Go to any of these businesses to get a $5 Bike Benefits sticker and a $4 Bike Bingo card to play. Or get them at the Bicycle Benefits alleycat and relaunch party Saturday.
Ian has left his perch on top of a water tower in Maine to give the Seattle Bicycle Benefits program renewed energy. That means not only are new businesses getting added to the Bicycle Benefits lineup, but Bike Bingo is also back for the summer.
If you want to get a big head start on your bingo card, Bicycle Benefits is hosting an all-day alleycat ride to Bike Bingo businesses tomorrow (June 8). The alleycat starts at Nielsen’s Pastries in Lower Queen Anne (520 2nd Ave W) at 9 a.m. and ends at the Bicycle Benefits relaunch party at 5 p.m. at Fast Fashion Brewing in SoDo (1723 1st Ave S). If you can’t spend your whole day biking around town to bike-friendly businesses (though I can’t think of a better way to spend a day), you can just join the party.
Bicycle Benefits is a year-round discount program where you show participating businesses the Bicycle Benefits sticker on your helmet to get a discount. Bike Bingo is a limited-time game in which a handful of businesses offer even more extensive discounts for each row you complete. Just patronize each business and have them stamp your card.
I was worried when I first read Lime’s announcement that they were launching a new throttle-controlled e-bike in Seattle because their existing Gen3 pedal-assist e-bikes were by far the best bike share bikes I’ve ever ridden. Would the new Gen4 bikes be more like sit-down scooters than bikes (like the Veo Cosmo “bikes”)?
Well, I finally got around to testing one of the new bikes out, and I’m happy to report that my fears were totally unfounded. It rides almost exactly like their previous generation of e-bikes. The braking is solid and, vitally, it has the same electric assist pedaling tech. The only difference most users will notice is that you now have the option of using a throttle to get power without pedaling. This is handy for starting on a steep uphill, for example, while also making the bikes usable by people who are unable to comfortably make a pedaling motion.
Having both pedal assist and a throttle is very rare for an e-bike. Usually it is one or the other. But it is a brilliant and simple way to expand the accessibility of the devices without turning them into sit-down scooters. The speed limiter, motor power and most other aspects of the bike seem largely unchanged. You can ignore the throttle completely and have a seamless biking experience. Or you can use the throttle to help get up to pedaling speed. Or you can keep the pedals still and let the motor do all the work. It’s up to you. Pedaling is still worthwhile since you can accelerate faster by adding leg power to the electric motor power. But most importantly to me, it rides like a bike. This may be largely personal preference, but I am more comfortable and feel safer on a bike rather than a scooter.
Bridge inspectors who checked out the Foothills Trail’s Spiketon Ditch Bridge last November must have seen something very scary because Pierce County not only closed the old rail bridge immediately after the inspection, they declared it an emergency and will tear it down this month. “The bridge is stressed under its own weight and any additional load placed on the bridge could result in collapse,” according to Pierce County Parks. No replacement is yet planned.
Tearing down a bridge before it collapses and causes a tragedy is obviously the smart and responsible thing to do. However, it has created a big problem for the Foothills Trail, one of the world’s most beautiful rail trails. Not only is there no suggested detour, Pierce County Parks does not recommend even trying.
“Pierce County Parks, working in conjunction with the Pierce County Engineer, have studied the roadway network and determined that no routes exist around the bridge closure that provide pedestrian or cycling facilities,” the department wrote in an FAQ about the bridge. The only nearby detour option is to bike on Pioneer Way E (SR-162), which has very skinny shoulders and no sidewalks. It’s doable for road cyclists, but is not going to be a viable option for people who mostly feel comfortable riding on trails and quality bike lanes. It’s definitely not an accessible detour option.
The doomed bridge is an aging timber-supported structure that cannot be easily repaired, so the county decided that rather than build a temporary bridge they will instead pursue a new permanent bridge. However, there is no current timeline for replacement, and Pierce County Parks notes that “the bridge closure may be in place for several years.”
This is awful news for South Prairie, Buckley and all users of the Foothills Trail. Hopefully Pierce County makes this project a priority and finds the funding to expedite a replacement. It will be a bummer later this year when the new White River Foothills Trail bridge finally opens across the Pierce-King border only to have the trail end in a new missing bridge four miles later. This trail in the foothills of Mount Rainier just can’t catch a break.
