...half of all trips in the [City of Vancouver] taken by walking, biking, or transit rather than automobile.
"...half of all trips in the [City of Vancouver] taken by walking, biking, or transit rather than automobile." Charles Mudede

Here is the bad news: There is currently nothing in Seattle's political system that has the power to realize affordable and public forms of housing in the near future. We can only expect the situation to get worse because the market has limited the solutions and discussion about housing to the limits of the market. Seattle is not the only city in this bad situation. Just this week, Vancouver BC announced an ambitious housing strategy to "make sure [it] remains a place for all people, all incomes." But 90 percent of this strategy is devoted to increasing market-rate rentals and owner-occupied condos and townhomes. The thinking of this strategy is still determined by neo-classical economics, with its belief in prices as reliable transmitters of market information. (A strategy that looked at the housing market from other economic positions, such as that described by excellent real estate reporter Kerry Gold in the piece, "Academic takes on Vancouver’s housing-supply ‘myth,’" would have been a very different and probably more effective solution to the housing crisis.)

That said, we in Seattle have to accept that for now (or the foreseeable future—and the only future we can act on is a visible one), we have lost housing to the speculators. But what we've lost in the housing sector, we might be able to compensate for with wins in the transportation sector. And the gains there have been impressive in both Seattle and Vancouver.

In the latter city, 50 percent of trips "are now done by foot, bike, or transit." As for Seattle, its "transit ridership is growing faster than any other city" in the US, and its Link line continues to break ridership records; since May, monthly boardings have been above 2,000,000. These achievements have real health and economic consequences. Transit saves money. It's revolutionizing lives.

Stories like this are becoming common:

For a while, Kelly Twiss Noonan tried taking the King County Metro bus to work, but the schedule was unpredictable and inconvenient. So for years, she drove and paid to park in downtown Seattle.

Then the University of Washington light rail station opened. Now she takes the train to her job as the managing shareholder of Seattle law firm Stokes Lawrence.

She gets to walk through a nice park on her way to the train, and the trip downtown takes about 15 minutes.

“Plus, the light rail doesn’t get stuck in traffic,” she said. “I just love it.”

The future of transportation in the region is not in the mist. A good part of it is visible, and therefore can be targeted by democratic action. Also, public transportation simply doesn't have the stigma of public housing, the key solution in non-neoclassical forms of housing strategies.