We’ve nearly closed the book on 2024, which was another massive year for urbanist news and advocacy in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s a look back at The Urbanist’s top ten most-read articles published in 2024.
#1: Amtrak’s Expansion Plan Includes Two New Pacific Northwest Routes
Our most read article of 2024 was on a frequent topic of interest for our readers: Amtrak rail service. Stephen Fesler covered the two new Pacific Northwest routes coming as part of Amtrak’s expanded long-distance service, which was funded in President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure package.
“The Pacific Northwest could see two new routes under the preferred plan, serving destinations without any train service at all, such as Yakima, Boise, Missoula, and Pocatello,” Fesler wrote. “Both routes would provide daily service from Seattle with one running to Denver and another running to Chicago on a modified alignment from Amtrak’s Empire Builder.”
This article didn’t just claim the top spot for 2024, but also set an all-time record for our publication. The hunger for more Amtrak service is strong.
#2: Pacific Northwest’s Largest Highway Project Ever Is in Deep Denial
While our top article was on a hotly anticipated piece of infrastructure for urbanists, the second most-read article was on the opposite: a reviled freeway expansion megaproject planned in Vancouver, Washington. Ryan Packer broke down the several-hundred-page environmental impact study for the “Interstate Bridge Replacement” project, as the freeway widening (which extends five miles north from the bridge) has been euphemistically been rebranded. This is not normal fodder for well-read pieces for most publications or reporters. But The Urbanist is built different.
Packer was able to pull off the feat by cutting through through the obfuscating and willful ignorance to call a spade a spade: A major $7.5 billion expansion of freeway infrastructure is not good for the environment — no matter what a shiny study says.
“[T]he shiny new document leaves out an essential consideration when it comes to projecting the future effects of I-5 expansion in this long-constrained corridor, an omission that would have been much less noticed in a decade ago but which sticks out like a sore thumb now,” Packer wrote. “It almost completely sidesteps the concept of induced demand, which posits that additional roadway capacity will prompt more trips as road users seek to take advantage of faster trips, ultimately cancelling out many of the promised benefits that come from adding that new capacity, especially congestion reduction.”
The Urbanist has been striving to demystify this concept, basically since our inception. And our readers our onboard judging by the fact this if our second most-read article to date.
“Induced demand is a well-documented phenomenon in transportation, which The Urbanist has covered before, for those seeking a primer,” Packer wrote. “Individual projects have demonstrated that this is the case for 60 years, but more recently the data has become hard to ignore. A 2014 study conducted by Daniel Graham of Imperial College London, UK, looked at traffic conditions across 101 US cities from 1982 to 2007 and found that a 10% increase in lane capacity was associated with a 9% increase in traffic, independent of background growth in population and the economy.”
#3: Where Have All the Washington State Ferries Walk-on Passengers Gone?
Our third most-read article covered some of the struggles at Washington State Ferries, focusing on the troubling trend of walk-on passenger ridership plummeting during the pandemic. The Urbanist’s volunteer Bremerton correspondent Travis Merrigan offered some theories for why walk-on ridership was taking a hit, with the Bremerton to Seattle route hit hardest of all.
“Bremerton stands out for its extremely low ridership recovery,” Merrigan wrote. “Ridership on the Bremerton to Seattle route is just 28% of walk-ons and 39% for drivers – the lowest recovery rates in the entire system. Before the pandemic, Bremerton accounted for about 23% of all WSF walk-on passengers. In 2023, it was just 11%.”
“Bremerton exemplifies all the trends above,” Merrigan continued. “Bremerton has always had the highest walk-on to drive-on ratio, so trends that affect walk-on we’re bound to affect Bremerton-Seattle more than other routes. And all the hypotheses discussed above affect Bremerton particularly strongly. The drive from Bremerton to Seattle (65 miles) is the second shortest ‘drive around’ of any terminal-to-terminal drive (Southworth to Fauntleroy is 62 miles). Bremerton has, by far, the most robust walk-on passenger system in the Puget Sound, and many more Brem-Sea fast ferry trips than in 2019. Both Bremerton Fast Ferry and WSF take passengers right downtown Seattle, so reduction in downtown office commuting hits ridership hard.”
#4: Seattle Breaks Ground on West Coast’s First Residential Highrise of 2024
Facing an office occupancy crash and an increasing sense of disorder, the fate of Downtown Seattle has been a hotly debated issue in recent elections. Freelancer reporter Andrew Engelson covered a tower groundbreaking in the north end of Downtown that claimed the distinction of being the first residential highrise to start construction in 2024 through the West Coast of the United States amid a cooling market. The 45-story tower will add 442 homes on the site of the former Elephant Car Wash near the Space Needle. Despite the good news, a slowing development pipeline could spell trouble for housing production down the road.
