Highways

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.

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.

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.

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.

As other states start to reassess their prioritization of expanding highway capacity in the face of ambitious climate goals and other transportation needs, Washington is still in denial mode.

A new report shows most states continue to funnel money toward highway expansion, locking in climate pollution, despite new tools to fund transit and other forms of climate action. This is a losing strategy for both the environment and increasing mobility options. 

To keep buses moving as lanes are set to be shut down on I-5 over a three-year period, the Seattle Department of Transportation is set to convert peak-hour bus lanes to all-day. But the city isn't calling the change permanent.