Midweek Roundup: 200,000 riders

Headlines:

• Vehicle Barrier Plan for Pike Place Market Comes Into View (The Urbanist)
• Issaquah Pitches Case for Keeping Its Light Rail Line on Track (The Urbanist)
• Light rail carried over 200K riders on Seahawks Super Bowl parade day (The Seattle Times, $). What about buses?
• Over 8 million people now live in Washington State (The Seattle Times, $). No mention of city-level statistics, but a comparison to other states. Census tract stats show 38% of workers in King County work remotely most days, up from 7% pre-pandemic, but the density of remote workers varies across the county (The Seattle Times, $).
• Two new senior executives and one boomerang hire at Sound Transit: Jessyn Farrell as Exec. Director of Government and Community Relations; Marshall Foster as Chief Planning and Development Officer, and Brook Belman returns as Deputy CEO (Sound Transit)

WA Legislative Short Session Updates:

• Mosquito Fleet Act Seeks to Throw Ferry-Oriented Communities a Lifeline (The Urbanist)
• Even the smallest apartment buildings are required to have full-size elevators, which makes them difficult to build. Legislators are trying again to fix it (The Urbanist)
• Gov. Ferguson wants to raid Climate Commitment Act revenues to backfill the state's budget hole (The Seattle Times, $). State Senator Reuven Carlyle, architect of the CCA, says tapping into the climate fund amounts to a breach of faith with voters.
• The Governor may oppose new taxes, but the Legislature Is Ready to Tax The Rich (The Stranger). The proposed Millionaires Tax" was passed by the State Senate on Monday, the first hurdle in what will likely prove to be a long battle to get the bill over the finish line" (The Seattle Times, $). Meanwhile, Seattle's 5% payroll tax on annual income over $1M raised $115M last year, more than twice the expected $50M (Office of the Mayor).

Commentary:

• Op-Ed: Pierce County Must Run a Transit Ballot Measure in 2026 (Kirk Hovenkotter and Laura Svancarek in The Urbanist)
• Driverless cars aren't much of a revolution, because dangerous drivers in the USA aren't typically held liable when pedestrians are involved (Opinion, The Seattle Times, $). Case in point: a pedestrian was hit and killed by a driver at Pine & Bellevue on Monday night (Capitol Hill Seattle Blog), but since the driver wasn't clearly inebriated, they face no charges.
• The bikeshare dilemma: are bikeshare companies providing a public good worthy of subsidy, or a private service worthy of taxation? (Momentum Magazine)
• Good urbanism isn't any good if you're not allowed to walk or bike (Fast Company)
• Exploring the intersection of transit-oriented development and public health policy (Transportation Choices Coalition

This is an Open Thread. Civil comments may discuss any transportation or land use topic. Uncivil comments will be removed.