I really wish the US would adopt something like Japanese zoning laws. I'd be fine with a small light factory that makes something like silverware or bike frames just down the road from me. What I don't want is something like Texas where they put a prone to explosion fertilizer factory right next to a school and old folks home. I also wish Seattle would enforce some design minimums. I really don't like the modernist architecture. I would love to see it embrace it's Art Deco roots.
I think it's better to have Japanese type zoning. It's anything butwold west but makes it easier to find work and goods in your own neighborhood they should probably feature more stories about how the Japanese do it. It would reduce objections when outsiders see how nice these neighborhoods are. I would emphasize a little more stanxing greenery than they urrently have. I love looking at how the Japanese problen solve design issues.
@@b_uppy it actually doesn't, japan rebuilds most of their housing every 50 years because houses are so abundant that an old house is substantially harder to sell than a new build
I live in Seattle, and it's fascinating seeing new apartments pop up around transit nodes (including where I'm currently living), directly surrounded by a lot of (very pricey) single-family homes from the 1900s.
Mayor Harrell is doing his best to wall-off most of Seattle for low density development (currently single family detached but the new version will allow townhomes and fourplexes). This is forcing a lot of the development into the "Urban Centers", so now those are transitioning to highrise construction. Highrise construction costs $500 a square foot and up, so it's not an affordable housing solution. We need a lot more land zoned for midrise wood frame construction, but the NIMBY's are in control, so this major update is going to be pretty anemic. Basically it's a good plan for the Seattle we had 20 years ago, and seriously inadequate for producing enough workforce housing. Sound transit accelerated the development of the northern most station in Seattle, based on Seattle upzoning that area from single family detached to midrise apartments, and with the station nearly complete, Seattle still hasn't updated the zoning to allow apartments. Mayor Harrell also blocked what would have been a intermodal transit center by Seattle's Chinatown that would have allowed easy transfers between the different light rail lines and also between light rail and commuter rail and Amtrak. The Urbanist has done a great job covering these various missteps.
You're giving the major too much credit. CID station faced huge community pushback and ultimately the sound transit board decides, not the major of Seattle
I absolutely love The Urbanist. I've never felt more informed about the city I live in than when I moved to Seattle and discovered their website. Other great urbanist news sites around seattle include Seattle Bike Blog and Seattle Transit Blog.
One major obstacle to housing is the design review process. New apartment buildings or grocery stores stymied for months or years as just a few people go "It needs three different colors of brick, and a jazzier facade. Try again." It's transparently in order to hamstring getting stuff actually built. We don't care how many brick styles new apartments have, we just want them built in time for us to not be forced out of our neighborhoods because we can't afford them!
The downtown adjacent neighborhoods (Uptown, South Lake Union, Pioneer Square, CID, and First Hill) just got exempted (Oct 2024) from design review for 3 years for most projects. It's a great first step! The city will also need to pass reforms for design review city wide ensuring that residential projects only go through 1 design review meeting as passed by the state legislature last year. Living in Seattle it's frustrating how slow these changes to improve housing density come about but every step forward leads to hundreds more new units for people to live in. We just got to keep pushing for change.
Seattle will also see ranked choice voting in 2027. What was never mentioned was displacing existing stroad lanes, or onstreet parking, exclusively for transit or bicycle paths. Or trams. When a political structure changes, behavior can change too. There's also the Sightline Institute. Part of what makes WA the way it is: prohibiting proportional income taxes and local rent controls.
Some important context: the 2023 state law HB1110 has mandates for cities to upzone areas around transit corridors. It's not just that Seattle wants to build more housing near transit, they're legally obligated to. Unfortunately, there are some loopholes with non-zoning regulations like floor-area ratio limits, but expanding transit is going to force cities to remove at least some of the red tape preventing new construction
As someone in Portland, I visit Seattle often. I used to laugh at Seattle's public transit because it was the one city out in the pacific northwest. Portland and Vancouver BC has good public transit, but Seattle was so far behind. The progress they've already made has been great to see. I love visiting Seattle and what they have already installed has been a massive improvement on that experience. They're still a long ways away from where Portland and Vancouver are, but they'll get there.
I frequent both cities and would argue that Seattle definitely has better public transit than Portland now. Sure, Portland has a much more extensive light rail system by lines and mileage than Seattle. Still, even with a single line running within the city (currently), Link has roughly 25,000 more daily riders than MAX. Even though it's been around much longer, MAX is significantly hindered by the ridiculously slow speeds trains have to run due to all the at-grade crossings and within traffic tracks. The Link is mainly grade-separated through tunnels and elevated rail. Link stations also allow for 4-car trains as opposed to the 2-car trains with MAX, and Link has, at worst, 15-minute frequencies as opposed to 30 minutes on MAX. King County Metro operates nearly three times the bus routes than Tri-Met, with most having 15-minute frequencies at worst. They also operate 8 BRT-lite lines with 5-10 minute frequencies during work hours; to my knowledge, TriMet doesn't have any type of limited-stop service. The Portland Streetcar system is pretty cool and much better than Seattle's 2 unconnected lines. And Portland is 100x better to bike around than Seattle. Vancouver is in a different league comapred to either of the two
I have to think.. God damn, why does it take so damn long to build. 2039???? . China built an entire high speed rail network in a fraction of that time. They even took many years to complete the tacoma link extension🤦♂️
The Ballard Link option that would build a station at the government campus is extremely unpopular since it would skip the International District / King Street Station hub, which is also a high equity priority neighborhood, and it would once again snub First Hill by removing the Midtown station
I've definitely fallen off on a lot of national/international youtubers because of their sanitizing of some pretty bad changes in land use and RoW plans. I think Seattle is making excellent strides in areas like bike infrastructure, but ST and the new zoning codes leave A LOT to be desired.
To add more context for others, King Street is already going to be the junction of the 2 line which goes to the east and the existing 1 line. Having the new tunnel skip that station would split existing travel options in half with poor transfers once the new tunnel is open.
Some things to note Federal Way Station will actually terminate on the North side of the street sandwiched between the current transit center and McDonald's. Federal Way is also looking to do a massive downtown redevelopment, in paticular redevelopment of the mall where the Target is and North of the current ST garage where the Performing Arts Center is. From what I also understand, there is also the possibility of looking towards building much taller buildings albiet not too tall as it sits under the flight path for SeaTac Airport.
This is so refreshing! It's VITAL cities maintain industrial space for middle class jobs! Trains that serve warehouses aren't a mistake, it makes sense!
I live near Northgate in Seattle. I can tell you that their TOD strategy isn’t perfect, but I like living by a train stop w/ amenities, so it’s okay. Seattle feels like a 1 step forward- half a step back- kinda place. The city gov and King county as a whole kind of limps in the right direction. Thankful for organizations like The Urbanist and Seattle YIMBY.
I live in Seattle and can get away with only driving once every other month or so. Its great! Bring on more transit. Seattle is back to the fastest growth metro in the US, and the more transit we get, the better we can manage the growth. With mountains and water constraining the buildable area, transit oriented development is the only way to build enough housing and manage the transportation needs of all the new arrivals.
To clarify, this is NOT a full 18 hole course. It's a small 9-hole par 3, course, a mini-golf, Driving Range, & has 2 ballfields. It's city run with focused on community & families.
Seattle NIMBYISM is kneecapping real urban development... and causing destruction of heritage architecture... they add speedbumps to taller buildings (like in the yesler terrace redevelopment and some sodo stuff) where it makes sense then causing higher prices and more urban sprawl which them claim to be against.
Most of Seattle especially the most desirable parts are strictly zoned for single family housing, there are also strict parking minimums in the city. Most development is conspicuous along arterials so visitors think a lot of housing is getting built but that’s not really the case.
I thought as much. The veneer of progressive urbanism but literally doing the bare minimum while appeasing NIMBY suburbanites... My solution? Stack as much non-market mixed and social housing as you can at station sites... All unlimited bonuses for all non-market housing and eliminate all parking mandates within 1/4 mile aka 400m of a station... Every city in the region should emulate the Vancouver Skytrain TOD pattern as much as possible since these plans were based on earlier Hong Kong TOD's that are so successful at driving ridership onto trains there it actually turns a profit...
I wish this video was a bit more critical of both Sound Transit 3 and also the centrist Harrell administration and city council. ST3's light rail plans are often overly expensive, destinationless boondoggles designed more with the goal of "subarea equity" than for actual opportunities for denser housing construction. ST is also facing a massive budget crisis that has already delayed some projects upwards of a decade, but there is little to no political will for considering options such as using the single tunnel or a switch to automated driverless light metro on the new lines that could provide more modern service for a lower cost. The mayor and county executive were more than happy to ram through the CID north and south plan that would remove any chance at creating a central hub for transfers, instead putting a station at the King County campus, which is mentioned in the video as ripe for redevelopment. Not a coincidence that the mayor and exec are pretty close with some big developers who might see some lucrative contracts, eh? The reason the city is unwilling to upzone past arterials is that the single-family homeowners are the most intrenched voting base within city limits. They naturally lean more conservative on land use and parking requirements, which is why Seattle has maintained parking minimums when many other cities in the state are reconsidering them. Seattle thus is going to do the absolute bare minimum in regards to meeting the state's new density requirements, as doing more could substantially change voting demographics that could make it more difficult for the centrists to maintain power in the future.
I find it amazing that we have packed light rail trains in central Seattle while there are nearly empty trains out at the ends of the system because Sound Transit won't implement something as basic as running double the frequency from SeaTac to Northgate by turning trains back at those stops. All because we want to give the suburban folks, who don't use the system much, equal service to the Seattle folks, who do.
@@blubaughmr they don't have enough trains or maintenance facilities yet. OMF North and South don't yet exist. Lynnwood is already the second most popular station blasting past Northgate which has fallen off due to losing its status as a terminus.
@@walawala-fo7ds The beauty of the turnback service is that it makes the limited rolling stock more productive. Lynnwood gets good commute traffic. 11:00 PM trains past Northgate are pretty empty, despite being standing room only Westlake to Capitol Hill.
The small extension that the downtown Nordstrom builds to accommodate people waiting in line to take pictures with Santa during the holidays is the only “housing” that gets built in urban Seattle. If you know you know.
