These were the alleged stories documented in a lawsuit recently filed at the Pierce County Superior Court against The Geo Group, Inc., which runs Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), a private, for-profit immigration detention facility used by the federal government.

Two specific guards were also named in the suit. 

Three plaintiffs are alleging abuse at the NWIPC in bringing the suit against The Geo Group. All three are Black men who have been detained at NWIPC, two of whom remain in detention at this time. All the alleged events described above happened in 2024, during the Biden administration, but it appears such abuses could be ramping up under Trump. 

The plaintiffs contend that the treatment described above is part of a pattern of misconduct by detention guards, that new guards are trained to follow suit, and that Geo Group covers up said misconduct. Furthermore, they allege that one of the detainee beatings described above was utilized in a training video to provide new recruits “an example of what guards can get away with if they feel a Black male detainee is mouthing off.”

The NWIPC is located in the 27th Legislative District, which is represented by Washington State Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma). Trudeau told The Urbanist the facility operates like a black box, in that it is very difficult to learn what’s going on inside. 

“If it gets to the point where there is something that egregious being leaked [such as the lawsuit], there are definitely horrific things that are being accepted in that institution,” Trudeau said. She referenced the “level of violence and flagrant disregard for people’s bodies” showcased in the lawsuit. 

Trudeau said that civil detainees at the NWICP are treated much worse than people charged and convicted of murder in this country. 

The NWIPC contains 1,575 beds and has a long history of poor conditions. In 2008, Seattle University’s International Human Rights Clinic collaborated with One America to publish a report documenting human rights violations at the center (then called the Northwest Detention Facility).

“Conditions are substandard, and are not even in compliance with the National Detention Standards, much less international human rights law,” the report reads. “These violations, unacceptable in any circumstances, are even more notable given the fact that detention—originally intended to be short-term—often lasts for months or even years.”

The report documents a laundry list of horrifying conditions, including violations of constitutional due process rights, overcrowding, inadequate emergency medical care, inhuman and degrading treatment by guards, insufficient and poor quality of food, and more.  

“My perception is that that facility has continued to operate more or less the same under Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” Angelina Godoy, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) director, told The Urbanist. “The reality is that abuse has been happening even when presidents spoke more palatable language about immigrants, and that abuse is hardwired into the system as a whole.”

Elected officials such as Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, and Representative Adam Smith all documented their concern about this facility in 2018 and 2019. 

The Washington Attorney General has been fighting an ongoing case against The Geo Group since 2017, in which The Geo Group has been found to have violated the state’s minimum wage law. Detainees at NWICP used to have the option to participate in a voluntary work program that paid $1 per day. The state won an appeal last year in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The facility’s contract with the federal government was due to expire in September 2025, potentially giving Congress the leverage to improve conditions during contract negotiations. Thus far, The Urbanist has been unable to confirm the status of this contract. 

More recent research into conditions at the NWIPC

The UWCHR published a series of reports about conditions at the NWIPC in 2020, some of which have since been updated. This research gives context to the allegations in the recent Pierce County lawsuit. 

The lawsuit, for example, alleges that Geo Group “has long employed openly racist employees and permitted discriminatory conduct.” It refers to a Proud Boys sticker on the mug of one of the prison guards named in the suit. The Proud Boys are a far-right, anti-immigrant group known to have ties to white supremacists. 

Godoy, who led the research, told The Urbanist she’s heard many anecdotes about racial slurs used in the Tacoma detention center.

“It’s certainly clear to me from what I have learned about the place that it’s not uncommon for the racial characteristic of a given detained person to influence the treatment they receive,” Godoy said.  

UWCHR’s research also directly pertains to the lawsuit’s allegations about the Tacoma Police Department (TPD). The lawsuit said that two of the three plaintiffs reported the incidents to TPD, but the department “effectively ignored them and allowed Defendant Geo Group to investigate itself.”

A spokesperson for TPD said the complaint has been reviewed, and the department doesn’t comment on active litigation. 

UWCHR published a report in 2025 that found that of the 157 reported incidents of abuse or assault at the facility between 2015 and 2025, only two resulted in prosecution. These two cases were incidents where facility personnel were the reported victims, even though overall, most of the reported victims were detainees, not staff.

Godoy said she hasn’t seen evidence that conditions at the NWICP have worsened in the past year, other than the strain of the facility operating at capacity exacerbating already-existing abuse.

“In this sense, the abusive conditions documented for eight years by the UW Center for Human Rights—such as the overuse of solitary confinement, the denial of access to quality medical care, poor hygiene and sanitation, frequent uses of physical force and chemical gases, and a lack of adequate responses to reported sexual abuse — not only persist, but may in fact have become even more acute as the facility approaches its maximum capacity of 1575 people,” the report read.

Because NWIPC is a privately operated facility, it falls into TPD’s jurisdiction, but Godoy says that hasn’t always been clear to police officers or detention officers. However, in September 2025, TPD released a public policy acknowledging their jurisdiction over the detention center. Godoy says that while UWCHR has requested records to determine whether having an official policy is changing TPD’s response to calls within the facility, the slow records response time means there isn’t yet sufficient data to make an assessment. 

UWCHR’s research also revealed the detention center’s flagrant use of solitary confinement. In 2020, the report found that the NWIPC detained people in solitary confinement for longer than any other detention facility in the country, based on the average duration of each confinement. More than 80% of reported placements in solitary confinement met the international human rights standards definition of torture. The facility regularly used solitary confinement for people suffering from mental illness and people exercising their First Amendment rights (for example, through hunger strikes).

UWCHR was only able to obtain this data by filing a lawsuit against the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act. Once received, they found discrepancies between the data provided by The Geo Group and the data provided by ICE.

“Under international standards, the mere use of solitary at all in civil consent confinement facilities like the Northwest Detention Center is considered extraordinarily inadvisable and something that should not be done, period,” Godoy told The Urbanist. “So the fact that it’s not only happening, but it’s happening in ways that are secretive and unclear, and even the same facility has multiple books, like an accountant with two books, should lead to grave concerns about how effective any mechanisms for oversight or accountability are.”

ICE in Washington State

While abusive conditions at the NWIPC have been documented for almost 20 years, it is undeniable that immigration enforcement has greatly accelerated during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. In mid-January, ICE was holding about 73,000 people in detention, the highest number in ICE’s history. 

Data collected by the Deportation Data Project shows that during the first nine months of Trump’s second term, ICE arrests quadrupled. Street arrests became much more common, leading to a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions. Deportations increased by a factor of 4.6.

In the past, people would interact with ICE and not necessarily be detained, but this has shifted as well. “Once people have been arrested, changes in policy have kept them locked up in detention centers for longer or indefinitely,” writes Aaron Reichlin-Melnick for the American Immigration Council’s website.

“Maybe that’s what the [Trump] administration is trying to do, is get people so scared that they are leaving,” Trudeau said. “But they’re scared because they know that once they are in the system, they are going to be treated like animals, and that their family may never find them. […] We can’t abide by a system like that.”

Recent reporting from The Washington Post details ICE’s plan to spend $38.3 billion to acquire warehouses – the plan says 16 – and retrofit them into immigration detention centers. People will move from the converted warehouse facilities to eight large-scale detention centers that will hold between 7,000 and 10,000 people.

In 2025, Congress lavished funding on departments carrying out Trump’s mass deportation campaign. “The so-called One Big Beautiful Act allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year,” the Brennan Center wrote. “That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States.”

Investigative reporting by Wired showed ICE working to spread its physical presence across the U.S., with documents for more than 150 leases and expansions, giving ICE a presence in nearly every state. Those documents indicate a potential new planned detention center at Riverfront Technical Park in Tukwila, Washington, a convenient distance from Boeing Field. This news came after a December posting on a government website indicated ICE’s interest in having more detention space in the Seattle area.

Both ICE and the owners of the Riverfront Technical Park declined to comment to KUOW about any upcoming lease.

“I would imagine, especially in a place like Tukwila that’s so diverse, the ripple effect that will have in a community in that area,” Trudeau said. “You’re talking about Renton, Tukwila, Kent, this is where a lot of immigrant communities live. I think you’re actually going to find a chilling factor if something like that is introduced. I think you’ll find a lot of people that do not want to participate in any systems, including probably even taking their kids to school, if something like that happens.”

Other cities are taking action to prevent detention centers within their jurisdictions. In 2017, the Tacoma City Council passed legislation rezoning land around the NWIPC to prevent any meaningful expansion. The City won the lawsuit brought against it by The Geo Group trying to overturn the legislation in 2021. 

Meanwhile, Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck is sponsoring legislation that would put a one-year moratorium on any new or expanded jail or detention center within the city limits. The bill treats the siting of a detention center as a zoning issue, giving the City time to develop permanent regulations over the next year. 

“We cannot make it clear enough, the human rights violations at facilities like the Northwest Detention Center are unacceptable, and we refuse to stand by while the federal government continues their inhumane practices,” Rinck said.

The bill will move directly to consideration by the full Seattle City Council, with a possible vote as early as Tuesday, February 24. Should the bill pass, there will be a public hearing within two months to give the public the opportunity to weigh in.

The City of SeaTac, where a federal detention facility is already located, just passed a temporary detention moratorium, and King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda announced she’s working on a detention moratorium for unincorporated King County. 

Seattle Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa is planning to introduce an order on February 24 that would disallow nonpublic Port of Seattle properties from being converted to new or expanded use for immigration detention or enforcement support. 

However, the news of the potential new immigration detention center in Tukwila underscores the difficulty for individual jurisdictions to respond to what is a regional, or even statewide, issue. 

Trudeau, along with Senator Lisa Orwall (D-33rd LD, SeaTac), introduced several bills designed to address detention facilities on a state level. SB 6286 would have fined the NWICP if the Geo Group didn’t allow the center to be inspected at will by the Department of Health.

