The Urbanist » Examining urban policy to improve cities and quality of life.

DEIS Shows Options and Urgency of Pending Backyard Cottage Reform

by Stephen Fesler @safesler on May 21, 2018

Seattle, a city of 348,000 homes, has built just 579 backyard cottages since 1994, the year the region also enacted an urban growth boundary limiting suburban sprawl at the region’s fringe. A more consequential 1,591 mother-in-law apartments have been built in the city during the same period.

The city, spearheaded by Councilmember Mike O’Brien, is trying to reform backyard cottage regulations (more formally referred to as “accessory dwelling units” or “ADUs”), and that effort continues. On May 10th, the Seattle City Council issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) analyzing three primary alternatives. One alternative would maintain the status quo while two alternatives considered various strategies to relax regulatory requirements, such as parking and owner occupancy standards, while adding affordable housing contributions. A 45-day comment period is open on the DEIS, after which the Council Central Staff will prepare and issue the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). Once those milestones are completed, actual reform legislation could be considered and adopted by the city council.

Background and Context

This extended environmental review process was the result of an appeal to the threshold determination by the Office of Planning and Community Development in 2016. Martin Kaplan, an architect and resident of Queen Anne, led the appeal against the city’s Determination of Nonsignificant under the State Environmental Policy Act, which was reviewed by the city hearing examiner. The hearing examiner sided with the appelant requiring additional environmental review on several grounds, including displacement, aesthetics, parking that could be impacted by the proposed land use reform. By more thoroughly evaluating these issues, the Enivormental Impact Statement process could result in different regulatory choices to mitigate impacts, if deemed necessary or desirable.

ADU production has picked up in the last few years, but existing regulations still make ADUs impossible to build on many of the city’s 135,000 single-family zoned lots. (City of Seattle)

Earlier this year, the released a summary report of scoping comments received last fall, which suggested what issues should be specifically evaluated through environmental review. The DEIS has responded to those comments by touching on issues in the following five key topic areas:

Housing and socioeconomics;
Land use;
Aesthetics;
Parking and transportation; and
Public services and utilities.

Key Differences Between Alternatives

The DEIS provided some important statistics showing how the different alternatives would perform in the years ahead. Alternatives 2 and 3–the action alternatives–would each add extra ADUs, both attached and detached–over the status quo. The city projects Alternative 1 would result in 1,890 new ADUs through 2027 while the reforms in Alternatives 2 and 3 would net an additional 1,200 to 1,400 ADUs beyond the status quo. Alternative 2 would produce the most ADUs with its 3,330 slightly outperforming Alternative 3’s projected 3,100 total, according to the DEIS.

The DEIS also summarizes several different appoarches to reform of backyard cottage regulations. Alternatives 2 and 3 share many of the same elements of reform, such as minimum lot size, lot coverage, and roof features but are also analyzed with slightly divergent regulations for parking and number of ADUs allowed on a lot.

Some of the big differences between the action alternatives include the following:

Owner-occupancy. Alternative 3 proposes to retain the owner-occupancy requirement for ADUs while Alternative 2 would eliminate the require for the property owner to live in one of the on-site dwelling units on a regular basis.
Off-street parking. Alternative 2 would fully eliminate the need to provide off-street parking for ADUs while Alternative 3 would only require off-street when a second ADU is proposed on-site. Regulations currently require parking for ADUs located oustide of an Urban Village.
Number of ADUs. Alternatives 2 and 3 would both allow two ADUs on a lot, except that Alternative 2 would only allow one detached accessory dwelling unit (DADU) and one attached accessory dwelling unit (AADU) on a lot while Alternative 3 would allow that scenario or two AADUs.
Maximum height. Building height maximums would increase under either action alternative, but Alternative 2 could allow an extra one to two feet in maximum building height for DADUs using green roofs.
Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA). Only Alternative 3 would require participation in the city’s affordable housing contributions program (MHA) for ADUs. The requirement would kick in only when a second ADU is constructed on a lot.
Floor area ratio (FAR) maximum. Likewise, only Alternative 3 would introduce new FAR maximums for development in single-family zones that applies to new primary residence construction. These residences would be subject to a 0.5 FAR limit or maximum of 2,500 square feet of construction per lot, whichever is greater. Square footage below ground would be exempt from the maximum in addition to DADUs. Other size maximums on ADUs would still apply.
Household size. Alternative 3 would retain the maximum household size of eight unrelated persons living on a lot. Alternative 2 would increase this number to 12 when two ADUs existing on the same lot.

