The Ballard Bridge, Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (SR-520), and SR-99 Tunnel will be closed this weekend. Check Metro and ST service alerts for detours before travel.
News:
- Seattle Bike Blog: The shovels are in the dirt, so Eastlake bike lanes are really happening. RapidRide J broke ground this week. Also on The Urbanist.
- The Urbanist: King County Metro Faces Looming Fiscal Cliff; “Metro is expected to be able unable to meet its required levels of reserve funds by the 2028-2029 biennium, coming short by $500 million dollars. By the 2030-2031 biennium, Metro could fully exhaust those reserves.”
- Seattle Times ($): WA found a better way to remove homeless encampments. Will it stick? It turns out offering shelter or housing to folks being swept from encampments results in said folks accepting more housing.
- Ryan Packer on Twitter: The Sound Transit Board System Expansion Committee hesitantly approved the Preferred Alignment of WSLE as the Project To Be Built, allowing ST staff to continue design and permitting work. King County CM Claudia Balducci and Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin drove the conversation around avoiding approval of a $7B WSLE without further cost savings and analysis of potential impact on the ST3 program. Balducci complained ST staff’s work plan did not seem to offer specifics on how they might reduce costs or increase revenues to make WSLE affordable.
Commentary:
- Pedestrian Observations: Taxes are not About Urbanism, in which Alon Levy discusses the temptation to turn Urbanism into an omnicause.
- The Urbanist: Policy Lab: Why Are Seattle Restaurants So Expensive? Katie Wilson discusses operational difficulties for restauranteurs and their workers. One idea from restaurant worker and organizer Sean Case: better late night transit service could improve access to bars and restaurants for customers and workers.
- 99 Problems: (Un) Safe Crossings on Aurora Avenue North; did you know there’s a 5-mile stretch of Aurora (Harrison Street to N 68th Street) which has no wheelchair-accessible crossings?
This is an Open Thread.
It’s too bad Constantinople doesn’t realize the waste of his ways and instead do a Las Vegas gamble into new and cheaper tech.
https://youtu.be/5WbZgclJkBw
https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/10/Robovan_73-e1728619221559.jpg?w=1500&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1
https://scottjeffrey.com/core-values-list/
So glad to have see Uber and Tesla have both invented a worse bus.
It will be interesting to travel around Vegas in a year or two. Granted,
anything is better than what they have but spending millions
for 20+ miles of PT vs WS’s billiions (and climbing) for less than 1/2 dozen miles. What is it these days, approaching 2 billion/mile for what 10, 20,000 riders a day. Constantinople has this city by the balls, makes you wonder what
his cut is.
Some folks here might enjoy the CityDensity site for comparing the distribution of population densities in various metro areas around the world.
I like this one: http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#7/38.595/125.728
You have to hover over a city and have “interactive stats” open. If you are zoomed in it will show a city (otherwise it shows the country). By breaking it out into different density classes I think it gives a much better look at the city. The big drawback is that it is only in map form. I would really like a web page with all of the cities on it. Even just comparing cities is a bit of a pain (I’ve found the easiest thing to do is take a snapshot).
“Balducci complained ST staff’s work plan did not seem to offer specifics on how they might reduce costs or increase revenues to make WSLE affordable.”
The report is here:
https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Resolution%20R2024-22.pdf
The staff report does not discuss the increased cost at all — and merely says that a budget amendment will come later.
Talk about fiscal irresponsibility of billions!
The Work Plan which Balducci complained about is summarized in this (very generic) presentation: https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Presentation%20-%20Approach%20for%20West%20Seattle%20Link%20Extension%20Workplan%2010-10-24.pdf
Balducci rightfully wondered what WSLE-specific elements were under consideration for the cost-savings work plan, because Staff were supposed to include “timelines and scale of potential benefits for each measure, and whether each measure is WSLE-specific or applies broadly to future projects”; there was no indication of WSLE-specific elements in their presentation. Staff complained they only had two weeks to prepare a presentation on the proposed structure of the work plan.
My takeaway is that the Staff know there simply aren’t any significant measures to be taken to reduce costs on WSLE. They might be able to shed an escalator or two, but the major cost increases of WSLE are due to the adoption of an unaffordable tunnel and design of a (metaphorically) gilded high bridge. If they really wanted an affordable route, they would need to go back to the drawing board and do a supplemental EIS looking at running the train down the middle of Fauntleroy (either elevated or not) and shunting the displaced road traffic to other streets. But they’d also need to convince WS to allow above-ground guideway to the Junction, which isn’t going to happen.
In the meantime, I think we’re going to see the Board adopt a plan to build the MOS for WSLE (SODO to Delridge) by 2032 and the MOS for BLE (CID to Smith Cove) by 2039. They’ll put completion of both projects on hold pending “additional funding” which will be an assumed Seattle-specific “ST4” in 2028 or 2032 utilizing the Enhanced Service Zone powers under 2021’s SB 5528 to increase revenues in the city. Mayor Bruce “No New Taxes” Harrell and County Executive Constantine are already apparently planning to force the issue on their successors instead of handling it now.
Since WS resident Constantine is ST chair I would expect WSLE to get rammed through with at least junction + delridge stations and they punt dealing with funding for future extensions (Everrett, line 4) to successors.
From the West Seattle Blog regarding yesterday meeting on WSLE –
“Meantime, Hampton said that ridership wouldn’t vary much between alternatives – all were projected at 24,000 to 27,000 daily boardings. If the Avalon station were dropped, they envision ridership would only drop by about 100 a day.”
If this is true (only 100 ridership reduction per day if Avalon eliminated), then that’s the first obvious thing that should be cut IMO.
It’s only 0.5 miles from planned 41st ave junction station site, 10 minute walk.
I imagine that would save significant $
Also don’t rebuild SODO station and instead have trains run through to Lynwood or at least northgate or something. I imagine that would save $ too. Has ST ever looked at NOT stubbing WSLE at SODO until Ballard line is opened? This is the most bizarre decision of the WSLE IMO. The final plan is to have WSLE go to Lynwood anyway when Ballard opens and Line 1 goes to Ballard instead. Why delay that?
As long as they design the track to allow for a future station. Allow for more development at this station location so it could come back in the future. A 1 or 2 station route isn’t a line or branch… its a dinky shuttle.
Seems to be going the way of the Seattle Monorail Project, have they tried a single track for the entire alignment? (sarcasm)
ST believes it cannot reliably run three lines through DSTT at its promised 6-minute peak frequencies for each line. They believe the shortest reliable headway they can achieve in DSTT is 180 seconds (3 minutes), although the signals are apparently capable of handling 90-second headways.
It would take a concerted advocacy campaign to convince the ST board that they should reduce service frequencies on other other lines to accommodate a third line in the existing tunnel, but it could be done. One potential operational pattern:
1 Line (Lynnwood-Federal Way): 8 trains per hour (7.5-minute headways)
2 Line (Lynnwood-Redmond): 6-8 trains per hour (7.5- to 10-minute headways)
3 Line (Northgate-West Seattle): 4-6 trains per hour (10- to 15-minute headways)
Of course, this is in service of making WSLE more usable in the 7-year period of “stub” operations currently planned.
It would be nice if we could first open East Link and see how much induced demand there is across the lake first. Given how strong Lynwood Link is out of the gate (with every little of the TOD built out), if East Link exceeds expectations, Line 2 may require the highest frequency.
ST believes it cannot reliably run three lines through DSTT at its promised 6-minute peak frequencies for each line. They believe the shortest reliable headway they can achieve in DSTT is 180 seconds (3 minutes),
Right, but they have never studied what it would take to (reliably) run the trains more often. Nor have they seriously looked at how often there would be a delay when running every 2.5 minutes. They only said they don’t feel comfortable running more often then every 3 minutes. It is quite likely that even if we very little this would be a good trade-off. Simply run the trains every 7.5 minutes during peak and every 10 minutes outside of peak (which is what we are doing now). Then run all the trains into the tunnel. Some of the trains could turn back (at Northgate or Lynnwood). Once or twice a weak you have some delays. It is quite likely this would be significantly better than building a second tunnel, simply because the second tunnel is so much worse than the existing one (and it requires existing transfers).
So not only are we spending a lot of money, it is quite likely things will be significantly worse.
Do all of the trains have to go to downtown Seattle though? If you connect West Seattle to East Link you could have half the trains go to Bellevue.
It is highly unlikely that Lynnwood is exceeding (pre-pandemic) expectations. My guess is East Link won’t either. The argument for a second tunnel was based on many things (like the ability to build it cheaply and world-class transfers) but one of it was very high commuter ridership (since it was planned before the pandemic). That just isn’t happening anywhere and probably never will.
ST isn’t known for making infrastructure flexible and futute-proof . There’s no infrastructure planned that I’ve heard of to allow West Seattle to go to the Eastside, or crossovers to allow a line to use either DSTT1 or DSTT2. The corridors are limited tot ST’s existing operation plan.
But some West Seattlites have said they want to go to the Eastside, so some ridership demand exists
About that West Seattle to Eastside thing:
1. There are no down escalators at ID Station. They should have been installed with East link — as well as a second elevator.
2. The SODO Station requires two level changes to transfer to — up and down. Will ST cheap out on a down escalator there too?
3. If ST ran West Seattle through the DSTT only one transfer would be needed. Even if it was only half of the DSTT trains that ran through, it would save a ton of steps for riders.
4. ST figeant care about transfer effort at all. If they did, there would have been at least on of the above three changes made. They’re all pretty obvious to a seasoned train rider who has used systems elsewhere regularly. But that’s not the Board nor the senior design staff.
Edit—
4. ST doesn’t care about transfer effort at all. If they did, there would have been at least one of the above three changes made. They’re all pretty obvious to a seasoned train rider who has used systems elsewhere regularly. But that’s not the Board nor the senior design staff.
“ There’s no infrastructure planned that I’ve heard of to allow West Seattle to go to the Eastside, or crossovers to allow a line to use either DSTT1 or DSTT2”
To get as deep as they need, DSTT2 is going to have to start very far south.
To expand the capacity of DSTT1, they need center platforms at all stations, with more vertical conveyances. That means getting rid of the center track at IDS, and probably replacing it with some sort of Eastside to SoDo connection to do the Eastside to SoDo moves for which they envision using the center track.
So, to get more capacity in DSTT1, they’ll have to build some sort of connection.
Properly executed, that could allow for West Seattle to Eastside trains, not just the out of service moves currently envisioned for the IDS center track.
The key metric for me is total ridership on Link to determine how many car drivers switch to Link when there is an extension, or “induced demand”.
When U. Dist. to Northgate Link opened, probably the highest ridership extension, in part because Northgate was the northern terminus, ridership stayed the same, but it was the middle of a pandemic and eventually all transit ridership declined around 30% due to work from home.
Not surprisingly a significant percentage of LLE ridership came from Northgate. Some also came from truncated ST express and CT express buses. The reality is LLE, not unlike WLE, will move very few car drivers to transit, although it does provide a better transit service to existing transit users, albeit at great cost.
LLE extension simply makes it easier for those living north of Northgate to get to Link (huge park and rides) and catch Link without having to take a bus to Northgate or drive there. However the numbers support what most suspected: few riders are going between LLE stations.
The key metric is boardings because boardings can’t be manipulated. One only has to divide most boardings in half to determine riders since most trips are round trips. So far LLE shows around 20,000 new total boardings, or 10,000 riders from all four stations, mostly at Lynnwood (which will decline as Link moves north), which are previous bus riders or those who caught Link at Northgate.
East Link will be much the same, except bus ridership cross lake has declined so precipitously. Ridership on East Link will be a combination of ridership on the starter line today plus cross lake bus ridership today, plus the 3000 or so daily boardings from Redmond that may stay within East KC and never cross the lake. East Link could see more intra-subarea trips than LLE because there is more there. There will be few “induced demand” trips cross lake who switch from a car, despite the massive park and rides.
WLE and BLE are both too expensive to even consider from a ridership perspective. TLE will have the issue of so many stops through South Seattle plus slow speeds so the main destination, downtown Seattle, will take too long, so boardings will depend on those mostly taking intra-Pierce/S. King Co. trips (not many is my guess considering Sounder S. is down considerably and it hits the eastern cities from Kent to Sumner to Auburn).
