I have some pretty exciting personal news to announce, but I’m holding it until Monday. OMG, that’s so mean. Why would I do that? I’m building hype. It’s part of a very loud whisper campaign. Am I doing this right? You’ll just have to check back Monday morning to find out…
But it’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s a look at some stuff going around the web lately that caught our eye.
First up, it is still so satisfying to watch the final pieces of the Alaskan Way Viaduct disappear. Good riddance!
Sure, it’s December and the winter solstice is just around the corner, but don’t let anyone tell you to put your bike in the garage until spring. Seattle is a year-round biking town, and there’s still so much biking to do before the year is over.
And the US Cyclocross National Championship is in Lakewood December 10–15. We don’t usually write about racing events, but it’s not often that we get a national championship nearby.
Tour of the Basic Bike Network. Saturday, Dec 7th. 10:00 AM -12:00. Starting at Lake Union Park. Tour the Basic Bike Network and celebrate the three major pieces that were completed this year, and see what remains to be done. RSVP on Facebook or to [email protected] (NOTE: This is planned along with Cascade Bicycle Club.)
Intro to Family Biking Advocacy. Sunday, Dec 8th. 10:00 am – 12:00 pm. Cal Anderson Park Shelter House (Capitol Hill). Come learn about how to get involved with local advocacy as a family biker! Getting involved in local advocacy as a parent can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be difficult! Join us for this fun, family-friendly event to learn how to use your personal experiences and stories to help create the city you want to see. RSVP on Facebook or to or to [email protected].
Dongho’s Favorite Things of 2019. Sunday, Dec 15th.11 AM – 1 PM. A walking tour of notable projects completed in 2019 with the City’s chief traffic engineer Dongho Chang. Featuring a new woonerf, an infamous bus lane, and perhaps Seattle’s coolest traffic signal. RSVP on Facebook or to [email protected]
Is there a December biking event you want folks to know about? Add it to our events calendar. Also check out Everyday Rides, a new biking events calendar in town.
Construction work to connect the existing light rail tracks to the new East Link tracks will require a very tough couple months in January, February and March 2020. Dubbed “Connect 2020,” train frequency will be dramatically reduced, and every passenger will need to switch from one train to another by crossing a new temporary center platform in Pioneer Square Station.
Imagine two crush-capacity trains unloading every passenger across a single center platform at the same time. Here’s a video explaining how it will work:
Trains will only run every 12 minutes all-day, compared to every 4–6 minutes during rush hour currently. Every trains will be full-size four-car trains, but this still means they will significantly more crowded (assuming people don’t divert to other modes, like buses, biking or driving).
Understandably, Sound Transit staff is concerned about how crammed that center platform will be during the transition, and they have decided that trying to bring a bike through the crowd won’t work and could even be a safety hazard. So people with bikes will be asked to exit at University Street and International District Stations.
From the League of American Bicyclists’ report card (PDF).
After Washington won the top spot in the League of American Bicyclists’ bike friendly state list for a decade straight from 2008-17, the League took a different tactic in 2018, providing each state with a report card to show how they have improved (or not) over time.
But the rankings are back for 2019 and, sure enough, no other state has put any effort real effort into taking the top spot from Washington. So hip hip hooray, we’re number 1 again, I guess.
Look, Washington is not a cycling utopia. Out state still dramatically under-invests in safe streets and non-motorized transportation. Traffic deaths and serious injuries for people biking and walking are going up, not down. The statewide bike commute rate (according to a flawed annual Census survey) is hardly budging from 1%, where it has been for the last decade. The only thing we really have going for us is that the other 49 states are terrible at walking and biking safety, too.
Yes, some WSDOT staffers are truly great and the state legislature does some good things. But come on, are we going to go another decade at number 1 just because no other state feels like lifting a finger to give it a try?
OK, yes, many states have people or maybe even a small staff of people working hard to improve cycling. But no state genuinely makes walking and biking access and safety a top priority. No state invests actual money in it, just the budget scraps they find in the rotunda couch cushions. A single freeway interchange “upgrade” project can cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and states build those all the time. And traffic still sucks after they are complete. Imagine if a state decided that just one of their mega-projects was going to be a statewide bikeways initiative, spending hundreds of millions to build safe bike lanes and trails along state highways that cut through communities. Give that state an award.
I would like this League ranking to be something states need to actually compete for. I want to see states get into an annual bikeways, crosswalks and trails construction race. Because what I really want to see more than anything is our injury and death totals trending down toward zero. Then we can think about pouring a few glasses of champagne.
Below are more details from the report card: (more…)
2,223 pounds. That’s 1.1 tons or 1 metric tonne. All by bike. All donated to the community.
I already wrote about how amazing the 2019 Seattle Cranksgiving was over the weekend, but this number is so big that I felt the need to give it its own post.
The 190 people who rode in Seattle’s 10th Cranksgiving all pitched in to purchase and pedal about 12 pounds of food each to donate to Rainier Valley Food Bank. And when you add the food in every rider’s backpacks and panniers together, you get a literal metric tonne. This is the weight of some small cars.
And this is only counting the Cranksgiving Seattle Bike Blog organized with The Bikery and Swift Industries. West Seattle Bike Connections hosted their first West Seattle Cranksgiving a week prior, and they had 35 people haul a reported 1,195 pounds of food to West Seattle Food Bank.
Nationwide, there were a record 109 Cranksgivings this year, which is just astounding. That’s a lot of people biking food for their communities.
There is so much power in people coming together. If many hands make light work, many hands on handlebars can replace a semi truck. And this event costs almost nothing to organize. The only cash that changes hands is between riders and the people selling groceries around town. And riders keep inviting more friends to join, resulting in consistent growth (with weather playing a factor year-to-year).
So big thank you to everyone who has ever ridden or sponsored the ride. And if you are inspired to start a Cranksgiving ride in your town or neighborhood, you should! Check out the how-to guide at cranksgiving.org to get started or email [email protected].
When news broke this morning that the court had granted an injunction delaying the effects of I-976 pending a final ruling on the initiative, there was a clear sense of relief among transportation advocates. Without an injunction, transportation agencies across the state would need to slash collection of vehicle license fees and motor vehicle excise taxes (“MVET”) starting December 5. That would have forced them to make massive decisions about their budgets in a very short period of time, a recipe for disaster.
But the final decision is still very unknown. Maybe the initiative is defeated in court and no budget changes will be necessary. Or maybe this injunction will simply be a short window of delay, and any qualifying fees collected will need to be refunded once the courts approve them.
Tim Eyman is sloppy and consistently writes misleading and shoddy initiatives that are illegal under the state’s constitution. I am no lawyer and have no special insight into the planned legal strategy beyond what has been reported elsewhere, but this initiative sure seems to break some of the laws regarding initiatives. For example, capping vehicle license fees and redefining how MVET should be calculated sure seem like two different things to me. It seems likely that many people (especially in Snohomish, Pierce and King Counties) voted for it because they were upset about Sound Transit’s car valuation calculations, but didn’t intend to also decimate transportation departments across the state that rely on the totally unrelated vehicle license fees. This is one reason why multiple-issue initiatives are and should be illegal. If it weren’t, an initiative writer could just package enough ideas together that most people will find at least something to vote for, resulting in a bunch of unpopular changes all becoming law together.
Others may have been mislead by the title into thinking the initiative would preserve any fees previously approved by voters, an argument the court found very compelling when granting the injunction: (more…)