In addition to the difference between the action alternatives above, several key changes could be made in common by both action alternatives over the status quo:

ADU size. Under both action alternatives, DADUs would increase from a maximum of 800 square feet to 1,000 square feet. Additional exceptions for extra size could be built into the Land Use Code for existing ADUs.
Minimum lot size. Both action alternatives would lower the minimum lot size to construct ADUs to 3,200 square feet–the existing standard is 4,000 square feet.
DADU entry. Alternatives 2 and 3 would make it easier to locate DADU entryways to all sides of the structure so long as the entryway is at least 10 feet from the nearest property line or located toward public right-of-way.
Rear yard coverage. Under both action alternatives, rear yard coverage for DADUs and other accessory structures could rise from 40% to 60%, provided that the DADU does not exceed 15 feet in height.

Next Steps

Many of these proposed changes represent significant lifting of restrictions on ADUs, which could spur further interest by landowners in development of them and adding hundreds of new housing units over the status quo. The differences between the alternatives, however, are fairly consequential. The number of unrelated persons allowed on a lot, off-street parking, and maximum building height standards, for instance, could result in widely different outcomes in ADU interest and construction.

Despite Seattle growing by nearly 80,000 residents, many single-family areas of town shrunk at the neighborhood level between 1970 and 2010. Since 2010, Seattle’s population has grown more than 100,000, again mostly outside of single-family areas. (City of Seattle)

The Environmental Impact Statement process is meant to evaluate the tradeoffs between alternatives. Depending upon public feedback, the alternatives could be further refined picking and choosing features from the DEIS alternatives to develop a consolidated preferred alternative in the FEIS.

An open house and public hearing on the DEIS will happen on Thursday, May 31st. The open house will kick off at 5.30pm and be followed by the public hearing at 6.30pm in the Bertha Knight Landes Room at Seattle City Hall. Council Central Staff is also accepting comments online during the full 45-day comment period.

Regardless of what happens with the backyard cottage regulations, the city is looking to streamline the permitting process for them. The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), for its part, will develop several pre-approved DADU designs that prospective applicants can use to expedite permit approvals and save money. SDCI will consult with architects to draft the pre-approved building designs to satisfy code requirements. Through the process, SDCI will also work with stakeholders and communities for input on design approaches. Ultimately, this could help get more DADUs built quicker and aid novice homeowners better traverse the complexities of permitting.

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Cycling/Transportation/Vision Zero/Walking

Vote For Seattle’s Worst Intersection: 2018 (Round 1)

by Troy Heerwagen @TroyHeerwagen on May 21, 2018

N 50th St / Stone Way N / Green Lake Way N today. (Google Maps)

The nominees are in and it’s time to vote for the Worst Intersection in Seattle.

Now in its 6th year, the competition has expanded from an exclusive focus on pedestrians to now include those intersections that are worst for people who are walking, biking, or busing through the intersection. And, the popularity has grown such that there are too many intersections this year to include in a single poll. So, nominees for 2018 are grouped by location, seeded based on based on the support given to the original nomination, and organized in a bracket. There will be four rounds of voting culminating in the “winner” of this esteemed prize for 2018.

Intersections are grouped into the following areas: North Seattle (anything north of Mercer), South Seattle (south of 90), South Lake Union, and Downtown (includes Capitol Hill and nominees south of Denny through the International District).

NE 40th St / 7th Ave NE / NE 40th St vs. 24th Ave E & E Lake Washington Blvd, Ravenna Ave NE & NE 54th St vs. W Roy St & Queen Anne Ave N, Rainier / 23rd Ave S / S Hill St vs. E Marginal Way S & E Marginal Way S, Rainier & S Holly St vs. Michigan St & E Marginal Way, Mercer & 9th vs. Mercer & Westlake, Denny & Lenora vs. Mercer (all), Denny & Olive vs. Boren & Olive, 4th & Jackson vs. 4th & Cherry — Bracket of worst intersection nominees

The intersections are mapped below and color-coded by area.

