Whenever I asked what was blocking progress, the conversation consistently turned to the giant rail companies which own most of the state’s rail infrastructure – Union Pacific (UP) and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe (BNSF). These companies, known as Class I railroads because they earn more than $500 million in yearly revenue, have immense leverage over the state because they own the tracks. This has led to a whole host of conflicts not simply about how to run a railroad, but for whom our railroads are being run.

Private rail ownership is far from the international norm: most countries recognize that allowing profit-driven organizations to control critical infrastructure results in systems that prioritize shareholders over the communities railroads serve. Not only has the United States also recognized this, nationalizing the country’s railroads during World War I when they couldn’t effectively support the war effort, but Washington State has done this with the Palouse River and Coulee City system (PCC). 

By international standards the PCC is still relatively privatized: the tracks are owned and maintained by the state, which then leases service operations and maintenance to small private rail operators. This incentivizes the government to focus on the system’s functioning holistically, while the operators focus on delivering services effectively to keep their lucrative contracts with the state. 

The PCC’s results are appreciated across the aisle in Olympia: both Senator Marko Liias (21st LD, Mukilteo), a Democrat chairing the Senate Transportation Committee, and Representative Andrew Barkis (2nd, Lacey), a Republican on the House Transportation Committee, acknowledged the PCC has been a staggering success when I spoke with them in the fall of 2024. 

Though the Republican Barkis said he sees the PCC as a “one-off,” Democrats Liias and Representative Alex Ramel (D-40th, Bellingham), who serves on the House Transportation Committee, were both receptive to the idea that this model could be useful in the future.

To understand how it’s possible that Republicans and Democrats could support state-ownership of rails, it’s necessary to understand how the PCC came into existence. The system was acquired by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) because Union Pacific (UP) Railroad had neglected maintenance and sold off the system to a company that had planned to abandon the system once it realized the extent of the system’s neglect. This would have bankrupted farmers across Eastern Washington, as the inefficiencies of trucking make it cost-prohibitive for long-haul grain shipping.

In an interview, Mike Bagott from Palouse Grain Growers, a small grain co-op on the PCC, said he had noticed UP “were more interested in storing excess cars on the line… there were times when we’d have hundreds of empty chlorine cars just sitting there on the tracks.” 

When it came to using trucks for grain shipping, Bagott laughed at the question. 

“Long haul trucking grain all the way to Portland or Vancouver: that makes no sense, forget about it,” Bagott said. “The overarching thing is that if things move forward as they seem to be going with the river system, we can’t wait very long on a macro scale to start putting a ton of money into the rail system. We’ve got some of the best farmland in the world out here, and if we can’t ship by rail then that just might mean the end of grain farming in Eastern Washington, and that’d be a shame.” 

This is why the state stepped in, and has committed to spend $3.4 million a year rehabilitating the system through 2031 and has received $5.3 million in federal grants. This on top of the initial $27.7 million cost of acquiring the railroad, is hardly a drop in the bucket when compared to the billions the state is devoting to single sections of highway upgrades. 

These investments aren’t just about shaving off a few minutes off commute times, they have ensured a vital pillar of the state’s agriculture did not collapse due to the mismanagement of Union Pacific. The most committed socialist could hardly invent a more perfect example of a case for economic interventionism: short-term profit seeking caused an enormous private corporation to so severely neglect infrastructure investments that it threatened the food supply.

The PCC isn’t the only government-controlled railroad in Washington, as Representative Jake Fey, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, highlighted that Tacoma Rail’s municipal rail service is financially self-sufficient and has supported the functioning of the Port of Tacoma. 

However, I wouldn’t use Tacoma Rail as a model specifically because it’s expected to be financially self-sufficient. We don’t expect air companies to build, maintain, and upgrade airports, we don’t expect trucking companies to build, maintain, and upgrade highways, and we don’t expect shipping companies to build, maintain, and upgrade ports. There is no reason we should arbitrarily single out railroads to do these things, especially when the state is actively seeking to decarbonize and increase efficiency of transport. Continuing to single out rail will lead to more situations of deferred maintenance and abandonment of lines, sabotaging industry and ultimately the wider economy.

In Western Washington, reacting to market preferences has caused the state to invest billions of dollars in expanding the least efficient form of land-based freight without even investigating the feasibility of rail connections when it chose to run with the Puget Sound Gateway project. Relying on privately-owned rail infrastructure nearly led to a collapse of grain farming because UP was more interested in leasing out track space for unused cars than running a railroad.

On top of all that, the state’s tolerance of neglect and dismissiveness by the Class I railroads – BNSF and UP – continues to cause outrageous passenger service delays, limits the ability of Sounder to extend service, and has seen millions of public dollars invested into privately-owned assets with absolutely no accountability mechanisms or changes in ownership. In the corporate world, one typically acquires ownership when investing in a company — except with public investment, which often drops down like manna from heaven. 

Asked what BNSF gives in exchange for the money the state invests in its infrastructure, Ramel shared that he was fretting with the same question. 

“I think that’s a really really important question, and I’ve not gotten a clear answer,” Ramel said. “I asked questions at a hearing last year and the answers did disturb me.”

During this March 5th hearing, Ramel asked WSDOT’s director of the rail, freight, and ports Jason Biggs whether the state’s investment to increase passenger capacity on BNSF’s tracks was “proportional to what, on a per-car or per-train basis, what the railroad is paying into the system that they own and profit from?”

“I understand your question,” Biggs answered. “We don’t have any insight into what the costs are that the railroad pays into its own system.” 

This level of detachment from BNSF is reflected in WSDOT’s strategic rail plans. Short-term profit seeking sabotages the state’s ability to plan an effective system because the private operators prioritize short-term profit seeking with swings in the market. As WSDOT states plainly in its strategic 20-year plan: “Rail investments are costly, and railroads must coordinate investments in response to changes in political and market forces. As such, freight railroad planners typically plan projects on a two- to three-year horizon.” 

So while WSDOT is trying to make 20- to 50-year rail plans which account for climate change, decarbonization, and population shifts, BNSF and UP are stuck chasing short-term market trends, ready to abandon vital economic and strategic systems due to a dip in the market as UP did with the PCC system.

“I think they sort of have this perspective that we make investments in the rail system to try to bring passenger service up to speed, so we’re responsible for having a rail system that can carry passengers,” Ramel continued. “Whereas I would look at this and say ‘hey, we have a faster and better rail system, and Amtrak’s are eight cars four times a day’ It’s the lightest cars, four-car trains, then maybe a dozen hundred-car [freight] trains. Why are we assuming all that additional cost? I think that model is not to the benefit of the taxpayers and probably is to the benefit to the owners of the railroads. It is a concern that I have.”

WSDOT acknowledges that rail is three to four times more efficient than trucking. Politicians from both major parties in the state of Washington acknowledge that state-owned railroads have been a major success. They have also noticed logistical trends are moving towards transferring large quantities between large warehouses and terminals, which is a niche rail specializes in fulfilling. 

In spite of public investment in their assets, BNSF and UP have demonstrated willful neglect of their responsibility to maintain a safe and functioning rail network which accommodates passenger services. The state has already proven that it is a better steward of tracks than BNSF and UP: it should start filling the gaps which they’ve neglected.

The post Op-Ed: PCC Provides Model for State Rail Ownership in Washington State first appeared on The Urbanist.

But a port is more than just the docks. It’s an ecosystem of heavy haul roads, railways, and warehousing. The area south of downtown known as SoDo is the gritty backbone of that transport system, where heavy trucks and loud trains work with industrial businesses that manufacture goods, deliver fresh food to restaurants and grocery stores, and export products to the Midwest and Asia. 

And for our city, SoDo is also where the essential functions happen, too: It’s the heart of our electrical grid, it’s where we consolidate waste and recyclables, and it’s home to maintenance facilities for buses, trucks, and trains. SoDo will also be home to large-scale electric vehicle charging infrastructure for medium and heavy-duty vehicles, including the drayage trucks serving the Port, delivery vans covering the last mile, and even school buses that no longer run on diesel.

When the City of Seattle passed Maritime and Industrial Lands Protection legislation in June 2023, it was a recognition of the need to protect what remains of our industrial areas for those basic municipal functions and maritime activities that support tens of thousands of well-paid jobs. After a decade of negotiations, we had a deal.

