But civil rights, privacy, and LGBTQ+ advocates say the bill doesn’t take the right approach to protecting minors’ mental health and keeping them safe. In encouraging companies to implement age verification systems to gatekeep their platforms, the bill opens a can of worms about the increased risk and difficulty these systems will cause to many marginalized people, as well as raising the more fundamental question of who is allowed to access the internet at all. 

“First, it will ban addictive algorithms for minors so they don’t get so easily hooked. And second, it will prohibit push notifications during school hours and late at night,” Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in an Instagram video explaining the bill. “And I know as a parent of two kids that those are the most susceptible times to some of the online behavior.”

Brown’s office specifically requested that the legislature advance HB 1834, which has been dubbed “Protecting Washington Children Online.”

“We have a plethora of documents that have been surfaced from our online services that are engaging with constant feeds and constant scrolling opportunities, including ads and other content, including ones that talk about causing reward deficit disorder, dopamine hits in teens that are undeniable, biological and psychological and the top down directives that drive all towards making sure people are coming back for more,” Callan said.

Maya Morales, founder of Washington People’s Privacy, said laws like these are extremely troubling for democracy. 

“The stated intention of these laws when they were originally pushed federally and across states was to remove the last bastions and shreds of the massive democratizing effect a free and open internet has had on our world,” Washington People’s Privacy wrote in a statement. “It’s undeniable that access to a free and open internet has empowered people’s movements, people’s speech rights, climate justice, LGBTQ+ visibility and rights, people’s education efforts, people’s ability to connect and communicate privately and securely, and even the ability of people to orchestrate uprisings and protest under authoritarian rule.”

In addition to civil rights advocates, tech lobbyists oppose the bill, as do some parental rights advocates and smaller tech companies who might not be able to afford to implement an age verification system sufficient to avoid litigation.

Opponents of the bill agree that children should be protected while online, but not through requiring age verification, or even incentivizing age verification. This distinction is crucial for understanding the arguments for and against HB 1834.

Advocates also have concerns that disallowing an algorithmic feed for minors, as HB 1834 does, will impede young people’s ability to discover relevant content on social media platforms.

The concerns around age verification for internet usage

Advocates have many concerns around the possible implementation of age verification requirements for using the internet. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote that age-verification systems are “at their core, surveillance systems.” Among the myriad of problems and risks of age verification systems, the EFF lists: 

• Loss of anonymity, ranging from journalistic sources to whistleblowers to domestic violence survivors.
• Loss of access to the internet for anyone without a legal ID, credit cards, or mortgage information, which disproportionately affects people of color, immigrants, unhoused people, and poor people.
• Higher error rates for age inference facial recognition for people of color, people with disabilities, and transgender people.
• Young people’s, and especially young LGBTQ+ young people’s, loss of access to vital information and affinity communities. 
• Increased privacy risks around sensitive data such as ID photos and biometric data that could be obtained through data breaches or sold to data brokers and marketers.
• Loss of access to, and the chilling of, freedom of speech.

There is a particularly increased risk to transgender people being forced to engage with these systems in order to use the internet. An estimated 43% of voting-eligible transgender Americans don’t possess IDs that correctly reflect their name and gender. 

The Greater Seattle Business Association (GBSA) wrote a letter opposing HB 1834 because it “would have unintended consequences for LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable young people who rely on social media for critical community support, a sense of belonging, and lifesaving educational resources.”

Proponents of HB 1834 argue that the bill won’t cause these harms because it doesn’t legally require age verification. The legislation states that tech companies must “reasonably determine” a user isn’t a minor instead of having the “actual knowledge” that would mandate measures like ID or biometric checks. 

“Our bill does not require age verification,” said Mike Faulk, the deputy communications officer at the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. “These companies can ‘reasonably determine’ age using the copious amounts of data they already collect from people. The bill does not ask, nor do we want, the companies to collect any additional data. We are bringing an amendment to strengthen data protection elements in the bill and are open to more.”

However, the EFF wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission about a federal bill with similar language, stating their fear that this language would nevertheless lead to age verification gates. 

“Litigation-averse companies are likely to implement some kind of age-verification process to avoid running afoul of the law,” the EFF wrote. 

Tee Sannon, the ACLU of Washington’s Technology Policy Program Director, said that HB 1834 would lead to the implementation of age-verification systems. 

“We all share the goal of protecting minors online, but age verification online is not the right solution,” Sannon told The Urbanist. “By requiring platforms to ‘reasonably determine’ whether users are minors, HB1834 will drive increased data collection and create new privacy risks for everyone.”

