News Roundup: Hotbed

• Community Transit hires a new director for customer experience.
• Measures of Seattle transit use are not that great.
• Kent may drop the requirement for a pedestrian bridge from the Link station to Highline Community College.
• Seattle apartment construction booming ($), starting to slow down rents.
• Kirkland City Council now has a professional transit planner, Jon Pascal.
• UW Station a hotbed of bike theft.
• Tacoma having a building boom as well.
• (Democratic!) legislators already using I-732 defeat as an excuse to not do anything about the climate. Nice work, environmentalists.
• I-405 tolls not high enough to be congestion free, which means that fast toll lanes are much more popular than the haters would have you believe.
• Mercer Island circulating a petition demanding special rights to public property, and keeping as many outsiders as possible off their island, as "compensation" for ST building a light rail station for their city.
• TCC expects a quiet legislative session, but still has priorities for 2017.
• State Legislature may crack down on distracted driving ($) this year.
• TriMet will cease most criminal prosecutions of fare evaders.
• Would Trump Administration funding resurrect the Columbia River Crossing?
• Federal funds let Oregon fund bus service to Columbia Gorge waterfalls.

This is an open thread.