🔥 David Hell 🔥

We could have this incredibly useful bus network with: - the same number of service hours as today's network (with planned RapidRide additions) - no changes to any service not on this map Neither Metro nor SDOT has ever focused on the central city bus network. It's time to start. More to come. 🧵

On KUOW this week former AG Rob McKenna lamented the low availability of housing stock in unincorporated King County and suggested potential expansion of the urban growth boundary to open up land. Unincorporated KC is meeting its growth target & most growth is happening in cities. This is GOOD.

Is there any more civilized way to kill extra time, anywhere in the world, than enjoying some good tea in a nice ceramic mug in a local independent coffee shop? This is why I live in a city.

Get the cars, especially the combustion cars and the pre-emissions diesel trucks, out. This would work just as well in any city in the world.

This is sadly accurate and a major reason for the historic decline in US union penetration.

Imagine being God and being inundated with this guy’s unceasing slop spam.

This picture is all I want for the city. (Well, also a few more apartments, buses, and trains.)

Reminder to all YIMBYs that more supply doesn’t do its job unless there is also rigorous and unapologetic fair housing enforcement. This shit is everywhere.

I'm biking down this hill with my kid in the back and a truck slows down beside me. Driver leans over and says, "Are you insane? You should be riding on the sidewalk!" I say, "That's illegal. Did you know that?" Wild idea, should drivers have to know the rules in order to drive?

Unions supporting the union-busting party over culture war bullshit is the same thing as executives ("business community") supporting NIMBY housing policy that makes it impossible to house workers. Both are leaders corrupting institutions into acting against interest for narrow personal reasons.

We need to abolish the entire current “historic preservation” infrastructure and start over. It has become nothing more than a vehicle for self-important busybodies to block any progress on the city’s most pressing problems.

You couldn’t dream up a better example than this of the US mentality that wrongdoing using cars isn’t actually wrongdoing. The guy used a two-ton weapon to try to kill people. The fact that the weapon is a car shouldn’t change the analysis. The framing by @thomaslake is absolutely sociopathic.

When they tell you outright that they are white nationalists, believe them. (And for God’s sake don’t support them just because you’re mad at feckless Democrats.)

Dare I hope that this is an oblique reference to Zucchini NIMBY from nearly a decade ago?

On the one hand: this is a great step. On the other hand: we need to do this in Laurelhurst or West Magnolia next.

Listening to this man say that Katie Wilson is "uncomfortable" addressing homelessness, when her budget actually funds high-acuity shelter in a meaningful way for the first time in many years, is one of the more condescending things I've heard from the council in at least a minute.

Making shit up without even a google, or just pasting LLM output without reading? Take your pick.

Seems like these CMs, never the brightest lights on the marquee, have decided to tell their conservative supporters that the mayor is doing exactly what they want.

People in cities who would really rather live in suburbs should move to the suburbs! And candidates in cities who would really rather live in the suburbs should run for office there. NY voters finally elected someone who actually likes cities, and maybe now LA voters can too.

The voters elected Katie Wilson over Bruce Harrell. Saka, Kettle, and Rivera all approved Harrell's unsustainable last budget. Now they want to preserve the budget priorities of the ex-mayor who lost. Elections do matter, it turns out.

I’m tweeting this far too often about this councilmember in particular, but, once again, there should be consequences for just making shit up on the dais.

Multiple agencies all trying to build housing in our supply environment is a good thing, not a bad thing.

SO CLOSE to getting it…

You want to know about things that cause loss of trees? Here is how you lose a whole lot of trees.

It's genuinely remarkable (and extremely frustrating) how much better the left has gotten on housing production and zoning in virtually every big city other than San Francisco

Caesar Cardini, the guy credited with inventing the salad that went from oddity to absolutely taking over Americans’ greens intake in just 40 years.

It is particularly sad that one of the leading NIMBY litigants here is a Seattle Symphony musician. The SSO has improved substantially in recent years, and even more since Xian Zhang became music director. Continued improvement will require more money - and that requires more growth of the city.

Pinehurst Station cost less than the three new parking garages that Sound Transit is currently building in Sumner, Kent, and Auburn but we don't talk about that

Where did this persistent rumor that RapidRide R will run less often than the 7 come from? The rumor just isn't true. It is currently planned to run at the same frequency at most times of day, and possibly with a few more trips at night.

Unfortunately, @transportation.seattle.gov needs to face up to the fact that, if it wants to achieve Vision Zero, we can't have multi-lane streets anymore. One in each direction, plus a bus lane, is the maximum that can be made safe.

This article has a basic factual error. The rapid ride R will not come less frequently than the 7.

All of his brain fell out and the space got filled by rocks and testosterone supplements, held together by pomade.

It’s a beautiful October day at Pike Place Market! Inviting all car traffic back Monday through Thursday was a mistake, that we should fix for next year.

It's mostly intersection widening and highway ramp improvements fwiw

We can do truly great things when we decide to. We just need to do that more often.

I hope the stop spacing debate around RR R doesn’t poison opinion on the rest of the project. The redesign of the north part of Rainier has the potential to make the whole area feel less like the side of a highway and more like a neighborhood, and we need the additional segments of bus lane stat.

What on earth would “road capacity” mean in Bellevue? Widening 9-lane NE 8th St to 11 lanes? Tearing down a bunch of skyscrapers to widen other downtown streets from 5 to 7 lanes? It’s nonsensical even on its own silly terms.

interesting that conservatives were militantly “we must reward hustle” when the target was affirmative action at elite universities and now, when faced with the success of south asians and other groups, it is “i think we are too meritocratic”

Seems like if you're going to make a national story out of Hasan Piker, who campaigned a few times with the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, saying Israel causes antisemitism, you should also make a national story out of the favorite intellectual of the US Vice President supporting Hitler.

Le Guin on the idea that there is a secret to getting good at writing.

Nighttime bus appreciation in Seattle. These pictures are from last week. I'm not currently in Seattle. @blitzurbanism.bsky.social @noahsbwilliams.com

This is why I'm so in favor of accessory commercial units. Just getting people in the US used to **walking** for a cup of coffee or a sandwich in the neighborhood may finally do something to rid Americans of our terminal car brain.

This seems like a pretty major scandal. Sound Transit needs to immediately remove this photo of a candidate for office at a brand new station in the district in which she is currently running.

People love trains, part 87. As always, electeds should remember that building trains is about the most popular thing they can do.

There is no possible articulable reason for this decision except sheer bloodthirstiness. Something has gone deeply, deeply wrong with the basic moral structure of the American right wing.

My most radical take is that TOD is a scam invented by single-family home preservationists to find a scientifically sound way to concentrate "those people" is specific areas outside of where real people live, and urbanists have embraced it because it's better than nothing.