Seattle Bike Blog

Trail Alert 10/12-13: State will replace bumpy 520 Bridge Trail covers

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 11, 2019

Photo from WSDOT.

Base photos from WSDOT.

It’s happening! WSDOT is going to replace all those abruptly bumpy expansion gap covers on the 520 floating bridge trail this weekend.

Of course, replacing the covers means crews need to close the trail for the weekend starting 11 p.m. tonight (Friday) and continuing until 5 a.m. Monday. But the trail was going to need to be closed anyway due to work in Montlake, so combining the work this weekend prevents a closure later.

As we reported back in 2016 before the bridge trail fully opened and again in 2017, WSDOT installed expansion gap covers with a steep enough rise that biking over them feels something like hitting a pothole. And there are a lot of them.

Because the bridge is floating on Lake Washington, it is built to rise and fall with the level of the lake. That means the bridge needs a lot of gaps in the bridge surface, which are then covered for obvious reasons.

But hitting what feels like a pothole every few seconds while biking across the world’s longest floating bridge is a bit of a bummer. Luckily, I have not heard of anyone crashing and being injured due to the bumps, which I was worried would happen.

Nearly a year ago, WSDOT started testing out a fix to one of the covers, and the response was 95% positive. So now they are fixing the rest of the covers this weekend and it should be a smoother ride come Monday.

tags: 520 trail, Bike Route Alert, wsdot

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District 1 Endorsement: Lisa Herbold

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 10, 2019

District: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Register to vote in King County

District 1 should reelect Lisa Herbold to the Seattle City Council.

Herbold has not been bad for biking, walking and transit, but she has at times been lukewarm to the bold changes needed to shift many more trips from cars and trucks to transit, walking and biking. For example, she considered proposing an amendment to water down the recent bike safety ordinance, but pulled the idea before it reached the Council floor (and then voted in favor). So that earns partial credit I suppose.

As noted in our voting guide for the primary, Herbold most directly butted heads with biking advocates when she fought against saving the beleaguered Pronto Cycle Share system. Though it is worth noting, as hard as it is to say so, that she was probably right. Though we did not see private dockless bike share coming at the time, it’s hard to imagine Pronto surviving once Lime, Spin and ofo hit the streets in much larger numbers and for much less money (at least less money to get started). The time may yet come again for public bike share in some form, but Pronto wasn’t it.

But all this is purely academic because as noted in our primary guide, her opponent Phil Tavel would be terrible on the Council. I mean, the guy’s primary campaign website (since updated) claimed that bike and bus lanes “eliminated parking spaces and impacted the viability of personal vehicles as a transportation option.” He also vowed to fight to protect free car parking, which he says is “One of District One’s unique qualities.” What an insult to his district! Don’t listen to him, District 1, you have so much more to offer than acreage of asphalt reserved for free car storage.

His website has since been updated and now talks about the need to reduce driving and praises “micro-mobility” like electric bikes, though he offers no support for bus and bike lanes. Has he had a change of heart? I am skeptical.

In their endorsement, Washington Bikes wrote:

Herbold has helped hold the city accountable to following through on key transportation projects in her district – including the Georgetown to Southpark trail and retaining bike improvements within the Delridge Rapid Ride project. In her response to our questionnaire, Herbold adds that in order to fund planned bike routes, money from traffic cameras and new revenue sources must be dedicated specifically to bike projects.

The Transit Riders Union wrote: “Lisa is a dedicated public servant, a smart and effective leader, and a strong ally to grassroots movements and groups like TRU.”

She has also been endorsed by Seattle Subway (PDF).

Vote Herbold.

tags: 2019 general election, city council district 1, Lisa herbold

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Fewer fights like the Missing Link? Seattle limits ‘weaponized’ environmental review appeals

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 9, 2019

Environmental review has been used to maintain dangerous conditions for people biking through the Ballard Missing Link.

Just about everyone who first learns about the decades-long Burke-Gilman Missing Link legal battle is baffled when they hear that this delay is under the guise of “environmental review.” It’s a biking and walking trail! Isn’t safer biking and walking inherently good for the environment?

They’re not wrong. A process that should prevent degradation of the environment was instead being used to prevent the city from completing a project that would improve the environment, and that’s just nonsense. The process puts proposed projects on trial, but not the status quo. And the status quo can be pretty terrible to the environment.

To be clear, “environmental” in this legal sense is defined very broadly, including things like traffic and economic impacts, supposed negatives that can sometimes work against what the average person might associate with the term “environment.” When massive freeway projects like the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement and the 520 Bridge Replacement Projects cruise through faster than a mile of biking and walking trail, there is a serious problem with the process.

