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On the Seattle Weekly‘s blog, Laura Onstot lets King County’s Ron Posthuma get away with a whopper about our report on tunnel cost overruns: …Posthuma says the Sightline report mis-characterizes at least the downtown tunnel, a project he oversaw at King County DOT. The costs blew up thanks to problems getting the stations built along the route. The tunnel itself came in under budget. “It was a double-digit percentage [under],”...

A few weeks back, Vancouver, BC-based urban planner Zach Shaner posted a comparison of bus transit service in Seattle and Vancouver.  Shaner’s basic claim—that Vancouver’s bus service just works better than Seattle’s—is hard to dispute. A few years ago I reached the same conclusion, based on the fact that  TransLink, BC’s transit agency, provided far more bus rides per capita than did greater Seattle’s. But while I totally agree with...

The press and progressive blogosphere seems to love the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s new Housing + Transportation Affordability Index.  But after playing around with their nifty maps, I ultimately found myself more bewildered than enlightened. Of course, the basic idea of combining housing and transportation costs is sound.  Typical measures of affordability take a narrow view of housing costs, looking only at mortgage payments and rents—which can make homes in low-priced exurbs look...

In putting together some background materials for a recent meeting, I stumbled upon a 5-year-old report by the Housing Partnership called Filling in the Spaces: Ten Essentials for Successful Urban Infill Housing. Five years is like an eternity in this economy, especially when it comes to housing. But I found the report still really fresh on the principles for dealing with growth in Northwest. The basic idea is that infill...

My favorite cliff hanger scene is in a film called the Italian Job, in which the hero (played by Michael Caine) is left at the end, hanging, quite literally, over a cliff in the Alps. Following a bill through the legislative process can often feel much like watching one of these thrillers. Take Washington State Representative Hans Dunshee’s bill that would increase the state’s debt limit to improve energy efficiency...

History is replete with political leaders setting big goals to fix problems in our society or address some perceived external threat to national or global security or well being. Nowadays federal, state, provincial and local governments are setting lofty goals around climate change, vowing carbon reductions and even carbon neutrality. Cities throughout our region are getting into the act on reducing their carbon emissions. Vancouver B.C and Portland both have...

Some Washington State legislators are concerned that EHB 2561—a measure to finance large scale building upgrades and energy efficiencies in the state’s Schools—might adversely affect the state’s credit rating. The State Treasurer has stoked those concerns with his statements. We looked into the bond rating issue and found that the impact of EHB 2561 would be rather small. See our new backgrounder, “Saving Money, Supporting Schools: Job Legislation Poses Minimal...

Interesting.  The Journal of Sustainable Real Estate recently accepted a paper showing that, after controlling for incomes, neighborhoods with low car ownership have fewer defaults on mortgages.  NRDC took a look at the findings, and concluded that… …factors such as neighborhood compactness, access to public transit, and rates of vehicle ownership are key to predicting mortgage performance and should be taken more seriously by mortgage underwriters, policymakers, and real estate developers....

$60 million isn’t chump change, but it didn’t get much notice last month when the state released new cost estimates for Seattle’s deep-bore tunnel. According to the revised numbers, the deep-bore tunnel cost projections have already risen by $60 million—which works out to 3.2 percent. And that’s before builders have broken ground. What was sold to the public—and approved by the legislature — as a $1.9 billion tunneling project is now projected to cost $1.96 billion. If...

For years, environmentalists have touted “low-impact development”—letting soil and vegetation soak up heavy rains, rather than channeling storm runoff into gutters and sewers—as the best solution for stormwater. But as it turns out, LID has picked up a whole host of new fans: smart economists, developers, builders, and government regulators are now singing LID’s praises as well. The fundamental principle of low-impact development is that it’s better—both for people’s pocketbooks...