The Levy to Move Seattle Era Draws to a Close

The era of transformative mobility investments is over, and the era of spot improvements is here.

As 2024 winds to a close, Seattle’s current transportation levy is set to expire, wrapping up nine years of investments that made their mark on the city’s streets, sidewalks, and bridges. The Levy to Move Seattle, approved by voters in November of 2015, sustained transportation spending across three separate mayoral administrations. It was crafted under Mayor Ed Murray as a transformational set of investments intended to permanently change how the city gets around.

With voters last month resoundingly approving a renewal levy, simply named the Seattle Transportation Levy and on ballots as Proposition 1, that will ramp up spending in a number of areas, the Move Seattle era is set to recede into the background. The new levy, approximately 30% larger than Move Seattle after accounting for inflation, is set to ramp up spending on areas like sidewalk construction, roadway repaving, and bridge maintenance.

With over 66% of voters approving the renewal, Seattle residents seem largely satisfied with Move Seattle and want even more investments like the ones it enabled. But in some ways, the Seattle Transportation Levy represents a step back, prioritizing the “basics” of the city’s transportation system over investments that set Seattle up to be able to reduce emissions, create more vibrant communities, and get ahead of expected population growth.

This week, the Move Seattle levy’s official oversight committee met for the last time, after approximately 100 meetings spent reviewing project updates and analyzing levy spending. For nine years, the promises to the voters have been that committee’s north star. Next year, a new oversight body will be stood up for the renewal levy, with new members selected by Mayor Harrell and the City Council. That committee will be tasked with keeping a new set of commitments on track, but exactly how remains to be seen.

“We’re all taking that [vote] as a mandate to keep doing this work and keep transforming our street network,” Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) Director Greg Spotts told the committee. “Because it was an 83% turnout election, we got more than 260,000 votes. We think Proposition 1 got the most votes of any candidate or proposition ever in the City of Seattle.”

The $930 million Move Seattle Levy, leveraged with other city funding and outside grants, led to over 250 blocks of new sidewalks and pathways, over 3,400 added street trees, and repaving along a length of roadway that would stretch from Seattle to Spokane. SDOT added 68 miles of new bike facilities to the bike network over the past nine years, with dozens more under construction right now.

The Move Seattle Levy also enabled the construction of three brand new bridges: the reconstruction of the Fairview Avenue N bridge near South Lake Union, the last wooden bridge on an arterial street in the city, the S Lander Street railroad overpass in SoDo, and the John Lewis Memorial Pedestrian Bridge in Northgate. And it provided a local match for three new RapidRide transit upgrade projects, two of which are already open and serving riders: the RapidRide H Line, G Line, and J Line.

Over the past year in particular, the SDOT has ramped up work to deliver final levy commitments, capitalizing on a project delivery machine that really didn’t exist within the department at the beginning of the Move Seattle era. So far in 2024, the city has awarded approximately 30 different construction contracts — more than double its normal rate of around 12 per year.

But for all its accomplishments, Move Seattle will also be remembered as a levy that fell short in many areas, which likely paved the way for a renewal that is much less ambitious in its scope.

Move Seattle promised seven total RapidRide lines, not three, banking on anticipated federal funding that never materialized. It promised West Seattle residents a transformed Fauntleroy Boulevard as an entrance to the entire peninsula, with protected bike lanes and a tree-lined median — a project that was put on hold by Mayor Jenny Durkan in 2018 as Sound Transit began eyeing Fauntleroy as a potential light rail corridor. Ultimately, Sound Transit selected a tunnel option as its preferred West Seattle Link alternative, greatly reducing any conflicts with Fauntleroy Way.

Move Seattle promised a grand total of 110 miles of bike facilities: a number that proved unattainable with the funding provided in the levy and political obstacles along the way.

Without a very intentional effort in 2019 to allocate some of the proceeds from a surplus City property in South Lake Union, spearheaded by Councilmember Mike O’Brien, the Move Seattle levy would have been on track to leave Southeast Seattle without any new bike connection to the rest of the city, despite millions in spending. With that seed funding, and a clear resolution from the City Council giving direction on a path forward, one of the projects is now open along MLK Jr Way S, and another three projects are under construction.

The new Seattle Transportation Levy is much less ambitious in its vision for expanding the bike network, focusing instead on a handful of key connections and upgrading and maintaining the bike infrastructure that was built during Move Seattle. When it comes to transit investments, it rests on Move Seattle’s laurels as well — with just one new RapidRide planned on top of the Move Seattle-funded J Line, set to open in 2027. The Seattle Transportation Levy promises 160 bus projects, with few requirements about what those improvements could entail: bus stop upgrades, bus lanes, or nearby pedestrian improvements all qualify.

With Seattle’s megaprojects like the waterfront revamp wrapping up, and the light visible at the end of the tunnel on the 520 bridge replacement, the era of setting up transformative investments is over, and the era of spot improvements is here.

With Move Seattle’s ambitious and fairly narrowly tailored targets now in the past, Seattle’s leaders do now have more flexibility around how to guide transportation spending. That could come with positives and negatives, but there are early signs that the city is heading into an time of intense micromanagement. At its last meeting, the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee (LOC) approved a letter sounding the alarm about a proviso, approved by the City Council during November budget deliberations, that puts a hold on roughly half of the new levy’s proceeds in 2025 until the Council approves a detailed spending plan outlining how SDOT will use the funding.

“[T]he LOC sees the potential for this proviso to be used in bad faith as its wording makes it possible for Councilmembers to hold levy funds hostage until they are spent on specific projects Councilmembers may see as a priority,” the letter states. “SDOT developed the [Seattle Transportation Plan] that is used to guide their work, including annual spending plans, with significant community input, leading to strong safety, equity, and mobility filters which guide how SDOT does project development work. It is important for community transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility that we respect the processes that went into developing these community plans.”

The Seattle City Council unanimously approved the Seattle Transportation Plan earlier this year, but without much time actually processing what the plan actually represents, and with few substantive amendments. The STP includes a lot of transformational projects, but both the Harrell Administration and the City Council haven’t shown much interest in actually pursuing them. The Seattle Streetcar system, sitting in limbo, is emblematic but far from the only example.

There are also signs that transportation spending is set to get increasingly Balkanized. As part of the 2025-2026 budget, the City Council approved a new program setting aside $1 million for each of the seven district councilmembers to utilize within their districts, with no apparent requirements around justifying those investments with any data or desired outcomes.

So far, a majority of the council has shown extreme deference to the priorities of other district councilmembers. The $2 million earmark from transportation chair Rob Saka requiring SDOT to completely reconfigure the already-completed RapidRide H project near a preschool with personal ties to his own family an extreme example. How exactly the Council will treat any draft spending plan put in front of them will be something to watch.

As the new levy’s investments start to take shape, Move Seattle is set to become yesterday’s news even as the trees, sidewalks, and asphalt that it paid for will remain behind long after the levy expires. For all its faults and for all the stumbles that the city made over the past nine years, it did encapsulate a vision for transforming the city’s transportation system. Now that it’s gone, where the city is headed next remains up in the air.

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