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.
Ray Delahanty of CityNerd visited Seattle to showcase the city's preeminent stroad: Aurora Avenue. Delahanty offers a sobering overview of the road, but he also discusses how it could be completely reimagined. The Urbanist and fellow local advocacy organizations make cameos in the video.
Amtrak will restore international Cascades train service to Vancouver, British Columbia on September 26th. Initially, Cascades service will only be one roundtrip daily between Seattle and Vancouver, but Amtrak will increase that to twice daily when available staffing and equipment levels allow. Bookings for the restored service are already...
Regulate cars: New York may regulate vehicle speed and size in a big way. A federal legislator also wants to tackle car safety.
Foot traffic: Portland is seeing a rebound in foot traffic.
Boosting service: Spokane Transit Authority has boosted service.
Idahome: Idaho's growth is changing demographics quickly.
Ferry rides: BC Ferries traffic...
Dave Amos of City Beautiful talks about how cities can move goods faster, more efficiently, and sustainably. Amos highlights some strategies that are being used in Seattle, too.
Planning for aging communities is increasingly important. Vox visits Weesp, a small city in The Netherlands, to understand how the "dementia village" model works through the lens of De Hogeweyk. These communities seem to perform much better for residents than the traditional dementia housing model.
This Transpo Notes roundup touches on a mix of transit stories, including:
New Sounder cars arrive;$30 million in federal bus grants for Washington transit agencies;A pilot passenger-only ferry launches service;Staffing levels at local transit agencies still down;Update on Link real-time arrival signs; andNew bike rooms open at Sound Transit facilities.
Sound...
Trolleybuses still exist across many transit systems in North America, but some transit agencies are beginning to cut back on them out of a mistaken belief that they are obsolete. Reece Martin explains in this video why that belief is wrong and how newer generation trolleybuses can be useful...
Puget Sound is investing heavily in large transit expansion projects like light rail and bus rapid transit. These are critically important for moving people quickly over in-city and short regional distances on-demand. But as the region grows around transit, policymakers need to begin planning how to transport people over...