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^{August 19, 1997
Uncategorized

5}

Will ‘smart growth’ prove to be smart political topic?

_{August 19, 1997
Uncategorized

5}

Vice President Al Gore stopped in Seattle yesterday to pitch the administration's "livability agenda," a plan to help cities and counties battle the ills of urban sprawl. It's a subject folks around here know something about. Development has created one of the worst traffic problems in the country, helped transform the chinook salmon from a symbol of abundance to an endangered species, and steadily eroded the rural farms and forests. Across the country, sprawl has spawned a potent political issue that has leapt from the domain of cities and counties to a place of its own on the national stage, a move welcomed by some and worrisome to others. There is no denying the appeal of Gore's proposals, particularly to suburban voters. If political analysts are right, the battle for the White House next year will be won or lost in places such as Issaquah, Federal Way and Shoreline, suburban cities where voters have been feeling the effects of growth for years. Read More ›

^{Bruce Chapman
August 15, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

Omigod, Norman, what is that man doing on channel 29?

_{Bruce Chapman
August 15, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

Just when you thought you had seen it all, so to speak, there is Seattle public access star Troy J. Williamson engaged in what appears to be an oral sex act on TV. Suddenly, the screen goes fuzzy as the police raid the program and cart him off. An historic day for common sense in public access TV, some would Read More ›

^{August 15, 1997
Uncategorized

3}

Amtrak speeds up with ‘Acela’

_{August 15, 1997
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3}

In the Pacific Northwest, Amtrak is employing European-style Talgo tilt trains to incrase speeds between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver B.C. The $10 million Northwest trains, called the Amtrak Cascades, are designed for speeds upto 125 mph, but will poke along at a more modest clip - up to a legal limit of 79 mph - until track, rail crossing and signal improvements have been made. The work could stretch out over 20 years. Read More ›

The marble Peace Monument, dedicated to those in the US Navy who died in the Civil War, located on Capitol HIll in Washington, DC. Sculptor Franklin Simmons completed it in 1878.

^{Bruce Chapman
August 8, 1997
Citizen Leadership, Foreign Policy

6}

Ronald Reagan deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

_{Bruce Chapman
August 8, 1997
Citizen Leadership, Foreign Policy

6}

On a pleasant October day in 1982 the Theodore Roosevelt Association was in Washington, DC to place on permanent display in the White House the medal for the Nobel Peace Prize that TR was awarded in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War. Welcoming a commemorative luncheon group to the Roosevelt Room, President Ronald Reagan quipped that as he had earlier Read More ›

^{August 8, 1997
Uncategorized

4}

Second Amtrak Run Not In Budget

_{August 8, 1997
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4}

Plans to run a second Amtrak passenger train between Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle fell out of the House Transportation budget Friday. Now local hopes ride on the Senate revising the budget and including $6.3 million toward operating the train. The stakes are high for Skagit County, the region and the sate. A lone Amtrak train current streaks passengers daily between Seattle and Vancouver, stopping in Mount Vernon. The second train would leave British Columbia early in the day, allowing passengers who hop aboard in Mount Vernon to make day trips to Seattle. The train also opens up possibilities for travelers between Canada and Oregon. Read More ›

^{August 6, 1997
Uncategorized

3}

Officials try to save second rail to Canada

_{August 6, 1997
Uncategorized

3}

A proposed second daily Amtrak train from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., touted as an important transportation choice up and down the line, may be derailed. If it is, the consequences are all bad, warned Bruce Agnew, director of the Cascadia Project and a former Snohomish County Council member. "A second train would really make the corridor work. It wouldn't be a novelty, it would be a transportation option," he said Thursday. "If the (second) train goes a lot of things go as well." A second train, leaving Vancouver every morning, would allow passengers to make a one-way trip to Portland, Ore. As it is now, the run to Oregon requires an overnight stay in Seattle. Amtrak runs one train a day from Seattle to Vancouver, stopping in Edmonds and Everett on its way north in the morning and in the evening on the return trip. Read More ›

Business accounting concept, Business man using calculator with computer laptop, budget and loan paper in office.

^{Bruce Chapman
August 1, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

Budget deal bottom line is grotesque absence of leadership

_{Bruce Chapman
August 1, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

There before the cameras in Washington, DC were Republicans and Democrats, their grins so big their fillings were showing as they cheered the tax cut deal. Oh, boy, we’re all going to get re-elected in ’98, those wild smiles said. The exuberance points either to the finest accomplishment of political compromise in our time, or to a grotesque absence of Read More ›

^{August 1, 1997
Uncategorized

4}

Planners ponder the future of “Cascadia”

_{August 1, 1997
Uncategorized

4}

The United States, mighty as it is, can't tame crowding and pollution in the growing Eugene-to-Vancouver, B.C., megalopolis without Canada's help. That's according to the visionaries behind "Cascadia" -- people in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia whose vision of a cross-border unity is becoming less of a wild-haired concept and more of a problem-solving tool. Leaders of an 8-year-old Cascadia think tank yesterday offered a rough outline of what they portrayed as a radical but realistic way of unclogging the region's bottlenecks. They chose as their audience some of the 5,700 urban planners who yetserday began their four-day annual convention in Seattle. The Cascadia think tank would like to do even more, creaing a binational organization called the Cascadia Corridor Corp. that would oversee a $100 billion, 20-year rebuild of the roads and bridges in the Interstate 5 coridor: Cascadia's 465-mile "Main Street.".....The plan, known as Gateways Phase 1, was created by the Cascadia Project of Seattle's Discovery Institute. It proposes rebuilding I-5 through downtown Seattle, for example, with layers of underground car and transit lanes. A new tunnel would channel commuters under Lake Washington. An integrated Cascadia transportation scheme also would bring 300 "seamless" miles of high-occupancy lanes to the Seattle metropolitan area, plus hundreds of miles of scenic greenbelts along highways. Modeled on the cross-border efforts to improve the East Coast's St. Lawrence Seaway, the plan would combine government and private investment from both nations through innovative financing methods. Without such new investment, (UBC prof Alan) Artibise said, freight and passenger delays will increasingly constrict the region's economy. Cross-border truck traffic has doubled in the last five years, he said, partly because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Read More ›

^{August 1, 1997
Uncategorized

4}

Lawmakers seek compromise plan for another Amtrak train in county

_{August 1, 1997
Uncategorized

4}

Legislators may derail plans for a second Amtrak train tip through Whatcom County. The state House of Representatives has approved a transportation budget that doesn't include money for operating a second train, and boosters are scrambling to find a way to fget the money back into the budget through the Senate. "The one train we have now isn't much of a transportation option for people," said Bruce Agnew, who works with Seattle's Cascadia Project pushing transportation alternatives and improvements. "This second train is in line with regional plans to increase the options to driving on I-5."...Cascadia's Agnew said there is a move afoot in British Columbia to get on board with the new service. The B.C. Transportation Finance Authority is considering spending $30 million (Canadian) on track improvements, Agnew said Read More ›

Wild salmon swimming upstream at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park (Alaska).

^{Bruce Chapman
July 25, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

We’ve made little progress between Pig War and Fish War

_{Bruce Chapman
July 25, 1997
Citizen Leadership

5}

Something is fishy in the salmon dispute with Canada. Why would two friendly countries who do a billion dollars of business with each other each day wind up in a public relations confrontation like the blockading of the Alaska Ferry in Prince Rupert, BC? In political terms, who was supposed to be persuaded by British Columbia’s Premier Glen Clark calling Read More ›