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Just a geek who lives in Olympia, WA with my wife, son, and animals. In my free time I play board games, write fiction, and make stuff.
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In 2023 Washington state adopted a raft of bills unlocking more home choices, at more affordable prices, in cities and towns across the state. It was hailed as the year of housing. The 2025 legislative session could be the year of parking reform, with the promise of taming rents and housing costs, curbing sprawling ... Read more
The post Washington Bill Would Cap Excessive Parking Mandates Around the State appeared first on Sightline Institute.
Despite constant handwringing from the national punditry about the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) ratings, a post-Christmas bump has left the league at an only marginal deficit to its previous season. True, the ratings have plummeted in the last decade-plus — four out of five of the lowest-rated finals of the last three decades occurring in these last four years — but these trends are not unique to the NBA.
Yet this hasn’t stopped a full-throated league audit, with the media class singling out their favorite reasons as to why the league’s numbers aren’t performing more favorably. Perhaps the loudest iteration belongs to right-wing figures like Clay Travis, who claim the league is simply too political and, specifically, too woke. This of course is a reference to George Floyd’s murder five years ago, where in lieu of spearheading a work stoppage to show solidarity with the victims of racialized police brutality, the players union allowed itself to be swayed back onto the court by league officials and former president Barack Obama. Who can forget the many league-approved social justice messages on the back of their favorite players’ jerseys that year, bangers like “Listen,” “Vote,” and my personal favorite — “Education Reform.”
Other more mainstream pundits have focused on the league’s dwindling percentage of American-born stars, suggesting US fans don’t connect with the Luka Dončićs and the Giannis Antetokounmpos of the world. This is a strange position, given these foreign-born stars’ fluency in English, which can often serve as an impediment for some non-native speaking athletes’ Q-ratings in internationalized sports.
And finally, there is the analytics griping, exorbitant three-point shooting, defender-legislating, and free agency roulette — all barely valid criticisms served up almost exclusively by former coaches and players. These commentators seem more motivated by a sense of nostalgia for a version of the sport that satisfies feelings of the familiar and bitterness toward basketball modernity.
To the extent that there are indeed real issues causing fans to walk away from their televisions, there do seem to be a few legitimate ones not based in either blanket conservatism, light nativism, or rank old-timerism.
For starters, the nature of sports fandom has undergone quite a shift. With the introduction of new media providing more snackable alternatives to consumers, fifteen-minute condensed-game recaps become more attractive than dedicating two and a half hours to watch your team lose a semi-meaningless game in mid-February. Fans also increasingly prioritize the ancillary parts of the sport, such as player movement, trade rumors, and gossip — all soap operatic elements with the low barrier of entry of only a quick podcast subscription or two.
For years, critics of the league have questioned the heart and professionalism of the athletes. It’s not uncommon to hear fan complaints about how players are spoiled and lazy — particularly when compared to their collegiate counterparts. The relatively recent development of “load management” — where teams sit healthy star players for spot games in the regular season in the hopes they’ll have fresher legs for the postseason — has inflamed these objections, as fans who spend the time and money on a babysitter to go watch LeBron James are left watching Rui Hachimura.
Upstream from these more minor concerns of league play-quality is the NBA’s biggest problem of all: the long-vaunted length of the NBA season. For decades, fans have criticized the bloated regular season schedule, yet any reduction in length could mean, at least in the short term, a financial haircut for league officials and ownership. For context, some calculations have a reduction in even five home games a year costing teams $13.5 million in revenue.
The trend in sports the past several years has been to oppose contraction of any kind. The National Football League (NFL) added to its regular season slate with potentially more to come, while National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football, basketball, and Major League Baseball (MLB) have all extended their playoff schedules. Even the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has increased the number of fights it puts on each year, with the total increasing by 50 percent since 2012. It appears leagues have caught on to the reality: more televised events mean better leverage to negotiate and land a massive TV deal.