SB 6109 would have prohibited the state from investing in (and therefore profiting from) private detention facilities. SB 6304 would have insured responsible principles be used by the state for its investments more generally. All three bills died at the fiscal cutoff deadline. 

HB 2464, on the other hand, was passed out of the House on Monday. Sponsored by Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self (D-21nd LD, Everett), the bill would require private detention facilities to report allegations of abuse, death, and suicide. Law enforcement agencies would also have to report annually about calls and investigations at the facilities. The bill also includes standards to improve food access and quality for detainees. 

Meanwhile, The Geo Group continues to profit in spite of the documented abuses at the NWIPC. The publicly-traded company, ticker symbol GEO, reported a net income of $254.3 million for 2025, an increase of almost 700% over its reported income for 2024, which was only $31.9 million.

“Not only are you creating a situation where you’re dehumanizing people in concentration camps, but you’re also making excessive and exorbitant profit off of it,” Trudeau said. “I think we call that slavery and human trafficking.” 

The post ICE’s Tacoma Detention Center Targeted in New Lawsuit Alleging Abuses 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.

###

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.

###

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.

For Pierce County, Pierce Transit, and the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, it’s a new year, a new budget — but the same problems. All of these entities face serious financial hurdles, leading to layoffs, lagging service levels, and reduced program offerings.

Despite a balanced budget this biennium, Pierce County officials are facing the very real possibility of long-term struggles that could severely impact the County’s main focus areas, including public safety and affordable housing. Officials are worried that the federal government will slash local funding, and the County’s limited options for raising revenue could make dealing with a fiscal crisis particularly difficult.

Pierce Transit, on the other hand, is dealing with financial woes that began nearly 15 years ago. Its budget is only a fraction of what’s needed to meet demand for transit and offer service at comparable frequencies to its peer agencies.

The health department, also an independent entity, has this year faced a major budgeting setback largely driven by total loss of Covid-19 funding, less overall grant funding, and a decrease in Foundational Public Health Services funding. As a result, it had to cut 22 staff jobs, some of which came from program divisions. 

Pierce County

Let’s start with the overall county budget. Pierce County budgets for bienniums, or two-year intervals. This means that the budget the county council passed in late November represents the County’s funding plans through 2027. In 2027, it will prepare to pass another two-year budget.

This year, the County passed a $3.5 billion budget. That budget, said County spokesperson Connor Davis, “reflects both optimism and realism—optimism about investments that will make the County safer, healthier, and more connected, and realism about the long-term fiscal challenges we must solve.”

He noted that the County budgeted a modest 2% over last biennium’s budget, and prioritized minimizing risk while fulfilling the County’s essential obligations, keeping vulnerable individuals safe, and progressing on strategic priorities.

Priorities

At the top of the County’s priority list is public safety, Davis said. Nearly 80% of the General Fund went towards services like the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, the prosecutor’s office, and Superior Court. 

More than half of that funding went towards the sheriff’s department. The council has also planned to match the sheriff’s department’s funding requests, after Mello concludes contract negotiations with the Pierce County Deputy Sheriff’s Guild, the guild that represents management staff.

These negotiations have been ongoing for more than a year, and have entered into interest arbitration.

Davis also said the County is prioritizing affordable housing, as well as investing in behavioral health services and creating safer transportation infrastructure.

Long-term Projections and New Revenue

The law limits what the County can use as a revenue source. Its primary sources of revenue are property taxes and sales taxes, and for the next three years, the County’s financial reserves are projected to remain in the black. But that could swiftly change, particularly given the combination of threats of funding cuts coming from Washington, D.C., existing state and federal cuts, and the fact that revenue coming from these taxes just isn’t keeping pace with the rising cost of County employees’ salaries and benefits, and core County services.

“This imbalance, combined with state and federal budget cuts, has created a structural deficit for Pierce County,” Davis explained. “Projections show [County] reserves falling below recommended levels in later years. The County maintains lean staffing compared to our peers and we have implemented cost-cutting measures, including a hiring freeze for positions supported by the General Fund. Without new, stable funding sources, the County will face difficult tradeoffs in the future.”

One of the new revenue sources the County is considering is imposing a 0.1% local sales tax to fund public safety, as authorized in House Bill 2015, which the legislature passed last year. In Pierce County, Davis said, this tax would generate more than $27 million for public safety over time, increasing overall public safety funding by 4%.

Last autumn, the County convened a Public Safety Work Group to figure out a plan for this tax, if the Pierce County Council approves it. The group consisted of Mello, the Department of Assigned Council, the District Court, the Juvenile Court, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, and the Superior Court.

The group’s submission of the ordinance has been delayed, Davis said, and the Pierce County Council has not yet set a date to discuss it.

Transportation

Unlike in King County, Pierce Transit — the main transit agency in Pierce County — isn’t under County control. Even so, the County does have the ability to create transportation-related projects, funded through a mix of County, state, and federal money.

This biennial budget’s focus on public safety also extends to transport, Davis said, particularly as it relates to making the area safer for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

Davis highlighted a few projects, including the recently adopted Vision Zero Action Plan. The plan is meant to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on County roadways by 2035. The County also partnered with local school districts in unincorporated Pierce County on its Safe Routes to School initiative, which focuses on creating safer walking routes to school by prioritizing sidewalk improvements in specific areas.

He also pointed to the ongoing Blue Zones Parkland-Spanaway project, which is supposed to create healthier communities through a number of community-based improvements, including improving transportation infrastructure between Parkland and Spanaway.

The County recently updated its Transportation Improvement Program to include tags specifying when work relates to any of these three initiatives.

Pierce Transit

Pierce Transit has historically lagged behind its peer agencies in the amount of service it can provide. The number one reason for this, said Pierce Transit spokesperson Rebecca Japhet, is lower funding levels. (Japhet retired from Pierce Transit shortly after speaking with The Urbanist.) More than three-quarters of the agency’s budget comes from a 0.6% local sales tax. That’s the lowest sales tax percentage collected amongst Pierce Transit’s peer agencies, and it hasn’t changed for the last 23 years.

Moreover, Pierce Transit is a standalone Public Transportation Benefit Area (PTBA). It’s not part of Pierce County. Putting aside the fact that King County Metro is part of King County, when Pierce Transit stands in comparison to King County Metro’s budget, it’s no contest: King County Metro has an annual budget of about $2 billion to serve its 2.4 million residents, while Pierce Transit has just north of $224 million to serve about 950,000 residents. 

In other words, King County spends 3.5 times as much on local transit per capita as Pierce Transit.

King County also has its RapidRide enhanced bus network and plans to add new lines. In contrast, Pierce Transit has just one frequent route that runs every 20 minutes or less.

But the agency would like that to change, and plans to make changes as soon as funding allows. Japhet said that Pierce Transit spent 2024 and 2025 gathering community feedback about what they want from local transit — more service on weekends, more frequent trips, and trips earlier and later in the day. From that, Pierce Transit developed an updated Long Range Plan.

Now, the agency is creating a framework to provide more service, in line with that plan, should funding become available. While it did not commit to a higher level of sales tax, Japhet said that more funding “could” come from a higher sales tax that voters would have to approve. The agency is also looking at other revenue sources, such as grants.

Pierce Transit spokesperson Penny Grellier said grant revenue could fund bus shelters, transit centers, and maintenance facilities, as well as bus replacements. She added that operating grants are available for services like Paratransit or the Pierce Transit Runner, though these are usually one-time grants or represent limited funding.

Pierce Transit’s 2026 budget includes funding for a few additional services inside its service boundaries. These new services will start in March, and will include an extended Stream Community Line to Commerce Street Station in downtown Tacoma. It will also increase service on two different routes, Route 1 and Route 3, so that a bus arrives every 15 minutes between 6 a.m. — 7 p.m. on weekdays.

Route 1 runs on a 30-minute schedule starting at 4 a.m., and changes to a 15-minute schedule just before 9 a.m. It returns to a 30-minute schedule just before 6 p.m., and stops service at 11:30 p.m.

Route 3 runs similarly, on a 30-minute schedule at the start of service at 5:30 a.m. until 10 a.m., after which it switches to a 15-minute schedule until 6:30 p.m. After that, it changes back to a 30-minute schedule, until the end of service at 10:30 p.m. 

Japhet highlighted, too, that the challenges that Pierce Transit faces are not entirely new. The agency has a limited range, and some parts of the county are located outside its current service area. This includes places like the Key Peninsula, a largely unincorporated area located just to the west of Tacoma across Puget Sound that is home to two state parks.

This limited service stems from past financial troubles. In 2011, following declining revenues, the agency’s board of commissioners convened a Public Transportation Improvement Conference to address the issue through revisions to the PTBA boundaries. One official from each jurisdiction in Pierce County had the authority to decide whether their jurisdiction would withdraw from the PTBA.

In 2012, the cities of Bonney Lake, Buckley, DuPont, Orting, and Sumner chose to leave the transportation benefit area. Pierce County also voted to remove a large portion of unincorporated Pierce County, including the Key Peninsula.

Today, Pierce Transit services 70% of Pierce County. Japhet said that Pierce Transit is aware of the challenges facing particular areas, and is “always open to providing contracted service, should another organization provide funding to do so, and Pierce Transit has the resources (drivers, vehicles, etc.) available. This would require an organization paying for 100% of the service costs, since it would be outside Pierce Transit’s service area.”

She also noted that rural areas have lower ridership, which makes service to those areas more expensive to operate. Because routes are evaluated on their efficiency, it’s hard to justify serving rural locations that are further apart, since the low ridership means that the agency is spending more to move fewer people from place to place.

