Seattle's been asking all year whether zoning reform actually pencils out. Tacoma just answered: sixty-two percent more homes in the pipeline. If you're just joining us: Seattle's transit measure is a voter-approved sales tax that lets the city buy extra Metro service on top of the countywide baseline. Mayor Katie Wilson wants to renew it and expand it — more bus frequency, low-income fare help — while transit advocates push Council for a package strong enough to rebuild the frequent service that pandemic cuts gutted. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today — Wilson puts a bigger bus-tax ask in front of a council that still hasn't delivered a build rate, and a volunteer zoning atlas that's basically an indictment in disguise. Seattle Transit Measure renewal isn't over. Follow us wherever you're listening, and the next chapter comes to you. Here's Ryan Packer at The Urbanist:
The Seattle City Council is starting to consider amendments to the proposed renewal of the Seattle Transit Measure(STM) before it's sent to voters. Ahead of a Council hearing Thursday, Mayor Katie Wilson appeared at a rally on the steps of city hall to advocate for her proposal.
Quick update on the transit measure — the mayor's expanded bus package is now in council-amendment territory. Wilson rallied on the City Hall steps Wednesday, and council starts marking it up Thursday. The shape of it: a 0.15-percentage-point sales-tax bump that doubles the existing measure from 2020. That takes city-funded service hours from 176,000 to about 280,000 — call it a 60% increase, with frequency boosts on 10 to 15 routes. 280,000 hours, sure — but that money goes to King County Metro to run the buses. So what does Seattle actually control here besides paying more? And the timing kills me. She's stacking this transit ask on a council that can't point to a build rate yet, while her own administration's still fighting to claw back the One Seattle zoning from a court ruling. Two big asks, no scoreboard yet. The pitch is nights and weekends — when most routes barely run. If that lands, it's a real material win. But “expanded” still needs to mean more Seattle say over routes and lanes, not just a fatter subsidy with the same governance gap. Okay, real talk — King County Metro already runs the buses. So why does Seattle need its own transit tax, and what does the city actually get to control with that money? Yeah — and the split is genuinely confusing. Metro sets the baseline network: routes, drivers, fleet. But that service is spread across the whole county, and Seattle has long wanted more frequency than the county budget delivers. So the city layers its own money on top and buys extra service hours from Metro. The vehicle right now is the Seattle Transit Measure, a voter-approved 0.15 percent sales tax that's set to expire. Wilson wants to double it to 0.3 percent, the legal maximum for a city, which PubliCola says would raise about $138 million over ten years. The Urbanist says the renewed measure is aimed at boosting frequency on major routes in every corner of Seattle, including the D Line and Route 36. And it goes beyond service hours. SDOT says the existing measure has already paid for things like the red bus lane on Rainier Avenue South and, in 2025, more than $5 million in transit safety and security work with Metro, including on-bus ambassadors. So Seattle's control is at the margin: frequency, safety add-ons, free ORCA passes for low-income riders, and street work that makes buses faster. So when the city builds a bus lane, like the one proposed on Denny Way for the Route 8, is that coming out of this transit measure money, or is that a whole different pot? That one's a separate stream — the Denny Way bus lane proposal sits under SDOT's capital program, apart from the transit measure's service-hours funding. As this goes to the City Council and then to voters this fall, watch the contract language with Metro. That's where the concrete deliverables — 280,000 Metro trips a year and 22,000 free ORCA passes, per the mayor's own proposal — turn into accountability. From Dylan Wahbe at The Urbanist:
To close this gap – to make visible Seattle’s urban policy – I created Seattle Atlas, an interactive map that lets users see zoning, transit infrastructure, and bike lanes, so Seattleites can see for themselves what our city is doing well and where we are lacking.
So Dylan Wahbe builds the Seattle Atlas — an interactive map of zoning, transit, bike lanes — because regular people can't tell what the city actually allows on their own block. Think about that for a second. His model cases are Google's Project Sunroof and a Superfund-tracking map. So Seattle land use now sits in the same “needs a volunteer to make it legible” category as toxic waste sites. And this is the same pattern as PermitFlow, right? The cheapest way through this system keeps being a workaround somebody bolts onto the outside. The Atlas is helpful, but it also tells you the system failed. If SDCI's own communication were doing its job, Wahbe wouldn't have a project. That's the quiet indictment buried in a fairly optimistic op-ed. City of Seattle writes:
The One Seattle Comprehensive Plan includes goals and policies, along with an updated growth strategy, that will guide where and how Seattle grows and invests in communities over the next 20 years toward becoming a more affordable, resilient, and equitable city.
The One Seattle Plan is the city's 20-year growth roadmap, and the live piece right now is the Centers and Corridors legislation transmitted to Council back on January 29th — rezones in neighborhood centers and along frequent transit routes. There's even a March anti-displacement memo attached. So the framework exists. The documents exist. What we need to see is what's actually moving through Council, and what's just parked while the litigation runs. Right, and that's the whole problem in one page. A 20-year vision, a Director's Report, an anti-displacement memo — binders for days. Show me a permit. Show me a unit. And notice what froze alongside Centers and Corridors — the affordability lever. So while Seattle sits here admiring its own roadmap, the part that actually delivers cheaper housing is on ice. Seattle does control where this growth lands, and that matters. But when the plan page is mostly PDFs of plans about the plan, you can see where the energy went. Twenty-year vision, January legislation, and now it's June. One jurisdiction south, somebody actually moved a number — we'll get to that. Seattle's got the prettier website. Here's Ryan Packer at The Urbanist:
The City of Tacoma is seeing early signs of success after unleashing builders across formerly single-family residential zones last year, bucking a trend of stagnant housing permits statewide. In the year since Tacoma adopted new zoning standards last February, the number of new permits entering the pipeline jumped by 39% compared to the five-year average, with the number of units included in those permits growing by 62%, according to City figures.
Sixty-two percent. That's Tacoma — total units in the pipeline up 62% in the year since their February zoning overhaul. A real number, on a scoreboard, thirty miles south. And here's what stings: Seattle can't point to the same number. We're tangled in SEPA appeals while Tacoma just... moved and counted. Let's be precise — that 62% is units entering the pipeline, with applications up 39%. Those are permits in the queue; people aren't living in them yet. Ryan Packer at The Urbanist says himself it's likely not at the scale Tacoma's goals need. But as a mirror? Brutal. Tacoma reformed, then produced data showing pent-up demand. Seattle's Centers and Corridors phase is slipping to late 2026 after the court ruling — so we're looking at one city with a measuring stick, and one still arguing about the ruler. That's the whole thing, Sarah. We spent the week cataloguing what Seattle doesn't control or won't publish. Tacoma controlled the one lever it had and pulled it. Got a correction, a story idea, or something you think we should be watching at City Hall? Send us a note at seattledailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We really do read what you send.
We'll be watching for City Council amendments to the Seattle Transit Measure spending plan before the renewal heads to voters this fall.
As always, we've linked the stories behind today's briefing in the show notes, so you can dig into the ones you want to spend more time with.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.