By Josh Feit
First, a quick follow-up to last week’s item about former state house candidate Ron Davis. ICYMI: Despite the fact that the Stranger endorsed a long list of progressives, Davis contended—in a 3,000-word email to his supporters—that because the paper didn’t endorse him, there’s reason to believe a cabal of centrist oligarchs have taken over the paper and are calling the shots on endorsements.
Surprise: It turns out Davis isn’t actually Neo in the Matrix. According to members of the Stranger’s endorsement board, there’s a banal reason he didn’t get the nod from them. I’ll put this as gently as I can: Davis is not a great listener. The SECB wasn’t thrilled with the mansplaining.
Okay. On to this week in X>Y.
No Cars in Pike Place Market > Cars in Pike Place Market
Despite increased business at Pike Place Market and broad public support for the no-cars pilot project that coincides with the bullish numbers, SDOT is looking at opening the Market back up to cars starting this October. Ryan Packer at the Urbanist has been all over the story.
The naive thing about undoing the new pedestrian-only version of Pike Place Market, which went into effect in April 2025 and tracks to a notable 8.8 percent increase in local visitors who live between 3 and 5 miles away, is that it’s not the only pro-pedestrian upgrade in the area. Have you noticed the new multi-billion-dollar Waterfront Park, including the $70 million Overlook Walk that melds directly into the Market? It’s a whole feng shui down there now. And it started, emphatically enough, when we tore down the car-choked Viaduct.
Pike Place Market is now just one element in a comprehensive waterfront makeover that has embraced pedestrians and de-emphasized cars. It’s one thing Seattle has gotten right.
7 > 69
The Seattle Metro Chamber is trolling me.
Their most recent polling had a stat that made my heart leap: 69 percent of people agreed with the concept that “Building more housing will help slow down Seattle’s increasing housing costs.” This might seem like easy-peasy Econ 101 to you, but as someone who’s been pushing this once-radical urbanist idea since 2004, I was pleasantly surprised to see it’s now conventional wisdom; 58 percent even agreed with the once-anathema notion that “All things considered, growth and development has been a positive for my area.”
Ah, but then, in the same poll, this: Only 7 percent of people think “more density” is among the top one or two things the city should be doing to improve quality of life.
So, nearly everyone supports the idea of growth and building more, but only a smidgen actually think it’s something we should prioritize? Isn’t there a term for that dysfunctional way of thinking. Oh, right. NIMBY.
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2026 > 2019
According to SDOT’s Fremont Bridge tracker, Seattle bike and scooter commuting hit its highest count in Seattle history last month. The previous high was set pre-pandemic in August 2019.
Tom Fucoloro at Seattle Bike Blog, who reported on the data last week with a headline that used the word “obliterated,” writes: “The 153,238 trips was near 11,000 trips more than the previous high-water mark set in August 2019, and total counts for 2026 through July are up more than 18% year-over-year.”
This is excellent news for anyone who supports investing more in multimodal transportation.
And I’ll add another stat: As of July, combined bike and scooter trips are nearly two million higher than last year at this time: 7.2 million versus 5.4 million.
I’m comparing 2026 to 2025 rather than the pre-pandemic 2019 baseline that city planners seem obsessed with these days because all these record-setting bike and scooter numbers exist in a post-pandemic reality that looks nothing like the pre-pandemic world. Fucoloro hints at this in his own analysis by pointing out that return-to-office requirements have generally only gotten downtown office workers back three days a week.
I’d contend the reason we’re lapping pre-pandemic ridership, and doing so when just three days a week is the new RTO norm, has to do with a disproportionate increase in commuting in the so-called off-hours.
For example, another telling 2025 to 2026 comparison: Off-traditional-peak bike and scooter ridership is growing at a faster rate than traditional peak-hour bike and scooter commuting. Ridership at 9 am has grown 21.4 percent while 11 am ridership has grown 23.3 percent. And after work? Ridership at 5 pm has grown 23.7 percent while ridership at 7 pm has grown 27.8 percent. At 8 pm it’s even more pronounced. Ridership has grown 29.8 percent..
