Cascadia Report

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  • Endorsements split on major Washington races

    Washington’s major newspapers have weighed in with endorsements for the Nov. 7 election, with several citing the country’s runaway spending and Iraq quagmire as top issues. The question is how much sway will they really have.

    The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald, Vancouver Columbian and Tri-City Herald all backed Maria Cantwell for reelection to the U.S. Senate. The News Tribune cites her mastery of policy and unease at retail politics, saying she “bears a striking resemblance to the man she unseated: Slade Gorton.”

    The Seattle Times endorsed Republican challenger Mike McGavick, citing his cost-cutting experience at Safeco, where he turned around the company’s finances by slashing the workforce, raising insurance rates and shedding businesses. The Bellingham Herald and Yakima Herald-Republic also backed McGavick, saying his pledge to cut spending gave him a slight edge over Cantwell. Each said they wished one of the candidates would have advocated a change of course in Iraq.

    In Washington’s other nationally watched race, the Seattle Times and the News Tribune backed Republican Dave Reichert for reelection to Congress from the 8th district. They cited challenger Darcy Burner’s inexperience and party-line attacks on the Bush Administration — instead of on Reichert — for the decision. Only the P-I backed Burner, saying that she made a strong case to unseat Reichert for his votes on the minimum wage, tax cuts and torture.

  • Vancouver has a fix for pricey mortgages

    Vancouver is experimenting with a new way for families to meet sky-high mortgage payments: selling condos with built-in rental suites.

    Vancouver condos by condodomain.comThe first example is a project at Simon Fraser University, where 40 three-bedroom units have already sold. Owners get a three-bedroom condo, with one 240-square-foot bedroom featuring its own entrance off the main corridor, with a bed, bathroom and kitchen.

    The project is a far cry from Seattle, where the city council just grudgingly allowed homeowners to rent-out part of their property — with a raft of restrictions. Love of the city’s single-family home status quo takes precedence over improving livability since limiting supply keeps prices artificially high and stifles demand for urban services.

    In Vancouver, Mayor Sam Sullivan has said encouraging creative housing styles will allow the city to build more units with a wider range of options, which will help lower prices. One plan is to to consider reducing the number of parking stalls in new condo buildings, a step that would lower development costs and encourage transit use.

  • Bicyclists getting a say in city planning

    Does urban cycling in Seattle have enough momentum to go anywhere? Or is recent planning yet another exercise in spinning our wheels?

    Those are the questions of a feature in The Seattle Times Sunday magazine about Seattle’s new plan to connect bike trails and make sure that road projects include provisions for bicycles. The city currently compares poorly to Portland, which has 156 miles of bike lanes, 68 miles of off-street paths and 30 miles of bike boulevards, according to the story. (Seattle has 25 miles of bike lanes and 37 miles of paths.)

    In Portland, the amount of bike commuting has tripled in the last 15 years, even as the rate of accidents has decreased. That’s partly because 1 percent of statewide transportation revenue has been dedicated to bike and pedestrian facilities since the mid-1990s, according to the story.

    It’s interesting that the story comes just two weeks ahead of a nine-year $365 million tax levy that would earmark about $38 million for bike-friendly projects. Specifics on what exactly would be done with the money are maddeningly few. The question remains: is it enough?

  • Latino voters gaining force

    Latinos are a small but growing force in electoral politics across Cascadia. The bet is on when they will make a difference.

    In Oregon, they make up about 10 percent of the population, but only about 4 percent of eligible voters and even fewer actual voters, according to a front-page story in The Oregonian. Latino voters are likely to be significant in 10-15 years. But this year, the Republican candidate for governor is betting that anti-immigrant policies will win him more support from working-class and conservatives than it will cost longer term.

  • B.C. names ‘czar’ to fix coastal economy

    The British Columbia government just named a high-level official to jump-start the struggling economy along the coast. But the move is unlikely to be enough.

    The region has been devastated in the last decade as its main industry — logging — has shriveled. An earlier revitalization plan tried to lure new investment into the region, which produces some of the world’s most costly lumber. Instead, Weyerhaeuser sold its business in the area.

    Naming a former deputy premier to coordinate policy for the coastal economy is an admission that earlier steps haven’t worked. But the new “coastal czar” already has several demanding posts and is unlikely to pull off a quick turnaround.

