Earlier this year, the Olympia School District released an audit of its public communications. This document offers a fascinating look into not only the district’s recent history and public narratives but also the general flow of information within our community.

Typically, such audits seek to understand how people perceive what’s happening in their community. The Olympia audit, for example, asked, “How do you learn about the Olympia School District?” with options like “local media,” “word of mouth,” and “social media.”

Across the country, a clear trend has emerged: responses indicating “local media” are declining, while those pointing to “social media” are increasing.

However, the broad conclusion that more people are getting their local news from “social media” is problematic because the term itself is poorly defined. Few comprehensive surveys that include this question ask for specific examples. Is “social media” referring to posts from established news organizations? If so, shouldn’t that fall under the “local media” category? Or is it truly just individuals posting on various platforms? If so, which ones? The wild, woolly frontier of social media needs to be understood, not just broadly categorized.

To genuinely understand how information flows through our community, to do the real work of helping people grasp “the news,” we need to comprehend the entire ecosystem. Simply categorizing it as “social media” feels like shrugging and walking away. This isn’t an accusation but a call for a more precise framework for approaching the question.

Analyzing the Local News Landscape

Similar to the communications audit, there have been a couple of attempts to understand the changing shape and decline of local media.

I have significant concerns with the Washington State University (WSU) research. While their approach is sound, they make some simple categorization mistakes. For instance, Olympia, as the state capital, naturally has more news sources (like TVW and the Washington State Standard). However, the WSU study also includes two North America Talks platforms in our Olympia count that do not cover local Olympia news. Thurston Talk is their local brand here, but South Sound Talk covers Pierce County. While “South Sound Talk” might be vaguely interpreted, “Whatcom Talk” clearly covers Whatcom County, a detail they should have identified.

Another study, using Muckrack data, tracks the decline of local journalism over the past two decades. In Thurston County, it estimates approximately 6.3 “Local Journalist Equivalents” per 100,000 residents, which would mean nearly 20 local reporters. This number feels a bit high, but their methodology section is clear, so I plan to delve into their data further for a better understanding.

However, these analyses often overlook the entire other section of where people report getting their local news: social media. When I conducted a back-of-the-napkin analysis for Thurston Community Media on the local media landscape, I generally found what others did: a decline in established, professional local media (e.g., the loss of the KGY newsroom, the decline of The Olympian), the rise of digital-only platforms that approach news differently, and the creation of several social media forums that seemingly replace traditional news. Specifically, I noted r/Olympia on Reddit, the Thurston Scanner Facebook page, and the now-private Olympia Looks like Shit Facebook group.

The Dangers of Misinformation in a Fragmented Ecosystem

An incident just yesterday highlighted how this evolving dynamic, particularly with newly established digital platforms, can spark misinformation and how quickly that misinformation can become political fuel. A recent article from The JOLT at best poorly described, at worst mischaracterized a key point in an Olympia City Council meeting. The JOLT’s practice is to outsource most of its reporting to overseas reporters, relying on video footage rather than on-the-ground context.

The topic was a state-funded program designed to move unhoused individuals off state highway rights-of-way within city limits into more stable housing, think of the Interstate 5 embankment next to Hobby Lobby on Sleater-Kinney, which is inside Olympia but on state-owned land. Councilmember Dani Madrone described the situation as one where the state essentially handed local governments money and said:

“…local governments are in this position of, you know, the state said, “Here’s some money to get the folks without housing off state lands, bring them into your jurisdiction, and then, you know, you better hope we continue to fund it.”

However, the reporter misunderstood and misquoted her, framing it as though Olympia was intentionally bringing in unhoused people from outside the city:

“Madrone pointed out that local governments were encouraged to bring unhoused individuals into their jurisdictions with the promise of continued state funding. “

The reporter heard Councilmember Madrone say something about the city “bringing people into the jurisdiction,” but misinterpreted it in a way that what they wrote meant to the reader Olympia was importing people from outside city. Had they been present in the room, they would have been able to follow up and understand she was referring to unhoused individuals already living on state rights-of-way within the city. A simple clarification could have prevented significant confusion.

This misquote quickly took on a life of its own. A city council candidate picked up the inaccurate paraphrase and incorporated it into a version of the “magnet theory,” the unfounded idea that Olympia is importing unhoused people to boost its budget.

In reality, the right-of-way program aims to help cities manage homelessness that already exists within their boundaries, but on state-owned land. As of the following day, the post had been shared 43 times on Facebook, and I could only see a handful of those shares, some of which might be in active Facebook groups I’m not part of. This only tracks the story’s spread via Facebook on its first day.

This situation highlights a dangerous chain reaction: poor paraphrasing by an out-of-area reporter led to a public misconception, which was then used to fuel a misleading political narrative. It serves as a stark reminder that local journalism requires both proximity and precision, especially when reporting on sensitive, politicized issues like homelessness.

This incident also underscores a larger problem: the way we talk about “social media” as if it were a single entity. It’s not. Local Facebook groups operate differently from Nextdoor or a subreddit. And for each community, these local online communities are different. Understanding how information and misinformation flow through these distinct channels, and how it is received and reframed by different audiences, is as crucial as getting the facts right in the first place. We cannot mend local news if we don’t understand how people perceive it, and that perception is increasingly shaped by a fragmented, algorithmic media landscape.

Despite the practices of one seemingly legitimate online news organization, local journalism matters. So does understanding the ecosystem that surrounds it. If we are serious about either, we need to be more precise in our reporting and in our analysis of how that reporting moves through our communities.

The Future of Local Information

We are in the midst of a transitional moment for local news and information ecosystems, and we need better tools and frameworks, not just to fix the supply of local journalism but to understand how people receive and reprocess that information in a fragmented digital world.

The mangled “right-of-way” quote was misunderstood, amplified by a local candidate, and reframed as part of a broader narrative about Olympia intentionally importing unhoused people. A single reporting error, left unchallenged, became political fodder across local social channels.

This isn’t just a failure of journalism; it’s a failure of how we understand the local information ecosystem. As traditional newsrooms shrink, digital-only platforms emerge, and community conversations shift to increasingly opaque or siloed online spaces, we need new approaches to track and support the health of our local discourse.

Pulling back from Olympia, we’re seeing this debate occur on a national scale as people reading the tea leaves of the last Presidential race implore Democrats not to depend so heavily on legacy media strategies but to engage in the influencer space more.

We’re also seeing the promise of closed, walled garden social media pay off as the broader media industry is facing a “web traffic apocalypse.” The usual sources of online readership like Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter, have either deprioritized news or made algorithmic changes that dramatically reduce referral traffic.

Hope

There are also options to not just bring more reporters to town, but to grow and heal local social media. Organizations like New_Public are exploring how to treat digital public spaces like parks or libraries, shared infrastructure that communities must tend to, not just scroll past.

If we want to strengthen local journalism and civic trust, we can’t just ask where people get their news; we have to understand how that news is distorted, reshaped, or ignored once it enters the digital bloodstream. The future of local news doesn’t just depend on reporters. It depends on recognizing the complexity of the ecosystem we’re already in.

