Seattle Bike Blog

Last push to get block-the-box and bus lane enforcement bill through the Senate

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

April 25, 2019

Screenshot of the TCC web tool to tell your Senator you support the bill.

The Washington State legislature initially failed this session to pass a law to allow cities to use automated camera enforcement to keep bus lanes and intersections clear. But thanks to some great, persistent advocacy from organizations like Transportation Choices Coalition and Rooted In Rights, the bill is back as a part of the state budget.

HB 1793 has already passed the full House and the Senate Transportation Committee. Now it has a handful of days to get a vote on the Senate floor, and you can help.

TCC put out this call for help and a handy online tool to help you quickly send a message to your Senator:

HB 1793 passed the House floor and Senate Transportation Committee! Now it’s headed to the Senate Rules Committee and — with your help — the Senate floor for a final vote.

TCC has been working with Representative Fitzgibbon, Senator Saldaña, and Senator Nguyen, as well as partners Rooted in Rights and the City of Seattle to pass the “block the box” legislation, which would allow Seattle to use automated traffic camera enforcement to keep people safe and transit moving. (more…)

tags: blocking the box, hb 1793, rooted in rights, transportation choices coalition

— Advertisement —
Padelford: Let’s build a better bike movement

By

Gordon Padelford

| Posted

April 23, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE: With Mayor Jenny Durkan delaying or cancelling so many bike route plans, Gordon Padelford and I had a conversation wondering how the movement for safe streets and better bike routes should evolve from here. Padelford, Executive Director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, then reached out with this open letter to people who bike in the Seattle area community.

Feeling this: "We come today to mourn the loss of the Bicycle Master Plan, Vision Zero, the Seattle Climate Action Plan, & the Complete Streets Ordinance—& we look to you @SeattleCouncil for guidance, and advising @MayorJenny, the Mayor's office, & @seattledot to bring them back! pic.twitter.com/Ou2JHdsxeG

— Seattle Greenways (@SNGreenways) April 8, 2019

Video: Apu Mishra and Tamara Schmautz shredding Seattle’s Climate Action Plan, Bicycle Master Plan, Complete Streets Policy, and Vision Zero Plan, symbolizing the disregard the mayor places on these plans and goals.

Dear Seattle bike movement,

Apu and Tamara’s symbolic shredding of the city’s climate and transportation plans represents what a lot of us have been feeling: What good are plans if the mayor turns around and ignores them when the going gets tough? We have all learned the hard way from the cancellation of long-planned bike lanes on 35th Ave NE and N 40th St that political pressure matters most in this mayor’s decision making — more than our city’s shared values and goals for health, safety, climate, fiscal responsibility, and accessibility.

So, what should the bike movement do in an era when raw politics matters most? By “the bike movement,” I mean the people and organizations who care about making our city a great place for everyone of all ages, abilities, walks of life, and backgrounds to cycle for their everyday needs.

Let’s build a bigger and better bike movement that is politically powerful enough to hold our elected leaders to Seattle’s values and goals, especially when there are loud voices trying to drag them back towards a 1950s vision for our streets. Let’s deepen and broaden our relationships and the base of people involved, and recognize that the “bike movement” is only one piece of a much larger effort — advocacy for housing, affordability, transit, disability rights, climate, community-building, walking, safety, police reform, public health, and more — to make a better city for everybody. And let’s redouble our efforts to out-organize and out-mobilize those who would oppose basic safety changes to our streets.

Where We’ve Been

(more…)

tags: gordon padelford, seattle neighborhood greenways

— Advertisement —
Trail Alert: Chief Sealth Trail detour at S Graham St

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

April 23, 2019

The Chief Sealth Trail will be detoured for about two blocks along S Graham St and 31st Ave S starting today (April 22) and lasting up to one month.

The closure is for a project to make crossing improvements where the trail route crosses Graham, so that’s the good news. The bad news is that we confirmed with the project team there will be no temporary bike lane or trail for users on S Graham Street during this work.

More details from SDOT:

To complete the work safely and efficiently, we will close 30th Ave S on the south side of S Graham St as soon as Tuesday, April 23 for up to 1 month. To maintain access to the Chief Sealth Trail, we will place a detour for people walking and biking along 31st Ave NE for up to 1 month. This is shown on the attached detour map.

Those biking and walking northbound along the Chief Sealth Trail will join 31st Ave NE and proceed north to S Graham St, where they will cross to the north side. They will then continue westbound to 30th Ave S, where they will head north to connect to Chief Sealth Trail. Similarly, those biking and walking southbound will head south on 30th Ave S to S Graham St, where they will head east to 31st Ave S and then cross S Graham St heading south. They will continue along 31st Ave S to the connection to Chief Sealth Trail at just before S Morgan St.

tags: Bike Route Alert, chief sealth trail

— Advertisement —
West Seattle community group responds to bike plan cuts + Cascade, SNG outline their priorities

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

April 22, 2019

Bike plan map modified by West Seattle Bike Connections.

