“That will teach you a lot about how our system works and doesn’t work,” she told attendees at the University of Washington’s (UW) OpenThePaths2026 conference on February 27.

Held by the UW Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, the conference was meant to highlight the state’s first-ever nearly complete map of pedestrian infrastructure, OS-CONNECT, which maps the pedestrian infrastructure across the area where 90% of the state’s population lives.

The map

While AI created that map, humans vetted it — and in opening the second day of conference presentations, Taskar Center researcher Anat Caspi, the host and moderator of the conference, said that humans would be continuously responsible for vetting and maintaining the data shared. She said that the center had envisioned the constantly updated map as a platform to encourage buy-in from the public and center people walking, rolling, and biking. At the same time, the Taskar Center would share the vetted data with different agencies and providers.

“One of the biggest issues that we’re facing with this data, as well as other areas where low information has existed, is that it’s low-resourced,” Caspi explained. “We don’t have a single source to provide us with data just as it has been available for car travel, and so car travel becomes the only mode we know […] about, both in terms of ridership, in terms of who’s there, what are they using, what roads are being used, and how much. But we don’t have this kind of information collected and shared across all the different partners that support active transporters, and so that’s really the vision.”

Caspi acknowledged that many institutional barriers exist preventing policymakers from “really subscribing to that shared vision and open shared data that supports non-drivers.”

Legislative advocacy

Balducci joined a morning panel alongside Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Rep. Greg Nance (D-23rd, Bainbridge Island), a sponsor of the Mosquito Fleet Act, which seeks to give local jurisdictions more tools to expand foot ferries. The trio, all of whom are pushing for accessible public transit in-office and in advocacy roles, covered a variety of topics, primarily focusing on how to get legislators to perk up, listen, and act on different community needs.

Rinck said that she’s among the 20% of Seattleites who don’t own a car, and who get around using public transit. But when does that 20% — or any percentage — begin to matter in public legislative discourse?

Balducci said that she believes it takes some sort of “forcing function.” She pointed to accessibility requirements as an example. Before ADA regulations, people with disabilities had very limited access to transit. Unfortunately, she said, it wasn’t the result of good intentions so much as a host of lawsuits, regulations and enforcement.

“Collectively, it takes a lot of pressure. I think that we need to maintain the focus on passing good laws. And that doesn’t just mean at the state and federal level, at the local level,” Balducci said. “We need to pass good ordinances that apply to our own jurisdictions that force us to then do the right thing and send the message to the entire organization.”

Rinck pointed out that change is hard in the face of a majority of people who still benefit from the way things are. She later highlighted that while policymakers care about data from the standpoint of funding decisions, that’s not the only thing that gets them to sit up and care.

“I would love if every policymaker looked at data and cared about data, but that’s not the way to do it. I want to emphasize how important it is to understand what drives your decision-making,” Rinck said. “Not everybody cares about data. They care about the re-election. They care about looking good. They care about whether or not they’re embarrassed to leave. Those are tools, too. That’s my very spicy take.”

“Sometimes,” she continued, “the thing that gets the decision-makers to do the thing we need them to do is, for a very silly reason, a silly rationale, but if we’re about really effectuating change, that is … a realistic tool in our toolbox.”

Nance agreed, saying that it’s extra difficult to get transportation bills the proper attention they need, especially with so many spreadsheets and numbers attached. What gets these kinds of pro-transit bills passed, he said, is story — personal stories about individuals, to put faces to those spreadsheets and numbers. It’s also important to personalize that data before getting too far along in the process, to head off any cross-aisle “shouting,” as Nance put it, at public meetings.

Community action

That’s where advocacy leaders like Paulo Nunes-Ueno and Kirk Hovenkotter come into play, which made their panel following the elected leaders well-timed. At the conference, the pair of transportation advocates presented the Megaproject For Safety, a roadway safety initiative that Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC) spearheaded. Hovenkotter is the executive director of TCC, while Nunes-Ueno runs his own transportation consulting firm.

The initiative calls for dedicated state funding to prioritize making the state’s most dangerous roads, many of which are state highways doubling as main streets, safer. The coalition’s webpage states that new money — which a measure like a road usage charge could create — would fund the initiative.

“I also want to use this as a moment to talk about how you can keep and build momentum around an idea like this. We all know there’s great ideas or a dime a dozen, but it’s how you organize and how you put pressure on decision makers and bureaucracies to be able to get them done,” Hovenkotter said, before outlining the project for attendees. “That’s the conversation that I really want to have with Paulo and with you all in the room today.”

2023 was Washington’s deadliest year for traffic deaths, marking a 33-year record high. Of the more than 800 people who died, 160 were pedestrians. 2024’s numbers were nearly as grim, with more than 730 people dying in traffic crashes, 155 of whom were pedestrians.

Every municipality has its known danger roads, Hovenkotter said, and listed a few of them — Aurora Avenue in Seattle, Pacific Avenue in Tacoma, Division Street in Spokane, and U.S. 2 in Monroe. The problem is not just that they persist, but that, as cities and towns overhaul their zoning codes to allow for more middle housing as required by state law, the surrounding streets will get increasingly worse at meeting residents’ needs.

“I can promise you almost 100% of the properties along these roadways are going to be upzoned for new housing,” Hovenkotter said. “And the ask that we have is, ‘If we’re going to add new housing here, how do we make the roads that this housing is going on places we can be proud of, places that are easy to walk and get to these destinations and get to these homes? They’re not the roads that we know they need to be to be the homes for so many more people in our state. But we know that our state can do big things when it puts its mind, money, and might to a problem.”

Hovenkotter pointed out that the state has no problem committing both billions of dollars and decades of time to infrastructure like floating bridges and freight. So why not commit similar resources to pedestrian safety along Washington’s major roadways?

Hovenkotter said that in last year’s legislative session, following former Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Secretary Roger Millar’s call on the legislature to put $150 million per year towards funding safer main street highways, the coalition asked the legislature of $1.5 billion over the course of 10 years to fund those safer roadways.

“Last year, we were lucky to win $100 million committed towards these roadways in the [2027 – 2029] biennium,” Hovenkotter said. “It was a really exciting win, and this went from an idea at the beginning of session to something that had $100 million committed to it.”

During the question and answer session, Barb Chamberlain, WSDOT’s director of active transportation, offered a slight correction. She pointed out that while Hovenkotter framed it as a win — and she appreciated that “advocates always have to say we had a win” — it was not, as she put it “new money” going towards those efforts, but repurposed funds already going to a similar purpose.

“It is within the preservation budget where we’re supposed to be doing Complete Streets work, so it’s money on specific projects, not on other projects. The real win would be new additive funding. ‘Additive’ is the key word here,” Chamberlain continued. “We want these transformational projects. We need new money to do transformative work, because you still want us to do the basic work — nobody gets across the river if the bridge is closed. No mode moves. So, ask for new money, when you are asking.”

She also highlighted that different agencies operate different roadways, and noted that there is a difference between roadway design and operation decisions and land use decisions.

