McGinn

Note: I’ve edited this post to include a more direct route to the mayor-elect’s ear. Thanks, Brice!

Want to help Mayor-elect Michael McGinn get off on the right foot? Have some ideas for him on what he should do first, who should help him do it, and how he can build the public trust? Tell him.

McGinn wants help getting his homework done before he moves into city hall at the end of the month. He’s asked community leaders to help gather public responses to three key questions.

Here are McGinn’s questions:

• How do we build the strongest possible team to achieve the policy objectives and values set forth during Mike’s campaign?

• How do we build public trust in the new administration?

• What do you view as the incoming administration and the city’s greatest challenge - what should we do first out of the gate?

Great City has a handy-dandy form online where you can submit your answers directly.

McGinn said at a CityClub panel in March (before officially announcing his candidacy for mayor) that he thinks the recession provides Seattle with a few years of breathing space, not only to prepare for the next wave of growth, but to make sure the city remains a place people want to live.

“The problem of people wanting to live here is a good one,” he said. “I think we’re smart enough to build smart places, we just need to do it.”

Forget it!

A national survey shows that people strongly favor the development of communities with lots of sidewalks. But ask voters — and especially motorists — to actually pay to make that happen, and you get a very different answer.

Such was the case in Burien where, earlier this month, residents voted on whether vehicle owners should pay an extra $25 car-tab fee to fund the construction of sidewalks and bike lanes. It was the first time a Washington city has voted on taxing cars to pay for such amenities, according to a Seattle Times article.

In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America, more than 80 percent of respondents favored building more walkable communities. Based on these results, which were published in the January 2008 issue of Realtor magazine, you’d think that Burien voters would have delivered a slam-dunk win for the suburb’s bicyclists and pedestrians.

But you’d be wrong. A whopping 74 percent of voters rejected the proposition.

Members of the City Council could have OK’d a $20 fee without going to the voters, but asked for $25. “We need to know what our community wants to do,” Mayor Joan McGilton told the Times.

City Hall clearly found out.

Marc Stiles covers transportation for the DJC.

As of 11:50 p.m. election night, most Seattle and King County votes haven’t been counted yet.

But some people don’t know that, and are already proclaiming McGinn over Mallahan. Way too early, guys. Those were the ballots that arrived early. Historically, later ballots trend differently, often in ways hard to predict. Sometimes the later votes are younger or more liberal. In this case, McGinn’s switcharoo on the tunnel might have hurt him, at least according to polling. But the damage would only show for people who voted after the 20th, when his announcement made the papers (ballots have to be mailed out 18 days in advance).

Conversely, there are undoubtedly a lot of people who voted for McGinn specifically because he mellowed out on the tunnel, allowing them to make their vote about other issues, where he had some good ideas in areas like density, sustainability and transit. This might have helped him after the shock wore off. If he wins, I hope he’ll do exactly as he said on his central issue: be a good watchdog, but not get in the way of the tunnel.

Personally I think Mallahan has at least a 50 percent chance right now…purely based on public and newspaper Web site info. My guess is McGinn lost some true believers due to the tunnel switch, without gaining the same number to replace them. More results come out at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the King County voter site.

Constantine vs. Hutchison is a wee bit more clear…she got trounced, currently by 14 points, worse than any poll. It’s an odd trend in this state, with votes frequently going significantly further left than polls suggested, with Rossi and McGavick being other examples. Theories will abound, like R-71 (drawing young voters more than conservatives perhaps?), cell phones (hard to poll and not properly accounted for by pollsters), late ads, etc. Also, the left has a volunteer advantage that helps get voters to vote. Hutchison’s idea of not talking about major aspects of her political beliefs didn’t appear to work, as we voters tend to care about our politicians’ political beliefs. Looking forward, this race has implications for many urban issues, such as Constantine’s greater support for saving bus service and building light rail.

Miraculously, voters seem to be figuring out Tim Eyman. Initiative 1033, designed to employ Tim Eyman, while also gutting state and local government services long-term and hopefully engendering political maneuvering that would continue to employ Tim Eyman, is down almost 11 points right now. At minimum, voters seem to be looking past the apple-pie ballot titles and thinking twice, perhaps remembering past initiatives. Eyman’s initiatives tend to poll well early but tail off as people learn more, and lately they’ve been tailing off into “landslide loss” territory.

