City Council can stop East Link Bellevue Reporter, WA Sound Transit Officials would like Eastside residents to believe their East Link Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) represents the results of more than 10 years of study by transportation experts, consultants, commissions, ...

The Seattle mayoral race is slow to shape up with good candidates skipping it and others jumping in who are largely unknown or inexperienced. One interesting twist: possibly the best candidate to challenge Dear Leader Greg Nickels for the job is currently mayor of another city.

Some noses wrinkled with offense when Bremerton mayor Cary Bozeman recently made a few criticisms of Seattle during a meeting with state mayors. Bozeman described the Seattle downtown waterfront as an "insult to American ingenuity," complained about Aurora's "visual garbage" and called Pioneer Square a "less-than-mediocre public space."

Worse, his ...

Apparently it's not increased building heights in Tacoma's neighborhoods that we need to worry about. It's the greasy badgers.

We have published a couple stories this week about Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's ideas for boosting transportation funding for Texas. See here and here . It is likely that, unless some grand bargain is struck that we can't imagine right now, her proposal will make good talking points for a 2010 gubernatorial campaign, but won't sway enough Democrats to influence the next highway bill, which Congress is scheduled to pass this year. The solutions being floated by Democrats sound a little more

Olive Way I-5 off-ramp to close for one year Seattle Post Intelligencer Sound Transit has scheduled a meeting next week to talk about its planned one-year closure of the Interstate 5 off-ramp at Olive Way. Starting as soon as May 18, workers will close the ramp as part of preparing the ground under I-5 for the boring ...

Nickels anounces Seattle $145 million housing levy proposal Seattle Post Intelligencer By our count, at least seven major tax measures have been implemented by local governments or voters since 2002 (Sound Transit Phase Two Sales Tax, Pike Place Market Levy, City Parks Levy, County Parks Levy, Metro Sales Tax, King County Ferry District, ...

Here is an excellent study from Dr. Ron Utt, a senior fellow at Heritage Foundation, called President Obama's New Plan to Decide Where Americans Live and How They Travel. You might remember that Dr. Utt was our featured speaker at last years transportation event, where he spoke about performance-based transportation policy and traffic congestion relief. President Barack Obama's early comments on his opposition to suburban sprawl and his intention to alter the way Americans live and ...

Seattle Times reporter Mike Lindblom informs us today that there will be variable speeds on I-90 at times in the future, and that WSDOT has installed “electronic variable speed signs” from Seattle to Mercer Island and Bellevue (click here).

“Starting Tuesday, the speed limit on the Interstate 90 floating bridge will no longer stay at 60 mph.

When traffic is heavy, the speed limit might temporarily be 50 or 40 mph. Ice on the roadway could force the posted speed limit down to 30 mph.”

This is probably a good safety practice during windstorms or bad weather, but I doubt many folks around here know about this yet.

Can anyone say “revenue stream“?

The Washington state ferry system raises fares on Friday for the peak summer season.

County sheriff tells Constantine to back off budget Seattle Post Intelligencer This is due to the fact that an increasing percentage of our costs are covered by our contracts with our 12 contact cities, Metro, and Sound Transit. Virtually every new position added to the Sheriff's Office for the past ten years has been revenue ...