Seattle, WA
SDOT Sprints Toward the End of the Move Seattle Era – The Urbanist
With a $1.45 billion transportation levy proposal in front of the Seattle City Council, attention has turned toward future investments and what they mean for the city’s collective mobility priorities. But behind the scenes, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is quietly getting projects out the door in what is on track to be the busiest year for transportation projects in Seattle, ever. The goal is to finish strong on the current Move Seattle Levy, approved in 2015, and make a compelling case for the next transportation levy, which makes up around a third of SDOT’s entire budget. But in so doing, SDOT is also showing how the department has evolved in the past nine years.
So far this year, SDOT has solicited bids from contractors on a huge array of projects, including nearly 10 seismic upgrades on bridges around the city, sidewalk projects, crossing improvements, and a number of big projects that have been in the pipeline for a long time — including the RapidRide J corridor project, the critical first phase of the Beacon Hill bike route, the next phase of Rainier Avenue transit lanes, and upgrades for King County Metro’s Route 40.
All of these projects are on different construction timelines, and different levels of visibility for everyday city residents, but they’re all part of the push at the end of the levy to get things out the door.
“The average number of construction starts we’ve had over the last few years, for contracted projects, is one a month,” SDOT Director Greg Spotts, who has been heading the department since fall of 2022, told The Urbanist. “January, February, March and April, we’ve had eight, so we’ve doubled it to two a month. That’s a step change. That’s not a incremental change. And I’m very proud of the team for doing that. And I think the pace is going to increase even further, in terms of the number of construction starts a month, most of which are levy funded projects, all the way through the end of this year.”
Spotts touts the project delivery machine that the department has been able to create in recent years as producing the results that Seattle residents are seeing in their neighborhoods, something that also extends to smaller projects, delivered by SDOT’s own crews: things like new crosswalks and all-way stops installed near many of Seattle’s elementary schools in the past year, and the pilot bike lane barriers being rolled out in existing protected bike lanes around the city.
“I have made a very significant effort to increase the tempo of how we get these projects through design, how we conduct community outreach in a way that’s efficient for us and the community members, and how we make decisions and confidently carry on and make the next round of decisions to get things into construction,” Spotts said.
But a big part of the 2024 push is attributable to the 2015 levy’s ambitious goals, which pushed the department to continually look for new resources to get closer. Even if Seattle wasn’t able to deliver seven full transit corridor projects, due in part to a lack of federal matching dollars, having that goal ensured that upgrades to the Route 40, 44, and 48 all moved forward in some capacity. Even though the city won’t hit its goal of implementing 110 miles of bike infrastructure, projects like the Georgetown-to-Downtown bike route likely wouldn’t have happened on their current timelines without that goal.
“There’s a pretty broad consensus within SDOT that we got off to a slow start on the Levy to Move Seattle, and perhaps one of the reasons why was there was kind of a assumption that existing staff could do the job. And if you just almost tripled the size of the levy, it would have made more common sense that you need to staff up,” Spotts said.
In many ways, in the area of project delivery, today’s Seattle Department of Transportation is the one that voters were promised in 2015… it just took several more years than initially expected to get there.
“SDOT’s quite a bit larger in headcount than we were in 2015-2016. And we have a very sophisticated capital projects division and project development division, who are, not just larger, but we’ve actually developed talent during this period,” Spotts continued. “We have people who are much more experienced, who are experienced working with each other; we’ve refined internal systems for collaboration and coordination. So I really believe that we have a capital projects delivery machine that didn’t exist at nearly this throughput capacity back when the Levy to Move Seattle was started.”
But Mayor Bruce Harrell’s levy renewal proposal, getting its first public hearing today at the Seattle City Council, is less ambitious in its goals and includes fewer guardrails around what specifically the city is expected to spend money on. When Move Seattle included baseline funding requirements in the city’s budget for its three main categories — safe routes, congestion relief, and maintenance and repair — this levy only specifies anticipated spending levels, no minimum requirements. Project lists are currently fairly vague, though there are some specific commitments, including one to construct 250 blocks of new sidewalks by the midpoint of the levy in 2029.
“One of the lessons we learned from the Levy to Move Seattle was to be more cautious about making early commitments that rely on optimistic assumptions about how much grant funding we will receive,” SDOT spokesperson Ethan Bergerson told The Urbanist. Making fewer concrete commitments is a way to ensure the department doesn’t go over its skis, but it also paints a less compelling vision for the city’s transportation vision, and is one factor behind a large push by transportation advocates to make the next levy much bigger and more ambitious.
And then there’s the issue of what happens later this year, with all of these projects out the door and the fate of the next levy very much up-in-the-air. Will a lack of projects in the pipeline lead to a similar lag in project delivery like the city saw at the start of Move Seattle? Spotts says no, adding that they’re thinking differently about this than they have in the past.
“We’re exploring whether there’s some projects that the current levy can’t afford to construct, but could afford to complete design on,” Spotts said. “We want to have basket of projects that could be shovel ready for the next levy.” The department has already received grant funding for two corridor repaving projects, one on E Marginal Way S north of the South Park Bridge, and another on Roosevelt Way NE from NE 92 St to Pinehurst Way NE. Those projects, expected to have multimodal components, are set to be the first to move forward under the new levy.
Spotts also touts the planned goal of protecting 30% of the existing bike lanes in the city with more substantive barriers. “We think we could take that Better Bike Barrier program, and scale it with funds from the new levy. We could be dropping Toronto [style] barriers into existing bike lanes that currently have the paint and post, and that’s something we can do with city forces.”
What SDOT seems to be showing the city in 2024 is that the department is prepared to hit the ground running if voters approve the next levy. But what’s missing is how that levy will actually push the City towards achieving a collective vision that can endure no matter who’s in the Mayor’s Office or at the top of SDOT.
The Seattle City Council is holding the first of two public hearings on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s transportation levy proposal today at 4:30pm. You can sign up to testify virtually starting at 3:30pm, or submit written comments anytime, here.
For more information, The Urbanist has analyzed the mayor’s levy proposal in a series of articles:
Ryan Packer lives in the Summit Slope neighborhood of Capitol Hill and has been writing for the The Urbanist since 2015. They report on multimodal transportation issues, #VisionZero, preservation, and local politics. They believe in using Seattle’s history to help attain the vibrant, diverse city that we all wish to inhabit. Ryan’s writing has appeared in Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Bike Portland, and Seattle Bike Blog, where they also did a four-month stint as temporary editor.
SEATTLE — Seattle is one of the only host cities for the FIFA World Cup 2026 with a stadium in the heart of downtown. While that gives soccer fans a wide range of options to get to a match or join a celebration, it also requires intensive planning to meet the varying transportation needs.
Sound Transit, King County Metro, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) laid out how each of their agencies is preparing for the upcoming competition during presentations on Thursday before the Seattle City Council’s Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center Committee.
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The overarching goal is to create a safe, inclusive, and welcoming atmosphere for visitors while limiting traffic impacts to the shortest time period possible for those not participating in the FIFA events. Adding to the challenge is that the international match-ups are scheduled to take place on weekdays while people are trying to get to their jobs.
Extensive street closures will be in effect around the Stadium District on game days, beginning four hours before kick-off and extending two to three hours post-game. That will help accommodate the intense pedestrian traffic that is anticipated, as many as 750,000 visitors try to navigate downtown on foot.
King County Metro plans to add more service during the four weeks of the World Cup. On match days, an additional 60 buses will be in operation, scaling back to an extra 30 buses on non-match days. There will also be a Waterfront service available.
Sound Transit will add more trains and expects to transport up to 2,800 riders per hour. The added capacity will extend from three hours before a match begins and continue until three hours after the match. Service from the eastside will also be available when the Crosslake Connection opens on March 28th.
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Both systems will now allow payment to be made by tapping a debit or credit card, in addition to the standard ORCA cards that have been used to cover fares. Sound Transit will also introduce a three-day visitor pass available through an ORCA card.
WSDOT will tear down its Revive I-5 construction zone on the Ship Canal Bridge and alternate the express lanes between north- and southbound directions depending on the time of day.
To help in these transit efforts, just this week Congress allocated money $8.4 million for transit service, which is on top of $9 million already promised last year by the state.
Ted Land had almost given up on being a homeowner.