As far as the Key Peninsula goes, she said, the agency “continues to engage with elected officials and community leaders about how we can support transportation solutions for Key Peninsula. For example, we have coordinated with those planning the new pilot service to ensure riders can make easy connections to Pierce Transit service, once they are into our service area.”

Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department 

It’s not just Pierce County and Pierce Transit that are feeling the squeeze. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD) — which currently faces a biennial budget reduction of a whopping $24 million — recently made headlines after cutting 22 staffers.

TPCHD spokesperson Kenny Via told The Urbanist that the staffing cuts were lower than what was originally on the table. At first, he said, the board presented a budget in July 2025 that would have meant 40 people lost their jobs. But between then and budget deadline time, the agency was able to secure enough funding to save 18 of those jobs by both finding new funding sources and deferring hiring for open positions. He also said that the department put a voluntary retirement incentive in place.

Of the 22 positions cut, 12 were from the department’s administrative division. Those staffers originally supported program staff.

When asked how those 12 individuals’ work would be distributed, Via said that they came from “a wide range of support duties, including communications, finance, human resources, information technology, office administration, and records management,” and that the department is in the process of adjusting work in those programs and redistributing some duties, while ending others.

Of the remaining 10 who lost their jobs, six were from the agency’s Disease Prevention and Management Division. These staffers focused on STI/HIV programs, as well as the department’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Management and Immunizations and Provider Engagement programs.

Two more were in the TPCHD’s Strengthening Families Division. These staff members worked in the agency’s Parent, Child & Family Health program and Behavioral & Emotional Health program.

The last two came from the department’s Environmental Health Division, and worked in its Social, Economic & Environmental Conditions for Health program.

“We prioritized keeping positions that work to bring services directly to Pierce County residents,” Via said. “Because of this, we don’t expect the public to see any immediate impact on the services we provide.”

He noted that the agency has five open positions, three of which it is currently looking to fill.

Overall, the agency’s 2026-2027 biennial budget is $102.9 million, which represents a decrease of more than $24 million from its current budget. That decrease reflects a combination of changes to federal and state funding, Via explained, including decreased funding to Foundational Public Health Services, less grant funding, and a complete loss of Covid response funding.

The agency has a variety of revenue sources, but most of the TPCHD’s revenue comes first from permits and fees (39%), and then from the state (30%). It receives further funding from the County, federal government, private, local and miscellaneous funding, and the City of Tacoma.

Via noted that though the TPCHD had planned a certain budget, and that the county council had approved that budget, “things often shift over time. That will certainly be the case here as well. We usually amend our budget twice every year, in the spring and fall, with the most up to date information.”

The post Pierce County’s Tight Budget Forces Tough Choices first appeared on The Urbanist.

However, the idea of increasing the cost of construction just as reforms intended to increase housing availability and affordability in the City of Destiny, particularly the Home in Tacoma rezones, start to take effect has drawn opposition.

Impact fees on new development have been legal under Washington law for decades, approved as a method to fund transportation projects, add school and park space, and increase fire department capacity. That said, some of the state’s most populous cities have held off on implementing them.

With the ostensible goal of ensuring that “growth pays for growth,” transportation impact fees can only be used to pay for upgrades that increase a transportation system’s capacity, and not to correct any existing deficiencies or basic maintenance. That capacity can come from new vehicle space, or from new multimodal facilities like protected bike lanes and sidewalks.

Tacoma is eyeing impact fees to pay for portions of long-planned street upgrades that would have a big impact on the ability for city residents and visitors to get around without a car, including pedestrian and bicycle upgrades to 6th Avenue through the busy 6th Avenue business district, and a protected bikeway on Tyler Street in South Tacoma. Transportation advocacy group Tacoma On The Go backed the impact fee plan, and encouraged allies to speak in support at Council.

Unlike cities like Spokane, where an impact fee is levied based on the type of development planned — with denser housing projects charged less per unit than single lot projects or car-oriented retail uses — Tacoma’s new impact fee is blunter and varies only by the area of the city where a project is located.

Projects in North Tacoma will be charged $5,286 for every PM peak hour car trip that the City expects the development to generate, projects in South Tacoma will pay $5,208. Projects in the northeast quadrant of the city, near Federal Way, will only pay $764 per PM trip, due to the lack of planned transportation projects in that area of the city.

In defending the new fees, City leaders have been pointing to the fact that collectively, charges to build new multifamily development in Tacoma remain much lower than in nearby cities, including unincorporated Pierce County. Inclusive of all charges, including wastewater and storm water fees, a developer of a new eight-unit apartment building in Tacoma would be expected to pay around $50,000 after the transportation impact fee program takes effect, compared to nearly $120,000 in Pierce County and around $150,000 in Puyallup.

But even if the fees remain low by comparison to nearby cities, additional costs could make some housing projects within Tacoma infeasible, particularly during the current environment of high interest rates and increasing materials costs. As a city aiming to grow to 325,000 people in the next 15 years, a comparison to Fife will only go so far.

“We wanted to make sure that we weren’t making Tacoma’s fees enormously different than others, but we’re still coming in low on the graph there,” Councilmember Kristina Walker, who sponsored the proposal, told The Urbanist. “The other piece of this is that we are taking advantage of the development exemptions, specifically those for [transit-oriented development] and for affordable housing. So keeping an eye to that always, so that we continue to have especially affordable, transit-friendly housing built in our city.”

Under HB 1491, the transit-oriented development bill approved by the legislature earlier this year, Tacoma can authorize a 50% discount on impact fees within a half-mile of current and future rail stations, including the Tacoma Dome Sounder station, the T Line streetcar and its future extension to Tacoma Community College, along with a planned light rail station on Puyallup Avenue as part of the extension between Federal Way and Tacoma Dome. The City could authorize other exemptions, but under state law they would be required to make up the discount.

As co-chair of the Tacoma Transportation Commission, Matt Stevens had a front row seat for the development of the impact fee program, with meetings taking place on the topic between 2021 and 2025. He credited the City with taking out its pencils and developing a program that was more attentive to concerns around adding costs to housing, an issue that was also raised by Tacoma’s Permit Advisory Task Force.

“I would say that the Transportation Commission was very concerned with the initial proposal,” Stevens told The Urbanist. “I will commend the City, they did a lot of drafts to evaluate this. Because the improvements are the most needed in the historically disadvantaged south end and the Eastside, additional bedrooms — which which translate to additional trips — the more improvements we did in those areas, means it was going to cost a lot more. And so the city did a lot of analysis to understand that: how do we make it so it’s much more equal across the city, so that those areas that’ve been historically under-invested in, that they’re not having to pay for so much more, when they’re already on a much lower level on the scale.”

But that work apparently didn’t go far enough for three councilmembers, with concerns raised ahead of the final vote on both the impact of higher fees on housing but also potential legal risks to the city.

Councilmember Sandesh Sadalge, who opposed the ordinance, brought up the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Sheetz v. County of El Dorado as creating a potential risk to the city’s new program. A challenge to a local impact fee program in Colorado, the Supreme Court didn’t overturn the ability of local governments to collect impact fees, but did rule that such fees are required to have an “essential nexus” to a legitimate government interest and be “roughly proportional” to the impact of planned development.

“Transportation impact fees are kind of similar to tariffs — developers aren’t paying these. The end users: the renters, the triple-net lease on a commercial property, or homeowners, will eventually pay this,” Sadalge said. “But recent federal court cases have shown that there is an opportunity now for those developers to come back within 10 years and sue us and get that money back due to the nexus and proportionality requirement. I think right now, where we have both offsite improvement requirements on developments, plus this idea of nexus and proportionality, plus this fee on top of it, not only does it add a barrier, it is creating a legal liability where we’re just going to end up giving this money back eventually.”

Deputy Mayor Kiara Daniels, who left office at the end of 2025 after declining to run for an additional term on the council, honed in on the issue of looking holistically at how costs get added to housing, a basic need that everyone agrees should be more affordable.

“I’ve spent the last four years advocating for housing in this community, housing affordability, and I feel like we are neglecting some really hard conversations about what that looks like and what it really means to not just think about the regulation of housing, but also the supply of housing and how we balance that with our environment and our infrastructure,” Daniels said.

While wholesale reform of how local governments, especially under-resourced cities like Tacoma, fund transportation improvements is surely overdue, a broad swath of the city’s multimodal transportation advocates see the impact fee program as a positive step, at least in the context of the tools that are available.

“The goal here is to mitigate for more trips and continue the city’s vision of making it easier to walk bike and transit both for safety reasons, but also in terms of quality of life and helping people get around the city no matter mode what they’re on,” Walker said. “This is not separate from all our other transportation work. It’s built-in, based in Vision Zero and safety and equity.”

The post Tacoma Turns to Builder Impact Fees to Bolster Transportation Funding first appeared on The Urbanist.

Council’s newly passed biennial budget also allows the County to use the tax to backfill federal support it expects to lose at existing facilities, following funding cuts. Though the County has not lost any federal funding aside from a FEMA grant, County Executive Ryan Mello told The Urbanist they want to be prepared, given the “signals coming out of Washington, D.C.”

Named for long-time housing advocate and Tacoma resident Maureen Howard, who died following a battle with cancer in 2023, the act set a one-tenth of 1% tax on sales within Pierce County to generate revenue for affordable housing. That works out to 1 cent for every $10.

The tax is the County’s primary source of affordable housing dollars. Mello said it’s “a meaningful stream of revenue,” but “does not come close to meeting the scale of need in Pierce County. We have families, seniors, and workers who are being priced out of the market, and federal uncertainty only heightens that challenge.”

