Transportation Impact Fee Proposal Resurfaces in Seattle

he Seattle city council is once again weighing a proposal to institute transportation impact fees, which would impose a charge on new developments that would fund transportation improvements.

As Ryan Packer explains in The Urbanist, these fees are aimed at mitigating the impacts on local infrastructure and roads caused by new projects. “Transportation impact fees, a tool authorized by the state legislature as part of the Growth Management Act, are levied by more than 70 cities statewide but have never been used in Seattle.”

However, “the issue of adding additional fees on new housing during a well-identified affordability crisis is causing additional scrutiny of the idea.” The proposal is being appealed by a “shadowy group” called the Seattle Mobility Coalition, which claims that the city skimped on its environmental review of proposed development impact fees. As Packer notes, “an impact fee that discourages housing growth in Seattle, making sprawl more cost-competitive and drives up commute times would put more demand on the region’s transportation system overall, defeating the entire purpose of the impact fee program.”

Supporters of the fee see it as a replacement for revenue from the Move Seattle transportation levy, which expires next year. Meanwhile, development permit applications are slowing down, with a 62 percent decline in applications in the second quarter of 2023 from the previous year.