Neighborhoods all over Seattle have been hit hard by Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposed bike plan cuts. And as is depressingly typical, West Seattle got hit especially hard. They already had lackluster improvements in the previous version of the bike plan, but the latest version cuts the remaining big improvements, like vital Fauntleroy Way and Roxbury St bike lanes.

West Seattle Bike Connections, the same community group that did amazing work to help their neighbors get around by bike during the Viaduct shutdown earlier this year, is sounding the alarm about the cuts to improvements their neighborhood needs to keep people safe and encourage more people to get around by bike.

From WSBC:

We need safe bike routes on East Marginal, Avalon, Fauntleroy, Delridge, Sylvan/Orchard/Dumar and Roxbury.

…

Let’s tell SDOT to stop backpedaling. We voted for, we are paying for, and we all need safe streets now. Essential for safety, connectivity, equity, and for Seattle to meet it’s Climate Action Plan and Vision Zero goals.

Unable to attend a meeting? Send comments to [email protected] by April 30, 2019.

…

The Mayor didn’t like what she heard from the Bicycle Advisory Board (“find funds and build it”) or what she heard from the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee (“find funds and build it”), so now she and SDOT are side-stepping the process mandated by City Council, hoping to get the answer they want from the rest of us. Please let them know how you feel.

You can attend an upcoming SDOT open house to push back against the proposed cuts: (more…)

tags: bicycle master plan, fauntleroy way, jenny durkan, west seattle, west seattle bike connections

— Advertisement —
Seattle’s bike share stands out as companies shift to scooters elsewhere

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

April 19, 2019
Map from the NACTO report “Shared Micromobility in the U.S.: 2018” (PDF)

Just 21 months ago, Seattle turned American bike share on its head by permitting companies to launch free-floating bikes all over town, an effort that dramatically increased the number of bike trips all over town, turned heads in city halls across the country and helped demonstrate the popularity of so-called “micromobilty” companies, some of which are now valued in the billions of dollars.

Since Spin and Lime (née LimeBike) launched in summer 2017 the industry has pivoted and changed many times over:
- It started with pedal bikes from U.S.-based companies.
- Then Beijing-based ofo arrived, charging only $1 per hour.
- Then electric scooters arrived in other cities, with per-minute fees.
- Then electric bikes arrived alongside pedal bikes, also with per-minute fees.
- Then Uber bought JUMP and Lyft bought Motivate.
- Then Lime added car share to its bike and scooter fleets.
- Then ofo imploded.
- Then pedal bikes were completely replaced by electric bikes and scooters.
- Now, in most cities, bikes are disappearing altogether because scooters get so many more uses per day than bikes.
But Seattle is a notable exception to this final trend, due mostly to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s continued resistance to allowing scooters. An early free-floating bike success story, Lime and JUMP are still working to compete here for the bike share market. Lyft is supposed to join the fray at some point, too, though there has been little news about their efforts.

And according to a recent report by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (“NACTO”), of which Seattle is a member, Seattle now stands out as an oddball in the country, and report authors essentially had to create a separate category just for Seattle. While other cities have sort of stratified into scooter cities and cities with dock-based bike share, Seattle is the only city noted as having only dockless bikes. At this point, Seattle is home to a huge percentage of all trips taken on dockless bikes in the country.

The report notes that 84 million trips have been taken on “shared micromobility” services in the nation, with the bulk split between the small handful of large docked systems and new scooter services: (more…)
tags: bike share, nacto

— Advertisement —
E Union Street is a chance for SDOT and the mayor to prove they care about connecting bike routes

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

April 17, 2019

All you have to do is disappear from existence for two blocks while biking and you’ll be fine.

Seattle is once again set to choose the convenience of car driving over the safety of people walking and biking and our city’s Vision Zero, Climate Action Plan and Bicycle Master Plan goals. This time, it’s on E Union Street in the Central District, where early designs for a planned protected bike lane on the street will fail to fully connect across the two busiest and most important intersections in the project area: 23rd Ave and MLK Way. The reason? Cars, of course.

The single clearest example of the city bailing on its goals is their plan to completely drop the bike lanes for the two blocks surrounding 23rd Avenue. And worse, SDOT spokesperson Ethan Bergerson told the Urbanist’s Ryan Packer that people could just bike on the sidewalk:

“People biking would have the option to get through the intersection by crossing in the marked shared lane or using the sidewalk. We understand that bikes using the sidewalk is not always optimal, however, developments on both sides of 23rd Ave are expanding the sidewalks providing some relief.”

SDOT just used their official megaphone to lean out their car window and yell at people biking to “get on the damn sidewalk!”

Biking on the sidewalk in a busy business district is not a solution, and SDOT damn well knows it. But just to illustrate the point, David Seater recently took SDOT’s advice. Here’s how that went: (more…)

tags: 23rd ave, bicycle master plan, central district, david seater, jenny durkan, mlk way, ryan packer, the urbanist, union street

— Advertisement —