On the whole, Pierce County — the second-largest county in the state, behind only King — lags woefully behind in its affordable housing needs, and it takes many years for housing projects to come to fruition. As part of its 2022 Housing Action Strategy, the County estimated that it would need to produce an average of 2,300 units per year through 2044 to meet its housing goals. More than half of these are needed for extremely-low income households. The County is exploring new options—some of which the Housing Action Strategy outlined—to try to meet the need.

Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act

The county started collecting revenue from the tax created by the Maureen Howard Act in July 2023. The County had anticipated the tax to generate a little more than $18 million for affordable housing over the first year. By November 2025, the County had brought in more than $31 million from the tax.

In total, the County has estimated that the tax will contribute to the creation of 1,700 affordable units over a period of six years, based on an historical estimate of needing to provide about $50,000 in County funding per low-income housing unit built. That’s a fraction of overall building costs; so developers braid County funding with outside funding, such as state grants, philanthropic funds or low-interest loans, and federal tax credits.

The six-year plan for the tax specifies that 30% of revenues will go towards developing and preserving housing for those households at extremely-low income levels (30% AMI). This includes permanent supportive housing. An additional 20% of the revenue will be used for housing-related services, including wraparound services for people living in permanent supportive housing.

The Maureen Howard fund has already contributed to the creation of more than 1,300 affordable units, alongside other funding streams.

“The increase in the number of units is reflective of the awarded projects having more outside funding and a lower amount of County dollars per unit,” Mello said, noting that local public funding is important for developers to attract outside funding. “We’ve been able to get more new units than estimated due to strategic investments in projects that leverage a large amount of outside funding. This has allowed the County to stretch its dollars further and exceed the original estimate.”

The four housing projects funded this year

At its Sept. 2 meeting, the county council approved $12.2 million from the tax revenue to go towards four more housing projects in unincorporated Pierce County: Cedar Flats in South Hill/Frederickson, Chateau Rainier in Fife, FFC Homes XIV in Buckley, and Fairway at Dupont in Dupont. The County based its awards on funding criteria, awarding the first three projects all requested funding, and partially funding the fourth. The County denied six other projects from some of the same applicants that won awards.

The tax will fund about 650 affordable homes split among the four projects, with different developers handling the projects.

Macdonald Ladd Development, LLC, is leading the Cedar Flats development and the Fairway at Dupont developments. The 276-unit development at Cedar Flats development is projected to cost nearly $109 million, while Fairway at Dupont’s estimated cost for 113 new homes stands at just over $52 million. The County will contribute $7 million towards the Cedar Flats project and $69,752 to the Fairway at Dupont project.

The Pierce County Housing Authority (PCHA) will helm the rehabilitation of Chateau Rainier in Fife. The PCHA already owns the 248-unit building—but while it has been kept “naturally affordable,” it is not deed-restricted, and requires “significant capital repairs,” including new roofs, interiors, and windows, all of which will require tenants to relocate. 

The PCHA stated that it plans to add 76 project-based vouchers to the building, in order to make it more affordable. Of the 248 units, 96 will be for extremely-low income households, who are families or individuals earning 30% or less of the area median income (AMI).

Foundation for the Challenged, a nonprofit that supports people with disabilities, received $166,800 to buy three different 3-bedroom, single-family homes in the Buckley area, with the aim of rehabilitating and converting them into group homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living at 30% AMI.

The Washington State Housing Trust fund will finance the full project, which will cost a little more than $3 million, the Tacoma News Tribune reported, while the other three projects will be funded through combining their Maureen Howard Act awards with low-income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bond financing, and private sources.

More flexible tax revenue use

Council Chair Jani Hitchen said that the County sees stable housing as a way to reduce the number of people in crisis or caught in crisis cycles. In order to get to a place where people experience homelessness once, instead of repeatedly, she said, the County needs to “build capacity.” This also helps service providers by reducing the burden of need, which allows them to work more quickly with those experiencing homelessness for the first time.

“Some of the most challenging to serve require the most services from the county and community when they are not receiving services,” Hitchen said of the Council’s decision to prioritize tax dollars for vulnerable populations.

Because the County is working on increasing density along its transit corridors, the Council also added language to the budget to prioritize funding affordable housing developments along SR 7, the main highway that runs through Pierce County and Pierce Transit’s busiest bus route. The Council additionally added a specific proviso that allows the County to prioritize using the affordable housing tax funds for development and preservation projects located in urban growth areas. Within those areas, the County will “especially prioritize projects located within ½ mile of State Route 7 south of South 38^th St.”

Backfilling federal funding loss

For the last 10 years, the County has received nearly $200 million in federal support, and about 50 of its programs rely on federal funding for at least 75% of their budgets, the County said. These programs include transportation, healthcare, and affordable housing. Handling significant federal funding cuts will be a serious challenge for Pierce County.

While the County has yet to lose federal grants save for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant for its Department of Emergency Management, Mello said that “the signals coming out of Washington, D.C., make it clear that we need to be prepared. We can’t wait until cuts occur to start planning; our responsibility is to safeguard critical programs before disruptions reach our communities.”

This is why, Hitchen said, the County opted to add a proviso to the Maureen Howard Act that makes an exception for the County to use tax revenue to backfill lost federal funding.

“At the end of the day it is about keeping people housed,” Hitchen said. “I do not want to foot the bill for the federal government, for a service that should be paid for through programs from [Housing and Urban Development] or other agencies. But, if we find that the federal government is going to harm our residents by cutting programs, especially if we are seeing the potential for people who are stably housed to end [up] out on the street, we have left some flexibility in our budget to respond.”

Urgent need for more affordable housing

The affordable housing tax is currently the County’s only source of affordable housing revenue, but it’s clear there need to be additional revenue sources and strategies. The County has produced less than half of the affordable housing needed, according to its Housing Action Strategy (HAS).

The HAS, developed by Seattle-based consulting firm BERK, contains some bleak statistics. At the time of the strategy’s release, more than a third of the County’s residents were cost-burdened, which is defined as spending more than 30% of household income on housing. Of those, a little less than half spent more than half their income on housing. In order to meet this need, the County must produce more than 2,300 new affordable housing units through 2044, according to the study, adding  “addressing this challenge will require significant resources.” 

“Pierce County has access to funding tools for raising another $44 million in annual revenue for affordable housing production. This additional investment would make an important and meaningful impact,” the HAS states. “However much more funding will be needed. BERK estimates a remaining funding gap of $624 million to fully address the needs of households at or below 50% AMI.”

The study recommended the County utilize both the Maureen Howard Act and add an Affordable Housing Property Tax Levy to generate needed funds, as well as dedicate dollars from the General Fund to affordable housing. The County does not currently have an affordable housing levy, which would need to go before voters and earn majority approval. 

The study also advised attempts to attract private investments in affordable housing through tax credit programs and outreach, and establish a regional, coordinated housing effort, which it suggested an existing intergovernmental roundtable, the South Sound Housing Affordability Partners, could oversee.

Additionally, the study suggested the County expand its Multi-Family Housing Tax Exemption (MFTE), lower overall costs for developers to create affordable housing by making it easier to use surplus public land and assisting builders on “challenging” sites, and encourage “middle housing” development.

“At the Council level, we have been working with intentionality around focusing the various tools that we have, and potentially new tools like MFTE (Multi Family Tax Exemption) programs that the county has only used once,” Hitchen said. “In 2026, the Health and Human Services will be looking at establishing some MFTE zones in unincorporated Pierce county, and hope that this will be an additional incentive to get more housing in our urban/suburban areas, especially along our transit lines.”

Mello told The Urbanist that, in addition to its affordable housing tax, the County is considering other tools and revenue streams to bolster its housing strategy.

“The County is working with partner organizations, and governments on identifying public land for affordable housing development,” Mello said.

He said that the County has secured two public properties for affordable housing—Frederickson South in Frederickson, and a forested, undeveloped land in East Tacoma, both of which are owned by the Department of Natural Resources. The Frederickson development can hold 28 new homes, and will be geared towards households earning 80% area median income, while the undeveloped land will hold 24 new affordable units.

The County said it is coordinating three transfers of public property for affordable development and looking to acquire “additional” pieces of land in 2026 for affordable housing purposes.

Mello said a newer initiative aims to provide technical support for smaller developers and faith-based organizations interested in creating affordable housing. The County will host a developer open house or forum this coming spring, as well as technical workshops for prospective affordable housing developers.

The County is also working to help affordable housing builders acquire private property for affordable development via loans through the Pierce County Community Development Corporation (PCCDC). The PCCDC has already approved two loans for organizations to acquire land in Lakewood and Puyallup for future development, the County noted. Both properties will support units for elders, multifamily workforce housing, and people with disabilities.

The PCCDC already loaned the Olga Dor Cooperative mobile home park $750,000 to preserve 48 affordable units for elders in Parkland.

On the whole, Pierce County’s housing needs currently far outstrip its existing supply and planned stock of affordable housing. Mello did not say whether the County would pursue an affordable housing tax levy, but the County’s revamped Comprehensive Plan has begun pursuing some elements that the Housing Action Strategy suggested, including zoning updates to allow multifamily development in more places.

Pierce County includes a large number of urban incorporated areas, which the County council oversees and controls zoning policy. Nearly half of Pierce County’s roughly 960,000 residents live in unincorporated areas, and the County’s Comprehensive Plan update aims to continue growing in these areas, particularly in transit corridors, with 32,000 net new homes targeted by 2044. The County also aims to spur affordable housing creation, but has not set a specific target for affordable homes.

“We continue to look at working smarter and with broader partnerships,” Hitchen said of the County’s efforts to create more affordable housing. “The needs for affordable housing in our county far outpace what this one source [the tax] can do, but without it, we would be even further behind. If we truly want a thriving Pierce County, where everyone has a place to call home, we have to have a large and diverse inventory of homes.”