Since the passage of the legislation and the certainty it provides, we are seeing promising developments toward a vision of SoDo as the heart of an innovative green energy and maritime economy, supporting new living wage jobs. Demand for industrial properties is healthy, with vacancy rates below 9%, compared to 26% for office space. The Port alone plans to invest more than half a billion dollars in new infrastructure along the waterfront in the next decade. 

Legislation recently introduced by Seattle City Council President Nelson would upend that vision, and thereby the deal that took years to craft. Despite the City’s current work to update its Comprehensive Plan, Council is being forced to consider a stand-alone bill on a separate, accelerated timeline with less public engagement and outreach than land use bills typically receive. This bill would allow developers to build housing on two blocks of SoDo along heavy-haul corridors, where industrial activities occur at all hours of the day and throughout the year all while removing safety protections for pedestrians and cyclists moving through SoDo.

No one disputes that our city needs more housing. One place that’s not great for housing is SoDo. Along with the health impacts of living near heavy industry, industrial areas don’t have the amenities people need. 

As my colleague Commission President Toshiko Hasegawa has pointed out, people deserve better than housing in a place with minimal public transit and no neighborhood schools, greenspaces, or grocery stores. As a transit, bike, and pedestrian advocate, I am constantly working to deconflict those areas of our city like Ballard and Interbay where industrial activities overlap with key commute corridors. The last thing I want to do is create another conflict.

So, rather than putting housing in a place ill-suited for it, let’s preserve SoDo for industrial uses. After all, population increases don’t just mean a need for more housing. We’ll need more buses and trains, food storage and distribution, and waste management. At the same time, a resurgence in American manufacturing has created a unique moment for new businesses to make products right here in Seattle.

In January, Mayor Bruce Harrell launched Seattle’s new Climate Innovation Hub, which he described as a “nexus for innovators and early-stage entrepreneurs focused on tackling the climate crisis and expanding the region’s green technology sector.” As those startups mature and seek space to move from prototypes to manufacturing, SoDo will be the place where greentech entrepreneurs can find industrial space well-suited to advanced manufacturing. Without industrial lands, those homegrown jobs will be lost to other markets.

Industrial lands in SoDo cannot be replicated in other parts of our region: the proximity of SoDo to the deepwater harbor is critical to its utility. Our maritime terminals serve as the transportation and logistics hub where trains, trucks, and ships converge. Pushing industrial activity outside the City would lengthen delivery and distribution routes resulting in more traffic and pollution.

The economic impact is widespread. We are a coalition of more than 70 organizations across the state concerned by the threat this legislation carries. Farmers, longshore workers, truckers, and small businesses have rallied to protect their livelihoods, with support from state legislators from Seattle and the region opposing encroachment on industrial lands.

Both the proponents of the amendment and the advocates for industrial lands agree that continued conversations among the parties could produce an outcome that would better serve everyone’s interest. 

In December, the City, Port, County, Washington State Department of Transportation, Sound Transit, and the Muckleshoot and Suquamish Tribes created the South Downtown Seattle Cross/Agency Intergovernmental Collaboration with the purpose of addressing the challenges identified during the passage of Maritime and Industrial Lands Protection. Council President Nelson’s legislation would kill that new mechanism for building a shared vision for the development of that area, including the Stadium District.

It’s not too late for the Seattle City Council to avoid an unforced error, table this proposal, and for all of us to work together through the collaboration to address the challenges and spur major revitalization.

The post Op-Ed: SoDo Is for Industry, Seattle Should Reject Rushed Housing Push first appeared on The Urbanist.

Council President Sara Nelson put forward the proposed code amendment earlier this month, and it would allow housing within what’s known as the Stadium Transition Overlay District (STOD), an area of around eight square blocks focused around First Avenue S and Occidental Avenue S. The bill would remove a restriction that exists in other industrial areas in the city that prevents housing from being permitted within 200 feet of a major truck street, which in this case includes both First Avenue S, Edgar Martinez Drive S, and Royal Brougham Way S. Nelson’s amendment is being considered outside of the broader Comprehensive Plan process, which has drew criticism from Councilmember Dan Strauss.

The goal is to allow up to 1,000 units of housing above light industrial uses, in what is touted as a potential “maker’s district” full of small business incubator spaces. The current uses in the area, in addition to the 2016 headquarters for KING 5 news, include the Showbox SoDo, and the flagship Filson retail store.

Stadium housing district: A long-time political football

The idea is not new. Allowing housing in the stadium district was studied in 2013 and again several years ago as part of a broad package of industrial zoning reforms, but it was not included in the final regulations approved by the council in 2023, in large part due to opposition from the Port of Seattle and other industrial groups. Allowing hotels in the area was seen as a compromise, and the new Urban Industrial (UI) zones created by the reforms allowed light industrial uses to coexist with mixed-use buildings elsewhere in the city, including in Ballard, Interbay, and Georgetown.

But advocates for the sports stadiums, housing groups, and labor unions representing construction workers have continued to advocate for the maker’s district to move forward. Under city code, at least 50% of the housing built in the district has to be made available for households making less than King County’s area median income, depending on the number of bedrooms included in each unit.

“Union-built affordable housing is a big deal for our members, and we can have it here,” Nicole Grant, political director for The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 46, said during public comment Friday. “I was the co-chair of the industrial lands advisory committee under Mayor Jenny Durkan, and I will tell you that this project was always on the table, but it had to be studied first to make sure that it would not compromise the Port of Seattle. It was studied, and it does not compromise the Port.”

The process Nelson is using to send this change through the council is atypical. Rather than send the bill through the Land Use Committee as customary, she used her power as council president to direct the bill to her own Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee, over the objection of several of her council colleagues. Land Use Committee had been without a chair until the recent appointment of Mark Solomon to fill the vacancy left by former Councilmember Tammy Morales’ resignation.

On Friday, Nelson invited a fair of advocates for the change to join city staff at the briefing table, not inviting anyone from the Port of Seattle or the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to provide their perspective.

“This bill is not good,” ILWU’s Dan McKisson told the Seattle Freight Advisory Board last week. “This was negotiated and voted on just over a year ago, and they’re coming back and simply, it’s the same gentleman who wanted the area there, and that’s Chris Hansen — he owns these 14 acres, he’s getting help from folks, but there’s a campaign to not allow that to happen, because having housing in there is of course not safe. For pedestrians down there, adding more pedestrians without further mitigation is a problem. And it’s really impactful to the ports.”

A California-based hedge fund manager, Hansen snatched up the 14 acres near the stadiums nearly a decade ago in hopes of building an arena complex to one day host NHL hockey and NBA basketball games. However, his plan relied on securing a street vacation from the City to host a multi-block development, which the Seattle City Council turned down in 2016. Instead, Mayor Ed Murray and the city council advanced an alternate plan remodeling the publicly owned Seattle Center Arena, which was rebranded Climate Pledge Arena following the overhaul. As a result, Hansen is still sitting on considerable SoDo land holdings and hoping to build something other than an arena.

This week a group of 31 state legislators, including Seattle Democrats and Eastern Washington Republicans, signed a letter asking city councilmembers to oppose Nelsons’s bill. “[W]e stand together in opposition to the proposed ordinance because we represent an array of constituencies that will be harmed by this proposal,” the letter states. “Our farmers and agricultural exporters rely on the efficient movement of goods and easy access to international trade gateways. Healthy and resilient communities rely on clean, walkable neighborhoods with easy access to green space and public amenities.”

Economic development tool or developer giveaway?

Nelson has called her bill an economic development opportunity, and one that would improve public safety in the area by adding more activity and vibrancy.

“The conditions in that area are not living up to their potential,” Nelson said in presenting her own slides on the proposal, ones that went ahead of any presented by independent city staff, another unusual move.

Nelson didn’t put forward an amendment to allow housing in the STOD in the 2023 industrial lands proposal, and she blamed this oversight on the fact that she was a new councilmember, despite being in office for a year-and-a-half when the legislation was approved.

“I did not want to ruin that stakeholder process at the last minute and blow the whole piece of legislation, and so I did not carry forward an amendment at that point,” Nelson said. “However, the underlying zoning does support housing.”