What isn’t clear to me is how farebox recovery will work out. Any person driving to the park and rides along LLE which apparently are full will pay $3, all of which goes to ST, not good for CT. But anyone taking a CT bus to LLE will mean ST gets 53% and CT 47%. I have to think that will increase total transit costs between feeder buses and Link, but not total fare revenue. It will be interesting to see how farebox recovery works out among Metro, ST and CT, and which O&M costs can’t be met with the assumed farebox recovery goal considering Metro today is at 8%, ST 15%, and CT I don’t know.
The other interesting fact I don’t know is how farebox recovery will be shared among subareas. The reality, at least today, is the north/south Line 1 is predominantly in Seattle/N. King Co., and a $3 fare ride from Lynnwood to say the airport covers a lot less cost than Capitol Hill to Westlake when N. King Co. has to share that fare from Lynnwood (and presumably with CT).
Although I think total boardings is the most relevant statistic today, in the long run I think it will be farebox revenue for Link, CT, and Metro. That is where the rubber will meet the road.
I know some think truncation will mean costs will equal farebox recovery because buses travel shorter distances which I suppose saves fuel costs but I am not so sure, and it looks so far like CT is losing riders to the park and rides.
Most of the Junction ridership is coming from buses and dropoffs. That’s why it’s higher than Avalon. The walk up ridership at the Junction station is pretty small — and who wants to go down 100 feet in elevation to catch a train? It’s also very expensive to build that last station.
So I would save the $1B and not build the 100 foot deep station hole at Alaska and 41st — and make Avalon Station the end for now.
Consider that Avalon and 35th is about the same walking distance from Alaska and California is as Market and 14th is from Ballard Ave and Market.
“who wants to go down 100 feet in elevation to catch a train?”
People around the world do, like Washington Park MAX station is at 260 feet underground. Can also point to Beacon Hill here as well. Like this is a non issue for most people who aren’t into the nitty gritty of transit. Outside of DSTT2, which I agree is too deep underground, most projects I find this criticism is not a solid argument against the project.
There’s criticisms to be had about WSLE, but this isn’t one of them.
The Washington Park MAX station may be 260 feet down, but it’s served by high speed elevators that make the trip in a fraction of the time it takes to do the escalator thing at UW. It takes less than 30 seconds.
Even then, it’s not a particularly busy station.
If ST could be convinced to use such elevators at some of its deep stations, I’d be more optimistic about these proposed deep stations.
“The walk up ridership at the Junction station is pretty small”
The Junction has the most walkable destinations in West Seattle by far. People going to Easy Street Records, the live-performance theater, Husky Deli, Bakery Nouveau, Pizza Mi Credo, etc. and various condos, will be in walking distance of the station. Avalon, Delridge, and Westwood Village have only a tiny fraction of that.
The Junction has the most walkable destinations in West Seattle by far.
Sure, and this likely explains the higher ridership of The Junction versus Avalon. But it is still pretty small. It is like where they put the Beacon Hill Station. It is by far the most walkable location on Beacon Hill for the station. I’m sure a fair number of people walk to it. But it is nothing like Capitol Hill, let alone the UW. Realistically how many people can we expect to walk to the station at the Junction? 20,000? 10,000? 5,000? I think 2,000 would be quite impressive, and much higher than expected.
Yet it would be a complete failure from a transit perspective. That is because:
1) It will cost a fortune for only three stations.
2) The other two stations have even less walk-up ridership.
3) Most riders have no interest in transferring.
It is worth considering how many people would ride West Seattle Link if they simply kept the buses as is. Of course some would walk to Link instead of the bus. Others would transfer there (instead of waiting until downtown). But we are still talking about probably less than 5,000 people. That means a fairly small number of people would actually benefit — and a lot of them wouldn’t benefit that much.
Parts of the second downtown tunnel could be done as cut-and-cover instead of deep bore? Might save a lot of money. Get the Vancouver Broadway subway people involved to see if it is an option for downtown Seattle.
ST and the politicians are against cut-and-cover. They don’t want the construction disruptions that DSTT1 had. It’s a non-starter until they change their minds and stand up to the opposition to it.
I don’t know how much could be done as cut and cover. They have to avoid a bunch of existing infrastructure, not limited to the existing tunnel, the BNSF tunnel (which cuts diagonally across some key downtown blocks), the highway 99 tunnel (important for the SLU section), and a bunch of sewer and water infrastructure.
It wouldn’t be popular, but the only real way to make it cheaper is to avoid the troublesome spots. That means ending at Westlake (as proposed several times on this website), or doing surface light rail in a street, or going elevated. There’s only so much that can be done with existing underground obstacles.
The big challenge is getting under the Westlake tracks — as the rest of Downtown is up the hill.
I don’t know if ST could have trains at the mezzanine level. I’m not sure how much room that would take.
Plus there is the 99 tunnel and the BNSF tunnel to thread too.
And that’s all before building footings and disrupting typical traffic.
Cut and cover is what should be done in West Seattle. I think DSTT2 is where deep bore makes sense given the need to get under DSTT1 and not necessarily follow the street ROWs
@poncho,
With the exception of stations, we will never see any substantial cut and cover construction in this region. And certainly not in urban settings.
Too disruptive, too expensive, no real benefit.
Metro proved that when the built the northern part of the old bus tunnel. So we can thank Metro for showing the way forward.
@ Poncho:
The proposed Avalon Station could be considered cut and cover underneath 35th. It’s the last station to the Junction that will require a deep bore as well as a large station vault 100 feet deep as big as a football field.
This fiscal cliff is a big deal and seems Metro (Sound Transit and other agencies across the country) are totally out to lunch on it. The farebox revenue and recovery ratio has plummeted is the short story here and they have no plans to remedy it other than ask for another tax or expect a federal bailout. No one pays for the bus anymore, whether fare evasion or feel-good top-down mandates for free youth fares that the agencies can’t afford. There is no aim to grow ridership or get transit agencies on a sustainable economic path forward.
>free youth fares that the agencies can’t afford
the free youth fares are paid by the state’s Climate Commitment Act, but the agencies are (rightfully) planning for a worst-case scenario of potential repeal by I-2117
I’m amazed how little the Climate Commitment Act actually does for transit. You’d think having a robust useable transit system would be paramount to tackling the climate. Instead it’s free youth fares and rural transit, battery electrification (the majority) and a 2-5% contribution to very minimal barely BRT projects. Would barely notice the impact to transit if it was repealed.
@poncho,
The fiscal cliff is indeed a big deal, but it isn’t much of a surprise either. At least to people who have been paying attention to Metro’s current financial situation.
And increasing Metro fares 9%(to $3) is going to do nearly nothing to change things. Not when farebox recovery is under 8%.
The Metro financial situation is being drive by 3 things:
1). The cost of a basic service hour has risen by over 50%.
2). Ridership is still down about 30%, and seems stuck there.
3). Fare evasion is at historic highs.
You just can’t solve those 3 problems with a 9% fare increase.
Instead of working on their cost structure, Metro seems intent on working on the revenue side — mainly hoping for a regional TBD that can be passed county wide.
But as the prospects for passing a county wide TBD are less certain than for just a Seattle wide TBD, the timing gets tricky. You’d want to put the county measure on the ballot before you ask for a renewal of the Seattle only measure, just in case it fails. But you also need enough time to put the Seattle measure on the ballot for renewal and get it passed before the current Seattle TBD expires.
So it gets messy.
“King County Metro Faces Looming Fiscal Cliff”: Cue the people who have been wanting to talk about this for four years. Until now we haven’t had more than armchair speculation on when or how much, and the armchair speculation tended toward overly pesstimistic, as shown when predicted reductions didn’t materialize. Now we have a real county assessment to quantify it.
And a big budget item that can be tapped: bus electrification. Keep the existing buses until their end of life and then gradually replace them. That would avoid the large initial expense that cuts into needed reliability improvements and service expansions, and would give the technology time to mature to the level that people the policy assume it already is.
@Mike Orr,
Metro’s electrification and hydrogen fuel cell programs should definitely be delayed at least 10 years. Such a delay would free up a big chunk of funding to at least delay the fiscal cliff a few years, although it’s arrival would probably only be delayed.
However, delaying the BEB program might allow technology to catch up with expectations, and it would certainly allow other transit orgs to work out the wrinkles first. There is real value in not being first — you can do a better job, and often at lower cost. Metro could do this.
The other thing to consider with the Metro financial cliff is that the local transit eco-verse is changing fast. We now have a highly successful LLE in operation, and within the next two years we will also have RLE, Full ELE, and FWLE.
How these Link extensions affect Metro’s bottom line is a bit of unknown at this point. CT has shown that it is possible to leverage off Link to increase bus ridership, but will that work for Metro? And can Metro leverage off Link to bring their own operating costs down?
These are all open questions, but the clock is ticking. And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of concern.
The biggest carbon reduction is having any kind of buses: we don’t need a particular kind. Pugetipikis would be a different kind of place if Metro, Link, and ST Express didn’t exist.
A bus gets 3 miles per gallon; an SUV (the predominant kind of car now), 20. So by my calculation a bus with 12 passengers used the same amount of fuel as 12 cars, and any more passengers makes the bus use less than cars would.
“Ridership is still down about 30%, and seems stuck there.”
Ridership has continued to increase. What’s gone is a lot of the peak commuter riders. That may take two or three decades to return to 2019 levels, if ever. But remember the population is increasing. That in itself is also increasing ridership, including peak commuting. So in that time period the population increase itself may catch up to 2019’s peak-hour ridership, even if work from home doesn’t decrease (as it surely will to some extent).
“Ridership is still down about 30%, and seems stuck there.”
“Ridership has continued to increase. What’s gone is a lot of the peak commuter riders. That may take two or three decades to return to 2019 levels, if ever. But remember the population is increasing. That in itself is also increasing ridership, including peak commuting”.
What makes you state population is increasing? If you mean the estimates from the Office of Financial Management those are very suspect, as are all state population estimates because they are used for grant applications, sometimes to contest the Census results that determine Congressional seats and federal funding, and in WA state are used in regional planning to support a political agenda on transportation, housing and climate change although the pandemic changed these fundamentally.
So state population growth estimates are always high. OFM estimated one million new residents would move to WA from 2020 to 2024. That is around 200,000 new residents in the last four years mostly in King Co. Where are they?
Over the last 3-4 years the U.S. Census Bureau has King Co. population growth at 1600+ residents. If based on average trip mode that is 160 new transit riders. Over four years.
With Metro’s farebox recovery rate at 8% and Link’s at 15%, and Metro facing a $500 million budget deficit, it is time to be realistic. I don’t see a county wide transit levy passing because they rarely passed in the past, S. King Co. will vote a hard no (even though they are the most heavily subsidized) and too few east King Co. residents commute on transit these days and peak commuters vote. Even Seattle property owners must be feeling levy exhaustion, and with the decline in office building valuations and new levies will see their property taxes increase on average $1000/year. It doesn’t help when RR G has turned out to be a comedy of errors.
It would be foolish for Seattle voters to approve a new Metro county TBD to subsidize S. King Co. It would be even more foolish for East King Co. to approve a county wide transit levy that goes to S. and N. King Co. Instead, a Seattle wide TBD makes more sense. But more and more these levies are either raided to cover budget shortfalls in the city’s general budget or deliver very little new for the crazy cost, and more and more voters see transit like RR G or WLE that are ridiculously expensive and usually poorly designed and constructed.
The reality was pretty clear in 2023 when work from home and transit ridership declines became permanent and inflation had increased everything 20%. Each peak rider produced double the farebox revenue as non-peak because payment was nearly 100% at full fare because the employer was paying and the bus was packed. That is why a 30% decline in ridership has resulted in a farebox recovery rate of 8% for Metro and 15% for ST.
The 30% ridership decline is an increase and is the new normal. Even if Metro and ST came closer to their farebox recovery goals — which would require a very high payment percentage due to the reduction in total riders which is what the peak commuter brought — without large general tax increases transit was always going to have to downscale to meet ridership levels, whether that is coverage or frequency.
ST continues to use these rose colored population growth estimates, which is how it sold ST 3, as does Seattle hoping for more tax revenue, which is how we get WLE and RR G and ST’s crazy ridership estimates.
Does anyone have numbers for this? My understanding is that even if you consider off-peak ridership the numbers are still down from pre-pandemic levels (although they are slowly recovering). It is just that peak ridership is down more.
