As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
Now, District 7. Right off the bat, we gotta talk about the Magnolia Bridge. Every candidate supports replacing this bridge, but the most popular idea among candidates is a “one-to-one” replacement of the car-centric freeway-style viaduct, which is complete nonsense. This would cost upwards of $420 million, a price tag that is simply not justified by the relatively small number of households it would serve. Investing in car-centric freeway infrastructure is also not in line with our climate goals. Our city has massive transportation challenges in quickly-growing parts of town and in lower-income areas that have long been neglected.
In order to make a Magnolia Bridge replacement make sense, it’s going to need to be paired with some major changes in the area, including a lot more housing and transit. So while all candidates support replacing the bridge, there are some differences in how they talk about it. (more…)
As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
Oh, Mike O’Brien. Please don’t leave us.
District 6 has drawn the biggest field of candidates, and the race is also among the least clear for biking and safe streets. On one hand, there are a lot of candidates who told Lester Black at the Stranger (be sure to check out the spreadsheet of responses) that they ride bikes (Terry Rice, Jon Lisbin, Dan Strauss, Heidi Wills, Jay Fathi, Joey Massa and Ed Pottharst) and think the city should invest more money to build bike lanes (Rice, Strauss, Fathi, Massa, Pottharst). So that’s good.
But no single candidate has yet emerged as the favorite among transportation-focused organizations, which is disappointing.
Melissa Hall has a good social media presence, sharing quality takes on transportation issues. For example, she supports completing the Missing Link which is somehow not a unanimous opinion among candidates this year. Her campaign got off to a late start and has been building. The question is whether she has a big enough campaign operation to get enough votes out. As we saw with the last mayoral race, being right about stuff is not enough to win an election.
Summary of public feedback on the Missing Link Environmental Impact Statement. Shilshole is the planned route.
The only candidate to get multiple endorsements from the orgs we’ve been tracking is Dan Strauss, who is currently a staffer for Sally Bagshaw. Strauss says a lot of the right things except for one big one: He is against completing the Missing Link. That’s a huge red flag. The city has already studied this section of trail far beyond the point of absurdity, and they found no evidence that the trail would harm jobs or any of the other arguments opponents have used in fighting for the past couple decades. I also worry about what opposing the trail says about who has his ear. The overwhelming majority of people (over 80 percent) who responded to the city’s multiple public outreach efforts about the trail support completing it as designed. Only 5 percent wanted Leary, Strauss’s stated preference. So who is he listening to?
UPDATE: Strauss commented below, and then he and I talked on the phone to somewhat clarify his Missing Link position. He wouldn’t budge from saying that he prefers Leary. But his position isn’t because of the business appellants, it’s because of the MLK Labor Council (I previously interviewed Nicole Grant about the council’s opposition).
“I know that a lot of people in the past have used Leary as a false alternative,” he said. “I want to get it done.” He also described himself as “very pro-bike.”
“I want a connected network of protected bike lanes,” he said. “I’m gonna go to the mat on the whole bike network.”
Work is scheduled to begin this fall, though schedule relies on a court ruling. I asked him if he would try to stop trail construction when/if work begins.
“My preference would still be Leary. But for me, we need to get it done now,” he said. So what does that mean? I dunno.
As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
Couldn’t at least one of those great District 4 candidates have lived just a few blocks further north?
The District 5 race leaves a lot to be desired. Incumbent Debora Juarez has not drawn a high quality challenger, it seems. Juarez gave good, though not inspiring, answers to Lester Black at the Stranger (be sure to check out the spreadsheet of responses), which is more than I can say about the other candidates who bothered to respond.
Juarez has somehow managed to publicly stay out of the 35th Ave NE bike lanes fight, though her lack of support for the project, which crossed into her district, is itself saying something. The mayor’s last-minute decision to cut those bike lanes has proven to be a huge mistake, and her lack of advocacy for SDOT’s designed and contracted plan has resulted in a more dangerous street in her district and a gap in her district’s bike network. Folks who live in D5 and ride a bike could really have used her help standing up for them.
The Urbanist notes in their non-endorsement that “In her questionnaire, Juarez refused to side with safety advocates pleading with the city council to save lives on NE 35th Avenue. She insisted the concerns of business owners and landowners must be given extra weight no matter how late in the process or badly needed the safety upgrades are.”
But she says the city should be building more bike lanes and providing more funding for bike improvements. She has helped work on home zones and says she supports safer streets and Vision Zero. That’s all great to hear. 35th, though, was a solid test of her true commitment to safe streets, and she failed it.
I just wish there were a challenger in this race who could press her on these issues. But there doesn’t seem to be.
As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
District 4 is a great example of the downside of changing to district-based elections. There are so many good candidates in this one race, yet the city can only elect one of them. Meanwhile, there are districts with few good options. It just seems like such a waste.
For example, Cathy Tuttle is running for District 4. Cathy Tuttle! The founder and longtime Executive Director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Just check out all these stories we’ve written about her and her work. And those are just the ones where I remembered to tag her name. Not only did she found and build a new safe streets non-profit organization, she was able to get it established enough that it could continue to thrive even after she stepped away. That is very rare. Only a tiny percentage of grassroots non-profit orgs ever survive their founder, and it takes great leadership to achieve this. Honestly, I’m not sure a Council seat is any harder than what she’s already done. And we know she’d be great for safe streets issues.
But she’s gotta somehow beat a dynamic cast of other candidates, many of whom have great things to say about biking and safe streets issues.
Shaun Scott, who racked up the most endorsements from transportation orgs (he’s the only D4 candidate who got the nod from every org we’ve been tracking below), has great things to say about transportation issues. And he is consistent in connecting it to issues of housing affordability and climate justice.
Emily Myers has also talked about the need to complete the Bike Master Plan and to “stop centering cars in our decision making process about how we improve transportation in the city,” as she said during the MASS forum (video and transcript below). Her answers to Lester Black at the Stranger were also particularly strong (be sure to check out the spreadsheet of responses).
And we haven’t even talked about Joshua Newman yet. Newman is a longtime neighborhood organizer who, instead of fighting new bike projects, says he wants to see neighborhoods with safer streets, more bike lanes and better transit.
As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
District 3 incumbent Kshama Sawant would be the senior member of the City Council if she wins reelection, but she has drawn her toughest slate of challengers yet.
Sawant has been a member of the Transportation and Sustainability Committee since 2016, when Mike O’Brien became chair after Tom Rasmussen declined to seek reelection. During that time, she has been unwavering in her support of walking, biking and transit efforts in her role on the committee and in full Council votes.
Transportation is not her top issue, and it’s not the focus of Socialist Alternative rallies and posters. But she gets it, and she often highlights equity and the needs of working people during committee discussions.
So if transportation is the issue you’re focusing on for this race, then I don’t see much of an opening to unseat Sawant.
As I wrote in our District 1 post, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements for the primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts. I also want to hear who you are supporting and why in the comments below.
With Bruce Harrell choosing not to run again, District 2 is our first of many open races this year. And, as a result, there are a lot of candidates, and endorsements are a bit more spread out. But as you’ll see, a couple names rise to the top.
As noted in our previous posts, Seattle Bike Blog is not doing official endorsements this primary. Instead, I’ll be going district-by-district, posting videos from the MASS Coalition’s transportation forums along with a roundup of transportation-related endorsements and other notable news items and thoughts.