On Sunday, June 15, one of our worst fears almost came to pass on Bicycle Weekend. A 16-year-old kid riding an electric motorcycle on Lake Washington Boulevard was forcefully hit by a car from behind. The motorcycle rider was approaching Lake Park Drive S from the north, having stopped for a vehicle in front of him who was, in turn, yielding to a pedestrian crossing the boulevard. The initial collision threw the kid off his bike. Immediately after, the driver of the car proceeded to crash into the jettisoned motorcycle, crushing it — seemingly on purpose.

The driver sped up, turned south on Lake Park Drive S, out of sight, with a shower of sparks coming from the bike trapped under its front bumper. The driver never came back to check on the motorcycle rider, instead pulling off on Mount Baker Boulevard where they pulled the crushed cycle out from under their car.

Their car was photographed by witnesses at that location. The car’s brand, color, and model are clear from the photos, including images showing the driver removing the cycle from under their car, dumping the bike and some of their car’s parts on the roadside.

Fortunately the kid escaped without serious injury, but the victim, their family, and witnesses (including one of the authors of this letter) were understandably shaken. How could such a lovely day on the boulevard be marred by such a senseless act of violence?

We have been a part of a coalition advocating for traffic safety improvements on Lake Washington Boulevard. This incident could have been prevented if the road had a safer design. Unfortunately, Mayor Bruce Harrell decided to remove an all-way stop sign planned at the Lake Park Drive intersection as part of the Lake Washington Boulevard safety project. 

Had a stop sign been in place on Sunday – it could have been installed months ago – chances are good that the driver would have stopped and avoided colliding with the young motorcycle rider in front of him. When the planned stop sign was removed by the Harrell Administration, our primary concern was that drivers wouldn’t yield to people walking and rolling crossing Lake Washington Boulevard between Mount Baker Beach and Mount Baker Park. 

This crash demonstrates that concern was justified. Hopefully the mayor will recognize his mistake and lead with safety at this intersection, rather than following a handful of uncompromising complainers who have hijacked the process, which had been originally launched to enhance safety on the boulevard for everyone.

Fortunately the worst case outcome did not occur. With the help of witnesses who pitched in, the victim compiled substantial, solid evidence. Passing this evidence over to the police and our tough-on-crime Seattle City Attorney surely means the hit-and-run driver would be held accountable.

Replacing a destroyed electric motorcycle will also be a significant cost for a teenager to bear. And the City not pursuing legal action against the hit-and-run driver will make it harder for the teen to recover damages for his totaled vehicle.

By our inexpert estimation, failure to yield, failure to exercise due caution, failure to remain at the scene of a collision, and tampering with physical evidence would all be reasonable charges to bring based on witness statements. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. 

The police are asserting that this hit-and-run on a kid enjoying a day at the park is the same as any other property damage hit-and-run. An officer with the Seattle Police Department’s Traffic Collision Unit said that in the last year there were 10,000 hit-and-runs in the city, and by policy, as there were no injuries (other than skinned knees) in this incident they do not have the capacity to pursue those at fault. 

The problem is that the police are treating a kid on a motorcycle getting hit by an adult driver with positive identification like a driver hitting a trash can, mail box, or parked car and then not leaving a note. We all know this is different, so why won’t the police act on it? 

We understand that the police must make decisions to prioritize incidents for investigation, but we think that the blanket refusal to investigate traffic crimes unless there was a death or serious injury is a mistake. We call on the newly appointed Chief of Police Shon Barnes to take a serious look at whether this approach aligns with his desired approach to public safety. If he disagrees, he needs to step in now and issue different directives to prioritize investigating all serious traffic collisions. 

In the case of egregious traffic violence with numerous witnesses and a positive identification of the vehicle, and or driver, victims deserve to have the police performing a full investigation. Imagine if a known person shot at someone and a positive ID was obtained, but the police refused to charge because the shooter missed! We’d never accept that outcome. But because the driver uses a vehicle instead of a gun, it’s just police policy to shrug. Such a policy encourages people to drive with impunity.There’s still a chance to right this wrong. We ask all of the candidates currently running for elected office in our city to raise their voices with us. Enforcement shouldn’t be the first choice for achieving traffic safety, but in the face of unrepentant acts there have to be consequences for actions.

In response to this senseless act and our experience with seeing far too many drivers ignoring the Bicycle Weekends street closure putting revelers in danger we are calling on volunteers to create a people-projected Bicycle Weekend at the Mount Baker Beach on Saturday, June 28th at 12pm. Sign up here

How Routine Lake Washington Boulevard Traffic Calming Turned Into a Fight

Special Summer Transit Options Increase Multimodal Access Across Puget Sound

The post Op-Ed: Latest Hit-and-Run Shows Harrell’s Failure on Lake Washington Boulevard Safety first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Health Through Housing program provides a road map for exiting homelessness, and it’s working. 

On Thursday, King County’s Department of Community & Human Services (DCHS) released its 2024 data showing the success of the Health Through Housing initiative, which provides permanent supportive and emergency housing for people exiting homelessness. DCHS pointed to improved housing stability and improved health outcomes for their residents via the program. 

In 2020, County Executive Dow Constantine announced the Health Through Housing initiative. Hoping to capitalize on cheap real estate during the Covid-19 pandemic, the program aimed to buy former hotels and other suitable buildings to convert into single-unit housing, saving money and time by avoiding having to build similar housing from scratch.

The initiative took effect at the beginning of 2021, with the implementation of a 0.1% sales tax in King County. Raising about $70 million per year at that time, the King County Council allocated the tax’s proceeds to the initiative, intended to purchase and convert properties into emergency and permanent supportive housing and provide onsite services. 

The program’s objective was to provide 1,600 housing units, and has secured 1,434 units at the end of 2024. This represents a 41% increase in people served compared to 2023. 

Its buildings span across 17 locations in seven cities: Auburn, Burien, Federal Way, Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, and Seattle. Meanwhile, the County plans to open three more buildings this year. 

In addition to permanent supportive housing, the initiative provides emergency housing units, which do not have a kitchenette. People who accept emergency housing do not have to sign a lease and retain their homeless status, which means they are still eligible for other permanent supportive housing options that may arise while remaining welcome to stay in emergency housing.

The program provides a variety of supportive services in addition to housing, including 24/7 staffing, case management, transportation and food assistance, employment resources, and community events. Residents are eligible for free ORCA transit cards, and participants’ use of public transportation greatly increased over the course of 2024. Buildings also offer free laundry service. 

In order to be eligible for the program, residents must have a disability, behavioral health condition, or chronic illness, which makes access to health care critical. On-site health care offerings, including mental health care and substance use treatment, vary from property to property. Residents are also offered transportation assistance to important medical appointments off-site.  

The data shows that 95% of the permanent supportive housing residents remained housed over the course of one year. This is in contrast to its emergency housing, where only 58% of residents maintained their housing.

“It validates decades of research in supportive housing,” said Kelly Rider, the director of DCHS. “It’s also incredibly exciting to see us get to this point in the Health through Housing initiative, specifically where we’re seeing lives change, we’re seeing the impact of the particular residents that we’ve been able to house. The project of Health through Housing was always about bringing supportive housing to scale, and to see that we have brought it to scale and it is effectively serving its residents is a really good confirmation that we’re on the right track.”

Meanwhile, the 2024 Point-in-Time Count in King County found that the number of unhoused people in our region continues to grow, with an increase of 26% between 2022 and 2024. On any given night, 16,868 people were homeless in King County in 2024. 

