Posted Mon, Jan 9, 11:55 a.m.

Thanks Doug for the early review. I agree strongly about the rigid rates and small differences between on & off peak in that this is going to greatly diminish midday flows AND increase diversion. What I can't tell is whether these negatives, and they are big, will overtake commuters' experiences ...

Posted Sun, Oct 30, 8:37 p.m.

Compared to most people's impressions, the Twin Cities has less snow and ice on the roadways than you would think. Three reasons. They plow agressively and de-ice roads and sidewalks. In the winter, the humidity is often quite low, unlike here in the NWest. So, when the sun comes out, ...

Posted Sat, Sep 24, 11:38 a.m.

I think this is a great idea to explore despite the opinions of the wondering trolls from Publicola and the Times. Rain in Seattle is one of the most exaggerated features of our city. Our total rainfall is LESS than at countless other big cities along the east coast and ...

Posted Sat, Sep 24, 11:16 a.m.

I read no articulation in this article or consensus in the comments naming the goals of current policy--job creation, residential density, livable density. Disagreements about policy are most often embedded in different assumptions about purpose and goal. Places like NYC have morphed over many cycles of reconstruction. Since I think ...

Posted Mon, Sep 12, 10:05 a.m.

I think that David Smith points to something important as we think of how to develop our built environments, which we're doing everywhere. For me, it all dials back to my first read of "Break Through", where an essential premise is that environmental arguements aren't going to sufficiently drive consumer ...

Posted Mon, Aug 29, 12:17 p.m.

I agree with the sentiments of Wells and Steve E. While designing our roadways to be less-bad is probably better than nothing, it's a distraction from the overwhelming problems our road systems create. What I'd like from the pulpits of Doug MacDonald and others is a call for wiser system-wide ...

Posted Sun, Aug 14, 10:05 p.m.

If we're lucky and avoid building this tunnel, I predict that this story will be one of those over-confident predictions steeped in ‘political reality’ and totally wrong. This article by David Brewster in 2007 on RTID is what I’m talking about. http://crosscut.com/2007/10/25/transportation/8477/Proposition-1-is-as-good-as-it-s-going-to-get/ His opening lines: "The roads-and-transit measure, expensive and ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 2:26 p.m.

I'm tired of being bullied by Boeing. Seems like every few years Boeing threatens us in one way or the other yet continues to relocate jobs and economic activity.

Posted Fri, Aug 5, 10:04 a.m.

Mr Brewster is, as most, a little off on the purpose of the EIS process. While its purpose is to unveil information, both adverse and otherwise, it is supposed to be done prior to the completion of the decision making process so that it can inform the decision making process. ...

Posted Thu, Aug 4, 10:47 p.m.

The waterfront redesign and viaduct replacement are completely independent projects. Claiming that a tunnel is required to give us a great water front is leveraging intuition but not facts. Even with a tunnel, we’ll still have a road just back from the waterfront, and it will be full of toll ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 11:04 a.m.

Those are the pro-tunnel forces working together to further their own interests.

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 11:01 a.m.

Follow the money, if you want to understand who's aligned with whom. http://www2.seattle.gov/ethics/eldata/filings/filings.asp?elcycle=el11a Harbor Properties - $2500 Argossy - $2000 Urban Renaissance Property LLC - $7000 Talon Private Capital LLC - $1040 GREATER SEATTLE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE - $20,050 DOWNTOWN SEATTLE ASSOCIATION - $20,550 TIM BURGESS - $1,500 McCullough, Hill ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 10:10 a.m.

To appreciate the true environmental impacts, all I need to know is that the region's most relentless and highly respected environmental group, the Sierra Club, is opposing the tunnel. My guess is because it’s bad for the environment. What I see really going on here is powerful downtown business interests, ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 9:23 a.m.

Tolling the tunnel is a poor transportation policy if you’re interested in protecting downtown for walking, biking and transit. Why? because people can and will avoid the tunnel by driving on city streets. The tunnel proposal doesn’t fund improvements to city streets to deal with the thousands of daily drivers ...