Don’t get me wrong, the Coal Creek Parkway bike lanes in Bellevue, Newcastle and Renton are not sufficient for the road conditions. As you can see in the Best Side Cycling video, the road is too fast and busy for a skinny paint-only bike lane to provide a safe and comfortable space. The problem is made worse because the road is winding and hilly, creating scary situations where riders must put a lot of trust in people driving to maintain their lanes even in slick conditions. There are also long stretches of the road where there are no opportunities to escape the lane if needed for any reason, which makes the experience that much more stressful.
So if this lane is genuinely bad, why was I so quick to dismiss the idea that they are among the worst bike lanes in the U.S.? Well, unfortunately, there is a lot of competition for that title. The other lanes featured in the Momentum Magazine story are worse. But also, these are not even the worst bike lanes in our region.
Right off the bat, I’d point to the MLK Jr Way bike lanes between E Union Street and the I-90 Trail in Seattle. They look like this:
“What bike lanes?” you ask? Precisely my point! Yet to this day, this is noted on the official Seattle Bike Map as having bike lanes. These were created many years ago and are effectively extended parking lanes. They used to paint little bike icons in these lanes, but SDOT paint crews have wisely and mercifully saved everyone a lot of confusion by no longer painting the bikes when they refresh the stripes. These never were real bike lanes, and the ever-increasing size of the average vehicle has only eaten further into whatever pitiful amount of space they once provided. One community member waged a years-long campaign to get the city to take them off the official bike map because he didn’t want the city’s bike lane prioritization process to rank this street lower because the computer thinks there are already bike lanes here. Because, I must reiterate, there absolutely are no bike lanes here. Unfortunately, even the recently-approved Seattle Transportation Plan calls for a bike lane “upgrade” here, signalling that the city’s database still considers these to be real bike lanes. Hopefully SDOT staff can step in and properly account for this when doing their prioritization calculations.
That said, it’s probably still more comfortable to bike on MLK Jr Way than Coal Creek Parkway just because of the traffic calming and slower speeds.
To Seattle’s credit, the city has been working hard to upgrade it’s worst bike lanes. The no-doubter worst bike lane in Seattle used to be the 2nd Ave chaos zone bike lane downtown (Easter Egg: You can see the very beginning of the Occupy Seattle protest in front of the Federal building):
Base map of the High Injury Network from the recently-approved Seattle Transportation Plan. Broken hearts added by Seattle Bike Blog to note the locations of the six traffic deaths in Seattle between May 23 and 29.
Traffic deaths in Washington State reached a high in 2023 that the state has not seen in 33 years. That number of deaths in 2023 increased 10% over 2022. King County leads the way with 167 people killed in traffic, more than double the number in 2014. These are all the big numbers on a scale that it’s difficult to wrap your head around.
Our condolences to the friends and families of the six people killed.
Three of those killed were inside cars while the other three were walking when someone in a car struck them. As you can see in the map above, every single death occurred on a street designated with a high injury score on the newly-approved Seattle Transportation Plan’s High Injury Network. These are streets “where fatal and serious crashed have already occurred,” according to the plan (page V-30 in the technical report). “Its use is considered a reactive approach that informs safety corridors of focus for the Vision Zero program and more.”
Seattle has more than enough data to identify where we need Vision Zero safety improvements, but now these six people have involuntarily added six more data points to this terrible map. Their lives are why this work is so important, and why the Seattle City Council could not possibly add too much funding for Vision Zero work in the next transportation levy. Every time SDOT’s Vision Zero team makes significant safety improvements to a street, it works. But the city continues to fund this work at a snail’s pace.
Seattle should simply not have a “high injury network” of streets. We built these streets, and so now it’s our city’s job to fix them before more people get hurt or killed. SDOT’s Vision Zero team has proven themselves worthy of our trust. It’s time to fund them properly and make a moonshot to actually reach Vision Zero by 2030 as is the city’s official policy goal. It’s not going to be easy or cheap, but we owe it to all those who have been killed and all their communities who have been shattered. Every time I speak to a grieving loved one of someone who has been killed, they all say the same thing: This can never happen to anyone else again. Let’s listen to them.
It’s yet another weekend of major closures in the Montlake/SR 520 area. The Bill Dawson Trail between Montlake Blvd and Montlake Playfield will be closed late Friday evening (May 31) through early Monday morning (June 3) along with Lake Washington Boulevard between 520 and the Arboretum. However, walking and biking access will be open along Montlake Boulevard even while the street is closed to general traffic. The 520 Bridge Trail will also remain open even as nearby freeway ramps are closed.
So in a way, it’s shaping up to be a decent weekend to bike through Montlake. But Boyer Ave E will likely be extra busy again, so be ready for that.
The Bill Dawson Trail is closed “so crews can remove temporary electrical poles and begin grading the area for landscaping,” according to WSDOT.
