But a plan to do just that at 21 intersections across Pioneer Square is not going over well with some of the neighborhood’s most high-profile voices. The Pioneer Square Preservation Board is threatening to block the project or force a costly design overhaul.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been rolling out on-street corrals around the city, utilizing space near intersections where drivers are prohibited from parking under state law. In practice, motorists often park within the 30-foot clear zone and risk parking tickets. SDOT’s micromobility and Vision Zero safety teams are collaborating to implement the quick-build projects as a proven safety countermeasure intended to reduce both the number of crashes that happen on city streets and their severity.

In Pioneer Square, street changes need buy-in from the neighborhood’s historic preservation board, which dates to the 1970s and gives local residents and business owners significant leverage to alter projects within the neighborhood or even hit the brakes.

Despite the fact that city code codifies that one purpose of Pioneer Square’s historic district is “to avoid a proliferation of vehicular parking and vehicular-oriented uses,” projects that reallocate street space away from cars in the neighborhood often meet opposition. One clear undercurrent of this discussion is the “removal” of parking spaces — spaces where it’s mostly not legal to park but where it still happens, thanks to lax enforcement.

Data collected from Seattle’s scootershare companies in 2025 showed around 750 trips per day ending in the Pioneer Square area, or around 275,000 trips across the entire year. Scooter usage in the city continues to increase, with a 96% jump in ridership between 2023 and 2025, according to SDOT. The proliferation of scooters and bikes on sidewalk edges have raised accessibility concerns, and the SDOT sees the on-street corrals as one element scooting riders toward better behavior.

But an initial briefing this week on the proposal brought out a litany of concerns and criticisms of the design of corrals that the department intends to roll out ahead of Seattle’s first World Cup match in June, primarily along the busy First Avenue S and Occidental Avenue S corridors.

The neighborhood’s primary business advocacy group, the Alliance for Pioneer Square, came out strongly against the corrals as currently proposed, pressing for more unique designs that reflect Pioneer Square’s character. The neighborhood already has its own specially-designed bike racks, intended to blend in better with the 1890s architecture common in the area. But the group also questioned the need for additional bike parking in the neighborhood, asserting that existing racks are underutilized.

“We have consistently communicated to SDOT that the proposed signs and designs and locations, particularly those that focus on daylighting, are not appropriate interventions for Pioneer Square,” said Anahí Bendeck, the Alliance’s Design and Planning Manager. “The proposal relies heavily on utilizing the same treatments, materials, and design that is being deployed citywide, without sufficient modification to reflect the neighborhood’s historic context or the actual lived conditions. And we just believe that this one-size-fits-all approach is fundamentally misaligned with the character and the knowledge of the neighborhood.”

Comments in opposition were also read into the record from Pioneer Square business owners, including the co-owner of Magic Mouse Toys, and the co-owner of Friend Museum. Neither business returned a request for comment from The Urbanist on their specific concerns. SDOT plans three corrals at First and Yesler near Magic Mouse, with another planned across the street from Friend Museum at First and King.

Comments were not universally against the proposal, however. In addition to supportive comments by a representative from Lime, Cascade Bicycle Club testified in favor.

“We believe these corrals are a practical, safety focused use of curb space. The majority of proposed sites utilize existing furniture zones or daylight intersections. Daylighting improves visibility at corners, reduces turning conflicts, conflicts, and helps prevent crashes,” Cascade’s Rachel Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer referenced a fatal crash just this week in Capitol Hill, where a turning driver struck and killed a 27-year-old woman at Bellevue Avenue and E Pine Street. “These are small design changes that can have lifesaving impacts.”

While the board wasn’t asked to make a decision Wednesday, numerous board members signaled that they wanted to see the proposal revamped to respond to community concerns.

“We’ve received more comments on this project than I’ve ever seen come in. And there’s deep concerns in the community, and a lot of it was feeling like, there needs to be more robust outreach to stakeholders and communication,” board chair Maureen Elenga said. “Out in front of Pioneer Park […] having that cluster [of corrals] up from there, I think really changes the character. Concern with the materiality of it, these plastic Omega posts are not really compatible with the neighborhood. And I’m wondering, what is the need for bike racks in this situation? We have parking for 200 and some bikes already. So if this is for the rideshare, nobody locks those up and they’re freestanding.”

“I’m fully persuaded by the public comments from the Pioneer Square businesses and from the National Park Service through the Klondike Historic National Park that the proposal is contrary to the nature of the historic district,” board member Catherine Walker said via written comments read by the city employee administering the meeting.

This isn’t the first time that an SDOT project has faced a tough crowd at the Pioneer Square preservation board. A plan to reconfigure S Main Street to upgrade a heavily used bus stop was delayed and nearly fell by the wayside after concerns were raised by nearby business owners and fretted over at the preservation board. Purported impacts to drivers from a proposed bike connection between Occidental Avenue and Western Avenue is a one reason that project hasn’t yet been completed.

Elsewhere in downtown, SDOT is currently navigating the Pike Place Historical Commission’s approval to add vehicle barricades at that popular tourist destination ahead of FIFA. Many of the same aesthetic concerns raised in Pioneer Square are being echoed several blocks north when it comes to changes to the streetscape, which is very different than it was during the time periods that both historic districts were created to highlight. When aesthetic gripes are front-and-center, it’s often hard to suss out whether they stem from a genuine concern over “character” or a simple desire to maintain the status quo.

The proposal will likely see one more briefing before the board is asked to vote. Comments can be submitted to the Pioneer Square Preservation Board on its website.

The post SDOT Bike Corral Plan Draws Fire in Pioneer Square 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.

The 2026 transportation levy delivery plan just released by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) includes a broad constellation of such projects, detailing the work happening at the city thanks to the eight-year, $1.55 billion levy approved in late 2024. That plan was in the works for months before incoming Mayor Katie Wilson took office, limiting the ability of her office to significantly shape what it looks like for 2026.

However, levy spending plans will ultimately form the canvas for much of the transportation work that will occur over the coming four years of her administration. Meghan Shepard, SDOT’s Director of Policy & Planning, told The Urbanist it was a “very exciting time” during a briefing on the plan last week.

“We’re really excited to have a mayor who has transportation and transit at the forefront of her priorities,” Shepard said. “The way that the levy delivery plan comes together is that it was in progress months ago. Projects require early analysis. A lot of them were in planning last year, where that analysis was happening. Some of them are just jumping into the hopper now and so the levy delivery plan that you’re seeing now is a picture of what is planned for 2026, to begin what we are looking forward to this year is that engagement with the mayor’s office and their priorities.”

The 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy was one of the crowning achievements of Wilson’s predecessor, Bruce Harrell, though it was criticized by transportation advocates as falling short of the level of investment needed to keep pace with a growing city. As a direct follow-up to the 2015 Move Seattle levy, which fell short of its campaign promises in several areas but pushed the city ahead in others, the new levy sets its sights lower, with far fewer signature investments spelled out. The 2024 levy includes much more flexibility to pivot away from a prescribed list of projects, if circumstances change.

