Seattle finally has a number for the bus side — 100,000 more trips a year — and a zoning rewrite that's already law. So today we find out if either one actually pencils out. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. Two documents on the desk: the Neighborhood Residential rewrite, and Wilson's transit measure with fresh math from Ryan Packer at The Urbanist. And I'm done summarizing PDFs. We've read the table of contents three days running. Today I want the build math. Then let's start with one correction we keep making. That NR document is dated October 2024 — but the council enacted it. The document proposed; the council passed. We've been blurring those all week. Right, so it's on the books. The question has moved past 'can you build a fourplex' — ordinances 127375 and 127376 say you can. Townhouses, detached units, stacked apartments. That's settled. Settled on paper. Today we're looking at the back half of that PDF — off-street parking, open space, design standards. The unglamorous stuff that decides whether a fourplex actually gets built at 2026 interest rates. So name the rule. Which part of that document is suppressing the permit count? Parking, first. You require off-street stalls on a 4,000-square-foot lot, you've just deleted a unit. And the displacement-risk carve-out — that's the trapdoor that lets the city slow-walk the exact neighborhoods that need it. Permit applications are the leading indicator either way. Bellevue pulled real numbers off Wilburton. We're nearly a year past the state's June 30, 2025 deadline and still counting ordinances instead of houses. And meanwhile the transit side keeps winning. 100,000 trips, the D Line, the 36 — Sound Transit's out with a glossy progress report about wind monitoring and a 'summer of soccer.' Housing's the one stuck in committee. Here's what I want to stress-test on that 100,000 figure. It's funded by a 0.15% sales tax bump. The MHA fee revenue softened when development slowed — does this frequency math survive if the sales tax base does the same thing? Two initiatives stacking up rather than stalling — credit where it's due. But a vote headed toward the ballot still doesn't put a bus on the road, and a passed ordinance doesn't build a fourplex. So that's the test for today. How many of those 100,000 trips serve the NR blocks where the rezoning's supposed to deliver housing? If the bus shows up and the homes don't, we've spent a sales tax on empty corners. From the source:
This report describes a revised proposal for updating Seattle’s Neighborhood Residential zoning, including visualizations of potential outcomes. Neighborhood Residential currently represents Seattle’s lowest-density residential zoning and consists primarily of detached homes. We published an initial proposal in March 2024. This revised proposal includes changes that respond to feedback received…
Quick note on the document itself — it's dated October 2024, and the header still reads 'a proposal.' The council enacted this. The document proposes; the council acted. Those are two different sentences, and we've blurred them all week. Right, and the table of contents tells the whole story. The bonuses are up front — affordable housing bonus on page six, stacked flat bonus on page eight. The development standards? Buried in the back half. Off-street parking, open space, design standards — that's where a fourplex lives or dies, and it's pages twelve through fifteen. That's the part nobody puts in a press release. And that's the test. HB 1110 forces Seattle to allow the middle housing — duplexes, triplexes — on lots that used to be single-family only. The state set the floor. But whether anything actually pencils out at 2026 interest rates? Look at the parking rule and the design review on page fourteen more than the headline on page one. Okay, so Seattle keeps announcing it's ending single-family zoning — but what does that actually mean for a regular residential block, and what's the catch? The baseline change is real. Under the middle-housing ordinances the city adopted — ordinances 127375 and 127376, per SDCI — most of Seattle's residential land is now zoned Neighborhood Residential. That zone explicitly allows attached units like townhouses, detached units, stacked apartments, and accessory dwelling units on the same kind of lot that used to be reserved for one house. State law, specifically HB 1110, set the floor here, letting builders put up to four homes on lots that used to cap out at one. Then the fine print kicks in. The Seattle Times reported in mid-2025 that the legal green light doesn't mean a construction flood: borrowing costs are steep, materials are expensive, and the market's sluggish, so a lot of developers are sitting tight. There's another layer, too. When the City Council passed the comprehensive plan last September, it approved height and density bonuses specifically for stacked flats. Per The Urbanist, builders who can stack those incentives could, in theory, reach 12-unit multiplex apartments in former single-family zones. That ceiling is genuinely new. But the gap between what's allowed and what actually pencils out is still huge right now. So zoning got looser, but the economics are still the gatekeeper — does the city have any levers to close that gap, or is it just waiting on interest rates? Some are in the pipeline. Mayor Wilson's Centers and Corridors proposal — Phase 2 of the four zoning packages coming out of the comprehensive plan — would allow much higher density near the 30 new Neighborhood Centers and along major transit corridors. That's where the math for bigger buildings is more likely to work. Councilmember Eddie Lin's Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan is taking it up now. So watch whether those transit-adjacent upzones actually clear the council, and whether the city pairs them with permitting or financing help. Zoning permission by itself, as we're seeing, doesn't automatically produce housing. Ryan Packer, writing in The Urbanist:
On the other hand, that focus is also causing the measure's potential impact on Seattle's broader transit system to get lost in the shuffle. The boosted funding would allow an additional 100,000 bus trips per year in Seattle, a sizable boost.