There’s a new shape to city life that’s not only about punching the clock. Our infrastructure and planning should adjust to this 21st-century lifestyle rather than looking backward to the old one.
Josh@PubliCola.com
And why will “Social Housing” developers be able to lower costs? All the A&E professionals and material suppliers and contractors will be operating on a non-profit basis? Maybe the “Social Housing” people will sing kumbaya loudly enough so that all will go minimum wage?
And why will “Social Housing” developers be able to lower costs? All the A&E professionals and material suppliers and contractors will be operating on a non-profit basis? Maybe the “Social Housing” people will sing kumbaya loudly enough so that all will go minimum wage?
No mention of Lime scooters being part of the increase in ridership. Many of us use them for the last mile.
The story mentions scooters a half-dozen times, and the lead image is of… a Lime scooter! So you must be reading a completely different story.
Can the Fremont Bridge tracker count helmets or lack thereof and multiple riders? Can it perceive following safe traffic rules? The “new shape of city life” that the author celebrates is an incredibly dangerous one as anyone who knows a Harborview ER doc can tell you. When I drive (yes, I drive an electric car sometimes, and even more rarely a gas car, come at me), it seems like riders have a death wish, between scooter rides splitting lanes and cutting across stoplight intersections, and bike riders blasting through red lights. When I’m walking (yes, I prefer to walk), it seems like riders have a death wish, except it’s for me, because the same safety issues that everyone rightly talks about with cars vs. smaller vehicles are even more pronounced when it’s a bike or scooter vs. a lightly clothes human. They just don’t care, they’re not looking, so many have earphones or earplugs in so can’t even hear the world around them.
This “new shape of city life” is dystopian and it’s hilarious that this ostensibly progressive author is gooning for it. Does he remember that this situation was forced on us and most other cities by venture capital startups who dumped bikes and scooters everywhere regardless of city or state regulations, and who wouldn’t be running these apps unless they were making bank on every bike or scooter—every one not immobilized in a park or thrown into a creek or onto train tracks, anyway.
While we’re at it, the whole x>y schtick of this column is tired. Get rid please…this guy clearly needs more space if he’s going to get a fully baked idea out there, so let him write whole essays or cut him loose.
To answer your question in good faith, no it cannot count helmets or lack thereof. It uses inductive loops to determine when someone passes over the pavement.
Are scooter riders the bane of my existence when I’m walking in and around downtown? Absolutely. We certainly need better norms around where it’s acceptable to ride. But I still think it’s a good thing that people use them rather than drive (though I suspect many trips could simply be 20 minute walks as well).
“the same safety issues that everyone rightly talks about with cars vs. smaller vehicles are even more pronounced when it’s a bike or scooter vs. a lightly clothes human.” This is so wrong it’s not funny. I don’t think there’s a single recorded instance of a scooter killing a pedestrian in Seattle. There are countless examples of cars killing cyclists and pedestrians. Cars are the public health menace, you just are numb to how common their destruction is.
And if you don’t like the column, simply don’t read it!
I completely agree that for a single person going from point A to point B, a scooter ride is better for all of us than a car ride, and we both clearly see the need for better regulations/norms/physical infrastructure to make those scooter rides safe. And we agree that walking is even better.
You’re right to take issue with the quoted bit, which was itself not fully baked, as you might guess from the typo. In terms of outcome, no question that cars are more dangerous than anything else, both potentially and in actual outcomes. What I meant by “safety issues” was simply the lack of awareness of so many scooterers and sometimes bikers too for the presence and right of way of pedestrians. The consequences aren’t as deadly, and most scooter accidents injure only the rider I think. But these vehicles do have the power to harm pedestrians and people tend to use them without regard for that power. Think of riding a scooter with noise cancelling headphones over your ears (which is illegal to do in a car)! Having cars on roads is a tradeoff and fewer is better, but I think it’s premature to be celebrating the advent of the scooter (only a generation after the Segway was supposed to revolutionize all our cities, remember?), when city governments and populations are all playing catch up and clean up on a mobility reality imposed by VC companies who simply want the maximum number of people riding and paying.
