Seattle Bike Blog

Senator Saldaña proposes $2 billion in statewide multimodal investments

By

Ryan Packer

| Posted

January 6, 2021

During the last state legislative session in 2020, Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens), chair of the State Senate’s transportation committee, released his latest version of the “Forward Washington” transportation package. The list of proposed projects to receive funding in the package totaled nearly $15 billion, and over half of that was proposed to go to “improving” state highways, not counting court-mandated spending on removing culverts statewide to improve fish habitat. That included dozens of projects with the sole purpose of expanding highway capacity, as well as projects like the $1.8 billion US 2 trestle rebuild that expand highways in the process of replacing aging infrastructure. It was not able to be passed by the end of the short legislative session.

Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, D-37

The Seattle Times reports this week that Senator Rebecca Saldaña (D-Seattle,Renton) is proposing an alternate plan that includes fewer highway expansion projects and shifts dollars to more sustainable transportation investments. Most notably, it would include $2 billion for multimodal transportation grants, projects that are shovel-ready but haven’t been able to receive funding due to the heavy highway bias of statewide transportation spending.

The Saldaña proposal would span twelve years: evenly split among six two-year transportation budgets, that would amount to $333 million per biennium for transit, walking, and biking projects. Governor Inslee’s proposed 2021-2023 budget only provided about $115 million, even with a one-time $20 million boost to pedestrian and bicycle grant program. A $2 billion investment over 12 years would absolutely be the biggest multimodal investment that has ever been made at the state level.

The spending plan does include $1.4 billion for the US 2 trestle, a project in Steve Hobbs’s district that is clearly included in the package as a compromise, but projects like $259 million to widen SR-18 in Issaquah are not included and many other projects to expand highway capacity are absent. It also includes only $450 million for the I-5 bridge between Washington and Oregon; this is likely not going to be the full amount for the project if the latest version of the bridge includes as much highway expansion as the previous iteration, the Columbia River Crossing. Hobbs’s 2020 proposal would have allocated $3 billion for it.

The spending plan in Senator Saldana’s proposed package

The Saldaña proposal acknowledges that we are currently underfunding badly needed local pedestrian, biking, and transit projects. Prior to the Governor’s extra funding being announced, WSDOT expected to only be able to fund 39 out of 232 projects that requested funding from either the Safe Routes to Schools grant program or the Pedestrian and Bicyclist program in the next two years. Local programs like this will make the difference in allowing people to make trips by biking, walking, or taking transit when they might not have otherwise. The shift away from focusing the transportation package on expanding state highway routes is huge.

The senate transportation committee now includes a very progressive contingent of Democrats on transportation issues. In addition to Saldaña, who is vice-chair, the committee has Joe Nguyen (White Center) and newly elected T’Wina Nobles (Tacoma) who is replacing anti-transit Republican Steve O’Ban, who also served on the transportation committee.

Getting a proposal like this passed during the legislature’s first all-remote session will be a heavy lift, and it has to compete with a coming update to the Hobbs transportation package that will likely hand out highway expansion packages to nearly every legislative district at the expense of needed statewide active transportation investments. But the fact that a more progressive proposal like this is even in the mix at all is a huge win.

tags: 2021 legislature, rebecca saldana

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From the beginning, Seattle ‘jaywalker’ stings were used to arrest poor people

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 5, 2021

May 16, 1939 Seattle Daily Times photo.

In the decade between 1924 and 1934, the number of people dying in traffic collisions in Seattle each year increased 250% from 48 to 121. About 70% of those killed were people walking.

By the end of the 1930s, Seattle decided that something needed to change. So the city’s Traffic and Safety Council partnered with the Seattle Police Department to crack down on bad traffic behavior as part of a major public safety campaign called “100 Deathless Days.” The city would publicly count the days between traffic deaths, encouraging everyone to work together to go a full 100 days without a single death.

They didn’t make it. And as each campaign ended with a death, they would start again from zero. And again. And again. As they reached their fifth campaign just five weeks after the start of the first one, they started to narrow their focus on the real problem: Jaywalkers.

