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From Highways to Homes: The Opportunity to Reconnect Communities Divided by Freeways

This article is part of the series YIMBYtown 2022 The conversation shared below was part of the YIMBYtown 2022 conference, cohosted by Sightline Institute and Portland: Neighbors Welcome.* At its peak, federal highway construction demolished 37,000 homes a year to make way for roads. More than 1 million Americans—a significant …

April 12, 2022

Washington State Traffic Forecast Finally Recognizes Reality

This is the single most responsible official traffic forecast I’ve seen from any government agency, ever: It’s from a new transportation revenue forecast (pdf link, see p. 27) recently published by the Washington State Office of Financial Management. Their previous forecast, in pink, assumed that traffic would grow endlessly, much as it did during the 1950s through 1990s. But the new forecast, in blue, assumes that the modest traffic growth of the past decade will continue, and will then be followed by a modest decline. There are two reasons why this forecast is the most responsible one I’ve seen to date. First, it reflects the growing evidence that three’s been a long-term slowdown in the growth vehicle travel—a slowdown that has been evident on major roads in Washington, for Washington State roads as a whole, for the US, and for much of the industrialized world. Second, even if the forecast is wrong, a conservative revenue forecast far and away the most fiscally prudent way to plan a transportation budget.

October 21, 2014

Ebola versus Cars

I think this chart speaks for itself. It’s fair to say that we’re in the midst of a full-blow media frenzy over the (admittedly worrisome) spread of the latest Ebola virus. Yet so far this year roughly 242 times as many people have died from traffic collisions—and I haven’t yet heard anyone call for banning cars, making driving illegal, or quarantining motorists. It’s almost as if we’re prone to focus on—and even overreact to—new and near-term problems and not very good at dealing with slower-moving “constant” threats even if they are wildly more dangerous. There’s a lesson here for our wholly inadequate response to climate change, though it’s not a case I can make with nearly as much alacrity as John Stewart.

October 16, 2014

A Fair Share of Streets (Part 2)

In my last post, I took a look at streets that have been designed specifically so kids and cars can …

October 9, 2014

Zoning Part Two: Exclusionary Zoning’s End

As we pointed out yesterday, inclusionary zoning (IZ) ordinances—rules that encourage private developers to provide some housing to lower-income tenants at below-market rates—were largely …

September 30, 2014

Zoning: Inclusionary v. Exclusionary

At last count, Seattle ranked as the fastest growing major city in America. The city’s growth has easily outpaced the projections of its decade-old Comprehensive Plan, which foresaw 47,000 new households (as well as 84,000 new jobs) between 2004 and 2024. Between 2005 and 2012 the city added 29,330 net new housing units—roughly 62 percent of its 2024 target in just 7 years.

This rapid growth has stemmed in large part from the city’s relatively robust economy. From March 2013 through March 2014, for example, King County (which includes Seattle) ranked fifth among all US counties in net job growth, trailing only the likes of Los Angeles County and Manhattan.

But the population boom has sent housing prices and rents trending upwards—creating real anxiety among many renters, and fears that Seattle’s housing market will price out residents that once could afford to live in the city.

September 29, 2014