Health improvements

The Health Through Housing initiative is firmly grounded in the tenets of Housing First philosophy, and its success thus far offers additional support to that approach. Housing First programs prioritize finding stable housing options for homeless people as an initial step, without requiring they first solve problems like behavioral health issues and substance use disorder. The philosophy espouses the idea that services and treatment tend to be more effective when they are chosen instead of forced. 

“The idea of giving folks housing first actually improving their health all by itself is absolutely good to see reinforced through this data,” said Rider.

This is the first time the initiative has collected data about health outcomes, comparing data from the residents’ year prior to enrollment in the program. Emergency department visits decreased by 17% after one year in the program, and the average in-patient hospital stay decreased by 33%. The average number of inpatient hospital stays also decreased by 22% after the first year. 

The number of participants enrolled in Medicaid only increased by 7%, as many people have already signed up for Medicaid before living in one of the Health Through Housing buildings.

“I was very happy to see the connection between folks getting housing and having some access to health care,” said Jelani Jackson, the manager of the Health Through Housing initiative. “Because that just tells the story of consistent case management that a resident receives, and that resident being able to then go after goals to improve their life, housing, health care, ability, and income, connection to their community, eating healthy, etc.”

Jackson spoke of the difficulty experienced by homeless people in maintaining their health. They have fewer medications they can be prescribed, due to not having access to refrigeration and regular toilet use. They have trouble staying clean, leading to skin abrasions and chronic infections. They may not have regular access to a sink and soap to wash their hands.

“It’s sort of an under-discussed aspect of homelessness, but it’s really difficult to maintain your physical and mental health while being on the street night after night, not experiencing safety,” Jackson said. “You know, homeless folks, unfortunately, are incredibly vulnerable. They experience high rates of violence, and there’s a trauma associated with that.”

Rider referenced a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington in 2009, studying residents of the permanent supportive housing at 1811 Eastlake. The scientists found that the program saved taxpayers over $4 million.

“This research reminds us of that,” Rider said. “It tells us that when you take folks who are living on the streets with disabilities and you bring them inside, the safety and security and the stability and the community bringing them inside helps them feel better.”

The Health Through Housing initiative also saves taxpayers money. It costs about $33,000 per year to operate one of their units. By contrast, in February, King County Councilmember Sarah Perry said a night at the King County Jail now costs $250, which adds up to $91,250 annually. 

“Nearly $4,000 is saved for every inpatient hospital stay that’s avoided,” Jackson said. 

The goal of racial equity

One of the goals of the program is to provide equitable access to permanent supportive housing, which means community partners are carefully selected. Current partners include the Chief Seattle Club, Lavender Rights Project, Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), the Urban League, and Catholic Community Services. 

The 2024 Point-in-Time Count found that 6% of people experiencing homelessness in King County identified as American Indian, Alaskan Native, or Indigenous, while that group makes up less than 1% of King County’s population. Similarly, the count found that 15% of people experiencing homelessness identified as Black, while only 7% of the total population is Black.

In 2024, 55% of Health Through Housing residents identified as Black, Indigenous, and people of color. This includes a significant increase in American Indian and Alaska Native residents from 3% in 2022 to 16% in 2024, which can be at least partially credited to the program’s partnership with Chief Seattle Club. 

“It’s not just as simple as getting somebody four walls and a ceiling and thinking that their problems are solved,” said Derrick Belgarde, Chief Seattle Club’s executive director. “There’s a lot of healing that needs to be done for people who are chronically homeless. In particular, we’ve focused on Native Americans that suffer from a lot of traumas intergenerationally that haven’t been addressed, from government policies to boarding schools to all kinds of things that affect our community still today.” 

Belgarde spoke about the compounding issues caused by intersectional crises: of homelessness, of substance use, of mental health, and of displacement. “If you go and you look at the streets of downtown and other areas that have a lot of encampments and things, this is what society looks like after 40 plus years of defunding mental health systems,” Belgarde said. “And it’s going to continue to get worse until we start building one back up as a society.”

Chief Seattle Club operates the Salmonberry Lofts and the recently opened Sacred Medicine House through the Health Through Housing initiative. They expect to open the Sweetgrass Flats later this year, and they will be offering property management support to the Lavender Rights Project, who will be operating a new building in Capitol Hill. 

At their buildings, Chief Seattle Club offers a traditional mental health counselor. Individual and group sessions are available, presented in culturally appropriate ways, such as talking circles, drum groups, and providing traditional plant medicine and sage smudges. Residents also go on field trips to sweat lodges.

“Obviously, you know, everything we do is kind of culturally grounded and […] traditional principles, and it’s about working with our relatives and healing the community. That’s our target,” Belgarde said. “We’re not in the business of housing people or feeding people. We’re in the business of healing people and trying to get that next generation stronger than what we found.”

Chief Seattle Club provides a social club for Native people, building a community where they will feel welcome. Belgarde emphasized how important having a shared experience is to helping Native people who have experienced chronic homelessness.

“If you’re going to provide services to address Native American needs, it’s got to come from other Native American people where they could fill that trust,” Belgarde said. “If we start serving just the broad community, once you get to a certain point, Native Americans will stop coming because it’s no longer a safe space for them.”

“When we have organizations that reflect the communities that they serve, we feel that folks will have an easier time accepting services and trusting the system,” said Jackson.

What’s next?

The data shows that 97% of Health Through Housing residents had previous ties in the neighborhood where they now live, a fact that Rider said will make it easier to site new buildings in the future. 

“The ability to really show jurisdictions that we are serving their residents has been an important part of this initiative, and we’re excited to be able to share that the residents that we’re serving are indeed homeless and connected to the communities that they’re now living stably in,” Rider said.

However, challenges remain. While the initiative itself is funded by a county sales tax, making it more resilient in the face of federal cuts, many of the residents housed through the Health Through Housing program rely on federal programs such as Medicaid/Apple Health and SNAP that could soon be facing large cuts. Belgarde pointed out the government might make changes to the system that would make claiming benefits more difficult.

“People of color have paper trauma, have form trauma,” Belgarde said, referring to the difficulties people facing homelessness already encounter navigating bureaucracies and applying for aid programs, which requires seemingly endless paperwork. 

Belgarde expects that deep federal cuts could cause many people to drop out of federal programs, even if they’re theoretically still eligible, since people will have even lower expectations that aid will come through or be unable to navigate increased bureaucratic demands.

The need is great. The Seattle Office of Housing estimated that Seattle alone will need 28,572 new permanent supportive housing units by 2044. 

“We’re going to continue as DCHS to work with the region on expanding permanent supportive housing, but more importantly, to make the best use of the current supportive housing that we have available,” said Rider.

For the time being, the Health Through Housing initiative is having an impact on people it serves who are recovering from homelessness, helping them regain both their dignity and a greater sense of safety. 

“The dignity of having clean clothes, the dignity of having access to a bathroom and a toilet that is all yours and doors that you can lock is just tremendous,” Jackson said. 

Trump Shreds Social Safety Net, Creating Perfect Storm for Homelessness

The post King County’s Housing First Initiative Boasts High Success Rate first appeared on The Urbanist.

When bicyclists started rolling into the small farming town of Tekoa in 2017, farmer John Heaton took notice. In a place where the wheat sways more often than people come and go, it was hard to miss.