Sannon also warned that age-verification systems often involve third-party vendors that add another layer of vulnerability when considering data security risks. 

Gabriel Neuman, director of policy & advocacy at GBSA, also warned that not all requirements stipulated in bills are actually verified or enforced. One example is mandating that tech companies not retain any age verification data they collect.

“Many pieces of legislation contain requirements that corporations not hold onto verification data, but there is no way to ensure they actually do that, and they have been caught keeping that data in the past,” Neuman told The Urbanist. 

The legislature was considering another bill this session – HB 2112 – that explicitly required age verification. Brought forward by Rep. Mari Leavitt (D-28, Tacoma), the bill was meant to protect minors from sexual material that is harmful to them. 

Aside from the clear data privacy risks, a bill like HB 2112 would allow lawmakers to define exactly what material is deemed “harmful,” which could be so broad as to include all LGTBQ+ content, sexual education content, and information about reproductive care. A similar power of determination has led to the recent escalation in book banning across the country. 

 “LGBTQ youth already face high rates of depression and isolation for many, especially in rural areas and in unsupportive homes,” Danielle Skeany, the executive director of Gender Justice League said during testimony. “Online communities are their lifeline, and this bill would cut off that lifeline.”

HB 2112 didn’t make it through the policy committee cut-off date, meaning it’s dead for the session. But the fact that it was brought forward at all, and might be revived during a future year, troubles some advocates.

“We talked to national experts doing this work, and they were surprised that 2112 was even put forward and given a hearing in Washington state,” said Oliver Miska, the government relations specialist for Lavender Rights Project. “They were even more surprised that it was supported by Democrats.”

Adding further grist to the mill is the possibility that age verification systems might not even work as designed. Although more research is needed, a March 2025 pre-print suggests that when faced with these systems, many users pivot, either by using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask their location in order to bypass relevant laws or by using websites that aren’t compliant with the laws. 

Recent trends in age verification

The last few years have seen a push towards age verification on the internet, not only in the United States but also in Europe and Australia. That being said, it is difficult to compare age verification laws in other countries to those in the U.S. since many countries have much stricter privacy laws.

Similar age verification laws in other states have faced legal challenges. HB 1834 is modeled after a California law that survived the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals but is still facing legal action from big tech companies Meta, Google, and TikTok. 

This week, popular online communications app Discord announced a default teen-friendly space rolling out in March, with an age verification process for users who want to retain full site functionality. Some adults will have their age automatically estimated through Discord’s age inference model, while other users will be asked to submit either a video or a form of identification. 

One of Discord’s third-party customer service providers suffered a data breach just last fall that compromised age verification data, including images of government-issued IDs. 

Age verification laws in Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming restrict social media service Blueksky users from accessing their direct messages unless they engage in an age verification process that could involve official ID, credit card verification, or social security number checks. A similar law in Mississippi caused Bluesky to cease operations entirely in the state for several months last year before reopening at the end of the year.

On Tuesday, the State of New Mexico brought Meta to trial for allegedly failing to protect children on its platform from sexual exploitation. New Mexico’s Attorney General wrote that he wants Meta to start using age verification. 

Some privacy and LGBTQ+ advocates see this recent push for age verification as an example of a moral panic. 

“Personally, I think this is an extension of the purity culture that is gaining popularity in the United States – age verification requirements are a way for legislators to keep kids away from content they deem inappropriate. It can also be a way for them to implement their version of morality,” Gabriel Neuman, director of policy & advocacy at GBSA, told The Urbanist. “‘Protecting kids’ is a dog whistle that has been used against the LGBTQ+ community for generations.” 

During the hearing for HB 2112, Miska drew a direct parallel between laws requiring age verification and the MAGA agenda. 

“We don’t have a clear and safe way to do age verification software. We just don’t,” Miska testified. “Unfortunately, this bill is a page from Project 2025. It’s reminiscent of 19th century obscenity laws that would use vague definitions to target LGBT community and culture.”

Project 2025 implies that all LGBTQ+ content, and specifically any transgender content, should be classified as pornography, which should be outlawed, including imprisonment for its creators and distributors. 

Washington People’s Privacy links these age verification laws to the movement to undermine democracy. 

“The Heritage Foundation and other ultra-to-moderate right wing groups realized that the key to seizing authoritarian power and tight global control of all our earth’s resources was to begin by decimating any possibility of anonymity and privacy online,” Washington People’s Privacy wrote in their statement. 

