Driving

More than one-third of WSDOT's two-year budget is set to go toward highway widenings and extensions, in the face of a significant maintenance backlog impacting Washington's state and local roads.

While the Washington State Senate budget includes additional taxes on e-bikes and fees for public transit, the House budget includes cuts to transit and climate work. Both budgets are in agreement on the need to double down on a number of highway megaprojects.

Issaquah Rep. Victoria Hunt added long implementation timelines and additional exemptions to Washington's parking reform bill as it passed out of Local Government Committee on Friday. Bill sponsors still tout the policy's significant potential to reduce costs for homebuilding.

While Seattle has cycled through carshare startups, Vancouver's Evo carshare program has grown into a big success, aided by strong transit and less competition from ridehailing in British Columbia.

In choosing how to fill a $1 billion budget hole over the next two years, Washington State lawmakers are being forced to take a hard look at deferring or even cancelling some long-planned highway capacity projects.

Dave Amos of City Beautiful dives into the thorny issue of punishing bad drivers and the many challenges that stem from lawlessness and impunity on roadways.

Seattle could meet its 30% tree canopy goal much quicker by converting a quarter of its 500,000 on-street parking spaces. The paving to planting conversion would convey many benefits, cooling neighborhoods and absorbing runoff.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell teased a few urbanist-minded initiatives as he delivered his annual state of the city speech on Tuesday, putting support behind a push to pedestrianize Pike Place and launched a new "Northern Lights" vision to remake Aurora Avenue. Exactly when either change would occur remains unclear.