Stephen Fesler
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) set a new record of 52.6 million passengers in 2024, and the Port of Seattle is advancing an improvement plan to better accommodate 56 million passengers by 2032.
In this video, CityNerd's Ray Delahanty digs into the public health effects of freeways. Pollution impacts fall most heavily on people who live near freeways.
State lawmakers are signaling intent to improve Amtrak Cascades service with legislation setting a goal of cutting the trip time from Seattle to Portland to 2.5 hours and boosting service to 14 daily trips with 88% on-time performance by 2035. If lawmakers pass the bill, the goal for trip time service north to Vancouver would be 2.75 hours.
High-speed rail as in investment in Cascadia remains a popular policy idea, but Reece Martin of RMTransit makes the case for prioritizing higher-speed rail upgrades to Amtrak Cascades.
Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes compares Utrecht, Netherlands and London, Ontario, showing how both cities became car-oriented in the mid-century era. However, Utrecht uniquely undid the damage, becoming a city highly oriented around pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure.
Inevitably, you’re probably going to travel and, from time to time, go by plane to get to your destination. But if you’re a transit...
The right-wing populist provincial government in Ontario, Canada has voted to remove bike lanes and make it difficult to install them in the future...
Ray Delahanty of CityNerd runs through a shame list for the worst downtown interchanges. Seattle doesn’t make the list, but the unfortunate prevalence of...