Seattle needs to Vancouverize itself. And Vancouver needs to Vienna-ize itself by building more mass market public housing at its vast network of Skytrain stations... Preferably on surface parking lots and kiss and ride areas...
My prayers have been answered haha. I found your channel because of Not Just Bike's newest video and love your style of videos and all the topics you cover! I was searching for a video on Washington State or Seattle from your channel JUST yesterday with no luck so you can imagine my excitement when I see you posted this!! Thanks for explaining things so well, your passion really shines through the camera.
IMHO, Link light rail is super inadequate. I went to a concert at the stadium over the summer, and it was a PITA to board the train afterwards because every train arriving was full. And that's with the one and only 1 Line. Imagine how it'll be when all the other interlining lines start running. I know America loves to build light rail, but Seattle really should have revived the heavy rail subway or pursued a driverless light metro.
Light Metro is a waste of money if you're trying to meet the capacity of an entire stadium. It is only marginally better at a massive cost due to grade separation requirements. Only heavy Metro can handle that and even that is pushing it. Seattle could barely afford light rail in both budget and voter support so a heavy Metro is totally a nonstarter without massive federal grants. And check who is president to tell me when that will happen
London had undergeound metro in 1863... And then all residential house suburbs had access to trains. Maybe in the 21th century, with a limited urban area seattle can expand a bit its train and make underground lines too, and make more dense neighbourhoods around stations. It is about time hudge US metropolises built some suburban train or metro. Glasgow has a metro. Budapest hungary has the 2nd oldest one, in 1896. Rennes, 400k people, has 2 lines , etc.
Great video. Sound Transit Link light rail is a good service which I have used even though I live in Tacoma. Sounder Commuter Rail was very popular before the pandemic but has struggled to get back to previous service levels because of people working from home. And it is needlessly crippled because it has to rely on BNSF rails which prevents midday service. Adding a third rail between Seattle and Tacoma would allow midday service and make money for ST as it could allow BNSF use of the track at night. The lack of midday service was the reason I couldn't use Sounder to travel to Seattle for meetings but had to drive to the nearest stop to catch Link. Most people don't mode switch once they start driving any distance, but it was an opportunity to check out Link.
Seattle really needs a similar regional rail plan to Denver’s RTD, where we have rapid electric commuter rail serving the outer burbs rather than the slow circuitous light rail we are building now.
@@dantem4119 Bingo! BEMU trains might be the best option since they are quicker and nimbler than conventional locomotive hauled trains and they can quick charge at the end of the line in the time it takes the driver to have a potty break... 75 miles and 100 mph are possible with batteries alone now after the last round of train makers showed their goods at Berlin last year. Stadler, Hitachi, Siemens, Alstom all have BEMU commuter/regional rail options now and don't use crazy weird proprietary equipment either. Just standardized overhead wire/catenary, third rail OR induction charging...
Thanks for the coverage. And for plugging the Urbanist. Contributors like Packer, Sundburg, and Trumm provide the best, most consistent urban policy news for seattle. Also, it's time for Harrell to go I think. Or to get very significant campaign concessions from him (and the city attorney and city council members) around urban planning, vision zero, and police accountability (not defunding but full civilian oversight).
Public transit is still a nightmare in Seattle. I'm on the bus three or more hours a day. Light rail is great...when it runs, but it often has problems, single tracking, accidents, power outages, and lots of unhoused and drugged folks riding. I'm a big public transit advocate, but we really need a lot more help here.
Brisbane, Australia, embraced the TOD concept maybe 20 years ago. You can judge it by many metrics but to my eye, I see a bunch of apartments lining our north-south arterial highways, making the apartments east-west facing (hot). This might count as added housing supply but who would choose to live there? Surely we can do better, design-wise.
Golf courses aregood places for old and disabled to get exercise and socialize. They could be encouraged to change from chemical inputs, as well as help manage rainwater harvesting to make the golf courses better neighbors.
@@1224chrisng The north line doesn't have any at grade crossings. The reason it is overcrowded is because the second line isn't operational across lake Washington yet so they cannot meet the 4 minute headways they planned. Should not be an issue once line two opens next year.
@@1224chrisng We don’t use streetcar vehicles, we use light rail vehicles. They are built by the same company, they look very similar, but they are NOT the same. And Rainier Valley really isn’t that bad, calm down.
An unfortunate trend in Seattle is that, while cities legally are supposed to allow for density to comply with a state mandate, many cities (including Seattle) reach that mandate by allowing high density housing right on highways, where we can maximize the negative health impacts of emissions. The trains provide an excellent place to put additional housing, especially the stations that are not right next to a highway. Unfortunately, around half of the stations are very close to a highway.
Not having link on sr99 and choosing the i5 alignment was such a travesty. The forward thrust and metrorail projects from 1967 and 1990 respectively used the Great Northern/interurban rows rather than I5. :/
@@dantem4119 The I-5 should have a huge cap put over top of it for parks space and in some cases high rise developments if its at all viable as it is in some other cities...
@@stickynorth Golf courses are well used, though could be managed to use better inputs, as well as manage rainwater thru harvesting. That said additional greenspace is important.
pretty good video!! i have to say though, im a little disappointed that kent des moines was the example you used.. overlake village, shoreline south, lynnwood city centre are a more representative bunch in my opinion
Also, golf is an important amenity in an American city. Interbay is one of the best driving ranges in the pacific northwest and a great place for new golfers to get into the game. I'm glad they aren't immanent domaining it. Please don't hate! Golf is for everyone!
Because of the limitations of TOD as primarily large scale corporate developments around a single station, I’ve moved on to TONs (Transit Oriented Neighborhoods) & further to TINs & NŌDs (Transit Integrated Neighborhoods & Neighborhood Oriented Developments). These expand thinking to integrate existing neighborhoods & new opportunity areas as truly transit oriented beyond the large scale wealth extraction human warehouses that’s common everywhere.
OMFG I was JUST TH INKING ABOUT Seattle and the area and making a fictional map based on the area to use in Transport games like open TTD to build railroads and highways around the Sound and what not. Anyways, thanks for another awesome video buds!
Federal Way Downtown Station isn’t in a Target parking lot, just the tail tracks are. The station is in a lot he didn’t even bother showing, right next to a massive transit center and a big lot to be developed into an urban village, which he specifically said no station on the extension would have an urban village.
Also, about that golf course built on a landfill, not all land is suitable for putting big housing on top of it. I can't imagine that literal trash is seismically stable, or good to pour a foundation on. Another roadblock to development >~
I'm shocked you didn't mention Seattle prohibitive development fees. In stead of $10k they want $170-$180k fee for added a backyard ADU, Basement or Attic Granny Suite. Blue collar neighbourhoods people can't afford it. These fees need to be lowered or waived in Working Class areas & for not for profit housing with that caveat that burdens on Water & Sewage are reduced. Existing & new units should install misser systems, irrigate with rainwater keeping rain water out of combined sewers, not wasting irrigation on sewers, & rain & grey water should be used for toilet flushing. Grey water should be taken off line as passive irrigation under front & back yards further reducing black sewage output. Curbside there sould be passive rain gardens. All these actions will reduce drinking water consumption & sewage output to 25% basicly eliminating any cost to City of new developments, on the Contrary it should actually create a negative cost with surplus.
Seattle single family neighborhood infrastructure cannot support up zoning without massive retrofits. It was designed in the 50s and it is barely holding together by spit and duct tape. Impact fees are simply necessary
Really glad that Seattle is taking TOD seriously, even if it's still very much circumspect about it rather than systemically bold (and let's be real: the Link should've been a faster, higher-capacity subway system, not a light rail). I wish Portland would do more with its MAX system, which is already quite extensive but hasn't seen a lot of development around stations, despite being around for decades.
Seattle passed on mass transit funding in 70’s that funding went to Portland… Seattle lack real forward thinking planning and execution. They want to put the horses ass before the head and cart and wonder why seattle is a mess. They should be looking to increase road width to create bus routes, instead they try to cram stacked/dense living into neighborhoods that won’t support zoning changes because they want big taxes first… Seattle built a convention center and said it would attract the big political conventions… but built it over the freeway and is a huge security risk. Built the transit tunnel in DT and planned for rail, but saved $1M by installing a specific rail type instead of the recommended universal rail. When we went to light rail the specific rail was not compatible as predicted and they shut the tunnel down for 3 years and spent $100M to retrofit & disrupted surface traffic. Seattle has a long list of disasters. Now they want to create new dense/stacked living in old established neighborhoods without upgrading sewer, power and transit infrastructure -cluster waiting to explode as usual
The downside as always, the taller you build the more expensive it is. Meaning yeah you might be building a ton of new homes but many of them might end up as empty investment properties.
It's true that industrial areas contain employment, but they often don't contain a particularly high density of employment meaning that they're not great land uses for inner urban areas. Kind of like how suburban culs-de-sac contain housing, but often not a high enough density of housing to make for good land use in an urban area. It depends on the industry and the specific style of industrial development, but often offices, hospitals, universities, retail and institutional zones are denser employment areas. Generally it's fine for industrial areas to be peripheral, as long as they have decent transit connections but it'll be interesting higher density urban industrial will be different.
would be nice for the current park and rides to start going away, the old one in northgate was replaced by a garage that wastes less space and the former p&r is being redeveloped as an apartment complex
Board members have expressed desire to eventually tear down parking garages in the far future and replace it with more urban development. We have a very good urban, walkable, and transit-oriented vision
8:23 what? Most stations do not have a garage. Did you really ride Link? The garages were part of the voter approved plan to gather suburban support. Car fee suburban living is a nonstarter and there are plenty of underdeveloped stations in Rainier valley with zero parking much closer to downtown than federal way.
Like this is why people think we built a stupid streetcar and too much tunnels and too much parking and bad service and blah blah blah cause people make these videos that deliberately make false statements and that’s why most of these comments are going along with it saying we need to build a fricking subway underneath our existing tunnels like what are you joking we already have a metro called Link
Deference to single-family housing and forcing apartments to be next to arterials, freeways, and other noisy, polluting, undesirable areas is a big part of why I left Seattle. I can't afford a detached single-family home and I want to live on a quiet street. In Seattle, it has for decades been city policy that the latter is a privilege to be reserved almost exclusively for the most affluent. It is disgusting that one of the supposedly most progressive cities in the USA is so much in favor of such naked class privilege.