“Although Seattle has already produced 6,500 new apartments through the first half of 2024 according to City data, there are troubling signs that permitting and construction of multi-family residential buildings – despite the example of the Sloane project – may be slowing down in Seattle,” Engelson wrote. “The stream of projects entering the permitting pipeline is slowing to a trickle, which will eventually force a major slowdown unless applications rebound quickly.”
#5: Seattle Pursues Looser Police Hiring Standards After High-Profile Screening Failure
The new centrist-dominated Seattle City Council has consistently talked about the need to boost police recruiting efforts. Amy Sundberg covered the Council’s push for looser hiring standards, which may stand at odds with efforts to weed out reckless cops like Kevin Dave, who killed Jaahnavi Kandula while driving over 70mph on a city street. Dave was hired despite numerous red flags on his resume, for driving infractions and misconduct in his previous job in Tucson.
Sundberg, who specializes in the public safety beat for The Urbanist, noted that using an easier screening test and having such haste to get officers in the door could cause quality of policing to decrease. This appears to be what happened with Kevin Dave.
“The Tucson Police Department warned SPD about the red flags in Dave’s file, including numerous driving infractions for wrecks, suspected drunk driving, and driving without valid insurance,” Sundberg wrote. “In spite of being aware of Dave’s past, SPD hired him, paying him a $7,500 hiring bonus. The department also failed to confirm that Dave maintained a valid driver’s license, meaning he was driving without a Washington state license at the time of the fatal crash — adding to the perception that officers consider themselves above the laws they are supposed to enforce.”
#6: Seattle Waterfront Park Project Finally Enters Its Home Stretch
The Urbanist has been all over plans to overhaul Seattle’s Waterfront Park and the surrounding streets. Our sixth most-read piece of 2024 (by yours truly) covered the anticipation that was building this spring as Seattle prepared to open the Overlook Walk this fall. The “State of Downtown” gala thrown by the Downtown Seattle Association featured a speech by Joy Shigaki, CEO of Friends of Waterfront Seattle, which programs park spaces on the waterfront.
Shigaki noted the trend of reclaiming highway viaducts to improve the public realm in urban areas, which urbanists were all too excited to see Seattle joining in on.
“Nationally, we’re seeing this trend of reclaiming old infrastructure projects, highways, double-decker highways, railroads, to be able to reclaim the beauty of our cities from what they once were,” Shigaki said in March. “And Waterfront Park is going to be part of that renewal, but it’s going to be part of the revitalization and part of creating a place that everyone sees themselves in and memories to be created.”
Beyond stoking excitement, discussion also touched on doling out credit and writing the first draft of history. Unsurprisingly, advocates for not building the SR 99 tunnel and instead focusing on surface transit and pedestrianization efforts did not get a mention in the official downtown booster telling of how Waterfront Park came to be:
While local urbanist leaders like Cary Moon and former Mayor Mike McGinn argued the highway tunnel was not necessary and the focus should be on transit, pedestrian, and park improvements alone, ultimately highway tunnel boosters won out and have sought to frame the tunnel as inevitable and necessary for the park plans since. Of course, Moon, McGinn, and the larger People’s Waterfront Coalition movement against the downtown highway in either an elevated or buried form received no mention at the event.
Doug Trumm, The Urbanist, March 20, 2024
“This extraordinary, double-decker highway cut across the most beautiful part of our city, like the Embarcadero in San Francisco, like other cities across the nation,” Shigaki said. “It was not about human-centered design. It was about disconnection. But the audacity of the vision after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, the conversations even before that was what happens when you build a new tunnel.”
Before the viaduct replacement project, the hulking highway polluted downtown with noise and air pollution and interrupted the flow of people from downtown to the waterfront. Now downtown finds itself relatively unobstructed and connected to its unique Elliott Bay waterfront — though the overbuilt Alaskan Way roadway, eight lanes near Colman Dock, isn’t the most welcoming sight to visitors arriving at downtown’s south end.
“Tear it down to reveal what is possible about a new waterfront and a new park to be born,” Shigaki said. “It is a 20-acre park that is in the shadow of the former viaduct. So I’ve met people who actually moved in after the viaduct came down and said, ‘What’s the big deal?’ Like you don’t remember. So part of the storytelling of this place is retelling that story, right? What it took to get here to take that double-decker highway down the political leadership residents advocates, this 20-acre park running from the stadium district all the way to Belltown will be creating this dynamic tapestry of experience of public space, connection to the waterfront, the tendrils back down to Pioneer Square, the 20-block Pike-Pine extension to Capitol Hill and down back to Pike Place Market is part of that vision of reclaiming this extraordinary space. There’s massive economic impact…
#7: Washington’s Statewide E-bike Rebate Program Is Still on the Way
Our seventh most-read article covered Washington State’s new e-bike program which is a long time in coming, despite the state legislation allocating funding in 2023. Unfortunately, the same Ryan Packer reported in April is still true today: The program is still yet to launch, despite hopes to do so this year. Roll out will need to wait for 2025. With only $5 million allocated for e-bike rebates, supplies will be limited. Unless buyers qualify qualify for a low-income voucher, they should not count on getting the rebate in the first iteration of the program. The state legislature will need to expand funding.