Posted Fri, Oct 8, 7:36 a.m.

I often find Crosscut articles lengthier than I’d prefer, but this is the first one I’ve found entirely too short and insufficiently substantiated. I am truly interested in Doug’s opinion about why co-lead status is as valuable going forward as it has been to date. I’ve read well articulated opinions ...

Posted Wed, Aug 4, midnight

1 – This is like saying that we should just go with whatever plan we have, because getting a different plan is too hard. 2 – How many pro-tunnel candidates ran against viable, ant-tunnel opponents? 3 – I’ve heard otherwise—that the imitative could legally stop the tunnel. 4 – Take ...

Posted Sat, Jun 19, 9:44 a.m.

I don't think it would take much work to write a story about what the mayor has been actively for: transparency, democracy, green jobs, walkability, ecologically sustainable and attractive urban forms, mass transit, reducing our carbon footprints, etc. Much of the reason McGinn is seen as Mayor No is due ...

Posted Thu, Jun 10, 9:12 a.m.

Advertising revenue is not free money for society, and it doesn’t come without a cost. Advertising itself, generally speaking, is not a beneficial service to society. There’s pretty much zero education in advertizing. It’s main purpose is to bias what we want and how we choose to behave in the ...

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 9:16 a.m.

Wilbur – the idea isn’t necessarily to connect MS to UW and deliver riders from one to the other. It’s that these are major origins/destinations in the system-wide demand. Riders will more likely enter and exit the bus/rail transit system when their origin or destination is easily accessible.

Posted Sun, Jan 3, 5:13 p.m.

The Big Dig is a wonderful 20th century solution where a point in the system was fixed. In Boston, the cars and consequent highways are what screwed up the urban experience, yet the cars are still being provided for in that solution. What's the over/under on the year that $10 ...

Posted Mon, Dec 7, 9:57 a.m.

Pocket parks, I think, are actually part of what can make density enjoyable. They create environmental diversity and habitat edges (for humans too). There may in fact be places where a neighborhood, including numbers of units and affordability, can benefit by the replacement of a house with a park instead ...

Posted Sun, Dec 6, 11:18 a.m.

An outcome I like about this policy effort is that the auto insurance industry would find added interest in bicycle safety and thus bike infrastructure.

Posted Thu, Oct 29, 11:10 a.m.

“And I like pragmatism, which he claims to embody.” One person's pragmatism is another person's folly. Even though we have only Joe’s word that he’s pragmatic, because he has little to no public record, let’s assume he’s right about that. Mallahan’s focus on pragmatism seems more because he doesn’t have ...

Posted Thu, Oct 22, 12:47 p.m.

Maybe it's that my enthusiasm to assemble a 500 word response to this article is lower today than it might be on a different day, but I holehearthedly dissagree with most of Ted's thinking and just can't give it enough respect to respond. Ted, I'll read your work a couple ...

Posted Fri, Oct 2, 12:04 p.m.

Anyone who can't tell the difference between our two mayoral candidates is not paying attention at all.

Posted Fri, Aug 28, 6:36 p.m.

I think the key to growth-management-like outcomes at this point in our cultural development is to ensure that sprawl and growth pay their own way. Every cost we can rightly put on the backs of growth and sprawl will beget thousands of improved market choices. This also seems to me ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 10:50 a.m.

"I-1033’s winners: Struggling working families and fixed-income senior citizens who are really being hurt by our state’s crushing property tax burden;" Because we rely on sales taxes, Washington has one of the most regressive tax structures in the country, which means that the middle and lower income families pay more ...

Posted Fri, Apr 25, 12:28 a.m.

RE: Knute is off: Is the icon indicating Staff Writer actually a blather alert, and we should immediately skip over the post? eg "trying to run fast-food places out of town" or "junk-food sales are often the only thing keeping gas stations in business".