Any kind of apartments at scale need to be on a fairly large street in order to create the capacity to get that concentrated number of residents to and from their destinations (since only a few will be routinely using only their feet to move around). Maybe a train line can substitute, but those also tend to be near major roads anyway... Garden apartments, those are a different story...
I live in downtown Seattle and I love having access to any bus route I want and go anywhere in the city, but I have to deal with people doing meth and drugs outside of my building every day. I'm not a NIMBY, I live in a old building with little security and I constantly have to deal with the lack of investment in housing and homelessness. Downtown also has a complete lack of affordable grocery stores that stay open until a convenient time. To be honest, Belltown is basically a food desert.
#Seattle needs a high-floor driverless AGT/APM/#metro/MRT/subway system of some sort to really convince car and other non-transit users to take transit via giving them a transit mode more reliable and respectful to their transportation choices than the low-floor #Link light rail, and homeowners nearby that it's really better than the current #Link. Too many of #SoundTransit's rail projects are #Link-related instead of expanding their rail options in making better decisions for each transit corridor suited for particular tasks.
Their redo of the comprehensive plan was so disappointing! Lots of obvious weird little carve-outs for special interests, and continuing their history of considering only detached family homeowners first-class citizens. But it's better than nothing, and I'm so glad our transit is as good as it is! (But it definitely has room to improve!)
I live in Puget Sound. I don't take light rail often, but when I am in Seattle, I love the light rail and the Kitsap Fast Ferries. Could you expand on or do a follow up video on the mostly elevated track and what the longevity of that is compared to at grade, how you expand that if and when the system has to grow, how you replace it without massive service disruptions and the financial aspect (seems like it might be cheaper now, but maybe not in the long run when it needs replacement). I know acquiring land and ROW is hard it just seems like a nightmare to manage and maintain. Thanks
Why can't they build a subway underground that connects to light rail stations above? Seems like a lot of wasted space on light rail with out gang ways and lower speeds. Idk enough if that could be done. But it seems like for all that time and money subway would be a good use.
Sound Transit did not have the political power or budget to build a subway, so we got the street running segment. And now its too late and there's no point trying to switch
@@CyanideCarrot I wouldn't say switch. But more of instead of taking the lightrail under ground, make a subway system. Political power definitely sounds like a huge reason. It just makes more sense to have a subway for longer but higher speeds to get around and light rail/tram, for smaller but more frequent stop areas.
8:18 Federal Way Downtown is literally supposed to have an urban village around the station. The station is not in the target parking lot, that is the tail tracks. You neglect to mention the massive transit hub. You point to lots that are under construction at Kent Des Moines Station and claim they are all for parking but you’re wrong. There is TOD planned for Kent Des Moines and a whole village planned for Federal Way Downtown. Star Lake is the only station on the extension that will only have a parking garage. Interbay Station exists to connect people to industrial jobs, but you really put a cloth over it all and try to spin it as terrible. It’s not like every station is in an industrial area? Plus it’s simply better to have a station in Interbay than to not have a station in Interbay on the way to Ballard, which, by the way, will have huge amounts of TOD, as with Lynnwood, which just opened, and EVERY SINGLE station on the Lynnwood Link Extension has TOD either already open or currently under construction, with more empty lots near 2 stations reserved for even more. Honestly, how dare you portray Seattle this way? We are absolutely pioneering Transit Oriented Development and upzoning. The generally conservative city of Shoreline (Just north of Seattle) even just abolished parking mandates. You can walk through any suburban neighborhood in Seattle and see lots of small 2-3 story apartment buildings similar to that of Japan. What is it that you actually want? Next time you want to call out a city for lack of TOD and bad zoning, go ANYWHERE else.
Seattle could have lots more people in its transit passengersheds if they permitted single family homes upgrade to two-family and three-family or add accessory dwelling units behind the sf houses.
The way WA does approval for projects is that we have to vote on projects before any planning happens at all. That means all the environmental and engineering work is done after we approve the project. Usually agencies can plan and bring a shovel ready proposal to the voters to approve/disapprove.
Washington state bureaucracy is pretty awful. A lot of current infrastructure projects started in the 80s or 90s. By the time a project is completed its already outdated by years!
I don’t know if you take feedback from here - but I here goes: I have previously enjoyed your essays and take on urban planning. But I think you are getting in to a trap with your videos. Your Dallas and Seattle videos are good examples of the shaken confidence. And I and writing here only because I care about the content you are putting out :) As feedback for both and future content - perhaps you need to take a broader wider angle. It could have been more educational and more “shareable” if your take on things would have just been more interesting and researched and used context and data. Sure that would be little more difficult, but that is the standard I suggest you set. For example - in the Seattle video, just starting with the fact that if someone drew the light rail map in 2014, it would have been a straight line from the airport to downtown would have been so powerful. You could have even compared that to the rail map of Dallas from the time! Surprising, interesting, intriguing already. I think in the Seattle video for instance, you should have simply expanded it to cover the sound very early. Its the metro area that matters. And then cover the economics of what drives the growth of the city. The very unique terrain challenges (an engineering achievement in itself). The type of growth the metro is seeing and the funding of this development. And the ridiculous timelines. The Dallas video too, similarly was a missed opportunity. With some factual errors to boot. I wont sandwich with a compliment to end. But just re state that I like where you are coming from. But I feel its time to level up ;) Love the bike bell (and no sponsor content)
In this video he claims no station on the FWLE has a plan for an urban village, which is wrong because Federal Way Downtown will have one. And he claims there’s nothing but parking going up at Kent Des Moines, which is wrong because multiple of the empty lots he pointed to are for TOD. So already off to a great start I just can’t waaaait to finish this video
Does new housing always have to mean giant skyscrapers? Besides, will these even cater to families? Or will they end up being expensive and tiny studios?
Coming from Vancouver, Seattle seems so "fascinatingly backwards" if I could describe it that way. I don't mean to be rude, but it's funny that you guys put streetcars in the sky (except when it isn't) and called it light rail, and you've put 5-over-1's and parkades next to stations and called it TOD. In some ways, I'd rather you keep the stroads and parking lots for now, so you cou have a blank slate to build proper trains and proper condos later. However, it is commendable that Seattle is a very good city by American standards.
Most stations don't have garages actually. TOD is only getting started at the older stations while Vancouver has been at it for forty years. Seattle has barely gotten started. Light Rail is not a street car. It is a 1500 volt 55 mph vehicle while a street car is slower, smaller, and runs at lower voltage. You cannot in fact run T line trams on Link tracks. Only 4.5 miles out of 120 planned are at grade and the Rainier Valley segment is easily separated and already in board discussions to present a plan. Vancouver has a massive budget shortfall as it financed transit with gas taxes meaning TransLink is going insolvent. Seattle wisely funds transit via property tax, sales tax, and vehicle registration which means a steady source of revenue. so overall I think it is not backwards. It is not Japan by any means but Vancouver is also extremely flawed with slow trains, small inconsistent platforms sizes, an old 80s automatic system which breaks down when it snows, and in need of a federal bailout to operate. Skytrain operating to Langley is also ridiculous. It is too slow for those distances which are better served by regional commuter heavy rail as skytrain is too slow and stops too much meaning it will be faster to drive than to ride
Traffic in Seattle is terrible and getting worse, particularly now after companies have started implementing RTO policies. While I understand where you're coming when you question the necessity of the park and ride lots, I can assure you that they're absolutely nessecary.
This is particularly an issue for towns south of Seattle (Tukwila, Kent, Des Moines, etc.) where a lot of car traffic will take the 405 to get North to the Bellevue area, and that highway is extremely inadequate for the amount of traffic it handles. The East Link extension will help with this a lot, but will only be able to reach its full potential if car traffic is able to commute to the park and rides. Otherwise it's simply too slow to commute by bus -> rail in a lot of places for it to be a practical option for most people.
@@SSBMDeekus The current 2 Line is actually faster than driving end to end in just light traffic. 19 minutes. Bellevue designs roads very terribly. Sound Transit designs Link very nicely.
You guys are probably too young to remember the Monorail aka Elevated Transportation Company. In the late 90s. It was totally legit but some accountant made some bad calculations and not supported by the real estate powers that wanted light rail underground. So sad. So much promise in the late 90s. Ugh 30 years later and one line.
If you're talking about just trains saving Seattle, I don't think so.... BUT A government that heeds to its people can help revive the city. A government that heeds to the will of a few or special groups will destroy the city. Proof of Seattle's current situation is proof of the latter‼️
For real. Story time, I remember trying to get home after a bar crawl on Halloween. It was terrifying trying to get home at 2AM as a woman on her own in a new city. Plus, my old phone's battery was dying from all the GPS/camera usage that night. After a long wait for a bus, around 3-3:30 AM I reached my rail station only for a police officer to inform me that the station wouldn't open for at least ninety minutes. After a panic, I thought that the rideshare prices might have gone down and yeah, it went from $60 to $33 to get home. I sent a ride request, and as I was waiting my phone finally died on ultra power saving mode. Transit is a massive step up from my native Los Angeles, but there's still much to be desired. At least I can get away with not owning a car and all the expense of that...
It’s just a four hour downtime for maintenance. 24 hour service is not out of the question but considering we don’t even have the second OMF hooked up to the first yet and the line down south that will eventually connect to a test track that leads to a future third OMF isn’t even open yet you can’t just give up right now. It just takes some patience, we’re a baby system, basically brand new, Seattle is extremely progressive but full 24 hour service is gonna take some time, and when it’s feasible for us to do so, don’t you ever question for a second that it won’t be brought to the board.
