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.
Today marks an unusual day in Seattle: we are shutting down an entire mode of transportation. Two and a half years after Pronto! Cycle Share launched in Downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, and the University District with 50 stations and 500 bikes, operations will cease at midnight tonight after the...
In 2008, Seattle transportation officials made a tough decision: divert money that was previously allocated for a major corridor improvement project to another area that was proving itself to be a higher priority: Mercer Street. With South Lake Union looking like it was about to explode, as it did,...
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has started taking feedback on the RapidRide H line, which will travel from Downtown Seattle to West Seattle via Delridge Way and continue to Burien. This line is planned to start service in 2020, the year after the Madison line, Rapidride G, begins...
This week, in an online open house, the Seattle Department of Transportation is presenting the latest update to the plans for the $120 million Madison Street improved transit corridor, recently announced as the RapidRide G line. The plans show a block-by-block design with several highlighted features that have changed...
Last month we wrote about a new process that the Department of Neighborhoods (DoN) is engaging in to allocate neighborhood grants focused on street & parks projects: participatory budgeting. In past years these projects were called Neighborhood Park and Street Fund grants: small projects that have an estimated cost of...
On Wednesday, conveniently after a Seattle Times article detailed how Sound Transit--or rather the Washington State Department of Licensing--values new and used cars to calculate car tabs (spoiler alert: it has to do with state law, hasn't been hidden, and hasn't changed in a long time), the Republican-controlled Washington...
On Tuesday at Idris Mosque in North Seattle, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray drew a stark contrast between Seattle's approach to governance and the one he sees forming at the Federal level. The 2017 State of the City address was also a high profile campaign event for a mayor who...
Last week, we reported on Commute Seattle's survey of downtown commute modes, which is getting widely shared because it reports single occupant vehicle (SOV) mode share dipped to 30%. Decreasing SOV mode share is a huge victory for our city and reflects the fact that new commuters recognize that downtown...