I’m not sure if Metro every calculated peak versus off-peak ridership (at a system wide level). But consider a bus like the D. It had a peak express (the 15). That is gone. So it should actually get a little bit of a bump from that. But overall ridership is way down (from about 14,000 to about 9,000). I don’t think that is just peak-ridership.
This might be an interesting thing to measure. Of course Link complicates things Metro ridership has gone down a bit in part because riders switched (buses like the 41 are now gone). But given that overall ridership on Link is not that big (and ridership on the existing Link stations are way down) I think it is following the same trend. In other words, overall ridership is down, while peak-ridership is way down.
Correction: OFM estimated one million new residents would move to WA between 2020 and 2040. I accidentally write 2020 to 2024.
Oh, and the driver shortage (and cut backs in service) are probably most responsible for the loss of ridership outside of peak. Overall the transit system just isn’t as good.
What makes you state population is increasing?
State population is irrelevant. The county has grown every decade since it was created. From 2010 to 2020 it grew 17.5%. It is reasonable to assume that it will continue to grow (even if it doesn’t grow that fast). It remains a highly desirable place to live (given the very high housing prices). The biggest obstacle to continued growth are development regulations. If we don’t build many places to live then there won’t be many additional people in the county.
It would be foolish for Seattle voters to approve a new Metro county TBD to subsidize S. King Co.
No, they have never done that. More likely you would have a repeat of what happened in the past. The county tries to pass a levy to increase funding for Metro. It fails. The city increases funding for Metro — but only in the city.
I could see a similar approach for East Side cities (like Kirkland and Bellevue) being successful, although the vote would be closer. Of course there is still the possibility that it passes county-wide.
Hovering over all of this is the driver shortage (and before that a bus shortage). Some of the recent spending has shifted to things other than service for this reason. One project is designed to get ORCA cards to the people that need them. An increasing amount is spent on capital projects, which remain hugely popular (for good reason). But most of the money is still spent on extra service (at least it was as of the last report I saw). I think a similar proposal would pass easily (as it has in the past).
The biggest problem last time was that the city council approved a ballot measure that was way too small. The mayor wanted a smaller package. Whether this was based on political ignorance (fear of the measure passing) or disinterest in high-quality transit is hard to say. Hopefully this mayor (and council) don’t make that mistake again.
In my business we study population growth estimates very carefully before committing tens of millions of dollars to a project. There are federal sources (Census Bureau) and state sources (OFM), and there are other subscription services that measure population growth and migration (along with job growth and migration since our clients build office buildings). Some cities publish estimates. We also often hire a demographer to compare the different estimates because other than the Census Bureau they all tend to be influenced by something, who review data like unemployment claims, employment figures, B&O tax revenue, sales tax revenue, head tax numbers, transit ridership, anything that is measured and can help determine population changes.
I agree with Frank that the OFM future population estimates are suspect. In 2019 when the estimates were first issued, which is what the PSRC based its Vision 2050 statement on and the GMPC based its housing allocations on, they were seen as high but plausible due to ahistorical growth in Seattle and King Co. from 2010 to 2019.
Today the OFM acknowledges its estimate are likely high, and The Seattle Times did a story on the discrepancy between the OFM’s and Census Bureau’s estimates (OFM claims the Census Bureau misses illegal immigrants which is questionable), and the PSRC acknowledges its Vision Statement 2050 needs to be reevaluated (including considering EV’s and work from home in the carbon calculations) but neither is really interested because Inslee’s and the Legislature’s zoning, transportation and climate policies including carbon taxes rely upon one million new residents moving to WA by 2040, predominantly to King Co.
I can tell you we don’t believe that, and neither do the experts we hire. Neither does the Census Bureau. Job growth in Seattle and King Co. will remain flat, the high cost of living and work from home will keep population growth/migration low, and without foreign born legal immigrants the population would be declining (which means if Trump is elected population in this area could decline).
Government agencies like ST or Metro can make mistakes re: population growth estimates but if we do it we go bankrupt. It is true office projects are siloed through LLC’s, but if you go bust you never get financing for another project. It is the reverse incentive for ST. The project engineers want WLE because it is a huge feather in their cap and resume, and they are guaranteed 10 years of employment and become very powerful in the construction industry. If the project runs out of money they just assume there will be more from somewhere. They never go bankrupt. So like Inslee, the Legislature, PSRC, GMPC, OFM, Dept. of Commerce, ST WANTS and NEEDS one million new residents to move here or all their political policies and projects lose their validity and immediacy.
For those of us who can’t make a mistake about future population, right now we have stopped building, and the permit applications for office/commercial and multi-family housing in all of King Co. reflect that. Until we see data from a source other than OFM we will wait until the new residents show up.
It is pretty hard to tell investors to disbelieve the Census Bureau when investing $100 million. At least advise them to wait a bit. But ST doesn’t want to wait, and neither do the PSRC or GMPC, because they are afraid the Census Bureau is correct so they want to build NOW. They don’t want the truth about future population growth estimates because they don’t lose anything if they are wrong.
To me, the Census Bureau estimates are the most accurate. They however are at least a year behind the actual population. Right now the most current are July 1, 2023. 2024 for the county comes out next March and for Seattle and other cities it’s next May.
Note that these are estimates not forecasts.
The Census Bureau has access to Federal sources like SSI and Medicare records. Income Tax filings along with the normal birth and death stats and school enrollments.
While King County shows less than 2,000 more people from 2020 to 2023, the City of Seattle shows over 18,000 more people for the same time period. So while King County as a whole shows very little growth, Seattle itself does. Auburn, Kent, Federal Way, Shoreline, Issaquah and Renton have all experienced notable population loss since 2020 according to the Censys Bureau. Kirkland and Bellevue only lost a little. Redmond and Seattle gained.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashington/LFE305222
The likely answer is that it sits somewhere between both estimates. The state’s and census estimates also likely use different methodologies or formulas to reach their answer, one may weigh multiple different metrics differently (higher or lower) compared to the other. Neither is inherently bad, but different in how they reach their conclusion.
I’m not as pessimistic about growth as I still see many people moving to Seattle for a multitude of reasons. I also think some people are overvaluing WFH estimates as WFH rates have been moving back towards 2019 levels. WFH will either plateau or see growth similar to what existed pre pandemic. I have a friend who works at UW and she has a hybrid week, one day to WFH and the rest of week in office.
The Census extrapolates from American Community Survey data which uses a subsample methodology which can underestimate certain populations and is often inaccurate in areas with volatile populations (e.g. cities where people are moving in and out due to WFH rule changes, etc.).
The OFM uses drivers’ license counts, moving data, and housing permits and household size data to estimate populations within the state.
Both methods are imperfect, but when the data diverges, it’s worth analyzing the methodologies and understanding the likelyhood, as Zach notes, that the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Conspiracy theories about inflated population numbers don’t hold water.
Both Duvall and Snoqualmie have filed requests with the GMPC to have their housing growth targets lowered due to the 2020-2023 Census estimates. I imagine other eastside cities will do the same (as Al notes, most East King. Co. cities lost population while Seattle gained population during this period). A decision is expected before the end of the year because both cities are writing their comp. Plans that are due Dec. 31.
This will require the GMPC to re-evaluate the OFM population estimates vs. Census estimates for each city that requests so. This is somewhat of an unusual situation because the population for cities in King Co. has not declined in a while and I don’t think this procedure was anticipated.
I am wondering if this doesn’t have to do with King Co.’s affordable housing targets under 1220 because every city (except perhaps Sammamish) met their GMPC housing growth targets through 2044 with existing zoning, despite the questionable population growth estimates from OFM. The only difference is 1220 required nearly all of that future housing to go into multi-family housing in the commercial/multi-family zones and gave no credit for zoning capacity in the single family zones.
If cities are losing population and are estimated to continue losing population their GMPC housing growth targets should be lowered to reflect that since they were based on OFM future population estimates. It could be that south and east King Co. are looking at a downzoning since so many cities have zoning that exceeds even the OFM estimates, although my guess is the cities just want to maintain the zoning they have even though it exceeds their likely growth needs. Downzoning is very difficult due to property owner expectations.
It is ironic that there has been so much disagreement over upzoning on this blog when population growth figures support downzoning for most of the county.
This goes to a point I made earlier. Agencies like ST, and the PSRC and builders and realtors, want to lock in zoning changes and projects based on the OFM’s future population growth estimates through 2040 NOW before they are reevaluated lower because they don’t trust OFM’s estimates in 2024 anymore than my clients do.
The GMPC is a little different in that it simply allocates jobs and housing targets based on REAL population growth figures, so if a city’s population declines and more important county population declines the GMPC can’t allocate targets based on fiction or political ideology.
Any city council has the power to upzone. But it can’t be forced to upzone without a valid reason, which is population growth. The GMPC disfavors upzoning beyond population needs because it wants to spread jobs and housing throughout the region to create self contained urban villages.
The reality is the PSRC’s Vision 2050 was obsolete on the day it was adopted in 2020 that estimated that by 2050 the region’s population would be 5.8 million, but never anticipated a pandemic.
But it can’t be forced to upzone without a valid reason, which is population growth.
What? That is not why you upzone. You upzone because prices are too expensive. Consider this study: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf. This is the summary:
This paper argues that in much of America the price of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction. The price of housing is significantly higher than construction costs only in a limited number of areas, such as California and some eastern cities. In those areas, we argue that high prices have little to do with conventional models with a free market for land. Instead, our evidence suggests that zoning and other land use controls play the dominant role in making housing expensive.
The paper is about twenty years old. The conclusions have never been refuted. Other papers have come to the same conclusion (usually via different means). The only thing that has changed is the number of cities for which the price of housing is significantly higher because of zoning and other land use controls. It used to be California and some eastern cities. Now it includes Seattle and probably a lot more cities across the country. This is why cities like Minneapolis and Spokane have liberalized their zoning code. It works. It reduces the cost of housing.
“Both Duvall and Snoqualmie have filed requests with the GMPC to have their housing growth targets”
Good, they’re outside the ST district where growth is supposed to be channeled.
Seattle’s population growth year to year is more than zero. We don’t need to look at a million coming in twenty years: it’s enough to see that year to year growth is positive, so transit service should increase from year to year, both for that and because we’re way behind.
If the Eastside truly shrank in the past four years, that’s an interesting reversal, but it’s probably not by much. We’d need a residential vacancy rate above 5-10% for several years before we could consider suspending or reversing the housing-growth policy. Otherwise may may get caught flat-footed again the way we have so many times in the past thirty years, underestimating growth.
Seattle’s population is increasing faster because it allows more housing construction than the rest of King County does. People can only live in units that exist and are vacant when they move in.
The single-family house supply continues to be very tight, as it has been since 2008, because people aren’t selling like they used to. If the Eastside’s shrinkage means that single-family home availability has gotten substantially easier there, that somehow failed to make front-page news, and all those people who’ve been looking for a house for a year and not finding one should go there.
What is wrong with upzoning even if the population declines? In that case, I assume nothing will be built because the market does not support it? Is there some downside to that?
“Both Duvall and Snoqualmie have filed requests with the GMPC to have their housing growth targets”
I find it odd that Duvall and Snoqualmie have growth targets at all. If the multi-county agency is trying to funnel growth into the right places then it isn’t clear there should be any growth in those areas. It is essentially suburban sprawl or at best a small independent town (in which case any growth should be centered around the middle of town).
A city like Seattle on the other hand, should have a huge growth target. There is huge demand to live here. The zoning plays a huge part in pushing costs up, which makes life much harder for low income people (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattles-longstanding-urban-village-strategy-for-growth-needs-reworking-new-report-says/). It is the center of commerce and already has density, which makes it better from a regional financial perspective (it is easier to provide goods and services).
Snoqualmie, Duvall, and the other Snoqualmie Valley cities should remain small towns in a protected agricultural and natural area. King County defined the core of the “urban” area with the ST district boundary, so it ends at Redmond-Sammamish-Issaquah-Renton-Kent. That’s where growth quotas should be. The Snoqualmie Valley cities can have tiny ones, but only tiny ones.
Is Snoqualmie Ridge a good thing or not? It doubled the population of Snoqualmie or more, and I read the Ridge residents don’t shop much in the city center or contribute in civic affairs. The Ridge is walkable I guess and has a few everyday shores that people don’t have to leave the neighborhood for, and I think it has pedestrian cut-throughs and trails, but it’s a ten-minute drive through emptiness to Issaquah and the rest of the metro area. So developments like the Ridge really should be closer in where they could be more on frequent transit lines and the driving distance to the metro core area is less.