“‘Wide and fast’ — those are functions of roadway design and operational decisions. … ‘Busy and complex,’ those are land use decisions. That is your city council or your county council,” Chamberlain said, indicating where residents could direct their advocacy energy. “What is the zoning? What is the anti-displacement housing policy? What are they going to do at the city level or the county level that means that the uses alongside the road and the design of the road work together? Because they don’t today. This is definitely not disputing the core premise, which is that we have a lot of car sewers [areas that are dangerous because of cars and car infrastructure]. And they need to be better. But just work all of the policy here, not only the transportation policy and not only the state. I think that’s my big takeaway.”

Another attendee, Jen Mayer, King County Metro’s equity and social justice capital implementation manager, agreed with Chamberlain about the funding, and said that she would love to see more interagency partnerships. While she acknowledged that sometimes these partnerships can mean long processes towards goals — she knows from personal experience — she also said it’s worth it, particularly dollar-wise.

“It would be way cheaper … all the different agencies are doing all sorts of stuff. Any time you dig dirt, I would like to have a model where we have a sidewalk SWAT team that says, ‘Oh, by the way, I saw you’re having a truck lay some ground here. Can you build some sidewalk along the side? Can you do ramps?’” Mayer said. “Can we be more opportunistic in our partnerships? Because it’s a lot of money to mobilize for sidewalks and ramps and crosswalks. But if somebody’s already mobilizing in that area, it’s way cheap to give them a little more money to do the work that we want to see get done. … I’d love to have more partnerships on the smaller scale as well as on the bigger scale.”

But, as conference speakers stressed throughout the morning, nothing changes without the public pushing for it.

Readers looking to get involved with transportation safety on a local level can check out organizations like the Seattle Streets Alliance, Tacoma on the Go, and the Transit Riders Union. Those looking to get involved at a state level can check out organizations like the Transportation Choices Coalition and Cascade Bicycle Club.

The post Advocates Gather at UW, Pushing for Safer, More Accessible Streets first appeared on The Urbanist.

A similar, but more direct attempt at state building code reform died abruptly last year.

SB 5156, sponsored by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32, Shoreline), has been significantly revamped after running into opposition in the state House in 2025. While the version greenlit by the Senate’s housing committee last year had included explicit direction to the state Department of Labor & Industries to revamp standards for elevators, the new version instead directs the state’s building code council to tackle the issue as part of their 2027 code update. In a compromise, the bill still includes explicit language to legalize smaller elevators that still meet the federal minimum for accessibility in buildings with up to 24 units or six stories.

It’s that provision that is the heart of the bill, creating an incentive for builders to stack units on top of one another without having to spring for a full elevator or being pushed to build no elevator at all. The change is meant to build on other reforms approved by the legislature in recent years, including another major change already being considered by the building code council that would legalize Seattle’s wildly successful single-stair regulations across the entire state.

“This is a bill that I think fits within the abundance agenda that you hear about so commonly. This is an innovation in housing to go along with the bill that we passed a few years ago allowing single-stair apartments on single lots,” Solomon said on the Senate floor Friday. “This bill is a supplement that says that in these smaller apartment buildings, you don’t have to have a gigantic elevator like we require now in the United States. In Europe, they have smaller sized elevators.”

Regulations unique to the U.S. and Canada that tightly clamp down on what elevators look like and how they can be maintained are increasingly attracting notice in the housing reform world. In 2024, the Center for Building in North America released a 122-page report detailing the factors that force elevators in North America to be much more expensive — and rare — than in other parts of the world.

“The price to install an elevator in a new mid-rise building in the United States or Canada is now at least three times the cost in Western Europe or East Asia. Ongoing expenses like service contracts, periodic inspections, repairs, and modernizations are just as overpriced,” the report noted. “High-income countries with strong labor movements and high safety standards from South Korea to Switzerland have found ways to install wheelchair-accessible elevators in mid-rise apartment buildings for around $50,000 each, even after adjusting for America’s typically higher general price levels. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, these installations start at around $150,000 in even low-cost areas.”

One major factor behind that disparity: U.S. elevators are required to be large enough to accommodate a full-sized stretcher for emergencies. In contrast, elevators elsewhere in the world are only required to accommodate a seated wheelchair user. But another major component is the incredibly limited elevator installation and repair market, which essentially operates as an oligopoly across North America and pushed back on reforms that could ultimately result in more elevators being built.

Last year, the union that represents those mechanics came out against SB 5156, with Lindsay LaBrosse, business representative for IUEC Local 19, asserting that the proposal would be “skirting important safety requirements.” Those concerns played a big part in the proposal being shelved, despite the fact that the U.S. is not a world leader when it comes to elevator safety. However, those same groups are likely to represent the biggest hurdle to the bill’s other provisions: asking the building code council to look at aligning Washington’s elevator regulations with global standards, a move that would be a sea change for any U.S. state.

“It shall be the intent of the state building code council and the department of labor and industries to support national and international standards harmonization efforts in order to foster the most competitive elevator sector possible, improve the affordability of elevators, and minimize modifications to model codes that increase costs,” the text of SB 5156 states.

According to Stephen Jacob Smith, the Center for Building in North America’s Executive Director, the reforms Washington is considering could unlock tens of thousands of dollars of savings for a small apartment building, especially if the building code council is able to make headway on costly requirements to include two-way video screens in every elevator.

An issue that few people were talking about in the housing space just a few years ago, elevator reform even made it onto the City of Seattle’s official legislative agenda for 2026, thanks to an amendment from Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck approved in December.

“This [bill], it maps really well to what we’ve been trying to do with the Comprehensive Plan, when we’re talking about a stacked flat strategy, really empowering and making sure that we are able to have more middle housing that allows for aging in place by making it easier to have more elevators go into middle housing options,” Rinck said in explaining how SB 5156 would supplement Seattle’s newly approved housing reforms.

The path for SB 5156 through the House won’t necessarily be a cakewalk, but the changes made to the bill since last year seem to have placated opposition within the Democratic caucus. Last year, Senators Javier Valdez (D-46th, Seattle), Tina Orwall (D-33rd, SeaTac), and Vandana Slatter (D-48th, Redmond) — legislators not known for maverick stances — voted against the bill on the Senate floor. But with the changes made this year, all three changed their position and voted yes.

Whether the bill is able to make it across the finish line this year or not, it’s clear that overhauling Washington’s outdated elevator standards is an issue that won’t be going away any time soon.

The post Washington’s Elevator Reform Bill Rises Again first appeared on The Urbanist.

This week the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) presented early designs for an access management pilot at Pike Place Market, a project intended to increase safety and security as Seattle opens itself up to the world stage this summer. Proposed in former Mayor Bruce Harrell’s final budget, the new infrastructure is set to be paired with bollard upgrades at Seattle Center and Westlake Park, and comes in the wake of vehicle ramming attacks in New Orleans and elsewhere.

What should be a straightforward conversation about how to protect pedestrians at one of Seattle’s biggest tourist attractions is actually highly charged, happening against the backdrop of Pike Place’s current pedestrianization pilot. A chance to “test and learn” put in place last spring by former Mayor Bruce Harrell and incoming Pike Place Public Development Authority head Rachel Ligtenberg, the pilot is expected to last at least a year, and made access points to Pike Place limited to delivery vehicles and other authorized visitors during the busiest times of the day.