Central revenue, or essentially broadcast rights, is the biggest moneymaker for the biggest leagues. It tops the revenue charts of both the NBA and NFL, accounting for two-thirds of the NFL’s industry-best $18.7 billion in annual revenue, as part of a landmark $110 billion collective deal signed with the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox, Amazon, and ESPN. These TV rights represent the most attractive avenue for growth, as other revenue streams for leagues — sponsorships, seating, local media, concessions, parking, and merchandise — are inherently a more static endeavor.
However, more is not necessarily better. The NBA has been in denial for years about its on-court product, a direct result of players who are chronically sleep-deprived, injured, and without enough time in-season to even practice their sport outside of a few shoot-arounds, walkthroughs, and film sessions. The overwhelming popularity of the NFL and college football in the United States can be at least partially attributed to the fact that teams play only about fifteen games per year, over 90 percent of which are on the same day. You won’t find much, if any, load management or lazy defense in the sport because every play and every game matters — a far cry from the reality of an NBA season. Fans also know when every game is played and can plan their leisure time accordingly, while the NBA scatters its events throughout the work week.
The league should take a longer-term approach, one that both respects the time and money of its fans, as well as both the physical labor and bodies of its athletes. At present, the league is an example of sustained mediocrity, succeeding in part due to peak global demand for live sports programming, unprecedented talent pools, and social media reach, and despite its tacit complicity in wrecking player health and gaslighting a loyal fanbase that is paying more than ever for a fun family night out. Its quantity-over-quality approach resembles a predictable short-term profit maximization model, and if it doesn’t get out of its own way, it risks squandering the reputation of what should be one of the best leagues in the world.
Last July, Atlanta’s transit agency board went viral. But it probably wasn’t the sort of attention they were excited to get. A records’ request by a high school student and transit advocate uncovered that most MARTA board members rarely rode transit, including the board chair who had ridden transit only once in the previous year.
“If you’re tasked with calling the shots of a such a large transit agency, you should have transit experience,” Greyson Forster, the student who initially requested the records, told Atlanta News First.
Forster’s advocacy aligns with a long-standing debate among transit allies, riders and agencies about how rider expertise can help create better transit systems and where that expertise can be integrated into decision-making structures.
One transit agency that has been at the forefront of inclusion is Intercity Transit, which serves our state’s capital of Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater and other smaller communities throughout Thurston County.
Since 1983, Intercity Transit has included three community member representatives on their transit board to ensure the voices of people who relied on the bus and paratransit systems were heard. But getting these voting seats for community representatives took a fight.
In 1975, Washington state legislature passed legislation to create a legal governance structure for local transit authorities, called the Public Transit Benefit Authority (PTBAs). By 1981, Intercity Transit, the transit provider in Thurston County, had reorganized under this structure, but the new board had some concerns. Olympia’s mayor and other elected leaders on the board were frustrated at the loss of community expertise represented by jettisoning the transit rider reps. The board started lobbying for legislation that would update the PTBA law and allow them to re-appoint citizen (now called “community”) representatives to their authority board.
This legislative update failed in the 1981 and 1982 legislative sessions. Finally in 1983, Intercity Transit was successful in passing an update to the PTBA governance laws that allowed them to appoint community representatives if these representatives were included under their previous governance structure.
Immediately, the board got to work at advertising the openings to community groups and setting up an application process. They agreed to add three community representatives and discussed a desire to have “users of the system such as senior citizens and handicapped persons” appointed to the board. In December that year, the initial three community representatives were appointed on staggered terms.
Community representatives have served on Intercity Transit’s governing board since these appointments, helping guide the authority through the budget crises brought on by Tim Eyman’s initiatives in the 2000s. In many cases, community members would first serve on the Community Advisory Committee before getting appointed as voting members of the transit board. This was true for Joan Cullen, the first woman appointed as a community representative to the board.