I definitely won’t read any more x>y articles. I was just airing my opinion, which was based on everything in this one and the last one or two, that I’d be interested in longer more fleshed out pieces from the author and not this particular format.
Possible solution: reduce/remove cars from the roads and let scooters use that space, reserving sidewalks for people.
Re Ron Davis and The Stranger: no trouble picturing Davis as a poor listener, but hilarious coming from The Stranger, which has never, to my knowledge, listened to anybody about anything.
Increased housing supply will make housing prices less than they would have been otherwise. That does not imply any of the new units will be affordable. Newness is a very pricey attribute. We need to discuss subsidies for the low income households who do not have market power; they are poor.
Sure we need to subsidize vulnerable populations… (Not low income per se and certainly not population based on race)…
But what about the idea of “trickle down”? That’s actually how it has worked and works pretty well if you allow enough new construction.
If 69% of people polled agreed that the earth is flat, would that make it true? it’s not surprising that 69% agree with the statement that more units will lower housing costs bc that’s the line the master builders and urbanists have been feeding the public for years – that doesn’t make it true. There are many factors, and many economists, that argue against this “easy peasy Econ 101”. Right now there are 13,000+ vacant dwellings in Seattle today; rents are flat but not falling (despite the “2 months free rent” sign, the rent remains the same, and next year’s increase will be based on that rent). Dig deeper – are builders building what people want? (hint: no, they are building what they think will make them the most money – studios or 1 BR units) Does the financing behind the buildings allow for decreased rent? (Hint: in most cases probably not)
sure, there are absolutely nuances to how rent gets set, but having more density is an important aspect of keeping up with economic growth. Financing plays a central role in both the building of apartments and the setting of rents, but this is not the only mechanism at play. If a place is growing fast AND it does not have suitable rent controls AND nothing is built, rents will skyrocket. New construction isn’t the only means by which a local government or place can keep rent affordable, but few economists I’ve seen would argue that it has no material impact.
There are two separate but related questions here. The first is “should the market set rents?”. Seattle does not have a choice in this policy, as state law prevents local governments from directly regulating rent. Given this, the second question is “given our current legal and political apparatus, how can we reduce housing costs?”. On this front, pursuing “more housing” as a means of keeping prices under control is perfectly reasonable – even if the financing arrangements of this new housing precludes affordable prices, as there should still be some market impact of new housing (even if that is only to make very unacceptably high rent growth simply unacceptably high).
Should we directly regulate rent? I say yes, but that’s a somewhat separate question from if we should also also more dense housing.
Well, we’ll see if Seattle housing starts tank under Mayor Katie. Although it might not be entirely her fault if they do, with higher national interest rates and huge rises in Washington State taxes also being in play. Why would any investor build housing in Seattle and pay the State’s “millionaires tax” on the profit when they could just build in Idaho or Tennessee and keep more for of the profits?
Why would anybody looking to build wealth want to stay in Washington State? Who’s going to build those apartments?
I doubt the “money’d class” will be in any hurry to deal with the current mayor. And yet Mayor Katie and her supporters tend towards being renters and beholden to the “money’d class” for a place to live! Home ownership offers a degree to financial renting will never achieve.
An increase in supply will lower unit cost, given any attempt to keep costs down (when a 1950s rambler is replaced by a modernist duplex where each unit costs more than the house sold for, that’s not the way). The principal constraint on development is land: Seattle is 84 square miles in size, same as it has been since the 1950s annexations. In the past 25 years, population has increased from 600,000 to 800,000…that’s 33% more people on the same amount of land.
Since we can’t make more land, the next option is to make more floor — density and upzoning. If a parcel of land costs $1m to buy, the developer needs to sell the building for a high enough price to recoup that upfront expense. Which means luxe interiors and other fripperies that make the units unaffordable to many. It also accounts for the same same exteriors we see. There is no value in decorating the exterior, you won’t get that back at sale time.
Seattle’s Social Housing Developer is where we might see some change here: it is tasked with buying land and developing units that are not part of that ecosystem.
Sing it!