Seattle Bike Blog

Support the MASS Coalition’s efforts to ease the pain from the 2021-22 Seattle transportation budget

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 2, 2020
Both Cascade Bicycle Club and the larger MASS Coalition (including Seattle Neighborhood Greenways ~~and Transporation Choices Coalition~~ among others) they are part of have action alerts out right now asking supporters to call on city leaders to limit the huge cuts in walking, biking and transit funding Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed in her 2021-22 budget. (Correction: This post erroneously said TCC is a member of the MASS Coalition. While TCC has partnered with MASS and its members in the past, they are not a member.)

Specifically, the Move All Seattle Sustainably (“MASS”) Coalition is backing the “Solidarity Budget” led by a long list of community organizations and is specifically pushing for a list of transportation budget amendments (PDF):
- Upgrade Rainier Avenue sidewalks in Southeast Seattle ($1 million)
- Continue work on the Georgetown-to-South Park Trail ($1.8 million)
- Cancel cuts to the Route 44 Multimodal Project connecting Ballard to the U-district via Phinney Ridge and Wallingford ($1 million)
- Advance planning and early design for bike network connections in South Seattle, specifically a route through the Rainier Valley (along MLK Way) and a connection between Georgetown and Downtown, via SoDo ($400,000).
The mayor’s budget levies heavier cuts to walking, biking and transit than to car-centric budget lines. Perhaps the most egregious is an increase in the so-called “Intelligent Transportation System,” investments that do nothing to help people get around outside of a car and can even make conditions for walking and biking worse. Just look at the disaster that is Mercer Street.

Safe streets projects in Seattle have been huge successes. ITS projects have been either useless or actively bad. Why would we invest in repeating our failures while slashing the budgets for our successes?

Worse, when Seattle voters passed the Move Seattle Levy in 2015, they did so based on big promises about investing in walking, biking and transit. But the city front-loaded the car-centric projects, and now the walking, biking and transit projects are exposed to budget cuts. If they don’t get funded before the levy expires, projects will fall off the end of the list. The city needs to dedicate itself to the vision voters approved and deliver big improvements for walking, biking and transit.

So while the budget is certainly going to be tighter than in previous years, cuts should obviously come from car-centric programs that don’t help us meet our climate, traffic safety and equity goals. And pointless freeway-style electronic signs are a great and very easy place to start. (more…)
tags: 2021 budget, cascade bicycle club, move all seattle sustainably, seattle neighborhood greenways

— Advertisement —
The Seattle Pedaling Relief Project will bike your ballot to a drop box

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 2, 2020

From the Seattle Pedaling Relief Project.

The Seattle Pedaling Relief Project has been organizing volunteer efforts to deliver food and necessities from food banks to community members for months. Now they want to help people get their ballots to the ballot box.

If you need assistance getting your ballot delivered for any reason, fill out this form online. If you want to help deliver, fill out this form. Delivery teams will consist of at least two volunteers.

Looking for voting advice? Check out these endorsements from local transportation organizations.

More details on the ballot delivery effort from the Seattle Pedaling Relief Project:

Do you know of any late voters who would like help transporting their ballot to a ballot box?

The Seattle Pedaling Relief Project is a group of volunteer bike riders who have been gathering since the beginning of the pandemic to deliver groceries from food banks to neighbors in need. With over 260 volunteers, we work with 5 food banks and multiple community gardens and little free pantries. We are grateful that in Washington we can mail in our ballots and we want to be a resource for those who want to be sure their ballots get counted in time for the election.

On Nov 1 and Nov 3 we will have groups of riders (at least 2 or more in each group) ready to pick up ballots anywhere in the Seattle/ King County area and deliver them to the nearest ballot box. Anyone who would like their ballot picked up can fill out this form. The riders who will be picking up the ballots will be coordinating with the ballot-givers directly for address details. We encourage folx to keep their ballot tab to track that their ballot has been counted.

If you are interested in volunteering to pick-up ballots from your friends, family, and neighbors and then bike them down to your local ballot box please fill out this form or visit the Bike the Ballot page on the Seattle Pedaling Relief Project website!

Thank you so much for your time and please promote this to anyone and everyone who could use this service.

Let’s go practice some democracy!

tags: seattle pedaling relief project

— Advertisement —
Halloween Peace Peloton starts in Wallingford and includes fundraising costume contest

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 28, 2020

Celebrate Halloween in the Peace Peloton Saturday.

The ride stages at Wallingford Playfield at noon for some food from the excellent Pam’s Kitchen, then leaves at 2 p.m. for a 12-mile ride to Gas Works Park via Discovery Park.

The “Hunter’s Moon Halloweekend Fun-Raisier” ride ends with a fund-raising costume contest at Gas Works. For more details and info on how to donate, go to peacepeloton.com.

tags: black lives matter, peace peloton, wallingford

— Advertisement —
Endorsement: Vote Sherae Lascelles in the 43rd

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 19, 2020

Photo from Sherae For State.