“This proposal is a spot rezone to benefit one wealthy out-of-state developer,” Port of Seattle Commissioner Fred Felleman said. “The industrial lands package that was transmitted by Mayor Harrell in 2023 was a culmination of over a decade of work, with many stakeholders. Nobody got exactly what we wanted, but we got an agreement. As a compromise, the Port agreed to hotels in the stadium district.[…] but long-term housing in an industrial zone without basic amenities is unacceptable and compromises our ability to attract new tenants.”

“The development of this maker’s zone is critical. We have a huge economic opportunity here,” Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary Monty Anderson told the committee. Anderson also said that representatives for Mayor Harrell communicated that housing would eventually be allowed in the stadium district, just not in 2023. “I was told by the Mayor’s office to come back in a year, and it’d be simple legislation, and we could support it. That is exactly what I was told,” he said.

Anderson’s account of being promised the change after a delay was backed up by Lizanne Lyons, a consultant for the Washington State Public Stadium Authority, which oversees the operation of Lumen Field and Events Center.

A steaming Kettle

It was in an exchange with Anderson where the meeting almost went off the rails. Councilmember Bob Kettle, a retired naval officer, took offense at an implication from Anderson that he was being fed talking points around why to oppose housing in the stadium district, though that was never actually asserted. Kettle insisted his own background has led him to where he stands on the proposal.

“My position on this, even as a candidate, was from that north star of understanding the international economics,” Kettle said. “It’s nothing to do with dirty tricks, or these kinds of things that you’re insinuating […] the idea that I’m getting talking points and that I’m just mouthing these, if that’s what you’re impugning, is absolutely false.”

Along with Kettle pushing back on Nelson’s bill was Dan Strauss, who shepherded the 2023 legislation as the former Land Use Committee chair, and expressed concerns about both the policy and the process that got the council to this point.

“There is merit to the conversation, and there are important things that need to go forward before I’m comfortable with housing in the stadium district,” Strauss said. “Because the transportation network between the port and I-90, in my opinion, is not working today, much less with any change.”

Strauss doesn’t sit on Nelson’s committee and will not get to weigh in on its recommendation to the full council.

Looking ahead

Meanwhile, Councilmembers Rivera, Saka, and Hollingsworth — the remaining members of Nelson’s committee — avoided staking a clear position during Friday’s meeting, though Rivera did note that she thinks the proposal would improve public safety and Saka praised Nelson for her “leadership and bravery” in putting the bill forward.

A public hearing on the bill is set for Monday, February 24 at 9:30am, with a committee vote likely later that same week.

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified Nicole Grant as executive director of the MLK Labor Council, a position she no longer holds. Katie Garrow is MLK Labor’s Executive Secretary-Treasurer.

The post Seattle Council Sharply Divided Over Allowing Housing in Stadium District first appeared on The Urbanist.

Transportation generates more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector of Washington State’s economy, and simply switching the current system onto the electric grid won’t solve its fundamental issue: inefficiency. Automotive modes of transportation are both less-fuel efficient and more land-intensive than rail, whether that rail is electrified or not. 

Thousands of passengers can glide down a single rail track during rush hour, and thousands of freight tons can do the same at night. Thousands of parking spaces can be condensed into a couple centrally-located rail platforms, and hundreds of square miles of paved surfaces at truck facilities can be replaced by a couple rail yards serviced by electric trucks and vans to cover the last mile. All this density could be accomplished even while decreasing local air pollution, because a single train, whether diesel or electric, can take thousands of cars and trucks off city streets, opening valuable urban space to pedestrians, parks, and amenities.

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), Sound Transit, and local transit agencies have recognized this issue for passenger traffic, but the state seems to have ignored inefficiencies built into its current freight logistics network. Instead the state has generally guided investment toward truck routes rather than upgrading freight rail.

Due to the private ownership of Washington State’s main rail corridors, electrifying the system has barely entered the conversation, despite the potential long-term pollution and decarbonization benefits. In an interview with The Urbanist, state senator Marko Liias (D-21st, Edmonds), who chairs the transportation committee, pointed toward lower hanging fruit. 

“[Rail electrification] is really hard because we don’t control the right of way on the mainline. In order to electrify the Cascades, it would require us to make substantial public investments in the private infrastructure,” Liias said. “There’s lower-cost quicker return opportunities that we’re going after first. Obviously, 50-100 years from now it will all be decarbonized, but the Burlington Northern infrastructure is not on the path to be one of the early movers on that.”

Fortunately, the state and federal government have been focusing on how to increase the efficiency of passenger transportation with rail in Washington, as exemplified by the electrified Link light rail expansions, the acquisition of new trainsets on the Cascades line, and improvements to Seattle’s Amtrak rail yard. 

“In our state, passenger rail is more the place where people are trying to think outside the usual paradigm, whether it’s light rail, Cascades or high speed rail, to create that people-moving capability on rail,” Liias said. “That hasn’t yet in the same broad widespread way caught the imagination in the freight space.” 

This is an oversight, but an understandable one, since people experience their commutes first-hand, but rarely interact with freight logistics. People feel the pain of bumper-to-bumper traffic or sticker shock at the gas pump and wish for a better way. This is how public transit projects can earn the loyalty of constituents by directly improving their mobility and the financial and carbon efficiency that improves their bottom lines. 

Meanwhile, freight inefficiencies are less visible to the public, as the intricacies of supply chain management are mixed into the myriad factors which affect price and profitability. Nevertheless, the hidden nature of these inefficiencies do not exempt them from the state’s prerogative to decarbonize.

Freight rail is three to four times more fuel efficient than trucking, WSDOT spokesperson Janit Matkin said. While electric locomotives are ideal, switching from trucking to diesel locomotives would still realize the fuel efficiency gains Matkin provided because of rail’s innate efficiency advantages over trucking. As the scale and distance of freight logistics increases, the inefficiencies of trucking compound regardless of whether the vehicles are diesel or electric: more engines per-load, the friction of tire-on-asphalt traction, more paved space at freight terminals, etc. Currently, rail’s potential remains unrealized, as trucks carry 69% of the state’s freight by weight, despite their lower efficiency.

The American overreliance on inefficient trucking stems from its long-standing policy of investing in roads as public infrastructure while abandoning rail to the private sector. This has caused rail companies in the United States to prioritize the most productive markets, with the profit-first approach narrowing companies’ focus to only those few sectors where rail is most lucrative (long-distance low-value shipping). This has allowed trucking to capture long-distance shipping which rail could perform if its infrastructure were provided by the state.

Forestry products, agriculture & seafood, energy, and industrial manufacturing are all sectors where rail would provide a more logical alternative to trucking. As consumer goods are also increasingly transferred between large terminals and warehouses, rail has the potential to capture even medium/high-value cargo from trucking. (Graph by Collin Reid, data by Washington Commodity Flow Dashboard)

Notice how high-tech manufacturing, clothing & miscellaneous manufacturing, transportation equipment, food manufacturing, and last-mile logistics all have greater value than weight. While ideally every form of cargo would be transported by the most efficient systems, it’s at least logical from an effectiveness standpoint to have trucks transport goods whose increased value justifies decreased efficiency. (Graph by Collin Reid, data by Washington Commodity Flow Dashboard)

Failing to see rail as a public asset has also sabotaged the state’s capacity to capitalize on modern logistical trends. According to ranking Republican on the House transportation committee Andrew Barkis (2nd LD, Lacey), Washington’s logistics network is centralizing around major terminals and warehousing facilities, the exact niche rail specializes in serving.

“Commodities come in on a ship, you have a limited amount of capacity at the ports, so they move that, and then what they can do is they can move it in bulk to another area and then distribute it from there,” Barkis said. 

Establishing rail connections between ports, warehouses, and distribution centers would capitalize on rail’s land-use advantages, as fewer lanes and paved facilities would be necessary to transport the same amount of goods. At the consumer-end, smaller electrified road vehicles could cover last-mile logistics better than point-to-point long-haul trucking.

While the state has yet to realize this potential to its fullest extent, recognition of rail’s essential role in the agricultural sector has led to concrete results: grain trains and the state-owned Palouse River and Coulee City (PCC) short-line rail system.