A no-brainer change for many city residents that has opened up the Market to people who walk, the change has not been received as equally well across the Market community, with many of the groups that make up the Market’s bureaucratic ecosystem voicing ongoing concerns around those changes and their impact on sales and access.

Whether that pilot continues and in what form remains up-in-the-air, but SDOT is preparing for the World Cup by looking at strategies to protect pedestrians on the Market’s busiest days that can be implemented quickly. These quick-and-dirty strategies may ultimately form a template for future permanent infrastructure, but will likely be significantly refined after this summer, with much more attention given to infrastructure that is proposed to be permanent.

“This is really just specific to getting ourselves ready for the World Cup. I want to be clear that this is not the full permanent [strategy], this is the interim barrier strategy for the World Cup,” SDOT’s Radcliffe Dacanay told the Market Historical Commission this week during a briefing. Next month, the department is hoping to win over that commission and get permission to start installing infrastructure as soon as April.

“We’ve been given this charge of, how do we protect Pike Place to mitigate against vehicles coming into and running into a lot of folks,” Dacanay said.

The plan presented Wednesday leans heavily on planters to block off non-essential vehicle access points, fitting in well with the Market atmosphere. Fire and delivery access lanes would be blocked off with barricades that could be more quickly removed: crash rated vehicle barriers like the type that were used to cordon off streets for this week’s Seahawks Super Bowl parade.

Surface-mounted bollards would be added at the periphery of intersections, at the edge of the sidewalk, to prevent drivers from jumping up onto the sidewalk to avoid those other barricades. Those bollards may end up being the most contentious part of the proposal at the Historical Commission.

“The rest of the Market gets extremely busy. [The sidewalk] is, or it should be, in my mind, a pure pedestrian zone, not for vehicles, not for scooters, and the bollards will impact that,” Commissioner Grace Leong said, in remarks that were echoed by Commissioner Tom Graff. “I still want to get rid of them because they block pedestrian access,” Graff said.

SDOT may be able to achieve its sidewalk protection goals without impacting that sacred space with bollards that are further into the street, but that could impact parking or travel lanes. No one on the Historical Commission, which controls half of First Avenue out into the middle of the street, brought up this potential option.

Many folks who hold differing opinions on vehicle access would love to see retractable bollards that can rise and lower for delivery vehicles — in place elsewhere at places like Seattle Center — allowing much greater flexibility around who can be let in at any given time. But those aren’t on the table…yet.

“Part of that is the dance between what is a long term solution and what we could accomplish this year,” SDOT’s Matt Beaulieu told the Commission. “In preparation for World Cup, we can’t physically construct retractable bollards in time for World Cup. When our time period moves out, they become feasible.”

Another point of contention Wednesday was the signage SDOT plans to install at Market entrances, specifically the need to add “street closed” language to prohibit general purpose vehicles from entering. Despite the fact that Pike Place is one of the few places in Seattle where city code explicitly allows pedestrians to cross anywhere without falling under “jaywalking statutes”, that fact remains in conflict with state law, hence this proposed signage that allows the street to open for broader uses.

That will likely change when Seattle takes advantage of a new state law, SB 5595, allowing cities to designate “shared streets” with lower speed limits where pedestrians have priority over other road users. Pike Place is a natural fit for such a designation, but authorizing legislation is held up within SDOT despite a budget amendment advanced last year by Councilmember Dan Strauss.

“We’re actively working to bring that proposal back to Council. We are not scheduled to go in front of Council yet, and based on what we’ve heard from Council, they are very excited to have that about two months ago,” Beaulieu said. “We’re really working towards it, and we’d like to be able to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to have it before World Cup.’ I can’t promise that.”

With such a quick timeline for implementation, some elements of this spring’s barricade installation look to fall short of what many people would love to see at Pike Place. But trying out something — with the ultimate goal of ensuring that a catastrophic incident doesn’t take place as Seattle prepares to host one of its biggest events ever — will ultimately represent a big step forward for the Market.

The post Vehicle Barrier Plan for Pike Place Market Comes Into View first appeared on The Urbanist.

Situated about halfway between Seattle’s Beacon Hill and Mount Baker light rail stations, 21st Avenue is close to several schools and can become a major thoroughfare close to school pick-up and drop-off times. Given the roadway’s slope, the street often floods when stormwater accumulates from further up the hill, and many homeowners along 21st have taken measures to protect their homes from flooding, including building rock walls and adding asphalt berms.

South of Bayview Street, sidewalks have been in place along 21st since the late 1960s, but north all the way to Rainier Avenue, longtime residents have spent decades walking without sidewalks or benefitting from proper curbs and drainage. The newly built Giddens School, which moved to Beacon Hill from the Central District in 2019, was required to add sidewalks in front of the school, but they sit disconnected from the broader sidewalk network.

Four blocks north of the Giddens School is the recently completed Grand Street Commons, a mixed-income apartment complex that added 569 homes to the neighborhood when it was completed in 2024. The builder added new sidewalks on the immediate blocks, but the City has not connected them to the nearby elementary school.

21st Avenue is just the type of area that Seattle’s 2024 transportation levy was intended to benefit, with voters approving a record amount of funding to build new sidewalks. On top of $111 million dedicated to expand the city’s sidewalk network, the $1.55 billion levy also includes millions more for sidewalks as part of neighborhood traffic safety projects.

However, since Seattle is missing sidewalks on around 11,000 of the blocks citywide — around a quarter of all blocks — the plan for 21st Avenue S comes with a catch.

Rather than a full curb-and-gutter sidewalk, built using concrete, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) plans to install an asphalt pathway along the west side of 21st, separated from the street by precast concrete wheel stops. This is the type of sidewalk typically seen in commercial parking lots. The project was included in the first tranche of sidewalk projects included in SDOT’s 2025 levy delivery plan, along with around 20 other projects set to start construction by the end of this year.

To Dana Lee, who moved to 21st Avenue with her husband Dan in 2019, that plan doesn’t fulfill the implicit promise that the city made when it started installing sidewalks in the neighborhood 50 years ago. She has been advocating for a full sidewalk, after initially spending years just trying to get the issue of building sidewalks on 21st onto the city’s radar.

As a non-arterial, or neighborhood street, 21st Avenue is far from alone in being slated for a more quick-build treatment for new sidewalks. An innovation developed during the previous transportation levy, 2015’s Levy to Move Seattle, SDOT has built dozens of lower-cost “pathways” or “sidewalk alternatives” over the past decade in the hopes of making bigger inroads in bridging gasps in the sidewalk network. For the most part, new concrete sidewalks have been reserved for arterial streets, the busiest corridors in the city where transit routes and businesses are concentrated.

But Lee sees the plan for an asphalt pathway as shortchanging the neighborhood, continuing a pattern of disinvestment. She points to other low-cost pathways that were installed throughout South Seattle during the Levy to Move Seattle era that have started to deteriorate after less than a decade of use. Elsewhere in Beacon Hill, along a stretch of S Kenyon Street near Beacon Avenue, the wheel stops have started to be swallowed up by weeds, and vegetation growth has narrowed the effective width of the sidewalk, potentially falling short of Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] standards.