The next year, Heaton couldn’t help himself and approached the riders. That was the first time he heard about the Cross-Washington Mountain Bike Route (XWA), a 700-mile bikepacking race that stretches from the town of La Push on the northwest tip of the state to Heaton’s hometown of Tekoa, on the Idaho border south of Spokane. 

“We’ll take any kind of excitement we can get around here,” Heaton said.

Every year since, Heaton has become a “dot watcher,” someone who tracks the progress of participants via GPS as they make their way across the state.

In a gravel parking lot at the center of town, it’s become tradition for him to welcome riders with the ringing of his cowbell and loading bikes on the back of his truck, giving cyclists a ride to Spokane.

“It’s kind of like a thing of pride,” Heaton said. “I have to be down at the finish line, by God, no matter when they arrive. I’ll be there at two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday.”

Heaton’s experience is just the tip of a larger story: how the slow-growing sport of bikepacking is connecting communities across Washington, and drawing both national and international attention.

Stitching of the Route

The growing stream of dusty cyclists arriving in Tekoa each spring can all trace their journey back to one person: Troy Hopwood.

At the age of four, Hopwood was crashing bikes into his neighbors’ front yards in Oregon. From there, his love for biking led him to compete in mountain bike races in college, and eventually to a documentary about the Tour Divide, the longest mountain bike route in the world.

After being voluntarily laid off during Microsoft’s recent mass firing, Hopwood can now focus his full attention towards bikepacking: a mashup of mountain biking and backpacking that requires cyclists to carry all their gear, including tent, sleeping bag, food, water filter, tools, for days or even weeks at a time. For many, it’s an escape from modern convenience; for others, it’s a grueling form of sport.

In 2016, Hopwood stitched together a route, mapping every forest road, gravel trail, and bike path that could link the Pacific Ocean to the rolling Palouse.

The result was the XWA.

Riders traverse everything from misty rainforest and snowy mountain passes to barren scablands and wheat-covered hills. It’s not for the faint of heart. The route often demands dealing with unpredictable spring weather in the west and rocky, unmaintained paths in the east.

“People who live in the state oftentimes don’t even realize how diverse the state is until they take on the route,” Hopwood said.

He wasn’t sure anyone would want to join him. 

But in 2017, a small group of riders took on the route together in what’s known as a “grand depart,” a mass start in La Push. Since then, the race has quietly grown, year by year. In 2024, 54 riders registered; this year, that number has grown to 138.

Attracting riders from across the U.S. and even abroad from South Africa to the United Kingdom, the route is also becoming a destination for tourists who are looking to experience what Washington can offer. Cyclists from around the world start by facing the unpredictable weather of the Olympic Peninsula.

Stephen Page is participating in the race for a second year, this time with a friend. Serving as an escape to his busy and structured life in Canada, Page returned to race and reconnect with nature. 

This year also saw more women participating. Emanuela Agosta, a member of the Mountaineers bikepacking division committee, acknowledged the challenge that women still face in male-dominated sports, but said it’s not impossible.

“​​It’s not as scary as it sounds. It’s just putting some gear together and going on overnights,” Agosta said. “You racing is all subjective… It’s a different challenge for everybody.”

Keeping the state connected

Not all is smooth biking, however. Throughout the years, the eastern section of the route has faced challenges.

After the last train ran on the Milwaukee Railroad that connected Seattle and Chicago in 1980, contention arose over who would own the land where the rail tracks lay.

Chic Hollenbeck founded the John Wayne Pioneer Wagons and Riders Association, a group that has done an annual pilgrimage on the trail since the 1980s, and lobbied against landowners who wanted the trail to become private land.

Hollenbeck’s group advocated to keep the John Wayne Pioneer Trail public, which much of it was for decades. But in 2015, legislation by Rep. Joe Schmick (R-Colfax) along with Rep. Mary Dye (R-Pomeroy) would have closed a 130-mile section east of the Columbia River and given it to farmers citing maintenance costs, underuse, and crime.

The legislation didn’t pass due to a typo.

Now named the Cascade to Palouse State Park Trail, which mostly covers the scabland section of the route, Hopwood said one of his motivations in creating the XWA was to protect this trail from future legislation that could take it away from the public.

Audra Sims, area manager for Washington State Parks who manages 10 different parks in the southeastern region of the state, including the Palouse to Cascade Trail, shared her excitement about the development happening in the area.

“A lot of enthusiasm and support for different sections of the trail and all of those things combined can have some impact on how certain developments happen and where and when they happen,” Sims said.

In 2022, the Tekoa Trestle opened to the public, offering additional access to locals. Sims said that current trail and route developments adjacent to rural communities could bring economic development.

Washington resident Robert Yates, who was involved with the Palouse to Cascade Trail Coalition, said that rural communities are becoming more open about outsiders and the potential of the route despite the lingering oppositions of some landowners.

The 2020 Economic Analysis of Outdoor Recreation in Washington State shows that bikers riding on paved and gravel routes generated approximately $1.5 billion worth of business.

The trail is also part of the 3,700-mile Great American Rail-Trail, which aims to connect Washington, D.C., and Washington State by revitalizing old rail corridors that could funnel in more visitors across the country. In 2023, a $16 million federal grant advanced work to build out the Olympic Peninsula section of the trail.

It’s a free ride, but respect is required

There are no fees or sign-ups required to participate in the grand depart, which usually takes place during the third week of May. However, riders are encouraged to stay connected on the Facebook group on route changes, trail conditions, and GPS tracking options.

A permit is required for the Palouse to Cascades section of the route, which also provides riders with gate codes necessary for access along parts of the trail.

Riders can take on the XWA at any time of year. For those who want to experience the journey across Washington on a less demanding route, Hopwood has created the XWA Lite, a version that follows a more direct path to the Idaho border.

Whether riding the entire length or just a portion of it, riders should be aware of their skill level and what they are signing up for.

“This ride is 100% self-supported,” Hopwood said. “Nobody will be looking out for your safety other than you. I do not guarantee the route is safe. In fact, this is a dangerous activity. There is a very high likelihood you will get hurt or worse.”

Ultimately, Hopwood often reminds riders to respect the trail by following Leave No Trace principles and being mindful of local residents and private properties near the route.

“Waiters, cashiers, and others don’t care that you are trying to set a personal record,” Hopwood said. “You can tell people you are in a hurry, but the small towns you pass through operate at a different pace. Be patient.”

From Competition to Connection

But for some, it’s not even about the money or the biking.

Flapping in the western winds of La Push, a yellow flag bearing a huge smiley face and a printed “XWA” was propped on the back of Brook Muldrow’s RV. He had driven all the way from Oklahoma to serve as a trail angel, someone who supports riders along the route.

A massage gun, thoughtfully arranged high-calorie snacks on the table, and a watchful eye anticipating muddy riders showing up around the bend make it clear Muldrow has done this for years.

“I enjoy being able to provide some of the supplies that the riders need at a critical time,” Muldrow said. 

Trail angels like Muldrow are scattered throughout the stretch of the trail from folks in North Bend to Tekoa, oftentimes just leaving marked containers filled with food and supplies outside for bikers.

Among the riders who have come to cherish the XWA race for more than just the competition is Eric Miller.

Miller has taken part in the race seven times, having become a regular presence over the years. At first, he was drawn to the challenge primarily to compete – both against himself and against others on the route.

“It started as a personal challenge, something to prove to myself,” Miller said. “But what kept bringing me back year after year wasn’t just the race itself, it was the people.”