While Cullen used transit to get to work before joining the board, she felt she didn’t know much about transit. But that changed as a result of her service on the board, where she became a “huge advocate” for transit and had the opportunity to attend national transit conferences and meet other transit advocates, including disability advocates who were at that time pushing for increased accessibility on transit services. “Regular citizens bring a different perspective to advisory boards,” she recalled.
In addition to providing valuable insight and connection to transit riders, both the community advisory council and community board seats provided pathways for transit riders to build careers in the transportation space, bringing perspectives that otherwise wouldn’t be at the table.
In 1991, Cullen left the Intercity Transit Board to become the State Agency Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) Manager of Washington State’s newly created CTR program. She helped launch Washington state’s transportation demand management work to reduce traffic congestion through employer supported transit and carpooling options for state employees in nine of the most populated counties.
Intercity Transit’s current general manager has a similar story: “Before I worked at Intercity Transit, I was a member of Intercity Transit’s Community Advisory Committee over 20 years ago, which is what first got me interested in public transit as a career,” Emily Bergkamp reminisced.
Ensuring that more community members have this pathway to engagement inspired the Intercity Transit Board in September 2024 to vote to approve a paid stipend for Community Advisory Committee members when they attend meetings. The intention was to reduce economic barriers related to the costs of committee participation.
“As we are striving to really fulfill our promises around equity and inclusion, having community voices, especially voices of people who rely on the transit system for their transportation, allows for much richer conversation and gives us better decisions,” explained Olympia City Council Member and Intercity Transit Board Chair Clark Gilman. He explained that offering a stipend was both as a “gesture of respect” and broadened the capacity of who could serve.
Intercity Transit GM Emily Bergkamp emphasized how having community members on the board and an engaged community advisory committee “creates a dynamic where local government officials work shoulder-to-shoulder with community members, combining the strengths of both elected leadership and grassroots change, to nurture and guide a transit system that truly reflects the community it serves.”
In many parts of the US, elected officials join other community leaders who are appointed to serve on public transit boards. While this doesn’t ensure appointees are transit riders, it at least allows for regular transit riders who aren’t able to serve as elected officials the opportunity to be appointed. That isn’t the case in Washington State, where even if a transit agency board wanted to create voting seats for representation from non-elected leaders, state transit governance law dictates that unless community representatives were grandfathered in like at Intercity Transit, they aren’t allowed to serve.
Port Angeles Councilmember and Clallam Transit board member Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin recalled how the Clallam Transit board looked into the possibility of appointing community representatives.
“Every four years public transportation benefit areas like Clallam Transit are required to do a board composition review to decide if the members of the board appropriately represent the cities and counties in the transit area,” Schromen-Wawrin explained. “When Clallam’s Transit last did its review, we dug into trying to figure out how we could diversify the board because we saw that the board members, limited to city council members and county commissioners, didn’t bring all the perspectives into the room that we need to adequately govern a transit agency.”
But the board was advised that without a change in state transit governance law, they wouldn’t be allowed to make these appointments.
In 2024, Councilmember Schromen-Wawrin testified in support of HB 2191, a bill that would have added the option for PTBA boards to create voting seats for transit riding community members. HB 2191 passed the state house, and was voted out of the senate transportation committee, but got stuck in the senate rules committee.
State Representative Joe Timmons (D-42) plans to re-introduce the bill in the 2025 legislative session, which begins on January 13.
“I think it’s so important that we let folks who most use transit services have a seat at the table in making these important decisions,” Rep. Timmons explained in a 2024 video. “I believe that transit riders have a unique perspective, lived experience and expertise that they can bring to these important decision-making processes.”
The post Op-Ed: Washington State Should Allow Riders to Serve on Transit Boards first appeared on The Urbanist.
After a bill legalizing neighborhood cafes in residential areas across Washington failed to advance last year, the bill’s sponsor Mark Klicker (R-16th, Walla Walla) is back with a new version that goes even further. House Bill 1175 would force local cities and towns to allow both restaurant cafes and corner stores in all residential areas, ending current bans that exist throughout the state on commercial uses in lower density neighborhoods.
