EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks again to Brock Howell of Bike Happy for putting together this comprehensive weekly newsletter.
TOP THINGS TO KNOW & DO
- Attend the third and final presentations of the Stoked Spoke Adventure Series this year on Wednesday, 6:30-9pm, at the Rhino Room. You’ll learn about amazing bikepacking and other bike adventures here in the Pacific Northwest. RSVP >
- Kathleen Emry, owner of Free Range Cycles, is retiring.
- Seattle City Council is set to move forward on major improvements to bike parking requirements for new buildings, although the update isn’t perfect.
- There’s sooo much bikeshare news this week, from vandals cutting brake wires to Eastside expansion.
- Cascade, SNG, and others are pushing SDOT to push forward on a planned two-way protected bike lane on 4th Avenue in Downtown. Take action >
SOCIAL, LIFESTYLE, & ADVENTURE
UPCOMING ACTIVITIES
- Thursday, Mar. 22
- Saturday, Mar. 24
- Sunday, Mar. 25
- Monday, Mar. 26
- Tuesday, Mar. 27
- Wednesday, Mar. 28
- 6:30-9pm, Stoked Spoke Adventure Series
- Thursday, Mar. 29
ARTICLES & POSTS
- Enjoy the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival by bike, Seattle Times.
- Ride the Alaskan Way Viaduct before you never can: Cascade’s Emerald City Bike Ride is on April 8 (Curbed, DJC).
- The Red Line Rides, led by Merlin Rainwater, highlighted the racist history of Seattle’s land use and housing policies (KUOW, Next City, Medium).
- “Ghost bike for Marvin Miller, after 12 years,” (WSB).
- Kathleen Emry, the owner of Free Range Cycles, is retiring and selling her Fremont shop (FB).
- Path Less Pedaled video interview of Jan Heine, the Ballard-based proprietor of Compass Bicycles and Bicycle Quarterly (YouTube).
- “Myth #7: Tubeless Tires Roll Faster,” (Jan Heine’s Blog).
- “Sedro-Woolley teacher preps for cross-country ride,” (Skagit Valley Herald).
POLICY & INFRASTRUCTURE
ACTION
- Take the Rainier Ave RapidRide survey, and write-in protected bike lanes for the length of Rainier Ave S as your top priority (because not enough people will).
- Tell Mayor Durkan to move forward on the 4th Avenue protected bike lane in Downtown.
- Apply to have your building named best for bicycling parking in the Seattle region.
- Tell the King County Public Health Board to repeal the bicycle helmet law.
UPCOMING EVENTS
- Thursday, Mar. 22
- 6-7:30pm, Beacon Hill Safe Streets meeting
- 5:30-7:30pm, Your Voice Your Choice Project Development Meeting — New Holly
- Saturday, Mar. 24
- Sunday, Mar 25
- Monday, Mar. 26
- Tuesday, Mar. 27
- Wednesday, Mar. 28
NEWS
- Bikeshare
- A vandal is cutting the brake cables of bikeshare bikes (Seattle Times, Curbed, Q13, KIRO7, KOMO, KING5, GeekWire, Stranger, Seattle PI).
- JUMP is ready to jump into Seattle with its e-bikes (MyNW).
- Bikeshare may soon expand to Bellevue, where they will require an e-bike-only fleet, capped at 400 for the initial pilot (GeekWire, KIRO7, MyNW).
- Redmond plans to authorize bikeshare by May, following Seattle’s framework more closely than Bellevue’s e-bike-only pilot (Redmond Reporter).
- In Ballard, SDOT is testing painted areas on sidewalks for bikeshare bikes (SDOT, GeekWire, Curbed, MyBallard, MyNW, KING5, SBB).
- ofo recently received $866 million in investment funding from Alibaba (PSBJ).
- Former SDOT Director Scott Kubly is now Chief Program Officer at LimeBike (Curbed).
- Bicycle Parking
- Seattle City Council’s PLUZ Committee approved new parking legislation, which includes significant improvements to long- and short-term bicycle parking within new development. However, the legislation continued to limit the requirements for bike parking in multi-family developments; after the first 50 long-term bike parking spaces, the the required amount is calculated at 75%. You can still weigh-in by emailing the city council at [email protected]. The full council is expected to take its final vote on April 2. (Urbanist, SCC Insight)
- Downtown
- Mayor Durkan & SDOT may be push the implementation of the 4th Ave Protected Bike Lane this year, and Cascade, SNG & SBB are pushing back (SBB).
- North Seattle
- SDOT will pave and improve the safety of several arterial streets in the Green Lake area in 2019, and is currently working on the roadway design plans now (Urbanist).
- Central Seattle
- The Washington Arboretum Loop Trail will have a grand opening celebration on April 8 (Madison Park Times).
- South & West Seattle
- SDOT and Metro have a survey for the Rainier Ave RapidRide. Despite question descriptions that indicate otherwise, none of the corridor design options provide protected bike lanes from the International District to Mt Baker or Columbia City, and the shown neighborhood greenways are essentially already planned as part of a separate project — so taking the survey is tricky if your goal is protected bike lanes on Rainier Avenue S (STB, SDOT Survey).
- “What ever happened to Phase 2 of SDOT’s 35th SW Safety Project?” (WSB).
- Snohomish
- A new 2.6-mile section of the White Horse Trail, which would’ve connected the Centennial Trail in Arlington to Trafton is no longer opening later this year due to likely landslides; another portion of the White Horse Trail was wiped out in the 2014 Oso landslide (Marysville Globe, Everett Herald).