Covington and Maple Valley have also grown outside the ST district. Since they’re already so big and closer to Kent and have large stores like Fred Meyer, I don’t mind as much accepting them into the core urbanized area with growth targets. But the Snoqualmie Valley was supposed to remain rural small towns.
One of the PSRC’s Vision goals is Urban villages that require fewer and shorter trips by residents to get to work or meet their daily needs to reduce carbon, road widening costs, and time wasted in traffic.
As a result, the GMPC allocates future housing AND job targets to every regional city based on estimated regional population growth. The GMPC recommends that cities not upzone beyond these targets to even out jobs and housing among cities in the region based on their current size, although some cities like Redmond and Bellevue accepted higher targets than required, which allows other cities to accept smaller targets. Development and jobs create a lot of revenue for cities so they naturally compete unless like Sammamish they don’t want either because the citizens are so wealthy.
The PSRC since around 2006, including the 2020 Vision Statement, has primarily focused on TOD and public transit, never imagining work from home would spread so quickly and downtown Seattle would deteriorate so quickly. This was never the 2050 Vision which was very urban oriented and ASSUMED huge population growth.
I think the “urban village” concept was more about Seattle neighborhoods, not remote east King Co. cities. It just shows how hard it is to control where and how people want to work and live. The PSRC has always promoted “urbanism” but its policies are doing the opposite, including spending $152 billion to run light rail from Everett to Tacoma to Redmond with poor intra-urban light rail in downtown Seattle and Bellevue.
I agree with Ross that in practice this creates more sprawl. It is also why I don’t understand legislation like HB 1110 that increases density in all these outer residential cities and neighborhoods. This is directly contrary to the goals in the 2035 and 2050 Vision Statements. That density needs to be more urban in such a huge area with a relatively small population. We are losing our urban core which means we lose our urban retail core that is hard to replicate in 50 small cities. Imagine “upzoning” Duvall when downtown Seattle is losing retail and urban density.
Places without zoning sprawl. Zoning is mostly about condensing uses, from commercial to housing to retail, because all three complement one another. Office work was what forced people to urbanize even though they didn’t want to live in the urban areas, which created retail density and more urban housing density because housing often follows vibrant retail (as opposed to the other way around).
I’ve said it before but Pacific Northwesterners are a complex bunch. They don’t like real housing density, a lot don’t like any, but like most like retail density so regional transportation like Link tries to bridge those two which was facilitated by making everyone commute to downtown Seattle for work.
I think 2024 has turned out much differently than the PSRC could have imagined in 2020. First the predicted population growth estimates look highly inflated. Our new zoning like 1110 and urban villages are promoting sprawl as is our transit like light rail. This is hurting our urban cores which hurts retail density which attracts housing density when the PSRC has always focused on urban vibrancy but took it for granted. As a result people drive as much as they ever did even with work from home.
No one is going to move to Constantine/Harrell’s CID N/S utopia if it is a retail desert, and it is very, very hard to create retail density because it must compete with existing retail density and a population can support only so much retail per capita.
Oh well. I hope the requests by Duvall and other cities force the GMPC to examine OFM’s population estimates which forces the state, cities and PSRC to reexamine what they are trying to accomplish with zoning when our current population is likely it, at least county wide. Way too much of our zoning and transit is based on future population growth that today looks unlikely.
Do we want to move more and more residents to Duvall or to Seattle’s outer residential neighborhoods that have little transit or retail at the expense of our limited and struggling urban cores. Because that is what our planning is doing.
Nothing is easier than zoning and creating a single family zone. Minimum lot size, use limits, regulatory limits and there you go. But no one talks about the great single family zones of the world and tourists (who usually come from SFH neighborhoods ) don’t want to go there. People write about the great CITIES of the world, whether 775,000 residents or 10 million, and what they mean is the urban/retail core. That usually doesn’t begin with moving the limited number of residents in a city of 775,000 in a city that is 142 sq miles to Duvall or West Seattle or Blue Ridge, but that is what our regional planning and 1110 do. As a region we are suburbanizing although I think that is in the region’s genes, at least when it comes to housing. If you want real urbanism you need people who like real housing density, not Ballard or Capitol Hill, let alone Duvall (which may be lively although I have never visited that great city).
I don’t see how upzoning in Seattle (or Bellevue or Redmond) causes sprawl. If anything isn’t it the exact opposite? The city is more or less fully developed, and any new development will be infill development. It would certainly be better if any new housing is built in a walkable neighborhood, but at the end of the day, a new unit in Seattle is another unit that’s closer to a regional job center and closer to regional amenities. And any new unit in Seattle takes a bit of housing pressure off of faraway exurbs like Duvall or Monroe
> I don’t see how upzoning in Seattle (or Bellevue or Redmond) causes sprawl. If anything isn’t it the exact opposite?
@John D
For “fact check” statements ironically I’d take them with a large grain of salt. I really don’t know where they come up with these ideas and then try citing them as fact.
> Places without zoning sprawl. Zoning is mostly about condensing uses, from commercial to housing to retail, because all three complement one another. Office work was what forced people to urbanize even though they didn’t want to live in the urban areas, which created retail density and more urban housing density because housing often follows vibrant retail (as opposed to the other way around).
Kind of a weird way to talk about how American zoning is about separation of uses. Yes all three complement each other — that is why oddly American zoning typically forces them all to be far from each other and forces one to travel further than needed to reach each one.
> Any city council has the power to upzone. But it can’t be forced to upzone without a valid reason, which is population growth. The GMPC disfavors upzoning beyond population needs because it wants to spread jobs and housing throughout the region to create self contained urban villages.
I don’t really understand how that helps spread jobs and housing throughout the region if those same areas are not upzoning to build more?
> Do we want to move more and more residents to Duvall or to Seattle’s outer residential neighborhoods that have little transit or retail at the expense of our limited and struggling urban cores. Because that is what our planning is doing.
Really what “Fact Check” is trying to advocate for is saying: don’t upzone Seattle beyond a few corridors. While upzoning farther areas into single family homes is suburban sprawl, they are somehow wildly tying upzoning townhouses/apartments in Seattle as the same sprawl.
Again they just are against townhouses/apartments. And then are working backwards to justify using some convoluted and flawed argument.
“The GMPC recommends that cities not upzone beyond these targets”
If that has really crept into the GMPC, it should be deleted. The capacity quotas are supposed to be minmums, not maximums.
“to even out jobs and housing among cities in the region based on their current size”
The larger and closer-in cities especially shouldn’t feel the targets are a ceiling. If all the growth occurs there, that’s a good thing.
We aren’t in a situation where far-out isolated cities like Issaquah or Maple Valley are clamoring for massive growth and would build tons of apartments if we don’t stop them. So we don’t need to worry about cities zoning too much.
If the total capacity increase exceeds the GMPC’s targets, that would allow the county to relieve some of the shortage backlog the GMPC doesn’t recognize. The GMPC focuses only on newcomers, not on the past shortages since 2003 that have driven housing prices through the roof. That’s what King County and the cities keep ignoring, or they say it needs to be solved (150,000 units) but then does nothing about it.
“The PSRC has always promoted “urbanism” but its policies are doing the opposite”
It’s an uphill battle against TV/movie/advertising propaganda about “the American dream” of a house, yard, and car. And regulations promoting those, including zoning, parking minimums, and traffic engineering — that shortchanges transit, walking, and bikes.
“I think the “urban village” concept was more about Seattle neighborhoods, not remote east King Co. cities. ”
It originated in Seattle in the 1990s to balance multifamily/walkable growth in a few neighborhoods and preserve the single-family character of the rest. The alternatives would be making the entire city lowrise (except perhaps the outer periphery like western Magnolia or the Lake Washington shore), or freezing villages at their then 2-4 story level.
King County needed a term for regional growth centers, which are like the largest urban villages (e.g., U-District), but not like smaller urban villages like Mt Baker or Beacon Hill.
Are the Spring District and future northwest Issaquah urban villages? It’s just a matter of terminology.
Also, proper urban villages should have a balance of housing and jobs, so that the people who work there could theoretically live there and vice-versa. Seattle villages like Ballard and Lake City have a better balance. The Spring District is job-heavy and housing-light, which is a problem because it means all the workers couldn’t fit there and would have to commute from Woodinville or elsewhere even if they don’t want to. Cities prefer jobs because of sales-tax revenue, so you have to make sure they include enough housing in their villages and don’t shift the burden on other cities.
The Issaquah Highlands is an urban village because that’s what New Urbanist developments are intended to do, and the Highlands has done better with density, walkability, and in-village retail than Snoqualmie Ridge or Redmond Ridge and near-frequent-transit location as far as I can tell.
“Places without zoning sprawl.”
That’s not what happened before zoning (1920s) or more restrictive zoning (1970s). Most Seattle neighborhoods had both residential and commercial growth, and 3-4 story apartments scattered all over the place. All that came to a halt with zoning restrictions, when commercial and apartments were prohibited on 70% of the land.
There was a problem with private covenants before zoning, where developers prohibited commercial or multifamily to keep lower-income people and minorities out. But that was mostly in the well-to-do neighborhoods, not everywhere.
Private covenants since have evolved into homeowners’ associations and the like. They can no longer discriminate on race, but they often still block apartments, or force everybody to keep their doors the same color.
“Zoning is mostly about condensing uses, from commercial to housing to retail, because all three complement one another.”
Ha ha ha. Zoning was first about forcibly separating uses, or prohibiting uses within a city. It was pushed by the same well-to-do people who spread private covenants. Zoning put the force of law behind these restrictions and extended it to the entire city/county.
Only now, when cities realized they can’t cope with population growth and keep economic growth and access to services humming, did they finally relent on significant upzones in “regional growth centers” and urban villages. That may look like consolidating things, but it’s really just an exception to the general restrictive policies. If those restrictive policies hadn’t been there, commercial and multifamily growth would have happened more organically and evenly throughout the closer-in neighborhoods — like it did before the 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s.
We could have a compromise policy where cities like Seattle, Bellevue, Shoreline, and Burien set 50% of the land to a minimum of lowrise/commercial/residential. That would be 20-30% more land than now, areas that are currently single-family (at the relaxed x-plex/ADU standard). They could further put those areas around and linking existing urban villages, to leverage existing transit/services/walkability rather than making them isolated.
“I think the “urban village” concept was more about Seattle neighborhoods, not remote east King Co. cities. ”
It’s a feel-good phrase that can mean just about anything. It has the adjective “urban” that is a euphemism for denser and more walkable than suburbia. Then the noun “village” sounds warm and fuzzy ala Clinton’s “It Takes a Village”.
It’s a trendy menu name for higher density (subjective about how much is enough) mixed-use areas. But its very subjective about what counts versus what should count – even inside the City of Seattle.
There are parts of “urban villages” in Seattle with 40-foot height limits and only one story retail nearby, for example.
The specific “villages” I see mentioned the most in Seattle are University Village and Westwood Village. They’re mostly retail centers with parking and only recently do they have high density residential in them.
Wesley, I think you misunderstand what I wrote.
Zoning began in the 1930’s to segregate uses in the urban cities. It wasn’t zoning that moved people to the suburbs. It was cheaper housing, better mobility (cars and roads), and an escape from an unpleasant urban experience because zoning to disallow disfavorable uses in the urban core was in its infancy. There was so much vacant land at that time no one worried about sprawl.
There are two main types of zoning: use zoning and regulatory zoning (scale of structure to lot size). A lot conflate the two. Rezoning a SFH lot “multi-family” but keeping the SFH regulatory limits is just SFH zoning.
You are partially correct this use zoning segregated some uses, but not retail and commercial/office. Until work from home the paradigm was TOD/transit to more and more remote areas to allow people to commute to their jobs in the urban core to work to reduce traffic congestion (and the cost to widen roads) and carbon where they naturally dined and shopped creating a vibrant urban retail core.
This was the PSRC’s main focus in its 2035 and 2050 Vision Statements adopted in 2010 and 2020: TOD that near light rail would allow workers and shoppers to commute more easily from great distances because the OFM was predicting large sustained population growth throughout the county. The PSRC always imagined an urban core in Seattle that contained and condensed offices and retail, like the last 50 years (due to workers having to commute to downtown Seattle).
But things changed unexpectedly:
1. A large percentage of urban office workers began to work from home. These tended to be high wealth and live outside the urban core (or moved outside the urban core).