As a visitor who spends about a month a year in Seattle's beautiful eastside highlands, I say: - it will be great when they fix that problem with the new rail line over Lake Washington and across Mercer Island. (Stupid delay, but very cool that within a couple of years there will be a floating rail line and a rail connection from Bellevue and the east into the city.) - Ballard seems like a fab destination for light rail. You could really build a tourist route around this. Ballard is so cool with its boutiques, eateries, cafes, pubs, classy accommodation, Sunday Farmer's Markets, historic areas, working boat locks with museum, parkland and fish ladder, the Nordic Museum and Sunset Beach, all within an easy walk around the village. Also there's a rail bridge over water and vantage points to see the freight trains heading to and from Canada, (I presume?). - When you talked about Magnolia I was hoping you weren't going to say anything about putting housing on that beautiful big waterfront reserve near there - Discovery Park. It's an historic old defense base and lovely to walk around. Such an asset left undeveloped, or maybe it could have just a children's park or some small cafes built. I think you could easily walk there from Ballard with a few pathways upgraded - maybe you already can. Seattle has much more challenging geography than many cities when it comes to retrofitting modern transport systems and housing around older infrastructure, so maybe this partly explains why they have been slow off the mark. Thank goodness Alaskan Way is gone from the waterfront and I cannot wait to see the newly opened park that stretches from there right up to Pike Place, including elevators, because man that's such an uphill climb!
Can you do a video on effective messaging/emails to people in city/town zoning leadership? I’ve been trying to improve urbanism in upstate NY but no responses. Maybe I need to break out the megaphones or something.
I wish you could speak a tiny bit more slowly and clearly. I would love to understand what you are saying. This is a good practice for non native English speakers. Thank you.
It’s okay it’s mostly nonsense. He’s totally wrong about our lack of TOD as well. I wish he was honest, but instead he’s made the whole comment section believe we built a dumb streetcar that goes slow from nowhere to nowhere
As a Kirkland resident, I've been paying for literally everyone else to get light rail. We've had thousands of apartments forced on us and no improvements to roads or bus service. Our parks are a crowded mess because of all the density now. And we'll never have light rail. What we got is lots of property taxes, lots of RTA taxes on vehicles we can't give up, tolls on every freeway around us, and all to subsidize everyone else. Screw Sound Transit. We're not NIMBYs. We're the ones being forced to pay for everyone else's car-free lifestyle. And btw, more apartments don't bring down rents. Every city on the Eastside has added 10,000+ units since 2021 and rents are higher than ever.
@@walawala-fo7ds I wonder if replacing the #Link light rail proposal with a high-floor driverless #metro (can be light capacity initially) proposal (i.e. no interlining with existing #Link 2 line, new #metro depot, must be fully separated with no level crossings like #Link but doesn't necessarily mean it has to be on elevated structure or in tunnels or trenches all the time, likely use third rail for aesthetic reasons, etc.) would convince them to accept bringing rail to town.
@ostkkfmhtsh012345678 there is a lot of things that can move more people than light rail. Seattle only needs to look at Japan for ideas, not North America. However until the federal government steps in as they did when they built the interstate system, all Seattle can afford is what they are building. Whatever flawed, at least it is sustainable unlike cities that built better systems on paper but now can't afford. When finished only 4.5 out of 120 miles won't be grade separated. It is not impossible to fix that eventually. What matters is that 100% of sound transit 3 is grade separated and that's the case with all current projects.
The 4 Line was literally supposed to go to downtown Kirkland and Totem Lake but you guys REALLY did not want it so now it will end at South Kirkland Station unless you guys suddenly actually want it and go to ST about funding it like originally intended.
I'm a Capitol Hill father about to leave Seattle for NYC. There is nothing, and I mean *NOTHING* being built for urban families in Seattle. This will be the demise of every urban revitalization project. Planners need to prioritize families or it's not going to scale.
Imho I think they are prioritizing whatever Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and other big tech firms with major presence here want re: city planning. So, tech workers (and tech salaries) over urban families. Units are not affordable in my opinion as a Seattle resident (Ballard). I moved here 3 years ago and it has been a struggle as someone not employed by Big Tech. My cousin who works in software moved to San Diego from Seattle 5 years ago after having a child because there are more amenities for families, but it is more expensive there than in Seattle (though Capitol Hill rents are crazy, comparable to San Diego). I hope NYC treats you well! As a single woman I might head there myself, I'm so frustrated with this city.
yup, the ol "seattle process" rears its ugly head yet again. I want my home region to succeed, but a lot of morons in power have gotta get trounced first.
can't disagree with you on that one. and 2 thoughts, 1.) what would you seek for your family from an "urban revitalization project"? First thing that comes to mind for me is changing codes to allow developers to make more 2-3 bed apartments (eg by changing stairwell requirement for 5-over-1s and similar height buildings and greater floor-area ratios) and adjusting parking requirements within 1/2mi of currrent and planned transit. 2.) what does nyc show you in this way that seattle doesn't? Moving, and particularly moving a family across the country is no easy feat so I'm sure you have your good reasons. I'm really curious to hear them.
@ NYC has so many more children in urban areas it is staggering. There are schools everywhere. There is clear prioritization and planning for kids. A lot of the family friendly housing was built pre automobile. That is a huge huge component. The post automobile planning era made every city built for commuting and for single people. Seattle has one elementary school for a ridiculously large area (lowell) and the area surrounding it is totally hostile to families, but this is the urban core of the city. Nothing is done or built thinking about families like in NYC. Idk just visit Park Slope. It is an absolute paradise and the price reflects how rare it is in the US
@@sgtfuzzz making more family friendly housing as you describe in nyc for seattle seems about allowing more commercial integration of mixed use into neighborhoods than most us cities including seattle currently allow. and also eliminating parking minimums more broadly (like has been done in pdx and elsewhere). the schools thing in seattle has its history in white flight from busing in the 60s and 70s iirc which is why even to this day in the city of seattle there is a relatively high proportion of kids who attend private schools instead of public schools when compared with other us cities. i'm not up to speed on policy around that and how to fund more schools. but yeah, that could be helpful to make seattle more family friendly.
tired of hearing about jobs in cities that have labor shortages and housing shortages, most of these cities have way more jobs than housing and even if you add jobs its not something that needs to be a priority
Seattle should rezone most of its suburban residential zones to high density zones, which may skyrocket the price of suburban homes due to offers from real estate developers, but in the long run it will alleviate a lot of the demand for more housing in the Seattle region.
The park and rides are for the suburban people. The Seattle people walk to the station, or take the bus. As for assaults, although they happen, as a frequent user of the system, I haven't seen one.
@blubaughmr Well I've never seen a bus driver get stabbed to death but it just happened by a transient and so many homeless use the train people call Sound Transit... "Sound Transient"
I clicked on this because I live in Seattle and I consider myself an urbanist, but I found this presentation almost impossible to watch. Please take elocution lessons. Your diction is impossible to understand. Slow down and pronounce your words please!!!!!
No! Trains are stupid in the Seattle area. It should've been done 30 years ago. Busses are smarter, more flexible, cheaper, and take up less space. Trains in the area are the dumbest waste of money.
I really wish the US would adopt something like Japanese zoning laws. I'd be fine with a small light factory that makes something like silverware or bike frames just down the road from me. What I don't want is something like Texas where they put a prone to explosion fertilizer factory right next to a school and old folks home.
I also wish Seattle would enforce some design minimums. I really don't like the modernist architecture. I would love to see it embrace it's Art Deco roots.
US cities are notorious for voting against re zone laws. It makes it super hard to develop a city when the land effected will always vote no
Their architecture spans a much longer period. A lot of buildings are there from the 1800s Alaska gold rush and Seattle was jumping off point...
I think it's better to have Japanese type zoning. It's anything butwold west but makes it easier to find work and goods in your own neighborhood they should probably feature more stories about how the Japanese do it. It would reduce objections when outsiders see how nice these neighborhoods are. I would emphasize a little more stanxing greenery than they urrently have.
I love looking at how the Japanese problen solve design issues.
@@b_uppy it actually doesn't, japan rebuilds most of their housing every 50 years because houses are so abundant that an old house is substantially harder to sell than a new build
@@b_uppy A lot of those were lost in the Great Fire of 1889.
I live in Seattle, and it's fascinating seeing new apartments pop up around transit nodes (including where I'm currently living), directly surrounded by a lot of (very pricey) single-family homes from the 1900s.
Mayor Harrell is doing his best to wall-off most of Seattle for low density development (currently single family detached but the new version will allow townhomes and fourplexes). This is forcing a lot of the development into the "Urban Centers", so now those are transitioning to highrise construction. Highrise construction costs $500 a square foot and up, so it's not an affordable housing solution. We need a lot more land zoned for midrise wood frame construction, but the NIMBY's are in control, so this major update is going to be pretty anemic. Basically it's a good plan for the Seattle we had 20 years ago, and seriously inadequate for producing enough workforce housing.
Sound transit accelerated the development of the northern most station in Seattle, based on Seattle upzoning that area from single family detached to midrise apartments, and with the station nearly complete, Seattle still hasn't updated the zoning to allow apartments. Mayor Harrell also blocked what would have been a intermodal transit center by Seattle's Chinatown that would have allowed easy transfers between the different light rail lines and also between light rail and commuter rail and Amtrak.
The Urbanist has done a great job covering these various missteps.
You're giving the major too much credit. CID station faced huge community pushback and ultimately the sound transit board decides, not the major of Seattle
I absolutely love The Urbanist. I've never felt more informed about the city I live in than when I moved to Seattle and discovered their website. Other great urbanist news sites around seattle include Seattle Bike Blog and Seattle Transit Blog.
One major obstacle to housing is the design review process. New apartment buildings or grocery stores stymied for months or years as just a few people go "It needs three different colors of brick, and a jazzier facade. Try again." It's transparently in order to hamstring getting stuff actually built. We don't care how many brick styles new apartments have, we just want them built in time for us to not be forced out of our neighborhoods because we can't afford them!
The downtown adjacent neighborhoods (Uptown, South Lake Union, Pioneer Square, CID, and First Hill) just got exempted (Oct 2024) from design review for 3 years for most projects. It's a great first step! The city will also need to pass reforms for design review city wide ensuring that residential projects only go through 1 design review meeting as passed by the state legislature last year. Living in Seattle it's frustrating how slow these changes to improve housing density come about but every step forward leads to hundreds more new units for people to live in. We just got to keep pushing for change.
