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  • Thanks to concerned neighbors, SPU is reconsidering multi-year Ship Canal Trail detour

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Thanks to concerns from neighbors, especially Queen Anne Greenways, Seattle Public Utilities and a contractor working on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project will not be closing the Ship Canal Trail and detouring people to Nickerson Street as announced in a recent project update. Work is moving forward, but the trail will remain open in the meantime while they figure out a different detour route (if one is needed at all).

    This is a very big deal because this detour was set to be in place for more than two years.

    The detour route previously announced (pictured in the tweet above) would have required people to bike in mixed traffic on Nickerson Street. The announcement said the people could bike in the Nickerson bike lanes, but there is no eastbound bike lane on this stretch of the busy street. City bike maps note the street as a bike route because it has a westbound bike lane. But as anyone who bikes is very aware, a bike lane in only one direction does not make a bike route because people don’t only travel in one direction. And the Ship Canal Trail is used by people of all ages an abilities, including children. Detouring the trail into traffic for years is not an acceptable option.

    If the trail does need to close, the obvious solution would be to create a temporary trail along the north side of Nickerson St. SPU had a fairly high quality trail for a long-term closure of the Burke-Gilman Trail in Fremont in recent years, and that should be the standard for the Ship Canal Trail, too.

    The messy detour rollout is likely also due to the way the pandemic has impeded public outreach. Work is moving forward, but the usual opportunities to solicit public feedback have been limited. This is the kind of issue that could have been caught and fixed much earlier. The planned detour probably looked fine if you were only looking at the Seattle Bike Map, but anyone who bikes in the area could have told the team that the reality on the ground is much different. Both public and private project teams need to find ways to make sure they are not skipping or glossing over public outreach during the pandemic.

    More details from SPU: (more…)

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  • Following successful test, Lake Washington Blvd will go car-light again

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Map of the Keep Moving Street route.Lake Washington Boulevard is going car-free(ish) again starting Friday and continuing until at least Labor Day.

    SDOT and Seattle Parks tested the concept of what they call a “Keep Moving Street” on the stories lakefront street for five days in late June. The street is marked as closed to cars, though people can still drive on it if they are accessing a home (whether they live there, are visiting someone or are making a delivery or service call). So it’s not entirely closed to cars, but cars are very limited. People are allowed to walk in the street, which helps limit overcrowding on the skinny sidewalks and paths along the lake.

    The city collected feedback following the five-day test, and the response was very positive, according to an SDOT Blog post. More than two-thirds of respondents enjoyed the pilot, according to a non-scientific online survey.

    Parking lots along the waterfront remain closed in an attempt by Seattle Parks to limit crowding in what would typically be one of the busiest summertime waterfronts in the city. This is where Seafair festivities are centered, after all. So closing the street helps to maintain that goal while also creating more open space for the people who do go there. Extra accessible parking has been added at both ends of the route, and the Seward Park parking lot is entirely dedicated to accessible parking.

    How did the pilot go?

    City staff studied travel habits and measured car and bike volumes before and after the June pilot, and it was successful by nearly every measure. Biking increased a lot, but not so much that overcrowding would become a problem, they found: (more…)

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  • POSTPONED: Southbound U Bridge bike lane closed through Tuesday, NB closed 7/27-29 – UPDATED

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    UPDATE 7/24: The work is now scheduled for 7/27-29 northbound and 8/10-12 southbound.

    UPDATE: This work has been postponed. From SDOT: “Unfortunately, this work has been postponed. When we opened the buckets of primer yesterday, we discovered that it had hardened inside of the sealed buckets and was unusable. So we reopened the bike lanes last night around 7pm and are waiting to hear back from the manufacturer on when new materials will arrive.”

    Previous post:

    The southbound University Bridge bike lane will be closed today until early Wednesday morning, SDOT announced today. The northbound lane will be closed July 27 until early July 29.

    SDOT crews are installing a high friction coating to the sections of bike lane over the bascule bridge. The metal grating has long been filled in with concrete for the bike lanes, but the concrete is recessed a bit. Bike tires still touch the metal, which can be very slippery when wet. Hopefully, the new coating will make it more comfortable to bike and improve traction in case users need to brake.

    Unfortunately, users don’t have great options for getting around the closures. There is a sidewalk, but it’s pretty skinny. You can also bike in the general purpose lanes, but be aware that the metal grating can be very slippery when wet and can feel a bit squirrelly when dry.