“The city keeps reiterating that the asphalt walkway will be ADA compliant, but research has shown that asphalt has crumbled over time. It doesn’t last for more than 15 years, and it’s just another example of the burden of funding being placed onto the community,” Lee told The Urbanist. “This community has waited for 60 years to get a true concrete sidewalk. And I think we’re willing to wait a little bit more time to get you know what we expect, which is, you know, a true safe walking path for the kids and the elders who have been here since the 60s to walk on and enjoy.”

SDOT told The Urbanist that advancing the quicker-built design option here was actually a reflection of the city’s prioritization of the gap along 21st. A permanent sidewalk, on the other hand, could cost the city as much as $6 million dollars — around half of the city’s annual budget for new sidewalks funded by the new transportation levy. In part, that high estimate is driven by the factors along the street that are pushing many residents to ask for this infrastructure, namely a need to manage drainage in a better way. The permanent sidewalk would also likely include street trees — adding to South Seattle’s tree canopy.

“This non-arterial street was prioritized for a walkway among the 11,000 missing blocks in Seattle because it is a gap in the pedestrian network connecting to two schools, frequent transit on Rainier Ave S, and the new Judkins Park light rail station,” SDOT spokesperson Mariam Ali said. “We are proceeding with a quick-build design walkway on the west side of the street that includes concrete curb ramps, driveways, and curbs, and an asphalt walkway. We expect to have 90% design to share as soon as January.”

SDOT didn’t conduct any direct surveys on its plan for an asphalt path along 21st, so Lee took measures into her own hands, collecting responses from over 50 of her neighbors. The results were striking: 88.7% of the respondents said they either feel “unsafe” or “very unsafe” walking along their street, with the same number of respondents saying they’d like to see a sidewalk on both sides of 21st to improve the situation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one supported the idea of an asphalt path when presented with the option of a full sidewalk.

The results of Lee’s outreach clearly show a broader desire from residents for a solution that is seen as more permanent.

“Installing two concrete sidewalks instead of a single asphalt one is a safer, longer-lasting, and more equitable choice for the neighborhood. Having sidewalks on both sides of the street protects pedestrians — especially children, seniors, and people with disabilities — from having to cross unnecessarily, reducing the risk of accidents,” one 21st Ave resident wrote in Lee’s survey. “Concrete also provides a sturdier and more accessible walking surface that stays cooler and resists cracking and tripping hazards better than asphalt.”

“Our neighborhood is structured around transit. We cannot all drive — make it easy for everyone to use our feet,” another respondent wrote.

From the City of Seattle’s perspective, turning to lower-cost solutions is the only way that the pace of filling in gaps in the sidewalk network will be able to quicken. Even at the current pace, every block in the city won’t be able to have some type of improvement added until around 400 years from now.

“What we hear most often is that people want more sidewalks and walkways delivered in more places, more quickly,” Ali said. “Using quick-build design approaches, like using asphalt, allows us to extend more walkways to more places more quickly to meet that demand. Feedback we’ve received about the type of new walkways and sidewalks — both concrete and quick-build — has generally been positive, and residents consistently share appreciation for safer, more predictable walking routes. We also use community feedback to help inform future design decisions. Quick-build walkways allow us to extend safer walking connections to more people more quickly throughout the city.”

In a city lacking the resources to add a concrete sidewalk to every block that needs one, the tradeoffs that exist are real and tangible: a full block of sidewalk built on 21st Avenue could mean several other blocks where a pathway isn’t able to be built elsewhere. But to Lee and many of her neighbors, the asphalt path that is planned is another example of the city’s South End being shortchanged, an additional manifestation of decades of underinvestment.

Lee is hopeful that the city can reverse course and take a more holistic view of sidewalk construction, rather than focusing on the number of blocks built. 

“It would be disappointing to know that the city isn’t true to its word when they say that they want to engage the community, or want to be transparent about the projects that they’re building that affect true people. ” Lee said. “If the city does build true concrete sidewalks on both side of the street, I’ll be like, ‘that is amazing.’ I’ll be totally won over. I could walk with my daughters and ride our bikes along the street and feel awesome knowing that we did that as a community.”

The post Despite Sidewalk Funding Boost, Some Seattle Neighborhoods Still Feel Shortchanged first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sponsored by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline), the bill would have required the state to allow smaller, lower-cost elevators that meet global standards, in contrast with the more circumscribed requirements in place in the U.S. and Canada.

Current state regulations require new elevators to be large enough to handle a full-sized ambulance stretcher in case of emergencies, a requirement that drives up elevator costs and leads to an absence of elevators in many newly constructed lowrise buildings and fewer elevators than could be possible in larger apartment buildings.

SB 5156 was intended to expand the number of accessible units, which often end up being constructed only on the ground floor of many buildings. The bill would have required that the state allow elevators that are just large enough to accommodate a wheelchair user, in buildings with up to six stories and with fewer than 24 units.

Opposition to the bill primarily came from firefighter advocacy organizations, which have stated concerns about reducing the size of elevator cabs, and from the state’s elevator constructor’s union, which benefits from the status quo when it comes to North American elevator standards. Those standards help reinforce a tight monopoly on elevator production, keeping the high-demand elevator labor market small.

In testimony before the Housing Committee last month, a representative for the International Union of Elevator Constructors (IUEC) Local 19 also presented their main argument against the bill as safety-related.

“While we understand the legislature is grappling with the important goal of increasing affordable housing units, this bill proposes to do so by skirting important safety requirements related to elevators, specifically that global safety standard, also known as ISO,” Lindsay LaBrosse, business representative for IUEC Local 19, told the committee. “This includes removing safety requirements that allow first responders to evacuate tenants quickly during an emergency like a building fire, as well as ensure that no one is burning alive inside of an elevator.”

However, reform proponents point to statistics indicating that apartment buildings with modest elevators (or no elevators at all) are at no greater risk of fire deaths or other disasters compared to those with America’s supersized elevators. This point was underscored in a Center for Building in North America deep dive report by the group’s executive director, Stephen Smith, which analyzed why elevators in the US and Canada are so expensive relative to international peers.

“Fundamentally, the claim is that elevators everywhere else in the world are unsafe,” Smith told The Urbanist. “You’ve got to make a really wide-ranging accusation of unsafety in basically the entire world in order to buy this.”

Smith pointed to the unique arrangement in place between North American elevator manufacturers and the elevator constructor unions as being a major driver behind high elevator costs compared to the rest of the world.

“Elevators are very expensive in the United States, and as with a lot of things, labor is a major component of the expense, and the elevator union has negotiated some agreements with its employers, the manufacturers, which create a lot of work,” Smith said. “This does not exist in other countries. It takes about twice as long to install an elevator in the United States as it does in Western Europe.”

Smith’s report detailed how the US has one of the lowest rates of elevators per capita compared to other high-income countries, with Spain currently having more than seven times the number of elevators in the US after adjusting for population, and Greece having more than 13 times what the U.S. does. It notes that Spain has fewer than half of the number of multifamily buildings than the U.S. does, yet the two countries have roughly the same number of elevators in absolute terms.

This is the first year that the idea of elevator reform has been floated in the Washington legislature, but it is clear that push back from the elevator constructor’s union played a role in halting the bill’s momentum after it sailed through the Senate.