Newspapers closely tracked the Deathless Days campaigns.

“We can’t have the rest of the year deathless if pedestrians are going to invite death by jaywalking,” Seattle Police Captain Joseph E. Prince told the Seattle Daily Times. He was preparing his officers for a major series of jaywalking stings during the summer of 1939, instructing officers that “pedestrians must share equal responsibility with drivers.”

The Seattle Daily Times ran a huge headline June 23 proclaiming “16 JAILED IN DRIVE ON JAYWALKERS!” It was the first highly-publicized jaywalking enforcement action, or “drive” as police called it back then. But dig a little deeper, and it starts to feel like maybe jaywalking wasn’t really the reason these particular individuals were stopped. The paper listed the names, ages and occupations of each person stopped. It also noted that of the 16 people arrested, only five were able to pay the $5 bail. Those who couldn’t pay were listed as “laborers” and had to stay in jail.

But incredibly, locking up poor people didn’t stop or even slow the steady stream of people being injured or killed by cars in Seattle. So they did it again a few weeks later, arresting 47 people this time. News stories refer to many jaywalking “drives” throughout 1939 and into the early 1940s.

But no matter how many poor people they arrested, the constant deadly collisions just wouldn’t stop. So Chair of the Traffic and Safety Council Earl F. Campbell decided it was time to get serious about the problem. Seattle needed more serious jaywalking penalties. (more…)

tags: history, jaywalking

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Washington Bikes legislative preview this Thursday

By

Ryan Packer

| Posted

January 4, 2021
The Washington legislature’s long legislative session starts next Monday. This is set to be an important session as lawmakers modify Governor Inslee’s proposal for the biennial budget.

If you were wondering what Washington’s statewide bicycle advocacy organization is planing to push for during this session, Washington Bikes is hosting a “Lunch and Learn” session this Thursday at noon to discuss their policy priorities.

Those priorities, from Washington Bikes, are:
- Grow bike and pedestrian funding in the multimodal account in the transportation budget. Washington Bikes is supportive of new, flexible revenue sources for active transportation.
- Protecting and connecting trails statewide. We support the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program’s $140 million funding request.
- Support policies to address inequities in transportation and policing, including measures to decriminalize biking and walking.
- Support measures that will incentivize or lower the barrier to e-bike ownership.
Governor Inslee’s budget already includes an additional $20 million for bike & pedestrian grants, and it looks like there are going to be dueling proposals for a big transportation package that could increase that amount over longer than the next two years.

Legalizing the “safety stop” was a high priority item on Washington Bikes’ 2020 agenda, with the legislature passing the law that allows people on bikes to treat stop signs as yield signs if there are no other vehicles present; it took effect last October. Oregon’s version of the law has been in effect for a year now.

RSVP for the Thursday lunch event here.
tags: 2021 legislature, washington bikes

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Proposed Duwamish Trail extension could make everyone safer on West Marginal Way

By

Ryan Packer

| Posted

January 4, 2021

The northern segment of the Duwamish trail, a sidewalk.

The Duwamish trail provides one of the only dedicated bike routes to and from the South Park neighborhood, which is currently dealing with an influx of drivers looking for any shortcut they can take to avoid the repercussions of the West Seattle bridge closure. But for nearly half a mile on its northern end, the Duwamish trail is nothing more than a narrow sidewalk through an industrial area. With the South Park to Georgetown trail moving forward, this segment deserves more attention than ever.

For years, the Duwamish tribe has been trying to improve safety in front of their Longhouse on West Marginal Way SW along the river that bears the name of the tribe. It took the West Seattle bridge crisis, which diverted thousands of vehicles per day onto Marginal Way that would have otherwise used the bridge, to provide impetus (and funding) to install a crosswalk and traffic signal directly at the Longhouse. “This year, we leveraged the fact that we have this crisis with the bridge closure to get the city to fully fund the project,” Councilmember Lisa Herbold recently told Real Change. Mitigation funds for the bridge will pay for a new pedestrian crossing directly in front of the Longhouse as well as install a missing sidewalk on the west side of Marginal Way north of the building.