2. The expected new residents did not show up. Instead of Amazon adding 25,000 new jobs in Bellevue it plans to move 25,000 workers from Seattle. It is a zero sum game now. Some still want to zone as if the OFM estimates are correct when it is beginning to look like county wide population growth will be flat. So where do you want existing residents to live, work and shop? Duvall?
3. In 2022 the GMPC calculated King Co. has EXISTING zoning to accommodate 800,000 new residents. That’s our problem. Too much land zoned for development pre-GMA. So who are you upzoning for and where? We are just moving existing residents from A to B. The entire problem and the point of the GMA is we have zoned too much of King Co. that is 2200 sq miles for development.
4. Although I don’t think the PSRC ever thought it would be a significant factor pre-work from home and before the decline of downtown Seattle, its concept of “urban villages” that really applied to residential neighborhoods bordering downtown Seattle got applied to all of King Co. Suddenly every city from Duvall to Snoqualmie to Carnation was suppose to be its own jobs/retail/housing urban village. So the GMPC based on OFM population estimates dutifully allocated future jobs and population growth (except there hasn’t been any) county wide because the PSRC requires proportionate allocations to every city so every city has jobs and retail to be an urban village when the county does not have the population to support that. The irony is cities already had existing zoning to accommodate these new housing targets based on OFM estimates through 2044.
What these factors are doing today is suburbanizing the region. We see it in the commercial and retail decline of downtown Seattle while the suburbs are doing well WITH THE SAME TOTAL NUMBER OF COUNTY RESIDENTS. . The fact is wealthy suburbs don’t need zoning or jobs to attract wealthy residents. They go there for the housing and schools alone.
Meanwhile 1220 and 20 years of PSRC zoning guidance mean all this new zoning will be in the “commercial” centers of small towns like Duvall because supposedly that is where the transit and retail will be, many of which don’t have downtowns. It is like someone shattered the Seattle urban core and spread the pieces throughout the county to create 100 mini Seattles, but the reality is these smaller and medium cities can’t really sustain vibrant retail density. That is why in this region with our suburban zoning we need private malls to do that because everyone wants vibrant, dense, walkable retail, even if they work from home or live in Duvall.
HB 1110 simply doubles down on this suburbanization , and is the predominant form of American zoning whereas European zoning sets strict growth boundaries and focuses density from the “center” out. Duvall is suddenly suppose to double its available housing and jobs when County wide population is flat. When some question whether zoning is to discourage sprawl I wonder what they think the point of the GMA was. More sprawl?
This is the antitheses of the original intent of the GMA in 1992 that sought to limit sprawl with growth boundaries and try and condense uses although the zoning genie was out of the bag. For 20 years the PSRC — has advocated for DENSITY, for housing, commercial and retail. Now we are de-densifying.
I understand those who support our current zoning and planning approach as long as they understand they are suburbanizing the region even more than it already is, and we can see that from the dramatic decline in jobs and retail in downtown Seattle.
It just seems so ironic to me that the state adopts the GMA to set growth boundaries, that by then were near the county border, and then decides let’s upzone those outer bands of the growth boundaries when we haven’t seen any population growth in King Co. since 2020.
I agree with Al that the term “urban village” is a feel good word without any real zoning meaning, except that how it is being applied with other factors is increasing the suburbanism of this area because having lived in real urban cities Seattle is the only regional city that could be truly urban but is going backwards. Why would anyone want to upzone Duvall when county population is flat? My job depends on “urbanism” but I tell our clients this region is deurbanizing and I have come to accept that is what a majority of residents want: single family neighborhoods and malls. Or the regional planners wouldn’t be doing what they are.
Except for obvious health hazards, like building a school next to a refinery or a freeway (which is, oddly, allowed), we should simply unzone. Just get rid of all zoning. Period. Anything less is at least classist, if not also racist.
Zoning began in the 1930’s to segregate uses in the urban cities.
No. I think you should fact check yourself, Fact Check. I suggest Wikipedia — allow me to quote a couple early paragraphs (minus all of the references):
Zoning laws in major cities originated with the Los Angeles zoning ordinances of 1904 and the New York City 1916 Zoning Resolution. Early zoning regulations were in some cases motivated by racism and classism, particularly with regard to those mandating single-family housing. Zoning ordinances did not allow African-Americans moving into or using residences that were occupied by majority whites due to the fact that their presence would decrease the value of home. The constitutionality of zoning ordinances was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. in 1926.
Low-density residential zoning is far more predominating in U.S. cities than in other countries. The housing shortage in many metropolitan areas, coupled with racial residential segregation, has led to increased public focus and political debates on zoning laws. Studies indicate that strict zoning regulations constrain the supply of housing and inflate housing prices, and increase homelessness, as well as contribute to inequality and a weaker economy.
[End Quote] Some of the laws are designed to limit the heights of buildings. Other are designed to limit uses (e. g. factories only in this part of town). But the regulations that have had the most influence on development in America have nothing to do with either one. They are not designed to “concentrate uses” as you put it, but to concentrate people. There is a reason why they call it a “ghetto”. The phrase “other side of the tracks” was often meant literally (black people were forced to live on one side of the tracks). Even now, in most US cities you can see how the law was designed to put poor people (or people of color) in areas that weren’t that desirable (e. g. on busy streets or in neighborhoods close to the factories).
Then there is the automobile, which America embraced like no other country. The rise of zoning after Euclid went along with it. Cars were both a blessing and a curse. They allowed for much better mobility, but they were a danger to people walking the streets. They also take up a lot of space. Thus you often have zoning which forbids a grocery store in a residential neighborhood (to prevent outsiders from driving to it and making traffic worse). Where they do allow it they require parking (so that people can park on the street for other purposes).
Consider Seattle — one of the most left-leaning, liberal cities in the country. In *most* of the city there are limits on what can be built. Never mind that a small corner grocery store is illegal. Never mind that lot sizes are way too big. Never mind that there are height limits or what I would consider ridiculous setbacks. Ignore all that BS for a second and just assume I persevere and build a house. It can easily house several families. How many can live in it (legally)? At most three (and that was a recent addition*). This has nothing to do with the physical dimensions of the building that others might find objectionable. It has nothing to do with “concentrating uses” (quite the opposite). This has everything to do with a long-standing tradition of discouraging low-income people from living in nicer areas.
* The rules for ADUs and DADUs were changed recently. You are allowed one of each, but there are rules limiting their size in proportion to the main house. This has led to some bizarre looking new construction. Basically a big house connected to a second house (thus qualifying as an attached dwelling unit although the door is always locked) and a third house off to the side. There can be only one legal owner for the land, which means that at least two of the houses are either rentals or condos. If this sounds like a ridiculous set of affairs that was caused by overzealous regulations it is important to remember that this was actually a step in the right direction.
Ross, I never said that zoning was not partly racially motivated, or applied with a racially disparate impact later on. That was why federal law made such covenants or zoning illegal in 1968. Part of 1220 was requiring every regional city to scrub their codes for any racially disparate impacts and submitting their findings to the County. Not surprisingly no city has any racially motivated or disparate impacts in their codes.
If you are going to quote an article, even Wiki, to make your point please quote the rest of the Wiki article you quote that is contrary to your point:
“The purported need for formal zoning in America arose at the turn of the twentieth century as cities such as New York, experiencing rapid urbanization and growth in industry, felt a growing need to reduce congestion, stabilize property values, combat poor urban design,[33] and protect residents from issues such as crowded living conditions, outbreaks of disease, and industrial pollution,[3] through legal means.
Edward M. Bassett, author of the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the United States, wrote in 1922:
“Skyscrapers would be built to unnecessary height, their cornices projecting into the street and shutting out light and air. The lower floors needed artificial light in the daytime. Business centers instead of being rationally spread out were intensively congested. Transit and street facilities were overwhelmed…[33]”
“In 1916, New York City adopted the first zoning regulations to apply citywide as a reaction to construction of the Equitable Building (which still stands at 120 Broadway). The building towered over the neighboring residences, completely covering all available land area within the property boundary, blocking windows of neighboring buildings and diminishing the availability of sunshine for the people in the affected area.[47]
“Bassett’s zoning map established height restrictions for the entire city, expressed as ratios between maximum building height and the width of adjacent streets. Residential zones were the most restrictive, limiting building height to no higher than the width of adjoining streets. The law also regulated land use, preventing factories and warehousing from encroaching on retail districts.[48]
“These laws, written by a commission headed by Edward Bassett and signed by Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, became the blueprint for zoning in the rest of the country, partly because Bassett headed the group of planning lawyers who wrote The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act that was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1924 and accepted almost without change by most states. The effect of these zoning regulations on the shape of skyscrapers was illustrated famously by architect and illustrator Hugh Ferriss.”[49]”
Another good article is this article from the Bloomberg Justic Lab that explains what led up to zoning laws The Birth of Zoning Codes, a History – Bloomberg (which really were just a formal application of nuisance laws to prevent the nuisance in the first place). You tend to think the birth of zoning had to do with the suburbs which didn’t even exist at the time.
As noted in the Wiki article, some cities have no zoning, such as Houston, although Houston has begun to roll that back because a city with no use zoning is generally not a pleasant place to live. I have spent some time in Houston and agree. Or do you think Houston is a model Seattle and King Co. should follow? You write about Europe without understanding European cities have some of the most restrictive zoning of all, including historical designations, and some of the most expensive housing.
If there was a point I was trying to make it was King Co. has existing zoning for 800,000 new residents, mostly in cities’ town centers because that is what the PSRC has advocated for since the early 2000’s. You and some on this blog begin your zoning argument with the assumption millions more residents will move to this huge county and King Co. will need more than 800,000 new dwellings. According to the Census Bureau that looks unlikely.
The GMPC — which is much less ideological than the PSRC — knew that when it allocated housing targets to cities in King Co. Through 2044 every city already had existing zoning that would meet those targets and so didn’t have to upzone if they didn’t want to.
What you are really advocating for are urban villages. You want to allocate housing and limited jobs to all cities in King Co. proportionally, and to the their remote single-family zones, which is what the GMPC did. So Duvall must upzone to become an urban village. Meanwhile the one possible place for true urbanism, downtown Seattle, withers.
You also think this will repeal the single-family zones because that is a primary goal of urbanists in this region because they think SFH zones are classist. Two problems with that:
1. HB 1110 allows cities to maintain their regulatory limits in the single-family zone, so as I pointed out in my original post use zoning is really determined by regulatory zoning. Pretty hard to build a multi-plex on a lot under 10,000 sf if the FAR is 40% and so is the impervious surface limit.
2. King Co. under 1220 has determined that basically the new housing targets from the GMPC must be in existing dense zones with walkable transit and retail so they can possibly be affordable to someone earning below 60% AMI. This includes Seattle. Someone earlier on this blog posted that the average cost of a relatively small SFH house/lot on Mercer Island under a standard mortgage is $16,000/mo. (and that does not factor in a number of the houses in the average that are tear downs and will be replaced with $4 million homes). I don’t care how many times you divide a small residential lot, if the base cost is $16,000/mo. before the cost of new multi-family construction when every unit must have its own kitchen none of the units will be affordable and each “poor” resident will need a car because there is no walkable transit because Metro is going broke. The worst thing that could happen for Metro is eastside cities that today get little transit service compared to the taxes they pay start to demand Metro service to their SFH neighborhoods like subarea equity.
So it is those who advocate for putting new housing in SFH zones that are classist because the new housing will never be affordable to someone earning less than 100% AMI.
I don’t care about the SFH zones. I care about the one possible urban area, downtown Seattle. The problem is the “urbanists” in this region are really suburbanists every other place in this country. They think putting four units on a SFH lot in Wallingford is urbanism. I have come to accept that, unfortunately. You are not urbanists. The only place any urbanist can live in this area is Belltown or downtown Seattle, but the raison d’etre of urbanism — dense, walkable, vibrant retail — is being destroyed so I have to go to a mall to find that.
So you go on upzoning Duvall and Snoqualmie and Mountlake Terrace and God knows where in this massive county — that the county demands goes into those cities’ dense zones — and I guess I will just have to go to the mall for my “urbanism”.
“The specific “villages” I see mentioned the most in Seattle are University Village and Westwood Village”
University Village is the name of the shopping center, which predates the urban village movement.
