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.
Traffic camera enforcement technology isn’t popular among motorists, but there’s a lot of upsides to camera enforcement of traffic regulations, such as speed limits. Dave Amos of City Beautiful dives into the lifesaving technology. Amos also highlights other lifesaving technologies related to driving.
Alignment and station alternatives to be studied for the Everett Link light rail extension have been set. In June, the Sound Transit board adopted a slate of preferred and non-preferred alternatives to be further refined and evaluated in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). Conspicuously absent from the June...
North American cities are known for their wide, gridded streets which stand in stark contrast to European city streets that tend to be narrower and more organic. Those narrower European streets also tend be more pleasant and dense, often with a mix of uses. But American streets weren’t always...
There's a segment of Americans and Canadians that like to say that good urbanism can't be replicated in North American cities because their countries are too big, or because their history is inherently different from places like France and Germany. Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes takes down those...
A one-time deep clean at Link stations headlines the hygiene.
Cleaning at some Sound Transit facilities are set to see an improvement. A newly approved contract amendment with MSNW Group, a third-party janitorial services provider, will enhance service at a slate of agency-operated facilities, including parking garages, Sounder, Tacoma Link,...
Sound Transit plans continue to avoid taking car lanes to site light rail. Greater displacement, less space for transit-oriented housing, and more dangerous crossings for pedestrians would be the result.
The Sound Transit board is poised to vote on alternatives to be studied in the Everett Link Extension’s first round...
The term “Vision Zero” gets bandied about a lot in transportation and urbanist circles, but to the unitiated the concept isn’t necessarily obvious or intuitive just by its name. The goal of it -- to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries -- is undoubtedly ambitious given the prevailing...
King County Metro has announced fresh service suspensions with six weekday peak-hour bus routes, affecting Routes 16, 232, 237, 301, 304, and 320. The suspensions are said to be temporary, applying from June 12 to June 23, but all six routes are set to be suspended for an undetermined...