Representative Klicker’s 2024 neighborhood cafe bill was initially well-received, sailing through the state House without a single vote in opposition. With a fairly broad definition of cafe, it would have allowed numerous types of small shops as long as they offered a “limited menu of food items” and also would have allowed alcohol sales on top of food sales. But it stalled out in the Senate, after concerns were raised by local governments. After the Senate’s Local Government Committee adopted a full rewrite of the bill that merely made it voluntary, it was never brought to a floor vote.
At the time, the Association of Washington Cities, the influential lobbying arm for city governments in Olympia, said the bill “pose[d] real concerns beyond preemption” and tried to argue that a restriction on having more than two off-street parking stalls with a cafe would “pose safety concerns near schools, day care centers, and for pets and vulnerable roadway users.”
While expanded to include stores — specifically, a “convenience grocery store or mini-market that provides a variety of convenience items that may include, but are not limited to, food, beverages, and household items” — the 2025 version does increase the ability for local governments to impose restrictions on how those stores and cafes operate.
While the bill includes a 500-square-foot minimum size on shops, it lets cities set the maximum limit, which could be a way to not actually allow very many commercial storefronts in practice. And it allows cities to regulate parking at neighborhood cafes, only stipulating “that the regulations are not infeasible,” with no clarification on what infeasible means.
Onerous and arbitrary parking requirements have kept small commercial spaces from being viable in neighborhoods across the U.S. for decades, but most local governments don’t seem to find these regulations infeasible to put on the books. The legislation also allows cities wide latitude to set operating hours, and are only prohibited from restricting a store or cafe from being open less than 12 hours in a row.
In response to calls for more amenities within walking distance of homes, several cities around the state have been taking steps to legalize neighborhood cafes and stores, acknowledging that the few examples of these local establishments that do exist are largely beloved community fixtures.
Shoreline’s newly adopted Comprehensive Plan will allow shops of all types on most of the city’s streets, with only dead-ends and culs-de-sac excluded. As a city without a distinct “downtown” neighborhood, Shoreline is set to lean into a more dispersed model of commercial activity to create a “stronger sense of place,” per the plan.
Seattle’s draft Comprehensive Plan is also set to allow corner stores, but in a bizarrely literal move, only on corner lots, stopping short of making popular cafes like Ravenna’s Seven Market (which is located mid-block) legal. New buildings that include corner stores would be have fewer ground-level setback requirements, but would still have to set back the upper floors from the lot line, which adds building costs, decreases energy efficiency, and isn’t typically found in historic examples.
Given the elements in the new version of the bill that defer to local governments, and changes in the makeup of the state Senate, HB 1175’s chances this year appear to be good. But the fact that many state lawmakers see neighborhood cafes as something “nice to have” and not an integral element of creating more complete communities — and encouraging less driving — may still prove problematic for the bill. Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32, Shoreline) voiced this objection around last year’s bill, and is now stepping into the role of chair of the Senate’s Local Government Committee, where the bill’s fate will again lie.
“We’ve done sort of similar bills around housing, right — we know there’s a housing crisis — where we’ve disallowed cities from restricting these [types of] housing,” Salomon said last February. “What is the case to be made that we should do this for these businesses? I grew up with a neighborhood business — I thought it was great. But I think it’s also a high bar to dictate to cities what they can and can’t do.”
With widespread positive reaction to 2024’s bill, securing final passage this year should be a slam dunk, but as is always the case in Olympia, there will likely be hidden landmines for the bill to navigate. Despite the fact that no one objects to more coffee shops and bodegas in theory, actually taking the step to legalize them over the objection of local governments is a completely different question.
The post Statewide Neighborhood Cafe Bill Returns, Expanded to More Types of Businesses first appeared on The Urbanist.