During the pre-race meeting on May 17, hugs and huge smiles rivaled the warmth of any parka jacket present. For Miller and other riders, XWA has become a yearly reunion of friends, a time to reconnect and recharge.

Through trail angels like Muldrow and the riders he met on the route, Miller discovered a tight-knit community that transcended competition. The shared struggles, stories, and moments of support formed lasting friendships that gave the race a new meaning for him.

That same spirit has inspired people like Heaton, who has welcomed strangers year after year with cowbells and open arms. 

After years of cheering from the sidelines, Heaton dreams of participating in the race himself next year – not just for the challenge, but to become part of the community that’s already changed his town and maybe even him.

200-Mile Puget Sound to Pacific Trail Will Jump Forward Thanks to Major Federal Grant

The post Sea to Desert: The 700-mile Bikepacking Route Uniting Washington first appeared on The Urbanist.

Senate Bill 5595 would encourage “shared” people-oriented streets.

What is a street if not shared public space? A city street is one of the few instances of true and actual public space in the city, at least in theory: it is always open; there is no cost to enter. You do not need a reason to be in it, and it is meant to accommodate all types of presence and uses. 

If your street or those you use daily do not feel that way to you, it is because we have designed and programmed our streets to operate as a monoculture: hospitable to cars first and foremost, and merely tolerant of everyone else. 

How safe and welcome do you feel on your streets? Anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that the majority of U.S. residents do not feel safe or welcome on our streets — and that isn’t just people who walk or bike. U.S. roads are twice as deadly as roads in other parts of the world, and that’s saying something given our high engineering standards. Washington State has seen increases in road violence and death involving cars.

This is the cost of designing our public easements to privilege cars above people. A new piece of legislation, SB 5595, could — above its stated intentions — help us rethink and reclaim the street as a true public easement. If passed and its provisions delivered, we can look forward to streets that are not only more welcoming of public life, but a lot less deadly. 

SB 5595, Establishing shared streets, allows “a local authority” to designate “any nonarterial highway that is not a state highway to be a ‘shared street,’” a designation that allows for vehicular traffic that does not exceed 10 miles per hour and where pedestrians, bicyclists, and people using micromobility devices (referring to motorized and non-motorized scooters, and motorized chairs). 

I have been thinking about streets and the role these are allowed to play in our cities in light of the lessons we learned (or didn’t, maybe) during the pandemic. The pandemic offered a glimpse of what our streets could be — if we really unlock their potential. Seattle, like many cities, established an “open streets” program, wherein neighbors could use their streets for safe gathering, child’s play, jogging and walking, and more. Tacoma, like many cities, established a program through which businesses could occupy sidewalks and parking spaces for outdoor seating.

We also see how useful our streets could be during festivals and block parties. More than parks, plazas, and other designated recreational spaces, our streets are the most abundant instance of public space. It’s too bad so few of us get to use them fully but for a few select times each year. 

SB 5595 states that a local authority can designate a street a “shared” street by placing traffic control devices “where pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicular traffic share a portion or all of the same street.” Again, in my mind a street is a street only by virtue of pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicular traffic sharing a portion or all of the same street.” A roadway that restricts all but vehicles from the roadway is a tollway or a highway. 

Because the street encompasses, technically speaking, sidewalks, planting strips, curbs, gutters, street furniture, utility poles, the utilities running below ground — and, yes — the roadway. It seems that the authors of this bill mean “roadway” when they write street. 

While SB 5595 does remind us that our streets can be more — more public, more optimally used, more safe, and more open — this proposed legislation sends a mixed signal in the sense that all streets are already shared. We do not need to pass a law to establish this reality. But proposing such a law is yet another reminder that our streets are failing us. 

SB 5595 joins efforts such as road diets and complete streets in our continuing effort to reclaim our public space. The bill provides local governments with a legal mechanism through which to enforce the public easements so few of us get to actually experience in our streets.

We do not experience streets as true public easements because automobile companies and auto enthusiasts have lobbied for restricting streets to automobiles only, arguing that streets are for cars and that anyone else who would think of using a street is a “jay,” an idiot. And that’s what it feels like to be a pedestrian on our streets today, does it not? 

Their efforts have transformed our sense of what a street is, and the physical shape of streets themselves.

Through 2024, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD)—a huge tome that establishes the look, feel, and function of all streets in the U.S. — encoded prescribed designs that make it unsafe for anyone not in a car to be in a street. A recent update moves state and other agencies towards the recognition that streets are sometimes used by people not in cars, and that more can be done to design streets so that these persons aren’t injured or killed by people in cars. 

This is a small but significant shift. But it is not enough; for now, the MUTCD and the engineers who rely on it to design streets seem to assume that a street is only a street if it has a car in it. SB 5595 reminds us that it could be otherwise. More needs to be done to change our sense that streets can accommodate and support public life without putting people at risk of death or violence. 

It’s way past time for things to be different. We need more public space — and we need it not to be dangerous. For a street to be experienced as a truly shared public space cars must be subordinated to other public uses. SB 5595 provides for that not through the exclusion of cars (though some streets could exclude them and still be a street), but by stipulating that vehicles be operated at low (people-friendly) speeds—10 miles per hour.

SB 5595 could be the start of a reformation of our thinking regarding the public realm and its potential. It may be the start of a process through which we retake more of our most precious public space, the street.

When I think of a shared street I think of State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. Here is an eight-block-long street connecting the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to the Wisconsin State Capitol. The street does not wholly exclude vehicles — busses and delivery and service vehicles are allowed at low speeds. State Street is the city’s Main Street — and it actually functions as that. The shops, eateries, bars, and other businesses that line State Street are always busy. Local businesses thrive here because people prefer to walk up and down State Street rather than other, car-ridden streets. 

State Street in Madison is a strong opposing argument to all who say that not accommodating cars “kills business.” It is a strong argument for the value and potential of SB 5595.

(This even as SB 5595 calls for traffic control devices and annual reporting on “accidents” involving vehicles and DUIs, two requirements that may prevent “local authorities” from implementing shared streets as these encumber already scarce public resources; if anything, these requirements make their own case for why we so desperately needs shared streets that are actually shared as they speak to fear we have of private vehicles on public space). 

If we are to use traffic-control devices to delineate the shared street that is actually shared then we have a model in London’s low-traffic neighborhoods (LTNs). LTNs are a solution to a problem leaders in London have been grappling with — one all too known to us in Puget Sound: road networks that are oversaturated with motor vehicles.

LTNs are, in practical terms, simple. Street planters or other “filters,” such as metal gates or even just monitoring cameras, are used to block traffic from using residential streets. They are strategically placed in order to keep the flow of cars on main roads and away from people’s homes, where noise and air pollution can have a serious impact.

Peter Yeung – Reasons To Be Cheerful

I observed such an LTN in another context, Córdova, Spain, where local neighborhoods used bollards to prevent non-local traffic from entering neighborhoods. Within the neighborhood vehicles were kept to low speeds by other design features (not only through aspirational measures such as posted speed limits) such as planters and street trees. If these streets were inaccessible to most private vehicles, they were fully accessible to people on foot or bike, and the experience of being on these streets was safe and comfortable. 

If the pandemic taught us anything about public space it is that we need it and that we don’t have access to enough of it. It’s there; most of us just can’t use it fully. And the most abundant instance of public space is uncomfortable to be in (at best) or deadly (at worse) for most.