Thanks for dropping by Dave! It was good to meet you at the Eastside Urbanism meet up in Redmond. - Shaun, from The Urbanist
Pretty incredible to see City Beautiful not only visit my neighborhood of Seattle but literally film on my street 😱
Seattle will also see ranked choice voting in 2027.
What was never mentioned was displacing existing stroad lanes, or onstreet parking, exclusively for transit or bicycle paths. Or trams. When a political structure changes, behavior can change too.
There's also the Sightline Institute.
Part of what makes WA the way it is: prohibiting proportional income taxes and local rent controls.
cant wait for rcv.
@@FrankLy-oy2bi If it works to elect party leaders in most places it should be good enough to use for every other elections state and nationwide too!
Absolutely. Trains always saved NYC. 🗽 we need to ease up on the car culture as a nation. It’s just ridiculous we don’t even have high speed rail yet.
Some important context: the 2023 state law HB1110 has mandates for cities to upzone areas around transit corridors. It's not just that Seattle wants to build more housing near transit, they're legally obligated to. Unfortunately, there are some loopholes with non-zoning regulations like floor-area ratio limits, but expanding transit is going to force cities to remove at least some of the red tape preventing new construction
As someone in Portland, I visit Seattle often. I used to laugh at Seattle's public transit because it was the one city out in the pacific northwest. Portland and Vancouver BC has good public transit, but Seattle was so far behind. The progress they've already made has been great to see. I love visiting Seattle and what they have already installed has been a massive improvement on that experience. They're still a long ways away from where Portland and Vancouver are, but they'll get there.
I frequent both cities and would argue that Seattle definitely has better public transit than Portland now. Sure, Portland has a much more extensive light rail system by lines and mileage than Seattle. Still, even with a single line running within the city (currently), Link has roughly 25,000 more daily riders than MAX. Even though it's been around much longer, MAX is significantly hindered by the ridiculously slow speeds trains have to run due to all the at-grade crossings and within traffic tracks. The Link is mainly grade-separated through tunnels and elevated rail. Link stations also allow for 4-car trains as opposed to the 2-car trains with MAX, and Link has, at worst, 15-minute frequencies as opposed to 30 minutes on MAX.
King County Metro operates nearly three times the bus routes than Tri-Met, with most having 15-minute frequencies at worst. They also operate 8 BRT-lite lines with 5-10 minute frequencies during work hours; to my knowledge, TriMet doesn't have any type of limited-stop service.
The Portland Streetcar system is pretty cool and much better than Seattle's 2 unconnected lines. And Portland is 100x better to bike around than Seattle.
Vancouver is in a different league comapred to either of the two
@@christianjamesrolfson1710Seattle will inch towards Vancouvers level eventually
The choice of going full grade separated after finding out how poorly it went when they didn't will easily put it over Portland.
I have to think.. God damn, why does it take so damn long to build. 2039???? . China built an entire high speed rail network in a fraction of that time.
They even took many years to complete the tacoma link extension🤦♂️
The Ballard Link option that would build a station at the government campus is extremely unpopular since it would skip the International District / King Street Station hub, which is also a high equity priority neighborhood, and it would once again snub First Hill by removing the Midtown station
I've definitely fallen off on a lot of national/international youtubers because of their sanitizing of some pretty bad changes in land use and RoW plans. I think Seattle is making excellent strides in areas like bike infrastructure, but ST and the new zoning codes leave A LOT to be desired.
@@cheef825it’s mostly due to Dow Constantine prioritizing unnecessary TOD as opposed to legit service for existing businesses and residents.
To add more context for others, King Street is already going to be the junction of the 2 line which goes to the east and the existing 1 line. Having the new tunnel skip that station would split existing travel options in half with poor transfers once the new tunnel is open.
well the CID community did not want the construction headaches and the board decided to bypass them. They got what they wanted
Some things to note
Federal Way Station will actually terminate on the North side of the street sandwiched between the current transit center and McDonald's. Federal Way is also looking to do a massive downtown redevelopment, in paticular redevelopment of the mall where the Target is and North of the current ST garage where the Performing Arts Center is. From what I also understand, there is also the possibility of looking towards building much taller buildings albiet not too tall as it sits under the flight path for SeaTac Airport.
This is so refreshing! It's VITAL cities maintain industrial space for middle class jobs! Trains that serve warehouses aren't a mistake, it makes sense!
I live near Northgate in Seattle. I can tell you that their TOD strategy isn’t perfect, but I like living by a train stop w/ amenities, so it’s okay. Seattle feels like a 1 step forward- half a step back- kinda place. The city gov and King county as a whole kind of limps in the right direction. Thankful for organizations like The Urbanist and Seattle YIMBY.
I live in Seattle and can get away with only driving once every other month or so. Its great! Bring on more transit. Seattle is back to the fastest growth metro in the US, and the more transit we get, the better we can manage the growth. With mountains and water constraining the buildable area, transit oriented development is the only way to build enough housing and manage the transportation needs of all the new arrivals.
4:08 I think urban golf courses built on a landfill might make a decent city park
Montreal built a park on one of its former landfills, Frederick Bach Park.
To clarify, this is NOT a full 18 hole course.
It's a small 9-hole par 3, course, a mini-golf, Driving Range, & has 2 ballfields. It's city run with focused on community & families.
There is Gas Works Park, just north of downtown that, I think, fits your suggestion. Lots of open area & fantastic views
@ oh I guess that could count as a park if you stretch the definition enough
Seattle NIMBYISM is kneecapping real urban development... and causing destruction of heritage architecture... they add speedbumps to taller buildings (like in the yesler terrace redevelopment and some sodo stuff) where it makes sense then causing higher prices and more urban sprawl which them claim to be against.
Most of Seattle especially the most desirable parts are strictly zoned for single family housing, there are also strict parking minimums in the city. Most development is conspicuous along arterials so visitors think a lot of housing is getting built but that’s not really the case.
I thought as much. The veneer of progressive urbanism but literally doing the bare minimum while appeasing NIMBY suburbanites... My solution? Stack as much non-market mixed and social housing as you can at station sites... All unlimited bonuses for all non-market housing and eliminate all parking mandates within 1/4 mile aka 400m of a station... Every city in the region should emulate the Vancouver Skytrain TOD pattern as much as possible since these plans were based on earlier Hong Kong TOD's that are so successful at driving ridership onto trains there it actually turns a profit...
This is going to change with the comprehensive plan per state law.
Did you check out the newer stations on the north end of the Link? There is a fair amount of new high-density development with more on the way/
Clearly he has not. Absolutely misleading. Boils my blood the things he’s saying.
Just came from Seattle for a work trip, cool place. Definitely needs more transit, it has potential.
I wish this video was a bit more critical of both Sound Transit 3 and also the centrist Harrell administration and city council. ST3's light rail plans are often overly expensive, destinationless boondoggles designed more with the goal of "subarea equity" than for actual opportunities for denser housing construction. ST is also facing a massive budget crisis that has already delayed some projects upwards of a decade, but there is little to no political will for considering options such as using the single tunnel or a switch to automated driverless light metro on the new lines that could provide more modern service for a lower cost. The mayor and county executive were more than happy to ram through the CID north and south plan that would remove any chance at creating a central hub for transfers, instead putting a station at the King County campus, which is mentioned in the video as ripe for redevelopment. Not a coincidence that the mayor and exec are pretty close with some big developers who might see some lucrative contracts, eh?
The reason the city is unwilling to upzone past arterials is that the single-family homeowners are the most intrenched voting base within city limits. They naturally lean more conservative on land use and parking requirements, which is why Seattle has maintained parking minimums when many other cities in the state are reconsidering them. Seattle thus is going to do the absolute bare minimum in regards to meeting the state's new density requirements, as doing more could substantially change voting demographics that could make it more difficult for the centrists to maintain power in the future.
I find it amazing that we have packed light rail trains in central Seattle while there are nearly empty trains out at the ends of the system because Sound Transit won't implement something as basic as running double the frequency from SeaTac to Northgate by turning trains back at those stops. All because we want to give the suburban folks, who don't use the system much, equal service to the Seattle folks, who do.
Yeah, the ST board structure is a huge problem that needs to be highlighted more.
@@blubaughmr they don't have enough trains or maintenance facilities yet. OMF North and South don't yet exist. Lynnwood is already the second most popular station blasting past Northgate which has fallen off due to losing its status as a terminus.
@@walawala-fo7ds The beauty of the turnback service is that it makes the limited rolling stock more productive.
Lynnwood gets good commute traffic. 11:00 PM trains past Northgate are pretty empty, despite being standing room only Westlake to Capitol Hill.
The small extension that the downtown Nordstrom builds to accommodate people waiting in line to take pictures with Santa during the holidays is the only “housing” that gets built in urban Seattle. If you know you know.
Seattle needs to Vancouverize itself. And Vancouver needs to Vienna-ize itself by building more mass market public housing at its vast network of Skytrain stations... Preferably on surface parking lots and kiss and ride areas...
yes absolutely! I'm very glad that TransLink is finally building the TOD themselves.
My prayers have been answered haha. I found your channel because of Not Just Bike's newest video and love your style of videos and all the topics you cover! I was searching for a video on Washington State or Seattle from your channel JUST yesterday with no luck so you can imagine my excitement when I see you posted this!!
Thanks for explaining things so well, your passion really shines through the camera.
IMHO, Link light rail is super inadequate. I went to a concert at the stadium over the summer, and it was a PITA to board the train afterwards because every train arriving was full. And that's with the one and only 1 Line. Imagine how it'll be when all the other interlining lines start running. I know America loves to build light rail, but Seattle really should have revived the heavy rail subway or pursued a driverless light metro.
Light Metro is a waste of money if you're trying to meet the capacity of an entire stadium. It is only marginally better at a massive cost due to grade separation requirements. Only heavy Metro can handle that and even that is pushing it. Seattle could barely afford light rail in both budget and voter support so a heavy Metro is totally a nonstarter without massive federal grants. And check who is president to tell me when that will happen
We’re building a metro and using LRVs. I don’t understand how you think more frequent trains will somehow make this worse.