A new report from Transportation from America has found that the supposed climate-friendly Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) has, to date, resulted in increased emissions. In addition, it could potentially even undo some of the emissions reductions achieved under other legislation taking action on climate, such as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The bipartisan IIJA was signed into law in 2021, proposing $1.2 trillion in funding for transportation spending, as well as broadband expansion, clean water, and electricity grid renewal. One of the stated aims of the IIJA was to reduce the impacts of climate change from the transportation sector, particularly from highways. But Transportation for America’s “Fueling the Crisis” report highlights the ways in which the IIJA has actually contributed to a business-as-usual approach, with states continuing to spend funds on highway expansion and resurfacing projects.
“It’s useful to think of every new highway or new lane like a new fossil fuel power plant, guaranteeing emissions for years to come from the additional miles of driving each will induce,” report author Corrigan Salerno wrote. “Over $37 billion in IIJA funding has gone toward new highways and wider roads. Using emissions increase and reduction output modeling figures from the GCC’s Transportation Investment Strategy Tool, these projects could induce the equivalent of more than 77 million cumulative metric tonnes of CO2e [climate] emissions above pre-IIJA baseline levels from 2022 and 2040. This is equivalent to the CO2e emissions produced from running 20 coal-fired power plants for a year.”
The IIJA is structured in such a way that federal funding is provided to states, who have high levels of flexibility to determine how this funding is spent. This was seen by legislators as an opportunity to impact transport emissions for the better, depending on states’ investment decisions. But with modern Republican leaders largely denying that the climate crisis is real, and many Democratic leaders rating it a low priority, most states have continued a highway-centric approach, in line with the status quo.
Donald Trump once again being in charge at the federal level will likely mean even more focus on highways. This will also create headwinds for transit and safe streets projects, stalling fledgling progress on clean transportation.
The Biden Administration awarded Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grants to multimodal and safety-focused projects on a much more frequent basis than the Trump-era predecessor. However, the larger Surface Transportation Block Grant program is more deferential to state priorities and continues to focus on highway expansion — a trend sure to increase under Trump.
The Biden administration released a fact sheet when the IIJA passed, stating that the legislation “will strengthen our nation’s resilience to extreme weather and climate change,” and that it would “help reduce our emissions by well over one gigaton this decade.” However, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported at the time that contrary to Biden’s statements, the IIJA framework seemed to reflect an “incremental rather than transformative approach,” partially due to the concessions made in pursuit of political agreement.
“The bipartisan deal,” wrote the CSIS, “Does far more for carbon-intensive roads and bridges than for fundamentally rethinking mobility,” an approach that would not lead to the climate-friendly outcomes touted by supporters of the law.
Three years after the IIJA came into force, analyses such as that from Transportation for America have now taken place that show the impacts of the legislation thus far. Contrary to the administration’s assertions and goals for the IIJA, the report is a damning picture of increased car-centric infrastructure: “States’ federal formula-funded investments made over the course of the IIJA could cumulatively increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving.”
“This did not really come as a surprise,” Transportation for America’s Salerno told The Urbanist. “States have not really used that power to focus on carbon-emissions reduction projects, and instead we’ve seen states continue along the same path, if not slightly worse compared to previous years.”
The state of Texas was by far the leader in highway expansion and locking in climate pollution, followed by fellow Republican-led states of Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, according to the report. However, Democratic governors did not prevent Pennsylvania and California from joining the list at 5th and 6th place in transportation emission gains, respectively.
The reasons behind these results are complex. In part, the carbon emissions reduction aspects of the IIJA are small, when compared to larger programs within the legislation. In addition, Salerno said, “The culture of planners and also, the political systems that we have, as well as how folks are rewarded for how they use transportation funds, tend to lead to more highway expansion projects.”
When many people are focused on car-centric transportation, using funds for highway expansion projects is seen as more politically expedient, and one way to solve the problem of congestion. This is despite significant evidence that expanding highways simply induces demand for more people to drive, and does not reduce congestion over the long run.