Current “crossing” in front of the Duwamish longhouse.

In 2019, lacking funding for a pedestrian crossing, SDOT took southbound Marginal Way down from one lanes to two for a short stretch in front of the Longhouse. Now SDOT proposes to extend that southbound lane closure up to the northern end of the Duwamish trail, converting the curbside lane into a two-way protected bike lane.

The proposed Duwamish trail connection would bridge a gap between the separated trail and the West Seattle bridge.

This improvement is obviously not a complete replacement for an off-street trail, but would be an improvement, especially for people biking southbound in the direction of traffic. But the biggest benefit of this change would be the impact on the speed of drivers on this segment of Marginal. SDOT recently brought the speed limit on the street down from 40 mph to 30 mph. But consistent design changes would do more to lower speeds, and since drivers are already merging into one lane at the Longhouse, it makes sense to extend that change all the way north.

Proposed cross section of Marginal with space made for a protected bike lane.

But the protected bike lane idea is meeting opposition from those who do not want to see auto capacity on Marginal Way reduced any further. Port Commissioner Peter Steinbrueck has been an outspoken critic of taking away space for vehicles on Marginal at West Seattle Bridge Community Taskforce meetings. In November of last year, the freight advisory board sent a letter to Deputy Mayor Shefali Ranganathan asking the city for West Marginal Way to be “restored as a five-lane facility”. The letter mischaracterizes the final connection of the Duwamish trail as “redundant” because users currently can use the sidewalk. “We are in deeply opposed to removing traffic lanes to add a protected bike lane on WMW”, the letter states. “We believe the proposed signal and sidewalk improvement near the Longhouse will improve safety so that the southbound traffic lane can be restored as a through traffic lane on this Major Truck Route.”

I spoke with Aley Thompson, who serves on the South Park Neighborhood Association and also serves on the West Seattle Bridge Community Taskforce. She told me that it was not her understanding that a removal of the lane reduction in front of the Longhouse was on the table, and cited the need to slow vehicle traffic down on Marginal as the most pressing issue.

SDOT spokesperson Ethan Bergerson characterized the issue as a debate over whether to install the protected bike lane this year or wait until the West Seattle bridge is repaired. “SDOT is committed to making this connection,” he told me. “Maintaining a single lane of traffic throughout the corridor would likely reduce the ‘hurry up and wait’ effect of congestion caused cars merging back into a single lane, and result in more consistent speeds throughout the corridor, closer to the current 30 mph speed limit,” Bergerson said, citing the lane reduction at the Longhouse as the “bottleneck” that is having a bigger impact on travel times than the bike lane would.

Asked if the lane reduction in front of the Duwamish tribe’s facility was on the table for removal, he told me, “There has not been a final decision on this. We are planning to conduct stakeholder engagement in early 2021 to get feedback once we have a design proposal ready to share.”

The new signal at the Longhouse is set to be installed this Summer. A pedestrian crossing will likely only be a bandaid if speed treatments aren’t effective, and adding the lane back to the street will likely increase driver speeds. It’s clear that any bike facility’s larger purpose would be to serve the larger goal of making West Marginal Way a safer street for everyone to use.

tags: duwamish trail, duwamish tribe, georgetown, south park, west seattle

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What 2021 means for Seattle’s bike network

By

Ryan Packer

| Posted

January 1, 2021

2020 was a year of adjusting to new realities, and Seattle’s effort to meet its goals for expanding its bike network did not escape the curveballs that were thrown during the year. In response to a fundamental reshuffling of demand for right-of-way compared to other years, the Seattle Department of Transportation responded with a few new programs, namely Stay Healthy Streets, but mostly stayed the course even as Covid impacts on staffing delayed projects and Covid-induced budget cuts imperiled future ones. 4th Avenue finally has a protected bike lane, protected lanes on Bell Street were installed, and bike lanes on Avalon Way in West Seattle opened just as the West Seattle Bridge was closed in March.

