Washington’s most famous Office Depot chair thief also wants to take our voter-approved transit and local transportation funding. We must defeat I-976.
Basically, Tim Eyman’s initiative would preempt local governments and agencies in places where voters have approved using vehicle license fees as a way to help fund everything from Sound Transit light rail expansion to basic bus service and street improvements in communities all over the state, including Seattle.
Getting a NO vote on I-976 is pretty much as important as passing Sound Transit 3 in 2016 or Seattle’s Metro-route-saving 2014 vote, both of which voters passed with comfortable margins. But those were local efforts, and we don’t really know how the entire concept of vehicle license fees will fare statewide.
That’s why Transportation Choices Coalition is leading an effort to fight the initiative and urge a NO vote. And they could use your help.
SDOT crews are set to start work on Pike Street bike lanes this weekend between Broadway and 9th Ave, Capitol Hill Seattle reports. Work is expected to last a week.
Community groups like Central Seattle Greenways have led outreach for this project to an almost unprecedented degree. In addition to a big public workshop in 2018, groups have conducted a ton of business outreach in recent years. Community groups even helped secure funding for a much grander future reimagining of Pike and Pine Streets as part of the Washington State Convention Center expansion’s “community package” of public benefits.
The bike lanes going in this week are largely thanks to a City Council resolution last summer that listed it as a 2019 priority. The project will almost connect the Broadway Bikeway to the 2nd Ave protected bike lane with frustrating gaps between 6th and 9th Avenues. It will be particularly frustrating heading westbound because 9th Ave is one-way southbound and Pike is one-way eastbound. So people biking will have to use the sidewalk, which is bad for biking and for people walking. I anticipate that a lot of people will continue using Pine Street instead because of this gap.
Pike Street bike lanes are extremely exciting. Pike and Pine are already heavily biked despite having very inadequate and incomplete bike infrastructure because these streets connect some of the city’s most densely-populated neighborhoods with the downtown core. A complete and connected bike lane will be a major and instant success.
But it is also extremely frustrating that city efforts to build bike lanes on these routes keeps falling short of actually connecting. The existing pilot bike lane on Pine disappears between 5th and 4th Avenues, for example. And now the new eastbound Pike bike lane will disappear at 9th Ave, one block short of 8th Ave, which at least connects to Pine St without needing to bike on the sidewalk. And the existing eastbound bike lane on Pike downtown will remain disconnected from the new bike lane by a stressful three blocks of uphill mixed traffic biking next to the convention center.
The most significant change to the existing trail will be an expansion of the park space and rounding of the trail route at the mouth of Smith Cove. Design image from Expedia.
Expedia has been working on rebuilding a section of the Elliott Bay Trail near their under-construction future headquarters in Interbay for the past year, and they’re nearly ready to unveil the new trail and open space improvements.
They’re hosting a celebratory walk and bike ride Saturday morning with Cascade Bicycle Club. So if you want to be among the first to bike the new trail, get down there at 8 a.m.
The centerpiece of the remake is a wider curve where the trail transitions from the industrial Smith Cove area to the Elliott Bay waterfront. Formerly a sharp turn in the trail with a sudden, breathtaking vista, the new trail comes with new open space so people can actually stop and enjoy the view. And this view is one of the best in the city.
Map of the proposed changes from the city fact sheet (PDF).
Seattle is finally set to make some much-needed bike safety improvements to streets near Bailey Gatzert Elementary School, where many people have crashed on the First Hill Streetcar tracks since the line was constructed in 2014.
The First Hill Streetcar and Bicycle Safety Enhancements Project (fact sheet PDF) will add protected bike lanes to 14th Ave S between S Jackson and S Washington Streets and to E Yesler Way between 14th and 12th Avenues S. The improved bike lanes will have an extra level of separation between people riding in the bike lane and the streetcar tracks. It will also make it less likely that someone driving will be able to pull over and block the bike lane, sending people biking into the tracks as they try to pass.
The project will also relocate a Route 27 bus stop from the northwest corner of 14th and Yesler to the northeast corner. This will both make room for the improved bike lane and create a space for people biking down hill to merge right and enter the new bike lane.
The project does not address the more complicated changes needed to fix the dangerous 14th/Jackson/Rainier/Boren intersection nearby. That intersection was the subject of a lawsuit stemming from a separate terrible crash in May 2014, a year before McCloud’s death. The City of Seattle settled with Daniel Ahrendt for $1.55 million this summer, four years after the streetcar tracks on S Jackson St sent him crashing to the ground where he was then run over by a Metro bus.
Work to improve bike/streetcar safety is far from over. (more…)
UPDATE: The ordinance and both resolutions passed unanimously. Details on amendments in updates below.
The City Council will vote today on an ordinance and set of resolutions that would all but require the Seattle Department of Transportation to build planned bike lanes when repaving streets, would dramatically increase the bike parking supply and would request additional funding in the mayor’s budget to build key southend and downtown bike lanes that were left out of the mayor’s most recent short term bike plan.
The Council meets 2 p.m. at City Hall today (September 3). You can watch online via Seattle Channel. I will update this post after the meeting, so stay tuned. UPDATE: Passed!
As we reported previously, the bike lane ordinance (CB 119601) would effectively strengthen the city’s existing complete streets ordinance by stating, “Whenever the Seattle Department of Transportation constructs a major paving project along a segment of the protected bicycle lane network, a protected bicycle lane with adequate directionality shall be installed along that segment.”
The ordinance does create an out for SDOT if the department determines a bike lane to be infeasible, but they would need to justify the decision to the City Council’s Transportation Committee. (Full Disclosure: My spouse Kelli works as a Legislative Assistant to Councilmember Mike O’Brien.)
UPDATE: A Councilmember Lisa Herbold amendment (with Councilmember Debora Juarez’s support) to water down the ordinance did not make it to a vote. A note was added that requires broad community outreach.
The two resolutions up for a vote are budget requests to the mayor as city leaders head into its annual budget season. Resolution 31898 seeks funding to build an additional 3,000 bike parking spaces, mostly in the form of on-street bike parking corrals, to support parking private bikes as well as shared bikes and scooters. This is key to the city’s goal of reducing sidewalk blockages from dockless bikes (and, soon, scooters).
Resolution 31894 seeks funding to add a list of vital bike projects in the southend and downtown that did not make the mayor’s cut in her latest short-term bike plan. Specifically, the resolution highlights:
Beacon Ave S Segment 1 (S 39th St to Myrtle St)
Beacon Ave S Segment 2 (Myrtle St to S Spokane St)
Beacon Ave S Segment 3 (S Spokane St to Jose Rizal Bridge)
Georgetown to Downtown
Martin Luther King Jr Way (Rainier Ave to Henderson St)
Two-way protected bike lane on 4th Ave (Main St to Vine St)
Alaskan Way (Virginia St to Elliott Bay Trail)
UPDATE: Two amendments passed: Councilmember Herbold added the Georgetown-to-South Park Trail to the list. Councilmember Bagshaw added Vine St from 2nd Ave to Thomas St.
It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s a look at some of the transportationy stuff going around the web lately.
First up! This spring, Russ at The Path Less Pedaled worked very hard to finally answer an enigma that has plagued non-French-speaking bike riders for ages: I bought these bike bags that attach to my bike rack, and the person at the store called them “pan-YAYS,” but then my friend called them “PAN-ee-yers,” and now I have no idea what to call them. How am I supposed to pronounce “panniers?” Well, even if you know (or think you know) the answer, Russ’s exploration of the question is surprisingly fascinating:
