Grist | Topics | 11 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 11 of 11
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Driven to extinction How transportation wonks can make your city rank	Eric de Place	16 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Here's an interesting ranking. For each major U.S. city, the list-happy editors at Men's Health calculated the negative effects of driving. They aggregated scores on transit ridership, air pollution, fuel consumption, and driving miles. (Presumably, the data are for metropolitan areas, not city limits.) Northwest cities do exceptionally well: Seattle ranks number one, Portland ranks third, and Spokane is eighth. Men's Health doesn't appear to include a methodo ...
Topics: placemaking, Portland, public transportation, Seattle, urban planning (all these topics)

Muddy footprints What a ranking of cities can tell us -- and what it can't	Eric de Place	30 May 2008	Gristmill
There's a big carbon footprint report out yesterday from Brookings. It ranks cities [PDF] according to their per capita carbon emissions. Sort of, anyway. Before I pick on it a little, I guess I should mention that Pacific Northwest cities do exceptionally well. Out of the 100 cities in the analysis, Portland ranks 3rd, Boise is 5th, and Seattle 6th. There's very little difference between them. That's wonderful and all, but the analysis only covers about 50 pe ...
Topics: climate, ecological footprint, greenhouse-gas emissions, placemaking, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

A desire named streetcar Transportation planning with people in mind	Eric de Place	12 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Say what you will about streetcars, they have an unmatched appeal. I mean, there must be a reason why it's hard to imagine a smoldering love affair between Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh with a bus theme. Or, as the inimitable Dan Savage says: Why is this so hard to understand? ... People like trains. People hate buses. To wit, the Seattle P-I recently interviewed folks about the new Seattle streetcar and elicited what I imagine are fairly ...
Topics: Seattle, public transportation, placemaking (all these topics)

Transportation and climate get hitched Seattle-area voters tied the knot	Eric de Place	07 Nov 2007	Gristmill
In the Seattle metro region, voters just sank an $18 billion transportation megaproposal that would have built more than 180 lanes miles of highway and 50 miles of light rail. But so far, the mainstream press has missed one of the most important stories of the year. The real story isn't tax fatigue, it's this: perhaps for the first time ever in the U.S., a critical bloc of voters linked transportation choices to climate protection. In the run-up to the vote, a surpr ...
Topics: cars, climate, greenhouse-gas emissions, legislation, local politics, placemaking, politics, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Roads vs. transit Seattle enviros face a Hobson's choice in November	Erica Barnett	23 Aug 2007	Gristmill
This November, those of us who live in and around Seattle will vote on a $17.7 billion transportation package that would expand light rail (by 50 miles) but also include billions for road expansion -- including roads that will primarily serve sprawling developments to Seattle's south and east, making the package a Hobson's choice for environmentalists. (The state legislature tied the roads and transit votes together last year, on the theory that road supporters will on ...
Topics: cars, placemaking, politics, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

The traffic is jammin' Fear of traffic snarls led to easier commutes in Seattle	Clark Williams-Derry	17 Aug 2007	Gristmill
We tend to think of traffic as an immutable -- that there's literally nothing we can do in our day-to-day lives to drive less. But Seattle's continued and mostly unexpected free-flowing traffic -- in the midst of a major construction project that some feared would trigger a morass of congestion throughout Puget Sound -- shows that this is simply false. Far from being rigid and incompressible, traffic and travel patterns are surprisingly fluid. Seattle's ex ...
Topics: placemaking, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Is the SkyTrain the limit? Making public transit work	Clark Williams-Derry	15 May 2007	Gristmill
Greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle. So the obvious question: How come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors?If you're from Seattle, the "obvious" answer might seem to be Vancouver's SkyTrain light rail system, which carries about 66 million passengers each year. Se ...
Topics: green living, placemaking, Portland, public transportation, Seattle, Vancouver (all these topics)

Seattle's difficult decision: Cary Moon She prefers a 'people's waterfront'	David Roberts	12 Mar 2007	Gristmill
Seattle is facing a difficult decision: what to do with a crumbling highway that serves as a major north-south corridor through the city? Below, we hear from Cary Moon. Cary is a landscape and urban designer and co-founder of the People's Waterfront Coalition. The PWC's No-Highway option won second prize in a national design competition sponsored by Metropolis magazine, called 'Next Generation: Big Idea.' ----- Faced with a maddening choice between two miserable hi ...
Topics: local politics, placemaking, politics, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Seattle's difficult decision: Erica C. Barnett She says no and hell no	David Roberts	11 Mar 2007	Gristmill
Seattle is facing a difficult decision: what to do with a crumbling highway that serves as a major north-south corridor through the city? Below, we hear from Erica C. Barnett. Erica is the senior news writer for Seattle's alternative newsweekly, The Stranger, where she covers City Hall and transportation, writes a weekly politics column, and serves on the paper's editorial board. She also has a blog. ----- Voters in Seattle are being asked to take up-or-down ...
Topics: local politics, placemaking, politics, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Seattle's difficult decision: A mini-series Because local transportation choices aren't local any more	David Roberts	11 Mar 2007	Gristmill
As Bradley noted below, the citizens of Seattle face a dilemma. The Alaskan Way Viaduct -- an elevated highway that enters Seattle on its west flank, offering stunning views (to drivers) of the city and the waterfront -- is falling apart. There's real danger that an earthquake, or just Father Time, could send it tumbling down, along with lots of cars. Nobody wants that. That's where the consensus ends. The question is: what should we do about it? In some sense th ...
Topics: local politics, placemaking, politics, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Why don't more people carpool or take public transit? Is convenience the drug that salves commuting guilt?	Chris Schults	13 Mar 2006	Gristmill
I sometimes catch the bus at the busy Fremont intersection of 34th and Fremont here in Seattle. I'd estimate that at least 90 percent of the vehicles heading west over the Fremont Bridge have one occupant. This, of course, frustrates me to no end. Here are all these people heading in the same general direction, at the same time. I've often wanted to stand on the side of the road with a sign that reads, 'Your car seats four, why are you driving alone?' So, why are ...
Topics: placemaking, public transportation, Seattle (all these topics)

Stories About: Seattle AND public transportation AND placemaking