Finally a number we can work with. Ryan Packer at The Urbanist pulls out the part the other coverage buried — 100,000 additional bus trips a year, frequency bumps on the D Line and the 36. See, that's a build number. After the zoning step-back we just did, where the answer to 'how many homes' is still a committee calendar — here's transit actually putting trips on routes I can name. Hold on though. Everyone fixated on the rate doubling, 0.15% to 0.3% — but the renewal itself is a 0.15% bump, around $138 million a year. That's the math that has to clear council by mid-July. And here's what gets me — Wilson's funding this off sales tax, not fees on development. She's routing clean around the MHA problem entirely. From Sound Transit:
Sound Transit is working to close a $34.5 billion future funding gap projected through 2046 to deliver what's outlined in the voter-approved Sound Transit 3 program. ST3 includes light rail extensions to West Seattle, Ballard, Tacoma, and Everett, new service between South Kirkland and Issaquah, and much more.
So Sound Transit drops a Spring/Summer Progress Report and the headline acts are a Wind and Wave Monitoring System on the I-90 bridge and a 'summer of soccer' transit pitch. Great. The trains will be on time for the World Cup. It's a marketing page, Devin. The actual number buried under it is the $34.5 billion funding gap through 2046 — that's what's standing between us and West Seattle, Ballard, Tacoma, Everett light rail. Right, and the maddening part is this — they've got a five-year Sustainability Plan. Where's the five-year housing-near-stations plan? The Urbanist piece we just hit puts 100,000 new bus trips a year on the table while Seattle's zoning compliance is nearly a year past the state's June 30 deadline. Different agencies, though. Sound Transit builds track; the city writes zoning. The gap you're pointing at is real, but it's two separate jurisdictions missing the same landing, instead of one body dropping the ball. City of Seattle writes:
The One Seattle Plan will guide City decisions about where we locate housing and jobs, and where and how we invest in transportation, utilities, parks, and other public assets. Our goal is to make the city more equitable, livable, sustainable, and resilient for today's communities and future residents.
So this is the 2014 plan page — the 20-year vision that's guided growth since 1994. And the city's helpfully bolted a banner on top telling you to go read the One Seattle Plan instead, updated 2026. Right, so the document we're staring at is basically a redirect notice. Two decades of vision, and the live version is one click away on a different page. Here's the thing, though — a comp plan is a framework. It says where housing and jobs and sidewalks go. It doesn't pour a single foundation. After the Neighborhood Residential walkthrough we just hit, that distinction matters. Exactly — the comp plan says "put housing here." The NR development standards in the back half of that PDF say "sure, but the open space and parking rules will eat your fourplex alive." The vision points to the block. The standards decide whether anything gets built. And the vision's been around since 1994. Thirty-plus years of frameworks. At some point, enough with asking whether Seattle has a plan. Look at the permit counts. We've got a 20-year roadmap, a 2026 update, and a state deadline that came and went last June. Plenty of maps. I want the build math the maps are supposed to produce. If Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily is part of your routine, consider subscribing wherever you’re listening. And if you have a moment, leave a quick review — it really helps other people find the show.
You’ll find links to all of today’s stories in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can follow it back to the source and read a little deeper.
That’s Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.