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.
Last week we outlined the different proposals to address the "congestion" crisis that our transportation agencies, in conjunction with the Downtown Seattle Association, are trying to prepare for in September of next year. That is the date of the King County Metro service change that will bring all Downtown...
Note: the article below separates transit proposals in the One Center City recommendations from the bike lane proposals. I am devoting an entire article next week to the issue over bike lanes and Vision Zero in the One Center City plan. Therefore, I have not discussed the bike lane aspects...
Last year, when the Mayor Ed Murray announced that Neighborhood District Councils (NDCs) would no longer be City-funded vessels for public outreach, one of the big questions was how some of the City programs that had been filtering through the NDCs would get channelled instead. On top of a...
If a street in Seattle has "Way" in the title, you know that it's more likely than most streets to be heavily car-centric. Denny Way, Leary Way, and Marginal Way all have this in common. Northeast Seattle's stroad is Sand Point Way, which follows the contours of Lake Washington...
On Friday afternoon, staff at the Seattle Department of Transportation working on a plan to expand Seattle's bikeshare program and make it successful had the rug pulled out from under them. In typical Murray Administration fashion, the news came at 5:00 pm, with the press release titled "City announces...
With plans for most Downtown bike facilities on hold pending the results of the One Center City study, work creating safe connections is still moving forward in a few places. I'll lay out two projects in different stages of planning both on Downtown's southern end in the International District.
South Dearborn Street...
While we've been deeply critical and reasonably skeptical about many aspects of the Viaduct replacement boondoggle, the best pieces of the flawed project to reengineer SR-99 through Downtown Seattle are nearing completion, and a few of them have already been delivered. Last Tuesday, the Washington State Department of Transportation...
Transit agencies around North America are getting ready for travelers in their cities to ring in 2017 in classic fashion, by going out. In Vancouver, BC, all public transit city-wide will be free of charge starting at 5pm on New Year's Eve. Extra buses will run to accommodate later...