a time when it has been used as a staging ground for construction projects, such as when Green Lake Way and NE 50th were recently repaved. The community has survived.

The truth is that the gravel lot is an ugly waste of space rather than an attribute. The construction project could open up opportunities to rehabilitate the trees that will surround the new field, to rebuild the curb where there is now a driving entrance, and to add green space and trees. Furthermore, having the field in the gravel lot will distribute activity away from the athletic complex, preventing overcrowding there and providing space for events.

Why has the process taken so long?

We in Friends of Woodland Park understand the frustration, and we share it. For the first year of the process in 2024, the focus was on whether to replace Wallingford Playfield or not, which turned into a huge mess and caused people outside of that area to tune out. SPS took a similarly high-handed approach when designing the field there, ignoring the community until they got a lawyer, then giving up. SPS designers then set their sights on Lower Woodland Park in the summer of 2025, but the initial focus on adding a track loop near the Green Lake Pitch & Putt was largely non-controversial.

Up until the November 6th meeting last year, outreach on football field placement was directed only to organized groups, such as BMX bike jump users. Park users not affiliated with groups were not notified or invited into the conversation. The first public communication was sent out for the November meeting, where the project team ruled out Option B as too expensive and said that only Option A was possible. No questions were allowed at the meeting, and it was clear the plan was set.

Since the November 6th meeting, over 350 people have endorsed a petition calling for SPS to abandon Option A and adopt Option C. At the Parks Board Meeting on January 22nd about 20 people spoke or protested in favor of rejecting Option A and advancing Option C. Nobody spoke in favor of continuing with Option A, and I am not aware of anybody in the community that wants Option A instead of Option C. Project managers responded to community opposition by cutting their presentation short and then leaving without taking questions or speaking with anyone. So far, the project team hasn’t had a single public meeting where the public was allowed to even ask questions.

It should not be this way. An example of how the Seattle process should work is when the South Transfer station was rebuilt in Wallingford. There, project managers did genuine outreach to the community, worked with people over a period of a year and came up with a mutually agreeable solution, then rolled out a transfer station design that is the best it could possibly be. The community was included, and no lawsuits required. You’d think it would be easier to design an athletic field that everyone is in favor of than to rebuild a dump that nobody wanted. The issue is that SPS is choosing to do outreach after they have already decided on a design, and that just doesn’t work.

What will it take to convince SPS to work constructively with the community?

The only advocates for Option A at the parks board meeting January 22nd was the City’s project team — Andy Sheffer, who is Seattle Park’s Deputy Superintendent of Planning and Capital Development, consultant project manager Paige McGehee, and Richard Best, Director of SPS Capital Projects and Planning. As they have refused to speak with the public, all we can do is make guesses based on the plans and statements they have put forward, and those show that parking is their foremost concern. Perhaps there are issues with Option C, and perhaps there is a better alternative yet to be considered, but as SPS has only looked at Option A and refuses to speak with anybody, we are stuck.

We as a community need to continue to try and get this project on track. You can sign our petition here, or reach out to SPS at their project page using the “Let’s Talk” feature. If you have questions or hear back from SPS, then please let us know at friends.lwp@gmail.com.

The post Op-Ed: How to Fix Seattle’s Plan to Expand Lower Woodland Playfields first appeared on The Urbanist.