When he moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014, he was an award-winning television journalist, having lived and reported in Indiana and Alaska before arriving in Seattle to work for a local station, King 5. At first, he rented a studio apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
[Did you recently buy a home? We want to hear from you. Email: thehunt@nytimes.com. Sign up here to have The Hunt delivered to your inbox every week.]
“It’s very walkable, with lots of transit, very L.G.B.T. friendly, great restaurants, nightlife, parks,” said Mr. Land, 40. “It has everything I like in a neighborhood.”
His journalism career had been fraught with unexpected transitions, so it didn’t seem sensible to buy a home. “I thought I was going to move up and be a reporter in New York City or L.A. or D.C.,” he said. “I had my sights set on that. It really wasn’t even on my mind. Buying a house seemed so out of reach for me.”
As the years passed and he bounced from rental to rental, the hustle of TV news began to wear him out. Finally, in 2022, he grabbed an opportunity to move into corporate communications. With that choice came a higher income and a more stable future in Seattle with expanded living options.
“I kept signing lease after lease, not wanting to confront the daunting process of purchasing, and increasingly frustrated with the fact that I didn’t lock in a low interest rate during Covid like so many of my peers did,” Mr. Land said.
He had up to about $620,000 to spend, but as a single-income buyer, he was vexed by the down payment. “Everyone says that you’ve got to put down 20 percent. It’s like, ‘Where am I going to get $100,000? Does anyone know? Can you please tell me that?’”
With help from his broker, Mark Chavez of Windermere Real Estate, Mr. Land arranged to structure a purchase with 10 percent down using a mortgage insurance that costs him less than $100 per month, with his payments reducing in size until they total 20 percent of the home price. “I mean, $50,000 is a lot easier to save for than $100,000,” he said.
But even with that cushion, options were limited in pricey Seattle, especially for the kind of home he wanted. “Apartments are noisy places,” Mr. Land said. “They just are. And that kind of gets old after a while. I was looking for something a little quieter where I’m not hearing neighbors all the time.”
Most of Mr. Chavez’s clients want single-family homes, the broker said, but “it’s a bigger expense and there’s more to take care of, like the landscape. It used to be that to get into a condo, the entry point was more affordable. However, with many homeowner associations underfunded for future expenses, it is becoming more challenging to buy into a condominium.”
The middle ground? Townhouses. But every square foot needed to count, and location was critical. Mr. Land loved Capitol Hill, but felt he couldn’t afford to buy there. “I just really like being in the central part of the city,” he said. “The more I looked, the more I realized that walkability is a really important attribute for me.”
Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:
One of the Seattle Seahawks’ biggest rivals delivered the first big shockwaves of the 2026 offseason.
Why Salk ‘blanched’ at a Seahawks Maxx Crosby trade proposal
Los Angeles Rams have agreed to a deal that would send four draft picks to the Kansas City Chiefs in exchange for All-Pro cornerback and former UW Huskies standout Trent McDuffie, according to a report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday morning.
McDuffie, who is entering the final season of his rookie contract, is expected to sign a long-term extension with the Rams, according to Schefter.
Shortly after the news broke, former NFL quarterback Brock Huard gave his reaction on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.
“This feels like a direct move to match up with JSN and the Seahawks,” Huard said.
Widely considered to be the two best teams in the NFL this past season, the Seahawks and Rams squared off in three epic battles, capped by Seattle’s 31-27 win over Los Angeles in the NFC Championship.
Over those three games, the Rams’ shaky secondary struggled to contain NFL receiving leader and AP Offensive Player of the Year Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The Seahawks star wideout totaled 27 catches for 354 yards and two touchdowns across those three matchups, including 10 catches for 153 yards and a TD in the NFC title game.
Smith-Njigba also had a career-high 180 receiving yards and two touchdowns in an overtime loss to the Rams in 2024.
“It’s kind of like an old NBA world,” Huard said. “Like, alright, we know we’re gonna have to deal with Jordan or we’re gonna have to deal with Pippen or we’re gonna have to deal with Bird. Like, how do we match up? And (the Rams) know that that was the one area – in their back seven – that could not match up.”
Listen to the full Brock and Salk conversation at this link or in the audio player in the middle of this story. Tune into Brock and Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.
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