This is a grass tramway appreciation account. 🚃 🌱
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The Urbanist
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Examining urban policy to improve cities and quality of life. 
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Advocacy journalism and podcasting. member. Non-Governmental & Nonprofit Organization Seattle and Puget Sound Regiontheurbanist.orgJoined February 2014
The Urbanist’s Tweets
“Colorado will cancel two planned highway expansions” and “will free up more than $100 million in funding…to enhancing the [Denver’s] bus rapid transit network and making the I-25 corridor safer…particularly for people outside cars.”
The Seattle Times is really on a kick to keep people houseless and its not just the editorial board.
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This may be one of Seattle’s coolest infill projects.
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Do your part to pedestrianize Pike Place. Always walk in the street. Assert your rights. Be the ban that bans cars.
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NEW: announces an increase of service. 16 daily roundtrips will operate between Seattle and Portland starting May 1st offering hourly service between 6am and 10pm seven days a week. 🚆
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Seattle took down a massive elevated highway on the waterfront only to wind up building a 10-lane surface highway.
NEW: Pike Place will permanently become a pedestrianized street starting June 4th, Councilmember Andrew Lewis will formally announce later today. The pedestrian zone will stretch from 1st Avenue to Western Avenue.
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Amtrak Cascades is going to get brand new trains that can go 125 mph but will be limited to 79 mph because of track conditions. twitter.com/GoBrightline/s
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It’s incredible how fragile and threatened motorists are by the existence of public transportation.
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KOMO: Everyone wants to leave Seattle.
Census Bureau: The City of Seattle grows another 17,749 in 2022 and is fastest-growing big city in the US.
The pyramid
🚶♀️🧑🦽👨🦯🚶👩🦯👨🦽🚶♀️
🚴 🛴 🚴♂️ 🛴🚴♀️
🚌 🚆 ⛴ 🚊
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✈️
Streetcars with grass growing around the tracks and surrounded by trees: it’s a real thing and enchanting. #BerlinUrbanism
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A thing nearly unheard of in American transit: a welcoming warm waiting transit shelter. #ZurichUrbanism
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Don’t know how this passed Seattle design review, but it’s a masterpiece!
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Dense cities fight climate change. Legalize and facilitate them. #EarthDay
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Name a bigger downgrade.
The U District is seeing a massive highrise boom. That's what happens when you get a light rail station and lift the lid on zoning.
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Your move, Seattle.
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As of today these infernal machines are officially illegal in Washington DC.
Happy New Year!
Do your part. Walk in the street. Be the car ban. 😎
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We need hourly trains between Portland-Seattle-Vancouver, BC yesterday. 🚆
What a sticker. 🚲
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Washington should be running trains from there every 30 minutes between Portland and Vancouver, BC and every 15 minutes between Olympia and Stanwood. 🚆 🚆 🚆 🚆
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Ah, King Street Station. Such a great gateway to Seattle! Heading to PDX on @Amtrak_Cascades this evening.
From
Deedee Sun
Get yourself city leaders that will keep cars out of the bus lane!
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How do you increase transit ridership? Like this. #BRT #busonlylanes
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BREAKING: announces restoration of 🚆 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 service between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia on September 26th.
Just admiring Seattle’s expanded waterfront surface highway. 🛣
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In Downtown Seattle, a land use application for a 54-story apartment building with 650 homes and retail has been approved. web8.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSe
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So at what point does KOMO lose its broadcasting license?
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Beats a Tesla any day.
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There are trains, and then there are Swiss trains
@seatsixtyone
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SAWANT ELECTION UPDATE: Kshama has passed Egan in today's first drop. And her margin likely only increases from here on out. She's up 1.4 points now. What a comeback, !
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It’s bonkers that this space isn’t some active retail space at Westlake Station.
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A generational mistake. It’s time to tear it out.
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#OnThisDay in 1969, Interstate 5 was completed in Washington. historylink.org/File/9393
In Capitol Hill, a land use application for an 8-story apartment building with 75 homes and 0 car parking has been approved. The project is 4 blocks from the subway station. web8.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSe
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It’s so curious how all those fancy renders of Seattle’s new waterfront highway show endless greenery and tree canopy.
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Spotted in Bellevue: a protected, separated bike lane! 😮 🚲
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BREAKING 🚆 🇺🇸 🤝 🇨🇦: “WSDOT and ODOT are pleased to share that [] train service between Seattle and Vancouver, BC now will resume in September 2022. Earlier plans called for a December return to Canada, but Amtrak was able to advance the schedule.”
It’s kinda wild that Seattle’s only true rapid transit system is at the city’s airport and manages to feature frequencies every ~4 minutes, full automation, cross-platform transfers, platforms barriers, very wide platforms, and high quality digital information signs.
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BREAKING: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is implementing an emergency moratorium on residential evictions in the city.
It doesn’t have to be this way. That tram could be speeding along free and clear of cars. Struck trams is merely a policy choice.
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8.5 minute timelapse of the Seattle Streetcar getting bogged down by traffic in what is a regular occurrence if you depend on riding it home after work in SLU. This line could shine if it had ROW all the way through. I even passed it walking 10 minutes later at intersection...
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On University of Washington Station platforms, you can see signs that indicate light rail vehicles cannot operate at 25mph under the University of Washington campus; vehicles must go higher or lower to avoid electromagnetism interference with UW sciences. 🚊 #Link21
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Replying to
We believe the happiest trams are ones that get to graze on grass along their journey. ☺️
“We can’t build sidewalks because it’s too expensive.”
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Sound Transit has quietly put out a document on the Everett Link Extension options. It details hundreds of unnecessary property acquisitions, including leveling dozens of businesses and buildings in Downtown Everett. soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/
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You love to see it.
