Seattle has seen a 90% rise in traffic deaths over the past decade—spiking in 2020, the year SPD largely stopped enforcing traffic laws. Citations dropped from 27,953 in 2019 to just 5,487 in 2024 (-80%). Drivers know there’s no enforcement—and drive like it. It’s time to bring back traffic enforcement. @MayorofSeattle @Sara4Council @SeattlePD

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the meaning of 'Election Day" (affecting mail-in votes) this month. I can't imagine that this CA sh*tshow weeks (days?) before the ruling won't have some impact in the Justices ruling that enough is enough....

"Other countries count tens of millions of votes in hours, not weeks. They aren't using magic. They simply make different tradeoffs. They rely more on technology, set stricter deadlines, tolerate fewer exceptions, and accept that no system can perfectly accommodate every conceivable scenario." Funnily enough this also sums up how we run bus services in the US.

What's more crazy is this is how the system is designed. California INTENTIONALLY does not count ballots for weeks. And I think it explains the state's broader dysfunction. Basically, California's voting rules are designed to maximize accessibility at all costs. ALL costs. Ballots can arrive after Election Day. Signatures can be fixed if they are unclear. Provisional ballots get individually reviewed. Every edge case gets its own process. And California doesn't trust technology or automation to solve these problems. Signatures are manually reviewed. Voters are contacted when issues arise. Humans review and re-review exceptions. The system is designed around minimizing the chance that a single valid ballot gets rejected. Other countries count tens of millions of votes in hours, not weeks. They aren't using magic. They simply make different tradeoffs. They rely more on technology, set stricter deadlines, tolerate fewer exceptions, and accept that no system can perfectly accommodate every conceivable scenario. California makes the opposite choice. And it's the same philosophy that shows up in housing, infrastructure, permitting, schools, and government generally: endless process, endless exceptions, and worse results.

I struggle to disagree with this.

You gotta be kidding me. So much for Democrats supporting the Abundance agenda to lower housing prices in our cities. Connie Chan is one of the most extreme lefty NIMBYs in the country. She let 2 (!) new primary housing units get built in her district in San Francisco (D1) in 2024, one of the worst markets in the entire US. She also opposed closing MLK Drive inside Golden Gate Park to cars. She opposes progress on anything. @SpeakerPelosi What are you doing....

If you just took a computer algorithm and made the country's maps compact, ignoring all else, you arguably end up in a healthier democracy than we have right now.

Hi @SoundTransit We’ve now waited close to 30 minutes for a northbound train at SeaTac Airport station. A train arrived 8 minutes ago but took no passengers, with zero explanation given. You have electronic displays, station speakers, and 3 transit security staff standing on the platform right now. Why is nobody communicating what’s happening? Platform full of passengers. Your incident communication is consistently awful.

I truly abhor this whole station numbering game that @SoundTransit did to the Link Light Rail in Seattle. Signage like this is just weird, and creates way more confusion than it solves.

They say a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson saying "bye" to the wealthy upset about taxes is not the kind of truth Seattle needs right now, writes columnist Danny Westneat. seattletimes.com/seattle-new…

BART spent $90 million on new fare gates. They're recovering about $10 million a year in fares. That's a 9-year payback on paper. The actual return hit in six months. Embarcadero station went from 112 hours of corrective maintenance in the six months before installation to 2 hours after. Daly City saved 109. Balboa Park saved 75. Across the system, 961 hours of cleanup work disappeared. Corrective maintenance is the term BART uses for graffiti, heavy soiling, vandalism, the damage that needs a crew not a janitor. At several stations it dropped to zero. Crime fell 41% year over year. Riders who reported seeing fare evasion on their trip dropped from 22% to 10%. Citations issued by BART police went from 2,200 in January to under 1,000 in July, because there was nothing to cite. The gates were a filtering project disguised as a revenue project. Old BART gates were waist-high orange fins designed in the 1970s. You could hop them in under a second. That made the station effectively a public space, and the rider mix reflected that. The new gates are 72 inches of polycarbonate with 3D sensors that detect tailgating. You either pay or you don't enter. Once you don't enter, you also don't smoke on the platform, sleep in the elevator, or harass other riders. BART tried hiring more police for years. Blitz operations at high-traffic stations. Increased patrols. Dedicated transit cops. None of it moved the numbers the way six feet of polycarbonate did. The $10 million in recovered fares is the smallest line in the return. Fare revenue used to cover 70% of BART operations. After the pandemic it collapsed to 22%. The gates won't fix that gap directly. They fix the precondition for fixing it: a system that office workers, families, and tourists are willing to use again. Ridership growth at stations with new gates outpaced ungated ones before the rollout finished. A $400 million annual deficit is heading to voters in November as a sales tax measure. Voters don't approve sales taxes for transit agencies they don't feel safe in. The $90 million on gates is buying BART the right to ask the public for more money. That's the real return on six feet of polycarbonate.

SF's best idea...the parks. worst idea? putting golf courses in all of them.

The stats here are kind of remarkable. BART's new fare gates have led to a 1,000-hour decline in clean up time; 41% drop in crime; and $10 million increase in projected revenue. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…

I didn’t think fare evasion was that big of a deal; the evidence from DC SF has definitely changed my mind.

How much additional revenue could Settle's @SoundTransit get if Link Light Rail added fare gates to the stations where it's feasible? theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…

Now that Seattle’s light rail runs at near metro-level frequency north of ID/Chinatown (a train every 4 minutes during rush hour), the gap between Westlake and Capitol Hill feels like a missed opportunity. A Pike/Pine station could’ve improved access to southwest Capitol Hill and north First Hill, and better served the Convention Center.

Transit safety tips 2026: – move cars – move cars again – keep moving cars – hope the antisocial behavior stays in the other car

The Good news: LA Metro will extend the K (pink line) north through West Hollywood to reach Hollywood Blvd. The Bad news: it is expected to be operational in 2070 (!!!!!).

From a democratic-process standpoint, the new “billionaire’s tax” introducing a state income tax in Washington looks ugly to me. Just two years ago, Initiative I-2111 gathered enough signatures to go to the ballot and ban any state income tax. The Democratic-majority Legislature instead passed it directly -out of concern that having I-2111 on the ballot could affect the outcome of other initiatives in 2024-, thereby preventing voters from weighing in on what likely would have been a majority vote to approve the ban. Whether Washington should have an income tax is a legitimate debate. But the Legislature’s strategic U-turn just two years later is not a good look. seattletimes.com/seattle-new…