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When my husband Jason and I planned a trip to Vancouver, BC, we decided to bring our family’s bikes just in case. With our eight-year-old son Orion in tow, I wasn’t sure we’d have the chance to ride unless we sought out an off-street trail. To my surprise, we were able to ride—and not just on trails we had to drive or take a bus to, but through the heart...

Spills are an unfortunate reality of moving oil on or near water. Try as we might to avoid them, the record shows that they happen in rivers, along coastlines, and in bays and harbors. They happen in remote areas and in the middle of cities. They happen in fog, in storms, and sometimes during fair weather. They happen around the world and they happen in Northwest waters. (Plus, near-misses and...

Editor’s note October 2016: Did you know the Portland area has experienced a double-digit boom in the percentages of people registered to vote in the upcoming presidential election? This increase is thanks to the implementation of the Oregon Motor Voter Law, a program that automatically registers eligible voters. We’re bringing back this popular post to highlight how this law was enacted and how Oregon’s continued leadership in voting rights can inspire other Cascadian states...

The comedians in the Port Mann Bridge forecasting department are at it again: despite a 29 percent decline in traffic volumes on the Port Mann bridge between 2005 and 2014, the province is still predicting an immediate, sustained increase in traffic across the span: That’s right—despite years and years of being wrong about the direction of future travel trends, they think they’ve finally spotted signs of a turnaround. You see,...

The Northwest’s most important waters are under a near-constant threat of oil spills. It’s a fact made plain by the historical record of major spills and the dozens of recent close calls, as well as the best available data and modeling analysis of oil spills risks. Yet the risk of spills could soon increase, perhaps dramatically. A spate of new fossil fuel shipment proposals could well generate very large increases...

You’ve probably heard that Seattle’s about to launch into a heated contest—one that pits city against city vying for honor, bragging rights, and civic pride. We refer, of course, to the Car-Sharing Super Bowl! OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. Still, on just about every playing field there’s a hint of healthy competition among the Pacific Northwest’s three biggest cities—Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland. Car-sharing should be no exception:...

Serena As a former Girl Scout—of the uber-lite variety… as in, whose only camping experience consisted of a night in a heated cabin with bathrooms—I am wholeheartedly inspired by this new scouting group, the Radical Brownies. If young women, and especially young women of color, aren’t going to learn important parts of American history from our public schools and if our culture is primarily going to give them the Disney-princess version...

When most people think of an oil spill, they imagine something like the Exxon Valdez grounding. While it’s certainly possible that a mishap of that magnitude could occur in the Northwest, the truth is most oil spills are far more mundane. They are also much more frequent, and arguably more damaging, than you might think. Take Puget Sound, for example. During the 38-month span from December 2009 to January 2013,...

The prospects for a downtown Seattle school brightened yesterday, with a unanimous school board vote allowing the district to bid on the empty Federal Reserve Bank building at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Spring Street. The federal government is auctioning off the vacant building—which is the right size to house 660 students—to the highest bidder. With the auction closing next Wednesday, no one has submitted a bid so far....

The Northwest is evaluating more than a dozen major projects that would add oil tankers and other major cargo ships to the region’s waters. Nearly all of these plans would affect Washington’s waters: either on the Columbia River, Grays Harbor, or in the labyrinthine channels of the Salish Sea. In the simplest terms, increasing ship traffic means increasing risk. And as the region is contemplating an astonishing jump in vessel...