Grain and energy (usually coal and oil) are logical for transportation by rail, as they are medium/low value, heavy, and not time-sensitive. Still, that doesn’t mean high-value time-sensitive industries are unable to capitalize on the efficiency of rail to avoid sacrificing profits on inefficient transportation modes. (Graph by Collin Reid, data by Washington Commodity Flow Dashboard)

Rail is more than capable of delivering increased profitability to high-value industries by increasing the efficiency of freight logistics. Expanding short-line networks and rail terminal facilities would increase its competitiveness with trucking. (Graph by Collin Reid, data by Washington Commodity Flow Dashboard)

The PCC in particular is something both Liias (a Democrat) and Barkis (a Republican) acknowledged has been a tremendous success. This is a state-owned short line rail system where operations are leased out to small private carriers, and it’s proven essential in supporting the viability of grain farming in eastern Washington. The inefficiency of trucking makes it cost prohibitive for long-haul grain shipping, to the point that Mike Bagott from Palouse Grain Growers, a small grain co-op on the system, laughed when I asked about the viability of trucking. 

“Long haul trucking grain all the way to Portland or Vancouver? That makes no sense,” Bagott said. “Forget about it.”

Liias, Barkis, and house transportation chair Jake Fey all acknowledged that investing in short-line rail across the state will be key to improving efficiency and meeting climate goals, expressing interest in supporting the expansion of short-lines throughout the state. 

“The more near-term state role is to facilitate main line connections off of the main line into the industrial centers and freight corridors so we can move more freight more efficiently so we can reduce the cost and complexity of doing the mode transfers,” Liias said. “I think that’s probably more the near-term: how do we build that connectivity.”

Although support for short lines is both necessary and a welcome sign that policymakers are beginning to take freight rail more seriously, providing tax benefits to companies investing in rail infrastructure (as appears to be the modern policy prescription) likely won’t be enough to meaningfully improve transportation efficiency to the degree the CCA and the state’s climate goals requires. 

“If we look at how we enhance our supply chain, I think incremental improvements in rail are front and center,” Liias said. “But full scale brand new corridors for freight, that’s not the kind of front-of-mind priority that’s expressed when I talk to folks on the ground. Because 70% of us in the state drive cars all the time, I think it’s natural and instinctive to think of it as a mode, we don’t broadly use rail yet.”

This is exactly why I’ve criticized the Puget Sound Gateway Project for seeking to establish a trucking connection between major port terminals and warehousing facilities when the state didn’t even investigate the feasibility of an upgraded rail corridor: people are repeating the mistakes of the past because they can’t imagine a world beyond the one that has been built around them.

Asked about the state providing rail infrastructure in the same way it currently provides road infrastructure between major warehousing and port facilities, Liias said that is not how things are typically done, with the government typically letting the private sector guide investment.

“That is a little beyond the traditional paradigm,” Liias said. “On the freight side in particular, it’s not necessarily in the state, but in the market place there’s still a preference for trucking and highway infrastructure for freight that’s just baked-in. If we look at the Gateway corridor between the Port of Seattle and Tacoma where there were connectivity challenges, the predominant request of the community and freight users was to build that highway connection.” While guiding freight rail planning may not be the role the state government has recently played, connecting large port terminals and warehouses via rail is textbook transportation geography.

The post Op-ed: Boosting Freight Rail Is a Forgotten but Essential Climate Action first appeared on The Urbanist.

A quiet workhorse of Seattle’s transit system, the SoDo busway, which opened in 1991, whisks riders along a dedicated lane in each direction from Spokane Street in the south to Royal Brougham near the stadiums, keeping buses moving parallel to the existing 1 Line tracks and allowing easy transfers. That busway today carries over 800 bus trips every weekday, but is set to be replaced with a second set of tracks to carry Link riders between West Seattle and Downtown — no matter what alternative the Sound Transit board chooses for a light rail alignment.

Those bus trips will need to go somewhere, so Sound Transit and the City of Seattle have been coordinating on proposed changes to nearby 4th Avenue S as the obvious choice for a new priority bus corridor in SoDo.

Where today 4th Avenue S tops out at 12 buses per hour during a busy evening hour, that will increase to nearly 60 buses per hour with the closure of the busway. As part of its environmental review for West Seattle and Ballard Link, Sound Transit will have to quantify the impacts that come from shifting those buses and find ways to mitigate those impacts. That mitigation will center Level of Service (LoS) for cars and trucks, the amount of time drivers will wait in added traffic.

However, 4th Avenue S is also one of the most dangerous streets in Seattle for all users, but particularly people outside of cars. Between 2017 and 2023, there have been eight fatal crashes and 17 crashes resulting in serious injuries along 4th Avenue, with close to half of those people walking. The high number of wide lanes, which are designed for freight traffic, along 4th is a big contributor to speeding, which average close to 10 mph over the 30 mph speed limit.

People walking and biking through the area have long been an afterthought, with anyone not biking on the short stretch of the SoDo Trail in the neighborhood likely using the narrow sidewalks.

Nonetheless, the initial proposal from Sound Transit, produced in coordination with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and other partners like the Port of Seattle, would largely leave 4th Avenue S as it exists today. Apart from a short freight-and-bus (FAB) lane for northbound traffic only starting just south of S Lander Street and ending at S Holgate Street, buses would share space with general purpose traffic. Bus queue jumps at intersections would give buses a head start at Holgate and Lander when heading southbound.

At the bus stops around Lander and Holgate Streets, the Sound Transit proposal would widen the narrow 4th Avenue sidewalks by only two-and-a-half feet, while leaving most 4th Avenue sidewalks unchanged. Meanwhile, the agency projects the number of transit riders using the stop at S Lander Street will increase tenfold when Ballard Link opens.

Sound Transit’s mitigation plan would do little to improve safety on 4th Avenue. Already dire, the additional pedestrian traffic on the street, may actually cause the situation to degrade further. According to a presentation produced by SDOT earlier this year and obtained by The Urbanist via a public records request, the department is not onboard with the plan, saying that the designs do “not meet SDOT standards. […] Sound Transit’s proposal prioritizes mobility for freight, transit, and general purpose, but worsens conditions for safety.”

Sound Transit’s proposal also leaves out improvements to other stops along 4th Avenue that aren’t at the major intersections. Perhaps most worryingly, the proposal would actually widen some of the lanes on 4th Avenue. “Channelization will increase speeds, worsening pedestrian safety and crashes,” the presentation notes.

SDOT envisions the future of 4th Avenue quite differently, proposing to widen sidewalks, plant street trees, add an additional pedestrian crossing at S Walker Street, and create a curbside business access and transit (BAT) lane all the way from Royal Brougham to Spokane Street. In contrast with Sound Transit’s proposal, freight wouldn’t be allowed to use this bus lane due to the expected peak hour volumes, though that could potentially change in the future. The proposal for street trees is intended to combat SoDo’s status as one of the city’s most intense urban heat islands.

SDOT proposes to implement the changes in two phases, adding sidewalk extensions around all bus stops in the corridor and at the major intersections by the time bus riders switch over to 4th. South of S Massachusetts Street, a full rechannelization would come later and not be directly tied to the Sound Transit mitigation efforts.

Funding for the proposal is another matter. Sound Transit’s north star will be the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, which will look narrowly at vehicle delay. The agency recently adopted a new policy around betterments, or ancillary improvements that come with transit lines, intended to curb the practice of cities putting nice-to-have elements on the Sound Transit tab. But Sound Transit does need to pay for the direct impacts from the West Seattle and Ballard Lines, which are much more broad and multifaceted than a simple increase in bus traffic.

“While the relocation of buses to 4th Avenue is a change proposed by the Sound Transit project, SDOT may decide to make additional improvements to 4th Avenue South that are separate from Sound Transit’s work,” SDOT spokesperson Mariam Ali told The Urbanist. “However, there is currently no timeline or secured funding for a potential future project. SDOT would conduct public engagement for any future project elements.”

A substantive overhaul of 4th Avenue will likely see pushback from freight and business advocacy groups intent on keeping the street as free-flowing as possible, and from nearby property owners concerned about changes to access and losing parking. Minor changes to 4th Avenue intended to improve safety following clearly preventable deaths have been put on ice before thanks to such opposition, and these changes go much further than that. If the goal is to increase road safety rather than worsen the situation, implementing the initial Sound Transit proposal would clearly be a mistake.

