Seattle’s New Subway?

Seattle. Photo taken August 6th, 2014 by Jeramey Jannene.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Seattle’s newest subway!: Seattle is building a new 2.7 mile subway between popular neighborhoods in Seattle that cost $700m. But the tunnel is for storm runoff mostly produced by the impervious cover of roads and parking lots. Joe Cortright wonders why this isn’t lumped into the conversation about the impacts of driving and how we subsidize transportation. (Joe Cortright | City Observatory)

Maui’s quick build neighborhood: After wildfires destroyed most of the city of Lahaina in Hawaii, officials have been looking for ways to quickly house survivors whose homes would take years to rebuild. A solution came in the form of creating a new neighborhood from prefabricated housing on public lands. After 100 days of construction, 600 people were housed. After including all costs including homes, water and road infrastructure, the neighborhood was constructed for $400k per unit. (Adele Peters | Fast Company)

Regional project block grants: Federal officials have run block grant programs for housing for years but a new report from Brookings suggest that the block grant could be used as a way to support transportation infrastructure projects of regional significance and build local capacity. Often larger regional projects require more coordination and longer term funding, but congress often fails to fund projects in that way. This makes a regional block grant a potential solution. (Adie Tomer and Ben Swedberg | Brookings)

A better paving system for runoff: To reduce runoff and increase filtration of rainwater, some paths in Valencia Spain have been paved with ceramics on top of layers of gravel. Tests have shown the design method can filter 10,000 liters per square meter per hour. The project is funded by the European Union and the Institute of Ceramic Technologies in order to figure out new uses for low value excess ceramic materials and find solutions to periods of excess heat and rains. (Damon Embling | Euronews)

California Forever seeks annexation: Facing the possibility of a tough county wide vote after enraging residents with plans for an experimental new town funded by billionaires, California Forever is considering annexation from two small local cities. The cities are worried about the impacts from development and inability to capture value for their struggling cities if the project gets approval. (Bryce Covert | Fast Company)

Quote of the Week

It allows the city to more openly negotiate inter-local agreements to provide regional transit service. As far as the urban transportation districts goes, the intention of the bill was to make it easier to establish an urban transportation district; and in saying ‘easier,’ just easier to get the vote on the ballot so that the voters could decide.

–Rusty Logan, an assistant director with the City of Billings who leads MET Transit discussing a new state law that would allow city transit agencies to extend service beyond their borders.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by journalist and host of KQED’s Forum Alexis Madrigal to discuss his book The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City.

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