Mike Eliason

Op-Ed: Why Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Is Rebranding as Seattle Streets Alliance » The Urbanist # After 15 years fighting for safe streets, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is excited to become Seattle Streets Alliance to more accurately reflect the nature of our grassroots organization’s mission....

After 13 years of working for @sngreenways.bsky.social, I'm now working for @streetsalliance.bsky.social! Wait, what? Read more on @theurbanist.org

ooooh and here comes HB 1717 down the stretch!

A new multifamily building fronting Rainier Ave.

Nothing says Urban Village like 8 stories of building, 6’ of sidewalk, 4’ of plantings, and 6 lanes of Rainier.

zine showing how side yard setbacks are bad news for trees.

this is incredible. lalali chan and @houseourneighbors.bsky.social produced a zine based on slides from a presentation i did on why setbacks make for terrible neighborhoods and cities with less space for trees.

it's perfect

Cut homelessness by 50% in Oakland? A new plan says it’s possible Mayor Lee’s homelessness office has issued a bold report. But funding is short, and there’s a different plan already on the table.

A pretty bold plan. Motel conversions to permanent supportive housing + assistance payments for at risk households could probably dramatically reduce homelessness in Oakland and everywhere. Big issue: Alameda County needs to do operate it but the County is weak.
oaklandside.org/2026/03/04/h...

Tesla-Werk in Grünheide laut Bericht nur noch unter 40 Prozent ausgelastet Teslas deutsches Werk baut laut einem Bericht deutlich weniger Autos, die Auslastung sinkt drastisch. Die Expansion rückt in weite Ferne.

New data shows Tesla's German factory is running way below capacity: fewer than 150k vehicles were made there last year, down 30% from the year before, for an estimated utilization rate of about 40%.

The factory is likely structurally unprofitable.

ecomento.de/2026/03/02/t...

Study: AVs Will Super-Charge VMTs — Streetsblog USA Yes, robocars address many of our traffic violence troubles, but they may fail to uproot the deeper rot of car dependency that has hollowed out our society

Yes, robocars address many of our traffic violence troubles, but they may fail to uproot the deeper rot of car dependency that has hollowed out our society.

63 Housing Units for the Bastide-Niel Urban Development / Olgga Architects Completed in 2025 in Bordeaux, France. Images by Stephane Aboudaram | WE ARE CONTENTS. The Garonne River divides Bordeaux's urban fabric in two, and its right bank has lagged somewhat in terms of its ...

single stair ftw

www.archdaily.com/1039312/63-h...

they double bombed an elementary school for girls

REP @aoc.bsky.social: “Vast majority of 🇺🇸 are against war with Iran- We can acknowledge the brutal reality of the Iranian regime + know a forever war won’t resolve that. We have multiple 🇺🇸 service members dead for an illegal action Trump pursued with no plan out.”

H/T @pabloreports.bsky.social

'NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 320 second or 5 minutes and 20 seconds “response time” goal for not less than 90% of these type incidents.'

fems.dc.gov/page/fire-re....

Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the environment. Where’s the pushback? Climate deniers expected more resistance to the fossil fuel blitz. But Democrats, billionaires and activists have gone silent

"'Democrats in Congress have been silent...There has been no pushback on this,' Morano said."

Why is longtime climate denier Marc Morano is happy that Democrats have stopped talking climate? As I told The Guardian, because it helps the Trump regime. Obviously.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Inside the Trump administration’s scramble to support its own war One State Department official said too few people were read in on war plans.

U.S. Central Command is now saying internally that this war against Iran is likely to last through September, according to information obtained by @politico.com.

This would easily cost over $100 billion, and that number could go much higher.

www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

oh hey SB 5156 allowing smaller elevators in single stair buildings passed the house last night.

i just saw this. horrendous.

christ & gantenbein are working on a housing project in tblisi...

45 (!) connected single stair buildings surrounding a massive courtyard

christgantenbein.com/index/napetv...

Republican is warning us about the threat of Sound Transit "taking" your house (i.e. paying you for land acquisition). It's hard to imagine them going so crazy about a highway project, doing exactly the same thing. #waleg

thinking how bleak US stairways in multifamily buildings are...

no daylight. no socialization. poor acoustics.

no wonder no one wants to use them. a liminal space.

Sure it isn't true that the bike lane is going to cost tens of millions of dollars, but imagine if it were.

Just got word that the Tacoma planning commission advanced a motion to fully eliminate parking mandates citywide at their meeting tonight, by a 8-0 vote with one abstention.

If implemented, Washington's second and third largest cities would have both beat Seattle to eliminating parking mandates.

To Cut Housing Costs, Some States Are Easing Fire Safety Rules

Too bad this good article is marred by such a bad headline.

Fixed it:

To Cut Housing Costs, Some States Are Reforming Fire Safety Rules That Don't Make Buildings Safer

For the record, WA was the first state to pass single-stair legislation, but is now lagging other states in implementation.

won't someone think of the cars?

jealous

We did fine on corridors but we need residential density on side streets to back it up

Very exciting to see new single stair proposals in Victoria BC! A result of municipal leadership, BC Building Code Changes, and a New City Plan. These builds would have been completely impossible several years ago and now we’re seeing the results - larger units + cross ventilation #singlestairs

Oh man, getting 3,600 undergrads to try to egress this building via six stairwells while firefighters climb them sounds like a blast. Can we schedule that?

bsky.app/profile/rory...

Actually brings up something important that nobody talks about – big buildings have tons of false alarms, so can people become desensitized to them. Whereas in a single-stair building, that once a year is going to be once a decade, and people will gtfo even faster.

Like every single Swedish apartment building is single stair. I sure they exist, but don't think I have ever been in a Swedish double loaded corridor building. So it works just fine for developers.
Importantly allowing single stair gives more options on maximizing usage.

Some comments from my (obviously pro-single-stair) perspective:

1. That’s a LOT of people evacuating. They did it based on the building code’s occupant load calculations, which assume there will be one occupant in every apartment building for every 200 sq. ft. of floor space (gross! so including…

…a single-stair building. This is wrong in theory (max occupant loads for a two-stair building are 500 *per floor*), and wrong in practice (a typical building has over 100 units, maybe 200 occupants).

5. On the flip side, in an actual fire, the stairway may be filled with smoke, and may also be…