Seattle and Columbus Show How Cities Can Win

Bloomberg LP | Noah Smith | May 29
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-29/seattle-and-columbus-show-how-cities-can-win

“In the modern U.S. economy, prosperity depends more and more on creating successful cities…Seattle is a major technology cluster, which creates high-paying jobs for knowledge workers. The inflows of money to the tech industry spill over into a huge variety of local services — everything from food to law to health care and real estate — and generates plenty of work even for those who aren’t engineering whizzes. That positive dynamic drives demand for residency in Seattle.”

Historic Population Boom Pushes Seattle to 19th Month in a Row as the Nation’s Hottest Market

GeekWire | Nat Levy | May 29
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/historic-population-boom-pushes-seattle-19th-month-row-nations-hottest-housing-market/

“Seattle has earned a couple of titles that explain a lot of the tension going on in the city lately: it is the fastest growing big city of the last decade and the hottest housing market in the country, a designation it has held for 19 straight months. According to the latest update from the Case-Shiller national home price report, Seattle home prices in March rose 13 percent over the same period a year ago, followed by Las Vegas and San Francisco. While Seattle has held its place at the top for some time, Las Vegas and San Francisco were ranked 10th and 16th, respectively, on the list, a year ago.”

Seattle’s Lander Street Overpass Project Begins Construction

KING 5 | Jimmy Bernhard and Chris Daniels | May 29
https://www.king5.com/article/traffic/traffic-news/seattles-lander-street-overpass-project-begins-construction/281-559526266

“The long awaited, much discussed, Lander Street overpass project is finally happening.  Work officially started Tuesday on the project in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood. The project involves building an elevated road over the railroad tracks on S. Lander Street to help relieve traffic congestion. Lander will be closed to traffic from 1st Avenue S. to 3rd Avenue S. as crews build the new overpass, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2020. More than 13,000 drivers use the route each day.”

Seattle Center Wants to Boost Monorail Capacity for Future Hockey Game-Goers

Seattle Times | Mike Lindblom | May 28
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattle-center-wants-to-boost-monorail-capacity-for-future-hockey-game-goers/

“City-owned Seattle Center hired Alan Hart — acclaimed architect of the Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain Millennium Line that carries 160,000 daily riders — to show how to improve the 1-mile monorail’s performance, by moving people and trains faster through its Seattle Center and Westlake Center stations. Hart’s company, VIA Architecture, designed a roomier passenger-waiting zone at Westlake that would make all eight train doors easy to reach from the existing platform, above Fifth Avenue. Quick people-loading might double the train frequency, so a 250-person load arrives on each of two tracks every five minutes. That’s 6,000 people an hour.”