    The city started testing the idea back in October, and you may have noticed a small rectangle of green. I guess it was successful, because now the whole bike lane is getting the treatment:

    The closure will be 24-hours because the materials need to cure. Timelines are weather dependent. More details from SDOT: (more…)

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  • Trail Alert: Green River Trail closed at Tukwila Intl Blvd until December

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Map of the detour route.The Green River Trail is closed on the south side of the Duwamish River between Tuwila International Boulevard and E Marginal Way S until November 30. The City of Tukwila is working to daylight Riverton Creek, “which has been flowing through a pipe for roughly 50 years,” according to Tukwila.

    The detour follows S 112th St and E Marginal Way S, which both have painted bike lanes most of the way. The only potential tricky part is turning left from Marginal to 112th when headed north, where the is no traffic signal. There is a center turn lane.

    But the work sounds great, daylighting the creek as part of an effort to restore it and its coho salmon runs. There will also be new public art when the trail reopens.

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  • Technicality about updating railroad track delays Ballard Missing Link until 2022

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Design concept for the new rail crossing near the intersection of Shilshole and NW 45th Street.
    The city’s trail design would realign the railroad tracks. A court decision says the Feds have jurisdiction over such a decision.

    Appellants fighting the city’s decades-long plan to finally complete the Ballard Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail have successfully found another legal maneuver to further delay the needed safety project until 2022, the Seattle Times reports.

    A King County Court has decided (PDF) that Seattle cannot redesign the railroad tracks along Shilshole Ave NW and NW 45th Street without first getting approval from the Federal Surface Transportation Board. Though the city’s planned trail route would not remove the mostly-abandoned (but still technically operational) railroad tracks, there are points in the current trail design where tracks would be realigned to make crossings work better. These rebuilt sections of track would be funded by the city, which owns the tracks, not the Ballard Terminal Railroad. The issue isn’t that there’s anything wrong with the city’s plan, just that they need another approval. And every new process opens more opportunities to find more technicalities to further delay the project.

    This design was the result of a much-lauded “compromise” between many industrial leaders and trail supporters. Now details of that compromise has been used against the city to further delay the project. Every time the Missing Link comes up for debate again, people say, “Let’s just get trail supporters and opponents together at the same table and work out a deal.” So much for that.

    Two people shake hands near a podium. A group of people stand behind them.
    Former Councilmember Mike O’Brien, a longtime trail supporter, and Warren Aakervik, the retired owner of Ballard Oil, shook hands during a 2017 press conference announcing a compromise deal.

    The City of Seattle will appeal the decision, saying it “could have concerning broader implications for public safety,” according to a statement (see full statement below). Cascade Bicycle Club, which has long championed the trail and legally intervened on the city’s behalf, put out a statement that the decision does not alter the fate of the project, but does add delay: (more…)

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  • Watch: ‘This is no longer a Disaster Relief Trials, this is disaster relief’

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Maxwell Burton and Michael Lang had started organizing the 2020 Disaster Relief Trials, a cargo-hauling bike competition, when the COVID-19 outbreak hit. As soon as schools closed down in the spring, Lang and Burton realized their mission had just changed.

    The Disaster Relief Trials (“DRT”) is “a trial competition that’s meant to simulate a natural disaster happening in an area,” said Burton in a recent interview for Seattle Bike Blog TV (SBBTV). During a disaster, “bikes, and especially cargo bikes, are going to be the most flexible way to transport needed goods and medical supplies and water and other things around.”

    Seattle has held DRTs several times over the past decade, usually organized by Familybike Seattle. It’s a ton of fun, but it’s also very informative. Teams or individuals bike around the city completing various tasks, from hauling water or “medicine” (usually an egg that you need to deliver unbroken) to demonstrating that you can fix a flat tire or carry your bike over a blocked path. It also connects different community-led and public disaster preparedness efforts, and it gets participants to think about their own personal disaster planning (or, commonly, the lack thereof).

    But when schools and businesses closed and people hunkered down to prevent the spread of this scary respiratory disease, Lang and Burton knew that the crisis all the previous DRTs were practicing for had just arrived.

    “This isn’t a trials anymore,” said Burton. “This is no longer a Disaster Relief Trials. This is disaster relief.”

    So they threw out all their planning notes for the event and created the Seattle Pedaling Relief Project (“SPRP”), an all-volunteer effort designed to help food banks and other community organizations with the huge logistical challenge of getting resources to people who need them. One of the unexpected challenges of a pandemic is that many of the most vulnerable people in the community can no longer safely or comfortably access services like food banks the way they used to. Meanwhile, the need for services like food banks has increased as people have lost work.

    The SPRP forms relationships with service providers and organizes volunteer opportunities for people with bikes to help make deliveries. (more…)

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