Jennifer Langston
Jennifer Langston former researcher and editor for Sightline Daily, Sightline’s daily news service, contributed to Sightline's research efforts with her hard-hitting journalism skills. She has covered topics from coal-fired power and ridesharing to green-collar jobs, immigrant farmers, and family-friendly cities. Before joining Sightline, Jennifer spent 15 years as a reporter covering environment issues across the Northwest, including a stint as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s land use and sustainability reporter. She has English and journalism degrees from Yale University and the University of Maryland. As a volunteer for the Washington Alpine Club and 826 Seattle, she has taught terrified adults to rock climb and fearless kids to write their own stories. Find her latest blog articles here and follow her on Twitter at @langstonjen.
SwatchJunkies
SwatchJunkies
Seattle’s Vision Zero Plan
Seattle became the second major Northwest city this week to promise to end all traffic deaths and serious injuries by ...
Read More
Portland’s Vision Zero Plan
Editor’s Note 6/23/2015: A SUV driver recently killed a pedestrian in Portland. Eight days earlier, a driver under the influence killed a jogger. A series of fatal bike collisions and pedestrian deaths in Portland concerned citizens and prompted a protest ride to hold the city to its Vision Zero commitment. Portlanders are saying enough is enough. Sightline profiled Portland’s Vision Zero commitment earlier this year, and the urgency of the plan’s goals has only grown greater since. Read up on it below, and help move our cities forward to make streets safer for all pedestrians, bikers, and drivers alike.
Last week, I outlined some of the key principles of Vision Zero—an approach to designing streets that prioritizes safety and human life above other considerations. Today, the city of Portland rolled out its Vision Zero commitments, including an ambitious goal of working toward zero traffic deaths and serious injuries within the next decade.
Read More
Seattle District Loses Bid for Downtown School
Seattle Public Schools officials confirmed this weekend that the district lost its bid to acquire a surplus federal building and ...
Read More
What is Vision Zero?
When you ask people to estimate how many people are killed on American roads each year, the answers vary widely: 1 million? 500,000? 40,000? 2,000?
As the video below shows, when you ask them what Washington state's traffic death goal should be, most people have no idea. They offer tentative guesses, ranging from fewer than 100 to 5000. (For context, there are actually about 33,000 annual US traffic deaths now, and 437 people lost their lives on Washington roads in 2013.)
But watch the video until minute 2:22, when the interviewers ask people what the traffic death goal for their family should be. Everyone knows immediately: Zero. Zero. Zero. None. Absolutely zero. Zero, of course. I would want zero.
Read More
Seattle’s Downtown School Is Back in Play
The prospects for a downtown Seattle school brightened yesterday, with a unanimous school board vote allowing the district to bid on the empty Federal Reserve Bank building at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Spring Street.
The federal government is auctioning off the vacant building---which is the right size to house 660 students---to the highest bidder. With the auction closing next Wednesday, no one has submitted a bid so far. But the school district may have competition---at least one other entity has paid the auction's $100,000 registration fee, officials have said.
The feds reduced the minimum bid from $5 million to $1 million last week, and buying the building outright would remove timing and funding issues that were earlier stumbling blocks for the district.
Read More
Why 20 Is Plenty on Neighborhood Streets
Next time you're in a car driving through a residential neighborhood, try this experiment. Glance at the speedometer when you're in the middle of a block. You'll probably find it's pretty easy to reach or top 25 mph, the standard residential speed limit for cities in Oregon and Washington.
I did this yesterday on my way to pick up my daughter from elementary school. And you know what I got from other parents walking on the sidewalk, often with a toddler or two in tow? Super dirty looks.
To someone on foot navigating narrow streets with parked cars and unprotected intersections, it feels like you're driving too fast. And they're probably not wrong. As I was cruising up to 25 mph (on streets outside the school zone), I tried to imagine that a ball rolled right in front of me with a kid chasing it. Or that someone with an armful of groceries opened a car door without looking, or that a pedestrian in dark clothes stepped into a poorly lit intersection. Would I be able to stop in time? Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on how soon I saw whatever I was about to hit.
Read More
5 Tips for Portland and Vancouver BC on Uber
Portland and Vancouver BC officials, welcome to Seattle’s pain. With Uber launching (or threatening to launch) its app-based personal transportation ...
Read More
How Portland’s Neighborhood Greenways Evolved
In my last post, I focused on Seattle’s nascent neighborhood greenway system, which aims to create a network of residential ...
Read More
A Mom Rediscovers Her Bike
Editor’s Note 5/3/16: Does the record-warm spring have you craving to hop back on your bike… but still a bit nervous to ...
Read More
A Missed Opportunity for Seattle’s Downtown School
Update: The federal General Services Administration plans to auction off the Federal Reserve Bank building, with an opening bid of ...
Read More
Toxic Lead’s Home Demolition Loophole
Residential construction is booming again in Seattle and other Northwest cities. To make way for the new, as well as ...
Read More
A Fair Share of Streets (Part 2)
In my last post, I took a look at streets that have been designed specifically so kids and cars can ...
Read More