“The transportation system remains one of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, but its emissions are projected to decline thanks to new policies from the Inflation Reduction Act,” the Transportation for America report states. “[But] those gains will be undercut if we continue to invest in projects that make driving the only viable mode of travel.”
Transportation for America calls on policymakers to prioritize safety over speed, take a fix it first approach to roads, and invest in the rest: high quality transit, active transportation, and intercity passenger rail networks.
Fixing this problem and making wiser transportation investments will take “a whole of government approach,” Salerno said, and it could involve emission reduction requirements to nudge states to invest funds in a different direction. It could also take dedicated staff working on clean transportation and pedestrian safety.
“When you put those sort of priorities as part of someone’s job description,” Salerno said. “I think that’s when you start to see the change really begin culturally.”
With support from Governor Jay Inslee, a climate hawk, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has built out an active transportation division and sought to incorporate bike and pedestrian safety into more state road projects, with the state legislature adding a Complete Streets requirement to ensure investments are balanced.
WSDOT tapped Barb Chamberlain, a respected leader in the bicycling advocacy community, to lead the active transportation division. Chamberlain said the Complete Streets requirement has influenced how they spend IIJA funds and jumpstarted investment in street safety.
“The Complete Streets requirement includes a set-aside of a minimum of 2.5% of federal planning funds for state and MPO [Metropolitan Planning Organization] planning, standards, policies, prioritization, and active transportation plans.” Chamberlain said in an email. As a result, “Federal dollars will support projects that benefit active transportation,” she wrote.
Transportation for America’s analysis found that high emissions projects are particularly concentrated in suburban areas.
“Emissions tend to be where travel demand is,” Salerno said. “So the big loss is that there are these highway dollars that are going to these multi-billion dollar highway expansion-boondoggles, that could be going to building out infrastructure that supports active transportation and public transit options in more urbanized areas… “You’re giving the majority of people who already only have one option, more of the same.”
Some states have set a good example, such as Colorado and Minnesota, who have both recently passed new climate and transportation bills that will influence state spending in a more positive direction. Chamberlain also explains that some of the benefits of the IIJA for their work at WSDOT have been in areas other than emissions reductions.
“Updated language — this is small but significant,” she wrote, “An emphasis on safety showed up in updated policy language, new requirements for analysis and reporting, and dedicated funding in competitive programs. States now must set safety performance goals to reduce serious and fatal crashes.”
The new language and priorities have translated into active transportation projects faring better in the process.
“Active transportation facilities were included in many of the [recent] winning [RAISE] grants,” Chamberlain wrote. “And the criteria around safety and environmental benefits are places where inclusion of active transportation will help an application rank higher.”
Nonetheless, even with a climate-friendly governor, a new active transportation division, and a long run of Democratic control in the state legislature, Washington State continues to invest in highway expansion. The state’s IIJA investments show that the climate has suffered, overall. State leaders have made a $7.5 billion megaproject their top priority, despite mounting issues with the project. The project would both widen I-5 and replace the Columbia River bridge in Clark County.
Despite opportunities to dedicate RAISE grants to transit projects, the state has mostly favored road widenings. One of the Evergreen State’s largest recent RAISE grant recipients is a road expansion project in Lynnwood, near the city’s new light rail station. While the bridge will feature six car lanes, it includes the bare-minimum-standard sidewalks and bike lanes.
Transportation for America is stressing that states need to take more steps to invest in projects that reduce emissions. This is a process that needs to take place at all levels.
“I think it’s important that advocates [for active transport] should involve themselves as collaborators. This includes DOT work and work with city officials,” Salerno said. “You can be the change and involve yourself as a planner.”
A vitally important step is “identifying who are the advocates in existing state DOTs and city DOTs, and finding ways to empower them,” Salerno said. “I think it is crucial in moving the needle in these things because at the end of the day, it’s all people.”
The post Biden Infrastructure Law Mostly Funded Road Expansion, Leading to Climate Backsliding first appeared on The Urbanist.
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