Do you have petition fatigue yet? I hope not, because I have a few more for you.
First of all, Transportation for Washington wants you to write to both gubernatorial candidates — Rob McKenna and Jay Inslee — asking them to support biking, walking and transit as part of their campaigns.
McKenna has been an opponent of Eastside light rail. Meanwhile, Inslee visited Bike Works earlier this year and seemed interested in how to increase bicycle education in the state. I doubt bikes are going to play much of a part in this campaign, but transit probably will.
How do you see transportation playing a role in the gubernatorial race?
Here’s the text of TFW’s letter (sign it online):
Jay Inslee & Rob McKenna:
In Washington, all people deserve an equal opportunity to success, and that starts with the ability to get to a job. Unfortunately, too many Washingtonians lack the freedom to choose an affordable way to get to work. Working families can save money by skipping the gas pump when they have more choices. Investments in walking, biking, transit, and repair projects create more jobs than new highway infrastructure. Balanced infrastructure investments stitch together neighborhoods, supporting local small businesses. It’s time to invest in walking, biking, transit, and road repair to create jobs, support working families, and build a strong economic backbone for our great state.
On a more local scale, Cascade Bicycle Club has a petition running urging the City Council to set ambitious goals for implementing the new Bicycle Master Plan once it is completed. Obviously, a new plan is worthless without significant investment. And since modern bike infrastructure (cycle tracks, neighborhood greenways, bike signals, bus islands, etc) are more expensive than the old paint-only bike lanes, we’ll need to continue increasing our investment if we want to maintain (or increase) our current rate of bike lane miles per year.
In order for Seattle to accomplish our shared vision of becoming a city where everyone, from an eight-year-old child to her eighty-year-old grandmother, has the freedom to safely bike to where they need to go, we need an updated bike plan that calls for 200 new miles of world-class bikeways by the year 2020. But that’s not all. The plan should also include the goals of:
