Chris Karnes | Tacoma, WA

About

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Chris Karnes, AICP, a Tacoma resident who has spent more than a decade shaping how the city plans, grows, and moves. I serve on the Tacoma Planning Commission in the public transportation seat, and as Vice-Chair of the Pierce County Planning Commission. My work sits at the intersection of transportation, housing, and land-use policy. This blog is about the question underneath every city decision: what is allowed where? It is the thread that connects how we get around, where we live, and the streets, parks, trees, and schools that hold a neighborhood together, each shaping the others.

Contact

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Reach me about transit, housing, or land use in Tacoma: Email: chris.tacoma (at) gmail.com Bluesky: @tacomatransit

Ibsen elected Mayor of Tacoma

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Unlike Tacoma’s neighbor to the north (Seattle), which saw a dramatic turnaround in results with Katie Wilson coming in from behind the incumbent by 9 points to lead a week later, Tacoma’s Mayoral election was essentially settled on election day - with former Tacoma Councilmember Anders Ibsen (who represented District 1) again defeating Councilmember John Hines (currently representing District 1) in a citywide electoral rematch.

Sound Transit to overhaul ST3 program, what it could mean for Pierce County

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It was a mixed bag of news from Sound Transit last week, with an announcement that light rail to Downtown Federal Way connecting to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Downtown Seattle would open on December 6th, 2025. This is good news for transit riders and urbanists in the South Puget Sound as light rail comes closer to fully serving South King County and Pierce County. However, as Ryan Packer at the Urbanist writes, the Sound Transit Board approved Motion M2025-36, otherwise known as the “Enterprise Initiative” which seeks to conduct a major overhaul of the voter-approved ST3 program as well as Sound Transit’s Long Range Plan, as it faces the twin constraints of inflation in construction costs and diminished projected tax revenues.

A clean sweep for Ibsen in Tacoma Mayor's Race

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Election as a Geographic Test Every election is a test of the sentiments of the public. Do they seek to change or to stay the course? Are the people hungry for new leadership? Are they satisfied with public services and infrastructure, the economy? And where are these sentiments the strongest or the weakest throughout a geography? It’s difficult to answer these questions, and damned near impossible without actual data.

Using AI and a Bike to Help Fix Tacoma's Potholes

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Your browser does not support the video tag. I was disappointed to see the recent failure of Tacoma’s Streets Initiative #2, which would have provided dedicated funding for street repairs and safety improvements. This motivated me to explore alternative ways to help keep our city’s streets in better shape. As someone who regularly bikes around Tacoma, I’ve experienced firsthand how many of our roads are deteriorating. Some are reaching a point where full replacement – and significant cost to the public – will be necessary.

Transit riders may get a seat on the Pierce Transit Board

Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For those of us who don’t drive, riding transit isn’t just about getting from point A to point B, it’s a lifeline to independence. Transit means the freedom to connect with our community, to pursue opportunities, and to live full lives, even without a car. But that freedom comes at a cost. It means sometimes carefully timing a sprint across a busy street to catch a bus that runs only once an hour, bracing against the wind and rain without a bus shelter, or feeling the weight of groceries digging into your hands as you walk a mile home.

SB 5184: How Tacoma moves beyond Parking Minimums

Tue, 06 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Senate Bill 5184 (The Parking Reform and Modernization Act), originally proposed by Jessica Bateman (D-Olympia), is due to be signed into law later tomorrow by Washington’s Governor Bob Ferguson. The bill seeks to reform the practice of requiring excessive vehicle parking at businesses and homes throughout the state, which the Legislature finds “needlessly drive up development costs, especially for housing,” as well as having negative impacts like furthering automobile dependence, harming public health, and contributing to climate change.

Housing for the working class

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Home in Tacoma (HiT) was a landmark achievement, the result of five years of meticulous planning, policy reform, and community engagement. By rezoning two-thirds of the city and overhauling single-family zoning, HiT has cleared the path for much-needed housing development. However, as the Planning Commission warned in their final recommendation, this effort alone cannot guarantee housing affordability across all income levels. While HiT sets the stage for building homes for higher-income households and those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, it leaves one part of our community out in the cold: the working class.

Happy Year of the Snake

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I would like to wish my friends in China on the other side of the world a Happy New Year and happy year of the snake. I hope that this year brings you all good health, prosperity and new possibilities. If you live in the West and haven’t noticed, a quiet revolution has been taking shape on a Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu or RedNote. In the lead up to this revolution, the US federal government enacted a draconian law meant to coerce, censor and align content filtration on the short-form social media app TikTok with the incoming Administration.