And how about the housing levy currently winning by 17 points? Seattle’s housing programs are one of the great prides of this city. Aided by these levies, the Seattle Housing Authority and Seattle’s array of outstanding non-profits build and maintain significant amounts of housing, and manage to improve neighborhoods in the process through attractive, long-life design and construction.

Replacing the viaduct with the surface-and-transit option could stall traffic downtown and encourage highway construction elsewhere.

The current mayoral race has placed the viaduct-replacement issue squarely back into the public limelight after most of us thought the issue had been put to bed, what with the governor’s and Legislature’s approval of the deep-bore tunnel option, as well as the accompanying funding commitments.

Both mayoral candidates have raised the issue of the viaduct replacement, with one issuing renewed and strident calls to reconsider the surface-and-transit option.

While the surface-and-transit option seems to be readily embraced by the nominally environmentally conscious activists, I’ve been wondering recently if their concerns may not be both overly simplistic and somewhat shortsighted, as well as possibly self-defeating.

We have heard and read much discussion in the media about the relative validity of arguments on both sides of the issue of whether the throughput of the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct can reasonably be reduced and/or otherwise accommodated by surface streets.  Activists promote the notion that greater and more attractive transit options will remove a certain amount of the vehicle traffic, leaving the remainder to be accommodated by an enhanced network of the existing surface streets.  Detractors protest that most of the throughput traffic is not transit-compatible and that diverting a huge volume of additional traffic onto the surface streets will create gridlock all day long on virtually all downtown Seattle streets.  These issues have been volleyed back and forth in the public debate ad nauseam, but there’s one additional concern that I have been discussing lately that I have not yet seen much coverage on.

Sharing the concern that simply cutting off one of our region’s major north-south highways will reduce downtown Seattle’s streets to a virtual standstill during most daylight hours, I wonder what impact the sharply exacerbated choke point of downtown Seattle within the Puget Sound area’s north-south regional transportation corridor would have on the pressure to consider future road-building in suburbia and exurbia?

You may remember that every few years pro-development forces on the Eastside raise the issue of the “Foothills Freeway,” or I-605, that would consist of a more distant loop around the easternmost edge of our metropolitan area.  If north-south circulation through the metro area is even further complicated by the removal of one of the region’s vital north-south highways, the I-605 promoters would essentially be offered more fuel for their fire.  Constant gridlock on I-5 and the downtown Seattle streets, coupled with the congestion already on I-405, could lead to a ready-made argument in favor of efforts to pursue an I-605.

And we need to ask: Even if some magical combination of street improvements and synchronized traffic signals could accommodate the existing Highway 99 flow through downtown (which I do not believe is possible), what about future growth?  Do the streets-and-transit promoters think the region will stop growing?

Now, in addition to the already oft-mentioned litany of environmental impacts from potentially gridlocked downtown Seattle streets (i.e., substantially increased vehicle idling and resulting air pollution, increased noise, and a markedly diminished pedestrian environment), we could add the potential consequence that the loss of the Highway 99 corridor through downtown Seattle could lead to the development of I-605.  Any environmentally conscious individual knows that the construction of a major new freeway in any metropolitan area literally paves the way to urbanization in its path.  Is that what we want virtually on the slopes of the Cascades?

Mayor Nickels, Gov. Gregoire and the state Legislature all recognized, and thankfully so, that the viaduct should not be replaced with a new modern-age monstrosity along our waterfront.  They also recognized that the vital transportation corridor that Highway 99 plays not only in Seattle, but in our entire region,  must be preserved.  The tunnel was and is the only option that accomplishes both noble objectives.  Environmental activists need to look beyond their Seattle-centric view of the world and see that Highway 99 is not just a Seattle problem, but a regionwide problem.  And the potential, long-term environmental impacts of the streets-and-transit option are far greater than the theoretical, short-term reduction of vehicle trips that that option is purported to create.

Drivers do a better job sharing the road with cyclists than they used to, but there's room for improvement.