Seattle Bike Blog did not do endorsements this year for a number of reasons (mostly that I haven’t had the time it takes to do a full slate of endorsements). Instead, I rounded up endorsements from a handful of transportation-focused organizations in the area and posted them here. There was very little disagreement.

But there was one split endorsement that caught my eye, perhaps because it is my district. So I figured it may be helpful to weigh in on the race for House Legislative District 43, Position 2. The Transit Riders Union and the Urbanist endorsed Sherae Lascelles while Seattle Subway and the Sierra Club endorsed Frank Chopp. Washington Bikes did not endorse in this race.

Seattle Bike Blog says to vote for Lascelles.

This race ultimately comes down to what access to power should look like. Neither candidate says anything notably bad in their transportation policy sections. Chopp, who has been in the legislature since 1995, clearly has a very detailed understanding of how the legislature works. But is it working?

The Democrats have had control of WA State’s government for years, yet the state still has an extremely regressive tax structure, still funds new and expanded freeways while leaving transit funding to local communities, and still has not made meaningful progress on reducing our climate changing emissions. No matter what major local issue you are talking about, conversation nearly always gets to this exchange:

Person 1: Well, in order to do that, we’d need to change state law.
Person 2: Ugh, that’s not going to happen.

This dynamic needs to change. Lascelles brings a dramatically different philosophy to their campaign. Everything in their platform is about centering people most impacted by each policy. For example, here’s Lascelles’ campaign policy statement on free mass transit: (more…)

tags: 2020 general election, 43rd legislative district, frank chopp, sherae lascelles

— Advertisement —
Who local transportation organizations endorsed in the 2020 general election

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 16, 2020

Your ballot is either in the mail or has already arrived. If you are in King County, you can check your ballot’s status online here. The tracker now indicates whether it has been mailed or has been delivered, which is very cool. The deadline to register online is October 26, but you can also register anytime up to and including the day of the election if you go in-person (online is encouraged during the pandemic, though). Ballots must be postmarked by November 3 or delivered to a ballot drop box before 8 p.m. November 3.

Here’s a look at endorsements and recommendations from local transportation organizations, including The Urbanist (“U”), Washington Bikes (“WB”), Seattle Subway (“SUB”) and the Transit Riders Union (“TRU”). Visit their sites to read more about their decisions. Note that these orgs sometimes cover different areas. So sometimes a non-endorsement means they couldn’t decide, but sometimes it means they just aren’t covering that race or issue.

FEDERAL CANDIDATES

(more…)

tags: 2020 general election, endorsements, seattle subway, the urbanist, transit riders union, washington bikes

— Advertisement —
WA Supreme Court strikes down I-976, calling it ‘deceptive and misleading’

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 15, 2020

Tim Eyman continues to be very bad at writing initiatives, wasting an enormous amount of people’s time and energy arguing over a statewide initiative that wasn’t even constitutional.

The official description for I-976 that appeared on ballots in 2019 said it would lower so-called “car tab” fees “except voter-approved charges.” But the initiative would actually lower the fees even for charges that voters had previously approved. Eight of the nine WA Supreme Court justices said that was “deceptive and misleading” to the point of being unconstitutional, Heidi Groover at the Seattle Times reports.

This is great news for several reasons. The most immediate cause for celebration is that Seattle and so many other communities that rely on these fees to fund transportation will not need to pay back any fees collected since the initiative passed. Seattle has been collecting the fees, but has not spent them in case they needed to be refunded. With transportation budgets in crisis, this is a huge relief.

“Car tabs” is also a bit of a confusing term because it combines different kinds of taxes together. A vehicle license fee—like the one used by Seattle—is a flat-rate fee attached to any vehicle license, but a vehicle excise tax—like the one used by Sound Transit—is based on the value of the vehicle. The term “car tab” attempts to lump them together, but they are different. Some voters were angry about the way Sound Transit’s excise tax valued vehicles, but does that mean they were also opposed to vehicle license fees? It’s impossible to know. That’s why initiatives are also not allowed to combine multiple issues into one vote, another concern the justices cited.

Again, Eyman is pretty decent at passing votes, but terrible at writing initiatives. Many YES voters will likely be angry at the Supreme Court, but they should reserve a lot of their anger for Eyman.

Even though it was struck down, the initiative has had a big impact anyway. Seattle is currently voting on Proposition 1, which would renew funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (“STBD”). The previous STBD was funded in part by sales tax and in part by vehicle license fees and expires at the end of 2020. But with the fate of I-976 unknown, Seattle leaders could not feasibly propose a new vote on a potentially illegal tax. So the version up for a vote does not include vehicle license fees. I-976 supporters can claim that as a victory.

It’s also not yet clear how state Democrats are going to respond. 53% of statewide voters approved the initiative, flawed as it was, though it failed miserably in Seattle and King County.

This decision also opens the door for adding vehicle license fees to the STBD in the future. Maybe next year? Obviously, it would have been nice to only have to run one campaign, but this is just how it played out. And in the end, maybe we’ll end up with an even bigger STBD than the version expiring now.

But man, it sure is exhausting and precarious work to fund transit in this supposedly pro-environment state.

tags: i-976, transportation benefits district

— Advertisement —