As you are making your decisions, please refer back to the original nominations for impassioned arguments on behalf of each of the awful intersections.

Voting is open through Sunday, May 27.

Transportation/Vision Zero/Walking

Seattle’s Sidewalk Plans Are Up in the Air with Levy Reset

by Ryan Packer @typewriteralley on May 21, 2018

Seattle’s system of sidewalks are worth an estimated $5.6 billion dollars, making them an asset with few equals on the city’s ledgers. But Seattle has neglected its sidewalks for decades and decades, both in terms of expansion and maintenance. The lack of sidewalks in vast swaths of the city–particularly in the extreme north and south ends–is a clear equity issue since those areas also are some of the most racially diverse and low-income parts of the city. The dearth of funds when compared to the colossal scale of the problem generally makes any effort to make a difference look like a silly half-attempt.

Consider that over the life of our entire nine-year Bridging the Gap levy (from 2007 to 2015) we constructed 118 block faces (one side of one four-sided block) of sidewalks, while the pedestrian master plan estimates that there are still nearly 12,000 blockfaces missing sidewalks, including 1,800 blocks of arterial streets. Simply building missing sidewalks along arterials would require enough concrete to build a straight sidewalk between Seattle and the Vancouver, B.C. suburbs.

The Move Seattle levy was supposed to take a big bite out of the sidewalk deficit. When the Seattle City Council passed legislation authorizing the new nine-year levy to go onto the ballot in November 2015, it included a goal of 150 additional blocks of sidewalks, only a few dozen more than the previous one. But the pressure to deliver more sidewalks to underserved areas of the city led the city to investigate other options under the umbrella of “low cost sidewalks.” As a result, the target of added sidewalk blocks was raised to 250 with no addition to the $61 million in levy funds that were to be allocated to the program. We wrote about this ambitious scale-up at the time, but in the context that we have now in retrospect, it looks like this plan may have been overly ambitious.

Architecture/Civics & Culture/Parks & Public Space

Sunday Video: Design For Inclusive Public Life

by Stephen Fesler @safesler on May 20, 2018

How do we design for inclusive urban public spaces and life? Jeff Risom from Gehl explains this paradigm.

What We're Reading

What We’re Reading: Free the Transit, Pedestrianizing Lower Manhattan, and Dutch the Parking

by Stephen Fesler @safesler on May 19, 2018

Free the transit: Paris could be on the way to having the largest urban fare-free public transit zone in the world while Estonia will go fare-free country-wide this summer.

Sketchy lawyering: Sound Transit staff has tried to dash the hopes of a First Hill station with a very questionable legal interpretation.

Hard to predict: Why is it hard to predict when the bus will turn up?

Bad faith player: Despite lots of noise and threats, Amazon is back to constructing the company’s Block 18 tower.

Right-on-red: Perhaps it’s time to rethink right-on-red for safety.

Greenwashing: Oregon is trying to greenwash a dirty urban highway expansion in Portland.

Making PTC progress: Railroads in the region appear to be making on-time progress toward implementing positive train control.

Coalescing opposition to shelter: A coalition has formed and raising funding to oppose a new citywide tax on wealthy businesses dedicated to shelter and housing attainment.

#1 for bikes: Minneapolis is America’s most bikeable city.

Pedestrianizing Lower Manhattan: In New York City, a strong coalition is supporting pedestrianization of the Financial District.

Reinvesting in Detroit: A plan is affoot to continue improving Detroit neighborhoods as the city recovers from its long-standing economic and population decline.

All-in for TOD: Montréal’s transit agency is venturing directly into investing in transit-oriented, mixed-use development at a planned metro station.

Sickening: Michigan could pass a very draconian Medicaid bill meant to strip people in need of vital healthcare benefits.

Parking reform angst: Despite the success of slashing parking requirements several years ago in Philadelphia, political opposition to the policy change.

Build Cascadia HSR: The Cascadia Innovation Corridor will need substantial changes to movements across the Canadian border if it’s to become reality ($), according to its proponents.

Saving Cougar Mountain: A last-ditch effort is underway to save Cougar Mountain, an important regional conservation area, from further urban development.

Dutch the parking: Dutch residents are transforming street parking to better uses like gardens, terraces, and play areas.

