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  • Alert: Some UW Station bike racks will be replaced with lockers starting Monday, so careful where you lock up

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Sound Transit is moving and replacing some bike racks near UW Station to install new on-demand secure bike lockers starting next week, so be extra careful about which racks you use. Look around for a “Rider Alert” sign before locking your ride.

    The total number of bike parking spaces should remain essentially the same. Today there are 286 open air bike parking spaces. After the lockers are installed, there will be 228 rack spaces and 60 locker spaces (288 total).

    Sound Transit started installing on-demand BikeLink lockers just this year, though King County Metro has been using them for a few years now. They are not free like the open air racks and they require you to sign up for an account in advance, but I’m sure there are people out there willing to pay a few cents an hour for extra bike security.

    Here’s a tweet from Sound Transit showing the kind of sign to look out for:

     

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  • Regional trails get a new brand: The Leafline Trail Network

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    The three Leafline logo options.
    Logo options.

    Puget Sound counties have selected one trail brand to rule them all: Leafline.

    The new name will describe “a network of over 400 miles of wide paved trails connecting communities throughout Snohomish, Kitsap, King and Pierce Counties,” according to King County Parks.

    The newly-created Regional Trails Coalition is creating this unified regional branding effort for trails, which could do a couple things. Most obviously, it could create some continuity for trails that cross county borders. That alone is probably worth the effort.

    But a larger, less concrete effect of talking about regional trails as part of the same network could be that people start thinking about them all as part of something bigger. After all, an investment in a trail builds on investments in nearby counties, too. And county lines are irrelevant to someone just trying to bike around.

    So a new logo isn’t exactly the most exciting thing on its own, but the sentiment behind it is pretty great.

    UPDATE: An earlier version of this post referred to a survey, which has since closed.

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  • Why Elizabeth Warren decrying ‘traffic violence’ is what America needs

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    On World Day of Remembrance Sunday, Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted:

    She didn’t say, “traffic accidents,” she said “traffic violence.” It’s a statement that shouldn’t be notable. More than 35,000 people are killed in traffic collisions nationwide every year, and many times that are seriously injured. And it doesn’t need to be this way. Of course we need to “end traffic violence,” and of course candidates for President should talk about it.

    But that’s the thing: They almost never do. All this death and carnage on our roads is never a topic in TV debates. It is practically never mentioned in presidential stump speeches. And policy platforms practically never include a plan for making our roadways safer (beyond things like fixing bridges and highways). So reading Warren’s tweet Sunday was very exciting. Do we finally have a national leader who wants to actually do something about the preventable traffic deaths happening every 15 minutes somewhere in our country? We spend a lot of time here talking about how Seattle can make our streets safer, but that does little for the rest of the country. This problem desperately needs national leadership.

    OK, so Warren’s statement plays well with Seattle Bike Blog, but what about middle America? Well, the origins for my interest in traffic safety began in a suburban red district in a Midwest swing state. And it’s a story that may as well have happened anywhere in this country, red or blue. (more…)

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  • I guess I need to take back some of the nice things I said about the Neighborhood Street Fund… UPDATED

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    UPDATE: Be sure to read to the bottom of this post for an update from SDOT. This specific Neighborhood Street Fund project is dead, but the department has not abandoned this intersection, a spokesperson said.

    2016 top-down concept of the winning 15th and Columbian redesign, including shorter crosswalks and a pedestrian plaza.
    What could have been at 15th and Columbian Way S. Concept from the 2016 Neighborhood Street Fund selection announcement.

    Yesterday’s post was supposed to be about a neighbor-led SDOT program focused on investing significantly into ideas generated from the community rather than from within SDOT. But then just when it went live, The Urbanist reported some very depressing news about a 2016 Neighborhood Street Fund safety project on Beacon Hill. SDOT has officially cancelled the long-delayed intersection redesign and public plaza at 15th and Columbian Way S for purely political reasons.