“It’s a relatively new idea, especially for our committee,” Rep. Strom Peterson (D-21st, Lynnwood), chair of the House Housing Committee, told The Urbanist. “There was certainly some opposition from firefighters, from the labor unions that put in elevators. And, to me, it was getting a lot of attention. I think the idea is relatively sound, but I didn’t see it as emergent as some of the other issues we’re dealing with. I think we can do some work in the interim. We can get something done in the next year or two, and it’s really not going to have a big impact on projects.”

Peterson cited another bill, the Parking Reform and Modernization Act, as one that would potentially have a bigger impact compared to elevator reform. That bill was modified in another House committee last month to add long implementation timelines that could reduce its immediate impact.

“Energy, I felt, was being expended on a bill that wasn’t going to have a huge impact and probably still needed a little bit of work,” Peterson said.

Housing advocates aren’t fully in agreement with Peterson that there won’t be a big impact from halting the bill.

“It’s incredibly disappointing to see that the elevator bill — specifically written for more affordable elevators in taller single-stair buildings — has been shelved. We have a crisis of care in this country, and an aging population. Anyone can find themselves in need of accessible or adaptable housing at some point in their life,” Mike Eliason, architect and founder of the housing thinktank Larch Lab, told The Urbanist this week.

An advocate for legalizing single-stair buildings, Eliason contends these “point-access blocks” will maximize livable space in buildings while reducing housing costs and making the most of small urban infill lots. Builders seeking to construct smaller apartment buildings struggle to make expensive supersized elevators work with their design, but would be far more likely to squeeze in a smaller elevator.

At 63' tall, Seattle's DP Studios is a slender mid-rise providing 22 units on a small 3,200sf site. Designed by ECCO Design & Architecture, the infill point access block would illegal to build in most US cities due to its six story height and single egress stair.

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— Sean Jursnick (@seanjurs.bsky.social) November 9, 2024 at 5:16 PM

Eliason, who has regularly contributed articles to The Urbanist, argued that other statewide building reforms won’t see their full potential realized without reforms like SB 5156, particularly the 2023 middle housing law, HB 1110.

“We will see tens of thousands of homes developed under HB 1110 – but the vast majority of them will not be accessible, visitable, or adaptable,” Eliason said. “Significantly more affordable elevators would lead to more installations – meaning more jobs, more accessible homes, more affordable homes, and more climate adaptive homes.”

Elevator reform will almost certainly be back in some form at the legislature as soon as next year, and ultimately legislators will be faced with a choice over whether to continue the status quo, or to challenge the powerful elevator union lobby and push for change.

“This is a plain tradeoff between having an elevator that can fit a stretcher, and not having one at all,” Smith said. “As you start to allow more single-stair buildings there’s going to be fewer units that each elevator is serving. And as a result, these really expensive elevators are going to make developers think twice about including an elevator, and they already have.”

The post Elevator Reform Falls Short at Washington Legislature first appeared on The Urbanist.

In the end, Cheyne got lucky and found a roommate to be able to afford an apartment in Ballard, but his rental search highlights an unjust reality in Seattle: there’s a severe lack of accessible housing and vast swaths of the city have essentially zero accessible units.

Unfortunately, this problem isn’t an accident, but rather a specific feature of our city’s planning codes. For the last 30 years, Seattle has adopted an urban village approach to growth that has reserved 75% of the city for single-family zoning while concentrating growth into walkable urban centers. This has created a de-facto form of housing segregation, where people with disabilities can essentially only reside inside the minority of neighborhoods classified as urban centers.

Federal and state housing laws enforce accessibility standards for multi-family housing with four or more units, with the strongest requirements on buildings with 10 or more units to build wheelchair accessible units. Single family homes face no requirements to be accessible. Combined with our dominance of single-family zoning, this means that the majority of our city prohibits the types of housing most likely to be accessible, leaving many neighborhoods with very few options for people with mobility disabilities.

Single-family-zoned neighborhoods also limit accessibility by requiring residents to drive to access businesses, services, and transit. We usually talk about walkability as an environmental and community benefit. But for nondrivers and people with disabilities, it is a lifeline. 

As Tanisha Sepúlveda, a Seattle powerchair user, explains: “Accessible housing is bigger than how a building is built, or an apartment is laid out.” For Tanisha and the many people with disabilities like her who cannot drive, accessibility means living within walking and rolling distance of resources or public transit that can get you where you need to go.

Accessible housing: Too rare and expensive

Meanwhile, Seattle’s urban villages have grown denser with more accessible housing and walkable neighborhoods, a clear benefit Seattle should be proud of. Yet by squeezing these accessible neighborhoods into a tiny minority of the city, Seattle has limited the supply of accessible spaces and made them extremely expensive. This disproportionately affects people with disabilities, who are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. As a result, our neighborhoods with the most transportation and housing options are often out of reach for the people facing the greatest housing and transportation barriers.

This isn’t just a problem for people with physical disabilities. I have attended several comprehensive plan community events over the past year and listened to older homeowners talk about how they, understandably, plan to stay in their homes. Every time I wonder if they are prepared for the inevitability of aging into disability.

My family certainly wasn’t prepared when I suddenly became paralyzed in high school. Our house wasn’t remotely accessible. My parents scrambled to find housing so that I could come home from the hospital and were faced with the harsh reality that wheelchair- accessible houses are simply not available.

Nineteen percent of U.S. households have one member with a mobility disability — yet nationwide less than 5% of housing is accessible and less than 1% of that is wheelchair accessible.

In Seattle accessible units can be extremely hard to find. It took me eight months of calling dozens of buildings before I found a wheelchair accessible apartment. My one requisite: it needed to be within easy (for me) walking distance from a transit hub and at least one basic service, like a grocery store. 

Finally, I found a brand-new apartment two blocks from the Roosevelt light rail station. I could walk to the grocery, grab a coffee, or hop on a bus or light rail without using all my energy just trying to get there. Living in a world not built for you is exhausting and I can’t fully explain the relief when leaving your house is just easy. This ease of access has been life changing.

In the context of Seattle land use and zoning, it’s not surprising I ended up in the Roosevelt neighborhood. Zoning changes in 2012 and development plans around the new light rail station paved the way for transit-oriented development, greater density, and mixed-use developments. Roosevelt has added 2,300 housing units to the neighborhood in the last 10 years, almost all of it in the form of new apartment buildings. New residents have increased demand for retail and other services, which are now expanding beyond the main commercial block, resulting in more access each added year. 

Roosevelt represents the potential of new zoning changes. It’s clear Seattle can build vibrant accessible neighborhoods. But with limited growth opportunities this will continue to come with a price tag. The average rent for a Roosevelt apartment is $2,081. In order to afford to live in Roosevelt and not be rent burdened, you would need to earn about $75,000 a year.

Zone for accessibility to truly create One Seattle

Luckily, we can change this.

This year Seattle will adopt its updated comprehensive plan for the next 20 years. It will set the baseline for how neighborhoods can change and grow. In the next 20 years, Seattle’s 65 + population is projected to grow by 75%. At least 30% of Seattleites are nondrivers, and 1 in 3 renter households in Seattle don’t own a car. And we have a housing crisis that has been catastrophic for the disability community, with over half of people experiencing homelessness having at least one disability.