The post Pierce County Boosts Affordable Housing Creation, Leveraging New Maureen Howard Fund first appeared on The Urbanist.

The move will help to standardize the fleets within the two cities, giving Sound Transit just one type of streetcar to maintain in Tacoma and the larger Portland Streetcar system two types of cars rather than three.

“Our preventive maintenance schedule will be reduced to only one type vehicle, which doesn’t sound like much on the start of it, but it will be a major reduction and simplification of our vehicle maintenance program,” T Line Light Rail Director Robert Blackburn told the Sound Transit board’s rider experience committee last week. “Vehicle systems will also be one type of maintenance for our maintenance department to troubleshoot and repair operations and maintenance staff will only have one vehicle to be trained on, which will substantially reduce operator and maintenance training. Also safety and emergency procedures will be simplified down to one vehicle.”

On its face, the deal is a great opportunity for Sound Transit, which will be able to receive virtually brand new streetcars at a 30-40% discount, and offload aging cars that only have a few years of life left in them. Sound Transit will pay $6.6 million for each Brookville. In exchange Portland will pay $500,000 for each Skoda, deduct the cost of retrofitting the Skodas for the Portland Streetcar network from its overall payment from Sound Transit, and split transport costs. All told, Sound Transit is expecting to fork over $16.6 million in addition to its three Skoda cars.

But the issue at the heart of the deal appears to be a raft of problems that Portland has experienced getting the Brookville cars to operate reliably on their system, a fact that is being downplayed by both the City of Portland and Sound Transit. Those issues that seem to be driving the entire proposal, and make a deal that at first glance appears much more beneficial to Sound Transit more easily understood.

Portland initially received the three Brookville Liberty NXTs by piggybacking off of a 2017 Sound Transit order procuring vehicles for the planned Hilltop T Line extension, which more than doubled the length of Tacoma’s streetcar line when it opened in 2022. Since Tacoma’s vehicles were needed first, Portland’s first car didn’t arrive until spring of 2023.

The extra cars would have allowed Portland to return to 15-minute service on the Eastside portion of its network, but they weren’t ready for prime time. They entered a “burn in” phase — a set of final test runs before being able to carry riders — a year after they were delivered. However, Portland’s Brookvilles didn’t actually enter revenue service until March 2025, another year after burn-in testing.

Stephen Weber, the chair of the advocacy group Friends of Portland Streetcar and a former member of Portland’s now disbanded Streetcar Citizens Advisory Committee, has called the Brookville purchase a “$12 million mistake.” He’s cataloged myriad issues that the new vehicles have experienced since first hitting the streets, including recurring problems deploying the ramp for passengers with disabilities, issues displaying correct signage, randomly pulsing lights, the car’s decorative trim around the windows falling off.

“To call Brookville a ‘nightmare’ would be a gross understatement, and I regret Brookville being the recommended manufacturer for the 030-series back when PBOT [Portland Bureau of Transportation] still had the Portland Streetcar Citizens Advisory Committee,” Weber told The Urbanist.

Issues with the cars, including the mechanical problems that prevented them from entering service sooner, have been cataloged in meeting minutes recorded by Friends of Portland Streetcar, including some directly reported by Portland Streetcar executive director Dan Bower.

“While Brookville looked immensely promising in 2017, Portland was not delivered the train that was ordered in 2018. Instead, we were delivered a fleet that is widely loathed by operators and one that a replacement for is already being sought after,” Weber wrote in a blog post written this summer, before the deal with Sound Transit was announced.

Officials from both Sound Transit and the Portland Streetcar have pointed to the fact that the cars were initially designed to run in Tacoma, suggesting that issues with the Brookville cars won’t necessarily follow them from Oregon into Washington, and that the Sound Transit maintenance teams are much better equipped to handle issues that do come up.

“We’ve worked closely with Sound Transit throughout the procurement of the Brookville vehicles, since we ordered as an option on their contract. In that process the streetcars were engineered for Tacoma’s system, which doesn’t necessarily present problems using them in Portland, but they’re definitely more optimally suited to Tacoma,” Andrew Plambeck, public affairs manager for the Portland Streetcar, told The Urbanist.

At the same time, Plambeck downplayed Portland’s long road to getting the Brookvilles to work.

“We’ve had minor issues implementing a new vehicle type on our system, but no more than you’d expect with any new vehicle type. Just things requiring a new or different preventive maintenance plan, etc.,” Plambeck said.

“Our vehicle engineering group has evaluated the Portland Brookville vehicles for us over a couple trips to Portland,” Sound Transit spokesperson David Jackson told The Urbanist. “Their engineers and ours are developing a scope of work to put out for a contract to perform the work. Also, the Portland purchased their Brookville vehicles using our vehicle contract options we had in the Hilltop extension. So, the vehicles were built using ST vehicle specifications with minor changes for the Portland Streetcar alignment.”

Despite all of the issues Portland has experienced, Weber doesn’t necessarily think Sound Transit will fare the same.

“While Tacoma will be getting vehicles that are not service proven, I do think they have the better resources to make them work, and they will no longer need to carry spare parts for just three aging vehicles,” Weber told The Urbanist, noting that the scarce market for streetcar procurement in the U.S. is one of the main reasons agencies would be reluctant to go on the record about problems. The scarce market also makes alternatives to the car swap much more costly.

“Considering that Brookville is the only option I am aware of in the U.S. for if you have a system that isn’t built to accommodate a longer vehicle offering from CAF and their Urbos rolling stock, I think you’re going to have a difficult time finding an agency willing to go on record detailing issues with Brookville,” Weber said.

While the purchase agreement was already approved by a unanimous vote of the Sound Transit board’s rider experience committee last week, the budget amendment enabling the deal to go through still needs to be approved by the full board on December 18.

The post Sound Transit Brokers Streetcar Swap Between Portland and Tacoma first appeared on The Urbanist.

One of the reasons newly elected Tacoma City Councilmember Latasha Palmer thinks she won is that Tacomans were looking for “something different.”

“The results came as a pleasant surprise,” she told The Urbanist. “I think it really served as reassurance that the voters are … looking for not the status quo and something that’s going to be a little bit more effective.”

Palmer isn’t the only “different” Pierce County candidate to win, either. Anders Ibsen beat out sitting councilmember John Hines, even though Hines outstripped Ibsen in funding by at least $100,000.

Both candidates are strong advocates for middle and supportive housing, and transit-oriented development and earned the endorsement of The Urbanist Elections Committee. They also told The Urbanist they want to tackle traffic safety, which Laura Svancarek, executive director of Tacoma On the Go, said is much needed and within reach with the right approach.

Both leaders bring direct housing experience to the table. Palmer is a founding board member of Aya Community Land Trust, focused on preventing displacement and building wealth for Pierce County’s Black community. Ibsen is a managing broker at Windermere real estate. He also served as a Tacoma City Councilmember from 2012 to 2019.

Housing affordability

Tacoma has been chipping away at its affordable housing crisis for years, including implementing phases of its Affordable Housing Action Strategy and, more recently, updating its Comprehensive Plan to increase housing opportunities citywide, in compliance with a state mandate that went into effect this summer. The City’s plan targets about 59,000 net new homes by 2050.

A major part of this plan is called Home in Tacoma, a reform allowing a broader range of housing in former single family zones. The change is intended to foster the creation of “middle housing,” ranging from duplexes to townhomes to small apartment buildings. Proponents argue middle housing will promote family-sized housing attainable to middle-income households, foster walkable neighborhoods, support local businesses, and encourage transit use and upgrades.

Palmer told The Urbanist that a major part of her campaign that appears to have resonated with voters is focusing on housing from both an affordability perspective and a “housing first” approach to homelessness.

“We see what’s happening now with a camping ban and things like that aren’t working,” Palmer said, referring to the city’s recently expanded ban on camping that the council enacted in 2022. “[These policies are] just moving the problem from one place to another, and we’re seeing people need more options, as far as shelter goes. When that happens, it’s effective in other cities.”

She said her campaign approached affordable housing “from a place of permanently affordable housing — not just housing that stays affordable for a couple years and then goes back to the market [rate], but other solutions that have had success.”

Ibsen attributed his victory to his campaign’s focus not only on affordability, but on community collaboration. While door-knocking, one of the things he recalled hearing over and over again was concern over a responsible regional approach to housing stability and homelessness.

“People have concerns about […] having a real plan for affordability and economic development,” Ibsen said. “But just as important as addressing the issues was the level of follow-through, attentiveness and collaboration. I think that’s what people are really hungry for, and it’s going to be a major priority of my administration.”

Ibsen supports Home in Tacoma — but he doesn’t think the city should stop there, and should in the long term, pursue social housing.

While he admitted the city doesn’t have the same tax base as some other cities to support such an initiative, Ibsen doesn’t see that as an insurmountable obstacle. In addition to having “a more in-depth conversation” with existing non-profit housing authorities and Pierce County, he believes that the city should work more closely with the Puyallup Tribe.

“The Puyallup Tribe has done some amazing work diversifying their portfolio,” Ibsen said of the tribe’s different property ventures, such as waterfront restaurant Woven, and an in-progress shipping terminal in the Port of Tacoma. “Integrating our partnership with them for economic development and community building is something I’m really going to focus a lot on because the Puyallup Nation are great neighbors. I’m very, very much committed to not simply undoing the mistakes and the injustices of the past, but working together to build a better future for all of our community, tribal and non-tribal.”

Focusing in the nearer term on Home in Tacoma, Ibsen said the city should seek to encourage affordability through the land use and building codes, in cooperation with the Board of Building Appeals and community groups. His goal is to “ensure that we’re aligning the standards we have for the actual physical improvements themselves, along with the land, so that we’re doing everything we can to to encourage affordability [and] as many meaningful options for homeowners and builders and others as we can, while also being cognizant of our environmental standards and not sacrificing those and other important social goods.”

