I asked the SDOT staff if they could explain how the cross from protected bike facilities north of S Alaska St to the median would work and they couldn't answer except to say that it would be a "two phase" crossing.
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
oh goodie the Seattle City Council is planning to fund volunteer neighborhood councils again
Bob Kettle said things "went sideways" when the city stopped paying for them
here's when their funding got cut and why
And the freaking greatest thing I have ever seen: this intersection has a traffic signal that is set by DEFAULT for pedestrians and cyclists, cars have to activate to cross.
π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯π₯
The district project funds are the dumbest thing imaginable. One off spending is the least effective and the scale of the funding completely misunderstands how expensive meaningful street projects are.
Budget news: Rob Saka is proposing to "restore" funding that was never proposed in the first place beyond this year, for the District Project Fund.
It remains to be seen where this $14 million will come from, as well as another $1.3M he proposes to add for pothole repair.
Because they don't have to be self-balancing, many amendments (20 from Saka alone!) will be more about politics than any budget reality. Don't forget how many of these CMs are up for election next year because I guarantee they haven't forgotten.
Washington's I-638 would ban trans girls from participating in girls sports.
If it passes, all girls who want to participate in K-12 girls' sports would need to submit a statement from their health care provider verifying what the initiative calls their "biological sex." #waleg#waelex
It's really clear from this budget cycle that a bunch of the Executive departments, but especially SPD, SFD, and SDOT haven't actually followed their budgets for years.
According to the Seattle Times Seattle canβt enforce parking rules because the police want a slush fund/thing to point to when asked how they are saving money? So why did we move parking enforcement from SDOT back to SPD? Maybe we should rethink that.
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
Tired: wow look how much money has been dumped into the state ballot initiatives
Wired: wow look how much money has been dumped into defeating Kitsap PUD proposition 1
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
The narrative that the UGA is responsible for our housing scarcity is a very attractive one, because it allows anti-housing voices in cities to join together with conservative voices pushing for suburban sprawl. But it's just not true.
The Dearborn bike lanes are good, but they aren't truly 8-80 unless they are protected all the way from Rainier to 5th ave.
actionnetwork.org/letters/fini...
There are many reasons I bike everywhere, but one of the primary ones is, at least in San Francisco, it's frequently one of the quickest ways from point A to point b, especially with the advent of e-bikes flattening the hills
The WA GOP is pushing sprawl hard. Meanwhile tree people in Seattle enable that sprawl by blocking infill housing - even though sprawl is *far* more destructive to forests, rivers, and thus to the salmon and the orcas that depend on the salmon.
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.
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
The PDC just handed more influence to rich and powerful special interests with nearly no warning.
Control of the state Supreme Court is on the line.
Initiatives attacking fundamental rights are on the ballot.
This is a travesty.
My phone was blowing up over this last night. (Progressives are pissed!) One potential outcome could be lots more last-minute money pouring into local independent expenditure campaigns, since the $7,500 limit no longer applies.
I'm Nilu Jenks, and I'm running because blue cities need to show they can govern. North Seattle has been left behind, and the people of D5 deserve as much attention, programming, and resources as the rest of the city. Iβll work hard everyday to change that, and I would be honored to earn your vote.
This is appalling. Please email schoolboard@seattleschools.org to register your objection to closing any schools.
This school board was brought to you by The Strangers endorsement committee, as if we need another reason not to trust them.
Families across Seattle are getting emails out of the blue from the school district about a new effort to close schools - this time branded as βmergers.β The emails provide no details about which school would close, nor any justification for the effort. Itβs an appalling way to treat the public.
Condos for cars on the waterway faces no environmental review, but a biking and walking trail nearish the waterway faces decades of review. Make it make sense, Washington State!
Local architect/historic board member perfectly articulates the raison dβetre of historic preservation boards:
βWhat I've heard is that this has been scaled and designed to work with economics and making finances work. So as it stands, I have a lot of trouble supporting the project moving forwardβ¦β
I asked the Waymo rep whether they allow their cars to park in bike lanes. She said they do, depending on city regulations.
Would they comply if the city prohibits parking in bike lanes?
She said she would have to get back to me on that.
LAWLESS!
An extremely large amount of the perception by car drivers that bicycle users are breaking laws all the time is that car drivers on average do not know the actual law at all, only vibes and ideas of what they *think* the law ought to be. Especially in Idaho Stop states.
This video camera study showed that less than 5% of people on bikes broke traffic laws while riding bikes, yet 66% of people did so while driving. And perhaps even more importantly, if you REALLY want even MORE bike-riders to obey laws, build more protected bike infrastructure. Via @carltonreid.com
Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. Itβs a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.
We found that as of right now 73% of your campaign donation goes back to the consultants and vendors (!!!), four times more than just 20 years ago. Only 13% to ads. Even I was shocked.
We need to abolish the entire current βhistoric preservationβ infrastructure and start over. It has become nothing more than a vehicle for self-important busybodies to block any progress on the cityβs most pressing problems.
Landmarks board member Matthew Zinski (a partner at Weinstein A+U) seems to be indignant that the project proposes to maximize its development rights though the massing, pressing Clark on the design principles that led to the design...but says he doesn't want to hear words like "maximizing housing."
"The 26-year-old Tesla driver from San Francisco stopped and cooperated with police, providing dash cam footage CHP said. 'The driver stated the vehicle was being operated in Full Self-Driving (FSD) autonomous mode at the time of the crash,' CHP said..." www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
Just now - Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja said Tesla's goal is to "take over any kind of transportation." CEO Elon Musk said he predicts, barring regulation and protectionism, "Tesla will end up doing a majority of all passenger miles on Earth in any country where it is allowed to operate freely."
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
American traffic engineers seem blind to the benefits of near-sided signals. It would eliminate this behavior immediately.
Design matters more than laws/rules.
It passedπ₯³! Here are the very reasonable street management principles the Pike Place Market Constituency adopted tonight. It would astounded normal Seattleites that this remains controversial, and that opponents said it was βsimilar to Trumpβs efforts to tear down the East Wing of the White Houseβ π€―
The legislation passes on the vote I predicted, with only Lin, Foster, and Rinck voting no. Strauss, Kettle, Hollingsworth, Rivera, Saka, and Juarez all voted yes.
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
I would say today's vote continues a trend I've reported on before of extreme deference from the council to the new Executive. No comments from Teresa Mosqueda on transit funding today, for example.
www.theurbanist.org/king-county-...
Anytime this guy is mentioned, remember that his company makes and sells ecoblocks to other businesses on the cheap (~$20/each) to illegally put in the right of way to displace homeless people. He's also responsible for the last 30 years of preventing the missing link of the Burke-Gilman trail.
"I'm not seeing any indication from the Executive branch that they want to talk about the funding for Metro now," CM Claudia Balducci today, on the agency's projected fiscal cliff in the early 2030s.
"We're spending a lot of money, but we're not talking about how to prop up the funding."
King County Metro's long-range plan once called for the agency to expand to 5.5 million service hours per year by the late 2030s, a 37% total increase compared to today.
Girmay Zahilay's proposed "Metro's Next Stop" update sets that goal much lower, at 4.5 million hours or a 12.5% increase.
"There was a misunderstanding about a commitment made" is a classic SDOT response to sitting on their hands for years waiting for a grant to expire (after sending a few million of it to consultants).
EXCLUSIVE: an email exchange that took place this month between Representative Julia Reed and Acting SDOT Director Angela Brady brings frustrations around the city's slow progress planning a street overhaul on Aurora Ave N fully out in the open.
www.theurbanist.org/state-lawmak...
With the number of staff being paid the salaries they're paid, you'd think SDOT leadership would be able to actually lead without needing to hire outside consultants.
David Seater πΆββοΈπ΄π»ββοΈπ³οΈβπ reposted
"Iβve worked in city government a long time so I speak roundabout email as well as anyone. Please do not spray water on my inbox and then try to convince me it is raining." @juliareedwa.bsky.social's mean email to an SDOT director is a lot funnier than my past mean emails to SDOT directors.
EXCLUSIVE: an email exchange that took place this month between Representative Julia Reed and Acting SDOT Director Angela Brady brings frustrations around the city's slow progress planning a street overhaul on Aurora Ave N fully out in the open.
www.theurbanist.org/state-lawmak...
One thing I did not expect was Dan Strauss getting into a public argument with Katie Wilson while on stage about the number of trips Seattle is funding for the Route 17X.
Friends of the Market on this proposal: "The defining issue [...] is not safety, which everyone can support. The issue is how to make decisions that promote safety while still respecting the protections afforded to special places by the careful judgments of the Boards and Commissions..."
I didn't realize WSDOT was still setting speed limits based on how fast most people drive rather than how fast people *should* be driving.
amp.bellinghamherald.com/news/politic...
peak-only bus lanes are such a spiteful concession to drivers.
proponents say lower off-peak traffic volumes do not justify a transit lane. but logically that also means that car drivers don't really need that additional lane outside of rush hour either, since traffic is moving better then. so??