🚶♀️🚶🚶♂️ > 🚗🚙
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Pedestrians walking along 1st Ave between S Royal Brougham Way and S King St blocking NB lanes. Use alternative routes and use caution.
Rain isn’t why people don’t bike; infrastructure or lack thereof is.
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It rains 150 days a year in the Netherlands, we bike 365.
#cycling #netherland
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Replying to
Under Best, tear gassed a sitting City Councilmember, maced a nine-year-old kid, repeatedly targeted journalists with munitions, jailed a British reporter causing an international incident, and never admitted to doing anything wrong. #DefundSPD
Replying to
Zillow says there are 100 listings for detached single-family homes in the entire City of Seattle priced at or below $850,000.
100.
In a city of 737,000 people.
This is what Link and the Seattle Streetcar right-of-ways should look like.
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Trams, grass and trees. A winning combination, greening our cities imaginatively. Our CitySpeakers talk in this episode about why trees are the answer to so many aspects of making cities better: open.spotify.com/episode/4Qqw7U
Uh oh. Someone drove a car in the bike lane on NE 43rd Street in the U District and end up in the planter bioswale.
Did a car write this tweet?
Breaking KOMO’s heart.
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Did a car write this?
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The City of Edmonds is deciding whether the outdoor dining spots should once again be much-needed parking spots. king5.com/article/news/h
Wait, what? KOMO told me Seattle was dying. What happened?
A DOT head calls parking minimums "absurd."
"While none of us are guaranteed a place to rest our heads tonight, if we own a car it is required by law to have multiple places to park it. And that to me has alway struck me as absurd." — Secretary Roger Millar
Very likely that Mayor Durkan committed a felony by setting her work phone to delete text messages after 30 days.
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After last week saying an “unknown technology issue” led Seattle’s mayor to lose 10-months of text messsages during a contentious time in her tenure, her office acknowledged yesterday that one of her iPhones had been set to delete texts older than 30 days seattletimes.com/seattle-news/s
The Sound Transit board’s view on transit priorities.
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As the future of commuting remains uncertain, the investment in parking is a bet that Sounder riders will return and, when they do, will need more parking. st.news/3qzKcdv
It’s just amazing how much disdain some people who live in cities have for cities.
Holy shit. actually claims they won’t rezone the area around the future South Bellevue Link station because of “crime” and “neighborhood character”. bellevuewa.gov/city-governmen
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A new poll shows very strong public support for high-speed rail in the Cascadia megaregion.
Story: theurbanist.org/2021/08/19/str
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In the U District, a land use application for a 7-story apartment building with 48 homes and 0 car parking spaces has been approved. web8.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSe
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As of today, development projects with housing in Seattle are fully exempt from SEPA. 🎉 🎊 💥
Setbacks: what are they good for? Absolutely nothing.
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If your prevailing transportation paradigm has created “road rage,” maybe it’s time to pursue a different paradigm. #JoyfulTransportation
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SDOT ticketing SDOT for illegally parking is 👨🍳 😘
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This could be Seattle’s waterfront with some zoning changes, right-of-way conversions to parcels, eliminating cars from Alaskan Way, and additional park improvements.
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Vancouver’s best public place isn’t a single place — it’s a linear public experience along the water, connecting parks, playgrounds & other offerings, for riding, strolling, people-watching & enjoying a sunny Saturday. Vancouver’s continuous Seawall around the downtown peninsula.
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Fascinating how permanent bike lanes work right in front of Amsterdam’s cruise terminal.
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We’ve been discussing an Alaskan Way bike trail strategy that supports safety for cyclists and pedestrians during cruise operations with the City of Seattle and the cycling community. Read more ↓
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The just as well could have said “WA House Passes Bill Relegalizing Small Multiplexes In Most Cities” but, uh, okay.
It's unconscionable that Sound Transit isn't running 6-minute or better frequencies even at this hour regardless of games. #FixLink
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Seattle single-family homeowners go to Europe, stay in city cores like this and love it, then they go home and complain about three-story duplexes and rowhouses.
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Downtown Bellevue is really gonna fill up with all the highrises and midrises in the pipeline.
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It's just wild that some people want to build clogged tunnels for cars instead of this.
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There are trains, and then there are Swiss trains
Marco Helvetic
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Everyone needs to do their business. It’s time Seattle take loos seriously so people don’t have to run on a hope and prayer for use of a porcelain god in a private establishment.
Today is a master class in why Seattle needs to repurpose lanes from cars to active and sustainable transportation options. The city is complete gridlock, even for buses in buses lanes because they aren’t continuous, all because of cars on I-5.
In Chinatown, an application for a 9-story, 238-unit apartment building with retail has been filed. No parking is proposed. The building will be on the corner of S Jackson Street and 7th Avenue S. web8.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSe
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Interesting how the Seattle Times Editorial Board endlessly lauds freedom of the press but opposes freedom to vote when it doesn’t align with who they endorse.
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This but I-5 in Downtown Seattle.
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Radical change: the same place in Utrecht a few years ago and now.
Do you think anyone misses the road?
#netherlands #urbanplanning #sustainability
IT’S HAPPENING
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but this 55-home apartment building headed to East Ballard will be very cool. web8.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSe
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The City of Seattle is turning every Ballard and West Seattle Link station into a street fight.
Tell Sound Transit to stop studying cancellation of voter-approved stations at the webinar today.
It’s time to stop with the performative process and start getting things done.
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Live, work, or spend time in South Lake Union (SLU)? We’d like your feedback! Join a webinar either on July 20 or 25 to learn about the Ballard Link Extension’s Denny and South Lake Union stations and make your voice heard: wsblink.participate.online
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