Cascadia Report

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  • Urban planning overlooked in Seattle

    The booming Seattle area is struggling to define itself. That’s why it’s curious that urban design seems overlooked in the latest regional awards by the American Institute of Architects.

    For last Monday’s ceremony there were nearly 200 entries for designs, from residential to industrial. But in the category of urban planning: nothing, not a single one for built or unbuilt work. (There was also nothing for historical preservation.)

    Here’s how our tipster put it:

    In a city that’s bursting at the seams, with the number of public projects that have been proposed, shot down, restarted, re-voted on — how is there nothing in the urban design category? Scary.

    Surely the numbers partly reflect who’s commissioning the projects. That makes rewarding quality design even more important.

  • Election results (literally) hurt

    My arches still ache from traipsing to eight election parties last night in downtown Seattle in To Boot loafers.

    The vote tallies were depressing (and today’s stock-market sell off and continuing slump in the U.S. dollar didn’t help the mood). A few takeaways:

    — People don’t want “politics” and compromise. I held my nose and voted for transit and roads — Prop. 1 — arguing that the package was better than doing nothing. Evidently there was just too much there for everyone to dislike.

    — Too few bothered to participate. Maybe Prop. 1 was so uninspiring that voters dismissed the whole election, which gave more power to obstructionists. How else to explain looney results like the victory of no-tax I-960 and the failure of simple majority for school levies?

    — The Establishment needs a shakeup. Everyone from council members to the biggest companies got slammed. On Prop. 1, they spent too much capital on TV ads and slogans ahead of the election, and not enough on honing the package and then inspiring the rest of us that it made sense. The region’s leadership vacuum is clearer than ever.

    So what’s next? For transportation, the first priority should be reorganizing transit planning to align growth with infrastructure. Then we need transit plans with a) incentives to change lifestyle patterns and b) infrastructure that will start to meet growing demand.

    Hopefully there’s more to celebrate after the next vote.

  • From one dark place to another — nonstop

    A day after the onslaught of standard time, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to fly nonstop to Germany. But thanks to Lufthansa at least Seattleites (and anyone doing international business) will have the option.

    The Sea-Tac-to-Franfurt nonstop announced today is the latest increase in air service since the Port of Seattle lowered its fees to attract more routes. That’s the right sort of subsidy — a targeted incentive that mulitplies the economic benefit. Recent new flights include to Mexico City and Paris.

    There were rumors that Sea-Tac was courting a nonstop to Munich (Vancouver and Portland already have Frankfurt flights — Portland, thanks to a package of tourism incentives). Lest anyone misconstrue the addition, note that Lufthansa also announced a host of new flights from Canada today.

    When the flights begin in March, Seattle may enjoy the best connections to Europe it’s ever had. (True, Aeroflot ended its nonstop to Moscow. But Sea-Tac will have daily scheduled service to five business centers: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.)

  • Sausage-making over farm subsidies

    The Omnivore’s Dilemma is playing out now in Congress over the latest package of farm subsidies.

    In an excellent op-ed in the New York Times, the author of that book makes a clear case against current agricultural policy. And then he turns the tables:

    How could this have happened? For starters, farm bill critics did a far better job demonizing subsidies, and depicting commodity farmers as welfare queens, than they did proposing alternative — and politically appealing — forms of farm support. And then the farm lobby did what it has always done: bought off its critics with “programs.” For that reason “Americans who eat” can expect some nutritious crumbs from the farm bill, just enough to ensure that reform-minded legislators will hold their noses and support it.

    Cascadia Report has found farm subsidies to be an easy target, for example here and here and here. We’re waiting for some good policy to praise.

  • B.C. plan could actually cut gas emissions

    Seattle announced Monday that it managed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases over the last 15 years. Too bad emissions from cars are bound to continue rising.

    Meanwhile in British Columbia there’s serious talk of a policy that could really make a difference: a carbon tax. The proposal would shift taxes to give incentives for lower emissions. It seems a lot more effective than just encouraging everyone to ride bicycles.

    Washington and the Seattle area need to think along the same lines. This report includes a chart of Seattle’s pollution sources and how hard it will be to make more progress. Next steps should be replacing the viaduct with transit and better streets and then nudging the region toward a more sustainable transportation network.

