Midweek Roundup: Cablebús

Off-sidewalk pedestrian island and transit loading at 4th and Pike, 1956. View looking east up Pike Street across 4th Avenue; compare with today. Item 53825, courtesy of theSeattle Municipal Archives.Transit & Streets:

• The Urbanist: Will Puget Sound's Official Transportation Plan Get a Badly Needed Refresh?
• King County Metro Matters: Supervisor Spotlight: Highlighting those behind the scenes who keep us moving.
• Seattle Times ($); Curbside parking rates roll past $6 in some Seattle neighborhoods; noticed by famous parking wonk Donald Shoup on Twitter; also on the SDOT Blog and KUOW.
• Cascade PBS: The case for and against Seattle's largest-ever transportation levy
• SDOT Blog: SDOT Crews Tackle Overgrown Vegetation Across Seattle

Housing & Land Use:

• The Urbanist: Seattle Breaks Ground on West Coast's First Residential Highrise of 2024; perhaps Downtown Seattle isn't dead after all?
• PubliCola: With Affordable Housing at a Crossroads, Many Low-Income Tenants Find Themselves at Risk of Eviction; meanwhile, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority is getting revamped, per the Seattle Times ($).
• Urban Land Magazine: Industrial Mixed-Use Zoning Paves Way for Housing & Economic Growth in Atlanta's Upper Westside

On Mexico City's Cablebus lines:

• Institute for Transportation and Development Policy: Mexico City's Cablebus Shows Us the Potential of Urban Cable Cars
• Gondola manufacturer Doppelmayr celebrates being awarded construction of Mexico City's third gondola line.
• Last year, the US FTA added gondolas to the list of modes eligible for Capital Investment Grants (pdf).
• Bloomberg's CityLab discusses Mexico City's longest route, with 80,000 daily riders.

Commentary & Other News:

• Dissent Magazine: Highway Robbery; on the use of fallacious traffic models to falsely justify freeway expansions.
• Pedestrian Observations: Transit Advocacy and (Lack of) Ideology in New York; Alon Levy on the apparent lack of significant ideological politicking in NYC, and how it's reflected in the local advocacy scene. How are (or aren't) Seattle politics reflected in our transit advocacy?
• Seattle Subway discusses on Twitter: For Ballard and West Seattle, Sound Transit could build something like Sky Train. It would be less expensive to build and less expensive to operate: Should they? Martin Pagel discussed this last year.
• Planetizen: The 100-Year Road to Car Dependency in the US; October 8, 2024, marks the centennial of the publication of what would soon become the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance - a landmark on the road toward our car-dominated status quo."

This is an Open Thread.