After months of negotiations behind closed doors, SDOT expects to start community engagement around the issue near the end of 2024 and into 2025. Two frequent opponents of safe streets projects in SoDo — the Seattle Freight Advisory Board and the SoDo Business Improvement Area (BIA) — factor heavily in those plans.

“SDOT has had some early discussions with the Port of Seattle and the Northwest Seaport Alliance to understand and address their concerns,” Ali said. “When public engagement starts later this year and into 2025, Sound Transit and SDOT will engage more broadly with the SODO BIA and its members, as well as with the City’s transportation modal boards, which include the Seattle Freight Advisory Board, to continue to hear directly from users of the 4th Avenue South corridor.”

The episode serves as a clear reminder that for so long, “mitigating” transportation projects has meant alleviating their impact on drivers and traffic, and not taking a broader look at what is best aligned with city and regional goals around safety, environmental justice, quality of life, and climate. But here is a clear opportunity to do better and chart a new path.

The post Seattle Looks to Rescue Sound Transit’s 4th Avenue Transit Street Plan first appeared on The Urbanist.

Clocking in at about 750 pages plus appendices, the plan will now head to the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee. With four brand new members, that committee is still generally getting its hands around the workings of city government and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) in particular. Significant tweaks aren’t likely, though any that do get made do have the potential to provide insights into policy priorities for incoming councilmembers.

The lofty plan includes eight overall goals for Seattle’s transportation system including safety, equity, and “maintenance & modernization,” as well as a long list of “key moves” under each priority. It sets itself up as providing a framework for transportation priorities through 2044, but other more tangible events coming up will do much more to actually set the agenda for the foreseeable future when it comes to SDOT spending and action. The most significant one is the renewal of the Move Seattle Levy this fall, with SDOT’s forthcoming release of an updated Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) close on its heels.

Accounting for at least 30% of SDOT’s overall budget, the Move Seattle Levy will determine how much the City has on hand to spend on transportation over the next nine years — and how much it’s able to leverage to take advantage of outside grant opportunities. The TAMP will tell us where maintenance dollars will be best used, another significant opportunity to leverage investments. Knowing which streets are most in need of repaving, for example, will dictate which corridors can be upgraded to make them safer and more accessible at the same time. It’s with those projects where the high-level vision outlined in the Seattle Transportation Plan will be actually put to the test.

Right now, SDOT is developing two potential sets of budgets for next year — one if voters approve a new levy, and one if they do not. But it’s still not clear what positive vision is being put forward.

High-tier projects for deadly roads like Aurora, Rainier

The STP released today includes more fleshed-out details on the 80 or so projects that SDOT sees as in line with the 20-year vision for the transportation system, but it still doesn’t include any prioritization of those projects. Next year, the department says it plans to release an implementation plan for the STP, based on available funding. This plan, however, does include a broad ranking of projects into three “tiers”, providing an insight into what projects could provide the biggest return on investment. The list won’t be surprising to anyone familiar with the city’s most dangerous streets, and includes projects like First Avenue S and Fourth Avenue S in SoDo, Rainier Avenue S and MLK Jr Way S, and Aurora Avenue N.

Many of these streets are the same ones where improvements were touted in 2015 to pass the current transportation levy, providing a good lesson in the fact that a list of projects is easy to make; implementation is the hard part.

With some early signs that the Harrell administration is leaning toward a levy renewal that totals $1.2 billion, the total of 2015’s levy simply adjusted for inflation, to be used against a transportation system with a replacement value of $40 billion, the need to target investments likely can’t be understated. Mobility and climate advocates, for their part, have called for a $3 billion levy focused on street safety and transit, a clear attempt to shift the City’s thinking about tackling its biggest challenges.

What’s changed since the draft plan

If you dug into the plan when it was released last summer, you may be wondering how it’s changed in response to added public comments and a thorough review by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office. The answer is not much, perhaps unsurprising given the sheer size of the plan. The plan does now include a formal vision statement, as flat and broad as possible in hopes of mass appeal.

“Seattle is an equitable, vibrant, and diverse city where moving around is safe, fair, and sustainable. All people and businesses can access their daily needs and feel connected to their community,” the statement reads.

The final plan emphasizes the importance of economic vitality more than the initial draft. We can trace this back to feedback received by business advocacy groups, including the Seattle freight advisory board. A letter that board sent last October requested that change, at the same time that it recommended the entire plan be held back so that it can be evaluated against the broader plans for changes in Seattle’s land use that are set to be included in the Comprehensive Plan update. “The Draft STP does not meet the goal of a holistic planning document,” the letter stated.

That request echoes criticism of the STP from the Seattle Planning Commission, which reviewed the plan in depth last year and sent SDOT a laundry list of suggested ways to beef up the draft, with coordination with the Comprehensive Plan near the top of the list. “Transportation investments to serve future land use development patterns will depend on the selected growth strategy and housing and jobs projections in the Comprehensive Plan,” their feedback noted. Likewise, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways stressed the opportunity to advance the 15-minute city concept by pairing denser land uses with building safe infrastructure for people walking, rolling, and biking. Advocates on all fronts want to see more on how the plan actually gets implemented.

The updated plan released this week does include some additional details, though vague, about how the land use plan the City is developing will interact with the STP. The type of neighborhood, whether “high density,” “low density,” residential, or industrial, are said to guide the types of investments the City will be making over the life of the plan.

“Many existing low density, primarily residential areas will evolve into ‘complete communities’ with more urban places as part of Seattle’s growth strategy,” the plan now states. “To align with the directed growth in these places, investments in frequent bus transit are a priority. Investments may also include community and mobility hubs. For pedestrians, we will maintain and, in some cases, enhance our sidewalk infrastructure.”

“In manufacturing and industrial centers (MICs) — the Ballard-Interbay Northend (BINMIC) and Greater Duwamish MIC — freight mobility and access are emphasized,” it states. Industrial areas like SoDo see some of the highest rates of fatal and serious crashes in the entire city, with business interests often adamant about not seeing any improvements installed that could impact freight movement. “Moving freight is complex, but safety for all people — whether driving trucks, biking to jobs, or walking to a transit stop — comes first and foremost.”

Since 2020, there have been signs that SDOT would be transitioning to a land-use based framework for prioritizing projects in an attempt to resolve conflicts over “scarce” street space, even though ultimately street space — which takes up nearly a quarter of the land in Seattle, is not scarce at all. This has always been a dicey proposition, since fights over which modes to prioritize are at their heart political, and not technical. The Seattle Transportation Plan could represent a step backwards, taking the city away from ambitious network goals like those included in the Bicycle Master Plan. Or it could turn into a plan that sits on a shelf.

Turning the Seattle Transportation Plan’s vision statement into action that furthers city goals across the board, as it sets out to do, will take political will and follow through.

The post Finalized Seattle Transportation Plan Heads to City Council first appeared on The Urbanist.

It’s no coincidence that the already overburdened community of South Tacoma is the planned site of a warehouse complex that would pave more than 125 acres of its remaining wetlands. This 2.5-million-square-foot mega warehouse would be both a symptom and a cause of worsening social, economic, and environmental injustice in Tacoma. 

South Tacomans already breathe some of the worst air in the city, and this warehouse would bring an estimated 8,000 more vehicle trips through South Tacoma neighborhoods every day — a sizable fraction of the current vehicle rate. This strain on the local infrastructure would also be accompanied by a transfer of control of some of that infrastructure to developer Bridge Industrial — which lacks any experience of operating in a residential area. Besides respiratory diseases and cancer, air pollution from vehicle exhaust with higher rates of violent crime in the surrounding area. More 18-wheelers driving past three South Tacoma public schools will not help any of our city’s problems.

Even now, before construction has taken place, we’re seeing the impacts of this warehouse on our home. As of this year, the City of Tacoma has implemented a city-wide camping ban as well as continuous sweeps of the potential warehouse location. Desperate, with their meager belongings trashed, our houseless community members are pushed out of the forest cover and into neighborhoods to try to survive. With more visibility and no space to legally occupy, they are harassed by cops, their housed neighbors, and other unhoused people. Increased complaints of crime in previously quiet neighborhoods around the warehouse site have followed. 

