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Seattle needs new resources to handle climate change including clean air shelters and new rules to protect workers when temperatures soar and wildfire smoke returns. The city also must do more to help reduce its own contributions to global warming. This week, Mayor Bruce Harrell signed an executive order with new requirements hoped to “reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions” in Seattle’s transportation sector.

“We recognize the inherent link between our infrastructure, transportation systems, climate, and community wellbeing – meeting the scale of the climate crisis and fulfilling our commitment to strong and healthy communities requires addressing them together,” Harrell said in the announcement on the order signed Thursday at City Hall.

The new plan includes more than 20 initiatives, including making 20 miles of “Health Street” roadways permanently marked for pedestrians and bicyclists, hosting a youth environment summit in 2023, and eliminating all gasoline vehicles from the city’s fleet by 2030.

The city will also launch an initiative to create three “low-pollution neighborhoods” by 2028. The designation would require decarbonizing buildings and transportation “while investing in community resiliency, equity, and economic opportunity,” the Harrell administration said.

The city will “continue to invest in a network of bus priority lanes on major arterials through Seattle Transit Measure and Move Seattle Levy” to do more to encourage the use of public transit, the mayor also said.

The order comes following a summer that ended with Seattle choked with wildfire smoke and sustained high temperatures that carried into October. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Seattle is falling short of goals to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Each year we are grappling with an increasingly severe whiplash of climate impacts. From flooding this spring to drought in the summer, topped off dangerous smoke and wildfires this fall, we see from our lived experiences and our GHG emissions data that we need to be far more aggressive in eliminating climate pollution and building resilience among our most impacted communities,” Jessyn Farrell, director, Office of Sustainability & Environment, said.

The full “One Seattle Transportation and Climate Justice Executive Order” is below.

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