I apologize to readers waiting for Seattle Bike Blog’s City Council endorsements, but I just plain did not have enough time this year to do Council primary endorsements justice. I had written earlier this year that I planned on creating an endorsements board, but it turns out organizing such a board also takes a lot of time that I didn’t have. Between watching the kiddo during the week and working on a top secret project I can’t yet talk about, it became clear that any endorsement effort would have been lacking. So I decided against doing them.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be Council primary coverage! This week, I’ll go 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. Sometimes one or two candidates will obviously stand out, and I’ll note that. This post is an example.
District 1 – Herbold goes unchallenged (basically)
The MASS coalition did not host a forum for this race, which also seems to be among the least competitive of the races this year.
Drum roll, please 🥁! Join us on July 20 at the Redmond Central Connector Park and be the first to see the Eastside Rail Corridor’s new name. To help us celebrate we will have live music, a bike rodeo for kids and more! 🚲🎉. https://t.co/hOSg9yEbsvpic.twitter.com/X8vLenjKZV
— King County Parks (@kingcountyparks) July 11, 2019
Yeah, no. The Eastside Rail Corridor Trail will not be named Traily McTrailface. Sorry.
I’m pretty sure I know the name, but I’ll go ahead and let King County announce it in style 10 a.m. July 20 at Redmond Central Connector Park (hmm, this trail isn’t the only thing that could use a better name).
We reported a while back on the contending names for the under-construction trail, which is planned to connect from Renton to Redmond. None of the names were notably amazing or seemed to find a strong following of supporters. I’ve been referring to it as “The Eastside Trail” for years now since it’s official name “The Eastside Rail Corridor Trail” is a real mouthful. Of course, there are several trails on the Eastside, so my name wasn’t all that great, either. In Kirkland, it is known as the Cross-Kirkland Corridor Trail, a name that will remain in use for the Kirkland-owned section.
Maybe if King County succeeds in fully funding and completing the trail according to its ambitious schedule, someday we’ll name it the DowWay or the Baldutrail. Honestly, if the county completes a fully-separated rail trail from Renton to Redmond, they can call it whatever they want. It will be amazing.
The latest design for Madison/12th/Union is much improved and rather innovative.
SDOT is hoping to begin construction on its Madison Street RapidRide G project in 2020 with service set to start in 2022. That assumes they get the Federal grant they need for the $121 million project. Capitol Hill Seattle reports that the project is still rated well on the FTA’s Small Starts Project list, but you never know what will happen with the current Federal administration.
Though the bulk of the project is about transit, of course, there are some great bike elements. There are also a couple spots where the project (or a complementary SDOT project) could help complete some key bike connections.
Then-member and now City Council candidate Phyllis Porter presents ideas about Rainier Valley bike routes to the Board in 2016.
Applications are open for a seat on Seattle’s volunteer Bicycle Advisory Board (“SBAB”). So if you want to volunteer your time to help the city make bicycle investments and influence bicycle policy, you should apply by July 28.
No professional expertise is required. In fact, some of the most effective board members have been regular ol’ Seattle residents who just want to learn, ask questions and offer their thoughts as people who ride bikes and want to help their city do better. Did you know Bill Nye was once an SBAB member? What I’m saying is, you could be Bill Nye.
The Board had made excellent strides in recent years to diversify its representation and leadership, and women of color have been co-chairs of the board for years. But the Board has lost some members of color in the past year (including Mayor Jenny Durkan’s controversial decision to oust Co-Chair Casey Gifford in November). People of color, women, LGBTQ folks, people from immigrant and refugee communities, people with disabilities, and people of all ages are encouraged to apply.
A clarifying ruling by King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff this week has put some extra pressure on the City of Seattle to win an ongoing appeal if they want to keep construction of the Ballard Missing Link on its recently-announced schedule. It also raises some questions about ongoing work on Market Street.
“The Superior Court ordered that SDOT may not proceed with construction of the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail until additional steps under SEPA are completed,” Dan Nolte, a spokesperson for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, said in an email to Seattle Bike Blog. “We respectfully disagree with this decision and believe that we have already complied with SEPA and the Court’s orders. Appeals are ongoing in the Court of Appeals and the City is evaluating next steps.”
Trail opponents have all but declared victory following this ruling (read their statement in this PDF), but that may be a bit premature. They lost almost every argument they made, and the only one that stuck has been thoroughly dismissed by the city’s latest economic study. So sure, if the city loses its appeal, opponents would live to fight another day and would successfully delay the project even more and further increasing the city’s costs (hooray?). But they should have a much more limited set of arguments to make since they would really only be able to argue against the new economic analysis (at least I think this is the case, though I am not a lawyer).
And, if the city wins its ongoing appeal, then this should all be a moot point because the courts would have determined that the economic analysis wasn’t needed in the first place and the initial FEIS was good to go. I say “should” because we have seen this trail delayed by increasingly complicated legal battles for decades. I’m not going to declare this thing a done deal until the day we cut the ribbon.
The more interesting and troubling question is whether the ongoing work on Market Street is now under scrutiny. Judge Rogoff’s decisions says, “It is hereby further ordered that SDOT shall not conduct any construction under the FEIS considered by Judge Chung unless that construction can stand on its own, or has independent utility beyond furthering the Missing Link Trail Project.”
The Market Street segment currently under construction is part of the city’s Ballard Multimodal Corridor project, which includes transit, paving, utility and street safety upgrades in addition to the trail connection between the Ballard Locks and 24th Ave NW. So is that enough to satisfy Judge Rogoff’s “independent utility” requirement? The City Attorney’s Office did not have an immediate and clear answer about whether this work could continue (staff was leaving for July 4 vacations as this story was breaking). I don’t know what would happen if the city had to stop work while Market Street is half demolished. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, because that would be a real nightmare scenario.
So yeah, as you can see, there’s a lot riding on the City Attorney’s appeal.
I live in my friends’ backyard along with my spouse Kelli and 16-month-old daughter. We all worked together (well, the baby didn’t really help) to build a new house where a carport and patchy weed-filled yard was previously. And in the end it cost about as much or maybe a bit less than buying a lower-end condo of comparable size, though it could have been a bit cheaper had the city’s very strange building codes been improved.
And that’s exactly what the Seattle City Council unanimously did today. Congratulations to everyone who worked for years to get this passed (Full disclosure: My spouse Kelli is a legislative aid to ordinance sponsor Mike O’Brien).
After going through this whole years-long process to design, permit, finance and build our backyard house under the existing rules, I have some insight into what it takes to make projects like this happen. It was more difficult, took longer and cost more than I had originally expected. But much of that work was fun, and I am so happy with how it all turned out. And with these new rules making many of the steps easier, there are a lot of people who will find building backyard houses useful for many different reasons, such as:
People partnering to share a property that they could not afford on their own. As a bonus, you get to be neighbors!
People looking to generate extra monthly income.
People hoping to age in their own neighborhood by downsizing into new smaller houses in their backyards and renting the main house.
In-fill housing like backyard cottages and basement apartments are an especially great way to increase the number of people who can live in our city’s bikeable, walkable and transit-connected neighborhoods. Though this blog is focused mostly on transportation, that issue in intimately connected to land use. The way we build our communities determines how far people need to travel to meet their needs. Biking is one big way to cut costs, but that only works if your home is within biking distance of your needs. A lot of houses in so-called “single family” neighborhoods are a bit far from necessities by foot, but a very easy distance by bike. Biking and backyard houses go together perfectly. (more…)
