Ryan Packer
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
The City of Seattle, via the Department of Neighborhoods, has just completed its first citywide experiment with participatory budgeting. In March, the department solicited ideas for relatively cheap improvements to parks and streets in Seattle neighborhoods and 900 ideas were whittled down; the top ones based on community-attended focus...
This past Saturday morning, The Urbanist held a walking tour focusing on the central topics around transportation and the public realm involved in the One Center City mobility plan. In addition to interested members of the public, we were lucky to have a number of advocacy groups that are...
This month Pike Place Market turns 110 years old. This archival footage shows some rare shots of the market during its second decade, when the market's buildings were owned and maintained by Arthur Goodwin, who took over after his uncle Frank Goodwin retired. Frank Goodwin oversaw the original building...
One of the centerpiece projects of the 2015 Move Seattle transportation levy was the final piece of funding for a pedestrian-only bridge across Interstate 5 adjacent to Northgate light rail station, set to open in 2021. Without a pedestrian connection created across the freeway, the walkshed around the station...
In August of 2015, a pilot project to tame a short segment of Seattle's most dangerous street, Rainier Avenue, resulted in pretty dramatic results. When the street in Columbia City was reduced from two lanes in each direction to one, with an added center turn lane, collisions overall decreased...
On Monday of last week, the City of Seattle settled a class action lawsuit in U.S. District court. The lawsuit alleged the City is currently violating the Americans with Disabilities act, based on the current number of intersections that are lacking proper curb ramps and the fact that many...
On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council got an update on the proposed Roosevelt RapidRide corridor. Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) staff shared details on the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) for the line, a required milestone for federal funding, which point to a transit line mimicking the one conceived in...
Throughout 2016, I covered the process that led to the selection of twelve neighborhood-focused transportation improvements though the Neighborhood Street Fund process. Those concepts are all getting designed this year to be constructed next year, and were all vetted through both the District Neighborhood Councils and the Move Seattle...