If the pandemic taught us something else about public space is that it does not take much to realize the street’s potential.

I would argue that we need neither traffic control devices nor a new law to use our streets as they are meant to be used (we were able to do it during the pandemic, and societies outside of the U.S. have been leveraging streets in more life-sustaining ways for a lot longer than the U.S. has been an urban nation). Still, there is utility in this bill in that it helps remind us that our streets can be more than a monoculture. Also, it gives traffic engineers an incentive to rethink the street and, in time, to design streets that are actually shared.

Just as we are learning that monoculture is an unsustainable way to grow our food, we are learning that monoculture on our streets is an unsustainable way to design and program our streets. Our streets are capable of sustaining more than a single use — vehicle circulation — they can be a place for public life in everyday living. 

SB 5595 may begin with an incomplete sense of what streets are, but its true value lies in reminding us of their potential and in how it provides cities in Washington with a legal avenue through which to reclaim our abundant public space for people.

To stay alive, SB 5595 must advance out of the state House before the opposite house cutoff on April 16. It’s scheduled for executive session in the House’s Transportation Committee this afternoon. Comment on the bill on the legislation page.

Advocates Advance ‘Pedestrianize This’ Campaign, Is SDOT Ready to Listen?

The post State Bill Could Unleash Potential of Streets, Making Space for People first appeared on The Urbanist.

A lot of us feel hopeless today. There’s the return of energy dominance as a federal goal, which places oil, gas and coal extraction above all other uses.

There’s the extinction crisis affecting animals and plants that’s 1,000 to 10,000 times the regular rate of extinction. Then there’s the erosion of soil, as half of the planet’s topsoil has been lost in the past 150 years.

Water pollution has increased because about 80% of untreated wastewaters worldwide get discharged into waterways that supply communities.

Worse is the elephant in the room—climate change—causing ever more major floods, violent hurricanes and extreme wildfires. Last year was also the first year the world exceeded the climate threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, at which climate impacts are expected to significantly increase.

These are just the headlines. It seems so grim today on Planet Earth that archaeologists, biologists and other ologists want to name this epoch the “Anthropocene”

for our human-dominated, hopeless present.

Is there an alternative to this gloom and doom? To function, I think there has to be, and much of that certainty comes out of a freshman course I teach called Environmental Conservation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

A hundred or more students enroll each semester, representing majors from pre-business to interior design, and the students are just three months out of high school when they arrive in the fall. The world they’ve begun studying seems anything but stable.

At the beginning of the semester, I ask them if their generation can “save the world.” There are always optimists who say “yes,” though in recent years fewer and fewer hands reach for the ceiling.

Over the course of the semester, we discuss the losses on the land and to wildlife, as well as the impacts of human population growth, the starkly different levels of per-capita global consumption, and the unintended consequences of technology. 

We also gain familiarity with our local and regional watershed. We do that by participating in “ecological restoration” workdays, going to work on ranches with conservation easements. There the young students use their hands and tools to protect water sources, build wildlife-friendly crossings, and slow soil erosion by filling in gullies, among other solutions.

Watershed-based experiences like this can cut through the murky esoteric to the pragmatic: There are ways to live on our home planet without spoiling it. The best part is seeing students shifting away from a sense of despair.

Colorado has over 150 collaborative conservation groups—  collaborativeconservation.org—that bring people together where they live, work, recreate and worship. Their aim is to improve the health of soil, water, plants and wildlife. This movement has grown West-wide, spanning 11 states.

The antidote to our planet’s illnesses also has global reach. Paul Hawken, in his book, The Blessed Unrest, describes the more than one million bottom-up groups around the globe working toward environmental sustainability and social justice. Unlike traditional movements, this network is decentralized, collaborative, diverse and not driven by a single ideology or leader.

This good news applies to climate change as well, even though President Trump has, for the second time, removed the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. That leaves our country in the company of Yemen, Libya and Iran.

But people concerned about global warming reacted by going public and objecting. More than 3,800 leaders from America’s city halls, state houses, boardrooms and college campuses have signed the “We Are Still In” declaration  (https://www.wearestillin.com/we-are-still-declaration). Signers represent more than 155 million Americans and $9 trillion of the U.S. economy.

My gut tells me that many of us refuse to give in to hopelessness. But can young people, inheriting our mistakes and the determination of some to deny there’s even a crisis, “save the world”? That’s a gigantic ask.

But can they make the watershed where they live better? If the state of one watershed after another improves, might the Earth over time become healthier, one watershed at a time? All we can do where we live is to get involved in conservation locally, regionally or nationally, joining a group or starting our own.

We can also contact our elected representatives to protest this administration’s intent to maximize extractive uses on public lands.

Let’s choose hope, get our hands dirty, and make our optimism real.

Richard Knight is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He works at the intersection of land use and land health in the American West.

The post When reality weighs you down appeared first on Writers On The Range.

Though radically different, the twin budget proposals released early this week by the Washington State Senate and House share a focus on highway expansion. The Senate budget proposes a broad array of new transportation revenue sources intended to stave off cuts, including a brand new 10% sales tax on new e-bikes and a new vehicle fee for public transit agencies. Contrarily, the House budget includes deep cuts across public transit, active transportation, and commute-trip reduction work.

The main thing the two budgets do have in common? A laser focus on getting Washington’s highway capacity projects back on track, after cost increases threatened to force the legislature to cancel or defer many of them indefinitely. Under both budgets, megaprojects like the North Spokane Corridor, the Puget Sound Gateway, Clark County’s Interstate Bridge Replacement, and a widening I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass would all continue to move forward.

Both budgets propose an increase in the state’s gas tax, six cents in the Senate and nine cents in the House, largely because few other revenue sources get close to providing the sums available to fill the gap on these large highway projects. The Senate budget, for example, would allocate $2.5 billion over the next six years to plugging budget holes, while keeping more than $1 billion on hand for potential projects down the road, like the widening of I-5 through the Nisqually Delta near Olympia.

But lurking beneath the surface is the fact that it’s these highway projects themselves that are the root cause of the budget crisis legislators are scrambling to fix. As detailed in presentations to the House and Senate transportation committees last month, deferring highway projects that haven’t yet been contracted would be the easiest path to balancing the state’s transportation budget. But while the two chambers — and the two political parties — in Olympia are out of alignment on many different things, the perceived need to continue hitting the gas pedal on expanding the state highway network is not one of them.

Senate budget focuses on achieving “bipartisan” agreement

The Senate’s proposal would raise more than $3 billion over the next six years via the gas tax increase, a luxury vehicle tax on cars and trucks that cost more than $100,000, expanded rental car and carsharing fees, and increased fees on electric vehicles. It also includes some bizarre revenue options, including the 10% e-bike sales tax, and a move to force transit agencies to not only pay vehicle registration fees on their taxpayer-funded vehicles but also to pay tolls on public roads as well.

Those new taxes are largely symbolic rather than significant revenue generators. An e-bike sales tax only brings in $9 million over a six year period, and additional fees on transit $33 million. This is pocket change in the context of the multi-billion-dollar budget.

Marko Liias (D-21st, Edmonds), chair of the Senate’ transportation committee, was open about the fact that those items were included at the request of the ranking Republican member of the committee, Curtis King (14th, Yakima), in order to bring along other Republicans.

