Posted Mon, Apr 23, 10:19 a.m.

Streetcars are particularly useful when they have their own right-of-way, but the stretch of this route along Broadway will put streetcars and motor vehicle traffic in the same lane to accommodate the exclusive separate bike lane on the east side of Broadway. Northbound streetcars will be waiting behind any cars ...

Posted Fri, Apr 20, 10:21 a.m.

The most recent estimate that I could find in a cursory online search says that more than 30 million trees a year are cut down to support the publishing industry. Personally, I'd rather read an e-book where the creator of the work gets a higher royalty payment and where not ...

Posted Wed, Apr 18, 8:36 a.m.

I don't think that it's a fear of change. It's a fear of losing the parts of the community that make it feel like home. A new brew pub opened up in Lake City, replacing a store that got a lot of my money over the years. But the store ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 9:10 a.m.

It is difficult to be a stay at home mom. Especially when you have several homes.

Posted Tue, Apr 10, 7:18 a.m.

The current parking model at Northgate reflects the reality of what most people use transit for - commuting. The density that would get people out of their cars for routine errands and recreation doesn't exist in this region and based on our experience over the past 20 years with Sound ...

Posted Tue, Apr 10, 6:41 a.m.

It's lucky that Ishmael's accident occurred in Amish country, where the ambulance buggy responded. It would have been a frightening thing if local EMS had driven a horseless carriage to the scene.

Posted Mon, Apr 9, 9:31 a.m.

It is clearly more cost effective to move freight over rail than passengers or else you'd see BNSF back in the passenger game. But the fact is that passenger rail requires tax subsidies to work. There are no subsidies for freight trains these days, and the few remaining freight rail ...

Posted Mon, Apr 9, 8:15 a.m.

The author writes, "The faux small town America offered by Disneyland is crass and cartoonish, compared with this authentic and home-grown townscape." This isn't authentic - Kansas City isn't in Spain, and J.C. Nichols wasn't Spanish. It's a themed environment, no different than any other themed tourist trap. Like Disney ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 7:05 a.m.

Amazon is about to build $1 billion worth of buildings and will create hundreds if not thousands of construction jobs over the next ten years. And once the buildings open, they'll be filled with thousands of well-paying jobs with benefits. They are actively recruiting from around the country, bringing in ...

Posted Mon, Apr 2, 9:44 a.m.

It seems like increased density reduces the diversity of the stores and restaurants rather than increasing them.

Posted Mon, Apr 2, 9:40 a.m.

We are being told over and over to prepare for another 1.5 million people in the region over the next few decades, and over and over again our policy planners make decisions that reduce traffic capacity and the ability to move large numbers of people around the region. This rail ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 9:23 a.m.

The trains need to serve more than just the neighborhoods around the stations if they are going to be effective. The Park and Ride at Northgate is a major hub, supporting buses to downtown every few minutes during rush hour. The 41 is always going to be faster to downtown ...

Posted Mon, Mar 26, 7:19 a.m.

I'd just like to see a regulation that requires that a certain width of sidewalk be kept clear, at least wide enough for two adults to pass each other.

Posted Thu, Mar 22, 9:02 a.m.

The coffee that Starbucks served was once coffee and not just coffee-based soft drinks. I'm struck by how few people go to Starbucks and just order a cup of coffee or an Americano. They want milk or cream and they want flavoring syrups. After seeing how Starbucks transformed coffee in ...

Posted Thu, Mar 22, 8:58 a.m.

Celebrity architects have given us spaces that are difficult to maintain and use and that have limited capability to be adapted to other uses in the future. The downtown library and EMP are both interesting as academic exercises, but as functional spaces to be used by actual human beings they ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 1:09 p.m.

Daylight Savings Time is pointless and costly. Why can't businesses decide to let workers shift their hours, or let schools change their schedules so that kids can take advantage of natural light instead of walking in the dark? Why does it have to be a change mandated by law?

Posted Fri, Feb 17, 8:17 a.m.

Amazon announced yesterday that they are going to build three new office buildings donwtonw that will probably represent $1 billion in construction spending. These office buildings will house hundreds if not thousands of new jobs for the area. And they aren't asking the city to finance part of it under ...

Posted Mon, Jan 23, 6:54 a.m.

The parallels that you tried to draw didn't really work, and you missed out on the key factor that we can look at when comparing today's society to Rome. Rome's government was run by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy, not for the benefit of the people. And ...

Posted Tue, Jan 17, 7:12 a.m.

I have no problem if the phone companies want to keep making phone books. I just don't want them dropped off at my house unless I ask for them.