The current proposal fails to make Seattle more accessible.

Forty percent of the added development capacity under the current proposal is in urban neighborhoods with zoning that prohibits the multifamily developments that are most likely to be accessible and creates challenges for accessible housing options like stacked flats. The proposal adds the bulk of new potential multifamily development along busy corridors without the option for retail and commercial space.

At the center of the comprehensive plan debate is the city’s proposal to create “complete communities,” each spanning only a handful of blocks, in just 30 neighborhoods. In these hotly contested neighborhood centers, the city has laid out a vision for walkable neighborhoods with a mix of housing options and goods and services to walk to. We cannot lose these neighborhood centers. But if we are going to address accessibility, we need to take a bigger step away from single-family zoning and start envisioning a city where every person has an opportunity to live in a complete community.

As Council finalizes the comprehensive plan over the next several months, let’s embrace the moment to create a different city with accessible, multi-generational communities that support active mobility for people of all ages and abilities in every neighborhood.

Make your voice heard

The Seattle City Council’s Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan will deliberate on amendments in coming weeks — though the legal appeal by neighborhood groups could delay the full package of legislation. Email your Seattle councilmembers at council@seattle.gov and visit OneSeattleForAll.org and Complete Communities Coalition for opportunities to engage.

The post Op-Ed: Single Family Zoning Is Keeping Seattle Inaccessible to Disabled People first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Washington State Legislature is considering a myriad of proposals targeting the issue of housing affordability, but one under-appreciated idea in particular could provide a lift: elevator reform. On Wednesday, a short but potentially very impactful bill passed the Senate by an overwhelming 42-6 vote.

Senate Bill 5156, sponsored by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline) attempts to make Washington State a leader on elevator reform. The bill directs Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries to adopt new standards for elevators in all buildings, specifically allowing smaller elevators in buildings six stories or shorter, with 24 units or less.

Elevators are an important factor in multifamily housing construction. The state’s rigorous standards drive up the cost of housing in the name of access for disabled people and emergency responders. Too often the result is that people with disabilities cannot afford to live in large new buildings with deluxe elevators because housing costs remain so high, while smaller buildings may offer no elevator at all.

As is the case across most of the United States and Canada, Washington’s elevator codes are one-size-fits-all. When an elevator is required in a new apartment building, it has to be large enough to provide space for a 24-inch by 84-inch ambulance stretcher in all cases, with the goal of enabling efficient emergency response.

Compared to European elevator standards, which often only require an elevator to accommodate someone seated in a wheelchair with an attendant, these requirements often limit the number of elevators a developer will choose to include in a building, or whether homebuilders decide to construct an elevator at all in smaller buildings below the legal threshold of requiring one, which usually kick in once new construction hits four stories in height.

“Right now, either you have to create a large elevator where you can lay down a gurney in case of emergency, in these buildings, or none at all,” Salomon said introducing his bill in January. “Creating such a large elevator takes up too much space from units, and so it’s just not realistic that we’re going to get things built that way, although we may get some built without elevators — that currently exists in Seattle — neither of which are ideal. So we have to allow, in my opinion, European-sized elevators.”

Two years ago, Salomon sponsored another bill directing the state’s building code council to convene a taskforce with the goal of allowing larger multifamily buildings with only one stairwell, a move that would more align the state code with what’s uniquely allowed in Seattle. That single stair reform made Seattle a national leader in allowing slimmer multifamily buildings on narrow lots that maximize livable space, but, without elevator reform, many of the new types of buildings that are likely to result from that change will continue to be inaccessible.

“Our codes mandate really large elevators that are extremely difficult to squeeze into a small building footprint, and even if they would fit, they usually end up cost prohibitive, so builders opt to not install an elevator at all,” the Sightline Institute’s Dan Bertolet said. “And so you have the situation in which all the homes above the first floor are then inaccessible to anyone who can’t use stairs.”

Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Center for Building in North America, broke down some of the regulations that contribute to the high cost of elevators in the US in a detailed report, released last year. Cabin size is a big factor, along with technical codes and regulations unique to the US and Canada. More intractable issues like the cost of labor will likely persist without systemic changes.

“The bottom line is that elevators in the U.S. cost three times what they do in Western Europe, and this is even after adjusting for higher cost-of-living. As a result, we have many fewer elevators than you find in Western Europe,” Smith told the Senate housing committee at SB 5156’s public hearing. “There are practically no new walk up apartment buildings in Western Europe, while they are still common in the United States and in Washington State. It’s not good for disabled people, it’s not good for elderly people. It’s not good for parents of young children. It’s not good for first responders. The situation is unbecoming of a country as wealthy as we are.”

The bill has faced some push back from firefighter advocates worried about emergency responders accessing the upper floors of larger buildings where full-sized elevators would be otherwise be required.

“We are severely concerned about the impacts, especially going up to six stories with an elevator that’s only able to accommodate a wheelchair,” Steve Brooks, executive director for the Washington Fire Chiefs, said. “As it’s currently written, we have great concerns that someone on a sixth floor of a building, who is the most severely ill or injured and would therefore be unable to be in a seated position, even on a folded gurney, would potentially require being carried down six flights of stairs.”

Given the fact that many more buildings are likely to be made accessible if Washington is able to get elevator reform right, those concerns have not hindered the bill, and it was able to advance with significant bipartisan support. Notably, all six “no” votes against SB 5156 Wednesday came from Democrats, including Javier Valdez (46th, Seattle), Vandana Slatter (48th, Bellevue) and Tina Orwall (33rd, SeaTac). That bloc of eight provided no justification for their opposition on the Senate floor.

“The important thing is that we’re allowing a little creativity,” Senator Keith Goehner (R-12th, Leavenworth) said ahead of the final vote. “So often our regulations make it cost-prohibitive to do something that could be a nice amenity, and this bill allows for that to happen.”

The post Washington Senate Greenlights Elevator Reform Aimed at Boosting Midrise Homebuilding first appeared on The Urbanist.

When the station opens by the end of the year — as part of the forthcoming 2 Line expansion across Lake Washington to Bellevue and Redmond — the number of people trying to cross the on- and off-ramps near the station entrance will dramatically increase.

With hundreds of new apartments along Rainier Avenue planned or in construction, including the brand new 569-unit Grand Street Commons, the current state of the ramps is untenable. While the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) did make some tweaks to the ramps in 2021, crossing any of them remains daunting, with drivers exiting the highway at high speeds or speeding up to get on.

By this summer, SDOT plans to add raised crosswalks at three of the ramps where there are existing marked crosswalks, along with pedestrian-activated flashing beacons at the two ramps to the northwest of the station where they’re currently missing. “Tuff curbs” will narrow the ramps entrances and exits in an attempt to give drivers visual cues to slow down and to prevent any driver from trying to pass another to enter and exit the ramp. An advance beacon on the ramp that includes a blind curve for drivers exiting I-90 to head south on Rainier will give drivers a heads up about the enhanced crossing ahead.

Implementing raised crosswalks across a state highway ramp is a pretty big step with few other precedents in the state, and illustrates how far WSDOT has come on safety upgrades in recent years. WSDOT’s own design manual calls raised crosswalks “specialized” and doesn’t recommend that they be implemented on streets with higher volumes of truck traffic, but here they have been approved to move forward in a move that could create a precedent for elsewhere.