It’s impressive how far we’ve come. Bike trails and bike lanes cross the metro. New lanes have been painted on important routes, particularly inside Seattle.  Drivers are more polite, not only skipping the shouted complaints of the ’80s, but often carefully waiting for bicyclists to pass before turning right. There’s plenty left to do, but still.

I took today off work and went for a ride, enjoying the scenery, the infrastructure (isn’t that an emotive word?), the unusual number of friendly nods from other bicyclists (a weekday thing?), and the clouds and trees that kept things comfortable, at least for the first couple hours before it got hot. A great day.

Except there was an incident at the Fremont Bridge. Probably good people forgetting to use good judgment.

As I headed over the bridge around lunchtime, 90 percent of the bike/pedestrian path was blocked by a City pickup and a pizza delivery car (delivering to the operator’s tower) parked side-by-side, leaving just enough room for a bike to edge through along the curb, and hopefully not fall into traffic in the process. The two drivers and presumably the operator were all outside. I yelled at them, they clearly saw the error, the pickup was moved immediately… and here we are.

How often does this happen?  If it’s more than ”never again,” something has to change. It may be too much to expect safe parking by the Domino’s driver. But the City staff… do they really think delivery drivers all think about public access or safety? The solution is that nobody should park on the bridge except City staff that will do it right. As for lunch, if Fremont is too far and nobody will deliver on foot, brown-bag it.

This isn’t the worst incident I’ve had on a drawbridge. About 15 years ago, the Ballard Bridge started to go up while I was walking across. Ever since then I’ve always looked for handholds, just in case.

Today is a good reminder that our City’s well-meaning plans and people who are generally good public servants aren’t enough. Infrastructure isn’t enough. You also have to look at practices, including how the bridge operator gets lunch.

Sandwich boards clutter a sidewalk on First Avenue in downtown Seattle.

We’re starving for good takeout places in Belltown, so the new place on Second should be a prime stop. But I’ve never tried it…because they have sandwich boards (plural) in the middle of the sidewalk, and that annoys me.

It’s odd to fixate on such things. Most people just walk around sandwich boards. But personally I take anything that intrudes on the middle of the sidewalk as an intrusion. Particularly if the sidewalk is narrow, such as passing a sidewalk cafe. So, often, I move the sign. And avoid that business like the plague.

Parking lots are worse than restaurants. At least the businesses are trying to reach pedestrians, but the parking lot signs are for drivers. If a sign is necessary, it should be by the curb, not in the main part of the sidewalk. Those signs are often heavier, but even the big hundred-pound ones can be rolled aside.

Let’s not get started on cars that roll into crosswalks at red lights. (breathe…calm…rippling stream…breathe…)

The City has a spotty record in sidewalk design. Lots of nice work has happened recently on Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth in Belltown, much of it associated with recent street repaves. Love the corner bulbs. But good lord, what’s with the oversized tree wells, particularly on Fourth? Are pedestrians supposed to walk in them? One assumes so, because at night we can hardly see some of them, and they’re inconsistent widths, and sometimes the sidewalks narrow to the width of two people so you walk in them just to pass. Putting gravel in the wells is a good idea in theory, but since we’re walking in the wells they become gravel dispersal systems. Safety issues include escaped gravel on the sidewalk, and the likelihood that at some point the gravel areas won’t be flush with the paved areas.

Then there’s the safety issue of those yellow rubber pads, which are slippery when wet, and are apparently intended to create disabled people.

As for those hanging plants at the Pike Place Market on First…they look great, but do they think we’re all 5 feet tall? Raise them, please.

As you can see, walking to work can bring a zen-like peace to one’s day!

The Moda Apartments ... roommates not required.

Few topics are as visceral. A 300 square foot apartment is an affront, and 200 square feet is downright inhuman…right?

Not to me. They fill an important and underserved need. And for a lot of people they’ll be a good and even fun way to live.

With the Videre opening up on 23rd soon, and with the Moda Apartments recently opening in Belltown (originally sold as condos), small apartments are a hot subject in more ways than one. There’s something about the very idea that compels many people to speak as if they’re being asked to live there personally.

Maybe those people think no housing is better than small housing. Or that the only legit route to affordability is to live farther out (as if that math makes sense), or to have roommates (there’s a way to maintain sanity!), or to live with Mom and Dad, or to live with a subsidy, or to live with the pitter-patter of rats, as a friend of mine once did.