Rent in decline: Rent for housing is falling in New York City with the onset of rising housing supply.

Falling behind the pack: In spite of skyrocketing healthcare costs since the 1980s, American life expectancy gains has essentially flatlined while it grows in other wealthy nations ($).

Public versus private: In Washington, D.C., private dockless rental bikes are growing shared bike use, but it is likely serving a very different market from public dock-based bikeshare, which remains successful.

Housing now: Could the American housing crisis become the next national political issue?

20 is plenty: Scotland could soon make it national policy to set street speed maximums in cities, towns, and villages at 20mph.

Map of the Week: If Massimo Vignelli had his way, Washington, D.C. would have a much more abstract transit map.

Civics & Culture/The View From Nathan's Bus

Rockin’ the In-Between

by Nathan Vass on May 19, 2018

The sensation was that of riding on air, a wave of euphoria whose origin I could hardly trace.

I told them about the reroute. This was going to be exciting—if for no one else than at least myself, what with the pleasant diversion of driving a nine-foot wide, sixty-foot long articulated coach on new streets. Almost immediately a young woman bounced up and asked furtively, politely, “I know this isn’t a bus stop but is there any chance, possibly, maybe, that you could, just for today….”

“Sure,” I replied with a smile. “Quick, before, anyone sees!”

Her normal stop was twenty-seven blocks away. Look at that smile. Was she cute? Of course she was. Everybody’s cute, when they’re in the mood she was in.

I caught up to the bus scheduled just before me (my “leader,” in bus parlance), who’d neglected the reroute and was now paying the price in lost time. He was busy and crowded; we ambled along behind, hardly working and half empty, looking for people to pick up to make his job easier. Bus-savvy passengers know the second bus of two is always the preferred choice, and half the time ends up in the lead anyway. There’s room to sprawl out in here.

As I parked behind my leader at the transit center, my relief driver ambled over with a smile, understanding the situation at a glance. I explained the brilliance of the reroute to him, and we talked about turns and clearances and express lanes. Don’t you love how work jargon rolls right off the tongue? Bruce. He and I are birds of a feather.

I gestured to another passenger onboard, motioning the half-lost middle-aged mother to come forward and fret not, it’s okay now, Bruce the friendly bus driver is taking over and all is well again. I identified her to Bruce as “the wonderful young lady up front,” and she laughed, maybe because she needed to: she was on her way to comfort a sick sibling, had flown in from out of town to do so. Ah, family. I gave Bruce the bus and walked away with a smile, listening to their two voices merging.

Driving the base car back to the base to clock out, sitting in slow but moving traffic, moving faster now, with the radio tuned to friendly voices, interviews and laughter. The swishing wipers offer a backbeat, the drum rhythm of city life. I dashed into the base, signing my name out and returning the base car. The window man asked if I was coming back for my second shift later on.

“In a few hours,” I replied, quipping, “I’m gonna go home and think about it for a while!”
“Do you know Nathan?” he asked a nearby supervisor.
“Do I know Nathan? Of course I know Nathan! Filmmaker, blogger, bus driver photographer extraordinaire…”
“Oh gosh, you guys,” I said.
The other continued, “but have you met Nathan? There’s knowing and there’s meeting. I know who the president is…”
“Oh no, don’t compare me to that guy! We’re two different people, I swear!”

I jogged back out into the pouring parking lot, excited to rush home for a few hours, enough time to cook a meal, work on my film, write this draft, and who knows– maybe even relax for a second. I leapt over the water puddles toward my car, calling out to another colleague, “wonderful weather we’re having!”
“Um, yeah,” she cried, shaking her head. “I love swimholes!!”

The metaphor of a pot reaching a boil isn’t generally used to describe the sensation of such mundane tasks, but isn’t that exactly what the most worthwhile, most deeply earned bliss feels like? These were the moments in between, that by rights should barely register in the raising of our mood, if we’re to believe what we’re told… who knew these things could make my day? Running to my car in the rain, reroutes and road reliefs?

There is a type of well-being that floods one’s system almost surreptitiously. It is the slow accumulation of interactions in which we feel whole, accepted—loved not by our loved ones but by everyone, included in the fabric of the world at large, the embrace that tells us it’s okay to be who we are. It seems to come from nowhere, but it’s a torrent coursing through your veins. Belonging. Oddly, the effect is strongest in interactions with people we barely know. We already know our small network of family and friends loves us. This is the world, speaking through the language of the ordinary, telling you your family is the entire population.

When you’re nice to a stranger, you may be helping them toward that sensation, building a block, offering one of a series of moments that infuses them with that unspeakably beautiful feeling of acceptance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—the positive impact you have on others will always be larger than you’re aware.

Ballot Measures/Forward Thrust/Sports

Forward Thrust Part 3: Big League City

by Shaun Scott and Guest Contributor @urbanistorg on May 18, 2018

The disappointment that urbanists feel about Seattle’s failure to obtain a subway system in 1968 (see part one and part two of the Forward Thrust series) reminds me of… professional sports: the aspirations and the disappointment; the recrimination and lost opportunities; the parsing over stats and precinct data for clues about where the team went wrong… the search for moral victories.

Under normal circumstances, a parallel like this would be crass. Insulting, even. Rapid transit impacts neighborhoods, jobs, health outcomes…lives. Professional sports are largely an escapist fantasy. But in the case of the 1968 Forward Thrust bond initiatives, the comparison is warranted. Because while civic mastermind Jim Ellis and the Forward Thrust committee failed to pass a $2.8 billion (adjusted for inflation) transportation levy that would have left the region with 47 miles of mass transit, they succeeded in getting King County voters to bight on the $293 million (inflation adjusted) multi-purpose arena known as the Kingdome. The 62-38 vote on “County Proposition 2” of Forward Thrust paved the way for the arrival of the Seattle Seahawks (1976) and Seattle Mariners (1977), who both played in the Kingdome for the next quarter century.

The demise of Forward Thrust’s transit initiatives in 1968 and 1970 meant that Seattle’s transit history lags behind the standard set in the 1960s by cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Washington D.C. Between 1966 and 1969, each of these cities posited rapid transit as an answer to questions posed by the explosive growth and environmental hazards of post-WWII capitalism. Like savvy general managers anticipating the crunch of the salary cap, the electorates in those cities made hard political choices well before the appointed hour arrived to make them. These roster moves helped them outpace rivals in towns with less foresight. Towns like Seattle in 1968.

For all its reputation as an environmentally conscious city, Seattle was mired in transit mediocrity for nearly a century. After Seattle voters rejected “The Bogue Plan” and its 90 miles of comprehensive citywide transit in 1912 and then turned down Forward Thrust’s rail initiatives in 1968 and 1970, Seattle finally opened its relatively piddling 14-mile light rail system in July 2009 after a Sound Transit measure for it passed in 1996. If city transit systems were ESPN Power Rankings, Seattle was somewhere near the bottom of the list of big-league cities for close to 100 years.

Transportation/Vision Zero/Walking

Leary Ave NW in Central Ballard Is A Little Safer

by Stephen Fesler @safesler on May 18, 2018

The confluence of three streets in the heart of Ballard has long been a community concern. Technically a five-way intersection, Leary Ave NW meets 20th Ave NW in two places and one leg of NW Vernon Pl. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) instituted some modest changes several years ago to aid pedestrian crossings across Leary Ave NW north NW Vernon Pl. These included a relocated crosswalk, signage, and striping. This week, however, SDOT implemented much more significant changes with the installation of brand new marked crosswalks, rechannelization of lanes and painted “curb bulbs” on Leary Ave NW, stop signs, and overhead flashing beacons indicating the fully controlled nature of the intersection.

New design of the Leary Ave NW at 20th Ave NW. (City of Seattle)

In 2014, The Urbanist documented in a YouTube video the confusing and dangerous nature of the intersection. At the time, it was observed that people driving vehicles tended to fail to yield to pedestrians and to speed. The primary marked crosswalk had also been moved northwest forcing pedestrians to awkwardly walk around the whole intersection if intending to cross Leary Ave NW or risk their lives at unmarked crossings.

The new marked crosswalks are a welcome addition to the street. These more clearly formalize the preferred ways pedestrians want to cross the complex street network. People driving tend to pay better attention to pedestrians crossing at intersections that are marked. But other features also reinforce this expectation, including the stop signs at all crossing approaches, flashing traffic control lights, stop strips, and painted “curb bulbs.”