South Tacoma already has the city’s lowest percentage of tree canopy cover and highest percentage of oppressed nationalities, and yet the city is actively planning to reduce that canopy. Trees and wetlands cool an area down significantly, while adding more pavement does the opposite. Reducing tree cover would worsen health outcomes and could also result in an increase in violent offenses, both because rising average temperatures and the scarcity of green space have been linked to violence. 

It’s systemic 

The relationship between green space and violent crime can be partially ascribed to the fact that neighborhoods with more green spaces also disproportionately have White populations, higher average income, and more economic opportunity. Rent is inherently cheaper in polluted areas, which draws in poorer, and often heavily non-White populations. Those that can afford to leave an environmentally devastated area do so and take their wealth with them, while those that remain breathe poison and fight for scraps.

There is more tax revenue to lose in upper-class neighborhoods than in working-class ones, so it’s cheaper for a city to put the brunt of the climate crisis on the most overburdened communities – who have the fewest resources to resist. Capitalism exacerbates inequity at an exponential rate.

This warehouse project is shaping up to be a textbook example of these mechanisms: the area is historically red-lined, known for its crime, and has 9% tree canopy cover. The City and Bridge Industrial chose this location because it’s cost effective and they think they can get away with it. They think that this working-class community is too squeezed to fight back. 

The struggle for South Tacoma 

City officials quietly approved Bridge Industrial’s construction plans in April 2023, after completely disregarding the voices of South Tacoma residents for over a year. Since then, we have been silenced, stonewalled, and lied to. Like a game of hot potato, our city and state governments pass accountability for this development back and forth as quickly as they can.

The City of Tacoma has been astonishingly unwilling to conduct standard research on the health and environmental impacts of this massive project.

Tacoma city government permitted construction under a Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance. A Determination of Significance would have required the city to do a full analysis of potential harms in an Environmental Impact Statement before moving forward with permits. Given the obvious potential for significant impacts to our health and environment, it seems that the City knows the results would hinder the warehouse plans. This is an open admittance by city officials that they see the residents of South Tacoma as insignificant.

South Tacomans represented by Earthjustice, 350 Tacoma and the South Tacoma Neighborhood Council appealed on behalf of residents. Unfortunately, the Hearing Examiner upheld the decision. These groups expressed frustration that any arguments about equity, environmental justice, and disproportionate health impacts were not allowed to be heard during the legal proceedings. Apparently, these key areas are not part of our State Environmental Policy Act, which determines which projects can obtain permits and proceed.

Despite these gaping flaws in our permit regulations, the City of Tacoma made decisions that demonstrate that they value the profits of industry over the wellbeing of the human and non-human lives placed in their care. Early on in the permit process, a handful of government agencies wrote letters to the City noting that there were environmental justice concerns, that the community already suffered from pollution-related impacts, and that a proper Health Impact Assessment should be conducted.

These letters and hundreds of public comments were ignored. Inaccurate and incomplete permit submissions by Bridge Industrial were accepted without scrutiny. And when the first traffic Impact Analysis showed over 8,000 additional vehicle trips per day through the neighborhood streets — an amount that might trigger a deeper analysis of the project — the City gave the consulting agency narrowed parameters and asked them to do it again — this time magically getting just below 5,000 vehicles, the amount that would trigger the deeper analysis. 

As the City’s facade of environmental concern and care for its citizens erodes, their priorities become painfully obvious. We are subjected to the financial interests of a giant corporation that was encouraged by our city officials to build any old monstrosity in our backyard. 

What it is to be done?

The people of Tacoma have spoken – and until the city chooses to listen to those it exists to serve, our voices will become louder and more numerous. The City tried to do this quietly because they are afraid of the power of an informed and coordinated populace. The working class is the lifeblood of any city and when we unite, we win. City officials’ blatant disregard for residents’ lives will cost them the consent of those they depend on to keep the city functioning. Defeating the warehouse is just a matter of uniting and activating our community to harness the power we already have. Growing numbers of residents and allies are working together to stand up to Bridge Industrial and to tell them to keep their hands off our home. 

Climate Alliance of the South Sound (CASS) opposes the construction of this warehouse complex because we know it will make South Tacoma lives worse. Our concerns are substantiated by the impact analysis the city refuses to perform, and by the rest of capitalism’s racist history. The working class of Tacoma demand that the City require a Health Impact Assessment and that Bridge Industrial do the right thing: recognize the damage this would do to the neighborhood, acknowledge the environmental racism involved in choosing South Tacoma, and pull out of the plans for the mega warehouse.

The post Op-Ed: South Tacoma Mega Warehouse Exemplifies Environmental Racism first appeared on The Urbanist.

When the Washington State Legislature passed the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) in 2021, it codified economic decarbonization as the government’s priority. To this end, the law created an ambitious emissions market system with two primary goals:

1) Incentivizing consensual private decarbonization.
2) Increasing revenue for investments in socially and environmentally sustainable infrastructure projects. 

The policy fits neatly into the ideological constraints written into Washington’s legal code: it specifically recommends market solutions while ignoring the government’s role in constructing the market’s operational infrastructure.

Ironically, cap-and-invest’s market-oriented solution implicitly acknowledges the state’s essential role in directing the economy. Disparate private enterprises cannot adequately respond to major social crises: They specialize in narrowly enhancing profitability within extant economic structures. It is the government which creates those structures, and the CCA builds a financial incline directing the flow of money towards sustainability.

However, monetary structures cannot accomplish change if people lack the physical structures which permit them to choose differently. For transport logistics under the CCA, this means a shift away from the less energy efficient freight modes and projects, such as trucking, and towards more efficient ones, like improving and expanding the state’s underfunded short-line rail network.

Given the structural incentives of the CCA, it’s worth interrogating how the legislature has seen fit to develop the Puget Sound Gateway Project, an initiative to build multiple highway extensions, interchanges, and overpasses to better link I-5 to the Port of Tacoma, Sea-Tac, and the Port of Seattle. How sustainable are the current freight mode shares between these areas, and how might this project impact the current mode distribution?

Dependence on trucking will disrupt business under CCA

Currently, King and Pierce counties together represent one of the state’s most vital logistical centers: They host the third largest port complex in the country and exchange tens of millions of metric tons per year. Though economically vibrant, the dual-county area’s logistical network relies on trucking for 90% of its trade by weight, meaning the CCA will risk inhibiting the region’s economic performance unless the state provides physical infrastructure for companies to choose more efficient freight modes.

As it was unwise for many of Washington’s 20th century homes to have been built with poor insulation – founded upon the shaky assumption that the Columbia River Basin dams’ abundant electricity would eternally and infinitely outpace demand – it is unwise to rely on a logistical network where costs rest on the the very means the state seeks to make prohibitively expensive.

Fortunately, the CCA’s focus on investment signals that the legislature has recognized this issue and plans to build off-ramps from carbon-intensive highways to more socially and environmentally conscious transportation infrastructure. At least, that is what the language of CCA signals, though the budget indicates otherwise.

State transportation funding is inconsistent with its climate policies

A pro-business ecologically conscious government committed to fulfilling its own legal emissions mandates would likely invest in shifting freight share away from trucking, especially for traffic between the state’s most significant ports. After all, the State plans to invest more than half a billion dollars in constructing hybrid ferries, so it must also plan to electrify its freight and passenger rail corridors, given that transportation causes nearly 40% of the state’s current emissions and rail already transports 20% of the state’s cargo by weight, in spite of the previous century’s plans to build highway dependency.

Unfortunately, the transportation project budget from 2023-2029 does not follow this logic. There are no plans for expanding or electrifying passenger and freight rail corridors; by mode rail will receive a mere 2% of the budget, coming in at $0.38 billion. Instead, the lion’s share of the transportation project budget is slated for highway improvements, with the single largest investment being the $1.9 billion reserved for the Puget Sound Gateway highway connections, more than five times all state investments in rail.

Both temporally and ideologically, the state remains constrained. According to Kris Olsen, the spokesperson for the Puget Sound Gateway Project, “both SR 509 and 167 were planned in the late 1950s and 1960s when most major highways in western Washington were planned and built,” meaning the state legislature is choosing to invest in projects conceived 30 years before we’d emitted more than half of our current atmosphere’s carbon. As the legislature has explicitly acknowledged the compounding consequences of climate change, it wouldn’t be beyond reason to expect them to scrap infrastructure plans reflecting priorities established before roughly 85% of the American population was born.

