You had me at “free coffee.” Oh, and also at “Tell Us What You Think about Biking and Walking.”
That’s right, SDOT wants to buy you coffee and chat about walking and biking in your neighborhood. They also want you to complete this online survey.
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Comments
11 responses to “SDOT will buy you coffee to chat about walking and biking”
I saw the dates/locations, took the survey, and only at the end did I realize that this was about neighborhood greenways. Interesting.
Awesome! I love a chance to tell SDOT what I think. I can’t wait to get some free coffee and tell them some more.
Am I the only one having trouble with the survey? It keeps kicking me back to the first question. Maybe it’s a browser issue (I’m using Chrome) but I don’t have time to test in other browsers.
looks like no one bikes or walks in the south end neighborhoods.
West seattle left hanging again.
Thanks again Meanie. I was looking for a nearby free coffee too. Looks like I have a long ride from west Seattle to give them a piece of my mind.
Survey worked OK for me.
The survey asks about the _images_ but halfway thru I realized they are probably actually intending to ask about the _text_. So I was answering based on which picture had the nicest weather, etc., but they were probably actually asking something else. Oh well. I will go meet them at Zoka’s.
I sent the following by email to WalkAndBike. (The survey was too ambiguous for me so I bailed.)
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The generalization of what encourages me to walk is having a nice walk. This encompasses:
– interesting streets (residential, small scale commercial or retail)
– short wait times to cross busy streets (more than 30 seconds is a long time)
– a buffer between high speed traffic and the sidewalk
– no superblocks or places peds can’t get through
– services within walking distance (e.g. not more than 10-15 blocks)
Bicycling is a whole different set of cases for me:
– room for cars to pass me safely (e.g. 2 lanes in same direction or center turn lane)
– no sharrows (absolutely meaningless)
– bike lanes for going up hill (down hill, they are to narrow to go fast)
– curb bulbs that don’t obstruct bike lanes (merging with traffic is dangerous)
– traffic signal sensors that work for bicycles (otherwise I’ll run a red light)
– smooth pavement (it takes twice the energy to ride on rough pavement)
– eliminate potholes and other distractions (if I’m watching the road, I’m not watching traffic)
Your points on smooth pavement and potholes are so true, and so frequently neglected (new infrastructure is so much easier to sell than maintenance). Especially for people unfamiliar with riding in traffic, having to worry about looking down instead of looking around is a huge point of stress.
Good points, Peri. I agree with those.
Given sharrows vs no sharrows (e.g. Pacific St vs 40th St in Wallingford), I’ll choose the sharrows because it makes me think the cars might be expecting me a little more. But they are not as helpful as other things, like safe space for passing.
I’m not sure I understand why they’re asking for input on cycling. We just finished an exhaustive and exhausting multi-year process to update a city-wide bicycle infrastructure planning document. Shouldn’t we just be following its recommendations at this point?
In terms of walking, oh man, where do I start? All of my wishes are about enforcement and basic, common sense regulations.
– enforce the parking restrictions near intersections to improve sight lines
– prevent sidewalks from being closed for construction without a temporary and safe pedestrian walkway
– prevent sidewalks on both sides of the street from being closed at the same time
– I shouldn’t have to push a button for a “walk” sign. I should get one by default.
– eliminate right-turn-on-red
– on streets with no sidewalks, enforce parking rules to make sure a public right-of-way for pedestrians is maintained as required by law
– get bicycle parking off of the sidewalk and onto the street
Hi Everyone- Dawn from SDOT here. Sounds like I should’ve added a bit more clarification to why we are conducting the survey. Now that the Bike Master Plan Update (BMP) is finished and we are starting to implement the Neighborhood Greenway network, we want to encourage their use. This supports Strategy 6.3 in the BMP and Strategy 6.1 in the Ped Master Plan. We are using the survey as a quick and dirty way to learn a bit more about what photos and activites might entice the ‘willing but wary’ to walk and bike more. Then we’ll build out a small campaign. This will be more obvious at our coffee chats where we’ll be able to chat with people taking the survey. We steered away from using the term Neighborhood Greenway, because many people aren’t familiar with them yet. We wanted them to fill out the survey regardless and also were interested to know what folks think of when they hear the term. Thanks for participating and spreading the word.