Erika Boyd was previously the chair of the Transportation Advisory Board and has been a big advocate for multimodal transportation. We are so excited to have her on board!! 🩵

Well, if the covenant was declared illegal and unenforceable by state law, then you couldn’t take action on anyone for breaking the covenant. The question would then be whether the state law was illegal. My sense is the state has a decent degree of latitude on this, but again, not a lawyer

I guess what they would sue over is whether the state law is constitutional or not. I’m not a lawyer though. FWIW I think “not including HOA covenants that can be removed by the homeowner in assessed valuation” seems reasonable and would probably be enough to solve the problem

The state also has the latitude to declare various types of covenants illegal. E.g. racially restrictive covenants are obviously now illegal and can’t be enforced. The state legislature could probably do something similar for these golf course covenants

There’s an election this year for a new assessor. Hopefully at least one of the candidates adds this to their campaign platform :)

I would actually love to use this money to buy within-city transit (local shuttles). My neighborhood in Issaquah has literally zero transit - the closest bus stop is the Issaquah transit center which is a 30 minute (!!) walk away. Metro doesn’t believe in neighborhood shuttles for some reason.

77 Greenwich Street: Luxury Condos and Bonus Public Elementary School N.Y.-based real estate company Trinity Place Holdings Inc. announced a loan for 77 Greenwich Street luxury condos and a public elementary school.

NYC has a high-rise (77 Greenwich St) combination of a 40-story condo building with an 8-story elementary school. It's super cool! schoolconstructionnews.com/2018/01/04/b...

School districts should also consider how to use their vast land holdings to contribute to providing housing! It's wild to see the discrepancy in some parts of Seattle - single-story elementary schools with huge fields right next to a bunch of 5-over-1s. Would help with school enrollment too.

That headline coming from the STEB is 🤌🤌🤌

Fun fact: the Sound Cities Association used to be called the “Suburban Cities Association” and rebranded sometime in the last 10-15 years or so.

It says “five hundred units of subsidized housing units”…sounds like someone needs a better proofreader 🫠

This mostly seems like “ensuring existing projects make it across the finish line” rather than “invest in new PSH”…like, the Plymouth housing project in Redmond would count towards this 500, no?

Mayor Katie Wilson speaking at Sound Transit Crosslake Light Rail Opening

“Having a car should not be a requirement to building a life of one’s choosing.”
🚶 🚴‍♀️ 🚌 🚆
-Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson at the Sound Transit Crosslake Light Rail Opening

In the Seattle area kids under 18 ride free too! Most of the fare revenue actually comes from employer orca cards. I ain’t complaining about Microsoft or Amazon paying for their employees to ride buses or trains

Thanks for sharing, Robert! To be clear, we took the ideas from Sound Transit’s own documents about what would be helpful to them, but those are both very reasonable ideas that every city can (and should!) adopt.

I got to ride the cross-lake light rail one day early! And I made a little video about it :) What a beautiful day!

Want Sound Transit to expand faster and for less money? Here's how | Op-Ed Issaquah city officials make their case for how to offer solutions to help ST deliver rail projects faster.

My op-ed with @kevinnichols.org and Mayor Mullet is in the Seattle Times today! Cities should come to the table with streamlined permitting, a collaborative approach, and skin in the game. Let’s #buildthedamntrains! www.seattletimes.com/opinion/want...

Who would’ve thunk, increasing bike access to transit increases transit ridership more than increasing car access does! 🚴🏻‍♀️🚊 And we’ve had studies on this since *checks notes* 1984?? Sheesh

Great idea, I’ll use float on as the background music for my cross lake light rail ride video 😁

American planners are bizarrely obsessed with requiring “facade modulation” because they think it makes buildings look better. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t make the buildings look better, and it’s also terrible for energy efficiency and many other things.

Like, I’m not the best biker ever, but I also have been known to seek out long cycling climbs as a form of recreation. But I would never, ever go grocery shopping on an acoustic bike, given the hill I live on 😂

I filled this out - based on the categorization I would consider myself high fitness but even biking up the hill I live on (400ft at ~10% grade) on a road bike is tough. I think anything related to hauling cargo and kids should recommend e-assist (unless someone has “extreme” fitness)

I strongly agree. Part of the job of a local elected official is to understand what’s going on and ask questions so that you can make informed decisions on policy. And frankly, reading the packet is the bare minimum. We also need to understand context and flag what staff might be missing.

We’re not paid that much, but reading the packet is part of the job. It’s not unreasonable to expect your elected officials to do their homework, be prepared for meetings, and know what’s going on.

The absolute worst NIMBYism was the historic preservationism of People’s Park. It really was a situation where probably like 90% of students were in favor of redevelopment there, but then the 10% who were opposed were just really loud. I was very happy to see it turn into housing after I graduated.

I actually looked up where this building is proposed to go and like … there was never anything going on there? It’s an abandoned building? Seems like a perfect place to put a giant dorm!

Being a student at UC Berkeley and seeing the insane NIMBYism of Berkeley residents is what radicalized me. Students could only live in dorms for one year because there wasn’t enough student housing! And then we had to move into shitty slumlord apartments because that’s all we could afford!

ST should also use their actual stations for retail. Downtown Redmond station is basically a ghost town but you could have like 20+ food stands there and make it really fun! Plus there are elevated tracks so it’s covered! But no, we couldn’t possibly make light rail stations actual destinations…

State law requires ST surplus properties to be used for 80% affordable housing. So they can’t get market value for the land. Personally I think that restriction should be relaxed, and ST should put more retail space in and around the station itself like they do in Asia, Europe, or Australia.

Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport Pedal power is booming, spinning up a new culture war

5. Studies show that e-bikes are currently displacing much more fossil fuel use than e-cars 😃 Even the lefties at the economist are on board with e-bikes! www.economist.com/internationa...