While criticized at the time, that flexibility cuts both ways and could allow Katie Wilson to significantly shape the direction of the levy during her term, pushing investments toward higher-impact safety projects.

The workplan’s biggest opportunities

The 430 individual investments in the delivery plan, which add up to more than $190 million in expenditures just this year, run the gamut from mechanical upgrades to Seattle’s bridges to repair work on sidewalk staircases. The biggest opportunities for an ambitious administration looking to maximize transportation dollars are the relatively small number of major corridor projects. Those include explicit Vision Zero corridor projects intended to maximize safety, and major repaving projects that will also come with multimodal upgrades under Seattle’s Complete Streets ordinance.

The 2015 levy included Vision Zero corridor projects as well, but without a mayor with a strong vision for what those projects could accomplish, many of those upgrades fell short of their full potential. In fact, many of the same corridors targeted for upgrades during that levy are on this levy’s long-term list of streets that will likely be tackled, illustrating the fact that the City didn’t finish the job. Recent repaving projects have also left improvements on the table, though community advocacy has been able to push SDOT to get more ambitious about these major opportunities.

The Vision Zero corridor projects set to start construction this year would tackle Renton Avenue S in the Rainier Valley and Spring Street in First Hill, and are likely firmly baked. Beyond that, projects on S Othello Street/S Myrtle Street, Roosevelt Avenue NE/Pinehurst Way, Highland Park Way SW, and E Marginal Way in Georgetown will all advance further in design this year.

When it comes to paving work, Beacon Avenue, Western and Elliott Avenues in Belltown, S Henderson Street in Rainier Beach, and N 130th Street around Pinehurst Station present major opportunities. With those overhauls, the Wilson administration has the chance to support SDOT in redesigning these key corridors to align with the city’s broader transportation goals, something that hasn’t always been done in the past.

But few opportunities in the levy are greater than on Rainier Avenue, where repaving, safety work, and transit upgrades (to make way for the RapidRide R Line) all converge, especially around Judkins Park Station, where the road remains incredibly dangerous and deadly even as it welcomes thousands of additional neighbors via significant housing growth. If SDOT treated these projects as separate, the city would likely miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity to remake one of its most important corridors. Thankfully, early signs point to a coordinated strategy poised to gain backing from Wilson’s office.

“As a department, we’re very thoughtful about how we want to go out, engage with community, thinking about how we package those in a way to bring in these different elements, so that folks can have impactful engagement, and we don’t keep coming back to them time after time after time after time,” Serena Lehman, SDOT’s Levy Portfolio Manager, told The Urbanist. “So, we are working internally on that overall community communication strategy and how we want to engage.”

The delivery plan also provides the new administration with significant opportunities to move forward on another key campaign plank: transit improvements. Wilson’s top transit priority — advancing a bus only lane on Denny Way to get the Route 8 out of traffic — is on there, along with potential improvements on Olive Way that will help the same route. That project was already in the works before an Executive Order made expectations clear last month, a move that will certainly shoot it to the top of the priorities list and force SDOT to rethink some past assumptions.

Other transit upgrades on the list include a number of minor operational improvements across the city’s bus network, upgrades that likely fall short of full-on transit priority, but that will provide gains that can be reinvested back in King County Metro’s network. More exciting is the news that SDOT will advance work on a northbound bus lane for the Route 43 and 48 through Montlake, an improvement that was considered and rejected during a major corridor overhaul several years ago.

Even more notably, the delivery plan includes several as-yet-unidentified bus-only lane segments, a placeholder that leaves significant room for an administration looking to make big moves on transit.

“Transit, more transit lanes specifically, is really going to be a planning and design priority for us this year,” Shepard said. “That’s a really data-driven approach, where Metro’s travel time data really helps us pinpoint areas where we are seeing delay. So that’ll be an important criteria this year.”

The seeds of game-changing public realm improvements

The delivery plan also provides more detail than ever before on a brand new program created by this levy: “People Streets and Public Spaces.” Intended to create people streets that “activate business districts and community spaces” in line with neighborhood priorities, the program comes with nearly $70 million over the full eight years. While some of that funding is earmarked for specific projects that were handpicked by the Harrell Administration like the Occidental Promenade, many of the dollars will be able to unlocked in the name of grassroots urbanism throughout the city.

The delivery plan identifies several longstanding concepts that will enter the design phase: W Crockett Street in Queen Anne (the home of the Queen Anne Farmers Market), S Lander Street in West Seattle’s Admiral District, and 18th Avenue SW and SW Barton Street off Delridge Way. All three are prime candidates for pedestrianization in some form or another, finally creating a clear precedent for reallocating street space for community use in the heart of the city’s neighborhoods.

Shepard told The Urbanist that while these projects had been at the top of the list, the department is very cognizant of the need to look more broadly for opportunities for public realm improvements in neighborhoods that might not be battering down SDOT’s door.

“The thing that is really important to us is to ensure, through an equity lens, that it’s not just the communities who know about our programs or might know about [People Streets and Public Spaces] who get that opportunity,” Shepard said. “So, we’ll be doing the work and the touchpoints to sort of spread out to other neighborhoods and make sure they are aware of how they may be able to partner with us to try something out, or put in a small improvement. So what you’re seeing this year are some of the ones we know that there’s a lot of enthusiasm and action behind from community, so we’re able to get those in to motion this year.”

Another program that Wilson will get to influence is the Low-Pollution Neighborhood Pilot, has languished through several different administrations after starting life as a vague promise made by interim Mayor Tim Burgess in 2017. Last year, SDOT had identified an initial list of top candidate areas for neighborhood-scale investments intended to increase non-motorized travel and decrease emissions, but that list is still being refined in the light of the leadership transition happening now, The Urbanist has confirmed.

“This is a really good example of taking the opportunity to align with the priorities of the new Mayor’s office, so we do not have neighborhoods to share, and they’re coming soon,” Shepard said.

So far, Wilson’s biggest move on transportation has been to put a new interim SDOT Director in place, picking longtime Office of the Waterfront leader Angela Brady to replace Harrell’s pick, former SDOT Transportation Operations Division Director Adiam Emery. At a very brief appearance at the transportation levy’s oversight committee last week, Brady stressed her own experience with project delivery as a project manager on both the entire waterfront revamp and on SDOT’s overhaul of the Mercer Street corridor before that.

It remains to be seen whether Brady will put her stamp on the department in terms of policy, but she is poised to provide a steady hand until Wilson’s permanent pick to lead the department can be found.

The 2026 delivery plan may not be an illustration of Katie Wilson’s vision for Seattle’s transportation system, but it will provide her with a significant canvas to work with.