“When we entered into bipartisan negotiation, one of the principles that Senator King served to the table was: if we’re going to be investing more in the system, he wanted as a priority that a variety of users would be contributing,” Liias told The Urbanist.

The Senate’s Republican caucus wanted to repeal Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA), which represents the biggest new funding source for public transit and active transportation projects seen in Olympia in decades. So it’s not surprising that the top Republican on the transportation committee is fine with sticking it to transit riders and people who are trying to get around without a car in Washington. Voters are not on the same page: a Republican-backed state initiative seeking to repeal the CCA just failed by a wide margin in 2024.

Why then is the prospect of producing a bipartisan budget so appealing to the Democratic caucus that they’re willing to go along with the plan? After steadily building their majorities over the last decade, Democrats hold 60% of the seats in both the House and the Senate. That makes a bipartisan package a luxury, rather than a need — unless the package is so unpopular with the Democratic caucus that defections are widespread when it’s up for vote.

Liias told The Urbanist that he sees the benefits accrued outweighing the concessions, and asserted that progressive priorities will ultimately come out ahead in the context of the overall budget.

“The e-bike fee raises $9 million and we invest $266 million over the same time period into additional new funding for active transportation. So we are asking everybody to contribute, but we are leaning in to fund the active transportation, particularly the safe systems infrastructure that people need everywhere,” Liias said.

When it comes to the fact that Washington is on the cusp of rolling out an e-bike rebate at the same time that the Senate is proposing a new surcharge, Liias said at least they weren’t proposing to scrap the rebate program all together. The e-bike rebate program, which has been in the works for nearly two years, is set to make a $300 rebate available to the general public via lottery system, and a separate $1,200 rebate will be open to households showing proof of modest income.

“There certainly was an idea on the table about ending the rebate program,” Liias said. “The surcharges certainly add a little bit to the upfront cost for folks that are low income that qualify for a higher value rebate, and [it] more than covers the surcharge. And for folks that are not low income, it’ll be more than the cost of the surcharge, so they’ll still be getting a net benefit from it.”

$3,000 is not an uncommon price for a more heavy duty e-bike and many cargo e-bikes can run much more than that. That’s spendy for a bike but not as a car replacement, but the larger issue is whether the state should be adding any disincentives to purchasing e-bikes at all.

On the added fees for public transit, Liias pointed to two new grant programs that are included in the Senate budget that will outweigh the new charges on public transit vehicles. One is a $100 million transit safety grant program, and the second is $100 million for green transit projects, e.g. electric bus purchases and charging infrastructure. Neither of those grants would explicitly make up for any lost service that could have been funded via the new added fees that public transit agencies will now have to account for.

While the concept of adding costs to transit agencies and e-bike riders clearly cuts against priorities that the broader Democratic caucus has, the Senate’s Majority Leader is still assessing whether to upset the apple cart over the issue.

“I’m still kind of mulling what to do about that,” Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen (D-43rd, Seattle) told The Urbanist. “I have not yet heard concerns from the agencies about it. If I heard from, you know, Sound Transit or Metro, that it would become a significant problem for them, rather than just a symbolic thing, then that might change my perspective on what I should do.”

House budget focuses on highway projects that are “well underway”

In contrast with the Senate budget, the House proposal does propose putting some highway megaprojects on ice: an expansion of State Route 18 in southeast King County, for example, would be pushed out past 2029, as would a widening of State Route 9 in Snohomish County. In that way, it’s more fiscally conservative than the Senate proposal, which proposes moving full speed ahead with those projects.

“There is a number of projects that we just can’t begin to think about going forward with because of the revenues that we’re working with at this point in time,” House transportation committee chair Jake Fey (D-27th, Tacoma) told reporters Monday.

Fey confirmed that a guiding principle behind the House budget wasn’t which projects were most aligned with state goals, but rather which projects were simply further along in the process.

“A lot of these projects are at different stages. We try to not interrupt projects that were well underway and ready for the next phase. And then there’s some projects that are just in the right-of-way [acquisition] and planning stages, and those were the ones that we were more focused on, pushing those programs and projects out,” Fey said.

But the House proposal also takes an ax to multimodal programs, cutting the state’s Regional Mobility Grant program, which pays for transit access projects around the state. Existing projects will be funded, but no new regional mobility grants will be offered until 2031, under the House’s plan.

And in an ironic move, the House proposal would also indefinitely suspend the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities grant program, which is geared at repairing the harmful legacy of Washington’s past highway decisions. Projects funded via the Sandy Williams program include a study looking at how to improve access to Seattle’s Judkins Park light rail station at Rainier and I-90, and how to improve access across I-5 in Tacoma, in Fey’s district.

Additionally, the House proposal take a hatchet to commute trip reduction (CTR) programs. By providing dollars to organizations around the state that are focused on offering alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle travel, CTR programs encourage transit use, coordinate vanpools, and provide transportation education. Clearly, they are climate programs.

In a letter sent in the wake of the budget’s release, a broad group of organizations engaged in transportation demand management asked for the cuts to be reversed. They include Expedia, Seattle Children’s, Commute Seattle, and cities like Seattle, Bellevue, Tukwila, and Vancouver.

“CTR is a cornerstone of Washington’s efforts to reduce congestion and air pollution, directly supporting the state’s goals under the Clean Air Act. For over 30 years, this program has provided a proven, cost-effective way to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips and increase access to reliable, affordable transportation,” the letter states. “Cutting CTR funding by 60% would severely undermine the state’s ability to leverage this long-standing, successful program — diminishing our ability to meet state environmental and transportation goals and compromising the effectiveness of a law that has served Washingtonians for decades.”

The sum savings of these cuts is minuscule, even when just looking at the scale of the funding being used to plug highway project budget holes, much less their full project costs. The Puget Sound Gateway projects alone need $153 million to move forward, along with $227 million for Snoqualmie Pass and $267 million for the North Spokane Corridor.

Proposals ignore climate implications

At a time when the federal government is not only withdrawing the U.S. from international climate agreements but also actively working to claw back federal dollars that had been allocated to climate-friendly modes of transportation, the climate impact of the state’s transportation budget remains an area of weakness for Democrats in Olympia.

Ahead of this year’s legislative session, as the budget crisis was beginning to come into full view, both Liias and Fey actively downplayed the idea that the state is focused on, despite the amount of funding within the budget that is allocated to capacity projects and the head of the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) was issuing warnings about continuing to invest in new infrastructure over basic maintenance. Even as the proposed Senate budget allocates more than $2.5 billion over the next six years to highway capacity projects, that hasn’t changed.

“I just fundamentally disagree that we’re expanding the highway network,” Liias said this week. “The one greenfield highway that’s being proposed — the two — are the Gateway Program and North Spokane Corridor. Those were projects that were initiated 10 years ago, and we’re in the last stages of them. I don’t propose that we do those sorts of projects in other parts of the state.”

As other states, like Colorado, have begun to calculate climate costs on their new highway projects and shift resources to greener projects, Liias defended the way that Washington builds highways.

“We, in the environmental review of projects, are looking at the impacts they have in terms of congestion and adding induced demand,” Liias said. “We’re looking at the impacts in terms of capacity for various users of various types. We’re doing that because of the HEAL Act. We’re doing environment justice review, which is not just thinking about the impacts on adjacent communities, but also who are the overburdened and vulnerable communities that haven’t been consulted or engaged?”