Time to reform Tacoma's Crossroads Centers

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tacoma has spent a lot of energy and effort to revitalize its downtown into a vibrant urban center and to plan for future growth in its mixed-use growth areas. These centers are meant to provide walkable commercial services, densifying environments, with added opportunities for housing, public amenities and access to robust public transportation. Growth centers are classified into three broad categories: Regional Growth Centers, Neighborhood Centers and Crossroads Centers. There are only two Regional Growth Centers: Downtown and Tacoma Mall, which represent the largest areas in the city with the highest levels of land use intensity in terms of commercial and residential development.

Home in Tacoma final passage

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today is the day. This evening the Tacoma City Council is poised to vote on the final Home in Tacoma code package. With that event, I thought I would get some reflection down for better or for worse. It’s taken five years to get this far, longer than a presidential term, longer than most people’s journeys through high school, and even longer than the COVID-19 pandemic. The substance of the package is enormous relative to most items that the Planning Commission and Tacoma’s planning department have taken on over the years: 246 pages of changes to the Land Use Regulatory Code.

Towards Transit Oriented Development

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A primary focus of Home in Tacoma has been to identify just how to absorb new growth into areas outside of the regional growth centers and mixed-use centers. The largest change by land area is the conversion of single family zoning to an inclusive zoning framework that enables more housing types citywide: duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units, and clusters of townhouses or cottage housing. Housing Types considered for Home in Tacoma Another significant change is the addition of mid-scale residential along walkable corridors, which should enable a bridge between development in the higher-intensity mixed-use centers and the lower-scale predominantly residential neighborhoods.

Mapping Transit (In)Equity in the Puget Sound

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How far can a traveler on public transit at 8AM on a Monday go in an hour in the Puget Sound region? The answer depends on where you start. If a rider lives near a major transit hub in a central city, Seattle, per se, you can get to just about all areas of the city as well as everywhere in the region, Bellevue, Lynnwood, Federal Way, Everett and Tacoma. Enormous opportunities for access to employment, cultural institutions, and education are possible without the use of a private vehicle.

Addressing transit inequity in Tacoma

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As it stands Tacoma, the second largest city in the Puget Sound region after Seattle, has a dearth of local transit service. The most frequent bus route in Tacoma on weekdays, Route 1 - 6th Ave - Pacific Ave, will operate once every half hour due to a lack of bus operators. While other local transit services in the Puget Sound region have continued a steady expansion from Kitsap Transit’s fast ferries to Intercity Transit’s fareless service to King County Metro’s Rapidride lines, to Sound Transit’s regional light rail expansion in King County, Pierce Transit has struggled to keep even hourly service on some routes.

Climate and Planning

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The debate on the existence of human-driven climate change is over. For the last two centuries humans have been burning solid, liquid, and gaseous fossil fuels in increasing amounts, which has been gradually changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. And with those changes, new changes occur in the complex system of our planet’s biosphere, yielding differences in typical surface temperatures, rates of precipitation, even the acidity of seawater.

The Generational Disconnect in Housing

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Based on written and oral testimony about the Home in Tacoma project, I conclude that there is an overall generational disconnect between people who bought a home in the housing market 25 or 30 years ago and those who are trying to find a place to live today in the 2020s. The Housing Market in 1996 People who bought earlier in areas zoned single family made the assumption that nothing would ever change.

On Transit and Housing

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

For Tacoma to continue to be a welcoming city to people who make less than the regional median income, we must plan to build more housing in such a way that all people will be able to afford it, regardless of their income level or family size. Access to affordable housing and access to transportation options like buses, light rail, bike lanes and sidewalks are deeply related. The old school of thought in real estate was to “drive until you qualify” in order to buy or rent a home, but people who go that route sometimes find that they get more than they bargained for by unwittingly exchanging housing costs for transportation costs.

Trees Versus Views

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I have the pleasure, honor and duty of serving on Tacoma’s Planning Commission. I was appointed in 2019 by the Tacoma City Council in the public transportation seat. I do my best to represent the interests of bus and rail riders and operators as well as the city’s interest in supporting public transportation. The point of the Planning Commission is to ensure that the City’s plans are generally consistent with the overall Comprehensive Plan, otherwise known as the One Tacoma plan.

One Man Data Band

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Pictured above: Bus Arrival prototype with data fed by R and OneBusAway API Tacoma has not historically been known for being a city rich in technical talent. We have Infoblox, TrueBlue, Accumula and a handful of other growing tech companies, but until recently it has been hard to find anyone who knows their way around a spreadsheet, much less a database. Learning technical skills in the South Sound is born out of necessity of getting the job done as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible.

Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

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