“With a $5 million allocation in the state transportation budget, spearheaded by Senator Sharon Shewmake (D-42, Bellingham), the legislature signaled its intent to start to incentivize the purchase of e-bikes. Already, e-bike sales nationwide have outpaced the sales of electric cars, despite much larger subsidies for the latter,” Packer wrote. “When established, Washington’s rebate program will provide an instant $300 off electric bicycle and tricycles, with an additional $900 available for purchasers who provide proof of a lower income, at 80% of their county’s median yearly wages or below. Per the state budget, 60% of the total funds for vouchers are earmarked for those low income purchasers.”
#8: Washington’s Traffic Camera Laws Get a Significant Overhaul
In other example of Ryan Packer’s Olympia reporting taking off, an article on reforms to state traffic camera laws climbed to eight most-read 2024 piece. Legislation passed this spring allows more enforcement of bus lanes via camera and drops strict requirements that only sworn police officers can review camera footage, which had created bottlenecks in issuing tickets.
“House Bill 2384, sponsored by Representative Brandy Donaghy (D-44, Snohomish), builds on reforms passed as part of the 2022 Move Ahead Washington transportation package that dramatically expanded where cities were allowed to use automatic cameras to enforce traffic laws,” Packer wrote in March. “And it tweaks some of the financial incentives that may prompt cities to decide to use cameras — and the incentives that might prompt cities to keep cameras in place as opposed to investing in infrastructure that stops the underlying behavior.”
Already, cities are moving to ramp up their camera enforcement, which holds the potential to increase street safety without consuming limited police resources or requiring unsafe traffic stops that can lead to violence and fall into patterns of racial bias.
#9: King County’s Transformative Vision for Downtown Seattle Comes Into View
King County Executive Dow Constantine has an ambitious vision to remake South Downtown by redeveloping the county’s extensive campus with housing, which would diversify today’s office-heavy character and underused campus. Ryan Packer offered the deepest dive on the County’s Civic Campus Plan penned to date, which clocked in as our ninth most popular 2024 piece.
King County Executive Dow Constantine’s vision for a transformed “civic campus” around the iconic County Courthouse and other county-owned properties in Downtown Seattle became much more clear late last week, as his administration released a new strategic plan for the undertaking. The plan spells out how King County might redevelop not only the eight buildings it owns near Pioneer Square, but also the 24.5 acres of land currently home to Metro’s Atlantic and Central bus bases in SoDo, moving some of the administrative and criminal justice functions the county oversees out from the urban core.
Ryan Packer, The Urbanist, August 7, 2024
The ultimate goal? A “24-hour neighborhood” with significantly more residential and office space than exists today, but with the additional intention of activating ground floor uses by creating a significant amount of new civic space in addition to bringing in retail amenities. But even with the 340-page plan released this month, there are still many unanswered questions around how the county might implement this incredibly bold vision. For example, could a condensed Metro bus base still support plans for expanded service?
#10: 2025 Opening for Full East Link Sits on a Razor’s Edge
The opening of East Link light rail on April 30 was among the biggest transit news of 2024. Due to construction issues on the I-90 segment, the 2 Line was not able to fully open with service to Downtown Seattle, and new stations in Mercer Island and Judkins Park continue to await service. In May, Ryan Packer covered the delicate plans to open the 2 Line’s cross-lake service in late 2025. Some schedule risks could further delay plans, potentially pushing opening to 2026. Clearly our readers are highly anticipating that development as this piece climbed to our tenth most-read of 2024.
“We do need a strong collaboration and a commitment from our contractors to meet the remaining schedule because we do not have float remaining,” deputy executive Tracy Reed told Sound Transit Board’s system expansion committee in May. “But we have made progress this spring, and are still on track to meet the fourth quarter delivery [in 2025]. Maintaining schedule is of the utmost importance, and if we do find opportunities to save and use any time that will benefit us collectively.”
We’ll continue to keep a close eye on this story in 2025. The Downtown Redmond extension is still on course to open in spring 2025, which hopefully bodes well for westward extension as well.
Honorable Mention: It Could Be the End of Line for the Seattle Streetcar
While not quite cracking the top 10, Urbanist readers are clearly interested in the fate of the Seattle Streetcar, as our piece on potential doom of the system was well read and claimed the 11th spot. The 1.2-mile Center City Connector streetcar extension plans continue to sit in limbo, and several councilmembers have expressed interest in shuttering the 1.3-mile South Lake Union Line, which suffers from anemic ridership without extension.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.