The timing of the introduction of HB 1834 and other age verification-related bills in the state legislature cannot be divorced from the concurrent attacks on LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights, the media, higher education, and the U.S. Constitution.

The larger political context may encourage lawmakers to think creatively while developing other options for keeping kids, as well as adults, safe from the addictive algorithms used in social media. 

“There are better approaches, such as extending strong privacy and safety protections to all users without forcing age determination,” Sannon said. “We can protect minors online without expanding surveillance or undermining anonymity.” 

Washington People’s Privacy offered several ideas for legislation they said would be more effective, including “a people-first universal data privacy law,” bans on the collection of sensitive personal data, data minimization regulations, a law that would prohibit state and local law enforcement from buying sensitive data from data brokers without a warrant (modeled after the federal Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act), and tech education classes for kids and their families.  

Legislators have recently added two amendments to HB 1834 for consideration, but advocates say neither sufficiently addresses their concerns. 

HB 1834 could be pulled for a House floor vote at any time. Should that vote succeed, the legislation would go to the Senate to reconcile any differences between HB 1834 and the bill the Senate passed last year. 

Correction: this story has been updated with a statement from the Washington Attorney General’s Office that was not included in its initial version due to an editing error.

The post Washington Legislature Toys with Age Verification for Big Tech first appeared on The Urbanist.

In this video, Uytae Lee of About Here teamed up with Sightline Institute to talk about North America’s elevator problem. Lee discusses in depth how North American regulations are a significant driver for elevator costs and may be ripe for serious reform to make elevators affordable and desirable to install in smaller residential buildings. While the effort came up short in the Washington State Legislature’s 2025 session, a reform bill is back in 2026.

The post Sunday Video: North America Has an Elevator Problem first appeared on The Urbanist.

“AI will be harnessed to accelerate permitting and housing, improve public safety, enhance the responsiveness of services for Seattle residents, and enable more accessible and plain-language interactions to remove barriers,” the plan states.

The plan includes an AI training program for City employees and partnerships with academia, industry, and communities. Its definition of AI is broad, and because of its high level nature, it often lacks specifics.

The City will also be adding a new AI Leadership position to its Information Technology Department (ITD). 

“We are trying to be very intentional about positioning Seattle as a national leader in responsible artificial intelligence implementation, make no mistake about that,” Harrell said at last week’s press event. “We believe it will position us to be not only a strong city in terms of our values, but as a port city, as a maritime city, as a biotech leader, as a high tech leader, really fits into our fabric as a city.”

The City also unveiled its new associated AI Policy, which lays out rules for City employees’ use of AI, including a list of prohibited uses. It requires attribution to an AI tool for generated images, videos, and source code; attribution for text generated by AI is required if it is “used substantively in a final product.” 

The policy says employees must conduct a racial equity toolkit before using AI in a new way, and departments are supposed to work to understand environmental impacts of specific tools prior to procurement. How these rules will work in practice, and whether they will dissuade certain AI use cases, remains unclear.

The Chief Technology Officer, currently Rob Lloyd, is responsible for enforcement of this policy.

Seattle’s many AI pilots

The City has engaged in 42 AI pilots thus far, 24 of which are currently ongoing. 

Of the 18 completed pilots, the majority were designated for “general” use and included AI applications such as Fathom AI, Beautiful.ai, Otter.ai, Hootsuite, AI Calendar, etcetera, that perform basic functions such as transcription, calendar coordination, and content creation and coordination. 

One completed pilot by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) tested CaseGuard for redacting body-worn video for public disclosure. The Seattle Fire Department (SFD) tested the tool Corti to both provide audio analysis of non-emergency calls and for “Public Safety Triaging, Documentation, Quality Improvement & Training.”

Of the 24 ongoing pilots, 11 are being conducted within ITD. Four are currently running within the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI) with the goal of streamlining and speeding up the permitting process. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is testing software to identify intersections where engineering improvements can reduce the risk of crashes.

ITD spokesperson Megan Erb told The Urbanist that the Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) department is also looking into using AI tools to analyze call prioritization data, which might help them better dispatch the right resources to the right call. However, this is not yet an active pilot. 

SPD has two new pilots: one is an Amazon Q/Bedrock business chatbot “for general business, ’low-risk’ use cases” and the other is with C3 AI, which ITD says is being used to more easily reference policy information. Erb said C3 AI is not being used as a tool to assist basic criminal investigations at this time. 

“With AI being a new technology, SPD is gradually working on responsible governance for the use of these tools in the future,” Erb told The Urbanist. “As part of this process, the department is testing platforms in limited use cases, such as summarizing survey results to help present information in easier to understand ways.” 

