A conversation with Seattle
Winter is coming, says Cliff Mass. The University of Washington meteorologist has a vested interest in preparedness since he gets stuck in the snow just like everyone else, and is a vocal member of the salt-and-snow-plow lobby. Continue reading Well-Salted Seattle Keeps an Online Watch on Winter Weather
Rasmussen, who recently rode on a crowded bus, thinks there’s nothing pressing about an Eastlake line, despite Amazon having just offered the city $5.5 million to pay, in part, for additional streetcar service in South Lake Union. The Seattle Streetcar carried 700,000 passengers in 2011–beating its forecasted ridership for that year by about 170,000. Continue reading City Council’s Transportation Chair Wants to Slow Down Rapid Transit
Keep in mind that this 31-percent increase would follow the past two years’ increase of 18 percent. I’m not an arithmetician, but it’s as if we’re moving away from that “low-cost” modifier somehow. That’s my gut feeling. Continue reading Seattle City Light’s Strategy is to Jack Your Rates Even More Strategically
As the magnitude of the problem has increased, the city’s response has grown more anemic. Using potholes an indicator species for overall road health, it’s troubling to note that in 2009 Seattle’s Department of Transportation filled 6,500 potholes; in 2010, 10,100 potholes; in 2011, over 25,000. Continue reading Seattle Tries Out New “Pothole City” Moniker
Last year, Seattle Weekly ran some eight or nine stories up the flagpole, alternately attacking misleading statistics and moralists, and defending their right to free speech and libertarian profit motive. Opposed were the City Council’s Tim Burgess, left, and Mayor Mike McGinn.
The last Weekly-written piece seems to have been in August 2011, but VVM has not given up the fight. PubliCola notes their unsigned editorial claiming that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has gotten his facts wrong, too. Continue reading Seattle Weekly Tries Soft-Pedaling the Whole Juvenile Prostitution Thing
“It’s time, it’s the right thing to do, and I will introduce a bill to do it,” lame duck Washington state Governor Gregoire said yesterday, announcing her intention to bring legislation permitting same-sex marriages in our state. “I say that as a wife, a mother, a student of the law, and above all as a Washingtonian with a lifelong commitment to equality and freedom. Some say domestic partnerships are the same as marriage. That’s a version of the discriminatory ‘separate but equal’ argument.” Continue reading After 7 Years, Governor Gregoire “Gets” Gay Marriage
I don’t know what people were thinking, really, and I doubt anyone else does, either. It is true that both the city and the King County Council had already increased car tab fees to $40, so this latest $60 increase would have created $100 tabs. But on the face of it, I’m happy enough that people said no, even it it does put a temporary stick in the spokes of new transit. Seattle’s political leadership has developed an unsettling fondness for an “Or the puppy gets it!” strategy when it comes to extorting money from taxpayers. Continue reading Prop 1 Didn’t Fail, the City of Seattle Did, for Decades