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.
In April, both houses of the Washington State Legislature succeeded in a passing a long-anticipated update to our state's distracted driving law. The bill they passed will expand the definition of distracted driving from merely holding a phone to your ear or texting to include holding any electronic device...
For the past two years, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has attempted to try out an idea that works well in high-volume pedestrian-oriented nightlife districts: closing a central street to vehicles during the peak weekend hours. This gives pedestrians more space when more people are out, and more...
In the new book Drawdown, editor Paul Hawken, an environmentalist and author, lays out 80 solutions to reverse global warming by 2050: modest, attainable goals to slow the production of CO2 and accelerate sequestration. Ranked #54 in impact on the list is the creation of walkable cities. The book estimates that...
Seattle, we need to talk. It's undeniable that we are creating the model for an urban high-tech corridor that eschews the inefficient sprawl that has been so entrenched in the American tech sector for the past few decades. Out with the sprawling corporate campus, in with the vertical one....
The repaving schedule for arterial streets in Seattle didn't used to register on the radar of urbanists and safe streets activists. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) would select streets that were in bad shape and in need of repaving, they would knock out a certain number per year, and...
The Washington State House, fresh from delivering a significant flesh wound to Sound Transit's taxing authority last week, turned its attention this week to addressing an epidemic on our state's streets and highways. In 2015, distracted driving accounted for nearly one-third of the deaths from traffic violence in Washington,...
A long-planned project is approaching its final steps before being ready to start construction on a long-dormant site on Denny Way, but first the developers must head to the City Council's Transportation and Sustainability Committee to seek permission from the City to vacate a small segment of alleyway on...
When the latest designs for Madison Street's BRT line were released in March, street safety advocates were dismayed at how the bike and pedestrian safety components of the project seem to be diminishing after every step of design work. In particular, the central bike component for the project, protected...