He also zeroed in on ensuring that there are both enough incentives for developers to create affordable housing, and that they are actually serving their purpose. 

“If we’re trying to encourage more ADUs [accessory dwelling units] or small multifamily missing middle conversions in our single-family areas, are there incentives that we can imagine for just average homeowners?” he said. He added that incentives should be available to households to allow them to age in place without “breaking the bank” and create more multi-generational households.

Palmer said that ideas like community land trusts and social housing were key elements that her campaign proposed, and that they built on things she heard the community asking for.

“The city has done studies in the past as to what can we do, and things like land trusts have come up in those studies,” Palmer said, referring to information included in Affordable Housing Action Strategy work, “but we just haven’t followed through, and I think people are ready for follow-through.”

Palmer said that she is particularly excited about Home in Tacoma, because it opens up several middle housing options for people who already live and want to stay in Tacoma.

“There’s so much opportunity for the city to support our residents in creating additional housing for their youth that are becoming young adults and find it difficult to afford a place on their own,” Palmer said. “You can build more housing in the backyard for your son or daughter. Same thing with the folks that are taking care of their elders, and having that opportunity to move closer to home.”

Palmer also sees the need to create housing incentives for community members, not just developers, particularly so that elders — who are increasingly experiencing homelessness and who are bearing much of the brunt of rising health care costs — can have stable care and housing.

“Home in Tacoma reforms made it so that […] it should be easier to make more middle housing, when it comes to things like ADUs,” Palmer said. “It’s making sure that those allowances in the zoning are accessible to our everyday residents and not folks just coming in and wanting to take advantage of those changes from the outside.”

Traffic safety issues

Tacoma’s traffic collision rate, as well as traffic fatalities, remains exceedingly high, with more than 4,000 crashes reported in 2023 and in 2024. The city is currently on track to exceed that number again this year, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s traffic crash portal. Dozens of those crashes are fatal, and hundreds result in significant injuries.

In a special election this April, the City came up short in passing the Tacoma Streets Initiative II, a levy that would have funded investments in safer streets, through increased maintenance work, spot safety fixes, and broader street redesigns that would have included pedestrian crossing upgrades and traffic calming features. Voters nixed the levy, which called for a 0.5% increase in utility taxes and a property tax increase of 5 cents per every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Svancarek said that even though this measure failed, how to make Tacoma’s streets safer is at the forefront of voters’ minds, particularly with a tight budget and the city facing a significant budget shortfall. She said that it is “critically important” for the new council to bring the levy back to voters, and that the ballot language needs to be clearer.

“I think people were confused by the ballot language, and we all can come together to do a better job to articulate what this is and what it will do for folks, especially how the city has been able to increase the value of taxpayer dollars through accessing grants,” Svancarek said, referring to the city’s ability to leverage matching funds the tune of $2.27 for every $1 approved by voters. “I think this is an example of how the city can really well-steward taxpayer dollars for issues that are very, very critically important. My hope is that the council and Mayor Ibsen will come out in significant support, and really get out there and speak to the people of their district and the city as a whole.”

She also pointed out that even though there was a one-time allotment of real estate excise tax (REET) towards the city’s Vision Zero plan, it wasn’t enough. Last year, the city council contemplated cutting the plan’s budget by 90%. However, Councilmember Kristina Walker (who formerly led Tacoma On The Go) successfully added an amendment dedicating $1 million in grant funding to Vision Zero, but long-term funding is uncertain, and the funding levels remain below peer cities.

“We need a clear plan on how we’re going to maintain at least the current amount of funding for Vision Zero in the next biennium, otherwise, we lose any momentum that we have,” she said. “Having dedicated Vision Zero dollars gives the city flexibility, to be able to fix things as they come up and be ready to move on bigger issues.”

Palmer said that even though Tacoma residents know traffic safety is an issue, they don’t necessarily want to shoulder another cost. While she is not opposed to resident-funded levies, she said that it “seems like there could be already existing dollars that we can move from some of the other things we’re doing in the city over to support that type of safer infrastructure.”

“I would be open to looking at that first and seeing what our opportunities are, how to make the dollars that we already have more effective,” Palmer said. While Tacoma residents know that money for safer streets has to come from somewhere, she said, “from what I’ve seen knocking doors and talking to folks, people aren’t very secure in the idea that what they’re paying for now in their taxes is going towards the things that they would like to see it go towards. I think there’s a lot of work to be done building trust before we would put something on the ballot again to pay for these types of things.”

She also floated the idea of other revenue streams that the city could consider, such as surtaxes on blighted buildings — “we could maybe bring in some more revenue that doesn’t just fall on the backs of our working folks.”

Ibsen said that one of the reasons the measure failed is because “we weren’t ambitious enough and we weren’t broad enough in who we were talking to.”

If the city were to “take another bite at the apple,” he said, the conversation would have to be multijurisdictional and multifaceted — in other words, not just approached as a roads package, but as a package that demonstrates infrastructure meant for social good. This includes activating neighborhood business districts and areas for transit-oriented development, bringing greater connectivity to downtown Tacoma, and making school and parks spaces safer.

“How can we achieve as many multiple mutual wins as possible, when we look at these things, instead of thinking of it as a monolith, like a street measure, and thinking more multilaterally?” Ibsen said. “How can we use infrastructure to activate space, enhance affordability, make neighborhoods safer and cleaner and just increase the wealth building opportunities for it?”

Public transit

Pierce County transit has faced consistent budget woes that bus riders, in particular, feel, as they wait for infrequent buses along county routes. Svancarek said that while Pierce County Transit is a “scrappy agency,” they still receive half the level of local funding as peer agencies in the region. Without additional funding, service improvements will be minimal.

In addition to successful advocacy for public transit funding, Svancarek said, local leaders need to be “fully invested in and understand the importance of it and be able to communicate to their districts and to the city as a whole why this matters, even for people that don’t ride the bus every day.”

“Pierce Transit … [gives] people access to opportunities, jobs, healthcare, community — all of these things, that are the health of our community as a whole,” Svancarek said.

The agency has been mulling a ballot measure that would bring additional funds to transit, and Svancarek said she would support such a measure, but added that “we all want to see that tax dollars are used smartly.”

“What we hear time and time again from folks out in the community is that they want to see higher [bus] frequencies, that go later into the evening and, especially, better service on weekends and weekend evenings,” she said. “What I would love to see start to come back into the conversation is bus rapid transit service or high capacity transit service in general — but that currently is not part of Pierce Transit’s long range plan due to those funding constraints.”

Pierce Transit’s bus rapid transit (BRT) plans died on the vine a couple years ago, due to escalating costs and budget constraints. The agency replaced it with the Stream Community Line, an express bus which does come with BRT-esque amenities, such as real-time arrival information.

“As we look at what it could mean to bring BRT back into the picture, I think it’s a really good thing to ask, ‘How can we start including those amenities throughout the system even without full BRT lines?’” Svancarek said. “How can we slowly build up?”

Thanks to her ridealong interview with Tacoma On the Go, Palmer specifically noticed that bus schedules in traditional bus stations along Pierce Transit’s routes were not regularly posted. She said they need to be, and also said that she noticed several smaller issues that need to be addressed to create a better transit experience.

Again, though, she wouldn’t want to put funding transit on Tacoma residents without looking at other funding sources, first.

“Everything’s so tight. Some of the things that the money has been going to in times of more abundance, we need to look at those things and see [if we can] allocate those […] so that our basic needs and the more pressing issues are being addressed,” Palmer said. “I think we look at the budget and see where we can move things around. And then if we have to, as a last resort, put an initiative on the ballot and bring people along with that process and have them understand [that] we tried to find the money in these other areas, but it’s not there. […] I say, yes, after other things first.”

Ibsen acknowledged that “transit is woefully underfunded,” and that “we have to have a thorough conversation about what does it mean to sustainably fund the services people care about, while also being mindful of the budget constraint that a lot of working families are facing in Tacoma.” He said he would work closely with Pierce Transit, in his role as mayor and try to be as forward-facing as possible to gather community input.

Correction: The original version of this article misspelled Laura Svancarek’s last name. It had also once stated that Tacoma’s camping ban was recently killed, when it was in fact recently expanded. We regret the errors.

The post Ibsen and Palmer Prevail in Tacoma, Pledging Housing, Safe Streets Push first appeared on The Urbanist.

Specific bright spots include Tacoma, Redmond, Burien, Woodinville, and Newcastle, where pro-growth candidates all currently lead. Which isn’t to say there wasn’t some backsliding: early results in Bainbridge Island and Sammamish point to a big housing backlash. But on the whole, the trends so far look cheer-worthy for urbanists.

Eastside

Bellevue‘s city council isn’t poised to see a seismic shift in composition, with incumbents Lynne Robinson, Jared Nieuwenhuis, Claire Sumadiwirya, and Vishal Bhargava all leading in their races. But eight-term Councilmember Conrad Lee’s career appears over, with human rights advocate Naren Briar leading Lee by nearly three points. With this council, Mo Malakoutian looks well-positioned to be the city’s next mayor.

Meanwhile voters in Redmond have resoundingly re-elected urbanist superstar Melissa Stuart, while at the same time sending Steve Fields and Jeralee Anderson packing. Fields and Anderson were the two voices on the council who opposed Redmond’s move to relocate the canceled Plymouth Housing project from Kenmore, an issue that right-leaning groups like Safe Eastside tried to turn into a central campaign issue — and failed at.

