Stephen Fesler

# Following an early planning process for the Graham Street infill station, Sound Transit has formally selected a particular location and design approach for the future Rainier Valley station.

# King County Metro has added ORCA transit card readers at all doors on nearly 75% of its bus fleet and has a goal of finishing work by the end of the year. Until it does, Metro said all-door boarding is officially not permitted outside of RapidRide lines and Third Avenue. However, some riders have started anyway.

# After a nearly three-month hiatus, bus stops near the intersection of 12th Avenue S and S Jackson Street in Little Saigon reopened today. King County Metro closed the stops due to public safety issues, which authorities say have improved.

# Dave Amos of City Beautiful dives into the thorny issue of punishing bad drivers and the many challenges that stem from lawlessness and impunity on roadways.

# Sound Transit continues to restore Sounder rail cars to service with some improvements for riders, but maintenance work by contractor Amtrak could take a while longer. That means reduce Sounder service could linger.

# Weekend service disruptions continue Sunday, February 23 on the Link 1 Line. Sound Transit will suspend light rail service between Capitol Hill and SoDo stations to facilitate maintenance and construction work, and offer replacement bus bridge service.

# On Saturday, March 1, Community Transit will implement a fare change benefitting low-income riders, seniors, Medicare recipients, and disabled riders, as fares drop from $1.25 to $1.00 for these riders. Community Transit's full fare will remain $2.50.

# Dave Amos of City Beautiful dives into the history of the Public Land Survey System and how it has affected much of the United States in big and small ways.

# Sounder commuter rail service will continue to operate on reduced schedules, with no firm timeline yet for the full restoration of service, Sound Transit said. The reductions stem from a maintenance lag revealed on Wednesday.

# Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) set a new record of 52.6 million passengers in 2024, and the Port of Seattle is advancing an improvement plan to better accommodate 56 million passengers by 2032.

# American freeways are almost universally car-choked, often with a dozen or more car lanes with vehicles belching out and kicking up deadly pollution. Those impacts fall heavily on people who live, work, and play nearby. Ray Delahanty of CityNerd digs into the research and data, and shows how America has a propensity to concentrate denser

# Utrecht and London, Ontario feel worlds away today. As Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes shows, Utrecht is a highly pedestrian-, bike-, and transit-oriented city with a dense but human scale cityscape. London is highly car-oriented, scarred by suburbanization and fairly low density outside its small city core. Both cities used to be dense, streetcar

# Inevitably, you’re probably going to travel and, from time to time, go by plane to get to your destination. But if you’re a transit enthusiast, environmentally minded, or an urbanist, you may want to make transit a more sustainable part of your travels, particularly to and from the airport. Ray Delahanty of CityNerd highlights the

# The right-wing populist provincial government in Ontario, Canada has voted to remove bike lanes and make it difficult to install them in the future in Toronto, the largest city in the Maple Leaf country. The effort is a mix of political distraction for a floundering government administration and cynical self-interest by Premier Doug Ford and

# Urbanist circles differ in how they see autonomous vehicles, particularly as they move toward wider adoption. Some see them being a tool that builds up urban communities and improves safety while others worry that they could have exactly the opposite effect. Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes falls into the latter category with this video

# Riding the rails from New York City to Toronto and then eventually onward to London, Ontario, Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes details his journey, highlighting the good and bad of Amtrak and Via Rail service and amenities. One big takeaway from Slaughter is just how slow the trains are. On the first leg of

# Sound Transit may be headed for another round of light rail project delays due to poor decision-making, and it needs to be open to overhauling the ST3 program.

# Last year, Uytae Lee of About Here discussed why point access block (single-stair) residential buildings are so good. But a common reaction to the idea was concern about fire safety by only having one means of emergency ingress and egress. In this video, Lee examines those concerns, fields the data, and looks to how this

# Puget Sound bus networks are getting fall updates, with a major overhaul in store near Lynnwood Link stations and the new RapidRide G Line. King County Metro, Community Transit, and Sound Transit are rolling out changes on September 14.

# Dave Amos of City Beautiful discusses non-motorized paths in the suburbs. Could these facilities provide more than just a recreational amenity to suburban neighborhoods? And how can they work best to offer suburban communities a sustainable and safe way to get around without a car? Amos discusses this and more.