Now that 2021 is here, we are looking forward to some of the projects that are planned for the year across the city that will improve conditions for people biking.

12th Ave S

Construction has already started on the installation of this bike lane, which won’t extend north of King Street due to concerns about impacts on traffic, namely the First Hill Streetcar, which doesn’t operate in its own dedicated lane.

12th Ave will feature similar to bus stops to the ones that were installed along NE 65th Street, with bus riders exiting directly into the bike lane. The PBL will extend all the way across the bridge to the connection with the Mountains to Sound trail. A route running the entire length of Beacon Hill is currently planned for 2023.

Asphalt surfacing installed https://t.co/1iTXwikzJD pic.twitter.com/glPX8MVi6U

— Dongho Chang (@dongho_chang) December 19, 2020

E Union Street

This project was originally planed for 2020 but was delayed due to coordination with Metro on moving trolley wires. A big win for advocates, this bike lane was originally planned to disappear on either side of the busy intersection at 23rd Avenue but was redesigned earlier this year to bridge the gap. Though the protected bike lanes will not extend west of 14th Ave, the Madison RapidRide project, which SDOT says will start construction next year and take about 3 years, will connect the facility across 12th Ave.

N 34th Street

Another 2020 holdover, this project will finally connect the Burke-Gilman at Stone Way with the Fremont bridge instead of that harrowing door zone lane. The project will also add a northbound protected bike lane just north of the bridge, making the transition from the cramped bridge deck a little more seamless.

A segment of the new protected bike lanes coming to N 34th Street.

Melrose Ave

The first phase of the long-awaited Melrose Promenade project will get underway next year, with protected bike lanes getting installed on Melrose Ave E in far west Capitol Hill between Pine Street and Denny Way. Between Pike and Pine, one of the most obvious places in the city to turn into a pedestrian street, people on bikes will share the road with cars and a massive raised intersection will be installed in front of the Starbucks Roastery. North of Denny Way, SDOT will be installing speed humps in the style of a greenway.

The raised intersection planned at Pike and Melrose.

Green Lake Way

The repaving project for the east half of the street circling Green Lake will finally be wrapping up next year, including protected bike facilities from Aurora and 83rd all the way to N 50th Street. A separate project will install protected bike lanes on a segment of Stone Way south of N 50th Street as well. The paint bike lanes on 50th Street are staying in place.

With these bike lanes the North Seattle bike network will really start to fill in, with Ravenna Boulevard and NE 65th Street fully connected to north Wallingford.

The Durkan administration’s decision to eliminate bike lanes on N 40th Street that would have been installed while that street was being repaved is still disappointing.

Green Lake Way repaving project brings bike lanes to that street.

Northgate Pedestrian & Bike Bridge

With the grand opening of the Northgate Link light rail extension in the fall, the bike and pedestrian bridge over I-5 will also be ready for traffic. This will open up a brand new connection at N 100th Street between the light rail station and North Seattle Community College.

Northgate pedestrian bridge

On the Northgate side of the bridge, separate bike facilities will connect NE 92nd Street all the way up to Northgate Way along 1st Ave NE.

Bike lanes planned outside Northgate station

Climate Pledge Arena

The bicycle improvements required as part of the agreement to renovate Key Arena into what will be Climate Pledge Arena are set to be installed by fall’s opening of the facility. The route will take several zigs and zags as riders heading to Uptown will take Broad Street onto 1st Avenue, continue onto 1st Ave N, and then have to take Thomas Street to Queen Anne Ave to continue north to Mercer.

Connection planned to Uptown for Climate Pledge Arena.

4th Avenue

SDOT will come back and improve the 4th Avenue protected bike lane they installed in 2020 by extending the lane north to Vine Street, converting the entire corridor to a two-way facility, and extending it south to Yesler Way via the out-of-the-way Dilling Way. SDOT says they envision the lane eventually connecting south to Main Street but not until there are fewer buses using 4th Ave S.

