Reduced fare program: King County Executive Dow Constantine released a plan this week for providing low-income individuals access to reduced fares on King County Metro.
Safety project for Dexter: The City is finally planning to provide safe bicycling facilities from Mercer to Denny on Dexter Ave.
Ditch the road centerline: Transport for London has experimented with removing the centerlines of roads and found that drivers dramatically reduce their speeds when they don’t know the extent of a lane.
Unappealing: A King County Superior Court judge has ruled that each dorm room constitutes a unit in microhousing, despite city code.
Backyard apartments: Council Member Mike O’Brien is championing a code update to encourage more detached accessory dwelling units, a very old planning idea to increase density on single-family properties.
Game of Thrones Railway: A clever map for all you Game of Thrones lovers that depicts Westeros (and more) through a railway network.
Charting the CVS evolution: A good chronicle of how CVS improved the design for their future Uptown location through design review and emergency minimum density requirements by Council. This project went from single-story, single-use to multi-story, multi-use.
Farewell Goran: Goran Sparrman, who had been Interim Director of SDOT, has decided to resign from his current post in the department after being knocked out of the running for Director.
Re-wild the urban: London plans to up its eco-cred by helping to establish some serious new wetlands in its Lea Valley, an area north and east of Central London.
The old 43: Capitol Hill Seattle Blog pays homage to the wonderful workhouse Metro 43.
Liberal-Conservative urban divide: One chart puts the top cities in perspective for their ideological leanings, no surprises here.
“Free” parking: It’s costing taxpayers a lot of money just to waste space on parking that no one, but everyone pays for.
Try the courts: Developers are suing the City of Seattle over incentive zoning fees, but their argument is pretty shaky.
Link transfers rehashed: A follow-up plea for Link transfers to reduce tunnel congestion and saving service hours.
Cyclist protest: Toronto wanted to remove Downtown bike lanes, but cyclists won to save them.
Urban canopy: Toronto also plans to dramatically improve its tree canopy from 28% to 40% by 2040.
1 million boardings: Link hit over 1,000,000 boardings in the month of June (a new record) while the system continues to see massive year-over-year growth.
Denver’s Union Station: A very good story about the renaissance of Denver’s Union Station–dilapidation to multi-modal hub.
America’s best neighborhood: Apparently for the urban dweller, Capitol Hill Seattle is where you must go if you want the best affordability, walkability, and opportunity.
Premiere on Pine: A look into the new 40-story building next to the Paramount Theatre.
Twitter fail: Governor Chris Christie pisses off his constituents over a transit tweet, they’re still bitter that he mothballed the ARC and is abysmal on transit.
Faceoff: Seattle voters will have to decide between one of two pre-school proposal in the General Election, or they could just say “no” to both, says a judge.
Bham pride: Bellingham has a plan to create the best bicycling system in the state.
Commutes are desirable: It may be surprising, but no commute isn’t preferred, some is.
Redesign urban parks: First Hill residents want to re-imagine urban parks so that they become better spaces for all.
Police militarization: A former Seattle police chief talks about police militarization.
High-speed rail’s challenge: Yonah Freemark argues that the delay of true high-speed rail in the US basically comes down to the failure of the Federal government to lead.
New microhousing rules on the way: Council Member Mike O’Brien wants to have permanent rules for microhousing come September, but no one is satisfied with the outcome of the draft rules.
Rails-to-trails redux: Cleveland is planning to convert old streetcar railways to superhighways for cyclists.
Retrofitting the suburbs: An interesting idea to use space above shopping center and strip mall retail to put in condos and apartments.
Affordable TOD: Council Member Mike O’Brien proposes the idea for a revolving fund for creating affordable units in new transit-oriented developments.