    So an intersection near a middle school will remain dangerous because people who didn’t want it to change got organized, and city leaders buckled.

    “After extensive design and coordination with the community, we were unable to reach a consensus on a design that could be supported by the community as a neighborhood proposed NSF project,” SDOT Spokesperson Ethan Bergerson told the Urbanist.

    Consensus? If we suddenly need neighborhood consensus to make changes to our city, then we will never change anything ever again. This is an absurd and dangerous requirement, and it cannot become the new standard for NSF projects. The process is already grueling for the volunteers who propose ideas, and the result is an idea that is generated from community members and design by SDOT’s professional engineers. There will always be people who don’t want change. Always and forever. True leadership means doing the right thing, anyway. Trading away safety for middle schoolers because some adults wanted it to be a little bit easier to drive and park cars is very poor leadership.

    This project was not cancelled because of further study. There was no professional report that found it would be unsafe or cause problems for neighbors or businesses. It was rejected because some neighbors just didn’t like it.

    This intersection is dangerous today, and it will be dangerous tomorrow and every day until we do something to make it safer. As the Urbanist’s Ryan Packer reported: (more…)

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  • 15 neighbor-led projects SDOT will build in the next couple years

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Map overview of the 51st and Renton project, which includes bike lane and crosswalk improvements.
    One of 15 projects moving forward through the Neighborhood Street Fund.

    When voters approved the 2015 Move Seattle Levy, they created a specific fund dedicated to building projects that came from neighbors. The process to get a project completed can be long and somewhat grueling for those to volunteer their time to propose and support them, but it’s pretty cool that the city will invest significantly into ideas that come from outside the department itself.

    SDOT recently released its list of 15 projects that the department plans to build through its Neighborhood Street Fund, including improvements spread out among every Council district. Individual projects can cost between $100,000 and $1 million. This is a totally different program from the city’s Your Voice Your Choice Parks & Street program, which is for smaller neighborhood-generated project ideas.

    All of the projects are focused on safety, especially for people walking and biking. Many are intersection and crosswalk improvements, a few are new or improved sidewalks and a couple would redesign intersections to improve bike lane connections.

    Below is the 2019–21 project list with links to sign up for email updates: (more…)

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  • King County Parks receives permit for final stretch of E Lake Sammamish Trail

    By

    Tom Fucoloro

    | Posted

    Map of the trail with the final section highlighted. The East Lake Sammamish Trail is likely the second-most litigated stretch of trail around following the Ballard Missing Link. But the final stretch of the trail got one big step closer to construction as the City of Sammamish issued King County a permit to finally finish the key link between Redmond and Issaquah.

    Sections of the rail trail have been completed for years, but the final piece has been held up by legal actions from some trailside neighbors in one of the wealthiest parts of the region.

    The work is largely funded through the King County Parks levy voters approved in August. The final section is right in the middle, flanked on both the north and the south by completed trails into Redmond and Issaquah.

    With the permit in hand, King County Parks plans to begin work in 2020 and construct the trail in 2021. That’s, of course, assuming opponents don’t find another legal maneuver to delay it or somehow convince the US Supreme Court to take up their case (yes, they are actually trying that)…

    UPDATE: I missed the news that the US Supreme Court declined to take up their case. So in theory, there is nowhere else to file an appeal. I think it is worth noting here how seriously messed up and shameful it was for opponents to put rail-trails across the entire nation at risk just to stop a parks investment near their homes. That required a shameful level of selfishness, and I’m very glad they lost. Imagine if they invested those resources into something good for the world instead.

    Cascade Bicycle Club has declared victory:

    We’re in it for the long haul to see a safe East Lake Sammamish Trail built to regional trail standards. And we’ve been there—together—every step of the way so far.

    For Cascade Bicycle Club, the East Lake Sammamish Trail is a project that has spanned two decades of work and hundreds of volunteer and staff hours. Once it’s complete, the trail will carry an estimated 5-7,000 people per day by foot and by bike.

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