But the existing system allows WSDOT to conduct environmental review on its own projects, doesn’t allow for any outside agency to confirm that the state’s highway projects are in alignment with state climate goals. The recent environmental review of the Interstate Bridge Replacement — the most expensive highway project in Pacific Northwest history — completely omitted the issue of induced demand, the concept that a widened highway will fill up with traffic, cancelling out any benefit in travel time that was gained by expanding it.

The prioritization of widening SR 18 also raised questions about the assertion that Washington is being data-driven with its decision making.

While agreement between the twin budgets is set to be hammered out over the next month, all signs point to the legislature continuing to focus on a small number of highway capacity projects, to the detriment of broader state goals. Even a major budget crisis has not yet been enough to prompt a rethinking.

Legislature Considers Cutting Highway Expansion Projects to Address Budget Woes

Facing Budget Crisis, Washington’s Leaders Downplay Focus on Highway Expansion

The post State Budget Proposals Focus on Highway Expansion in Both Chambers first appeared on The Urbanist.

Something is in the air. Unseen. Vibrating. Friscalating. Between A Message from the Stars, City of Six Moons, and Out of Sorts, it almost seems like we’re being prepared for some grand task, an entire species press-ganged into the labor of translating alien missives.

Or maybe I just really like first contact stories.

Signal, created by the design collective Jasper Beatrix, bears a singular honor. This is the best of the recent spate of games about communicating with aliens. But more than that, it’s a game I’ve delayed writing about so I could play it over and over again, reveling in its unparalleled sense of experimentation and discovery.

It begins with the appearance of an alien.

Illustrated by Cricks Rose, the twenty-five extraterrestrial bodies included in Signal are more silhouettes than profiles. They remind me slightly of Stephen Gammell’s nightmare-inducing images from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, suggesting peristalsing appendages and inhuman trunks. Unlike Gammell’s illustrations, however, Rose’s approach is more curious than horrifying. One horned beast, furred along the edges, seems to sport ordinary legs until on closer inspection it becomes apparent that the creature’s head is also its abdomen is also its mode of conveyance. Another adorns itself with burning candles, whether decorative or natural. Yet another radiates like a glow-worm, but in such a way that suggests its gleaming outline is merely a stripe of something larger.

While an alien’s appearance offers the first glimpse into its behavior, there are clues aplenty yet to discover. By the conclusion of a ten-to-thirty-minute session, hopefully you’ll even know what some of those clues are.

Signal is a cooperative game. One player takes on the role of the alien. Everybody else, from one to however many people you can cram around a table, constitute a panel of experts. That’s right. “Experts.” In which field? How do you staff such a panel? It’s anybody’s guess. The obvious option is linguists, but there’s no reason to hold back. In our sessions, we’ve fielded translators and mathematicians and artists. My friend Adam plays the videographer, snapping still images of the panel’s experiments and recording videos of the alien’s responses. Recording is explicitly permitted by the rules, and good thing, too. Those videos have staved off misunderstandings on more than one occasion.

Unlike City of Six Moons, which offered the commonality of written language to fall back on, or A Message from the Stars, which saw alien and human bantering words back and forth, Signal begins where all bridges between cultures lay their actual groundwork: pointing to sticks and rocks and listening to what your opposite party has to say.

Really, that isn’t too far off. The experts have an assortment of triangles, cubes, rods, and discs in two colors at their disposal. They arrange these shapes on a fabric mat according to any logic of their choosing. Together, apart, touching, stacked, piled atop the mat’s test-pattern leylines — anything goes.

And then the alien responds. It moves shapes. It removes some and adds others. Perhaps it stacks one piece atop another. The objective, for both experts and alien alike, is to alter the experiment until it resembles a certain predetermined arrangement. Maybe three triangles next to each other. A rod atop a disc. Something like that.

One of the great strengths of playing Signal, as opposed to the (frankly dull) call-and-response exchanges of A Message from the Stars, is the stark degree of latitude entrusted to both sides of these conversations. As the panel of experts, you need to prompt the alien to create the right pattern, but you’re given total control over the starting parameters of each experiment. Those early moments are overwhelming, each experiment producing what seems like random noise, until little by little you begin to feel out the shape of the rules governing the alien’s behavior.

Speaking of which, the alien’s rules may be ironclad, but this is a melty, bendy alloy of iron. Every alien is given three separate rules. Early on, only the first rule applies. Later the second rule is added, and then the third. I won’t spoil anything, but a rule might be something like “Remove any black cubes touching a line.” Later, once the experts have successfully mastered that first edict, another is appended: “Push apart any touching triangles.” Eventually, a third rule appears: “Place a disc atop any cube not touching a rod, then remove any rods.” That sort of thing.

This entire process is quietly brilliant. Both sides are bound by the alien’s rules, but there’s a surprising degree of leeway in how the alien can execute them, not to mention how the experts interpret what they’ve witnessed. The result is something like conversational frisson. Even when both sides understand the gist of what the other is doing, little inconsistencies or misunderstandings tend to accumulate in the wake of each experiment.

I’ll give an example. Let’s say my alien is operating on a simple rule. “Stack a disc on top of any two touching cubes.” Easy, right?

Except you, as our resident expert, might place two cubes side by side, one black and one white, and watch me add a black disc to the top of those cubes. What should you take away from that? Maybe you will deduce the correct rule immediately. But the rule might have instead been “Cover any differently-colored pieces with a black disc.” Or, crud, even “Stack a disc on top of any other piece.” Maybe there are outside considerations. “If there is a triangle within the inner circle, place a disc on a piece outside the inner circle.”

The point I’m trying to make is that you aren’t only grappling with the rules, but with the gray areas that surround those rules, with the waffling specificities that govern how those shapes are moved, subtracted, generated, or replaced. This is where a skilled alien can do so much more than follow the rules like some program adhering to lines of code. You’re free to get creative. Are my experts stuck on the idea that two non-matching shapes make a black disc? Okay, I’ll give them a white disc instead. I’ll give them a reason to pause and reevaluate. Consistency is but one key of communication. In the right hands, inconsistency unlocks a fair few doors as well.

The result is a fumbling conversation, absent any real precision or even true understanding, and I mean that entirely as a compliment. More than once, I’ve watched a team of experts “successfully” commune with their alien, only to laugh themselves silly when they heard the rules they were ostensibly interfacing with.

That might sound like a weakness, but it’s no more a problem than speaking a language without being able to fully explain its grammatical rules. That’s the beauty of this thing we call communication. It’s enough to know that certain words hit the ear right. If you hear somebody reading Red Riding Hood and immediately launch into an explanation about how ablaut reduplication is an acceptable exception to proper adjective order, everyone in your kid’s kindergarten class is going to stare at you like some bug-eyed nerd. And they would be right. You would be a bug-eyed nerd to care that much about apophony. Just let the vibes wash over you, man.

Okay, enough of that. This is the second time I’ve been deeply impressed by Jasper Beatrix. The collective’s previous title, Typeset, also produced surprising heft despite its tiny box and twenty-minute duration. Signal is even stronger than Typeset, a commendable achievement indeed. I can’t wait to see what these folks get up to next. More immediately, I can’t wait to hold another fireside chat with the rest of these aliens.

 

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A complimentary copy of Signal was provided by the publisher.