Amazon published a blog post earlier this summer about possible public safety applications of Bedrock, focusing on the tool receiving noise complaint calls and automatically generating incident reports. Other use cases mentioned in the post include reporting of traffic incidents without injuries, abandoned vehicle reporting, and graffiti and vandalism reporting.

ITD did not share any specific current use cases with The Urbanist. 

When asked more about the Amazon AI pilot, Ben Dalgetty, a spokesperson for Mayor Harrell, said SPD is currently in the process of developing policy and technical guardrails for this technology.

“Future uses of this technology may have implications for the identification of complex trends and patterns used to prevent crime but a lot of work needs to be done before SPD is comfortable employing it in this way,” Dalgetty said.

This description sounds dangerously close to AI-fueled predictive policing, which studies have shown can lead to the disproportionate targeting of minority communities. Depending on the data used by the AI tool, this bias can be further exacerbated in a number of ways. 

A number of U.S. Senators sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice at the beginning of 2024, asking for grants funding predictive policing projects to be halted.

“Mounting evidence indicates that predictive policing technologies do not reduce crime. Instead, they worsen the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement,” the senators wrote. And later, “The continued use of such systems creates a dangerous feedback loop: biased predictions are used to justify disproportionate stops and arrests in minority neighborhoods, which further biases statistics on where crimes are happening.”

Meanwhile, ITD’s recent annual learning conference featured two Oracle executives demonstrating an AI software interface for police case record management. The software involved AI transcription of audio and video files as well as summaries of text. 

“There’s tremendous issues here, especially in the policing context, especially when we’re talking about going from something that’s originally an audio recording,” said Dr. Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington who specializes in computational linguistics. 

Bender explained that AI transcription technology doesn’t work as well when the language used diverges from the “prestige” standard, which can then cause more errors. AI models also have biases in the data on which they’re trained.

“The generative AI system is set up to basically output plausible-looking text based on the immediate input plus all of its pre-training data, and so it is very likely to output additional details that just look plausible in context but bear no resemblance to what happened,” Bender said.

Officers might not be given the time and space to correct transcription and other errors in such an AI system after the fact. Such a system would also harm accountability, as reports it generates could be presented in a court of law as an account from the involved officer, when it didn’t begin as a personal account from the officer about what actually happened.

There has recently been community concern around SPD’s use of generative AI in communicating with the public. PubliCola reported on an Office of Police Accountability (OPA) complaint from an anonymous community member alleging that SPD used AI to generate public-facing materials, including blog posts and a statement from new Chief Shon Barnes. While a well-known AI detection tool found the above examples to have been likely completely or partially written by AI, SPD denied using generative AI in “a substantive way” for communications.

This example shows a weakness in the City’s AI Policy, which is vague about what a substantive use of AI text generation entails. If the SPD communications above really were generated with AI tools, there should have been attribution acknowledging such. As PubliCola reported, the OPA referred the complaint as a “supervisor action,” meaning that there will be no consequences beyond training or coaching. 

Cascade PBS recently reported that in Everett, even after the city adopted an AI policy requiring attribution of AI-generated text, city staff hasn’t always followed the guidelines.

In addition to AI tools sometimes providing incorrect information (sometimes known as “hallucinations”), the use of AI could further erode trust in government, a particular problem for SPD as it seeks to rebuild trust in the community. Some critics have argued AI-generated text has no place in government communications.

“There are no appropriate use cases for synthetic text,” said Bender. “Setting up a system that is just designed to mimic the way people use language can only be harmful.”

Other concerns about City use of AI

The example of cities like Everett call into question the actual implementation of the City’s AI Plan. 

The recent release of OpenAI’s newest chatbot model, ChatGPT-5, which upon launch was unable to draw an accurate map of the United States or create an accurate list of U.S. Presidents, has accelerated criticism of generative AI and raised questions about the future of this technology. 

Even early into its deployment, AI has faced criticism for its environmental impacts. The data centers that power AI require large amounts of freshwater for cooling, and Bloomberg News found that two thirds of data centers built since 2022 are in locations already experiencing water stress. The power needs of data centers are also expected to grow, with McKinsey writing that power needs will be three times higher than current capacity within five years in the United States, increasing reliance on fossil fuels.

Promises that AI can readily replace human work have not necessarily materialized in practice. For example, the Swedish company Klarna began laying off about 700 employees in 2022 in order to replace them with AI, only to decide to rehire human employees this spring. 

