While the vast majority of Seattleites identify as progressive when polled, the City of Seattle’s approach to many of its biggest problems is fundamentally conservative. The status quo rules the day, barring herculean efforts. Our use of public street space is a prime example.
The amount of planning, outreach, stakeholdering, discourse, and delay required to make the smallest change borders on absurd. Bike lane projects start feeling like a lunar landing mission, and full-bore street pedestrianization like colonizing Mars. Seattle’s recent push to liberalize food truck and food cart regulations and make Seattle’s street café program permanent is another example of a great idea to make streets more pleasant (and tasty) places to be running into an inexplicable opposition.
Food truck liberalization
Who wouldn’t like more food options at reasonable prices in their neighborhood? Why pass on the benefit of enlivening streets and parks while providing more opportunities for entrepreneurs to start a business without a huge capital outlay that brick and mortar storefronts entail? If we agree about nothing else can we at least agree that a truck dispensing tasty goodies like street tacos or dumplings or curried scallops or the miracle that is sushi burritos should be invited as close as possible to our appreciative homes and jobs?
But no. That would be too easy. Seattle is the land of tortured decision-making and a million concerns.
Instead of welcoming a modest food truck expansion and moving on without much drama or debate, Alex Pedersen stepped into the arena — eager to put himself between the public and a good time. Pedersen submitted a series of amendments kneecapping the legislation carefully crafted by Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) with the support of Councilmember Dan Strauss. Instead of expanding where food trucks would go, Pedersen mostly wanted to keep the old rules. A simple update and modernization had to be turned into a big debate.
Tellingly, even the Seattle Restaurant Alliance doesn’t support Pedersen’s amendment keeping the existing restriction barring food trucks 50 feet from existing restaurants and coffee shops, The Urbanist’s Ryan Packer reported. Pedersen ultimately withdrew that amendment, citing overwhelming public opposition, but he did succeed in passing a different amendment adding a new hurdle in 2024, a report measuring the “impact” of the rule’s removal on existing businesses.