London had undergeound metro in 1863... And then all residential house suburbs had access to trains. Maybe in the 21th century, with a limited urban area seattle can expand a bit its train and make underground lines too, and make more dense neighbourhoods around stations.
It is about time hudge US metropolises built some suburban train or metro.
Glasgow has a metro. Budapest hungary has the 2nd oldest one, in 1896. Rennes, 400k people, has 2 lines , etc.
Budapest is even more pathetic
Great video. Sound Transit Link light rail is a good service which I have used even though I live in Tacoma. Sounder Commuter Rail was very popular before the pandemic but has struggled to get back to previous service levels because of people working from home. And it is needlessly crippled because it has to rely on BNSF rails which prevents midday service. Adding a third rail between Seattle and Tacoma would allow midday service and make money for ST as it could allow BNSF use of the track at night. The lack of midday service was the reason I couldn't use Sounder to travel to Seattle for meetings but had to drive to the nearest stop to catch Link. Most people don't mode switch once they start driving any distance, but it was an opportunity to check out Link.
Seattle really needs a similar regional rail plan to Denver’s RTD, where we have rapid electric commuter rail serving the outer burbs rather than the slow circuitous light rail we are building now.
@@dantem4119 Bingo! BEMU trains might be the best option since they are quicker and nimbler than conventional locomotive hauled trains and they can quick charge at the end of the line in the time it takes the driver to have a potty break... 75 miles and 100 mph are possible with batteries alone now after the last round of train makers showed their goods at Berlin last year. Stadler, Hitachi, Siemens, Alstom all have BEMU commuter/regional rail options now and don't use crazy weird proprietary equipment either. Just standardized overhead wire/catenary, third rail OR induction charging...
Thanks for the coverage. And for plugging the Urbanist. Contributors like Packer, Sundburg, and Trumm provide the best, most consistent urban policy news for seattle. Also, it's time for Harrell to go I think. Or to get very significant campaign concessions from him (and the city attorney and city council members) around urban planning, vision zero, and police accountability (not defunding but full civilian oversight).
Public transit is still a nightmare in Seattle. I'm on the bus three or more hours a day. Light rail is great...when it runs, but it often has problems, single tracking, accidents, power outages, and lots of unhoused and drugged folks riding. I'm a big public transit advocate, but we really need a lot more help here.
No you aren’t.
Brisbane, Australia, embraced the TOD concept maybe 20 years ago. You can judge it by many metrics but to my eye, I see a bunch of apartments lining our north-south arterial highways, making the apartments east-west facing (hot). This might count as added housing supply but who would choose to live there? Surely we can do better, design-wise.
East/West hotness is such an important factor, esp since so few of us have a/c
Train can save any city
Golf courses aregood places for old and disabled to get exercise and socialize. They could be encouraged to change from chemical inputs, as well as help manage rainwater harvesting to make the golf courses better neighbors.
Seattle's light rail needs relief north-south service, or else it will stay hamstrung by the cramped capacity of its light rail rolling stock
between the streetcar rolling stock and nonstop level crossings in Rainier Valley, Seattle makes Ottawa's train look almost acceptable
@@1224chrisng The north line doesn't have any at grade crossings. The reason it is overcrowded is because the second line isn't operational across lake Washington yet so they cannot meet the 4 minute headways they planned. Should not be an issue once line two opens next year.
@@1224chrisng We don’t use streetcar vehicles, we use light rail vehicles. They are built by the same company, they look very similar, but they are NOT the same.
And Rainier Valley really isn’t that bad, calm down.
An unfortunate trend in Seattle is that, while cities legally are supposed to allow for density to comply with a state mandate, many cities (including Seattle) reach that mandate by allowing high density housing right on highways, where we can maximize the negative health impacts of emissions.
The trains provide an excellent place to put additional housing, especially the stations that are not right next to a highway. Unfortunately, around half of the stations are very close to a highway.
Not having link on sr99 and choosing the i5 alignment was such a travesty. The forward thrust and metrorail projects from 1967 and 1990 respectively used the Great Northern/interurban rows rather than I5. :/
@@dantem4119 The I-5 should have a huge cap put over top of it for parks space and in some cases high rise developments if its at all viable as it is in some other cities...
@@stickynorth
Golf courses are well used, though could be managed to use better inputs, as well as manage rainwater thru harvesting. That said additional greenspace is important.
@@dantem4119add a new line
pretty good video!! i have to say though, im a little disappointed that kent des moines was the example you used.. overlake village, shoreline south, lynnwood city centre are a more representative bunch in my opinion
He’s trying to be misleading, saying false things and sugarcoating Seattle to make us look like every other city.
Please consider doing a video explaining economy’s of density in cities
*economies ❤
Also, golf is an important amenity in an American city. Interbay is one of the best driving ranges in the pacific northwest and a great place for new golfers to get into the game. I'm glad they aren't immanent domaining it. Please don't hate! Golf is for everyone!
Because of the limitations of TOD as primarily large scale corporate developments around a single station, I’ve moved on to TONs (Transit Oriented Neighborhoods) & further to TINs & NŌDs (Transit Integrated Neighborhoods & Neighborhood Oriented Developments). These expand thinking to integrate existing neighborhoods & new opportunity areas as truly transit oriented beyond the large scale wealth extraction human warehouses that’s common everywhere.
OMFG I was JUST TH INKING ABOUT Seattle and the area and making a fictional map based on the area to use in Transport games like open TTD to build railroads and highways around the Sound and what not.
Anyways, thanks for another awesome video buds!
San Diego's Copper line trolley (formerly the east end of the Green line) ends in Santee also in a Target parking lot.
Federal Way Downtown Station isn’t in a Target parking lot, just the tail tracks are. The station is in a lot he didn’t even bother showing, right next to a massive transit center and a big lot to be developed into an urban village, which he specifically said no station on the extension would have an urban village.
Also, about that golf course built on a landfill, not all land is suitable for putting big housing on top of it. I can't imagine that literal trash is seismically stable, or good to pour a foundation on. Another roadblock to development >~
Was just talking about the Seattle Light rail with a mechanic today... Nice!
I'm shocked you didn't mention Seattle prohibitive development fees. In stead of $10k they want $170-$180k fee for added a backyard ADU, Basement or Attic Granny Suite. Blue collar neighbourhoods people can't afford it. These fees need to be lowered or waived in Working Class areas & for not for profit housing with that caveat that burdens on Water & Sewage are reduced.
Existing & new units should install misser systems, irrigate with rainwater keeping rain water out of combined sewers, not wasting irrigation on sewers, & rain & grey water should be used for toilet flushing. Grey water should be taken off line as passive irrigation under front & back yards further reducing black sewage output. Curbside there sould be passive rain gardens. All these actions will reduce drinking water consumption & sewage output to 25% basicly eliminating any cost to City of new developments, on the Contrary it should actually create a negative cost with surplus.
Seattle single family neighborhood infrastructure cannot support up zoning without massive retrofits. It was designed in the 50s and it is barely holding together by spit and duct tape. Impact fees are simply necessary
Really glad that Seattle is taking TOD seriously, even if it's still very much circumspect about it rather than systemically bold (and let's be real: the Link should've been a faster, higher-capacity subway system, not a light rail). I wish Portland would do more with its MAX system, which is already quite extensive but hasn't seen a lot of development around stations, despite being around for decades.
Why not sling a few stories of apartments on top of the park and rides?
Interbay is fill land inbetween two bays, elliot bay and salmon bay.
Seattle passed on mass transit funding in 70’s that funding went to Portland… Seattle lack real forward thinking planning and execution. They want to put the horses ass before the head and cart and wonder why seattle is a mess. They should be looking to increase road width to create bus routes, instead they try to cram stacked/dense living into neighborhoods that won’t support zoning changes because they want big taxes first… Seattle built a convention center and said it would attract the big political conventions… but built it over the freeway and is a huge security risk. Built the transit tunnel in DT and planned for rail, but saved $1M by installing a specific rail type instead of the recommended universal rail. When we went to light rail the specific rail was not compatible as predicted and they shut the tunnel down for 3 years and spent $100M to retrofit & disrupted surface traffic. Seattle has a long list of disasters. Now they want to create new dense/stacked living in old established neighborhoods without upgrading sewer, power and transit infrastructure -cluster waiting to explode as usual
Do you even support transit bro
You do not know what you are talking about
The downside as always, the taller you build the more expensive it is. Meaning yeah you might be building a ton of new homes but many of them might end up as empty investment properties.
It's true that industrial areas contain employment, but they often don't contain a particularly high density of employment meaning that they're not great land uses for inner urban areas. Kind of like how suburban culs-de-sac contain housing, but often not a high enough density of housing to make for good land use in an urban area. It depends on the industry and the specific style of industrial development, but often offices, hospitals, universities, retail and institutional zones are denser employment areas. Generally it's fine for industrial areas to be peripheral, as long as they have decent transit connections but it'll be interesting higher density urban industrial will be different.
I mean the station area was just re-zoned to be *urban* industrial.
would be nice for the current park and rides to start going away, the old one in northgate was replaced by a garage that wastes less space and the former p&r is being redeveloped as an apartment complex
Board members have expressed desire to eventually tear down parking garages in the far future and replace it with more urban development. We have a very good urban, walkable, and transit-oriented vision
8:23 what? Most stations do not have a garage. Did you really ride Link? The garages were part of the voter approved plan to gather suburban support. Car fee suburban living is a nonstarter and there are plenty of underdeveloped stations in Rainier valley with zero parking much closer to downtown than federal way.
EXACTLY THIS DUDE IS SAYING CRAZY TALK
Like this is why people think we built a stupid streetcar and too much tunnels and too much parking and bad service and blah blah blah cause people make these videos that deliberately make false statements and that’s why most of these comments are going along with it saying we need to build a fricking subway underneath our existing tunnels like what are you joking we already have a metro called Link
Deference to single-family housing and forcing apartments to be next to arterials, freeways, and other noisy, polluting, undesirable areas is a big part of why I left Seattle. I can't afford a detached single-family home and I want to live on a quiet street. In Seattle, it has for decades been city policy that the latter is a privilege to be reserved almost exclusively for the most affluent. It is disgusting that one of the supposedly most progressive cities in the USA is so much in favor of such naked class privilege.