To the question of whether WSDOT committed to retaining trucks as a key pillar of land-based logistics in Washington, the WSDOT spokesperson responded, “We do not dictate the means of transport used by the private sector.” Though technically true, the statement betrays heavy market-ideological constraints, abdicating the state’s responsibility in creating viable alternatives for companies to utilize.

Beyond this, the specific decision to spend more than quadruple the entire rail project budget on a single highway corridor betrays a distinct windshield perspective on the part of legislators: They conflate transportation and driving, their ideological limits reflecting the physical transportation constraints they have likely grown up with. This can be best summarized by two notable linguistic choices: 

1) Transportation infrastructure laws fall under the category “Public Highways and Transportation” in the Revised Code of Washington, and 

2) The Puget Sound Gateway spokesperson stated one of the primary purposes of the project is “… creating new, more efficient driving options,” rather than creating more efficient transportation options. 

This implicit erasure of modes beyond the road undermines the multimodal priorities established in the state’s ironically titled legal code. Gaining an appreciation of how a car-centric paradigm limits their perspectives would help legislators maintain consistency between the government’s various climate and transportation directives, and would ultimately assist companies in complying with the CCA’s emissions mandates.

If the state refuses to invest more than 2% of its transportation project spending in providing businesses with more efficient freight alternatives, how are companies supposed to choose a more efficient mode than trucking? Is it wise to continue to rely on gasoline when oil prices are prone to fluctuation due to global political strife? Regardless of external oil price shocks, the CCA will increase carbon-intensive logistical costs by imposing fines on companies. Continuing to fund reliance on highways through projects like the Puget Sound Gateway thus creates a Catch 22: The state will financially penalize companies for choosing carbon intensive practices while investing almost exclusively in carbon-intensive freight infrastructure. It’s as if the state passed higher tobacco taxes in order to curb consumption, then. increased cigarette advertising to children. It’s a great way to generate revenue, but socially, fiscally, and ecologically, it’s unsustainable.

Aligning transportation and climate policies is possible

Theoretically, the Puget Sound Gateway Project could secretly be a clever means of boosting state carbon fee revenues by inducing more driving. To my personal disappointment, because I enjoy schemes of legal and financial intrigue, it is not such a scheme, according to Olsen.

“The Puget Sound Gateway Program, at the direction of the Legislature, is focused on building these highway connections to the ports to complete the interconnectivity necessary for the efficient movement and transfer of goods using highways, railways and seaports,” Olsen said.

Since they had mentioned railways, and because multimodality and emissions limits are legislatively established priorities, I asked whether there had been any comparative evaluations on whether port connections might be better served by expanded and upgraded rail connections. As shipping large volumes between specific terminals quite succinctly defines the specialization of freight rail, a port connection via rail would seem a concept worth investigating.

Surprisingly, I was told Puget Sound Gateway planners “do not have any information that compares emissions from completing the SR 167 and 509 projects with emissions from rail or rail projects.” The specific environmental and economic reasons why the state will invest five times the rail budget in a single highway project appear confined to the heads of the legislators, rather than anyone at WSDOT.

Washington State does not require radically unprecedented change to reform its transportation sector: WSDOT planners have already located specific rail improvements to alleviate friction between freight and passenger traffic and have identified the short line rail network as a mode holding potential and requiring investment. The State doesn’t lack the funds to implement these meaningful changes, legislators are simply choosing to place $14.8 billion in highways and 38 times less in all the state’s rail projects. The money slated for the Puget Sound Gateway could revitalize rail across the entire state, but the legislature has chosen to completely squander this potential.

If the state wants to operate effectively, it needs to operate with internal consistency. Investing billions in projects which will specifically undercut parallel objectives will lead to the state disrupting its own projects. Any wise politician would pay attention to the potentially catastrophic political blowback from failed policies. The legislature has formulated an innovative and ambitious market-based solution to emissions, now it needs to follow that up with the requisite state-based solutions, or risk seeing those priorities scrapped after a lost election.

The post Puget Sound Gateway Project Reveals State’s Lack of Freight Vision first appeared on The Urbanist.

An under-the-radar resolution moving through the Seattle City Council could be about to open the door to additional scrutiny of high-impact safety and mobility projects planned for some of the city’s most dangerous streets. Originally intended to encourage city departments to work with industrial businesses and organizations to improve operation of Seattle’s freight networks, last-minute changes raised eyebrows among safe streets advocacy by appearing to prioritize vehicle movement over safety.

The resolution, which has been shepherded by Land Use Committee Chair Dan Strauss, directs the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to analyze its existing transportation plans in order to “prioritize freight movement on streets classified as major truck streets” and includes language that would empower the city’s volunteer board that advises on freight mobility issues to more forcefully push back on any changes intended to reduce fatal or serious injury crashes.

“When a transportation project may result in the reduction in the number or width of lanes along a major truck street, the Council requests that SDOT offers a briefing to the Seattle Freight Advisory Board and the Seattle City Council’s Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee, or successor committee with purview over transportation issues, with a goal of demonstrating that adjacent land uses and through traffic will not be compromised,” the new language in the resolution reads.

That wording seems to be in conflict with some of the City’s broader goals around reducing serious crashes and shifting city residents out of their single-occupancy vehicles. It could throw up obstacles to completing planned safety projects and making progress toward the City’s Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030. That Vision Zero pledge is already is well off-course at the current pace of building safety infrastructure, and adding more hurdles would not help.

Some of the most impactful street improvement projects across the city, from a planned bike lane on Airport Way S in Georgetown, to a new plan to study rerouting the Burke-Gilman Trail’s missing link on Leary Way NW in Ballard, to a complete safety overhaul of Aurora Avenue N, all impact “major truck streets,” and establishing a bar of no impact whatsoever to vehicle throughput on those streets could create a considerable new hurdle.

The resolution was originally introduced in July, to be paired with a long-awaited overhaul of the city’s industrial and maritime land use regulations. The changes tweak zoning in the city’s industrial lands to potentially allow 3,000 new units of housing that wouldn’t have been permitted, but freight and industrial interests pushed back on the idea of allowing more housing around the sports stadiums in SoDo, a collision hotspot with more serious and fatal traffic crashes than any other part of the city. The goal of maintaining freight vehicle capacity in that area of the city played a major role in their advocacy on the topic.

Originally, the language around maintaining “through traffic” was not included in the resolution. Instead it had only directed the city to “improve the movement of workers and goods by making transit and freight networks more efficient” — work the city is already doing by exploring new programs like dedicated freight lanes and freight spot improvements around the city. But early this week, the city council’s land use committee reviewed a new version of the resolution that included the stronger language.

Major truck streets aren’t just located in the city’s Manufacturing and Industrial Centers (MICs) but extend throughout the entire city, and include important pedestrian-oriented transit corridors like NW Market Street in Ballard, Rainier Avenue in Mount Baker, and Westlake Avenue in South Lake Union. The way these streets operate now, there is a fundamental tension that exists between providing incredible amounts of vehicle capacity to get freight traffic in and out, and being local neighborhood streets.

The resolution also directs the city to “support Vision Zero projects with unique industrial-area applications to reduce traffic deaths and injuries,” but many of the Vision Zero projects that have been proposed in recent years have received considerable pushback from businesses concerned about freight.

For example, plans to implement traffic-calming measures including center medians to prevent high-speed passing along West Marginal Way SW, a city-controlled street with some of the highest average vehicle speeds in the city, were paused indefinitely after a presentation to the freight advisory board prompted intense skepticism and fears of traffic backups. SDOT’s analysis of the proposed changes found “negligible impacts to traffic,” but that did little to assuage the freight board.

Just this week, the freight advisory board pushed back on plans to implement 10.5-foot lanes on a very short segment of a planned rechannelization of N 130th Street — a minor truck street, where trucks are 3% of overall traffic — in order to accommodate protected bike lanes. Seattle’s Chief Safety Officer Venu Nemani presented the board with information laying out how narrower vehicle lanes lead to slower vehicle speeds, but given the fact that Seattle’s own transportation design manual calls for 11-foot lanes even on minor truck streets, the argument was not well-received. It’s unclear whether SDOT will push forward or back off.

Even though this proposed change is included in a resolution, which has less force than a full city council ordinance, transportation advocates are taking it seriously as an impediment to some of progress Seattle has made in recent years around safety, as SDOT gears up to tackle some of the city’s most problematic streets.

“If safety is truly our city’s #1 transportation priority, the goal should not be to demonstrate that ‘through traffic will not be compromised’ (as in the amendment language), but rather to implement improvements will make everyone safer,” Gordon Padelford, the executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, wrote to city councilmembers this week, asking for a fix to the language.

Padelford pointed out the broad public support for safer streets.

“For example, the major truck streets of Aurora, Rainier, MLK, Lake City Way, and 4th Avenue S are the top five most dangerous streets in our city because they were historically designed to feel comfortable to drive at speeds we now know are dangerous,” Padelford added. “Changes to these and other streets may mean, at times, that through traffic in the hearts of our communities is a bit slower than it used to be — but that is a compromise Seattleites have said they are willing to make in polls and surveys.”

The resolution still needs to be approved by the full Seattle City Council, leaving time for a last-minute amendment that could scale back some of the strongest language in the text. But even if that happens, the episode underscores the disconnect that will continue to exist between encouraging freight mobility, which enables the entire city to access goods and services, and safety — at least so long as narrowing or eliminating general purpose vehicle lanes continues to be viewed as an existential threat to freight. Keeping streets exactly as they are right now isn’t going to make that conflict go away.

The post Seattle Council Set to Empower Freight Board to Water Down Safety Projects first appeared on The Urbanist.

Under the auspices of asking “growth to pay for growth,” the legislature authorized impact fees to fund only projects that expand the capacity of the transportation network for users of any mode. But the issue of adding additional fees on new housing during a well-identified affordability crisis is causing additional scrutiny of the idea.

The proposal on the table now would update the city’s Comprehensive Plan to include specific details on how a transportation impact fee would be implemented and which projects could get funding, with any vote to actually adopt impact fees occurring down the road. But the discussion is happening against the backdrop of an active appeal of the proposal, with the appellants telling the city’s Hearing Examiner just last week that they don’t believe the City did proper due-diligence around the proposal.

That appeal is essentially a replay of a similar appeal from 2018, brought by the same shadowy group calling itself the Seattle Mobility Coalition. It argues the City cut corners in conducting environmental review of the overall citywide impact of impact fees. During last week’s hearing, a number of local housing developers testified and made the argument that the transportation impact fee proposal will add to the cost of housing and slow development, to the detriment of the city.

Bill sponsors Alex Pedersen and Lisa Herbold had originally scheduled an official public hearing this week to receive comments on the proposal, but were forced to cancel given the fact that this appeal is still active, with a ruling not expected until deep into the council’s budget season this fall.

Councilmember Herbold called the move a “small procedural step” that still leaves the issue of actually implementing impact fees to another time and a new set of councilmembers, but it’s not exactly clear why the city council couldn’t take that step if the body decided to move forward. The city’s Comprehensive Plan already says the city should consider the use of transportation impact fees, and the transportation project list will likely be updated as priorities change with a new council.

And it will be a majority-new city council since four sitting councilmembers are not seeking reelection and a fifth (Teresa Mosqueda) appears poised to win a King County Council seat, vacating her seat. Statements on the campaign trail from leading council candidates suggest there will likely be more skepticism of the entire concept next year, with candidates like D3’s Alex Hudson and D4’s Ron Davis strongly coming out against impact fees.

“They are perverse, raising the cost of supplying a good with significant positive environmental, economic, and social justice externalities,” Davis wrote to The Urbanist’s elections committee earlier this year. Davis led the field with 45% of the primary vote, suggesting he’s the leading contender to replace Pedersen on council.

The push for transportation impact fees is also tied to the fact that Seattle’s current nine-year transportation levy, dubbed, Move Seattle, is set to expire next year. Transportation Committee Chair Pedersen has been fairly adamant that the city move forward with implementing transportation impact fees as a replacement for at least a portion of the levy, currently funded entirely by property taxes.

“In the spirit of progressive tax reform — which is long overdue in Seattle — imposing this one-time new fee on just new for-profit real estate development could, in turn, enable City Hall to LOWER an ongoing expense for everyone’s housing: the property taxes charged to everyone for future transportation projects,” Pedersen wrote in a blog post on his council website earlier this year.

But an impact fee that discourages housing growth in Seattle, making sprawl more cost-competitive and drives up commute times would put more demand on the region’s transportation system overall, defeating the entire purpose of the impact fee program.

Housing Applications are Way Down in 2023

The new discussion about this potential source of transportation funding is happening at a time when city data shows the pace of development is slowing considerably. Permit intake data from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) shows that new applications for housing are at a fraction of the levels that they had been in recent years, as high interest rates continue to make borrowing to finance projects less and less feasible.

Applications for new units of housing through the second quarter of 2023 totaled just 1,514, a 62% decline year-over-year for that period.

At Wednesday’s meeting, a number of housing developers spoke to the chilling effect a new fee could have right now. Pat Foley of Lake Union Partners, developer of the Midtown Square project at 23rd and Union — a project that the Seattle Times recently noted “offer[s] hope for Seattle’s future” by allowing the city’s cultural roots to have a new home — noted impact fees would have rendered that project infeasible.

“What I will tell you is if the impact fees that are being proposed were in place when we started that project a few years ago, we wouldn’t have built that project. Social impact projects like that would be done… we just can’t take the hit, there’s no more room,” Foley said.

State law allows jurisdictions to exempt affordable housing projects from impact fees, but the proposal has not defined what level of affordability would qualify for an exemption.

“I recognize that the reasons for the decline in projects that we’re seeing are complex,” Councilmember Mosqueda said at Wednesday’s committee meeting. “I do wonder about what impacts we would have if we were going to layer on a new fee.”

Mosqueda didn’t go so far as to say that the proposal shouldn’t move forward, but did want the city to consider the most up-to-date information on new units coming online. “The concern that I have is wanting to see any real-time analysis of potential impacts on housing production, given the impact of the pandemic on housing production and the slowdown that we’ve seen…all of these things have been identified as important factors for why we need additional funding, but we also need additional housing.”

A Project List from 2018

The big thing that the bill in front of the council right now would do is adopt an official list of projects that could be funded by a future impact fee. Only transportation projects that add capacity — for any mode of transportation — are eligible to be funded through transportation impact fees, and a project has to be specifically listed in the Comprehensive Plan to receive that funding.

The laundry list of projects developed for the city council’s impact fee proposal includes a number of multimodal corridor projects, like upgrading Lake City Way, Rainier Avenue, or Jackson Street into a “complete street” — though it’s not exactly clear what that means. It also includes multiple projects aimed directly at increasing freight and general-purpose vehicle capacity, including expansion of city streets around the I-5 ramps at 6th Avenue, truck improvements to S Massachusetts Street in SoDo, and vague improvements to First Avenue through Downtown and SoDo.

The current way the impact fee proposal is structured, developments in specific areas of the city do not directly fund projects related to expected capacity needed in that area. A new townhouse in Ballard, for example, could be charged an impact fee that funds signal upgrades or truck aprons in SoDo. On its face, that appears to be a big hole in the “making growth pay for growth” argument used to justify the policy. And then there’s the fact that the project list doesn’t seem to be aligned with the city’s Climate Action Plan and its goals around reducing emissions and vehicle miles traveled.

During Wednesday’s hearing, city council central staff noted that the list the city is moving forward with is largely the same one that was developed a half-decade ago by then-transportation chair Councilmember Mike O’Brien, who left the council at the end of 2019. While the list had been updated to do things like remove upgrades to Delridge Way SW that were completed as part of the RapidRide H project, it still includes Madison Street bus rapid transit, a fully-funded project that has been under construction for nearly two years.

The project list is not aligned with any of the projects in the draft of the Seattle Transportation Plan, underlining why the next council will likely want to take another look at what’s included.

The debate around whether impact fees are appropriate for Seattle, especially given the current development market, may clarify the issue for several councilmembers who may be on the fence. However, we can likely expect the policy debate to be repeated under the next version of the city council, raising the question of whether this is the best use of time for an 11th-hour city council.

The post Seattle Council Pushes Forward on Transportation Impact Fees first appeared on The Urbanist.