Rita Hulsman: ‘Please join me in honoring Steve’s legacy with your YES vote to approve Proposition 1’

| Posted

October 22, 2024

A man and woman from the shoulders-up looking at the camera. — Steve and Rita Hulsman. Photo courtesy of Rita.

Rita Hulsman lost her husband of more than 40 years in December when a person turned his Chevy Tahoe in front of Steve while Steve biked downhill on Marine View Drive SW not far from his home. Steve died shortly after the collision. He was 66.

In the months since that horrible day, Rita has become an outspoken advocate for the need for safer streets. She attended City Council Transportation Committee meetings to testify about the need for increasing safety funding in the transportation levy they were developing, and now she is urging Seattle voters to approve Proposition 1.

Rita penned an op-ed, which Cascade Bicycle Club published on their blog. She makes a powerful and heartfelt case in favor of the proposition, but perhaps because my mother was an elementary school teacher and my kid is now in first grade, this section really got to me:

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As a recently retired elementary school teacher, I encourage you to think about the many students who deserve safe routes to schools. As a widow and mom, I urge you to think of your family members, friends and neighbors who deserve the right to safely walk, bike, and roll through our neighborhoods.

Whether it’s a transportation levy or any other issue, these are the thoughts that should guide everyone’s voting decisions. What would be best for the next generation and for the people you love? We must invest in solutions so that young people today are not doomed to repeat the tragedies of the current generation.

I urge all Seattle voters to support Proposition 1, the Keep Seattle Moving Transportation Levy, which will appear on your Nov. 5 general election ballot. It comes too late for Steve, a pillar of the Seattle bicycling community, but approving this sensible transportation package could save the lives of other people who walk, bike, or roll on Seattle’s frequently inhospitable and dangerous streets.

Thank you, Rita.

Read her full op-ed on the Cascade Blog.

About the author:

Tom Fucoloro is the Founder and Editor of Seattle Bike Blog. He is also the author of Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars.

Tags:

2024 general election, 2024 seattle transportation levy, cascade bicycle club, rita hulsman, steven hulsman

4 responses to “Rita Hulsman: ‘Please join me in honoring Steve’s legacy with your YES vote to approve Proposition 1’”

Matthew Snyder

October 22, 2024

Please vote no.

This levy falls far short of the kind of serious, climate-focused, transformational plan we need to rethink our transportation infrastructure. It’s incremental change wrapped into a long-term package with a big price tag. It’s really hard for me to imagine anyone being excited or motivated by the vision of the next 10 years embodied in this levy. But even if it were ambitious in scope, SDOT has not shown that it can be trusted to execute on such a vision, having routinely failed at delivering on the promises of Move Seattle and of Vision Zero, while fatal and serious injuries continue to increase on our streets and substantial VMT reduction seems like a distant goal. A “yes” vote is a vote for continued glacial progress with the wrong drivers at the wheel.

Reply
1. syen
  
  October 23, 2024
  
  If a “yes” vote is a vote for glacial progress, a “no” vote is a vote for a complete halt to improvements over the status quo, if not a reversal of progress with potential actions like road expansions, removing bike lanes (as has been done in Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR), and letting buses get slower and slower as congestion increases.
  
  Reply
BeanEater

October 28, 2024

Vote Yes if you care about Seattle. Vote No if you don’t care…and want Seattle to decline. Opposition to Prop 1 as expressed by Matthew Snyder above is naive insofar as it rejects the notion that improvement can come with compromise. In a democracy, nobody gets everything they want. I also wish there was more money for bike lanes and less for big dumb road projects in Keep Seattle Moving. But I have voted yes because $133.5 million for bike projects is monumental and transformative. Achieving the “serious, climate-focused” plan that Matthew calls for can only be achieved at the federal level through bold regulatory action–which is off the table as long as the GOP has control of the House, Senate, or Executive branch. Local transportation policy has no bearing on the global climate. But local transportation policy that funds better active transportation can save lives and improve our health and local air quality and make Seattle more livable and prosperous for us all.

Reply
1. Matthew Snyder
  
  October 31, 2024
  
  I may be naive — although having watched the failures of the Move Seattle years and the systemic underinvestment in the Rainier Valley, I feel like my opinion is pretty data-driven — but I’m not sure who you’re arguing against here. I never said anything about how improvement can’t come from compromise; you just made that up. I didn’t say anything about Prop 1 having “big dumb road projects,” because it doesn’t. But c’mon, you can’t seriously write something like “Local transportation policy has no bearing on the global climate” and then proceed to call _other_ people naive!
  
  We are living in a climate emergency and a pedestrian safety emergency. We need plans that take those things seriously. This plan absolutely fails that test on both fronts. You want to pass the buck to the federal level, and I want to live in a city that confronts these things head on .
  
  Reply