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.

I was in Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, on Sunday with a piece about the urgency of bus priority.  An unpaywalled version is here.

Canada’s major cities and transit authorities will continue to propose street design changes that nudge everyone toward sharing the scarce space of the city street more fairly. These proposals will always be compromises between the needs of different users of the street. The goal is always to make everyone’s lives better, and maximize the access to opportunity that is the whole purpose of cities. But if the result is a bit inconvenient for you, it’s probably also still a little inconvenient for everyone else, and that may mean it’s the right compromise for everyone. Urban life is all about making compromises so that we share limited space fairly, with no user allowed to veto the needs of others. In a city, if everyone is compromising, everyone is winning.

The post My Globe and Mail Piece on Bus Priority appeared first on Human Transit.

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.

What I love about this most is the voice over. 99 times out of 100 it’s a mistake, but Skarsgard hits the disinterested, a little passive-aggressive, tone of Murderbot so well. The trailer feels like the book feels in my head, vibe-wise, so I’m looking forward to this as I love the books.

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.

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