Westwood Village tends to be forgotten, but the city said in the 2000s it’s intended to grow into an urban center (then called “hub urban village” the middle level), which is characterized by a couple large office/institutional/apartment buildings plus smaller multistory retail/apartments. Like Mt Baker, it hasn’t grown into anything resembling that yet. I think most people forget Westwood Village exists, and I wonder how many local residents realize how large it’s intended to become.
“Zoning began in the 1930’s to segregate uses in the urban cities. It wasn’t zoning that moved people to the suburbs. It was cheaper housing, better mobility (cars and roads), and an escape from an unpleasant urban experience because zoning to disallow disfavorable uses in the urban core was in its infancy.”
Some elaboration and other perspectives.
The American cities that grew in the 19th century were mostly industrial centers, so the factories were right near downtown. They were polluting and dangerous, and workers lived next to them in overcrowded, badly maintained tenements where diseases could easily spread. So a lot of people wanted to escape that.
Private covenants started in the 1880s to make a few peripheral neighborhood developments exclusive. There were two motivations for zoning: (1) to keep polluting factories and “pig farms” out of residential areas, and (2) to keep apartments and lower-income/minorities out of the better half of the city by making it too expensive and impractical to live there. The first part could have been done with simply public health regulations. The second part is where zoning fulfilled the vision of private covenants on a citywide basis.
“Suburbs” in the early 1900s referred to what are now outlying city neighborhoods (although some are separately incorporated). It wasn’t possible to have far-flung suburbs when only 10% of families had a car. But by the 50s most families had a car, and the government had started subsidizing greenfield development outside of cities.
“There was so much vacant land at that time no one worried about sprawl.”
More than that, they didn’t foresee the consequences of car-dependent, low-density, use-separated cities. It’s one thing if a few wealthy neighborhoods are like that. It’s another thing if entire cities are, and four-fifths of the metropolitan area’s population and land lives in them.
Even with the new tract housing and freeways, people in the 1950s thought fathers would continue to work downtown, mothers would stay at home, the existing level of transit would continue to be there (buses, streetcars, intercity trains and buses), and the best shopping and entertainment would remain downtown. They didn’t imagine jobs would move to the suburbs, city centers would be gutted, and in some cities the primary (or only) retail and social interaction would be at gas-station mini marts and big box power centers off freeway exits with nothing around them.
The largest growth quotas are in the largest cities as they should be. Why are you focusing on cities like Duvall with a small growth quota? It’s small enough that we can ignore it, and it doesn’t make much difference to the county’s overall population or where most people live. And it won’t make everybody live and shop in urban villages. The villages are far too small to fit more than a quarter of the people, so most people will live outside them.
You wrote “Zoning began in the 1930’s to segregate uses in the urban cities. ”
Now you cite this to back up your case:
“The purported need for formal zoning in America arose at the turn of the twentieth century
The turn of the 20th century is thirty years before 1930! American zoning goes back way before then. Hell, Euclid was 1926! The most important Supreme Court case ever involving zoning occurred four years before you think zoning began! And yes, I’ve read plenty of articles (as well as a book) about zoning — my point was you had your timing way off. The 1930s were the Great Depression. Stating that zoning started during the Great Depression is simply wrong, and confusing for people reading the comment.
The emphasis is off as well. Yes, zoning started because people didn’t want to live next to skyscrapers and factories. If that is all that zoning was, this country would be very different. Seattle would probably have twice as many people.
If there was a point I was trying to make it was King Co. has existing zoning for 800,000 new residents,
So what? That is like being in the USA in 1973 and saying “it doesn’t matter what OPEC does, because there is plenty of oil in the US and Norway”. Just because there is enough supply (theoretically) doesn’t mean that it can reach the market. A lot of the wells won’t be developed for years. Likewise, a lot of people won’t sell or develop their land to add more people.
It is almost beside the point. There is a housing shortage in Seattle. It is caused by regulations. This is not really debated amongst economists for the same reason that climatologists don’t debate whether global warming is real or not. They argue about the effects on particular areas.
What you are really advocating for are urban villages.
No, I’m not. I’m advocating for a far more liberal zoning code in Seattle. I would like to see Seattle itself add 800,000 units — maybe more. A lot more people would move here and/or prices would drop. If you build enough units then eventually the cost of living here is not dictated by the zoning but by the cost of construction (which is a lot less). I also think this can be achieved without allowing six story buildings everywhere. Various cities or areas (Montreal, Brooklyn) are relative low in height, but are high density. There is no reason why we can’t allow the same.
I would prefer not to see sprawl in places like Duvall, but I think the various cities are far more responsible for that than the PSRC. I’m not saying they PSRC is doing a great job but if Seattle (and some other nearby suburbs like Bellevue) allowed a lot more housing then there would be less pressure to allow another sprawling subdivision.
@Fact Check
Houston doesn’t have zoning laws but it has other requirements that limit the type of development. I’m not familiar with all the details, but I do know that Houston has very high parking mandates, which as I’m sure you know heavily incentivizes the city to sprawl outwards.
I can’t speak for everyone, but what I would like is for Seattle (and other large, high-demand cities like Bellevue or Redmond) to zone for a large amount of growth in “urban villages” and upzone residential areas to something that would allow up to around 3-6 units per parcel. Ideally the majority of the growth and the majority of more affordable units would be concentrated in the “urban villages”, and residential areas could absorb any excess growth. Lower-density residential areas would likely contain the more expensive housing.
If population stops growing, that’s fine, then nothing will be built due to a lack of demand. If population does grow, then we would have enough capacity to absorb it within the larger cities instead of forcing construction to sprawl outward into the exurbs. A 4-plex built in Wallingford is going to take housing pressure off of even worse locations like Lynnwood or Mill Creek.
@ Fact Check
Look you are just starting out with a complete flawed history of zoning and vastly understate the problem of how much housing is needed.
Zoning was originally to separate out industrial/residential uses, but now present day local zoning is more about just “protecting single family homes” rarely to do with environmental health — after all why are do cities approving apartments near freeways over better land near single family homes.
The housing shortage is even before the pandemic, and while Seattle has built more housing relative to jobs compared to other regions like San Francisco it is still not enough .
> HB 1110 simply doubles down on this suburbanization , and is the predominant form of American zoning whereas European zoning sets strict growth boundaries and focuses density from the “center” out.
Look you seriously are conflating and misinterpreting so much stuff it is really hard to teach everything here. It’s like someone stating dividing 5 by 2 is impossible because it’s not a whole number after divided.
> It is like someone shattered the Seattle urban core and spread the pieces throughout the county to create 100 mini Seattles
European zoning literally allows that all the time and has much more denser areas around their towns. Also they are much denser around their city areas, I really don’t know how you are arguing for that while also being against Seattle upzoning it’s single family homes.
Again your arguments are just some weird justification to not upzone apartments.
> So it is those who advocate for putting new housing in SFH zones that are classist because the new housing will never be affordable to someone earning less than 100% AMI.
Ahh there it is.
Maybe you might want to check out some European zoning maps compare them to Seattle’s and then get back to us.
Yikes! A discussion of the history of zoning in a third level thread — mixed in with growth management and population estimates!
Let’s not go there!
I will say the “zoning” is a legal “tool” for land use regulation. It’s been used differently over time for both good (like separating smelly polluting factors from homes) and bad (like racial discrimination). Its applicability greatly expanded after Ambler v Euclid. Still, it’s just a tool. It’s like trying to describe the history and usage of a mallet.
Ross, read Mike’s post. He gets it.
Sometimes I don’t think you read what others actually write. I said zoning began in the 1930’s. That is because The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1924. The “need” for zoning obviously began before that with the issues Mike and I list. For example, the “need” for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act began before both acts were passed. Like by over 100 years.
You may want to see 800,000 more housing units in Seattle, but the builders won’t build more housing than is needed and current regional planning is based on spreading the actual amount of housing that will be needed throughout the county. It is why building applications have plummeted. According to the GMPC existing zoning can meet that need through 2044, even based on OFM estimates. Even if Seattle did build 800,000 new units, 1220 would mandate almost all of them go into existing commercial and multi-family zones so not wealthy people can live in them, although what builder is going to build more housing than there are buyers. So your obsession with the single family zones would not be sated. We can’t design county wide planning and zoning around your obessesion with the single family zones.
I have said this a dozen times but will say it one more time. There is not a shortage of market rate housing in Seattle or in King Co. There is not a shortage of zoning, even if the OFM estimates are correct. There is a shortage of AFFORDABLE housing, housing that is affordable to someone earning below 60% AMI. I agree with the PSRC and County under 1220 that housing should go into existing dense zones where there is walkable retail and transit, except no one knows who will build it.
But, as Mike gets to in his post, in 2024 we need to think about zoning that preserves something very hard to create and very special: the urban core. No one ever writes about the greatest single family zones in the world. They write about the greatest cities in the world, and they are not talking about the single family zones that ring those cities like in Paris. Or Houston.
The problem is the self styled “urbanists” in Seattle and on this blog are really suburbanists.
First we need to return the jobs to the urban core, even if 2-3 days/week. We just spent a fortune on light rail (and Sounder) to make it easier for workers to commute (except ironically to SLU or Belltown). Once in downtown Seattle they will shop and dine if it is pleasant, which benefits all residents and visitors by creating the urban dense retail core. Not unlike Seattle in 2010.
Next the city needs to do its part, and that means dealing with crime, 3rd Ave., parking costs, homelessness, drugs, and things that make city streets unsafe or unpleasant. Otherwise shoppers and diners will go to the malls. Like today.
Next we need to stop dispersing retail and housing to the outer bands of the growth boundaries. We need to CONDENSE, because the truth is we don’t have enough jobs or retail for the entire county, although we do have adequate housing zoning, 800,000 more units zoned than residents.
Our biggest problem today is our zoning is based on the past, from before the pandemic, and on “optimistic” population growth estimates (which drives Link extensions so far). Rather than planning that disperses residents, jobs and retail throughout the county, assuming they will always commute to downtown Seattle for work, we need to focus those jobs, retail and housing in the urban core, because there just is not enough of each for the entire county.
The proof is in the pudding. This county is suburbanizing. Jobs, retail and housing are moving to the suburbs and the urban city on Puget Sound is shrinking in every category: jobs, retail, housing. Pretty bleak if you are a true urbanist and live in Belltown.
I said zoning began in the 1930’s. That is because The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1924.
What??? 1924 is not the 1930s!
… the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act began before both acts were passed.
Yes the Civil Rights acts that were passed in the 1980s. I remember them well.
Holy cow — you just got the dates wrong. Zoning actually started well before the 1920s (as you pointed out in a previous comment). But it sure as hell didn’t start in the 1930s. The model law you mentioned was first issued in 1922. They formed the committee in 1921. That is not the 1930s.
You may want to see 800,000 more housing units in Seattle, but the builders won’t build more housing than is needed
Right, but what is that number? No one actually knows. What we do know is that there clearly aren’t enough units and the supply is being artificially held low.
Even if Seattle did build 800,000 new units, 1220 would mandate almost all of them go into existing commercial and multi-family zones
Not necessarily. There is nothing stopping Seattle from allowing way more units across the city.
There is not a shortage of market rate housing in Seattle or in King Co.
Wrong! Holy cow, prices are way too high. Homelessness is way too high. It is all due to the zoning. I thought this was obvious. Do you really question this? If so I can find numerous studies confirming this (like this one, which I think is the easiest to understand: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf). Holy cow, just look at the Wikipedia article:
Studies indicate that strict zoning regulations constrain the supply of housing and inflate housing prices,[13][14][15][16][excessive citations] and increase homelessness,[17] as well as contribute to inequality[18] and a weaker economy.[19][13][20][21][excessive citations]
So many citations that Wikipedia editors think it is excessive (alright already, we get it, zoning causes higher housing prices).
Our biggest problem today is our zoning is based on the past,
On that we agree. Spokane has the most advanced zoning rules in the state (and they probably don’t go far enough). We lag way behind.
This county is suburbanizing.
Surprisingly enough, it is not. Despite the zoning (which lead to very high prices in the city) Seattle grew faster than the rest of the county. It is a reversal of a trend that was going on for decades. Seattle would grow much faster if the zoning was liberalized. Other growth areas include places like downtown Kirkland and Bellevue.
