Cities & Planning

As crosstown traffic becomes intolerable, a few Seattle thinkers are suggesting a gondola as the best way out of the mess. One possible route would go from the light-rail station being built on Capitol Hill to Olympic Sculpture Park, serving...

This is a comparison of capacity, carbon footprint, technology, availability, and construction impact between Link light rail and SkyLink urban gondola for West Seattle.

The North American Steel Interstate Coalition supports higher speed passenger and freight rail development, including putting trucks on trains in truck ferries.

In the 1980s, it was the granting of 48 state authorities by the ICC that opened the trucking and airline industry to competition. This could work for rail—not just local reciprocal switching, but national reciprocal trackage rights might enable competition over shared lines. Let’s reimagine rail.

On December 26, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential order that effectively seized the railroads for the U.S. government. Several factors, both governmental and economic, had conspired over the previous decade to result in an inefficient system suffering from labor unrest, poor scheduling, car shortages, and outright inability of the railroads to respond to wartime requirements. On or before December 28, the Treasury Department took possession of the railroads, and their operat

Jakarta is a coastal city run through with rivers, yet paradoxically: the city is sinking in no small part due to a lack of water as well. As residents pull water to drink from underground aquifers, the city settles — in some places dropping inches each year. At its current rate of descent, most of

In dry places, photovoltaic shade can even reduce water use.

When we last looked at Nuro, the developers of an autonomous electric delivery vehicle, they were on their second-generation R2. To refresh your memory, it was essentially a diminutive car designed to carry goods, not people, and Dominos successfully used them to deliver pizzas in a pilot program in Texas.

A group of Berlin residents has put forward a proposal to turn all of central Berlin (an area larger than Manhattan) into a car-

We need to visualize the kinds of urban environments we want to live in

New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans for a 14-mile Interborough Express on train tracks that already exist. Other U.S. states should take note.

The citizen-driven plan that the city is considering now would create the largest car-free area in a city anywhere in the world.

This week’s Traspo Notes highlights: hearing on an additive Sound Transit funding bill, cats and dogs can ride the King County Water Taxi, the state transportation department has a new mobility pla…

Reaching the station platform could take six minutes at the deepest stations. Sound Transit’s preferred alignment for the next phase of light rail in Seattle includes a Westlake Station that …

Locked public restrooms are an easy-to-spot sign that a municipality is suffering from an underinvestment in public infrastructure. If a city doesn’t maintain public restrooms it’s likely tha…

Prepare for light rail, slow down Interbay, and save 15th Avenue Imagine for a moment taking a pleasant walk from Ballard to Queen Anne. Coming from one of the neighborhood’s fine breweries, you step out onto a tree lined Northwest 14th Avenue, busy with folks walking and rolling. You head south, stopping occasionally at crosswalks

Faced with worsening floods and a shortage of housing, the Netherlands is seeing growing interest in floating homes.

The approach—which has been replicated throughout Rwanda and beyond—simply serves patients better.

When trying to cool off a space, most people reach for an air conditioning unit that uses a pump, compressor, refrigerant, and a radiator to move heat from inside a room to the outside air. But in a break from this typical model, YouTuber Curtis in Seattle came up with a system that pumps water between […]

Making an electric car is more carbon intensive, but lower emissions when driving soon makes up the difference

The goal is a new network that could level the economic development playing field by offering super-fast speeds to poorer cities and rural towns that currently suffer from a distinct

[Image: Max Ernst, “Landscape with a view of the lake and chimeras” (1940), via Archive.] While we’re on the subject of astronomical events leaving traces in our everyday world, here’s another stor…

In 2020, cities adapted to COVID-19 with open streets, outdoor dining, and added bike lanes. In 2021, some of those changes became permanent—and advocates for walkable, bikeable cities can take lessons from what worked to redesign even more streets.