  • Wanted at Sea-Tac: Pride of place

    How does Seattle greet visitors? If they get off a flight at Sea-Tac’s gate N-15, the answer is with a dingy jetway that has a severely waterstained ceiling, discolored walls and wet wood between the floor joints.

    sea-tac crowd; komotv.comThe dark and crowded North Satellite terminal was a jarring change after my recent flight from the airy, modern facility in Toronto. Luckily flights from Canada clear U.S. customs before they take off so at least those passengers can avoid Sea-Tac’s 70s-era international arrivals area in the South Satellite.

    Sea-Tac’s embarrassment is about more than aesthetics. With its new facilities, Vancouver is wooing Seattle fliers and more business because airlines prefer its new terminal. Each flight means thousands of dollars in economic benefit on the ground.

    There’s a comprehensive plan to remodel Sea-Tac — eventually. There also are examples of how to use the space more efficiently. It wouldn’t hurt to start with basics.

  • Why I’m voting for Transit and Roads

    The tax package to fund transit and roads in the greater Seattle area, known as Prop. 1, is a compromise: there are details for everyone to hate. I may be holding my nose, but I’m voting yes.

    I-5 in Tacoma; kevinfreitas.netConsider what the measure does: it raises $10.8 billion to add light rail, HOV lanes, streetcars, park-and-rides and other transit infrastructure. It also generates $7 billion to fix some road choke points and complete several missing links in the region’s network, for example connecting 509 and 167 to I-5. It’s far from the sole solution, but it’s a start.

    For more info, take a look at this map.

    What would be better? Funding much more transit, completing the projects much faster and explicitly including congestion pricing in the financing mix. In fact, the most persuasive argument against the measure is that any investment in roads lessens incentives for transit and worsens global warming.

    But politics is reality. There’s a huge backlog of infrastructure projects in the region and chipping away at it takes regional buy-in — a process that in this case took five years. The dense areas of the region can’t afford to pay for all the transit this area needs (remember the monorail?). To build support, there needs to be something for people who help pay but wouldn’t directly benefit. Even with this package, congestion will still create a growing incentive to use transit; as alternatives start becoming available policies can be shifted to encourage even more use.

    Assuming the measure passes, the next step should be reorganizing the governments that oversee the region’s transportation to execute more efficiently. There will still be chances during the planning process to modifiy specific projects. These are all big challenges, not deal breakers.

  • Writing that captures the city

    There’s a nice elegy in the Seattle P-I today marking the 25th anniversary of the death of the poet Richard Hugo.

    The author of “The Real West Marginal Way” captured the city in a way that may not be possible now that the area is more grown up. That makes his contribution more worth remembering than ever.

    One place that builds on his example is the Hugo House literary center (where I serve on the board). From the P-I piece:

    Most of all, Hugo, our hometown poet, tells us that writing matters: “It’s a way of saying you and the world have a chance.” In these past 25 years, multitudes of writers working in all sorts of genres have gathered in Seattle. We’re now not only a bookish city, we’re a city where the raw ore of language is formed into literature. All along the ridges and valleys, writers are working away, word by word, creating the drafts that we’ll see later caught between the smooth, glimmering covers of books. It’s the kind of industry that would have impressed Richard Hugo.

  • A crazy way to get around a city

    People in Toronto have a crazy way of getting around the city: streetcars.

    After a few days of enviously watching streetcars move through traffic-clogged streets (they have right of way), I finally snapped this picture on King Street.

    toronto streetcar

    There’s momentum to expand streetcars in Cascadia, though it seems to be a question whether they could work in a city bigger than Portland.

    Seattle has a tiny starter line and an expansion is a small part of the transit package, Prop. 1, on the ballot next month in the Puget Sound area.

  • Making a city for residents, not tourists

    I just noticed this article in Vancouver magazine, pointing out the need to make the city serve its residents rather than just tourists, planners and the people who create “most-livable city” lists.

    The writer finds fault with Vancouver’s regional government system (exactly what Seattle lacks):

    One of the biggest obstacles is political: planners are king here because our politicians allow them to be. Our at-large municipal system—unlike the ward system, with defined constituencies, which you find in most major cities—gives a free pass to city councillors. We select our council from a list of 100-plus candidates every three years, and they thank us by answering to “the city at large”—not to the widower in Strathcona trying to save the local seniors’ centre from destruction, not to the South Main sculptor trying to find a spot for his public art, not to the young couple in Yaletown trying to get a playground built near their condo. Such quotidian concerns become the domain of bureaucrats and enforcers, while politicians turn their attention to the “big picture” stuff like EcoDensity, Civil City and the Olympics.

    By contrast, the Seattle area has the worst of both worlds. The Seattle city council is elected city wide (so they’re not accountable to neighborhoods) yet there’s no effective regional government.