• We’re in this together: Sightline’s fall fund drive is on!

    As a Sightline reader, you are well informed about the challenges that the Northwest faces in the journey toward health, safety, and sustained prosperity for all. Perhaps you’d like to make a difference, but are unsure about where to begin. At times, sustainability matters and policy choices can seem like colossal burdens in the journey to a happy, healthy planet. To begin can seem a tremendous act. Luckily, we are...
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  • Have You Signed?

    You know the drill. To get into the Safeway, you’re going to have to walk past the man with the clipboards. “Are you a registered voter?” he is asking you already, when you’re still 10 feet away. “Have you signed for…?” Whatever the pitch, it’s hard to decline, because he looked you in the eye and asked politely. It’s a small request. He’ll be here on the way out, too....
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  • (Pay To) Park and Ride?

    In July 2013, board members of the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, better known as Sound Transit, unanimously approved a pilot program to test several efficiency-boosting strategies for a woefully oversubscribed parking system. The pilot scheme was budgeted at $495,000 and set for a 2014 roll out, with three key measures: Parking permits; Real-time information on parking availability; Rideshare collaboration. Unsurprisingly, the introduction of parking permits became the most controversial part of this...
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  • 3 Charts: Bus Cuts Drive Riders Away

    Seattle recently got accolades for being one of the US cities with significant growth in transit ridership. This mirrors a national trend in which more people rode buses, trains, streetcars and subways last year than at any time since 1956. A good part of that bump came from Sound Transit. But King County Metro’s bus ridership also grew by 3 percent last year, and it has nearly reached the record...
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  • All You Need to Know About BC’s Carbon Tax Shift in Five Charts

    Author’s note:The graphs in this post were updated in August 2015 to include the most recent available data.  When British Columbia enacted a carbon tax shift in 2008, many thought other jurisdictions would follow soon with their own ways of cashing in their carbon. Seven states and four provinces were working out the details of a huge carbon cap-and-trade market called the Western Climate Initiative. Candidates Barack Obama and John...
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  • Where Oh Where Does Your Money Go?

    Editor’s note 1/19/16: Anna Fahey’s 2012 resolution to buy nothing new for a whole year centered on a goal many of us share: spending less and saving more. She added up the costs of several everyday wallet-munchers and found that cutting them also helped curb her carbon footprint. My motivations for resolving to buy nothing new in 2012 are numerous, but chief among them is the desire to save money....
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  • All You Need to Know About Stormwater Runoff

    Editor’s note: This blog is also available as a printer friendly pdf, and a similar version was published this week in Trim Tab, the publication of the Cascadia Green Building Council.  A woman drowns when the basement of her Seattle home suddenly fills with a torrent of filthy water. An overflow of 15 million gallons of sewage and stormwater fouls the shoreline of picturesque Port Angeles, putting the waterfront off limits...
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  • The Young and Not-So-Restless

    This Advertising Age article discussing the massive decline in driving among young Americans is a bit old now.  But it’s both fascinating enough, and aggravating enough, to be worth some attention.  The basic facts are the fascinating part:  young people simply don’t drive as much as they used to.  Between 1978 and 2008, for example, the share of 17 year olds with a valid driver’s license fell by a third. [Update, 4/2/2012:...
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  • Pimp Your Ride III, Oregon Edition

    We’ve been talking for years about the concept of personal car sharing, which allows a car owner whose vehicle sits idle most of the time to rent it out to someone who needs to run errands on four wheels. (As we’ve described it before, think of it as plugging your car into the Zipcar network when you’re not using it.) It’s an entrepreneurial idea with lots of benefits—reducing pollution and...
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  • Don't Lose Your Head Tax

    Seattle used to have a “head tax” that charged companies for employees who drove alone to work. It was a pretty good deal and it funded important transit infrastructure in the city. But it got repealed after some griping and moaning by the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), leaving a big hole in the city’s transit budget. A look at Oregon’s system for funding transit (a regular old payroll tax) makes...
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