Washington

California's $10 billion high speed rail bond was not the only transit initiative to pass on Election Day. Over 70% (double the customary rate) of all transportation initiatives passed, including 18 that raise sales or property taxes.

The Old Town neighborhood of Bellingham, WA, is a hangout for the homeless. The city plans to revitalize the area with new condo buildings, but locals fear that new residents won't mix well with the current ones.

Puget Sound voters strongly supported Sound Transit's sales tax measure to expand public transit while Washington state voters overwhelmingly rejected an Eyeman initiative to allow solo motorists to use carpool lanes during off-peak hours.

It's time for Seattle to take a few chances with its architecture, according to the author of this article.

High Occupancy Toll lanes, long derided as 'Lexus Lanes', may have to be re-dubbed. Statistics kept by the Washington State DOT on a new Hwy 167 HOT lane show that most users are not driving fancy luxury cars.

Washington instituted a Growth Management Act in the 1980s to help the state grow smarter. But recent studies show that the GMA has made housing increasingly unaffordable.

The myth of the American West as a wild, natural place is long gone, says urban studies professor Carl Abbott. The Western U.S. is actually the most urban part of the nation.

Residents in the Seattle region are calling on officials to expand the area's urban growth boundary to allow denser development in what is currently outside the border.

Going beyond traditional approaches to public art, Washington's transit authority has launched a program that provides the city with art that expresses Seattle's "core identity."

In an effort to protect endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest, the National Marine Fisheries Service is calling for a building moratorium near rivers in the Puget Sound region.

Washington State is telling local governments that they need to ban carwashing in driveways, where runoff goes into storm drains and pollutes groundwater.

For the past year, a Washington state legislator has been devising a plan for replacing Seattle's damaged inner-city freeway, the Alaskan Way Viaduct. His plan has mainly been a secret -- until now.

Tacoma, Washington has created a local improvement district in the Broadway-St. Helens neighborhood to create an 'urban village' and improve old infrastructure, but existing small businesses are afraid of being priced out.

Seattle is growing, and it's going to have to start thinking about augmenting its single-family neighborhoods with more multi-unit housing if it wants to keep up with the pace of growth.

Broad redevelopment plans have been approved for Seattle Center, the public gathering place first built in 1962 for the World's Fair.

Van Nguyen and six neighbors in the NewHolly neighborhood of Seattle weren't satisfied with the city's lack of action on the cars speeding through their community- so they installed speedbumps themselves.