These upgrades likely wouldn’t have happened without pushing from community members. While SDOT had made some improvements around Judkins Park Station, including adding lighting on the I-90 trail and building a new stairway at Hiawatha Place S, the ramps largely went unaddressed until they were brought up by Rainier Valley residents. “We heard the need to improve safety and accessibility at the on- and off-ramps along Rainier Ave S from community members, transit riders, and through the advocacy of Disability Rights Washington and others,” SDOT’s new project website states.

But if you’re thinking that raised crosswalks aren’t a great way to tame highway ramps over the long-term, you’re right. WSDOT is also looking at more systemic fixes for safety near Judkins Park Station, as part of the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities program. Established by the state legislature in 2022, the Sandy Williams program exists “to improve active transportation connectivity for people walking, biking and rolling along and across current and former state and legacy highways,” something clearly needed here.

With the help of an advisory group that started meeting in December, the agency has started to look at potential changes to the ramps that would systemically improve safety, including reconfiguring them to be more like normal city intersections. This idea has been sitting on a shelf for years, and was included in a full report detailing potential transportation safety upgrades in Southeast Seattle created by SDOT in 2008.

One of the bolder ideas that has been advanced to this point entails deleting the northbound off-ramp from westbound I-90 that runs right alongside Judkins Park and a connection to the I-90 trail. And even more bolder ideas than that could potential be on the table — but they’ll need to pass muster with federal officials, who will have to sign off on any changes to how the interstate highway functions.

“This is a facility that, because it’s I-90, [the Federal Highway Administration] has oversight here,” WSDOT planning manager April Delchamps told the advisory group in December. “So one of the important considerations that we’ll need to look at, is to ensure that the improvements we are making to these ramps, as we’re going forward, does not create concern or another hazard on I-90.”

And then there’s the issue of funding. $1 million in funding from the US Department of Transportation’s RAISE grant program — along with $2 million from the Sandy Williams program — is enabling the design for changes to the ramps to get to 30% design, but funding for full design and construction of improvements hasn’t yet been identified.

Finding future funding for projects like this just got harder. Just days into the second Trump administration, the criteria for future RAISE grant applications (which has been renamed to the BUILD program) were revised to remove references to “improving and expanding active transportation usage” as funding criteria, and to remove any references to targeting funding to historically disadvantaged communities. While the Reconnecting Communities Pilot program, the federal cousin to the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities program, still exists — for now, it’s clear that the federal funding priorities are going to shift away from badly needed projects like improving how I-90 operates at a light rail station’s front door.

In the meantime, the near-term upgrades to the ramps will make it safer for people to access Judkins Park Station when it opens later this year, a win for riders and everyone traveling through the Rainier Valley.

The post I-90 Ramps Will See Safety Upgrades Ahead of Judkins Park Station Opening first appeared on The Urbanist.

On the evening of December 12, a community room on the upper floor of Mt. Baker Rowing and Sailing Center was packed to capacity for a public meeting. The topic was Lake Washington Boulevard, the winding arterial street that sits on Seattle Parks and Recreation land throughout most of Southeast Seattle. Despite the fact that the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been adding speed cushions to slow traffic throughout the city without much controversy, changes to Lake Washington Boulevard have prompted a stronger reaction.

To many attendees, the purpose of the meeting was a little unclear. Weeks earlier, an initial series of speed cushions and other safety improvements had been installed along different segments of Lake Washington Boulevard, the first of two phases of work that were announced in late summer. With the second phase not set to go in until this upcoming spring, there was a sense that holding another meeting meant that the project’s completion was very much at risk, after so much outreach had already been done.

Ahead of the meeting, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways had created a letter-writing campaign to support the second phase of work, and although the city employees leading the meeting shied away from the topic of shelving the remaining improvements, that possibility hung in the air throughout the night.

Adding traffic calming to Lake Washington Boulevard shouldn’t be controversial, given the current conditions on the street. The relatively low volume of vehicle traffic means speeding by drivers is near-constant, with close to one in three drivers going at least 10 mph over the 25 mph posted limit, according to a 2023 speed survey. Without a significant traffic calming upgrade to the street, accessing the park space along the lake — including popular Mount Baker Beach and other popular gathering spots — would continue to be intimidating, and the roadway would almost certainly remain unwelcoming to most people on bikes trying to travel north-south. But the improvements stop well short of what many would like to see — a full rethinking of having a busy arterial along a parkway — Lake Washington Boulevard is actually Seattle Parks property.

At that December 12 meeting, many attendees praised the safety enhancements.

“This summer, there were four accidents where people were meaningfully injured, and I was the first responder: my wife and I are the first on the scene whenever that happens. And we get to call 911 and have 911, come out and respond to a serious accident,” one attendee said during the meeting’s open forum. “Since the speed humps have been installed, there has been one — someone hit someone’s dog, and the dog was just fine. So thank you to the speed humps for slowing things down and the pedestrian crosswalk for literally saving multiple injuries going forward.”

Others in attendance clearly saw the speed humps as a symbolic change, larger than just the issue of slowing down drivers through a park.

“These speed bumps are a disaster,” another attendee said. “Everything you guys are doing to the South End is a disaster, in my opinion, the road diet on Rainier Avenue, the bus lane on Rainier Avenue, all I’ve ever seen there is cars speeding through it. And you’re squeezing off the South End to the rest of the city.”

Despite the success of the popular “Keep Moving Street” along Lake Washington Boulevard in 2020 and 2021, in which the roadway was closed to through traffic between Mount Baker Beach and Seward Park for months at a time, the idea of changing how the street operates has mostly lost its momentum. The group Coexist Lake Washington, whose website states support for making improvements “without adversely affecting people who drive,” has advocated strongly against major changes to the street, and a specially-created taskforce that met in 2022 and 2023 and deadlocked on the issue.

While traffic calming was the compromise solution on paper between competing paths forward, communication behind-the-scenes shows a different story. Last spring, after Parks released its initial list of improvements, members of Coexist Lake Washington contacted the department to push back on multiple aspects of the design, which was positively received in a City survey. Emails obtained by The Urbanist in a public records request show a sustained push to get elements changed even before they were installed.

“Some of these [changes] are so poorly thought out that they may worsen safety – on a roadway that is currently one of the safest arterials in the city,” Theresa Huey, who represented Coexist Lake Washington on the now-disbanded task force, wrote in a May email. “That in turn would lead to calls to reduce driver access. As you know, there is already a vigorous campaign underway to change the road’s designation as an arterial and permanently close one lane on the boulevard.”

The group took issue with plans for an all-way stop at Lake Washington Boulevard and Lake Park Drive S, narrowing of intersections at 43rd Avenue S, 51st Avenue S, and S Genesee Way (a proven safety countermeasure), a new marked crosswalk at S Ferdinand Street, and a rechannelization of a tricky intersection near Seward Park, at S Orcas Street. “This proposal has no evident benefits and the funds would be better used adding raised crosswalks on Lake Washington Boulevard or pedestrian-activated crossing lights,” Huey wrote of the Orcas Street proposal, which would reduce conflicts by converting two legs of the three-way intersection to one-way.