The post 2026 Levy Plan Sets Stage for a New Mayor’s Transportation Priorities first appeared on The Urbanist.

But once in place, it would represent one of the most ambitious traffic safety projects to move forward across central Puget Sound in recent years.

As Pacific Highway, this 6.6-mile stretch of SR 99 widens out to seven lanes at major intersections, with narrow sidewalks and infrequent signalized crossings for pedestrians. The speed limit is 45 mph but drivers frequently exceed the posted speed by double digits. Between 2019 and 2023, there were 63 different traffic collisions that resulted in a death or serious injury — more than one devastating crash happening every single month, on average. During that time, more than 60 people who were walking or biking were hit by drivers, including eight people who lost their lives.

These upgrades will build on multimodal upgrades advancing further south along SR 99 in Edmonds, but they are much more comprehensive and wide ranging than the ones being designed there.

While changes along the corridor have been eyed for more than a decade, Washington’s 2021 Complete Streets mandate now requires an analysis of potential multimodal upgrades whenever a state highway like SR 99 gets major maintenance work. Because designing those upgrades takes time, the department is spending time now determining what the vision for the corridor will be, so that future maintenance work can more easily incorporate those changes without adding years of additional time.

“The intent is for this study to very easily translate and push into pre-design so [the project team] won’t need to go back to the public to figure out, what do they want,” WSDOT Planning Manager April Delchamps told The Urbanist last fall, before the study’s release. “When we get design funding, we’re able to immediately transition to designing what we heard from the community, and we established this kind of listening approach for the community. And so if things change, for example we find a constraint, we go back out to the community, explain the constraint, and start understanding if there’s particular priorities around how we address that constraint.”

A survey open through January 20 presents the recommended concept, featuring corridor-wide changes along with spot improvements at specific locations.

WSDOT is proposing two different concepts that would provide full bicycle and pedestrian connectivity along the entire corridor: separated bike lanes next to sidewalks, and recreating the entire walking and biking area as a shared-use path. Those two proposals would give pedestrians and cyclists a similar amount of space and aren’t dramatically different from one another. But with maintaining two general purpose travel lanes, curbside business access and transit (BAT) lanes and planter strips including in the median, they would both require around 25 feet in additional right-of-way, despite the existing road’s significant width.

WSDOT is also recommending a slate of spot improvements at different points along the corridor that would make the highway function more like a local street, including 12 midblock crossings “either near bus stops, major destinations or where there is a large distance between intersections.” Awkward intersections with large crossing distances would be redesigned to better accommodate people walking or biking and improve safety. Slip lanes would be removed.

Major changes are also being proposed for the interchange between SR 99 and SR 525, which connects I-5 with Paine Field. Ramps would be realigned to create perpendicular angles and slow speeds, and all ramps would be either signalized or have stop control. Pedestrian crossings would be raised and include rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFBs) to increase visibility.

A full rebuild of the entire 6.6 miles is likely to cost the state $660 million to $780 million in today’s dollars, with another $310 to $370 million for the right-of-way acquisition needed to fully accommodate all of the anticipated project elements. Future projects, including one that is already on deck to tackle bus priority between Airport Road and 148th, will be leveraged to achieve the full vision. And while that vision will likely take years if not decades to fully materialize, the transformation seemed totally impossible just a few short years ago.

This isn’t the only revamp of SR 99 being considered right now. Further south in Seattle, changes are being considered for the crash-prone Aurora Avenue N, but advocates have been expressing early disappointment in the ideas that have been put on the table so. In contrast with the Snohomish County proposal, dedicated bike facilities are far from guaranteed, with people on bikes likely to be directed to use side streets.

While the state’s Complete Streets mandate has been in place since 2021, major transformations like this one have been getting put on deck less slowly than they might have otherwise, with the legislature prioritizing new highway projects over the maintenance work that would come with required multimodal upgrades.

Recently, Governor Bob Ferguson proposed around $2 billion in funding for bridge and highway upkeep as part of the 2026 supplemental budget, but that funding would be unlocked via new state transportation bonds that come with a price tag for future budget writers. Plus, bonding would require a 60% vote in both the state House and Senate — a tall order.

Although the exact timeline for making these urgent upgrades is still very opaque, establishing a clear baseline for what will ultimately take shape is certain to pay dividends.

The post WSDOT Eyes Major Transformation for SR 99 in Snohomish County first appeared on The Urbanist.

Washington has been neglecting basic transportation maintenance work for decades, a fact that is starting to become more and more apparent: nearly 350 bridges in the state highway network are more than 80 years old and overdue for replacement. But rather than rely on a new source of revenue to pay for that necessary upkeep, Ferguson’s budget taps into funding sources that the legislature already approved earlier this year, including a 6-cent increase in the state’s gas tax, and leverages them for the new bonds.

Those new gas tax revenues had allowed legislators to fill a sizable budget gap, brought on by rising infrastructure costs and declining gas tax revenue, and keep a handful of high-profile highway expansion projects moving forward. Those include the extensions of State Route 167 and 509 between the Port of Tacoma and the Port of Seattle, known as the Puget Sound Gateway, the North Spokane Corridor, expansions of I-405 and I-90, and the sprawling Interstate Bridge Replacement.

Ferguson’s budget keeps those projects on track and instead sets the state up for additional debt service payments in future years, at a time when gas tax revenues are predicted to continue to decline. Just before he announced his transportation plan, the governor announced his housing plan, which similarly leaned on bonding to raise $225 million backed by the state’s Housing Trust Fund.

The idea of taking the transportation budget further into debt is likely to face considerable skepticism at the legislature, where 60% of lawmakers in both the House and Senate will need to sign off on any bill authorizing additional bonds. Three years ago, Governor Jay Inslee proposed that the state issue $4 billion in bonds to accelerate the production of affordable housing, an idea that met tepid reception at the legislature and ultimately failed to advance.

Debt service payments already eat up nearly 12% of the state transportation budget, thanks to past transportation packages approved by the legislature that relied on bonding. That’s more than the entire Washington State Ferries budget, and more than double the amount currently spent on state support for public transportation.

Ferguson touted an additional $164 million in highway spending tabbed for next year as enabling the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to boost the number of lane miles that get repaved by more than 600 miles, or a two-thirds increase. Thanks to a Complete Streets mandate approved by the legislature approved in 2022, any sizable preservation and maintenance project in the state needs to include potential pedestrian and bicycle upgrades that can be added at the same time, so that additional roads spending will be poised to provide more dividends than it would have in the past, but at a cost to future transportation budget writers.

Bridge and highway maintenance issues have been front-and-center during Ferguson’s first year on the job, starting with the closure of the SR 516 Carbon River Bridge near Mount Rainier this April. The 103-year-old structure’s steel supports had deteriorated to the point where it could no longer safely support traffic, cutting off an entire access point to Mount Rainier and leaving towns that had depended on tourist revenue from those visitors in the lurch. Following that bridge closure, two more state bridges had to close abruptly due to collisions that caused structural damage, impacting communities for months.

December’s atmospheric river put highway maintenance directly in the spotlight, with high-profile road closures caused by flooding likely to keep entire regions of the state cut off for months. Emergency repairs to US Highway 2, a heavily used corridor providing access to areas including tourist-dependent Leavenworth, began this weekend with no estimated date yet available for the road to reopen.

“Preservation and maintenance work isn’t the sexiest thing, I get that. You know, everybody likes a ribbon cutting for a brand new structure. I like that as much as the next person does, but we have neglected this core mission of our government for too long, and we need to reprioritize and focus on the needs that we have,” Ferguson said. “Painting a bridge or sealing a road may not seem very exciting, but it’s like changing the oil in your car or replacing the timing belt. If you skip that basic maintenance, you could have a catastrophic failure and pay more down the line.”

When it comes to the state ferry system, Ferguson is endorsing the current plan to purchase new hybrid-electric vessels as replacements for the aging fleet, but those boats can’t arrive fast enough. The 58-year-old MV Kaleetan, which had been in service on the Anacortes-San Juan Island route, is currently benched due to a “catastrophic engine failure” that occurred earlier this month. As a result, service on the Fauntleroy-Vashon Island-Southworth route has been reduced during the busy holiday season, illustrating the cascading impacts that result when one boat is out-of-commission.

The first hybrid-electric retrofit to be completed, the MV Wenatchee, has seen a bumpy roll out after first being put back into service on the Seattle-Bainbridge Island run earlier this year. Mechanical issues have led to prolonged service outages, including one for nearly a month. Additional retrofits of existing ferries are officially on hold until after the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, which was one of Ferguson’s first major transportation decisions. Advancing future retrofit work before one of the new ferries arrives in 2029 will almost certainly mean reducing service elsewhere in the system.

Ferguson’s $1 billion bond would enable the state to increase the number of boats on order to six, with seven more still in need of replacement before 2040. But calm sailing is far from guaranteed, as more and more legislators start to question the cost premium attached to hybrid-electric boats, and the state’s labor community continues to question the choice to select a Florida-based shipyard as the first company tabbed to produce the next generation of state ferries — instead of a local shipyard in Washington state.

As someone who came into office without a background in transportation policy, Ferguson’s focus has remained on the ferry system, and he’s devoted little attention to other issues like the state’s commitment to eliminate fatal crashes by 2030 as part of the Target Zero initiative. Just this past week, five separate Washington State troopers were involved in traffic crashes while on duty, with one of those crashes resulting in the death of 29-year-old Trooper Tara-Marysa Guting on SR 509 in Tacoma.

While the choice to issue bonds to make inroads on the state’s transportation needs is more politically appealing than turning to a tax increase, the ultimate question will be the long-term impact on the ability to make progress on state goals. Rather than presenting a forward-looking vision for the future of transportation in Washington, Ferguson’s proposal is ultimately focused on maintaining the status quo, when it comes to both the highway system and the ferry system.

Marko Liias (D-21st LD, Edmonds), chair of the state Senate’s transportation committee, praised the proposal in a statement. Despite the fact that Democrats hold a considerable majority over Republicans in the upper chamber, Liias has remained focused on securing GOP support for transportation budget proposals, even going so far as to include a proposed e-bike tax in an initial draft of the 2025-2027 budget at the request of the committee’s ranking member, Curtis King (R-14th LD, Yakima).

“I’m excited the governor is proposing the Preserve Washington fund, providing $3 Billion over 10 years dedicated to preservation and maintenance for our entire transportation system. Funding for preservation and maintenance must be a long-term budget commitment, not a one-time decision,” Liias wrote Friday. “I look forward to reviewing the governor’s priorities in detail with our transportation budget team. When we wrote the biennial transportation budget last session, I committed to delivering a bipartisan plan for Washingtonians, and I intend to stay on that same bipartisan path as we write the supplemental budget next year.”

The 2026 legislative session starts on January 12 and lasts 60 days.

The post Ferguson Proposes Borrowing $3 Billion for Highway Maintenance, Ferries first appeared on The Urbanist.

It’s a misty Friday night in December, and even though it’s only 6pm, the sun has been long gone. Everything is damp and dark. My nine-year-old son skips ahead of me on the sidewalk. I fight the urge to call him back and grab his hand. The sidewalk is narrow and there’s no parking strip protecting him from six lanes of high-speed traffic coming off I-90. I tell myself if a driver leaves the road, it won’t make much of a difference if he’s standing on the far side of me or not — we’ll both be toast. 

A few months ago a six-year-old child was critically injured by a speeding vehicle in a nearby crosswalk. Even before that, I always turned on my phone camera and held it up like a protective shield when crossing in hopes that the threat of video evidence would prevent us from getting hit. 

I first encountered this stretch of road in 2019 when my son started childcare nearby. We had just moved back to Washington State, partially because it felt like a place I, as a nondriving parent, could get around safely. But walking to and from our childcare center I found this stretch of road to be totally out of place in a city that strives for great transit and biking and walking. 

I was even more appalled when I learned that we were building a light rail station right in the center of what is essentially highway spaghetti: a clover leaf of unsignalized ramps and slip lanes where vehicles accelerating to or de-accelerating from highway speeds encounter the major north-south thoroughfare and transit route in Southeast Seattle. 

Six years later, my kid is back at school in the area, attending Thurgood Marshall Elementary that sits just up the hill from this interchange. It’s one of several schools in the vicinity — Hamlin Robison, Seattle Girls School, and Giddens. Between 2025 and 2026, more than 1,500 newly constructed apartment units along this stretch of Rainier will be ready for move in.

Thanks to advocacy from community members and leadership from public agency staff, there’s been a host of small-scale improvements to make this area safer for pedestrians, starting with changes in 2020 that narrowed crossing distances on the ramps and reduced a double on-ramp to a single lane. More recent changes built elevated crosswalks and installed additional flashing beacons. 

But the challenge remains. To cross Rainier means navigating across six lanes of traffic. People needing to travel north or south along Rainier Avenue are forced to cross unsignalized ramps, playing chicken with cars accelerating to or decelerating from highway speeds. As blind pedestrian and advocate Micah Lusignan explained after he joined me on a walk audit of the area: “That’s tough: they can’t see me and I can’t see them.” 

Walking along, trying to cross or waiting for transit along Rainier Avenue is inherently stressful because of the high volume of vehicles traveling at high speeds. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of prioritizing cars trying to get to and from the highway, what if we redesigned this area to reflect the needs of the thousands of families that live in apartments and go to school here? When the light rail across the lake opens next year, King County Metro anticipates this becoming one of the busiest transfer points in their system.

What if this was a transfer hub where you would want to sit and linger? What if the area featured wide, smooth sidewalks, pedestrian-scale lighting, greenery, art, and a place to get coffee or use the restroom? Rainier could be a place where you would want to live, not just because the apartments are relatively affordable but because it’s vibrant with people, local businesses, and excellent transit access. 

But if we continue to try to move as many private cars as quickly as possible along Rainier and onto I-90 and I-5, this vision can’t be realized. 

That’s why I’ve been advocating with other residents, parents and transit riders for bigger changes. In 2021, we worked with State Senator Rebecca Saldaña on a budget proviso earmarking funds for the effort, but the budget it was part of didn’t pass. The following year, we supported the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) in applying for a federal RAISE grant, but it too was unsuccessful. In 2023, WSDOT applied again and this time was successful in securing the grant, which partnered with the state’s connecting communities program. The grant funds early phases of community outreach and planning needed to reach an initial “30% completed” redesign of the I-90 ramps. 

I share this context because I want you to know how hard advocates, elected officials and agency staff worked to secure this funding. And I’m worried now that we’re potentially squandering the opportunity to plan for the kind of city we need. 

I am a member of the project’s community feedback advisory committee and work to design safety improvements is underway. But from what I’ve seen so far, the effort is limited by our underlying assumptions. The traffic modeling by WSDOT contractors and staff for this intersection (which is based on traffic projections embedded in Seattle’s comprehensive plan) assume that traffic volumes will remain the same through the year 2050; this is what critics call “predict and provide planning” that creates self-fulfilling prophecies – cities build for more traffic and it appears.

Since many U.S. transportation engineers erroneously project endless growth in car traffic, a flat projection might seem like a step in the right direction. With projected population growth in the Seattle region, maintaining current traffic volumes will indeed require fewer car trips per capita and more people to shift travel modes away from cars. 

But here’s the rub: if we want to keep the traffic levels we have and maintain reasonable traffic flow on and off highway ramps (as required by federal guidelines) we have to keep most of the tarmac intact. In fact, some of WSDOT’s design ideas even included adding more lanes to Rainier to accommodate cars entering the highway.

Refusing to envision fewer cars on Rainier greatly limits our ability to plan for a corridor that returns some dignity to those of us walking, rolling, or waiting for the bus.

Projecting future traffic volumes to match current traffic volumes means we’re limited in envisioning what this area could look like with wider sidewalks, shorter crossing distances for pedestrians, slower speeds and less air pollution. And it’s not just this project — the same limitations will also limit what is possible for Aurora, Highway 99 in South Park, complete streets on the 45th street overpass, and Lake City Way. 

The only way to reclaim these spaces for people is to imagine a future Seattle with less car travel. We must insist that the WSDOT consider multimodal planning options that reduce total automobile traffic and invest instead in more affordable and resource-efficient transportation. What is possible on Rainier Avenue if traffic volumes are cut in half? What is possible if we close Rainier’s I-90 ramps and instead invest in excellent transit service and affordable housing? 

Our city and our region have climate, environmental justice, and traffic safety policies that direct us that, rather than planning for a future where we continue to expose apartment residents, school children, and workers in this area to the air pollution and crash risk of a major highway interchange, we should instead be planning toward a future that reduces these harms. Thanks to reduced car volumes with congestion pricing, New York City just saw transit use jump and a 22% decrease in particulate pollution, which is a major health risk linked to asthma. 

We could have that here if we are creative and bold.

In addition to the WSDOT planning and design work around the I-90 ramps, the Seattle Transportation Levy is planning a major repaving project, which will trigger complete streets upgrades of sidewalks and bike infrastructures along Rainier from Walden to Jackson. This work will happen in conjunction with the planned RapidRide R Line project to upgrade the Route 7 bus. We shouldn’t squander these opportunities by insisting that we must maintain car volumes. It’s time to dream bigger about the kind of community we can build.

The post Op-Ed: It’s Time to Imagine a Safer, More Connected Rainier Avenue first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Promise of Shared Streets

Shared streets flip American traffic laws upside-down. Currently, the portion of the roadway between curbs is the exclusive province of vehicles. You can drive, park, or cycle there — but you are legally prohibited from walking or standing in the roadway, except at designated crosswalks.

Where shared streets are implemented, cars are allowed but pedestrians have priority over other users and are permitted to walk or stand in the roadway. A maximum speed limit of 10 mph governs all users.

According to the text of SB 5595, 

(2) Vehicular traffic traveling along a shared street shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian, bicyclist, or operator of a micromobility device on the shared street.

(3) A bicyclist or operator of a micromobility device shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian on a shared street.

Hold Up. Safer Streets Require Environmental Review?

Governor Ferguson signed the Shared Streets Bill into law on May 17 but implementation has been slow. Clearly, Seattle needs to pass enabling legislation — current city ordinances don’t provide legal support for this new street type — but it is less clear whether the city also needs to complete an environmental review.

Washington's first-in-the-nation shared streets bill, allowing local governments to lower speed limits to 10 mph on specific streets where vehicle traffic must yield to pedestrian, bike, and scooter traffic, is now law. app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?…

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) May 17, 2025 at 11:29 AM

Attorneys at the City of Seattle have been tied in knots for months over the question of whether an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) is required. SEPA’s stated purpose is to “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between humankind and the environment” but there are cases where it arguably does the opposite.

Councilmember Dan Strauss, who is leading the charge on shared streets at the City Council level, has said the City could simply draft a Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) and move forward. The city’s legal team is perhaps being more cautious and are keen to inoculate the new street type from legal challenge. 

Breaking the Process Logjam

Frustrated with the slow pace of progress, Councilmember Strauss attached a Statement of Legislative Intent (SLI) to Seattle’s 2026 budget, instructing SDOT to provide a legislative proposal for shared streets implementation.

Councilmember Strauss has long sought better tools to improve the streetscape and traffic operation on Ballard Avenue, a popular and historic street in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, which he represents. 

Ballard Avenue is lined with shops, restaurants, and bars — many with outdoor dining established during the pandemic — and has interim improvements using paint, posts, and movable barriers. Gaining the legal authority to reduce speed limits to 10 mph and allow pedestrians to circulate in the street can provide better options for permanent improvements to this popular destination.

The Shared Streets SLI passed the Budget Committee on November 14. The response from SDOT is due January 1, 2026, so we will know their plans soon enough, but internal documents obtained from the department reveal their thought process.

The Redmond Way

While Seattle dithers, the City of Redmond has moved to implement the law with less apparent concern for SEPA. Redmond, home to Microsoft, is a suburb of Seattle known for progressive aspirations and policy. According to their draft Street System Plan:

“In Redmond, some local streets will be transitioned to shared streets, which are appropriate on a residential, limited use, or other low-volume street, where the neighborhood desires to create a public space for social activities and play or as an alternative to building conventional sidewalk where there may be environmental or cost constraints. Shared streets are also appropriate on streets with commerce where there is a desire to create an active and attractive people-oriented area.”