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 10:14 a.m.

I'd bet that the 48-hour shutdown after a landslide has to do with getting the backed-up freight trains through the corridor before getting back on a regular schedule. BNSF loses money for every delayed freight train, but since the passenger services are paying a set fee to lease trackage rights ...

Posted Fri, Dec 9, 9:09 a.m.

$20 doesn't buy very much at a Farmer's Market. The recipients could get a lot more for an extra $20 at the Safeway up the street in Columbia City or the H-Mart a few blocks away in Federal Way. We are facing record numbers of people on food stamps right ...

Posted Thu, Dec 1, 11:21 a.m.

When the new Broadway streetcar opens, sharing its lane with cars and delivery trucks, people are going to wonder why we spent the money putting in the streetcar when a bus could just as easily sit in the same lane. BRT isn't light rail, but it is just as effective ...

Posted Thu, Dec 1, 8:33 a.m.

We have been ripped off in our culture by ignoring Advent and not celebrating the full 12 days of Christmas. Imagine having a month to prepare for two weeks of celebration. Imagine not having every office and social holiday party jammed together in the short month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. ...

Posted Tue, Nov 29, 7:05 a.m.

You can buy plastic bags at Amazon for about 1.5 cents each in boxes of 1000. It'd be easy to have five or six in your pocket or bag when you go to the store, which would be handy for bus commuters who stop at the store on the way ...

Posted Mon, Nov 28, 9:14 a.m.

The problem isn't health costs, it is health insurance costs. Compare the profit levels in the insurance industry with the healthcare industry. Hospitals are laying off staff left and right. Is Regence?

Posted Mon, Nov 28, 9:12 a.m.

I agree with Urban_Observer. Airlines know how much each kilo costs in fuel consumption, so basing ticket prices on weight makes the most sense. Each passenger ticket is allowed a certain amount of weight, say 300 pounds, of combined baggage and themselves. Kids tickets can be cheaper since they weight ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 11:15 a.m.

Lake City is actually pretty good for a variety of stores. I live in Olympic Hills and there is a QFC, a Safeway, a Fred Meyer and a Grocery Outlet all within a mile or so of my house. There's a good hardware store, an auto parts store, two thrift ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 7:31 a.m.

There is a huge gap between what planners think of themselves and how the public views them. There is a great deal of skepticism about the intent of the planners and the populations for whom they are planning. And all too often it seems like they don't account for or ...

Posted Thu, Oct 27, 1:51 p.m.

If you make it harder to get around in a car then more cars will be idling in long traffic lines spewing pollutants into the atmosphere. Making it harder to drive is harmful to the environment.

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 1:57 p.m.

It is much easier to spot a driver who is speeding because they tend to do it for long periods of time. Failing to yield right-of-way to a pedestrian is something that is an event that happens in a very narrow window of time. Unless a cop is at that ...

Posted Mon, Oct 10, 10:53 a.m.

Columbus didn't introduce genocide, slavery and warfare to the New World. Those things were already here. What Columbus introduced was the technology to make those things far deadlier to the indigenous people than they had ever experienced. And he also introduced the groundwork for the political structures that now exist ...

Posted Fri, Oct 7, 12:45 p.m.

You don't have to eat organic produce to have healthy food. There are Safeways and QFCs and Red Apple Markets all over Southeast Seattle, and the last time I was in them I saw both fresh and frozen vegetables. There is also a PCC near Seward Park. There are a ...

Posted Wed, Oct 5, 7:11 a.m.

Doesn't City Light already bill all of these buildings for energy usage? Can't the city just look at their own records and see how many kilowatt hours the Exchange Building used?

Posted Wed, Oct 5, 7:09 a.m.

Any flat tax needs to include capital gains as part of the income calculation.

Posted Mon, Sep 12, 12:15 p.m.

Density is great if the area is filled with people who have lots of disposable income to support the local businesses in the area. If you have density along with check cashing stores, bodegas and bars than it isn't so great. It's downright dangerous, actually. I think people are afraid ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 7:09 a.m.

These people don't even exist to me when I pass them by. Luckily, I have no social skills or else I might feel a little guilty for ignoring them. But they are attempting to impose an unwanted business transaction upon me so I treat them with the same fundamental disrespect ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 7 a.m.

I was hoping that as ill-advised as the road diet on 125th was they would at least repair the street. They wouldn't just spend money putting in bike lanes and reducing traffic capacity without addressing the underlying problems with the road, would they? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. ...

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 7:24 a.m.