You might think this is all theory to me, but I’ve lived it, and recently. Spent four months in a hotel room on Lower Queen Anne while between condos in 2008. Probably 250 square feet. Stuff away in a storage locker. The only thing roomy was the ADA-compliant bathroom. Living in the middle of things made it much easier…sort of like Moda, and even Videre for some people.

Costs can be high on a square foot basis, for example because plumbing costs don’t scale down with the size of the bathroom, the electrical load for each unit might be nearly as high, and elevator service is related to the number of units more than square footage. With shell costs automatically high, developers can be excused for spending a little bit extra to put in finishes that bring the perceived value up to the prices they need to justify.

About “fun.” We’re all wired a little differently. Some people think fun is living in 3,000 square feet and stretching out, with the whole family having a different room for each thing they do, and spending a lot of time fussing with the lawn, and having lots and lots of furniture, and, well, why on earth do people assume we all want that? Maybe fun is living within one’s means in a cozy place, knowing where everything is, and having freedom from stuff. Maybe fun is using that money to eat better, travel more, or have a financial cushion. Maybe it’s trading square footage for a location in the middle of it all. Yes, it’s possible to live small as a lifestyle choice.

Some people want fun, while others just want to live affordably and without subsidy in a clean place without roommates of the various kinds. Nothing wrong with that. Let those subsidies (such as the levy we should renew this year) go to more needy people. And it’s great when people choose to live near work or school, rather than taxing the transportation system.

Apparently the Videre project was fit into the zoning through creative use of the code, and wasn’t specifically envisioned. Rather than scurry around to fix this “loophole,” we should find ways to help more of these projects happen.

The head tax generates $4.5 million for local transportation projects.

Times are tough in Seattle for small and large businesses.  Everyone is trying to find ways to save money and weather the biggest recession in almost 30 years, and maybe since the end of World War II.

So it makes sense that the Seattle City Council would consider repealing a rather small tax on local businesses as a way of acknowledging this. Repealing the employee hours tax has been proposed by a couple of council members as a symbolic gesture to businesses.

But let’s take a quick look at the employee hours tax, often called the “head tax.”  It is $25 per employee and it doesn’t have to be paid for employees that don’t drive to work. Most employers admit that they don’t pay much tax, and businesses that have less than $80,000 in revenue are exempt. They do feel like it is a hassle. Too much paper work can be expensive in terms of time. But the form is only a couple of pages.

We do know that this arguably innocuous tax generates $4.5 million for transportation projects.  And this funding is part of the overall Bridging the Gap levy that was passed by Seattle voters to make small but critical infrastructure improvements to Seattle’s sidewalks and roads.

So we know that this symbolic gesture:

• will not create any new jobs or revenue for businesses;

• will eliminate $4 million dollars that currently pay for projects that employ people in the city; and

• will eliminate an incentive for employers to encourage their employees NOT to drive to work.

Now, supporters of the repeal acknowledge the first two of these items but deny the last point. Nobody has quit driving to work because of this tax. Do we have survey data?  Have collections gone down or up over since the tax was implemented? We really don’t know.

I find local, state and federal taxes annoying and confusing. But that isn’t a rationale to repeal them. Would simplifying the collection of the tax help? We don’t know that, either.

Are there other ideas out there that would create tangible benefits for business other than repealing the tax? Another thing that hasn’t been explored yet.

That is why tax supporters (including myself as a resident of Capitol Hill) are asking for more time to so the City Council can consider these questions. And here are some basic principles the council should consider during discussions this fall. Any repeal or alternative should:

• measurably improve the climate for business in Seattle;

• replace the revenue generated by the employee hours tax;

• create measurable targets for investment in transportation infrastructure and jobs; and

• have an incentive element to discourage driving and encourage alternatives.

If the council waits for the time to consider these principles perhaps there is a chance of finding a win-win solution to the question of how to improve the business climate without hurting neighborhood transportation projects.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the keynote address in March at the annual BuiltGreen conference here in Seattle, a dinner was held in his honor on the eve of the event. As a supporter of the BuiltGreen program, I was lucky enough to attend the dinner and to get up close with Kennedy, a man who bears a striking resemblance to his father, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and who is in person a soft-spoken, passionate environmental advocate with deep experience and a strong moral compass.

