Category: Public Planning

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Without Metro & Sound Transit, the Eastside’s traffic problems would be much worse

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The Seat­tle Times is run­ning a sto­ry in tomor­row’s print edi­tion about the 48th LD state Sen­ate race, which pits well-liked State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cyrus Habib against Repub­li­can Michelle Dar­nell, an attor­ney. Habib, who cap­tured over 63% of the vote in the August Top Two elec­tion, is con­sid­ered to be a shoo-in, but that’s not stopping […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Ridership on Sound Transit’s Central Link light rail line keeps climbing, defying naysayers

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Back in mid-July, we at NPI joined with Sound Tran­sit and many pro-tran­sit activists to cel­e­brate the five year anniver­sary of Cen­tral Link, which opened to the pub­lic on a sun­ny Sat­ur­day morn­ing to thou­sands of eager rid­ers. More than six­ty months lat­er, Link is doing spec­tac­u­lar­ly well. Rid­er­ship just keeps going up, pleas­ant­ly exceeding […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Frontier working round the clock to restore service to Redmond area after major outage

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

For the past few days, many homes and busi­ness­es in the greater Red­mond area have been with­out phone, Inter­net, and tele­vi­sion ser­vice after a con­struc­tion crew work­ing on a stormwa­ter treat­ment project sliced through fiber and cop­per lines belong­ing to Fron­tier Com­mu­ni­ca­tions when they dug in the wrong place. The dam­age caused was appraised by […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Redmond communications outage shows how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

This morn­ing, at around at 9:30 AM Pacif­ic Day­light Time, a con­struc­tion crew work­ing on a stormwa­ter treat­ment project in NPI’s home­town of Red­mond, Wash­ing­ton acci­den­tal­ly caused a major telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions out­age for near­ly six thou­sand cus­tomers of Fron­tier Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (includ­ing yours tru­ly) when they dug in the wrong place and sev­ered vital fiber and cop­per wires. […]

Posted inBreaking News, Civil Liberties, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Tragedy strikes again: One dead, several hurt in mass shooting at Seattle Pacific University

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Amer­i­ca’s dead­ly gun vio­lence epi­dem­ic has once again vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton State. Today, at Seat­tle Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, one young per­son was killed and sev­er­al oth­ers were crit­i­cal­ly and seri­ous­ly hurt by an uniden­ti­fied gun­man who walked into Otto Miller Hall and began shoot­ing at stu­dents ear­ly in the after­noon. The gun­man was tack­led and sub­dued by an […]

Posted inElections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Flashback: The Seattle Times was for funding Metro bus service before they were against it

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Read­ers, wel­come to anoth­er install­ment in our Flash­back series, where we enlist the help of past Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al boards to debunk short­sight­ed and poor­ly rea­soned edi­to­ri­als pub­lished on the Times’ op-ed page in the present day. Today, 2000, 2006 and 2008 Seat­tle Times are going to be help­ing us defend Metro against 2014 Seattle […]

Posted inNational Defense, Policy Topics, Public Planning

President Obama signs emergency declaration for Washington State to help mudslide victims

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Good news. This just in from the White House: Today, the Pres­i­dent declared an emer­gency in the State of Wash­ing­ton and ordered fed­er­al aid to sup­ple­ment state and local response efforts due to the emer­gency con­di­tions result­ing from flood­ing and mud­slides begin­ning on March 22, 2014, and con­tin­u­ing. The Pres­i­den­t’s action autho­rizes the Depart­ment of Homeland […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Move King County Now! Local leaders prepare to go to the ballot to save Metro, bypassing Rodney Tom, Andy Hill, Senate Republicans

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Mak­ing good on last mon­th’s promise to act in the event that the Repub­­li­­can-con­trolled state Sen­ate con­tin­ued to block leg­is­la­tion allow­ing King Coun­ty to save Metro and KCDOT from evis­cer­a­tion, coun­ty law­mak­ers vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly today to take the first step towards putting a fall­back plan before vot­ers in April. The Coun­cil used its exist­ing author­i­ty under […]

Posted inPublic Planning

State Senate Republicans set new date to finish negotiating with themselves on transportation plan they don’t have votes for

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Top law­mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton’s dys­func­tion­al Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cau­cus said today they still plan to release their own revised statewide trans­porta­tion pack­age, despite blow­ing past anoth­er self-imposed dead­line to get it done. Speak­ing with The Olympian’s Brad Shan­non a day after the new pro­pos­al was sup­posed to have been released, Major­i­ty Leader-in-Name-Only Rod­ney Tom said, “We’re going […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Policy Topics, Public Planning

More senseless gun violence claims the lives of two young employees of Zumiez

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Tragedies like these have seem to have become a week­ly occur­rence. We are so desen­si­tized to vio­lence now that we are not as shocked as we all should be when more lives are end­ed by sense­less gun vio­lence: As throngs of patrons strolled and browsed at the Mall in Colum­bia on a gray, cold Saturday, […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Education, Elections, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Navy veteran Matt Isenhower announces he’s challenging Republican Andy Hill for Senate

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s effort to recap­ture the state Sen­ate got a big boost today with the announce­ment that the par­ty has found a chal­lenger to take on fresh­man Repub­li­can Andy Hill in the 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict. Hill is the Chair­man of the Sen­ate’s Ways & Means Com­mit­tee. Matt Isen­how­er, thir­­ty-three, says he’s running […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Move King County Now: Dow Constantine unveils plan to save Metro, fund road repairs

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Flanked by over a dozen coun­ty and city lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing Seat­tle, the East­side, and the South Sound, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine announced this after­noon that vot­ers from Vashon to Sno­qualmie will get the oppor­tu­ni­ty this spring to decide whether to raise rev­enue to pre­vent dra­con­ian ser­vice cuts to Metro and address an increas­ing­ly dangerous […]

Posted inNational Defense, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Theft of Victoria Clipper IV demonstrates the need for stronger port security

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, the newest high speed cata­ma­ran in the Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion fleet, the Vic­to­ria Clip­per IV, was stolen from its berth at Seat­tle’s Pier 69 by a reg­is­tered sex offend­er who lat­er told police he was try­ing to use the ves­sel to get to West Seat­tle. (Why he did­n’t just walk or take the […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

King County Medic One renewal levy passing overwhelmingly with 80%+ in favor

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

King Coun­ty vot­ers have giv­en a big thumbs up to Medic One, approv­ing a levy that renews fund­ing for emer­gency med­ical response ser­vices for sev­er­al more years and ensur­ing that King Coun­ty remains the best place in the world to be in the very unfor­tu­nate event of a heart attack (or car­diac arrest, to use […]