The other problem is that environmental appeals are a tool available almost solely to wealthy individuals, groups and businesses. And it is so effective at delaying projects that even the threat of an appeal can get wealthy interests what they want as we saw clearly on Westlake. (more…)

tags: city council, environmental review, hearing examiner, sepa

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Watch: Move over Sprocket Man, SDOT has a new spokesper…uh…salmon

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 8, 2019

OK, so departments of transportation are not known for their excellent advertising. There are exceptions, for sure, like those Midttrafik bus commercials:

Or New York’s recent car-shrinking bus GIFs:

The rollout of our bus lane enforcement cameras starts with M15 SBS buses next week. Bus-mounted cameras will photograph vehicles that are blocking bus lanes, and drivers will be ticketed. #LaserBus pic.twitter.com/pP6CVfJ9Fd

— NYCT Buses (@NYCTBus) October 4, 2019

But in general, Seattle’s 1980s Sprocket Man ads are much more the norm:

But SDOT has a new “spokessalmon” named Sal who went around town like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing people but not really letting them get a word in. The message of the video, part of the city’s Flip Your Trip campaign, is that people should try taking the bus, walking or biking to work at least one a week. I mean, that’s certainly a good start!

Watch:

So far so good. I look forward to the biking episode (there is one, right?).

tags: sal the salmon, sdot

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Biking boom: Fremont Bridge biking is on track to reach 1 million 2019 trips a whole month early

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 7, 2019

UPDATED 10/15

When the Fremont Bridge bike counter started ticking away in 2012, the big question was: How many years before it measures 1 million trips in a calendar year? It barely hit 1 million in 2014, though that year was a bit anomalous. It narrowly missed 1 million 2015 though 2017 before a big biking surge in 2018 hit the mark around Thanksgiving, itself an incredible feat.

This year, Seattle is on pace to hit 1 million trips before Halloween. With 958,572 trips measured as of October 6 and a weekly pace of around 25,000 we should be about a week and a half away (shorter with great weather, a bit longer if there is sustained heavy rain). But it is almost certain that the Fremont Bridge will reach 1 million before Halloween, a month earlier than the record set last year.

Dockless bike share services, which launched in 2017 and dramatically grew in 2018, are the most obvious force behind the boom in recent years. But the smoke choking the city last summer diminished the counts, as is clear in the 27% increase in August 2019 compared to August 2018.

But smoke is not the whole story. Neither is bike share. Monthly totals have seen significant year-over-year increases in 7 of 9 months so far (only volatile, very weather-dependent February saw a significant decrease). Meanwhile, bike share use is largely the same as in 2018, according to a recent city report. So it seems that in 2019, more people are riding their own bikes more often. Could the clear rise in e-bikes be part of the equation here? Did using bike share convince more people to buy their own bikes? There’s a lot worth exploring here. (more…)

tags: bike counter, fremont bridge

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The dark side of bait bikes

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 3, 2019

BikeIndex is a great resource for people to report a stolen bike.

Bike theft is a serious issue. Not only do victims lose the value of their bikes — measured both by money and sentimental value — but they also lose their mobility. A bike isn’t a car stereo or Amazon package, it’s a mode of transportation. And if you can’t easily afford a replacement, a stolen bike can be devastating. And even for people who can afford a replacement, the hassle required to go bike shopping is sometimes enough that people don’t bother. And that’s not a good outcome either.

It’s also very difficult to catch bike thieves, especially since the item they just stole happens to be a great way to get away. So it makes some sense that departments would want to find ways to deter bike theft by making bike theft seem more risky. What if some percentage of bikes were tracked by police, and it was impossible to tell which ones they were? Would that make potential thieves think twice about stealing one? That’s the basic idea behind “bait bikes.”

However, there’s a point where theft deterrence becomes victimization of poor people, and Denny Westneat at the Seattle Times recently wrote about a troubling case in which the jury sided with the accused:

Back in the summer of 2018, [Jolene] Paris was hanging around near a Goodwill outlet store, on Sixth Avenue South in Sodo. It’s a regular gathering spot for the homeless and the near-homeless, as it’s a liquidation center where they offer stuff in bulk that didn’t sell at a regular Goodwill. (“Shoes — $1.19 per pound. All sales final.”)

Paris noticed a silver road bicycle, an old Sirrus Pro model, leaning against a tree in the dirt near some shrubs. According to her testimony, she thought it odd someone had left a bike there, unlocked and unattended, in this high-crime neighborhood. So she started wheeling it around the Goodwill parking lot, asking if it belonged to anyone.

It did belong to someone – the Seattle Police Department.

The police basically argued that it wasn’t her bike, but she took it. Therefore she should be guilty of theft (it was a misdemeanor charge because the bike was valued below the threshold for a felony). But context is everything, and the bike in the dirt near a Goodwill (where people get rid of things they don’t want) and was not locked. So how serious really was the crime they caught here? Was there room for someone to reasonably believe the bike had been abandoned? The jury thought so. (more…)

tags: bike index, bike thefts, danny westneat, spd

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