Harrell emphasized that the City doesn’t intend to use AI to replace its workers and pledged to keep union leaders in the loop. 

“We work collaboratively with our labor partners,” Harrell said. “And as we look at certain tasks that could possibly be replaced by AI, we always make sure, as we sit with a human-centered approach, we work with our labor partners and make sure that these discussions are open and transparent.”

The AI Plan adds that “[a]s intelligent systems begin to automate routine and/or administrative tasks, job roles will indeed refocus on higher-value, creative, people-facing, and decision-making responsibilities.”

The Urbanist reached out to Protec 17, the union that represents many of the City’s workers. “We have recently been made aware of the City’s AI plan, and are in the process of gathering information and analyzing the impacts to PROTEC17 members,” their Executive Director Karen Estevenin said. “While we are concerned with many aspects around how AI could impact the workforce — including any reduction in positions — we also are interested in exploring smart, safe, and effective uses for AI that could support the work and improve the working conditions of City employees.”

Another issue that could impact City workers is the use of AI leading to deskilling workers. A recent paper in The Lancet found that enterologists who regularly used AI for polyp detection during colonoscopy became deskilled within six months, with the rate of a certain type of polyp detection without AI usage dropping from 28% to 22%. 

Earlier this summer, MIT’s Media Lab found that the use of large language models (LLMs) for essay writing “came at a cognitive cost” and used weaker cognitive engagement compared to people using only their brains or a search engine. 

“If the idea is to do these pilots and evaluate, then the City really ought to be evaluating impacts on deskilling of the workforce and the quality of service that can be offered,” said Bender.

There is also the question of accountability when using AI in the public sector. While both Harrell and the AI Plan are clear as to keeping a human in the loop when using these tools, these workers could potentially be used as moral crumple zones, taking the hit for AI errors. 

“Sometimes the person who is the human in the loop ends up taking the impact when something goes wrong, and they are effectively protecting the larger organization that decided to do the automation,” said Bender.

The push to adopt AI

In spite of the possible perils, Harrell is enthusiastic about incorporating AI into the City of Seattle.

“Artificial intelligence is more than just a buzzword in Seattle – it’s a powerful tool we are harnessing to build a better city for all,” said Harrell. “By using this technology intentionally and responsibly, we are fostering a nation-leading AI economy, creating jobs and opportunities for our residents, while making progress on creating a more innovative, equitable, and efficient future for everyone.”

Last year Harrell was invited to serve on the Office of Homeland Security’s Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, whose stated purpose is to develop recommendations for infrastructure stakeholders to leverage AI responsibly and prevent and prepare for AI-related disruptions to critical services. Harrell also serves as the Chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Standing Committee on Technology and Innovation.

During his speech at the State of Downtown event hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association this February, Harrell spoke of his concern around cyber security and AI, while also seeming to praise right-wing technology leaders who funded Trump’s campaign. 

“We know that our current president surrounds himself by some of the smartest innovators around,” Harrell said. “When we drop names like Andreessen or Peter Thiel or David Sacks or Elon Musk, these are smart innovators.” 

Ironically, Musk presents a strong cautionary tale for the use of AI LLMs in government with his work earlier this year at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In spite of Musk and DOGE’s stated goal of efficiency, The Atlantic found that the U.S. government actually spent more money this February and March than they did in the same months last year. 

Instead, DOGE and its role in facilitating the adoption of LLMs at the federal level have handed unprecedented power to the wealthy tech CEOs who control the contracted models: namely, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Peter Thiel (Palantir), and Musk (xAI). The AI systems currently in use by the federal government are leading to less accountability, less transparency, and the creation of a vast surveillance state.

In contrast, Harrell is selling Seattle as a leader in responsible AI implementation.

“You see the controls that we’ve put in for our AI policy, and our plan is to say that it has to go through responsible use,” said Lloyd. “There is a security process, there is a privacy consideration. And as we go through that, we are also saying that we will enable AI to make the City of Seattle able to solve civic challenges.”

The AI Plan calls for the creation of a Citywide AI Governance Group that will be responsible for providing input and guidance on the direction of the AI Plan and its priorities. This group will be convened later this fall after the AI Leadership position is filled. 

The Office of Civil Rights did not participate in the development of the AI Plan. However, they will be asked to participate in the governance group, Erb said. 

Bender said it will be important for the City to get specific about what they want to automate, avoid synthetic text machines, and choose use cases in a well-tested and sensible way that provides for clear accountability. 

Meanwhile, with the City facing a structural budget deficit, it could be tempting to use AI tools as a Band-Aid to keep things running. But that strategy is likely to create greater disparities.

