In the News

How a demolition crew punctured the Westlake Station ceiling

How a demolition crew punctured the Westlake Station ceiling

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...

read more
Contractor blames red tape for Tacoma light-rail project delay

Contractor blames red tape for Tacoma light-rail project delay

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...

read more
Your old workweek is extinct, Commute Seattle data shows

Your old workweek is extinct, Commute Seattle data shows

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’...

read more
‘The Era of Urban Supremacy Is Over’

‘The Era of Urban Supremacy Is Over’

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...

read more
Drug use on Sound Transit trains is intolerable

Drug use on Sound Transit trains is intolerable

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...

read more
Light-rail service in Seattle resumes after Tuesday closure

Light-rail service in Seattle resumes after Tuesday closure

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...

read more
Seattle’s streetcar dithering criticized in federal audit

Seattle’s streetcar dithering criticized in federal audit

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...

read more