Eastlake Ave

As part of a project to make more space for Metro buses to lay over in South Lake Union, SDOT will be reconfiguring Eastlake Ave E along I-5 south of the Lakeview overpass and adding protected bike lanes, although a short segment between Mercer and Roy Street will be a multiuse trail. An extension north to the bike lanes planned as part of the RapidRide J line will be coming later.

Bike lanes planned for Eastlake Ave E in SLU

All of these projects are set to happen while a wide-open Mayor’s race takes place where transportation issues like the West Seattle bridge take center stage, and the two at-large councilmembers (two of the best on transportation) are also up for reelection. The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty.

tags: 2021

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Time to comment on the Washington State Active Transportation Plan

By

Ryan Packer

| Posted

December 29, 2020

State law in Washington that dates from the 1990s requires that the Washington Department of Transportation complete a “bicycle transportation and pedestrian walkways plan”. The last version of the plan was created in 2008, and is getting a brand new update. A draft of part one of the plan is available to read and comment on at this online open house until February 15 of 2021.

Part one of the plan is in large part devoted to high level concepts around walking, biking, and rolling facilities, overall purpose and need, the current state of Washington’s active transportation infrastructure, and what WSDOT has heard from community member while conducting public outreach for the plan. Part two, which will come out next year, will cover specific policy topics around project implementation, performance measures, and next steps for developing an actual implementation plan- in other words, even deeper into the weeds.

The entire plan is worth your time, but at 184 pages the draft is a bit hard to get through. I want to highlight a particularly rich area of the report, in case you don’t have time to read it. Chapter 4 looks at cost estimates for statewide needs and opportunities. Early in the report, dropped in a section about benefits of active transportation is the fact that “for the approximate cost of one Seattle-area freeway interchange, approximately 300 miles of trail could be constructed”. These numbers come from WSDOT’s own planning level cost estimates, and it’s facts like these that are the best part of the report.

The report looked at the 6,977 miles of state highway and noted that 1,685 of them went through a city, town, or census-designated place. The plan looked at costs to improve state routes in those population centers in part because that is where a large majority of the bicyclist and pedestrian injuries and fatalities occur, 83% between 2010 and 2020.

The vast majority of people walking and biking hurt on our state highways are in population centers.

86% of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities in Washington occurred on roads with posted speeds of 30 mph or higher during the same timeframe. The active transportation plan looks at the mileage of state highways with posted speeds over 30 mph, 849 miles, and calculates a one-time statewide need to implement changes bring vehicle speeds below 30 mph at $283 million.

Also estimated is the amount of money to improve the 542 miles of state highways that do not have adequate pedestrian facilities and 1,142 miles where there are not separated bike facilities (on highways where people walking and biking are not prohibited) at $1.8 billion. Add to that $1.6 billion to improve crossing treatments at 7,564 locations on the state system, and 1.98 billion to improve 680 bridges on state routes where pedestrian & bike facilities are nonexistent or substandard.

“Intersection gaps” like the one pictured here near Soap Lake were looked in by the Active Transportation plan.

Added together, the total for those improvements for safety and access to the entire statewide highway system totals $5.7 billion. These aren’t upgrades, they are basic elements that a statewide transportation system should have, before the state spends money expanding it.

Costs associated with adding basic infrastructure to the state system

Governor Inslee’s proposed transportation budget for the next two years totals $6.2 billion in spending, $3.7 billion of that for the Highway Improvements program, which mainly goes to expanding highway capacity, while a tiny portion of the biennial budget goes toward these basic safety improvements. Washington State has had a Target Zero goal for twenty years now, and the state’s transportation agency knows what it will take to make the changes needed to get us there.

Pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities in Washington, 2010-2019

We’ll be closely watching for part 2 of the Active Transportation plan to see how we can get there. In the meantime, read part 1 and submit your comments.

tags: vision zero, wsdot, wsdot active transportation division

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