Meanwhile, other cities around the state of Washington watch and wait for Seattle to guide the way forward.

What Is Enabling Legislation?

The Shared Streets Law is permissive, not prescriptive, meaning it allows cities to enable shared streets but doesn’t require them. Since most cities have traffic ordinances that mirror state law, when that law changes, city ordinances need to change, as well, and this is accomplished with enabling legislation.

City legislation to enable shared streets can consist of five elements:

1. Definition
2. Enabling Language
3. Signage
4. Speed Limit
5. Driving Regulations

1. Definition. Since this is a new street type, it needs a name and definition, which can mirror state law: “Shared Street means a city street designated by placement of official traffic control devices where pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicular traffic share a portion or all of the same street.”

2. Enabling Language. This delegates authority to the relevant body or individual: “The City Traffic Engineer is authorized to designate any non-arterial street or alley, or any part of a non-arterial street or alley as a Shared Street in accordance with Senate Bill 5595.”

3. Signage: “Upon approval, the City Traffic Engineer will install and maintain appropriate markings, signage, barriers or other devices to clearly indicate the speed limit and shared street designation.” Since true shared streets are new in the United States, local authorities will need to glean guidance from existing authorities like Federal Highway Association and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), and perhaps exercise engineering judgment to ensure clarity until nationwide standards are developed.

4. Speed Limit: “A Shared Street has a maximum speed limit of 10 miles per hour.”

5. Driving Regulations: Lastly, the key clause that redefines rights and responsibilities on shared streets, again mirroring state law: “Vehicular traffic traveling along a shared street shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian, bicyclist, or operator of a micromobility device on the shared street. A bicyclist or operator of a micromobility device shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian on a shared street.”

Once All Streets Were Shared Streets. What Happened?

A century ago, American streets were shared public spaces. People walked freely in the roadway, children played in them, vendors sold from carts, and perhaps a streetcar threaded a slow-moving mix of pedestrians, carriages, and early automobiles. Horses did their business in the street, as well, so it wasn’t all roses but American streets functioned more or less the same as they had around the world since the invention of cities.

That changed starting in January 1925 when Los Angeles passed its traffic ordinance. Cars were proliferating — and killing pedestrians at an alarming rate. The solution was to relegate people to the edges, require them to cross at crosswalks, ticket them for jaywalking, and then to launch a propaganda campaign funded by the motor industry.

LA’s new law propagated quickly across the country and that spread accelerated when it was adopted by the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety as the blueprint for the 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance. Soon, every state in the Union would ban shared streets and effectively prohibit speed limits lower than 20 mph.

Only now, 100 years later, has Washington State lifted the ban on shared streets — the first in the nation. So the race is on to build the first fully legal shared street in America in a century.

The SDOT Team Set to Bring Shared Streets (Back) to Seattle

Interviews and public disclosure requests reveal that SDOT staff members are enthusiastic about the new powers the Shared Streets Law will grant them, once enabled. Responsibility for shared streets will fall to Ashley Rhead, SDOT’s Pedestrian and Neighborhood Projects Manager, working under Director of Project Development Jim Curtin and Deputy Director Brian Dougherty. Rhead’s group deals with neighborhood greenways, home zones, safe routes to school, school streets, and sidewalks.

City Traffic Engineer Venu Nemani has been deeply involved in developing a strategy for implementing shared streets, while longtime neighborhood greenway champion and Neighborhood Projects Manager, Summer Jawson, tracked the bill and reported progress to SDOT Director Greg Spotts, and later Interim Director Adiam Emery.

It is important to note that the shared streets law is a tool that cities can use to improve all kinds of streets. It is a legal designation that changes the rights and responsibilities of users and opens new design possibilities. A neighborhood greenway, for example, can be a shared street and allow pedestrians into the roadway, or it can remain a typical neighborhood street where pedestrians are expected to use sidewalks. Transportation departments implementing SB 5595 will have a choice.

Let’s take a look at the ideas brewing at SDOT.

Home Zones and Other Circulation Plans

Documents obtained via public disclosure request reveal robust internal discussion at SDOT around shared streets. One of the more intriguing examples is the opportunity to create better home zones.

A home zone is an area of neighborhood streets bounded by arterials where diverters are used to make the zone less attractive for cut-through traffic. The result is a reduction in traffic volumes in the interior while maintaining full vehicular access. Once traffic volumes are reduced, there are opportunities for traffic-calming and the provision of additional public space—ideal places to flip the modal hierarchy to favor pedestrians, consistent with SB 5595.  

This approach is most similar to London’s Low-Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) but uses techniques similar to Barcelona Superblocks, as well as larger city center traffic circulation plans like those found in Ghent, Brussels, Paris, and Groningen.

SDOT staff are internally proposing what they call “Home Zones 2.0.” Currently, Seattle’s Home Zone program provides spot improvements to reduce speeds, typically requested by residents, but generally doesn’t decrease volumes. 

Home Zones 2.0 would take a more comprehensive approach, to measurably decrease vehicle volumes and speeds and increase walking, biking, and playing. Home zones would be “physically identifiable by drivers, walkers, bikers” when they enter the zone.

SDOT staff illustrated how a new and improved home zone might work on Seattle’s Crown Hill, a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood that generally lacks sidewalks. Diverters, shown in red, prevent cut-through car traffic while allowing people walking and rolling to pass. Gateway treatments, shown as yellow circles, let you know you’re in a traffic-calmed area. 

The chronic lack of sidewalks in much of South Seattle, as well as vast areas north of N 85th Street, make this kind of traffic-calming imperative. At the current pace, it will be as many as 1,800 years before the city finishes building sidewalks in Seattle. In the meantime, these are de facto shared streets. Children walk to school on them, mixing with vehicular traffic in a shared space, but lacking the rights and pedestrian-compatible speed limits they need and deserve to travel safely.

Where Are Shared Streets Going First?

Neighborhood Greenways present the prime case for shared streets treatment in Seattle, which has a loose network of these streets across the city. Neighborhood greenways are non-arterial streets with lower traffic volumes that have been enhanced with traffic-calming, wayfinding, and improved arterial crossings. During the pandemic, to provide space for people to gather outdoors, Seattle converted several of these to “Healthy Streets,” with the addition of “Street Closed” signs, which was, as the time, the only tool available under state law to permit pedestrians to walk in the roadway.

According to internal documents, Healthy Streets are likely to be the first to receive shared streets designation, along with festival streets and school streets. Neighborhood greenways could follow. The changes are likely to be modest at first — with the addition of signage — paving the way to more robust treatments in the future as budget allows and SDOT standards develop.