In Woodinville, the wave of cash spent by Coinbase cryptocurrency engineer Jeff Lyon to promote slow growth candidates appears to have fully backfired, with promoted candidate Rachel Best-Campbell losing in a landslide to challenger Amber Wise. Lyon himself is also losing to incumbent Michelle Evans, with fellow incumbents Sarah Arndt and James Randolph also doing fine.

Results in Kirkland were more mixed on election night.

Incumbent Neal Black, who has defended the city’s direction on housing densification, looks to be holding on while his colleague, Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold, is currently trailing Ken Oberman. Oberman is a part of the “sanity slate” promoted by the group Cherish Kirkland, explicitly formed to push back on proposals to consider allowing additional housing near Kirkland’s transit corridors. Catie Malik, another slate member, leads pro-growth candidate Shilpa Prem, but only by a hair — less than 300 votes. Both Arnold and Prem could be poised to take the lead, based on returns in the coming days. Finally, Jon Pascal, the only incumbent running who voted against the city’s growth plan last year, is leading significantly against Kurt Dresner, a leader with the urbanist group Liveable Kirkland — that lead looks harder to surmount.

Another election update: progressive candidates Shilpa Prem and Jay Arnold have TAKEN THE LEAD in their races for the Kirkland City Council after previously being behind. So much for that reactionary anti-growth backlash in Kirkland.

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 4:13 PM

Meanwhile, Sammamish appears to be entering a full-on housing backlash era, with Mayor Karen Howe way behind Debbie Treen, a former mayor of Bothell and wife of another serving councilmember, Kent Treen. Councilmember Sid Gupta is set to lose his seat, with his colleague Amy Lam likely only retaining her seat due to a write-in campaign siphoning votes from her opponent. And Michael Boyer is set to win a race for an open seat on the council against more pro-growth Lin Yang. At the heart of all these races is the Town Center Plan, and the current council’s consideration of alternatives to double the upper limit on growth that the city is planning for over the long term.

We also cannot leave out Newcastle, where progressives made a full sweep including incumbent Paul Charbonneau, and Chris Villasenor, Karin Frost Blakley, and Andy Jacobs, bringing the city to a full 6-1 Democratic majority for the first time in the city’s 31-year history.

And in Bothell, progressive incumbents Jenne Alderks and Rami Al-Kabra are cruising to re-election, while uncontested races see Prasad Anguluri and Brittany Miles joining the council.

North King and Snohomish County

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin looks poised to hold onto her seat for another term, after facing a right-leaning challenge focused on crime and homelessness from Scott Murphy. As a member of the Sound Transit board, expect Franklin to continue pushing for the completion of the light rail “spine” between Tacoma and Everett, and to de-prioritize other light rail projects (like those in Seattle).

The race for mayor of Lynnwood remains too close to call, with incumbent mayor Christine Frizzell trailing challenger and longtime councilmember George Hurst. Frizzell also serves on the Sound Transit board as one of its less outspoken members. On Lynnwood Council, Josh Binda is set to lose his seat after being involved in several high-profile ethics investigations. Incumbents Robert Leutwyler and Derica Escamilla are set to be retained, with more urbanist-leaning Isabel Mata winning an open seat.

In Edmonds, voters are set to re-elect pro-housing Chris Eck, but pick small business advocate Erika Barnett over the more urbanist-leaning Alex Newman for the open position 3 seat. Incumbent Will Chen will secure another term, but the biggest news to come out of Edmonds on election night was the wholehearted rejection of a ballot measure that would have raised taxes to salvage the city’s dire budget situation.

Lake Forest Park urbanist Josh Rosenau is absolutely within striking distance of beating incumbent John Lebo, trailing by only 14 votes as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile Kenmore voters reelected Nigel Herbig despite his support for the Plymouth Housing project that was ultimately moved to Redmond.

Meanwhile in Kenmore, progressive council candidate @tracyforkenmore.bsky.social is now just 37 votes behind her opponent, Joe Marshall.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 4:22 PM

Voters in Shoreline only faced a decision in one council race, with Chris Roberts, Eben Pobee and Laura Mork all running for re-election unopposed. The only open seat, currently filled by retiring John Ramsdell, is poised to be held by Valerie Snider, who campaigned on a platform of tree preservation and has voiced skepticism for Shoreline’s full-throated support of transit-oriented development.

South King County

When it comes to the King County Council, 30-year incumbent Pete von Reichbauer is coasting to another term against challenger Maya Vengadasalam in District 7. In the open race for District 5, attorney Steffanie Fain is narrowly ahead of SeaTac Councilmember Peter Kwon to fill the seat currently occupied by appointed Councilmember De’Sean Quinn. Progressives split on that race in the primary between Renton Councilmembers Kim-Khanh Van and Ryan McIrvin, leading to two more right-leaning candidates advancing into the primary. In the end, both The Stranger and the Seattle Times endorsed Fain, with The Urbanist making no recommendation.

Speaking of Renton: incumbents are leading in all races there, with James Alberson, Carmen Rivera, and Ruth Pérez all likely to secure an additional term on the Renton Council.

Federal Way, Kent, and Auburn will all retain their mayors, with Kent Mayor Dana Ralph running unopposed.

But the bright spot in South King County is in Burien, where an existing 5-2 moderate majority is poised to flip. Sam Méndez is on track to replace outgoing Councilmember Jimmy Matta, with former planning commissioner Rocco DeVito on track to beat incumbent Stephanie Mora. The council’s two left-leaning incumbents — Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia — likely to retain their seats. This fall, that slate of four candidates was endorsed by Representative Pramila Jayapal, a big boost for progressives in Burien. The Urbanist Elections Committee also backed the slate.

Pierce County

In South Sound, incumbent Bryan Yambe will retain his seat on the Pierce County Council, maintaining the existing 4-3 Democratic majority on that body. That’s good news for Executive Ryan Mello, who just took office at the beginning of the year as the first Democrat to lead the county in eight years.

Tacoma‘s next mayor will be Anders Ibsen, after incumbent Victoria Woodards hit the limit of two terms in that job. A former member of the Tacoma Council, Ibsen is leading current councilmember John Hines despite more than $100,000 in outside spending in Hines’s favor. That spending went fairly negative on Ibsen, in a move that may have actually backfired.

On the Tacoma City Council, Latasha Palmer is set to replace outgoing Deputy Mayor Kiara Daniels. Palmer will likely defeat property manager Jessica Johnston in a campaign that saw Palmer support the idea of implementing social housing in Tacoma and Johnston oppose the move. Sandesh Sadalge, who was appointed to his seat last July, looks on track to retain his seat despite a strong challenge from Silong Chhun, and incumbents Sarah Rumbaugh and Joe Bushnell are also set to stay on the council. Ultimately, the results point to voters’ support for the council’s current trajectory on housing, including the Home in Tacoma plan.

Kitsap County

Across the Sound in Kitsap County, there are fewer signs of hope for urbanist candidates.

Transportation advocates in Bremerton will be disappointed to see Councilmember Jeff Coughlin trailing incumbent Mayor Greg Wheeler. Wheeler, who opposed the Bremerton Council’s recent move to ditch parking mandates across the city, has nonetheless vowed to prioritize the issue in his next term, with Coughlin’s challenge likely sharpening those promises.

In Bainbridge Island as in Sammamish, a strong housing backlash looks to propel several anti-growth candidates into office. Incumbent Joe Deets, an outspoken supporter of the 625 Winslow Way affordable housing project, is on track to lose to Lara Lant, who explicitly opposed the project. Meanwhile Clarence Moriwaki, who has been more moderate on housing issues, is likely to be reelected.

For the open seat, currently occupied by Jon Quitslund, voters had to choose between two candidates who have opposed the 625 Winslow Way project as designed, including current planning commission chair Sarah Blossom, who voted against a zoning ordinance that would allow it to move forward. Instead, they look to have picked Mike Nelson, a candidate who has held an even harder line on housing, opposing “ultra-density” within the city’s main downtown of Winslow during the campaign.

The post Pro-Housing Candidates Make Gains All Around Puget Sound first appeared on The Urbanist.

This reconfiguration will be the biggest change to ST Express service in years, and will lead to the elimination of several routes where an alternative light rail trip would be comparable in terms of time spent, especially during times of heavy traffic.

With service to Star Lake, Kent Des Moines, and Federal Way set to start on December 6, and full 2 Line service across Lake Washington between Seattle and the Eastside on track to begin sometime next spring, riders will have an adjustment period before they see express bus changes. And many of the agency’s most popular express bus routes, including direct bus connections between Redmond and Seattle and Federal Way and Seattle are set to stick around, providing riders with multiple options.

How did Sound Transit decide which ST Express routes to pare back or eliminate and which to keep? By looking at actual travel times compared to new trip times on Link light rail, to get an idea of how often riders are getting stuck in traffic, Sound Transit’s Director of System and Service Planning, Emily Yasukochi, told the committee.

“When comparing the scheduled travel times and the actual travel times for the routes that we have proposed to change, shorten, [or] eliminate, we are finding up to 25 minutes of savings at the worst times to about, I would say, 10 minutes of additional travel time for some of the trips at some of the times,” Yasukochi said. “When it kind of went above that about 10 minute mark is when we were thinking […] these routes should remain fully bus routes, continuing all the way into where they’re currently serving.”

Changes in Snohomish and North King County

Sound Transit is making the fewest changes up north, where changes to the ST Express network were already implemented in the wake of the start of light rail service to Lynnwood last year. The updates in Snohomish County and North King County largely involve tying off some loose ends.

Route 515 between Lynnwood and Downtown Seattle will be fully eliminated. That route had provided riders with an additional option heading north from downtown due to expected overcrowding on 1 Line trains, but won’t be needed any longer with 2 Line trains set to fully extend north to Lynnwood and bring doubled frequency north of International District/Chinatown Station.

