Riders will get a sneak peek of the new trail for a few hours on the first day of cruise ship season, providing a detour around Pier 66. The full stretch opens next Tuesday, providing a wide, comfortable path between downtown and the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Transit advocates will march from Ballard to Smith Cove to draw attention to Sound Transit's plans to jettison this section of light rail, promised in the ST3 ballot measure.
Sound Transit can halve the cost of light rail to Ballard and West Seattle by building them as a connected automated light rail line with slimmer stations, according to two transit experts who have launched the Sound Transit Now campaign.
Last week, Toshiko Hasegawa and Rebecca Saldaña, the two leading candidates for King County Council’s District 2 seat, each released public safety platforms. Both are focused on reforming the criminal legal system and decreasing incarceration.
King County Metro restarted fare enforcement on its buses last spring after a five-year hiatus. But between May and December, the agency issued just eight citations for repeated non-payment, with none of those citations being resolved.
Seattle's only annual open streets festival along the South Seattle waterfront will run every single weekend this summer outside of Seafair. Wilson's changes are a bold reversal of her predecessor's scaling back of Bicycle Weekends.
Transit advocates will march from Ballard to Smith Cove to draw attention to Sound Transit's plans to jettison this section of light rail, promised in the ST3 ballot measure.
Join The Urbanist and other grassroots organizations for an April filled with advocacy and social hours! Among our events: the Save Ballard Rail march on April 19, our Seattle social on April 23, and our Redmond meetup April 30.
Join The Urbanist and Complete Communities Coalition for a housing rally on April 6, pushing for a bolder Seattle Comprehensive Plan that promotes affordability and abundance.
Join The Urbanist for our March socials, including riding the 2 Line across the lake with us on March 28th!
Completion of the full 2 Line has brought Bellevue so much closer to the rest of the region. That's set to provide Bellevue's slate of elected leaders, transformed to match the city in recent years, with major opportunities to advance progressive citybuilding.
As one of the region's most exclusive cities, 3,000-resident Medina's building code is already very restrictive about what can be built. The new regulations add setback requirements and fully eliminate a height bonus program that had existed for years, all in the name of improving "bulk and scale."
Since 2010, Mercer Island has added just 549 housing units in its "Town Center" on the doorstep of a brand new light rail station opening this weekend. State intervention could force more housing to get built, but a big opportunity has been missed so far.
When it opens in 2028, the S3 rapid bus line will provide riders across Bothell, Kenmore, Lake Forest Park, and Shoreline with a more frequent, reliable transit option and extend the reach of Sound Transit’s light rail network.
While the upgrades wouldn’t happen all at once, and would only go in as other maintenance work occurs, the proposed concept sets a strong baseline for one of the state’s most dangerous surface highways.
On the whole, there were bright spots for urbanist candidates all around the region, with major gains seen in Burien, Redmond, and Tacoma. There was also some backsliding in places like Sammamish and Bainbridge Island.
Pierce County is set to consider an ordinance on March 24 that would prohibit a new ICE detention facility within its unincorporated areas. On March 3, King County passed just such an emergency ordinance. Advocates hope officials can do more to block illegal detentions.
A new lawsuit against the Northwest ICE detention center in Tacoma underscores the abusive conditions detainees face. Meanwhile, some local cities are seeking to block ICE’s plans to expand detention facilities in the region.
The Pierce Transit Board is considering a ballot measure in November 2026 that would boost funding to expand bus service, make routes more frequent, and create new connections to light rail. Two advocacy leaders make the case for this measure.
The Urbanist newsroom discusses the big opening day for Sound Transit's crosslake 2 Line, how we got here, and what it means for the future of light rail expansion in the Seattle region.
The Urbanist's Ryan Packer, Amy Sundberg, and Doug Trumm discussed recent news out of Olympia, candidate campaign rollouts, and King County transportation funding woes.
In this podcast episode, The Urbanist’s newsroom dives into recent headlines including Katie Wilson’s State of the City speech, which bills are moving and which are dying at the Washington State Legislation, and the Seattle Social Housing Developer’s latest moves.
