In the News

In a year of tight money, Sound Transit is poised to accept another $327 million in federal loans this week, at bargain rates most people can only dream about. The feds offered this money to the Hilltop Tacoma Link streetcar extension, the Northeast 130th Street...

It’s easy to understand how a demolition crew on a Pine Street sidewalk, while trying to remove a clock base, wound up puncturing the roof of Westlake Station. The top of the station begins only 3 feet deep. Not only that, but the clock’s foundation was integrated...

TACOMA — Why isn’t the Hilltop Tacoma Link Extension already carrying passengers? A grand opening for the 2.4-mile, six-station streetcar project is likely to occur in late August, compared to its May 2022 target, at an estimated $283 million, including $65 million in...

After some futile attempts at repairs, Sound Transit contractors have scraped thousands of flawed concrete track ties from the decks of Interstate 90 so new ties can be built from scratch. This second effort by the Kiewit-Hoffman partnership delays the Lake Washington...

If you agree with the information below, please contact your elected officials in Olympia asap and share with neighbors, colleagues, friends and family. These Bills will be moving out of committees this week. Here's how to contact them. If you would like electronic...

Thousands of passengers who enter the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel learned a while ago to sidestep broken escalators marked by yellow barricades, avoid the fentanyl smokers huddled outside certain entrances and take shallow breaths inside fetid elevators. They’ve...

The report, released Thursday by the nonprofit Commute Seattle and the University of Washington’s Mobility Innovation Center, represents the most rigorous examination available of downtown commuter trips, and this year’s version illustrates an upheaval in workers’...

From July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021, “New census data shows a huge spike in movement out of big metro areas during the pandemic,” Frey writes in an April 2022 paper, including “an absolute decline in the aggregate size of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (those...

  Outside experts warn that Sound Transit light-rail extensions, already years late, will careen into endless delays unless the board and executives adopt a big-time mindset to match the 116-mile network they promised the voters.       Read the...

Does Seattle suffer from too much politically-driven compassion and not enough tough love? During the COVID-19 years of 2021 and 2022, drug use on Sound Transit became rampant as security enforcement nearly disappeared. Riders and operators on light-rail trains...

Light-rail service resumed Wednesday morning between Seattle’s Westlake and Stadium stations after a mechanical issue disrupted service Tuesday, according to Sound Transit.   Failure of emergency ventilation fans at the Pioneer Square Station caused the closure, the...

Sound Transit says security guards will be removing people who smoke fentanyl or anything else aboard light-rail trains, an effort to address chronic complaints by transit riders and operators. Drug use became common in 2021 and 2022 as transit agencies de-emphasized...

The U.S. Department of Transportation shouldn’t let Seattle sit on $7.4 million in transit grants the city failed to spend on streetcar extensions along First Avenue and on Broadway, a new audit says. Federal sleuths also criticized the city’s former Lander Street...

Despite serial predictions of an imminent Office Return, most remote workers still haven’t come back. Offices in downtown Seattle remain at around 40% of their pre-COVID worker occupancy, according to data posted by the Downtown Seattle Association. (In downtown...

An estimated 10,000 people will receive the black farecards at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $2.2 million per year, city staff said. Mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Department of Transportation Director Greg Spotts, and SHA Executive Director Rod Brandon announced...