I've thought that this would be a good solution for a long time. From the government's perspective, a marriage is a legal property agreement. It is recorded and registered to indicate shared property rights and survivorship and inheritance guidelines. The genders of the two parties are irrelevant. Let the government ...

Posted Fri, Jul 22, 11:43 a.m.

What is stopping the tourism-based businesses from coming together to set up and fund their own advertising campaigns? Why do taxpayers have to be on the hook for it?

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 11:55 a.m.

Funny, but when I visited Austin there were waits are the restaurants for seats while there were also lines at the better food trucks. Saw the same thing in Portland. As far as mandating sick days? I think it would be better to fine restaurant owners for allowing sick people ...

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 9:03 a.m.

Different markets. Dining at a restaurant is a different experience than grabbing a bite at a food truck. There are plenty of customers for both.

Posted Wed, Jun 29, 8:10 a.m.

The law may say that your employer has to provide sick leave, but the reality is that you may not have an employer if he or she can't afford to stay in business in Seattle.

Posted Tue, Jun 28, 1:56 p.m.

We can put these along the roads if they also agree to put them between their offices and Puget Sound.

Posted Sat, Jun 11, 10:40 p.m.

But the cost of the electricity itself is a small part of the cost of delivering the electricity and the infrastructure to support the fueling stations. The actual cost isn't just kilowatt-hours, but the materials and labor involved in putting the stations in place and keeping the power flowing to ...

Posted Fri, Jun 10, 7:10 a.m.

'Rep. Jim McDermott, said, "A hundred years ago, if you looked out on the streets here you would see horse and buggies, and horse-driven trollies." ' You might also have seen a Woods, a Babcock, a Bailey Electric, or even a Studebaker running on battery power in 1911 in Seattle.

Posted Wed, Jun 8, 7:51 a.m.

Want to help the capacity problems? Give us vouchers for private education. There are seats already available at private schools across the city. It would be much more cost effective for the state to give parents a voucher for $3000 instead of sending $7500 to the school district. It wouldn't ...

Posted Thu, Jun 2, 7:16 p.m.

Michael Cain, the new Swedish campus is being funded by the company that is leasing the facility to Swedish. Swedish isn't spending much capital on it from what I understand.

Posted Wed, Jun 1, 7:36 p.m.

Swedish is a non-profit entity, just like St. James across the street from the First Hill campus. Swedish performs a service that many Christian facilities also provide. It is interesting that you didn't mention the $500 million facility that the Providence - a Catholic institution - built in Everett. These ...

Posted Tue, May 17, 12:14 p.m.

If someone started a recall petition I have a strong sense that McGinn wouldn't last until this Thanksgiving.

Posted Tue, May 3, 9:14 a.m.

Celebrate. Be happy. Be proud of our intelligence teams for finding him. Be proud of our president for being cautious and measured in his response and waiting for the right opportunity to strike instead of using it for political advantage leading up to last November's elections. Be proud of the ...

Posted Wed, Mar 23, 7:09 a.m.

Wallace Stegner was right when he said that the attitude of the supposedly self-sufficient residents of the rural West towards government could be summed up as "Leave us alone and give us more money." The dry side of the state has been sucking at the government teat - and Seattle's ...

Posted Fri, Feb 11, 9:19 a.m.

Must have been hard to type that paean to Mr. Reagan with only one hand.

Posted Tue, Jan 18, 12:18 p.m.

It takes me 10-15 minutes to drive to work from where I live in North Seattle to First Hill. It would take me close to an hour by transit. The new light rail line that will eventually connect the Northgate P & R will actually increase travel time from there ...

Posted Mon, Dec 13, 7:13 a.m.

Convert it into a natural history museum. The food court idea could be better served in a smaller venue elsewhere.

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 3:22 p.m.

RE: Try 5 billion: The NYC expansion cost about $440 million in current dollars, which adjusted for inflation is just shy of $5 billion. In order for the figure on $1.13 trillion to be correct, the cost of the subway would have had to have been $99 billion in 1929 ...

Posted Tue, Jun 12, 7:35 a.m.

Why not make our buses free?: We only collect about 15% of the cost of our transit system at the fare box. We could probably save a lot of that cost by eliminating the administrative overhead required for collecting those fares. Why not show that we're serious about increasing transit ...

Posted Tue, Jun 12, 7:27 a.m.

Kids today...: It's sad to see that our kids aren't getting as much exposure to the outdoors as we were when we were younger. Not only do the gods of commerce demand that we are insecure in order to sell us more stuff, they demand that we spend our time ...