The death of a man biking in Georgetown in late March has shaken the community, so some neighbors are organizing a slow bike ride tomorrow (Friday) to mourn his death and call for safer streets.
“For years, our community has demanded safe routes within Georgetown, and safe access to SoDo, the Chinatown/International District, and Downtown for biking,” the event listing created by John Persak and Amy Amaryllis says. “The city has been slow to prioritize this infrastructure which people in most other parts of the city already enjoy. This must be addressed now.”
The ride meets 4 p.m. at South Seattle College’s Georgetown Campus near Corson Ave S and E Marginal Way. Organizer say the ride will go slow and is for all ages, traveling major streets in the neighborhood before ending near Counterbalance Brewing.
As we reported previously, a person driving a semi truck made a right turn from northbound Corson Ave S onto S Bailey Street, striking and killing the man. The collision occurred shortly before 5 p.m. March 24. Seattle Police are investigating, and no new details are available at this time.
Our condolences to his loved ones. If any friends or family members want to share his story, you can reach me at [email protected].
After eight years behind construction barriers, Brooklyn Ave NE and NE 43rd Street are finally starting to reopen today, Sound Transit announced. Brooklyn will open to all traffic while 43rd will open sidewalks.
This is a big deal for the neighborhood and a reminder that the opening of Brooklyn Station…ahem, I mean U District Station is getting very close. There is still no official opening date, but test trains have been running on the tracks up to Roosevelt and Northgate Stations. The current service plan calls for a September start, though train deliveries have been delayed. Each train needs to operate for a certain number of hours without any faults before it can go into service. So fingers crossed that all the testing goes smoothly.
Brooklyn’s street design is a big miss, unfortunately. It has a sidewalk-level protected bike lane headed uphill in the northbound direction, which should be lovely. But then people headed southbound are expected to mix with car traffic. It’s so strange. Who is the target user of this street? Who will decide to bike to the station because there is a comfortable bike lane in only one direction? There is space for a downhill bike lane, but instead SDOT and Sound Transit prioritized on-street parking on both sides of the street. Hopefully SDOT will closely observe car traffic on this street and will be ready to make significant changes to limit volumes and speeds if needed. This should also be an opportunity to improve the nearby 12th Ave neighborhood greenway, one of the worst in the city due to its relatively heavy car traffic thanks to people driving around the closed Brooklyn Ave.
A failed design concept for a “mall” on the Ave from 1972, as published in the Seattle Daily Times (PDF).
Brooklyn is also just one foot too skinny for two-way bus service, a huge priority for the advocacy group U District Mobility. This could make it more difficult to someday turn the Ave and NE 43rd Street into the car-free (or car-light) spaces they should be, a dream of many people in the neighborhood going back half a century.
Car ownership levels in the neighborhood are some of the lowest in the entire city. Only Belltown and downtown have fewer cars per capita than the U District, which has about one car for every two people. Yet the streets in the neighborhood still prioritize driving and parking cars even though half of the neighborhood residents don’t have one.
I’m not sure the city has yet to fully comprehend how much the U District is about to change. There are a lot of buildings under construction right now, and more are in the queue. It’s one of the few areas of the city that allows towers, and it is about to get a subway that brings it just minutes away from the heart of Capitol Hill and downtown.
With Brooklyn and 43rd closed since 2013, the neighborhood has felt a bit like a construction zone. But it’s about to open back up just as COVID vaccine rates start to gain steam (though Washington is currently seeing a spike in cases, so it is too soon to stop following the pandemic protocols!). But as the pandemic fades and the station opens, the neighborhood could assume its role as one of the biggest hubs of activity in our city. It will be transformative.
Ryan Packer did a fantastic job taking the helm of Seattle Bike Blog over the winter, writing 64 posts December through March.
Ryan was the Temporary Editor of Seattle Bike Blog while I focused on writing the first draft of a book for UW Press about bike history and culture in Seattle. Being a parent during COVID is very challenging, and my time had disappeared. So I was facing a tough choice in late 2020, and it seemed like I was going to need to shut down the blog entirely if I didn’t find someone who could do the job without much help from me. So you could say that Ryan saved Seattle Bike Blog.
I invited Ryan to talk about some of the most important stories of the past few months and to talk about taking over the Editor role. Check out our conversation above.
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 death of a man biking in Georgetown in late March has shaken the community, so some neighbors are organizing a slow bike ride tomorrow (Friday) to mourn his death and call for safer streets.