“If you think about who has the ability to opt out of poorly provisioned city services, it’s the wealthy,” Bender said. “And everybody else is going to be stuck with what we’re doing collectively. So why don’t we do it well?”

Correction: The original version mistakenly identified Ben Dalgetty as a spokesperson for the City’s IT Department. He is a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office.

The post Harrell Pledges Seattle Will Be AI Leader, Plan Fuzzy on Details first appeared on The Urbanist.

Lately, I’ve been volunteering in policy areas like worker’s rights and immigration advocacy. Through those advocacy spaces, I learned that our state had a huge budget deficit. We were told it was unlikely that we would pass any of the policies we cared about this year unless our representatives passed progressive tax reforms to make the wealthy pay a little more of what they owe.

By spring, it became clear that this would not happen, despite lawmakers initially rallying behind the wealth tax and several bills to close corporate tax loopholes. In the end, we didn’t get many taxes on rich people. Instead, we got regressive taxes that impact small businesses more than big corporations. We got sales and sin taxes that only worsen our upside-down tax code, balancing the cost of running our state on those who can afford it the least.

Organizers shared why the much-needed reforms didn’t pass, and it wasn’t just Governor Bob Ferguson threatening to veto many progressive bills. It was also big tech. 

Because of their lobbying this year, Washington is cutting funds for public health services, childcare and early learning programs, and higher education. While families are struggling financially, we won’t see the needed increases in funding for our most basic social supports.

I started the Tech4Taxes coalition this year out of a strong sense of injustice. I knew those tech lobbyists were telling legislators the same threats they always do: “We’re so poor! If you pass these taxes, we’ll lay off your constituents, then write an op-ed blaming you!” And so far, their threats have been working.

But tech workers like me don’t enjoy being a bargaining chip to protect our CEO’s bottom line. And we know better than anyone else that their claims are false. They can absolutely afford to pay all the taxes that were proposed this year, and more. 

The CEOs of Meta, Microsoft, Uber, and Lyft are all making yearly compensation in the tens of millions – and that doesn’t even cover their other assets and wealth that we allow them to hoard tax-free. They are constantly spending billions on new hardware, just to serve more ads or create more sketchy artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It’s hard for the average person to understand just how small a dent that local tax changes would make in the bottom line of these global corporations.

The threat of layoffs also doesn’t ring true to us. Tech corporations lay people off all the time. Microsoft just laid off a bunch of workers recently for no good reason, as the company’s net income was up 18%. Washington choosing to make our state resilient and better for all of us is not going to affect how these big corporations operate.

In fact, making our state a better place for working people is actually in these corporations’ best interests. They can’t survive without a workforce, and we are simply not going to move. We want to live in a state where there are public parks, beautiful nature nearby, and progressive social policies – that’s why corporations are still operating in states with much more progressive tax codes like California and New York. 

It is sometimes easy to accept being a cog in the corporatocracy, but I find hope when other tech workers realize that we have much more in common with other working people than with the CEOs and lobbyists at our own companies. We work hard, and then we get arbitrarily laid off because the company wants to depress wages. We don’t have a union, and we’re often forced to work on projects that clash with our personal values and morals.

We are the actual people who work every day to keep enormous technical systems running – systems that are super critical to the entire world. Tech workers don’t understand our own leverage and political power, and our companies take advantage of that. Only our boss’s boss’s boss’s boss is actually benefiting from the lobbying that is happening “for us.” 

In general, it hurts your ego to be told you don’t deserve to live here, or that the tech autocracy is your fault. The truth for most of us is that we live here not just because of our company, but because we feel connections to the people and the land, the natural beauty of the Northwest, and our neighbors that share our values. In the face of our current federal administration, more and more tech workers are trying to figure out what we can do to help. Having more tech people stand up for a just economy, and having non-tech people hear that, is important for building solidarity. 

Advocates will continue doing our work because we care about making Washington a resilient state that doesn’t just tax our poorest people. Like always, there will be resistance from the tech lobby and the Governor. But we voters protected childcare funding when the capital gains tax on the wealthy was challenged at the ballot. Coalitions of people made sure it stayed. And if we want a state that works not just for tech workers, but for all people who live here, we have to face these challenges together.

The post Op-Ed: Tech Workers Must Challenge the Political Power of Their Bosses first appeared on The Urbanist.

The post Sunday Video: Trolleybus Technology Makes San Francisco’s Transit Superior first appeared on The Urbanist.

New legislation passed by the county council directs Metro to better track and report unplanned trip cancellations and improve communications with riders. King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci stressed the need as the council took up the motion, pointing out that ghost buses can discourage riders from taking transit and introduce a lot of stress about navigating the system.

“I think possibly the most frustrating thing that can happen is you’re waiting for a bus, you see on your app that it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, and then you see that it left, and you’re like, ‘No, it didn’t, I was standing right here, and it did not go by,’ possibly exceeded only by buses that go by early,” Balducci said.

The county council legislation was spurred on by the recent annual system evaluation for Metro, which showed that reliability is still a significant problem across the bus system and highlighted the challenge of unplanned trip cancellations. But unlike service reliability data, the annual evaluation does not directly report data about unplanned trip cancellations or buses that are operating but failing to track in real time. Such data is not directly factored into the reliability metric.

“I know Metro doesn’t control the third-party apps, but Metro provides the information and the data that feeds third-party apps,” Balducci said in a committee meeting in February. She expressed worry that data isn’t always getting pushed to third-party apps and said she would like to ensure that Metro does whatever it can to change that.

Metro currently provides real-time and scheduled data to the OneBusAway platform, which distributes data to other third-party apps. Despite the data sharing arrangement, rider ghost bus complaints have continued. Sometimes buses that are not tracking on transit apps still show up, but other times they are cancelled trips that never show up. The inconsistency makes it hard for riders to know what to expect.

Tackling bus reliability issues

Unplanned trip cancellations and service reliability are related but different service metrics. Trip cancellations happen because a bus never leaves the base, breaks down enroute, or gets stuck in traffic before starting a trip, or when there isn’t an available operator. Service reliability can suffer from some of the same issues, like traffic snarls affecting the timeliness of a trip, but measures trips that are completed and arrive at route time points a certain number of minutes ahead or behind of schedule.

Solving service reliability can generally be addressed by increasing service hours dedicated to a route or by coordinating with local governments to install targeted speed and reliability improvements (e.g., bus-only lanes and transit signal priority).

Meanwhile, reducing unplanned trip cancellations require different solutions, such as suspending trips on the schedule or ensuring that staffing and equipment levels are stable enough to support scheduled service.

Since the pandemic, unplanned trip cancellations have waxed and waned. In 2022, cancellations rose as service was restored, the operator staffing shortage persisted, and a vehicle steering column part recall forced the sidelining of equipment. Delivery of scheduled trips fell heavily that year, leading to a low of 93.8%. That was bested by July of 2023 when scheduled trip delivery slipped further to 93.2%, resulting in well over 700 daily trip cancellations on average. 

In response to widespread trip cancellations, the county council requested that Metro temporarily trimmed scheduled service to match limited operator and vehicle availability. Metro followed suit with an emergency service reduction in the fall of 2023. That led to significant improvements in delivery of scheduled trips, reaching 97.7% by the end of 2023.

Reliability up, but service and ridership still well below 2019 levels

But to achieve the gains, the agency did have to trim 4% of bus service, pushing it even farther from a full restoration to pre-pandemic service levels. 

Reliability issues and lower service frequencies are translating in lagging ridership recovery. Metro’s 2024 ridership was about 69% of 2019 levels, which was worse than the nationwide average of 74%.

Data from 2024 shows that Metro’s scheduled service delivery rates are even better, improving to a range of 98.4% to 99.1%. That translates to about 100 to 190 daily cancelled trips. It’s unclear if that’s the same level of ghost buses that riders are experiencing since sometimes buses fail to track with real-time arrival information on apps, and riders may give up on them if untracked buses are running late.

Metro’s official scheduled trip delivery goal is 99.7% or better, meaning that about 30 trips still end up cancelled on the average day. The agency currently operates about 11,500 trips each weekday.

The plan to address ghost buses

In terms of the approved legislation, Councilmember Balducci and her colleagues are calling on Metro to improve its handling of unplanned trip cancellations in three ways:

1. Metro will need to coordinate with the county council this year to identify how it can enhance real-time tools to inform riders about unplanned trip cancellations, particularly through third-party apps, and how cancellation rates compare to peer agencies.
2. Metro will need to include data on unplanned trip cancellations and the estimated number of riders impacted by cancellations directly in its annual system evaluation report.
3. Metro will need to incorporate unplanned trip cancellation metrics into the agency’s next Service Guidelines policy update. That update is due in 2028, so Metro has some time to develop useful metrics that can be used in the guidelines to inform operational and investment decisions.

For riders, the real-time information piece in the county council’s legislation will be the most noticeable deliverable. 

