Lake Washington Blvd is reopening to people walking and biking Friday as the city’s Keep Moving Street program returns. The street will remain mostly car-free between Mount Baker Beach and Genesee Park from April 9 through 18.
Seattle has experimented with various versions of this Keep Moving Street for the past nine months, and they have been very popular (see the video above). Every time they shut it down and allow car traffic to take over, it’s a huge loss. So Rainier Valley Greenways is running a campaign to extend the project to Seward Park, keep the project open all year and to work with community to come up with a permanent design for the street that enables comfortable walking and biking on the street in some fashion.
There is no equivalent to the Burke-Gilman Trail in South Seattle, so a permanent route along Lake Washington Blvd would be huge for all ages and abilities biking access in the neighborhood. But it’s not just about biking. The open street also increases public access to the whole waterfront, an incredible public asset. It’s like an accessible extension of the lakefront park.
Additionally, Seattle Parks has been hosting Bicycle Sunday along the street for more than half a century, so this is not a major new concept. If anything, starting and stopping the program is more disruptive and confusing than simply leaving it in place.
Many Seattleites have only ever known life with the Ballard Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail held up in court. Children born when the City Council first approved the route are now getting ready to vote in their first election. Seattle has nearly wasted an entire generation arguing over about 1.2 miles of trail, and the Washington Court of Appeals just decided to extend the fighting even longer.
The court ruled this week that the Seattle Hearing Examiner needs to redo a 2018 decision that determined the city’s massive environmental study of this short trail segment was sufficient. That study rivals freeway megaprojects in scale and depth. It’s an absurd document that took years to create and goes over the entire trail proposal with a toothbrush.
But the Appeals Court’s decision has nothing to do with the study’s findings or the trail design or even the businesses along the planned route. In fact, it seems to have little or nothing to do with SDOT or the trail at all. Instead, the court levied a rather harsh rebuke of Ryan Vancil, now the Seattle Hearing Examiner. In 2017–18, Vancil was hearing the appeal against the Missing Link’s environmental impact statement as Deputy Hearing Examiner. At the same time, he had applied to replace the city’s retiring Hearing Examiner and was going through the interview process, a fact he did not disclose during the proceedings. Because the City Council appoints the Hearing Examiner and the Missing Link was a Council-approved project, “Vancil violated the appearance of fairness doctrine,” the Appeals Court wrote in its decision reversing King County Superior Court’s decision.
“Because the deputy hearing examiner failed to disclose that he was seeking appointment by the Seattle City Council to replace the retiring city hearing examiner while he was also considering the adequacy of a council–endorsed project, we reverse the trial court’s summary judgment in favor of the city, enter summary judgment for the coalition, and remand for a new hearing.”
UPDATE: The Hearing Examiner declined to comment, saying, “It would be inappropriate for the Hearing Examiner to comment on a legal ruling concerning a matter on remand to the Office of Hearing Examiner.”
SDOT said in a statement that “the decision was solely concerned with the procedures followed by the Hearing Examiner, which were outside of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT’s) control or knowledge. The decision did not include any negative findings about SDOT’s plans or Final Environmental Impact Statement.”
But the result is largely the same, at least in the near-term. The project now needs to go back to the Hearing Examiner, and that means more delays. And to the Ballard Coalition, that’s a win. (more…)
The I-90 trail just got a major upgrade in Factoria.
A new bike trail tunnel and flyover opened Wednesday allowing trail users to bypass the busy intersection with Factoria Blvd and the I-90 off-ramp entirely. It also saves users some elevation change.
I biked out there to try it out Wednesday, and it’s fantastic. Not only do users now get to skip a stressful intersection, but it also crosses over to a new trail on the north side of SE 36th Street. Previously, trail users had to use skinny paint-only bike lanes, a significant gap in the major trail.
For now, the trail ends at 132nd Ave SE, where users can cross at a light to access the bike lanes. But work is underway to extend the trail to 142nd Pl SE, which has bike lanes across I-90 toward Bellevue College.The eventual goal is to extend this new trail all the way to Lakemont Blvd SE, which would be much more direct than the current route, but that segment is not funded.
The 3.6-mile stretch from Factoria Blvd to Lakemont Blvd is known as the “Eastgate Gap,” and this project crosses one of the more difficult sections.
The Northgate biking and walking bridge is an enormous undertaking. I-5 in this part of town is level with or even above street level, so the bridge needs to climb in order to get above and over the massive freeway. But it’s needed if Northgate Station is going to be able to reach people on the west side of the freeway.
Crews have been closing the I-5 Express Lanes for several days of intense work in recent weeks to install large structural elements that were constructed off-site.
The project is still aiming for completion in fall 2021 in time for the opening of Northgate Station. A lot of things have had to come together to meet this deadline, and it’s great to see that goal seemingly within reach. It had to gather funding from the Move Seattle Levy, Sound Transit and the Washington State legislature in order to become reality.
It’s also becoming a symbol, at least for me, of a better future once COVID is finally behind us. Knowing that more Link stations are coming online later this year and that this bridge should be ready to greet the first passengers is really inspiring to me after such a dismal year. We still have more time in COVID protocols (especially us parents), but there is promise on the other side. Because of projects like this, which people worked so hard for in the last decade, our city will open up this decade in ways it never did before COVID arrived.
And for as much criticism as I send to Mayor Jenny Durkan, it is really cool that when this opens students will be able to use it to access two years of free tuition at North Seattle College thanks to her Seattle Promise program.
This bridge is going to need a better name. “Northgate Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge” is way too long. I usually just call it the “Northgate Bridge,” but that maybe isn’t great because there is already a nearby I-5 bridge over Northgate Way. Maybe “Northgate Station Bridge?” Anyone have any other suggestions?