Any kind of apartments at scale need to be on a fairly large street in order to create the capacity to get that concentrated number of residents to and from their destinations (since only a few will be routinely using only their feet to move around). Maybe a train line can substitute, but those also tend to be near major roads anyway...
Garden apartments, those are a different story...
I live in downtown Seattle and I love having access to any bus route I want and go anywhere in the city, but I have to deal with people doing meth and drugs outside of my building every day. I'm not a NIMBY, I live in a old building with little security and I constantly have to deal with the lack of investment in housing and homelessness. Downtown also has a complete lack of affordable grocery stores that stay open until a convenient time. To be honest, Belltown is basically a food desert.
A point of grammar: it's not "the Puget Sound." It's "Puget Sound." You wouldn't say "the Boston Harbor!"
We do say the Puget Sound
It's giving Sky Train. I like it.
#Seattle needs a high-floor driverless AGT/APM/#metro/MRT/subway system of some sort to really convince car and other non-transit users to take transit via giving them a transit mode more reliable and respectful to their transportation choices than the low-floor #Link light rail, and homeowners nearby that it's really better than the current #Link. Too many of #SoundTransit's rail projects are #Link-related instead of expanding their rail options in making better decisions for each transit corridor suited for particular tasks.
Their redo of the comprehensive plan was so disappointing! Lots of obvious weird little carve-outs for special interests, and continuing their history of considering only detached family homeowners first-class citizens. But it's better than nothing, and I'm so glad our transit is as good as it is! (But it definitely has room to improve!)
I live in Puget Sound. I don't take light rail often, but when I am in Seattle, I love the light rail and the Kitsap Fast Ferries. Could you expand on or do a follow up video on the mostly elevated track and what the longevity of that is compared to at grade, how you expand that if and when the system has to grow, how you replace it without massive service disruptions and the financial aspect (seems like it might be cheaper now, but maybe not in the long run when it needs replacement). I know acquiring land and ROW is hard it just seems like a nightmare to manage and maintain. Thanks
He won’t because he wants everyone to think it’s just a stupid streetcar from nowhere to nowhere
I've worked at Balmer Yard before and could again if I wanted to. It would be pretty nice to take a train to my train job lol.
Why can't they build a subway underground that connects to light rail stations above? Seems like a lot of wasted space on light rail with out gang ways and lower speeds. Idk enough if that could be done. But it seems like for all that time and money subway would be a good use.
Costs?
Sound Transit did not have the political power or budget to build a subway, so we got the street running segment. And now its too late and there's no point trying to switch
with what money bruh 😂 ST already has massive budget shortfalls
@@CyanideCarrot I wouldn't say switch. But more of instead of taking the lightrail under ground, make a subway system. Political power definitely sounds like a huge reason. It just makes more sense to have a subway for longer but higher speeds to get around and light rail/tram, for smaller but more frequent stop areas.
Because we already have a metro?
8:18 Federal Way Downtown is literally supposed to have an urban village around the station. The station is not in the target parking lot, that is the tail tracks. You neglect to mention the massive transit hub. You point to lots that are under construction at Kent Des Moines Station and claim they are all for parking but you’re wrong. There is TOD planned for Kent Des Moines and a whole village planned for Federal Way Downtown. Star Lake is the only station on the extension that will only have a parking garage.
Interbay Station exists to connect people to industrial jobs, but you really put a cloth over it all and try to spin it as terrible. It’s not like every station is in an industrial area? Plus it’s simply better to have a station in Interbay than to not have a station in Interbay on the way to Ballard, which, by the way, will have huge amounts of TOD, as with Lynnwood, which just opened, and EVERY SINGLE station on the Lynnwood Link Extension has TOD either already open or currently under construction, with more empty lots near 2 stations reserved for even more.
Honestly, how dare you portray Seattle this way? We are absolutely pioneering Transit Oriented Development and upzoning. The generally conservative city of Shoreline (Just north of Seattle) even just abolished parking mandates.
You can walk through any suburban neighborhood in Seattle and see lots of small 2-3 story apartment buildings similar to that of Japan.
What is it that you actually want? Next time you want to call out a city for lack of TOD and bad zoning, go ANYWHERE else.
Seattle could have lots more people in its transit passengersheds if they permitted single family homes upgrade to two-family and three-family or add accessory dwelling units behind the sf houses.
Check the law because all of that is allowed State wide ever since the legislature passed multiple bills
@walawala-fo7ds Good for them!
We literally do.
You know rail is in good shape when it takes you by...the dump.
Why is it going to take almost 14 years for a new transit line!?
The way WA does approval for projects is that we have to vote on projects before any planning happens at all. That means all the environmental and engineering work is done after we approve the project. Usually agencies can plan and bring a shovel ready proposal to the voters to approve/disapprove.
It's the US. Building things here usually happens at a glacial pace nowadays, even more so for transit.
@@dantem4119 this is the way most of the us does such project approval. in fact, i question where in the us it doesn't work this way.
@@danielkelly2210 it’s crazy.
Washington state bureaucracy is pretty awful. A lot of current infrastructure projects started in the 80s or 90s. By the time a project is completed its already outdated by years!
I live in North Queen Anne walking distance to Fremont, Ballard, and Interbay...bring the transit and density! #YIMBY
I don’t know if you take feedback from here - but I here goes:
I have previously enjoyed your essays and take on urban planning. But I think you are getting in to a trap with your videos. Your Dallas and Seattle videos are good examples of the shaken confidence. And I and writing here only because I care about the content you are putting out :)
As feedback for both and future content - perhaps you need to take a broader wider angle. It could have been more educational and more “shareable” if your take on things would have just been more interesting and researched and used context and data. Sure that would be little more difficult, but that is the standard I suggest you set.
For example - in the Seattle video, just starting with the fact that if someone drew the light rail map in 2014, it would have been a straight line from the airport to downtown would have been so powerful. You could have even compared that to the rail map of Dallas from the time! Surprising, interesting, intriguing already.
I think in the Seattle video for instance, you should have simply expanded it to cover the sound very early. Its the metro area that matters. And then cover the economics of what drives the growth of the city. The very unique terrain challenges (an engineering achievement in itself). The type of growth the metro is seeing and the funding of this development. And the ridiculous timelines.
The Dallas video too, similarly was a missed opportunity. With some factual errors to boot.
I wont sandwich with a compliment to end. But just re state that I like where you are coming from. But I feel its time to level up ;)
Love the bike bell (and no sponsor content)
In this video he claims no station on the FWLE has a plan for an urban village, which is wrong because Federal Way Downtown will have one. And he claims there’s nothing but parking going up at Kent Des Moines, which is wrong because multiple of the empty lots he pointed to are for TOD.
So already off to a great start I just can’t waaaait to finish this video
Ballard won't get a link station until 2035. 😭
What an absolute slap in the face.
2037
Does new housing always have to mean giant skyscrapers? Besides, will these even cater to families? Or will they end up being expensive and tiny studios?
Coming from Vancouver, Seattle seems so "fascinatingly backwards" if I could describe it that way. I don't mean to be rude, but it's funny that you guys put streetcars in the sky (except when it isn't) and called it light rail, and you've put 5-over-1's and parkades next to stations and called it TOD. In some ways, I'd rather you keep the stroads and parking lots for now, so you cou have a blank slate to build proper trains and proper condos later. However, it is commendable that Seattle is a very good city by American standards.
Most stations don't have garages actually. TOD is only getting started at the older stations while Vancouver has been at it for forty years. Seattle has barely gotten started. Light Rail is not a street car. It is a 1500 volt 55 mph vehicle while a street car is slower, smaller, and runs at lower voltage. You cannot in fact run T line trams on Link tracks. Only 4.5 miles out of 120 planned are at grade and the Rainier Valley segment is easily separated and already in board discussions to present a plan.
Vancouver has a massive budget shortfall as it financed transit with gas taxes meaning TransLink is going insolvent. Seattle wisely funds transit via property tax, sales tax, and vehicle registration which means a steady source of revenue.
so overall I think it is not backwards. It is not Japan by any means but Vancouver is also extremely flawed with slow trains, small inconsistent platforms sizes, an old 80s automatic system which breaks down when it snows, and in need of a federal bailout to operate. Skytrain operating to Langley is also ridiculous. It is too slow for those distances which are better served by regional commuter heavy rail as skytrain is too slow and stops too much meaning it will be faster to drive than to ride
Okay and it’s funny you guys put APM in the sky all around the city like stop
@@walawala-fo7ds THANK YOU SOME REAL KNOWLEDGE IN THESE COMMENTS
Traffic in Seattle is terrible and getting worse, particularly now after companies have started implementing RTO policies. While I understand where you're coming when you question the necessity of the park and ride lots, I can assure you that they're absolutely nessecary.
This is particularly an issue for towns south of Seattle (Tukwila, Kent, Des Moines, etc.) where a lot of car traffic will take the 405 to get North to the Bellevue area, and that highway is extremely inadequate for the amount of traffic it handles.
The East Link extension will help with this a lot, but will only be able to reach its full potential if car traffic is able to commute to the park and rides. Otherwise it's simply too slow to commute by bus -> rail in a lot of places for it to be a practical option for most people.
Suck it up cause we’re only building less and less at new stations (despite what he says)
Take transit!
@@SSBMDeekus The current 2 Line is actually faster than driving end to end in just light traffic. 19 minutes. Bellevue designs roads very terribly. Sound Transit designs Link very nicely.
You guys are probably too young to remember the Monorail aka Elevated Transportation Company. In the late 90s. It was totally legit but some accountant made some bad calculations and not supported by the real estate powers that wanted light rail underground. So sad. So much promise in the late 90s. Ugh 30 years later and one line.
I dream that one day the state removes I-5 from the middle of downtown and builds new parks and pretty apartment towers up the length
If you're talking about just trains saving Seattle, I don't think so....
BUT
A government that heeds to its people can help revive the city.
A government that heeds to the will of a few or special groups will destroy the city.
Proof of Seattle's current situation is proof of the latter‼️
Trains do not run past 1:40 a.m.
Complete failure.
Try again.
For real.
Story time, I remember trying to get home after a bar crawl on Halloween. It was terrifying trying to get home at 2AM as a woman on her own in a new city. Plus, my old phone's battery was dying from all the GPS/camera usage that night. After a long wait for a bus, around 3-3:30 AM I reached my rail station only for a police officer to inform me that the station wouldn't open for at least ninety minutes. After a panic, I thought that the rideshare prices might have gone down and yeah, it went from $60 to $33 to get home. I sent a ride request, and as I was waiting my phone finally died on ultra power saving mode. Transit is a massive step up from my native Los Angeles, but there's still much to be desired. At least I can get away with not owning a car and all the expense of that...
It’s just a four hour downtime for maintenance. 24 hour service is not out of the question but considering we don’t even have the second OMF hooked up to the first yet and the line down south that will eventually connect to a test track that leads to a future third OMF isn’t even open yet you can’t just give up right now. It just takes some patience, we’re a baby system, basically brand new, Seattle is extremely progressive but full 24 hour service is gonna take some time, and when it’s feasible for us to do so, don’t you ever question for a second that it won’t be brought to the board.
As a visitor who spends about a month a year in Seattle's beautiful eastside highlands, I say:
- it will be great when they fix that problem with the new rail line over Lake Washington and across Mercer Island. (Stupid delay, but very cool that within a couple of years there will be a floating rail line and a rail connection from Bellevue and the east into the city.)
- Ballard seems like a fab destination for light rail. You could really build a tourist route around this. Ballard is so cool with its boutiques, eateries, cafes, pubs, classy accommodation, Sunday Farmer's Markets, historic areas, working boat locks with museum, parkland and fish ladder, the Nordic Museum and Sunset Beach, all within an easy walk around the village. Also there's a rail bridge over water and vantage points to see the freight trains heading to and from Canada, (I presume?).
- When you talked about Magnolia I was hoping you weren't going to say anything about putting housing on that beautiful big waterfront reserve near there - Discovery Park. It's an historic old defense base and lovely to walk around. Such an asset left undeveloped, or maybe it could have just a children's park or some small cafes built. I think you could easily walk there from Ballard with a few pathways upgraded - maybe you already can.
Seattle has much more challenging geography than many cities when it comes to retrofitting modern transport systems and housing around older infrastructure, so maybe this partly explains why they have been slow off the mark. Thank goodness Alaskan Way is gone from the waterfront and I cannot wait to see the newly opened park that stretches from there right up to Pike Place, including elevators, because man that's such an uphill climb!
lol I shop at that Target all the time 😂
Can you do a video on effective messaging/emails to people in city/town zoning leadership? I’ve been trying to improve urbanism in upstate NY but no responses. Maybe I need to break out the megaphones or something.
Betteridge's law.
Dude do you live in SLO county? I didn't realise. I'm from there lol. Live in London now tho! (I guessed by the Airport you left from)
I wish you could speak a tiny bit more slowly and clearly. I would love to understand what you are saying. This is a good practice for non native English speakers. Thank you.
It’s okay it’s mostly nonsense. He’s totally wrong about our lack of TOD as well. I wish he was honest, but instead he’s made the whole comment section believe we built a dumb streetcar that goes slow from nowhere to nowhere
It sounds like downtown Seattle is about to get very dark with skyscrapers crowding the streets. Any setback requirements in that plan?
No because setbacks are dumb
SEATTLE VOTERS - Vote Yes on Prop 1A in February. Lets fund affordable housing for all 😄
Absolutely
Parkades for park and rides are an awful use of construction money and valuable land for cars. It's so disappointing.
God damn... why does it take so damn long to build. China built an entire high speed rail network in much less time
As a Kirkland resident, I've been paying for literally everyone else to get light rail. We've had thousands of apartments forced on us and no improvements to roads or bus service. Our parks are a crowded mess because of all the density now. And we'll never have light rail. What we got is lots of property taxes, lots of RTA taxes on vehicles we can't give up, tolls on every freeway around us, and all to subsidize everyone else. Screw Sound Transit. We're not NIMBYs. We're the ones being forced to pay for everyone else's car-free lifestyle. And btw, more apartments don't bring down rents. Every city on the Eastside has added 10,000+ units since 2021 and rents are higher than ever.
because Kirkland opposed the light rail entering town so they got pushed to the end along with Issaquah 😂
@@walawala-fo7ds I wonder if replacing the #Link light rail proposal with a high-floor driverless #metro (can be light capacity initially) proposal (i.e. no interlining with existing #Link 2 line, new #metro depot, must be fully separated with no level crossings like #Link but doesn't necessarily mean it has to be on elevated structure or in tunnels or trenches all the time, likely use third rail for aesthetic reasons, etc.) would convince them to accept bringing rail to town.
@ostkkfmhtsh012345678 there is a lot of things that can move more people than light rail. Seattle only needs to look at Japan for ideas, not North America. However until the federal government steps in as they did when they built the interstate system, all Seattle can afford is what they are building. Whatever flawed, at least it is sustainable unlike cities that built better systems on paper but now can't afford. When finished only 4.5 out of 120 miles won't be grade separated. It is not impossible to fix that eventually. What matters is that 100% of sound transit 3 is grade separated and that's the case with all current projects.
"We're the ones being forced to pay for everyone else's car-free lifestyle." lol
The 4 Line was literally supposed to go to downtown Kirkland and Totem Lake but you guys REALLY did not want it so now it will end at South Kirkland Station unless you guys suddenly actually want it and go to ST about funding it like originally intended.
Abolish state review laws
nah, that makes too much sense.....so it's safe to say they won't do any of it😊
I'm a Capitol Hill father about to leave Seattle for NYC. There is nothing, and I mean *NOTHING* being built for urban families in Seattle. This will be the demise of every urban revitalization project. Planners need to prioritize families or it's not going to scale.
Imho I think they are prioritizing whatever Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and other big tech firms with major presence here want re: city planning. So, tech workers (and tech salaries) over urban families. Units are not affordable in my opinion as a Seattle resident (Ballard). I moved here 3 years ago and it has been a struggle as someone not employed by Big Tech. My cousin who works in software moved to San Diego from Seattle 5 years ago after having a child because there are more amenities for families, but it is more expensive there than in Seattle (though Capitol Hill rents are crazy, comparable to San Diego). I hope NYC treats you well! As a single woman I might head there myself, I'm so frustrated with this city.
yup, the ol "seattle process" rears its ugly head yet again. I want my home region to succeed, but a lot of morons in power have gotta get trounced first.
can't disagree with you on that one. and 2 thoughts, 1.) what would you seek for your family from an "urban revitalization project"? First thing that comes to mind for me is changing codes to allow developers to make more 2-3 bed apartments (eg by changing stairwell requirement for 5-over-1s and similar height buildings and greater floor-area ratios) and adjusting parking requirements within 1/2mi of currrent and planned transit. 2.) what does nyc show you in this way that seattle doesn't? Moving, and particularly moving a family across the country is no easy feat so I'm sure you have your good reasons. I'm really curious to hear them.
@ NYC has so many more children in urban areas it is staggering. There are schools everywhere. There is clear prioritization and planning for kids. A lot of the family friendly housing was built pre automobile. That is a huge huge component. The post automobile planning era made every city built for commuting and for single people. Seattle has one elementary school for a ridiculously large area (lowell) and the area surrounding it is totally hostile to families, but this is the urban core of the city. Nothing is done or built thinking about families like in NYC. Idk just visit Park Slope. It is an absolute paradise and the price reflects how rare it is in the US
@@sgtfuzzz making more family friendly housing as you describe in nyc for seattle seems about allowing more commercial integration of mixed use into neighborhoods than most us cities including seattle currently allow. and also eliminating parking minimums more broadly (like has been done in pdx and elsewhere). the schools thing in seattle has its history in white flight from busing in the 60s and 70s iirc which is why even to this day in the city of seattle there is a relatively high proportion of kids who attend private schools instead of public schools when compared with other us cities. i'm not up to speed on policy around that and how to fund more schools. but yeah, that could be helpful to make seattle more family friendly.
2039.....omg. The west is failing
Have you ever heard of a budget
600,000 passengers a day is more than chicago L and slightly less than the DC metro. Keep dreaming.
already at 200k average daily boardings on link iirc.
We’re already exceeding ridership expectations on East Link and Lynnwood Link. It’s not a dream.
:)
Population growth has slowed.
tired of hearing about jobs in cities that have labor shortages and housing shortages, most of these cities have way more jobs than housing and even if you add jobs its not something that needs to be a priority
Seattle should rezone most of its suburban residential zones to high density zones, which may skyrocket the price of suburban homes due to offers from real estate developers, but in the long run it will alleviate a lot of the demand for more housing in the Seattle region.
The suburbs are zoned for additional backyard dweller units as well as 2-3 story tiny apartment buildings and townhouses
Its a feel good story until you realize your car will be broken into at the station and you will be assaulted on the train
The park and rides are for the suburban people. The Seattle people walk to the station, or take the bus. As for assaults, although they happen, as a frequent user of the system, I haven't seen one.
@blubaughmr Well I've never seen a bus driver get stabbed to death but it just happened by a transient and so many homeless use the train people call Sound Transit... "Sound Transient"
Oh please. Ride Link. Tell me how many homeless people you see. One guy asleep? Oh no, is he gonna get you?
Bro how you research your topics and write scripts
I clicked on this because I live in Seattle and I consider myself an urbanist, but I found this presentation almost impossible to watch. Please take elocution lessons. Your diction is impossible to understand. Slow down and pronounce your words please!!!!!
And he gets all his facts wrong it’s crazy
No! Trains are stupid in the Seattle area. It should've been done 30 years ago. Busses are smarter, more flexible, cheaper, and take up less space. Trains in the area are the dumbest waste of money.
Dumb
You’re funny lol so funny it’s kind of just sad.
How about you fix the problem of not having enough 'Daniel Penny's' in Seattle first instead.
i.e. solve the urban crime problem.
Jesus christ can you people ever give it a break.
Yep. Seattle has great Rapid Ride bus lines that are filled with 50% math addicts. If the trains are gross, people will still choose to drive.
i think daniel penny would have been daniel pennied had it happened on in seattle