SDOT also hopes to roll out what they are calling the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Program (NISP, sometimes playfully called “nispy”) in 2026 that lets residents nominate areas for traffic-calming, possibly merged with the Home Zones program. That would be a welcome development. Since the Your Voice, Your Choice (YVYC) and Neighborhood Street Fund (NSF) grant programs were discontinued, there has not been an accessible outlet for neighborhood organizing around safer streets.

SB 5595 will not transform Seattle overnight — that much is clear — but shared streets represent a generational opportunity to reclaim safe space for walking, rolling, and community life. Cities around the world already treat low-speed, pedestrian-first streets as routine public infrastructure. With enabling legislation on the horizon and SDOT laying the groundwork, Seattle has a chance to join them. The question now is whether the city can cut through its own red tape and deliver the kind of streets residents have long said they want.

The post A Sneak Peek at Shared Streets Coming to Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways staff and volunteers have worked closely with Wilson and the Transit Riders Union over the years, most notably as part of the Move All Seattle Sustainably Coalition to successfully reverse cuts to the walking, biking and transit projects during Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration, and more recently to dedicate more money to walking, biking and transit in the Keep Seattle Moving Levy. 

Note, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning we cannot, and do not, endorse candidates for office. But now that the election is over, we can share our analysis of Mayor-elect Wilson’s transportation platform.

Wilson’s transportation platform is bold and visionary, and she will need our ongoing community support to achieve it. Here are a few excerpts of her priorities with our thoughts on how she can get started on implementing them in her first year of office. 

Safety and Vision Zero

Wilson’s platform: “Seattle launched Vision Zero in 2015 with the goal to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030. But in the last decade, more than 1,850 people have been seriously injured and 253 people have been killed in vehicle collisions. We need city leadership that will prioritize keeping our kids, elders and neighbors safe on our streets. Prioritize transforming our most dangerous corridors, from Aurora to Rainier, into people-centered streets with great public transit, safe neighborhoods, thriving businesses, and tree canopy that will help clean the air and moderate the urban heat island effect.”

Our first-year recommendations: 

1. Stand up a team to tackle a major overhaul of Rainier Avenue S. The section of Rainier from Mount Baker to the Chinatown International District (CID) has planned repaving, bike, safety, transit, and on-ramp revision projects, and they must all be coordinated in a unified vision to reimagine the street.  We must dedicate the same intensity of effort and care for major safety projects as Seattle did for the downtown waterfront rebuild or the West Seattle bridge repair.   
2. Course-correct and speed up the Aurora Avenue project to adopt a bolder vision, and come up with a plan for a demonstration project to unlock the $50 million in state funding. 
3. Construct safety projects on S Henderson Street in Rainier Beach, N 125th Street in Lake City, and 14th Avenue S in South Park. 
4. Roll out rapid spot improvements on streets and at intersections that the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) knows are unsafe. 

Sidewalks and accessibility 

Wilson’s platform: “Maximize efficient use of Keep Seattle Moving Levy dollars to build new sidewalks, fix our streets and bridges, improve transit infrastructure, and connect our bike network… Support the workgroup, created during the levy process, to explore a bond measure that would provide more transportation infrastructure funding.”

Our first-year recommendations: 

1. Rapidly convene the delayed workgroup to develop funding proposals to continue SDOT’s sidewalk building surge. 
2. Overhaul the Home Zone program to measurably decrease vehicle volumes and speeds with diverters and increase walking, biking, and playing for neighborhoods that are not first in line for sidewalks. (SDOT was considering this in 2024 but it has not moved forward.)
3. Require repaving and other projects to pay for basic accessibility and safety upgrades like curb ramps and bike lanes, in keeping with the spirit of the Complete Streets ordinance. For instance, the lower E Marginal Way repaving project is siphoning significant funds from the bike budget. 
4. Accelerate investment in a parking corral system where, in busy areas around town, shared bikes and scooters must be parked in designated zones located on the street (and ideally just before the corner to improve visibility for pedestrians) whenever physically possible to help increase accessibility of sidewalks.

Bike routes

Wilson’s platform: “Continue and accelerate progress on Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan. Make rapid safety improvements in the most dangerous spots; and expand bike parking, especially where small business owners or residents have requested rack installation.”

Our first-year recommendations: 

1. Provide bold goals and leadership as we begin community engagement and design on transformational bike routes including a Rainier Avenue S to MLK Jr Way S bike lane and connecting the gaps in the Duwamish Valley. 
2. Assess the bike network for gaps and points of friction where spot improvements and small projects will make an outsized difference and rapidly implement fixes such as connections to our bridges. 
3. Expand SDOT’s well loved “even better bike lanes” project to include intersection upgrades (where the majority of crashes happen). 
4. Sign and mark “Bike Lines” in time for the 2026 World Cup to help Seattleites and visitors find the best long distance bike routes through the city, and commit to developing them into a safe, convenient, and easy-to- follow system for the long term. 

Places for people

Wilson’s platform: “The new Pike Place Market ‘limited vehicle access pilot’ is the exciting and long-overdue outcome of years of community organizing and advocacy. With real leadership in City Hall we can go much further, much faster.

Create more car-free and vehicle-lite spaces in dense neighborhoods throughout the city, where people and families can visit, shop, play, and socialize without fear. Pilot a “superblock” zone in the heart of Capitol Hill, diverting cars to allow walking and other modes on the street and permitting businesses to expand into the sidewalks.”

Our first-year recommendations:

1. Make Pike Place Market pedestrianization permanent. 
2. Pilot the pedestrianization of streets around the city in time for FIFA watch parties including Barbara Bailey Way, a weekend pedestrianization of Ballard Avenue, and others nominated by communities.  
3. Pilot a multi-use trail along Lake Washington Boulevard and invite the community to activate the space with art, food, music, and more. 
4. Direct SDOT’s People Streets program to create a process for community members to pedestrianize their streets and create space for market streets, school streets, community gardens, and more. Set a goal of a fully pedestrian street at the heart of every neighborhood.

Climate 

Wilson’s platform: “We must make it much easier and safer to get around by transit, bike, walking, and rolling. Most of Seattle’s carbon pollution comes from transportation. Cutting emissions is largely a matter of ‘mode shift’ — changing how people get around — as well as reducing how far and how often they need to travel.”

Our first-year recommendations: 

1. Direct SDOT to use the Climate Change Response Framework mode shift goals to shape decisions, such as the evaluation of the benefits of bike and bus lanes  versus SOV traffic delay. For instance, bike lanes on MLK Way Jr S and bus lanes on Denny Way were shelved because of concerns around traffic delay that trumped all other considerations.
2. Accelerate the timeline of SDOT’s Low-Pollution Neighborhoods program, and set the bar higher to reach zero transportation emissions. 
3. Incorporate consideration of an Ultra Low Emission Zone into the transportation funding workgroup. 

15-Minute City 

Wilson’s platform:  “Seattle should be a world leader in mobility, where people of all ages and abilities can get to work, daycare or the grocery store safely without having to drive. […] Building affordable and abundant housing and preventing displacement is a vital climate strategy, allowing people to live near where they work, shop, and socialize. Shorter trips mean less driving and more walking, rolling, biking, and riding transit.”