Here’s a video with some cool flyover footage of the area: (more…)
Friend of Seattle Bike Blog Marley Blonsky stars in the new mini-documentary All Bodies on Bikes alongside Kailey Kornhauser. The 13-minute film premiered today, so check it out above.
The film follows them on a bike camping trip and other bike adventures while they discuss their relationships with their bodies and society’s harmful associations with weight and body size.
Marley has been a longtime friend of the site and was the last in-person guest from outside my household to join the Bike News Roundup chat before the 2020 COVID shutdown. Not only has she been a strong voice for helping more fat people feel welcome on a bike, she also works hard to improve the bike industry’s offerings for people with larger bodies. So it’s great to see Shimano featuring her in their video series, hopefully a sign of changes to come from more companies.
Also, Marley is going to teach a two-part bike camping class online in April. You can learn more and register here. Not only is the class a way for the bike-camping-curious to learn more, but Marley will also offer suggestions one-on-one if you have questions about your gear or bike set-up. Suggested $30-$50 per person.
From Seattle Congestion Pricing Study Summary Report (PDF)
As Mayor Jenny Durkan’s frustrating and damaging time in office gets slowly closer to ending, it’s important that Seattle understands the ways her leadership (or lack thereof) harmed our city and many of its genuine movements for change. Because we cannot afford to elect another mayor like Durkan. So let’s look at her congestion pricing plan as one good illustration of many of the ways her leadership style is ineffective at best and harmful at worst.
In April 2018, Seattle’s new mayor Jenny Durkan made headlines by announcing that by the end of her first term (this year) she would launch a congestion pricing scheme to toll motor vehicles entering downtown. The announcement certainly turned heads, but not for the right reasons.
Congestion pricing can be a very effective tool to reduce driving while also raising funds to improve other transportation options like transit, walking and biking. Durkan’s tolling plan hoped to reduce the city’s total carbon emissions by 9% to 20%, and it was the centerpiece of her climate plan. Congestion pricing can be a very effective policy, and a handful of European cities and Singapore have enacted versions of the concept successfully. Durkan wanted Seattle to be the first city in the U.S. to do it.
The problem is that nobody was asking for it. I don’t mean that nobody in Seattle thinks it’s a good idea or has dreamed up concepts. Congestion pricing is one of those ideas that could be great, but it’s an enormous political undertaking. You have to pick your battles, and very few if any community organizations, including safe streets and environmental justice organizations, had been specifically advocating for congestion pricing. They hadn’t been doing all the community-building work that they know is necessary for a major idea like this to have community buy-in. There are a lot of questions about the potential inequities with such tolls, for example, so people and organizations that take equity seriously are not going to just jump on board with a plan they know nothing about just because the mayor announced it.
But to make matters worse, Mayor Durkan was quickly losing community trust. At the same time she was announcing her congestion pricing plan, she was delaying or cancelling many of the projects that people and organizations were actually asking for. In 2018, Mayor Durkan essentially cancelled Seattle’s bike lane program, for example. She built just 4% of the bike lanes planned for that year. I remember someone (I honestly don’t remember who) saying that complaints about delayed bike lanes were “thinking too small” because Durkan was going to do congestion pricing. But if she won’t even paint a bike lane, what on Earth made anyone think she would toll every motor vehicle entering downtown?
So it is absolutely no surprise to learn that her congestion pricing plan is officially dead. Of course it is. I personally never believed she was serious. It seemed like she just wanted to stand out to Mike Bloomberg, a plan that worked because he soon visited town and they went on a media tour together. Bloomberg was a proponent of congestion pricing in New York City in his time as mayor and had launched the American Cities Climate Challenge. Seattle “won” his challenge in 2018 in part by planning for congestion pricing. This does not feel like a coincidence.
Mayor Durkan cared more about what Michael Bloomberg wanted than what community organizations in her own city wanted.
People quickly realized that even if they support the concept of congestion pricing, Durkan was absolutely the wrong person to lead such a delicate program that needed a strong equity focus.
What’s frustrating is that congestion pricing could be good for Seattle. We need big and bold ideas to address big problems like climate change, improving transit, increasing equitable mobility, and making streets safer. But I worry that the idea of congestion pricing is now poisoned because people had to organize against Durkan’s half-assed, non-serious proposal.
“Multiple members, including ourselves, voiced concerns of the regressivity of congestion pricing towards workers, especially those who have been displaced and have to drive into downtown Seattle for work,” Jill Mangaliman told KUOW. Mangaliman is the executive director of Got Green, an important environmental justice organization in our community and the exact kind of organization we would want helping to craft such an effort. “Those from the [environmental justice] communities were in favor of having a more comprehensive transit system and progressive funding sources, instead of being punitive towards workers and communities priced out of the city.”
I don’t blame Got Green for having this response given Durkan’s track record on anti-poor policies like her cruel treatment of people living in encampments. But it sucks that now congestion pricing is considered “punitive towards workers and communities out of the city.” It doesn’t need to be that way, but Durkan sure wasn’t making a good case otherwise.
As the number of people running for mayor continues to grow, hopefully Seattle’s community organizations and candidates can all learn from Durkan’s mistakes here. She did not earn community trust before asking them to go out on a limb for her. She displayed a disdain or disinterest in their existing priorities, then proposed a major idea that relied heavily on their enthusiastic support in order to succeed. It was a failure of leadership from beginning to end, and I just hope that the lesson Seattle takes away from this is more about Durkan’s leadership than the promising idea that she dragged down with her.