Metro currently offers a transit alerts tool that riders can sign up for to receive email or text message notifications. The tool can provide route-by-route information, including trip cancellations. 

Nevertheless, the legislation doesn’t directly address other ways that Metro communicates with riders. For instance, the agency previously published trip cancellation information on social media. That service was retired in early 2023. Service impact alerts also exist in isolation from other transit agencies, such as Sound Transit. That forces riders to consult multiple transit service providers for potential impacts when not using a third-party app.  

But if the county council is successful in its requests to improve real-time information and collect and publish better data, riders should see tangible results that make the bus a more attractive option to get around.

Ahead of the final vote on the legislation, Councilmember Jorge Barón expressed strong support for Balducci’s legislation, saying that he had just had a constituent interaction days before about ghost buses and outlining why he felt it was a meaningful tool.

“I think that for the rider experience, whether it’s the bus being delayed or the bus not showing up when, when it’s supposed to, it creates this tension that […] undermines our ability to provide the service,” Councilmember Barón said. “And so, I think it’s important that we have that information so that we can use it to improve the system and make it even better than it is today.”

This article was made possible by the generous support of The Urbanist Fund. The Urbanist Fund is a 501(c)(3) organization that supports local, public-interest journalism. See theurbanistfund.org for more information or to make a tax-deductible gift.

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Slaughter gives concrete reasons for his skepticism, including exacerbating traffic congestion, pollution, and the traffic safety crisis. Slaughter argues that cities need to start taking actions now to future-proof against more car proliferation in cities, whether autonomous vehicle or not.

The post Sunday Video: Autonomous Vehicles Deserve Heavy Skepticism first appeared on The Urbanist.

To use the new payment option, Android users will need to download and install the Google Wallet app to a device equipped with near-field communication (NFC) capabilities and then go through the process to add ORCA on the app as a pass. The steps are relatively simple:

1. Open Google Wallet;
2. Select the “Add to Wallet” option;
3. Select the “Transit Pass” option; 
4. Search for and select “ORCA”; and
5. Create a mobile ORCA card.

Users creating an ORCA mobile card will have the option to add money, add a pass, or transfer a physical card to their digital ORCA card.

Transferring a physical card to Google Wallet is free of charge and will pull in any existing ORCA e-purse funds and passes. This is available to all existing adult, youth, senior, disabled, and ORCA LIFT cards, except for certain employer- and organization-based cards which require the respective sponsor to opt into allowing digitization. 

Users will need to move through several steps, including entering the respective card number and three-digit security code, and a special e-mailed verification code if the physical card was registered with myORCA. By transferring a physical card to a digital one, a user will be issued a brand new card number and the existing physical card will be deactivated from the ORCA system, rendering it inoperative.

The other option to create a new digital card without transferring a physical one will incur a $3.00 charge — same as buying a physical ORCA card — and have no impact on existing physical cards that a user may have.

Users adding e-purse money or a new pass to ORCA will need to add a preferred credit or debit card payment method. The minimum e-purse funds that can be added to ORCA is $5.00, but users otherwise have flexibility to load any amount or set up daily or monthly passes, such as a Regional PugetPass and agency-specific pass (e.g., King County Metro, Pierce Transit, and Washington State Ferries). 

Once an ORCA card is created in the digital environment, it is mostly locked into the Google Wallet system and associated with the Google Wallet account it’s created in. Users can opt to move back to a physical ORCA card, but this will require coordinating with ORCA’s customer service unit, getting an entirely new physical ORCA card issued, and paying a $3.00 charge.

With ORCA loaded as a pass on Google Wallet, users will simply need to wake their mobile device and tap it at an ORCA card reader to pay for their trips.

Riders using Google Wallet, however, should be aware that a single ORCA pass is still only good for one rider, not multiple, and that they should keep their mobile device properly charged during the period of travel since proof of payment may be required. Additionally, riders with special types of ORCA passes, like RRFP and the U-PASS, should keep them on hand for other uses if they transfer the ORCA functionality to the digital environment. 

Other digital payment options, like Apple Pay and an integration planned for Sound Transit’s forthcoming Sound RideGuide app, remain unavailable for now. When that might change is unclear with ORCA officials only saying, “We are committed to bringing the convenience of mobile payments to all our customers, but we have nothing else to share at this time.” 

Another rider-requested feature, using NFC-equipped credit and debit cards directly at ORCA card readers, also has no defined timeline for implementation.  

The post Google Wallet Now Supports Digital ORCA Card Passes in Puget Sound first appeared on The Urbanist.