Stephen Fesler
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.
Point access block (single-stair) buildings are ubiquitous across the globe, except for North America. Building codes are the big reason why. Debate in recent years has centered on relegalizing them in the United States and Canada, but because the issue is so esoteric, there is still reticence among many...
Sound Transit boardmembers heard from experts on the agency's Technical Advisory Group (TAG) and their own independent consultant, Dave Peters, as part of a quarterly update last week. Albeit diplomatically, the group of experts chastised agency leadership and staff for what they considered a lack of urgency to implement...
The agency is seeking feedback on its initial pedestrian, bike, bus, and transit-oriented development plans near its four planned West Seattle light rail stations.
Sound Transit recently reached out to communities on the West Seattle Link Extension to gauge priorities around station area planning. The agency was specifically looking into...
Just in time for the Link fare change debate, Reece Martin at RMTransit weighs in on zone-based, distance-base, and flat fares. Martin digs into the differences between them, how transit systems across the globe use them, and why it all matters.
Washington State came up short in its bid for a larger $198 million grant to advance high-speed rail planning.
On Friday, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) unveiled its selection of rail projects that will be getting a windfall via President Biden's 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This "Corridor Identification...
Splitting up the four-line, 116-mile system into smaller segments allows greater frequencies with fewer traincars.
Link is in trouble. Service planning estimates widely missed the mark on how many trains that Sound Transit would need to run the Link system as it is expanded into the 2030s and 2040s. Agency...
Sound Transit is in the midst of its budget season when agency policymakers decide on priorities for next year and manage the agency's long-term financial plan.
By and large, the proposed budget is sticking to the nuts and bolts of running a transit agency. That means funding transit service, reinvesting...
Chicago sold its on-street paid parking spaces for a small proportion of their value for decades. The city, however, is reeling from that fundamental error in so many ways beyond just revenues. Rollie Williams of Climate Town explains how, especially from a sustainability and urban standpoint.