Ross, The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1924. At that time around 16 or 19 cities had some kind of zoning ordinance although it wasn’t until 1926 that the Supreme Court upheld zoning in Euclid v. Ambler Realtor. But the Standard State Zoning Act was not mandatory but advisory, and it took time for states and cities to draft and adopt zoning codes which they had never done before. By the end of the 1930’s over 30,000 U.S. jurisdictions had adopted some kind of zoning ordinance. So yes, it was in the 1930’s that zoning really began in the U.S.
Same with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. Even though mandatory their implementation by states took many years, and some states even today resist them.
You never address the point I made. Instead like WL you attack me personally as though I am in charge of these state regional planning policies I’m not sure you fully understand.
Current planning policies are suburbanizing the county. Current policies won’t affect the single family zones, but for me that is not the issue. The issue is county wide planning policies disperse housing, jobs and retail from downtown Seattle to the suburbs and beyond, which is deflating the one regional place any kind of urbanism, even Pacific NW urbanism, can exist let alone thrive: downtown Seattle.
I would gladly grant you your wish to eliminate SFH zoning (although you are going to need to abolish SFH regulatory limits) if I could have a truly world class urban downtown Seattle.
Unfortunately current planning policies won’t do either. Jobs, retail and housing are dispersed from downtown to Duvall and Snoqualmie and King Co. has mandated virtually all new housing go in existing dense multi-family zones by upzoning those dense multi-family zones.
I have come to accept this is what this region really wants. SFH zones with maybe an ADU although those are not very popular and suburban town centers with all the suburban retail they provide.
I am not attacking you personally I just think you need to get your facts straight. Historians argue over the beginning of World War 2, but no one says the war really started after 1943. If you wrote “zoning began before Euclid but really took off after that decision” then I wouldn’t question your knowledge of the subject. But you immediately got your dates wrong and then proceeded to focus on the wrong things. Something doesn’t “begin” years — even decades — after it started.
You never address the point I made.
Yes I did. I wrote:
I would prefer not to see sprawl in places like Duvall, but I think the various cities are far more responsible for that than the PSRC. I’m not saying the PSRC is doing a great job but if Seattle (and some other nearby suburbs like Bellevue) allowed a lot more housing then there would be less pressure to allow another sprawling subdivision.
You claim that even if Seattle loosened its zoning they wouldn’t build 800,000 units. At some point it just isn’t worth building anything. Yeah, sure. But at that point they sure as hell won’t want to add a bunch of places in Duvall.
“So it is those who advocate for putting new housing in SFH zones that are classist because the new housing will never be affordable to someone earning less than 100% AMI.”
It’s called filtering. Filtering is what building new housing does and what helps keep housing realistically affordable. That person who buys the new condo in Wallingford or Ballard is one less person or couple fighting for housing on the lower (less expensive) housing rungs in Seattle. Housing cycles through being expensive upper class/upper middle class > middle class > lower class > and back again to upper class. Some don’t go through the whole cycle but a lot of the older and middle aged housing stock was at one point housing for lower class that was renovated to be new housing for yuppies or was expensive housing that became middle class housing with time as the building isn’t in vogue anymore and aging.
So it is those who advocate for putting new housing in SFH zones that are classist because the new housing will never be affordable to someone earning less than 100% AMI.
Ludicrous. In areas where zoning doesn’t matter, the price of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction*. The cost of construction is not that high. There is a reason why Japan was able to build enough places to house everyone in their cities. It was legal.
* https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf
The “across the country” part is a bit exaggerated.
TriMet had to drop Saturday bus service in my area during the Bush II financial crisis in 2008. This past year it’s been brought back, and even operates on Sundays now, which hasn’t been there for decades.
MAX ridership is still much lower than it was, as reflected in the reduced schedules. The cost per passenger mile for MAX is thus much higher than it once was, but it’s still cheaper than moving the same passengers by bus.
I think the “fiscal cliff” problem is particularly a problem with agencies with a high reliance on sales taxes, since online shopping has completely altered that entire segment of the economy. Since TriMet has a payroll tax, it doesn’t seem to be having quite as much trouble as sales tax dependent agencies.
Another problem is that Metro doesn’t get to see much of the economy from Link, because it’s operated by a different agency. TriMet got every bit of the economy of scale of the $0.56* per passenger-mile cost for a MAX passenger during prior financial troubles. Metro doesn’t get as much cost benefit from Link, it doesn’t seem.
* Post pandemic, this is now about double what it was in 2019, but still much less than the buses.
Yeah TriMet may be the exception given its alternate funding source. I know Muni and BART have been hit super hard and are looking at severe cuts or a bailout but like Metro dont seem to be doing anything different now. I believe most large agencies are in some form of death spiral.
The irony of TriMet doing well with a payroll tax despite the suburbanization of jobs and decline of downtown in Portland post-COVID.
At the risk of sounding like Debbie Downer for those hoping for an automated BLE, or Nathan’s accusation I am just baiting some on this blog, I think Packer’s term “hesitantly” is a bit optimistic.
The Board unanimously voted to approve the preferred alternative without any specific cuts. The hope that WLE would be scrapped, or even value engineered, or delayed until BLE is built or studied, ended at this meeting.
I wouldn’t pin any hopes on Balducci, although she was only asking for some minor cuts to the cost of the $7 BILLION preferred alternative, not skipping a station or an elevated line. If you follow Balducci, you know she is a skilled retail politician but not a wonk, and she tends to seek “compromise” to make it sound like she has done her homework. She knows her constituents don’t vote based on transit, let alone transit in West Seattle. Balducci also tends to “think out loud” at public meetings rather than do the politicking before the meeting. Like adding an $800 million (estimated, so say $1.2 billion) station on 4th Ave. S. to appease the CID who killed a station on 5th when the subarea doesn’t have the money for DSTT2 or any stations.
When it comes to Franklin, I think she is just astounded at the cost of Link in Seattle, and maybe a little irritated at the endless calls for a value engineered ELE from Seattle transit critics. Her concern is whether the cost of WLE will affect her ST 3 projects (ELE) and the debt ceiling, but I don’t think it will because WLE is less than the cost of WSBLE as originally estimated for the debt ceiling during the realignment, which was only a few years ago. My how things change.
The key is who didn’t speak or voice concern: Bruce Harrell, mayor of Seattle up for election next year, and Dow Constantine, King Co. Executive and Chair of the Board.
I don’t think Harrell really cares about Link unless it can help him address some of the intractable issues he is facing, especially downtown (like Renton, using ST funds to rehabilitate downtown city/county buildings or in Renton pay to raze the Red Lion Inn). Harrell is not a wonk, and three years in is not looking very good. He has a better council but no money, unless he continues to raid levies. Crime and public safety in Seattle are still the dominant political issues in Seattle, never good for an incumbent.
Constantine in many ways is the opposite of Balducci. He is not a retail politician, but he does his homework, and he works the phones BEFORE the meeting. He knew what the vote would be so why speak? He knew Balducci would do her usual hand wringing but vote yes with no cuts to the preferred analysis, and Franklin told him she needs to go on the record about the insane amount of money for WLE (by Everett standards) and to make it clear she expects no value engineering when it comes to Everett (depending on subarea revenue). I think Fesler threw Constantine a bone when Fesler upped the project cost for BLE from ST’s $15 billion to $20 billion which the subarea cannot afford no matter what, but $20 billion is likely the closer figure, and Fesler was obviously angry at the new ST project cost estimate of $15 billion that is also not affordable by the subarea no matter what.
The fact is I don’t think there are any easy cuts to WLE that mean anything unless you get into the big stuff like skipping a station or an elevated line in the middle of arterials when WLE will move zero drivers to transit, and no one on the Board was going there and neither was West Seattle. This blog may hate cars but West Seattleites love them.
I am sure ST will come up with some minor budget gimmicks to make Balducci feel good, that usually hurt the rider like eliminating down escalators, and the Board will give the final greenlight for the preferred alternative, because it is the preferred alternative for a reason.
Then in a decade we can argue over value engineering TLE and ELE. Pretty hard to value engineer Stride, and the east KC subarea can easily afford Issaquah Link with cost overruns even if no one rides it. Like opening a starter line, I don’t think the Eastside does Link for the transit.
“The Board unanimously voted to approve the preferred alternative without any specific cuts. The hope that WLE would be scrapped, or even value engineered, or delayed until BLE is built or studied, ended at this meeting.”
This isn’t approving construction, it’s just approving more planning. When the decision to approve construction comes, BLE, Tacoma Dome, and Everett planning will be further along and their costs will be more quantified. That will give the board an opportunity to face whether the the WSLE cost ballooning is unique to WSLE or emerging on all projects (because most of the factors are common to all projects), and thus all those questions about whether all of WS/BLE or all of ST3 is affordable, and some boardmembers like Balducci and the Snohomish/Pierce ones might object more strongly, and ST might do something different than it looks like it’s heading toward now.
There is no incentive for Constantine to rock the boat at this point. He wants to run out the clock. It is quite likely he quits his job a year from now. Then it will be someone else’s problem.
Harrell remains fairly popular, even amongst his critics (like me). He is far more competent than many of the mayors we’ve had recently, which should be no surprise given that he had experience in city government and they didn’t. I think it is quite likely he would win reelection. But that assumes he wants it. He will be almost 70 years old by then. He might just call it a career (and a pretty damn good one really).
I think there will be churn on the city council. Many of the members are reactionaries and would not have been elected during most years. Others got in because of the stupidity of The Stranger Editorial Staff (in the primaries). The Stranger seems to be more pragmatic now which could be bad news for a lot of the council incumbents.
In any event I don’t see the mayor or council getting too involved in Link issues. No one wants to be the first to announce that you have a problem. You run the risk of being considered “anti-transit”. There is a very strong incentive to just keep paying for this and to continue to delay the project (e. g. Ballard Link in 2050). I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I don’t see an obvious way in which it will. If you were designing a massive transit boondoggle this is pretty much how you would do it.
Consider: We have the projects in the wrong order. Not only that but West Seattle Link (as formally defined) ends at SoDo. This means it is largely useless until Ballard Link is built. Meanwhile you have things like Everett Link and Tacoma Dome Link. These are basically a mass transit version of the Peter Principle. You keep building until what you are building is clearly not a good value. All of these contribute to the likelihood that we are simply going full speed ahead into the iceberg (just as everyone expected years ago).
“As of June 2024, the Agency Progress Report is retired. Information about project status can be viewed on each project’s webpage.”
https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/documents-reports/agency-progress-reports
This is a great loss of transparency.
I guess I’m glad my inquiry into it resulted in some clarification, but it is a shame we’re losing these narrative reports.
I went looking for progress reports by project and could not find them. Unless they’re hidden somewhere it appears that the “switch” is a bureaucratic lie until they actually post new reports.
An ST PR rep told they’re upgrading the Project Performance Tracker to incorporate the data presented in the Progress Reports: https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/building-system/project-performance-tracker
However, it seems they’re going to reserve the narrative parts of the progress reports for the monthly presentations to the System Expansion Committee. I assume it’s coming at the direction of Terri Mestas.
The right thing would have been to continue the monthly progress reports until the project performance tracker updates were completed. Instead, they’ve basically shut off opportunities for the public to stay informed.
Based on previous updates, the performance tracker has just a shred of the information of the agency progress reports. It is very questionable that it is a real replacement anyway.
Like @M stated, this is a real loss of transparency.
Lets build the 4 line and everett extension first and then see how much money is left for West Seattle.
Bleh, opening Lynwood before finishing the 2 and still cutting off bus service from snohomish is seeming like a poor choice. Between Reddit and talking to folks at the northern stations, it seems like a lot of riders are unhappy with how crowded trains are in addition to the loss of their one-seat rides. This will be a year of lost ridership growth (and reputational harm) because of the decision not to keep more bus service into the city until OFM East was connected.
I’m opposite commute but when Link service breaks down (like it did today) it would be nice to have something to replace distance trips. But maybe I’m just in a bad mood because I had to wait 30 minutes for a train too packed to get my bike on then had to wait another 30 for a second train. 🤷♂️
It would be helpful to know what station, and direction, and what time was it when the overcrowded train came? And why did it take 30 minutes before the next train came?
Per email ST alerts this afternoon, a train broke somewhere around CH station and trains had to single-track around it for a couple hours.
Yes, some trains are terminating at Capitol Hill so you’d transfer to continue. It’s blamed on a broken train somewhere.
