Push The Needle

Our streets in the US are so wide. And believe it or not engineers and planners here will tell you the ROW on the left is “too narrow” to add bike lanes or bus lanes

I wonder what kind of “gradual transitions” there are in Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona and New York compared to what we are planning here in Seattle?

I agree. And it’s fascinating the director kinda lurks this site and follows people being critical

By limiting housing you limit the ability for homeownership

You think they care? Hes their empty vessel they can shove every heinous law through and absolve themselves of accountability by blaming him for the policy

Great news but it does make me laugh the “international” building code (which WA building code is based on) will still not adopt an internationally recognized standard.

Inspirational. You’ve got my support.

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One thread I wish the article pulled was pointing out how relatively new 2-exit design is even in the US and how places like Switzerland and Germany (heavily wooded) don’t have fire death issues.

To Cut Housing Costs, Some States Are Easing Fire Safety Rules

Great article overall. Some ridiculous commentary from firefighters suggesting 1 stair is dangerous because they overlap egress. Isn’t that the same even if there’s 2? Also missing is that Hawaii was on UBC until late 2000s when single stair was legal for high-rises

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/b...

The only way to make sense of these kids of hypocritical statements is realizing just how much everyone hates cars and has anxiety about all these big clunky things impeding their own personal trip. Its why people driving in traffic complain about traffic too

World’s Worst Building Code WWBC

What’s funny about the defenders of this code is they never advocate for 3 or 4 or 10 exit stairs per floor. Aren’t those safer? They resist that. So I guess they’re against safety too.

Yes that’s the case. And even just a window. The point is a midrise building can be reached by the firefighters so there’s no sense in 2 exits for those shorter buildings

The onerous fire code was used to stop density in the 1920s to shove people into SFHs

The timing is incredible. There’s lots of single family homes who had transitioned to electric heating over gas etc and never was an issue. This is someone at SCL maliciously using their department to stop the middle housing bill

Only in Seattle could we create a huge expensive & time consuming hurdle to electrify dense housing and have the cheap and obvious solution hung up in some dumb argument about the aesthetics of a fiberglass power pole.

“Strong said Seattle City Light has identified a thicker fiberglass pole that could be strong enough to hold larger transformers and heavier wires, but said they may run into obstacles due to their aesthetics.”

The most Seattle story of all time

I FOUND THE ARTICLE advocating to build @sound-transit.bsky.social...ghostwritten by me and printed in the Mercer Island Reporter. I'll post it below (🧵thread!) and you can tell me if it aged well or not. I wrote this in 1996!

Adding Up What Urban Highways Really Cost A new report maps the economic toll that downtown freeways exact on 142 US cities — and tallies up what that land could be worth if it was developed for other uses.

A new report by @thedotcity.bsky.social quantifies the economic toll of downtown freeways, and the economic potential of tearing them down.

The 66K acres that downtown freeways occupy could yield more than half a trillion dollars of development and over $5b annually in property taxes.

This war ($1 billion per day) is probably not going to end up costing as much as either California HSR ($128 billion) or Northeast Corridor high-speed rail ($151 billion).

The funny thing is, density isn’t noisy. Go hang out anywhere in dense Capitol Hill in Seattle at any time of day and it’s completely quiet despite being the densest neighborhood in the state. These planners know this too

Just you wait. www.geekwire.com/2026/light-r...

When politics is literally your career you have no incentive to do anything that makes anyone slightly upset even if it’s the right thing

According to her calendar, Katie Wilson will literally be striping this bike lane herself next Friday??

“Sound Transit should have the ability to conduct its own permitting, rather than have to go through the permitting process of every city it serves.”

Kind of a complete shock to me that this isn’t already how this operates. The state needs to do something

“I didn’t like either candidate”

Great. Well you’re getting one of them. You have the power to decide which one that is

I’m sick of these people

Consequences of their vote. I have no problem lecturing people. I don’t give a shit about their feelings. Grow up.

And I can assure you they know this and it was part of the design delivered by whoever studied it

And should remain that way forever after they realize the month long experiment was a success for everyone

2 people in a state of 8 million proposing amendments that the code council considers is the furthest from democratic