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.
This week's Transpo Notes roundup is focused on Sound Transit and Community Transit updates. These include new details on Sound Transit's South Tacoma Station access improvement, Stride bus rapid transit S3 Line, and Tacoma T Line projects as well as Community Transit's planned technology enhancements and future planning work.
South...
Paris is famed for its grand Hussmann-era boulevards. North American cities are famed for their dangerous stroads. Dave Amos of City Beautiful looks into the anatomy of boulevards and how they might be a better fit in the hierarchy of streets for cities.
Community Transit and Everett Transit are proposing service changes that would go into effect in March. Bus riders can expect very different experiences from the agencies with Everett Transit adding service and adjusting the bus network while Community Transit reduces service on select routes.
Community Transit's service change proposal
The service...
The gig economy has transformed the way we receive a lot of services, including deliver of groceries. Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes looks into a growing industry that is offering fast grocery delivery in Dutch cities. These industries are picking up spaces in traditional commercial spaces and using...
In the University District, Sound Transit is moving ahead with planning equitable transit-oriented development on surplus property. The agency owns two parcels of land (about 18,000 square feet) on the north side of NE 45th Street between Roosevelt Way NE and 12th Avenue NE. The parcels are separated by...
Sound Transit unveiled plans for a new "digital assistant" and passenger-facing technology program last week. The agency wants to build a single tool that would allow riders to do regional trip planning, obtain real-time information, receive interactive support, and pay their fares, which could be a first-in-the-nation innovation for...
Sound Transit will deploy a new station code system across the Link network for navigation much like sequential numbering systems used for airport gates and major train station tracks and platforms. These will supplement regular station names, not replace them, but the eccentric pictograms (e.g., Roosevelt moose and Capitol...
Dave Amos takes stock of top and bottom US bike cities. Unsurprisingly, the best still fall far short of European cities for biking, but Amos points out how they can improve and ranks San Luis Obispo’s latests efforts. Amos also highlights how lower ranking US cities can do better.