News Roundup: Toronto Wins

• A profile of Seattle's Chief Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang ($), notably including his sadly-uncommon perspective on civil engineering: "Creating things that enable civilization - where people are gathered - to occur."
• On that note, here's what SDOT is doing to make crossing the Mercer Stroad better for people on foot ($).
• How City Planning Can Change an Anti-Aging Culture.
• Seoul's Lessons for Seattle Transit and Land Use. TL;DR allow density, build out your rail network, operate more and better buses.
• Vancouver is considering streetcars. Here's my advice.
• London's walking and cycling commissioner says all the right things you would expect.
• Toronto's King St improvements have brought drastic speed improvements to streetcar riders; Jarrett Walker has a relevant guest post on his blog.
• A $40 peak period toll ($) to drive ten miles in a HOT lane sounds great, I want that for all of our regional freeways.
• Kent City Council agrees to pay $3 million for railroad quiet zone.
• Reconnected Thomas St at Aurora to get a traffic diverter.
• Issaquah Updates its Central Issaquah Plan. It's good that Issaquah still wants to grow in a compact way, but the people writing the doc seem to have rather optimistic ideas around how much you can legislate good design.
• Two-way Columbia rebuild will soon begin.
• SDOT's official blog puts out a very rosy take on the transit-accessibility of Key Arena.
• Union pushback against driverless buses is already here.
• Times catalogs what anyone looking in Zillow already knows: Condo shortage is worse than ever in King County ($). Primary culprit seems to be an unusually strict state law around condo construction defects.
• Vi(C)liberti(C), egaliti(C), fraterniti(C): is Paris's seminal bike share scheme out of date?
• Design pieces drop into place for new Sumner Sounder Train Station parking monstrosity.
• From congestion to carbon to fatalities, roads are getting worse ($), WSDOT data show.
• As the NFL founders, cities are dangling football-style funding promises at pro soccer franchises.
• "We have wages nowhere near matching increased housing costs."
• These six cities are smarter than Portland (and Seattle) about housing.
• The pedestrian walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge is severely overcrowded. The obvious solution of taking space away from cars was rejected out of hand.
• Curved Element design allows rail on floating bridge.
• Portland's Southeast Division Corridor: big plans for buses.
• How urban sprawl shapes the critters that crawl our city.
• Renovations shutter subway stations for Months. Some ask ($), for What?
• Plan to ban cars on SF's Market Street moves forward this month.
• Wallyhood writes about dockless bikeshare.
• CM Herbold's update discusses partnering with ST, Key Arena redevelopment, and RapidRide H.
• "The Cincinnati [streetcar's] challenges track back to a factor common among underperforming streetcars" 'It doesn't really go where people want to go.'"
• Cities, Counties To Pool Resources As They Brace For Climate Change Impacts.
• One of the last great Washington train rides is coming to an end. (It's not actually, but the view won't be as great.)
• And, last but not least, Seattle Ped Advisory Board has open seats.

This is an open thread.