Route 522 to Bothell and Woodinville will see its western terminus switch from Roosevelt Station to Shoreline South Station at 148th Street. By that time, the City of Shoreline will have wrapped up work on its roundabout project along 145th Street, an infrastructure upgrade that ultimately took the place of adding a transit lane for buses heading to the light rail station. The 522’s reroute to Shoreline ultimately sets the stage for the final alignment of the Stride S3 Line, which will launch in 2028 with increased frequency along the corridor and upgraded rider facilities.

Route 535 between Lynnwood and Bellevue will see new Sunday service, and will get a frequency bump on Saturdays to every 30 minutes. This route is also set to be transformed into a Stride route, with the launch of the S2 Line in 2029.

Sound Transit will also reconfigure Route 513, which currently only provides service between Seaway Transit Center in South Everett in one direction during peak hours, to serve riders heading the opposite direction. The reconfigured route will stop serving the Eastmont Park and Ride.

Changes on the Eastside

A major era of regional express bus service will come to an end when Route 550 is fully replaced by light rail between Seattle and Bellevue next fall. One of the nine original ST Express routes, the 550 has been operating across I-90 since 1999, but will transition to a one-seat ride all the way up to Lynnwood for 2 Line riders. With 2 Line systems integration officially underway, that cross lake connection remains on track for a grand opening next spring well ahead of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup.

But other ST Express routes on the Eastside that provide a more competitive trip compared to Link are staying around, including the 545 between Redmond and Downtown Seattle and the 542 between Redmond and the University District.

Issaquah’s direct 554 bus to Downtown Seattle, on the other hand, is set to be eliminated and replaced with the 556, which will terminate in Downtown Bellevue. With increased frequency and expanded span of service that will include the entire day, the new 556 will provide a direct connection to the 2 Line at South Bellevue and in Downtown Bellevue.

Changes in South King County and Pierce County

As the launch of Federal Way Link on December 6 extends the reach of the 1 Line south nearly to Pierce County, Sound Transit plans some adjustments to the southern portion of its express bus network. But many of the most well-used routes, including the Route 577 and 578, which both provide direct connections between Downtown Seattle and Downtown Federal Way, will be sticking around. While a 1 Line trip is set to make that trip in 50 minutes, bus travel times can take a half hour or less, depending on traffic.

Most express buses between Tacoma and Seattle will also not see a change, including the all-day 594 and the peak-only 590. Sound Transit will terminate the 574, which provides direct service from Lakewood and Tacoma to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, at Federal Way Downtown Station, a move that will add a time penalty but also allow the agency to increase frequency on the route.

Sound Transit will eliminate the only direct bus between Tacoma and the University of Washington, the 586, with riders expected to utilize other buses heading to Downtown Seattle and then transfer to Link there.

Finally, the agency will eliminate the Route 580, which only provides a few trips per day between Puyallup Station and South Hill, with riders asked to take local Pierce Transit buses, including Route 4.

New overnight shadow service along Link corridors

Along with these changes to existing routes, Sound Transit staff also showed board members a brand new service proposal for ST Express: overnight service. Filling a major gap in the regional transit network, the overnight network will provide a transit option in the midnight to 5am window, and be especially valuable outside of King County — the only area county where the existing Night Owl network provides some overnight service.

Sound Transit’s overnight network would consist of three routes, all converging on Downtown Seattle: one from Everett, one from Redmond, and one from Lakewood with a stop at Sea-Tac Airport. Along with the Night Owl network, the new coverage would mean 85% of Link stations would be served by overnight service. But planned frequencies are still up-in-the air, and will likely depend on staffing at Sound Transit’s partner transit agencies.

Sound Transit taking steps to expand bus service across an underserved area in the wake of efficiencies gained with light rail service expansion would be a big regional win, though much depends on how that service is implemented.

An exact date for this major ST Express service change isn’t yet known, though fall service changes usually take place in late August or early September. Starting next week, Sound Transit will begin conducting public outreach on the plan, with potential tweaks to come in response to that feedback ahead of approval by the full Sound Transit board in the coming months.

Correction: a previous version of this article misstated the new route for the 556.

The post Sound Transit Queues Big Express Bus Network Changes after Light Rail Openings first appeared on The Urbanist.

The 7.8-mile extension will take the 1 Line to 41 miles in total length from Federal Way Downtown to Lynnwood City Center, completing the 1 Line vision funded in the Sound Transit 2 ballot measure, which was approved in 2008. Subsequently, the Sound Transit 3 measure expanded upon that vision after earning voter approval in 2016.

“Today’s announcement on Federal Way shows that the region continues to make significant progress toward our mass transit goals,” said Sound Transit Board Chair and Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers. “This is one more step in completing the spine and providing relief from gridlock and more travel options for our residents. I look forward to the day we open Everett, and Tacoma, and the other key elements of the Sound Transit 3 package.”   

An opening for Federal Way had been scheduled for next year, after Sound Transit connected the existing 2 Line on the Eastside across Lake Washington to Seattle and up to Lynnwood. But with testing on the I-90 bridge segment continuing to be delayed, Sound Transit was able to rearrange the order of operations when it looked like Federal Way would be ready sooner.

The agency remains optimistic that it can open the full 2 Line by next spring, ahead of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. As a host city, Seattle is expecting to see travel demand spike across its regional transportation network.

Mudslide delays

Like the I-90 segment, getting to Federal Way required some technical ingenuity and last-minute adjustments on Sound Transit’s part. As recently as the summer of 2022, the agency had been expecting to open the Federal Way Link Extension in 2024. However, a major issue with unstable soils in Kent emerged via a mudslide that summer, which caused the agency to overhaul plans and delay that timeline.

“On July 19, approximately 200 linear feet of embankment slid downslope by approximately nine feet, requiring a roughly three-day precautionary lane closure on southbound I-5,” Sound Transit spokesperson John Gallagher said in a 2022 press release. “The slope has been temporarily stabilized, and Sound Transit and its design-build contractor are working with the Washington State Department of Transportation on permanent design solutions that will address a liquifiable layer of soil that has been identified fairly deep below the light rail alignment. Work to identify solutions will remain focused on minimizing delay to the project.”

To overcome the soupy soils and earthquake liquefaction risk, Sound Transit added a cantilever bridge span over the problem section near the McSorely Creek Wetland.

The last-minute bridge addition was able to come together relatively quickly, clearing the way for the project opening this December. Sound Transit reported solid progress on Federal Way Link this summer, but at the time only went as far as pledging an early 2026 opening.

Federal Way Link leapfrogging the westward 2 Line connection will present challenges for operations in the interim period. Sound Transit’s second light rail operations base is in Bellevue’s Spring District. Without the Lake Washington crossing, the 1 Line’s lacks access to the trains stored at the Bellevue base, which had been integral to its ultimate operational plan. As a result, the agency will likely be counting on keeping in service nearly all of its trains stored at its central base in SoDo to meet peak frequencies.

Once the 2 Line is complete, operating a 62-mile light rail network will continue to be a challenge for Sound Transit. Recently, the agency has pondered projects to improve operational flexibility — some of which had been deferred to cut costs. Staff have also indicated the agency likely underestimated how many trains it will need to maintain promised peak headways.

Future headaches aside, moving up the Federal Way opening is likely to be a relief to riders who were itching to see long-promised expansions completed.

Federal Way Link housing plans

For now, all three station areas are decidedly suburban in character and oriented around park-and-ride facilities. However, Federal Way has made some efforts toward urbanizing around its Federal Way Downtown station. In 2024, the City approved a phased development agreement that could ultimately bring 1,600 homes to a city-owned site near the station, perhaps serving as a catalyst for further redevelopment.

A catalyst could be needed to spur some momentum, as Federal Way’s growth has been well below the regional average in recent years. A city of about 103,000, Federal Way added just 1,200 residents over the last four years, while Redmond (also a recent light rail addition) added nearly 8,500, according to state estimates. The City of Federal Way’s high impact fees targeting new multifamily homes likely are not helping, but they will need to be revised due to a change in state law.

Star Lake meanwhile is bordered by Federal Way to the southwest, Kent to the north, and the unincorporated community of Lakeland North to the southeast. The station is sandwiched between a green belt and a freeway, but may find riders from the apartment complex to the south. The eastern side of I-5 is mostly single family homes.

Redevelopment opportunities near Kent Des Moines Station are similarly limited by the presence of I-5 and Pacific Highway, a major obstacle to people walking, rolling, and biking in its own right. Nonetheless, Sound Transit did create two transit-oriented development (TOD) opportunities on agency-owned construction staging sites near the station. On the north TOD site, Sound Transit has signed an agreement with nonprofit builder Mercy Housing Northwest to construct at least 175 affordable homes.

Getting to light rail stations before they're actually open is always a learning experience. RapidRide A stops across the street from Kent Des Moines Station, but it's a ten minute walk thanks to Pac Highway. And then the signal across the highway didn't even change for me. Lots of parking though

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) August 28, 2025 at 10:06 AM

On the south TOD site, the Sound Transit Board of Directors had hoped to attract for-profit builder interest to create a mixed-income mixed-use development. That plan fell through. “Sound Transit did not receive proposals sufficiently meeting the RFP criteria,” the project website noted. “Agency staff will continue working with the City of Kent and the Sound Transit Board on next steps.”

On the eastern side of I-5, a series of large apartment complexes did manage to sprout along Veterans Drive. Unfortunately, the presence of a 90-acre Kent Highlands superfund site (formerly the Seattle Municipal Dump) limits the extent to which that redevelopment can continue to expand southward.

While TOD may be slow in coming, Highline College (just west of the station) will certainly attract ridership.

The post Federal Way Light Rail Extension to Open December 6 first appeared on The Urbanist.