I was raised as an Irish Catholic and the Kennedys were iconic in our household. The dinner was a deeply profound moment for me and my twin, Patti Southard, seated on the other side of the table.

Prior to sitting down to dinner, Kennedy spoke fondly about his boyhood memories of exploring the natural beauty of the Puget Sound region with his father, along with friends such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and famed climber and Northwest native Jim Whittaker. These experiences, it would seem, helped to form Kennedy’s passion for the outdoors and the environment. Through his work as the prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper and as president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, Kennedy has transformed his passion into his career.

He has since expanded beyond water issues into a holistic realm of environmental action, including serving on the Board of NRDC; one of the groups I believe is making some of the most significant contributions to protecting endangered species. During his keynote address, he referred to the economy as a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, and made it clear that economic opportunity is tied to strong environmental policy and practices.

With about 16 of us around the dinner table including director of the Washington State Department of Ecology, Jay Manning, along with designers, land use attorneys, developers, communications professionals, and other government and non-profit leaders, we each brought our own lens through which we viewed Kennedy’s work that evening. As the conversation warmed up and we discussed everything from skiing at Whistler to the country’s energy grid, Kennedy shared his thoughts on the growing list of environmental challenges we face today, the connections between them, and the role the environment plays in the economy.

(more…)

Want to speak out on Seattle’s pedestrian environment, and the City’s upcoming plans? Your best chance is between now and June 15, the comment period for the recently-released Draft Seattle Pedestrian Master Plan. In addition to the summary, remember to see the list of specific implementation actions.

It’s heartening to see so much effort go into boosting walkability, especially since the leaders are frequent pedestrians and experts in pedestrian issues. There’s much to love in the plan (not focusing on that here). At the same time, Seattle has a long history of well-intentioned plans being subverted by other goals, directly or indirectly. The plan addresses all of these general topics, but not in detail, and where it really matters is in practice.

An example is enlarged tree wells. These are good for trees that outgrow their old wells. But they can also interrupt pedestrian flow, they’re often muddy, and sometimes they’re even dangerous. This photograph is a rogue tree well on First Avenue, with a four-inch drop that must surprise a few people, at least those who haven’t walked in it countless times as I have (rather than wait for others to pass). Some hard-packed gravel at sidewalk level would be nice. Or maybe a walkable hard-surface platform of some kind.

At first look, the draft plan itself has some items that need adjustment. The yellow, bumpy plastic “tactile warning strips” it calls for at curb ramps are useful for the blind, but they’re slippery, which is something you don’t want at a street corner! A potential solution would be to build the same thing in concrete, integrally colored or painted so it’s more visible, though even then you’ve created a trip hazard.

Another usually good idea is chirping walk signals for the blind. But some of these signals, such as the ones at 6th & Bell, are incredibly loud, easily audible a full block away. How many advocates would live 50 feet from that? We encourage people to live near work, while making some intersections inhospitable for living. Turn the volume down.

“All way walk” intersections (like First & Pike) are also discussed in the draft plan. These sound like a good idea, until it occurs that at a standard intersection, they mean you can’t walk 2/3 of the time. First & Pike works because there are only two phases, “traffic” and “pedestrians,” plus it’s easy to jaywalk N-S during traffic’s phase. But at a regular multiphase intersection, all way walk is like punishment.

Let’s not get into the parking meters and light poles in the centers of many sidewalks, which exist because City liability fears have required them to be three feet from curbs. This was thought up by bean counters more worried about fenders and dollars than pedestrian safety or walkability. Even the new “pay stations” are often located within narrow sidewalks due to expediency, and can be barriers if people are standing at them. They should be in parking strips.

Curb bulbs are a great idea, to shorten crossings and improve visibility. But please make sure there’s room for not only the car lanes, but bicycles along the right fringe as well.  Just a couple feet. The same stretch of Bell, a significant bike route, is a good example. Hit Fifth Avenue, and either the driver or the bicyclist better give way, because the curb bulb sticks out too much.

Readers, please read the plan and comment. City, good job on the plan, but please make some adustments, and please follow through on implementation!