  • New steps toward more regional air service

    The prospect of commercial airline service at a second Seattle airport came into focus this week, with a report outlining how Everett’s Paine Field could support such service.

    The potential addition of regional air service is the latest example of airport supply meeting growing demand for air travel around Cascadia. Vancouver International and several smaller airports in the Vancouver area are already expanding.

    Businesses north of Seattle want commercial airline service to the Everett airport, which is far more convenient to the area than Sea-Tac. Combined with more frequent, faster trains between Vancouver and Portland, the extra air service could alleviate the need for a new Seattle-area airport in the future.

    Airline flights at Everett are discouraged by a 1979 agreement with the neighboring communities. Some neighbors still say occasional airline service would be a disaster, causing school test scores to plummet, asthma, pregnancy complications, dropping property values, and an overall lower quality of live. The airport is mainly used by Boeing, which builds 747s and 767s there, Goodrich Aerospace and smaller private planes.

  • Trade agreement sparks new questions

    Now that a trade agreement with the U.S. is in place, Canada’s lumber producers face a perplexing question: what to do with too much money?

    The agreeement calls for the return of billions of dollars in duties on imported Canadian lumber that the U.S. collected since 2002. Canfor, West Fraser and Interfor are in line to receive about C$550 million, C$285 million and C$70 million, respectively. Some companies reportedly haven’t decided whether the money should fund expansion into the U.S., special dividends, or just paying down debt

    The fact that there’s a question of what to do with the windfall, which could shore up otherwise troubled companies operating in a depressed market for lumber, is another sign of how distorted the trade agreement is.

  • Sale of Seattle biotech a loss for region

    The sale of Seattle-area biotechnology firm Icos will likely result in the loss of many jobs. The question is whether the region will gain from the sale.

    In the last five years, the leading firms in Seattle’s biotech field have been swallowed by rivals, leaving just one such firm with a market worth of more than $1 billion. “If Icos had made it, it would have made us a center for the industry,” Charles Hill, a University of Washington business professor and former Icos shareholder, told the Seattle Times. “It’s a huge loss for the region, and a huge missed opportunity.”

    The current CEO of Icos said the $2.1 billion that Ely Lilly is paying for the smaller company is proof of its success. The fact that Icos, a startup in 1990, could be sold for that price proves that the region is a fertile place for biotech investments and should encourage more startups, he said.

    It will be interesting to see if professionals from Icos, which employs 700, take their paychecks and start new businesses in the region.

  • Cascadia not alone with extreme commutes

    Commuter tales of woe are becoming more frequent in Cascadia. Yet they’re not unique, according to an article Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

    As traffic worsens, commuters are hitting the roads and trains far before sunrise, stretching the traditional “rush hour” and spurring businesses to meet the extra demand. In 85 U.S. urban areas, congestion occurred an average of 7.1 hours a day on major urban roads in 2003, up from 6.2 hours a day in 1993 and 4.5 hours daily in 1982, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.

    Some commuters to downtown Seattle leave home as early as 4:15 a.m. in order to beat clogged freeways. Sound Transit’s earliest commuter train from Tacoma to Seattle now leaves at 5:45 a.m., a change from 6:20 a.m. when the service started in 2000, the story notes. The first daily West Coast Express commuter train into Vancouver leaves at 5:27 a.m.

    One result is longer hours for service businesses. According to the story, more than 90 percent of McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. now operate on extended hours — opening at 5 a.m., closing at midnight or are staying open 24 hours. McDonald’s restaurants generally used to open as early as 6 a.m.

  • Traffic shifting away from Seattle’s port

    The number of containers passing through the Port of Seattle dropped again in September as traffic continued shifting to California and to other Cascadia ports.

    Last month Seattle traffic dropped 7.6 percent, the seventh monthly drop so far this year. Port officials blame the decline on the draw of the large southern California market and say that cruise ships and other business will help Seattle weather the downturn.

    The numbers underscore the need for investment in efficient infrastructure in order to hold onto trade-related business. Vancouver’s port has continued to grow by investing in better on-shore transportation links, and Tacoma is poised to become the largest Puget Sound port this year. Seattle reportedly has the capacity to double its traffic to 4 million 20-foot containers a year by 2013, and Tacoma — which has more space — says it will be able to handle 6 million by 2025.