Our first-year recommendations: 

1. Support Council’s efforts to expand neighborhood centers in 2026. 
2. Propose legislation that would align Seattle with cities around Washington State like Bothell, Shoreline, and Spokane that now allow homebuilders the flexibility to determine what level of car parking makes sense.

These are our recommendations for how the incoming Wilson administration can make a strong year one start on her campaign pledges. These bold actions will set the stage for even larger transformational change over the next few years! Additionally, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is a bottom-up coalition where our members–groups representing Seattle’s neighborhoods – set our priorities, and we will be outlining our 2026 priorities next month. 

Lastly, as Wilson mentioned in her victory speech, she can lead from the top, but change always requires organized people power: 

“To the people of Seattle, I say, what I am able to actually accomplish in office will depend on you,” she said. “It will depend on the support and the pressure and the people power that you all are able to build in the months and the years ahead. It’s your work and your initiative that will continue to drive our city and our society forward.”

That’s why there has never been a better time for you to get involved with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Join us at one of these upcoming events:

• Seattle Neighborhood Greenways New Volunteer Orientation. Wednesday December 3, 5:30pm – 6:30pm. Virtual via Zoom. Learn about our coalition, our local neighborhood groups, and best practices for being an effective advocate in your community.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Community Happy Hour. Thursday December 11, 5:30pm – 7:00pm. Stoup Brewing (Capitol Hill). Meet new friends and connect with advocates from across Seattle.

The post How Mayor-elect Wilson Can Hit the Ground Running, Walking, Rolling, and Biking first appeared on The Urbanist.

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

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

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

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

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

Housing affordability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Traffic safety issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public transit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The move comes just after Bothell voters approved a nine-year Safe Streets and Sidewalks Levy, providing needed funding for new sidewalks, crosswalks, bike paths and bike lanes, and traffic safety improvements along with basic street maintenance. City leaders kept the renewal of a 2016 measure of the same name at the same rate. The ballot measure passed easily and is on track to win nearly 70% of votes this November.

In safety-conscious cities across the U.S., 20 mph residential speed limits are becoming the standard, including Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, and Denver.

Seattle has had a default 20 mph speed limit in place since 2016, which was implemented at the same time as the default speed limit on arterial streets was lowered to 25 mph. Road safety advocates, including the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, have touted Seattle as a success story, citing reduced crash severity, particularly downtown. However, the speed limit reduction’s impact on residential areas has been less clear.

Portland’s implementation of the same policy, in 2018, produced more conclusive data on the positive impact of the small change. While average speeds on residential streets remained virtually unchanged, the city saw a statistically significant drop in the prevalence of higher-end speeding, with a 49% drop in residents observing a driver exceeding 35 mph in a residential zone.

“Before and after data show that lower percentages of people drove above 25, 30, and 35 mph on streets subject to the speed limit reduction,” the Portland Bureau of Transportation wrote in its assessment of the independent review of the change, conducted by researchers at Portland State University.

“It is most noteworthy that the reduction in the percentage of vehicles faster than 30 mi/hr and 35 mi/hr are larger in magnitude than the other changes,” the PSU study authors Jason C. Anderson, Chris Monsere, and Sirisha Kothuri noted. “These changes are more meaningful for the Vision Zero speed reduction efforts than the change in average speed, given the link to crash severity for vulnerable road users.”

In declining to support a limited pilot, which has been the approach to reductions like these in other cities, Bothell Councilmembers framed the change as a no-brainer. That’s in spite of concerns raised in a Public Works staff report that warned of a “false sense of security” that could come from streets where design speeds — how fast drivers are typically comfortable going based on the design of the road — are significantly higher than posted speeds.

“The only real concern that I particularly have is if we miss a street that has a lot of [high-end speeds], and we don’t know about it, and we try to put this on there, and it doesn’t do anything. […] A guest comes to your house and they drive on the road: they see 20 miles per hour and they say, ‘my kids can play,’ and do all kinds of things. And that’s just not true,” Steve Morikawa, Bothell’s Deputy Public Works Director, said. “Those are the ones we’re mostly worried about. I think we’ve got the bulk of them. I think it’s those outliers that we really want to test and make sure we’re doing OK.”

“Listening to the presentation, I’m just struck by how doing a phased approach is just — we know what the outcome is going to be, and it’s going to be deployment of 20 mile an hour speed limit signs on every local road eventually,” Councilmember Carston Curd said. “If this is something truly that the research shows is going to reduce unsafe speeds, which it does, I think we need to get all in and just do it, rather than piloting and then hearing complaints and then slow rolling around the rest of the city when we know that ultimately it has to be done.”

“I think not enough people know about the difference between 20 and 30 miles per hour, because I didn’t know that until I did the police department’s Community Academy, and that sort of completely changed the mind frame that I had around the speed I was going as a driver,” Councilmember Amanda Dodd said.

That 10 mile per hour difference has a big impact of a driver’s field of vision, and on the chances of a pedestrian hit by a driver surviving the incident — only around 10% of crashes at 20 mph result in a death, compared to around half of crashes at 30 mph.

In the Council’s eyes, the risk created by not broadly lowering speed limits is larger than the risk created by the possibility of a false sense of security on some streets.

“I would be siding with my colleagues who would like to see [this change made] citywide,” Councilmember Jenne Alderks said. “I think that that’s the approach that that saves the most lives soonest, because if we reduce speed limits in some on some streets, and what I’m hearing is just a couple, which I don’t know even think that would be a big enough pilot, then that means we’re neglecting all of the other streets. And if there was a traffic death or a serious injury on one of those other streets during the pilot program, I would say we missed the opportunity to prevent that injury from occurring.”

But Alderks pushed city staff to consider a broad change in speed limits in the context of other traffic safety improvements, and called this change alone not a “true Vision Zero plan.” And while Morikawa pointed to the city’s new Transportation Safety Plan, adopted this summer, Alderks clearly wanted to see more direct changes put on the table while they considered a speed limit reduction.

“I thought that we would be receiving a plan that would be about, what are all of the multi-pronged approaches, all of the strategies that we can employ and choose from when working to achieve zero traffic deaths, one of them being 20 miles an hour,” Alderks said. “This feels taken out of context. And like, sure, we could reduce speed limits in residential areas to 20 miles an hour, and say we did one thing, and then go back but, I would like to see how it all fits together, and how it all works together. So I’m just surprised that this is the approach that we’re taking.”

In shying away from the incremental approach, Bothell’s city leaders appear ready to go even bolder to tackle traffic safety issues, and the main question is the pace at which the city’s administration is able to keep up.

The post Bothell Advances Citywide 20 MPH Residential Speed Limit first appeared on The Urbanist.