SPORT
UPCOMING EVENTS
- Saturday, Mar. 24
- 9am-4pm, Independence Valley Road Race (Rochester)
- PNW Women’s Series (Bellingham)
- Collegiate Series: WWU Omnium (Bellingham)
- Sunday, Mar. 25
- PNW Women’s Series (Bellingham)
- Collegiate Series: WWU Omnium (Bellingham)
- Tuesday, Mar. 27
- Wednesday, Mar. 28
- 6pm, Seattle Bike Polo’s Beginner’s Night (Cal Anderson)
ARTICLES
- “Olympia Orthopaedics Sponsors Local Athlete All the Way to the National Stage,” (South Sound Talk).
SAVE THE DATES
- Seattle Critical Mass, Mar. 30
- 2018 Gorge Gravel Grinder, Apr. 8
- Washington Bike Summit, Apr. 29–30
- Bicycle Sundays: Twelve Sundays, May 20 – Sept. 16
BIKE INDUSTRY JOBS
Bike Retail
Sales Clerk, Aaron’s Bicycle Repair
Professional Bicycle Mechanic, Aaron’s Bicycle Repair
Bicycle Mechanic-in-Training, Aaron’s Bicycle Repair
Seasonal Bike Shop Mechanic, Bike Works
Seasonal Bike Shop Sales & Retail Assistant, Bike Works
Seasonal Recycle & Reuse Assistant, Bike Works
Mechanics & Retail Staff, Gregg’s Cycles
Nonprofit
Program Coordinator, Bike Works
Volunteer Program Assistant (Seasonal), Cascade
Major Taylor Ride Leader/Instructor, Cascade
Business Relations, Policy & Operations Manager, Commute Seattle
Government
Principal Planner / Strategic Advisor, SDOT (3/27)
Public Space Management Inspector, SDOT
Traffic Records & Data Supervisor, SDOT
Supervising Project Manager, SDOT
Walk N Roll Teacher Assistant, Intercity Transit
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STOLEN BIKES
In the past week, ten bikes were reported as stolen to SPD, not counting stolen bikes part of burglaries and assaults. Help fight back by (1) registering your bike on Bike Index, and (2) always locking up your bike with a U lock, even inside a bike room. Bicycle Security Advisors provides additional information on how to keep your bike safe.
TIP
- Dos & don’ts for riding the Burke-Gilman Trail (Seattle Magazine).
- Where sidewalk riding is banned, allowed (Seattle Times).
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Comments
2 responses to “Bike Happy: Get stoked + Eastside cuts bikeshare loose”
As far as Eastside bikeshare goes, it has, in effect, already launched, simply as a result of users riding the bikes over from Seattle. As of this posting, the LimeBike app is reporting a total of 8 bikes in Bellevue (3 electric), 10 in Redmond (0 electric), 6 in Kirkland (1 electric), 2 in Medina (one electric), and 11 in Woodinville (1 electric).
Basically, people ride the bikes where there are safe, flat bicycle facilities, and the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River trails are pulling the bikes in, well beyond what you would expect from a low-density area like Woodinville. On the Bellevue/Kirkland side, the opening of the 520 bridge trail was the catalyst.
You can the details of Bellevue’s bikeshare rules here: https://bellevue.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=5881371&GUID=48D59569-9BD4-42F5-A339-5ABC45972056.
Looks like it’s much more strict than Seattle, and will require the companies to spend a lot more money on active re-balancing of bikes. In particular, the companies will have to go through nightly and move bikes from residential areas to activity centers. It sounds good for reliable access to bikes in the activity centers. Although, I’m somewhat concerned about the effect of such rules on the profitability of the system. There are going to be a lot of trips that will end up costing the company more money to relocate the bike than what the user is going to be paying.
On the bright side, the list of designated activity centers where companies are encouraged to locate their bikes includes more than just Bellevue downtown. Also included are Overlake Hospital and the shopping areas just east of downtown (e.g. Best Buy, Home Depot), Crossroads Mall, Bellevue College, Eastgate P&R, and Factoria Mall.
One thing that the city’s document doesn’t discuss is that lots of bikes are inevitably going to be taken to transit hubs and destination centers that are technically outside the Bellevue city limits. For instance, bikes will move between Crossroads Mall and the Redmond Microsoft campus, and will also move between Bellevue downtown and the freeway stations along SR-520, which technically belong to the cities of Clyde Hill and Medina. There will also be a flow of bikes across the 520 bridge between Bellevue and Seattle. Ideally, bikes that get ridden into Bellevue from neighboring cities won’t have to be trucked back, simply because the permit for the specific bike was registered to the other city. The e-bike on nature presents a particular annoyance, in that every pedal bike ridden in from Seattle or Redmond will be non-compliant, and have to be actively removed. On the other hand, the number of such bikes will likely be limited, due to topography, and if the ground crews are already out distributing e-bikes, loading a couple of pedal bikes into the truck at the same time isn’t much of a hardship.
Another interesting Bellevue-specific rule is that the companies will be required to impose a financial penalty on riders for parking a bike in a city-defined “no parking” zone, which would specifically target city parks. The intent for users to leave bikes at the edge of the park, rather than in the interior seems clear enough. Hopefully, the GPS will be accurate enough so that people who do leave bikes at the park edges, like they’re supposed to won’t be hit with violation fees.