Seattle’s least talked about light rail station could be it’s most bikeable.
The planned East Link station at I-90/Rainier/23rd Ave will have an entrance right off the I-90 Trail and will be located in the midst of a neighborhood with a high bike commute rate.
Thursday’s meeting at the Northwest African American Museum will specifically look at bicycle amenities at the station and possible connectivity improvements with nearby neighborhoods.
Meeting details:
You are invited to attend a Sound Transit open house for the future light rail station at I-90 and Rainier Avenue in Seattle. Sound Transit would like your feedback on the planned bicycle amenities at the station. In addition, Seattle Department of Transportation staff will be present to talk about future improvements for bicyclists around and near the station.
East Link Open House • Seattle I-90 Neighborhoods
Northwest African American Museum
Sept. 12, 2013
6 – 8 p.m.
2300 S. Massachusetts St., Seattle
Presentation at 6:30 p.m.
Sound Transit is also holding a meeting Tuesday to discuss bicycle amenities at the 130 Ave NE Station in Bellevue. Details:
Please join us at an East Link open house on September 10 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., with a presentation at 5:30.
Highland Community Center
14224 Bel-Red Road, BellevueSound Transit will present the 60 percent design for the 130th Avenue Northeast Station and would like to hear your comments about the bicycle facilities planned for the station.
The City of Bellevue will also share information about its concurrent transportation projects at the open house.
Comments
7 responses to “Help guide Judkins Park light rail station access”
“Seattle’s least talked about light rail station could be it’s most bikeable.
Please don’t make me get all pedantic on you. The word is its not it’s! Yeah, English is a weird language and we have what are known as homophones i.e. a word sounds the same, but its spelling makes all the difference in the world to its meaning.
Yeesh. I’m writing on the road, so please ignore iPhone autocorrect errors. You get the idea.
‘Twould be good to expand the discussion to better bicycle accommodations inside the cars. When you hang up an adult-size bike, its saddle protrudes into the aisle. It’s a ridiculous situation. And it’s inconvenient to hoist bikes up onto the hooks in the first place. Not all of us ride superlight racing bikes all the time! What’s needed is to remove enough seats from at least one car of each train to allow bikes to be rolled on and leaned against the side of the car. There could be fold-down seats for when no bikes are on board.
Generally people carrying bikes on trains benefit from wide aisles, just as riders on crowded trains do generally (because wide aisles mean more standing capacity and easier movement to and from the doors). Unfortunately removing seats to widen aisles is unpopular.
On the other hand, bikes take up a lot of space on transit vehicles, and people carrying bikes take longer to board and exit. It’s nice to have that option for general mobility, but it doesn’t scale up to the masses. In places where bike/transit commutes are common people park their bikes at the station. What do we need to be able to do this? We have lots of distributed employment centers, to which convenient transit is available from a limited number of places.
From where I live I can get up to Lynnwood and Everett pretty fast on the buses from I-5/45th, and I can get to Kirkland, Redmond, and Bellevue pretty fast from Montlake (or the Green Lake P&R); I can get to all these stops on bike pretty easily. If I lived closer to I-90 I could easily get to Bellevue and Issaquah from the I-90/Rainier stop and its bike access is quite good. But secure, covered bike parking is lacking in most of these places. We need some of those nickel-per-hour bike lockers at the places in Seattle where people catch reverse-commute buses.
That assumes that the bike is needed at only one end of the transit ride. Many people need their bikes at both the first mile (to a transit stop) and the last mile (from there to their destination). Even bike share only works for that if there is a station at each end of the ride. We’re nowhere near that point yet.
Short hop at beginning or end of transit run seems like a great application for a folding bike.
That leaves the challenge of overcoming conformity. In a world where people will fight over whether eyeglass temples should go over or under helmet straps we have a long hard road to pedal in that department.
Would like to see the bike path connected to the station area from the west also.
The only connections to the I-90 flyer stop from the bike path require crossing some of the more dangerous I-90 ramps.