In June, a follow-up email sent to SDOT Director Greg Spotts by another Coexist member, Tai Mattox, took direct aim at the all-way stop proposed at Lake Park Dr S, next to Mount Baker Beach.

“The stop sign seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist,” Mattox’s email stated. “The stop sign will create traffic congestion and increased pollution that will impact everyone on and around the boulevard: drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, park and beach goers, and local residents […] The stop sign will increase conflicts at the intersection – and further down the road as travelers become frustrated by backups and delays.”

The email also asked the City to cancel the planned upgrades at Orcas Street and the redesign of the 41st Avenue and 53rd Avenue intersections, and instead use the dollars earmarked for those projects on rapid rectangular flashing beacons (RRFBs) at Lake Park Drive S. RRFBs alert drivers to the presence of people trying to cross at marked crosswalks, but don’t force drivers to actually stop.

After Mattox’s email, a meeting was scheduled between Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office and Coexist Lake Washington, for July. In advance of that meeting, a memo created by Parks specifically outlined the reasons why RRFBs aren’t seen as an appropriate substitute for the all-way stop at that location, with a response to the idea that it will create congestion. “Vehicles will need to stop, so there will no longer be free flowing traffic through this intersection, but significant delays are not anticipated,” the memo noted.

Despite the fact that the all-way stop had been vetted by SDOT prior to its inclusion in the plans, after the meeting between Harrell’s office and Coexist Lake Washington, SDOT reversed its position and told Parks to drop it from the plans. The Urbanist noted the reversal in early September, but the emails now show that it was the Mayor’s office that forced the change.

“Since this meeting, we have received direction from SDOT to remove the all-way stop and replace with additional speed cushions and signage,” Seattle Parks’ Jordan Hoy, the planner in charge of the Lake Washington Boulevard improvements, wrote in an email to a colleague in late July. “I am still trying to understand this decision, as it is not consistent with community feedback or recommendations based on SDOT traffic engineering expertise. An all-way stop warrant data analysis was conducted and determined that this intersection would be a good candidate for this treatment.”

This isn’t the first time that Mayor Harrell’s office has directly overridden a department’s decision when it comes to Lake Washington Boulevard. Records from last year revealed how Adiam Emery, Executive General Manager in Harrell’s office, stepped in after the Parks department announced expanded hours for the popular Bicycle Weekends closure events along the street, and then quickly reversed itself. At the time, Emery cited an “extensive outreach effort” that resulted in the scaled-back schedule, despite consistent city surveys showing broad support for extended closures of the street to vehicles

With the sustained push to undermine city staff trying to make Lake Washington Boulevard safer exposed to sunlight, December’s community meeting makes much more sense. And while there were a fair number of residents who showed up to push back on completing phase two, there was also clear community support for continuing among the packed room. Ultimately, that may not be enough to stave off backsliding, but for now Parks says the improvements are still on track to be implemented.

One thing is for sure: even completing those upgrades won’t put to rest a debate about the best way to utilize Lake Washington Boulevard as a city asset for all of Seattle to enjoy.

The post How Routine Lake Washington Boulevard Traffic Calming Turned Into a Fight first appeared on The Urbanist.

Traffic at the station is expected to grow following a revamp of Memorial Stadium, building on the momentum of an overhauled Climate Pledge Arena and the myriad other event venues at Seattle Center that add significant demand on the 0.9-mile monorail.

The update is badly needed. Seattle Center Station remains much as it did in 1962, with only small tweaks for the modern era. The only Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant way for wheelchair users to access the station is by entering the Seattle Center Armory and using the pedestrian bridge to get to the monorail, and the station platform itself doesn’t have level boarding onto the trains.

In contrast, the Seattle Monorail’s southern terminus in downtown was completely rebuilt with the construction of Westlake Mall in the mid-1980s, and received another revamp in 2020 to better accommodate increased passenger flow, just in time for the line’s 60th anniversary.

The project’s current schedule means upgrades won’t be fully complete in time for the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, which includes a planned “celebration site” at the Seattle Center Campus and some of the biggest crowds the campus has seen in decades. This fall, the City of Seattle started the process of selecting a general contractor who will oversee the finalization of design and the construction process, with construction not actually set to start until summer of 2026, according to procurement documents.

In the meantime, monorail riders will be faced with a fare increase starting in 2025 that will up the price for one trip to $4, making the short line one of the most expensive transit trips in town.

The preferred concept for Seattle Center station upgrades, developed after engaging a consultant on several different alternatives over recent months, is similar to concepts for reconfiguration examined in the past. A full rebuild of the monorail’s main entrance onto Thomas Street will remove an awkward bottleneck, with a new stairway entrance, a ramp, and an ADA-compliant ramp all providing a way to access the station.

The City of Seattle is looking at additional, longer-term changes to the Thomas Street corridor, which includes several small retail stores near the monorail entrance. Ultimately, an ADA ramp that doesn’t include any sharp turns is envisioned, but not immediately planned for implementation. The primary east-west pedestrian corridor through Seattle Center, Thomas Street, has a lot of potential that will be enhanced with better access to the monorail station.

Inside the station, an uncovered extension of the platform will create more room to accommodate crowds, and the platform itself will be realigned to allow level boarding onto the two monorail trains, one of the biggest accessibility upgrades included here.

On the north side of the station, a new elevator will provide direct access for riders heading to and from Memorial Stadium, which is set to reorient itself with a new Seattle Center-focused “front porch” — in strong contrast with today when most visitors enter off 5th Avenue N. Along the Armory building, the stairway leading up to the pedestrian bridge will be rebuilt to handle larger crowds.

So, what ideas were examined and discarded? Another alternative looked at rebuilding the pedestrian bridge, which is well below standard height, preventing Seattle Center maintenance vehicles from being able to use the Nob Hill Avenue pathway. A new stairway directly onto ground level heading north would have provided better access to Memorial Stadium. But this concept providing fewer improvements around passenger flow and came with a higher price tag.

As part of the improvement study, consultant HDR looked at another issue facing the monorail: is it better to load passengers onto trains from the center platform at Seattle Center or from the sides? With center loading, passengers can board onto either of the two trains, but the space on the center platform is more limited. After modelling passenger flow, the study concluded side-loading would mean the system could handle larger crowds, as long as there are line managers in place to tell passengers which entrance to use.

Counterintuitively, the study found that reducing train headways and increasing the number of passengers on each train is the only way that the system will be able to accommodate close to its maximum capacity of carrying 5,000 riders in a single hour. Those models assumed both trains arriving at four-minute headways, which each four-car train able to handle just under 300 passengers.

Ultimately, it will be up to Seattle Monorail Services, the private company that operates the monorail, to implement procedural changes like this. But with a potential NBA team at Climate Pledge Arena on the horizon, the City of Seattle is banking on the monorail’s people-moving capacity.

Throughout all of these upgrades, monorail service is not expected to be significantly disrupted, with construction crews working around the schedule of what’s become a vital tool to handle big Seattle Center events. If all goes according to plan, officials will be able to cut the ribbon on these upgrades by fall of 2027.

The post A First Look at Seattle Center Monorail Station’s Planned Access Upgrades first appeared on The Urbanist.