Sorry I just pounded out a message because it got me thinking of how the system can respond to breakdowns. This was the first time since the extension opened that something like this has affected my commute, but I did miss an appointment because a normally hourlong trip turned into a 2:15 trip.
I was SB at 148th, got there probably 1:10-15. I even left work early because I knew that something was up with the system.
With previous tunnel issues, shuttles have been ordered very quickly, but not in this case. As the spine gets longer and longer, it is a strategy that will have to be carefully tuned to work at all.
Unfortunately that happens whenever there’s a train outage. Replacement buses are ordered some twenty minutes later, and it takes another twenty minutes for them to get into place. So train service is often interrupted for thirty minutes to an hour until the problem is fixed or the replacement buses are running in earnest. And the people on the platform are usually the last to hear anything, particularly how long it will take. It helps to know other bus routes; e.g., when I got caught in a UW station outage I resorted to the 48, at Roosevelt I resorted to the 67, and when my friend in north Lynnwood got caught at Northgate I would have recommended the 67 but she’d already got on the 20 (now gone).
At some poker, the naive dispatchers at ST will have to do a better job at scheduling tripper trains. They’ve never had this problem outside of sporting events.
If they talked to seasoned dispatchers in Chicago and New York, they would know what to do. But of course they won’t. The agency is too proud to think that there are other realtime ways around overcrowding problems.
Places like that have things like:
– Instant express trains (no stops until Westlake)
– Short turning trains (Northgate to SODO or Stadium or Rainier Beach)
– Bicycle bans from overcrowded trains
That’s just a few examples.
Spitting = sporting (typo)
Fixed. It was funnier before though.
My wife got caught in the outage today. She was lucky though — she knew what bus to take (the 75). It is very counter-intuitive from the U-District because you start going south and then head east before looping around to the north. With the 73 gone the alternative is dealing with two buses and I think she made the right choice. Funny exchange though, this is what she texted me:
Light rail stopped due to a mechanical problem at Capitol Hill station. Getting on the 75 bus
Thanks for teaching me about the buses. They are far more reliable than the light rail!
My response:
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren’t. :)
She responded with a bunch of emojis. But yeah, it got me thinking about how this could impact transit long term. She does not take transit that often. I think she has also gotten unlucky with Link. I could easily see how someone heading to Lynnwood would be in much worse shape and really miss the old system, even though overall it is better (in my opinion).
ST tracks reliability here: https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/dependable. For Link this is the percentage of trips between on-time and five minutes late. I think it would be useful to have a list of major outages — delays more than ten minutes (and how long a delay).
So we shouldn’t have opened a new line because too many people would want to ride on it?
That is a terrible take
A line with bad overcrowding issues is much better than no line
Another skeptical view of West Seattle Link. (Note: I’m a suburbanite who’s more focused on East Link and rarely goes to Ballard or West Seattle, so I don’t get into the weeds on their extensions.) https://www.postalley.org/2024/10/11/west-seattle-light-rail-an-expensive-folly/
Important to note that the author (Charles Prestrud) is a transportation policy director for the conservative-libertarian Washington Policy Center.
Who cares if he iterates what I said, the truth.
“The new estimate is about triple the cost estimate provided in 2016 when the ST3 plan was approved, which, at $2.3 billion, was hardly a bargain. The revised cost is over $1.5 billion per mile for a line that is only four miles long and adds just four stations. On a per-mile basis that would make it one of the costliest light rail lines in the world, but nowhere near the most productive.”
Granted that there’s been some healthy inflation in the intervening years, but this is getting near Manhattan construction numbers. The difference is that these lines carry 5-10x the number of people.
“The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.”
I care WS Weirdo bc people with an agenda will neglect and distort facts
@Nathan Dickey,
Who cares what group Prestrud writes for, are his facts right or wrong?
I.e., as my mom used to say, “If the best you can do is to attack the messenger, then you have already lost the argument”.
@ WS Weirdo and @Lazarus, I think it’s important to understand the biases inherent in all commentary. For example, some people have strong biases against certain modes of transportation or certain operators, and thus will downplay any success and highlight every failure. By understanding the biases of a commentator, you can understand how they are spinning the facts in line with their own agenda.
@Confused
I’m more interested in the facts that have been distorted and not who delivers facts. Please expound on what is off and not who is off. Otherwise it is only a weak attempt at deflection.
I think it’s important to understand the biases inherent in all commentary
Sure, but that is the nature of commentary. There is bound to a bias of some sort, reflecting the belief of the person writing. If anything, his comments should be given more weight simply because of his experience (working for WSDOT).
It is also a somewhat circular argument. It is like Liz Cheney endorsing Harris. She is a prominent, very conservative Republican — this should carry some weight. But she has opposed Trump in the past and to some that means she isn’t a real Republican. Thus it means nothing.
If you want to make the case that he simply opposes all mass transit, be my guest (although I see no evidence for it). I don’t agree with Liz Cheney (or probably Charles Prestrud) very much, but in this case I think they are right.
Folks seem to be missing the fact I didn’t comment on what people should do with the information that the Washington Policy Center is a conservative-libertarian think tank, just that those biases should be noted.
@Nathan Dickey,
You can’t just write off what people are reporting as fact simply because of your perception that they might be biased. Or simply because you don’t agree with where they fall on the political spectrum. Facts don’t care.
And bias works both ways.
For example, supposedly it is a fact that the cost of a a Metro service hour has increased by about 57%.
So is the WPC exhibiting bias by reporting this fact? Or is this blog exhibiting bias by not reporting this fact?
Facts are facts, politics is opinion. We need to deal with facts in the transit world.
I learned this stuff in high school. Basic media literacy is important these days. This is an article explaining the concept for students.
https://www.history.org.uk/student/resource/3211/using-historical-sources
Consider the author and their purpose. Who was the author? Consider their race, gender, religion, nationality, heritage, party affiliation, socio-economic class, and their job. Is there bias? Is the author trying to persuade, incite, enlighten, explain or deceive their audience? Why was it written and for whom? Was the author paid to write this? Or bribed or threatened? Where did it first appear: a newspaper, a diary, a letter or a propaganda flyer?
@Lazarus, where did I write off anything he wrote?
@Confused, yes, it is basic media literacy to know the context of a piece. I could guess why Lazarus and WS Weirdo got offended at me simply pointing out a fact, but won’t.
Folks seem to be missing the fact I didn’t comment on what people should do with the information that the Washington Policy Center is a conservative-libertarian think tank, just that those biases should be noted.
Yes, and that was listed in the editorial. You didn’t mention his experience with WSDOT. You only focused on his affiliation with a right-wing organization. This suggests you were trying to bias people against the author by implying that he is biased because he is part of a biased organization. Somehow we should take this editorial less seriously than ones written by say … the people on this blog? He really isn’t saying anything fundamentally different than a lot of other have said here, he is just saying it better.
No one was suggesting that this editorial should carry more weight because of the author’s political affiliation. This was not a “Liz Cheney” story. In contrast, this was: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/upgrade-amtrak-cascades-or-build-high-speed-rail-the-choice-is-clear/. Tim Gould is chair of the Transportation & Land Use Committee for Sierra Club Washington and there he is opposing ultra high-speed rail.
If you think the editorial has biases and flaws, then point them out. It is like you used your opening statement (the author is biased) and then just walked off the stage when it was time to deliver your rebuttal.
The “Policy Lab” piece in The Urbanist on the high cost of restaurants in Seattle was written by Katie Wilson, general secretary of the Transit Riders Union. I still read it first before checking out the author. I was interested in why Seattle restaurants cost more than nearby cities.
Wilson’s solutions: more late night transit and upzoning. The article does not mention what restaurant or retail expertise she has for a “policy lab”, or whether she has worked in a restaurant.
Her analysis of the main reasons for high restaurant prices: Structural and historical racism and sexual harassment in tipping that prevents restaurant workers from moving to a salary. The current average pay in Seattle with tips is $27/hr. The real average for wait staff in a decent restaurant: Closer to $50/hr. This is when I decided to check out the author’s background.
Her evidence? A comment from a very liberal UW professor who claims that a piece of pizza costs $1.50 in NYC due to housing density creating more customers and longer work hours when anyone can Google and find a piece of pizza in NYC is over $3 in 2020 according to the Quigley Report (New Yorkers take their pizza seriously) and NYC has the highest cost of any U.S. city for a pizza. Which is hardly surprising.
To call Wilson’s piece a “policy lab” is a stretch and a bit disingenuous as evidenced by her questionable findings and solutions. The Urbanist needs to identify the expertise of the author before calling a piece “Policy Lab”.
So yes, I think the biases of the author are important. Nathan’s first and immediate reaction was to post the author’s political affiliation without addressing a single fact or conclusion in the piece which I thought was pretty factual.
Some like the Prestrude piece have some valid facts even if you disagree with the solutions or conclusions or policy bent of the organization. No one argues The Urbanist is mainstream, except compared to TRU. Some like Wilson’s piece are by someone with apparently no expertise in restaurants or retail using false facts to reach biased conclusions that come down to the same tired class warfare.
I never did learn why restaurant prices are so high in Seattle, which is a fact. My assumptions why restaurant prices are high in Seattle (not all prices are high) are Seattle has a huge wealth divide so like housing restaurants cater to the upper half, lease rates, labor costs, ingredient costs, and either too few customers or too many restaurants. Instead Wilson makes these struggling working class restaurant owners out as robber barons because that is what she wanted to find.
The author may have biases, but the article is pretty soft on the cost escalation versus benefit issue. He could have been more harsh like talking about the wild costs of a cable stayed bridge or the deep West Seattle Junction Station or the needless SODO giant station design that uselessly requires so many stairs to transfer.
It’s no more harsh than what lots of transit advocates are saying:
As designed the preferred West Seattle Link project is a wildly expensive cost for almost no benefit.
I didn’t comment on the content because I didn’t see anything worth commenting on that I haven’t already in other posts.
I thought it worthwhile to note the (probable) bias of the author as the piece was linked as “another skeptical view”, implying some level of novelty to the perspective. I don’t know for certain if this author was for or against ST3, but I can guess based on his apparent political leanings. If someone has held the same opinion for 8 years, is it a novel perspective? I don’t think so, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
Food has always been more expensive in the Pacific Northwest because of the long distance the the rest of the country (ingredients/supplies), and since the 1980s because northwesterners have demanded higher-quality/organic/luxury foods.
When I went to Oklahoma City in the 2000s, I was struck by how both the food choices and prices were still like what Seattle had in the 1970s. You could get a pretty complete meal for less than $5, which would cost $8 or $10 in King County, or an ice-cream soda for a low price. But the international offerings were limited to one or two mediocre Mexican and Chinese places, and organic foods or “authentic Italian” pizzas weren’t that widespread. Gas was also much cheaper because it’s an oil-producing region, so transportation costs were lower.
When I traveled a lot in the 90s and 00s I compared the price of a pound of bananas at a large supermarket. I can’t remember the exact prices now, but Pugetopolis was around 80c or 90c while California was 60c, or something like that.
The recent rising cost of real estate and labor adds to restaurants’ price pressures.
“Food has always been more expensive in the Pacific Northwest because of the long distance the the rest of the country (ingredients/supplies), and since the 1980s because northwesterners have demanded higher-quality/organic/luxury foods.”
That’s the local perception. However food prices in middle America seemed to have increased much faster than wages have. My recent trip experiences there are that food and restaurant prices are now between 70-100 percent of what Seattlites pay yet the overall income levels seem to be more in the 40-60 percent range. Housing and gasoline seem to be the main much cheaper items.
Doing my east Bellevue trip to Lake Hills, after a 2-month gap due to illness. Somebody commented that the bus stops at Overlake Village station have shelters and benches now so I came to check. No, they don’t; you still have to stand under the sun or rain. I tested this when I’d only have to wait 15 minutes for the 221 in case therw was no shelter. The walk from the platform to the bus stops is 6 minutes at my slower pace, and I reconfirmed it’s up a slight hill (but slight).
This suggests it’s still better to transfer at Redmond Tech to the 245, which has a RapidRide shelter, shorter walk, flat walk, and the bus is more frequent weekdays, although I’d have a longer walk at the end.
The northbound 245 at Redmond Tech now stops on 156th instead of going into the station bus vats. The sign says the B should do that too but the one I saw didn’t.
Lovely spell check. But “bus vats” has a nice Halloweeny ring to it.
Not sure how long it has been up, but looks like the September ridership numbers for Sound Transit are out!