The Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board meets 6 p.m. the first Wednesday of every month at City Hall. Anyone can sit in on meetings and provide public comment at the beginning and (thanks to a recent change) end.
The volunteer board “advises the Mayor, City Council, and City Departments and Divisions on projects, policies, and programs that improve and/or affect bicycling conditions in Seattle,” and does so in a number of ways. In addition to their meetings, they host bike tours of areas under study, write letters and help prioritize the Bicycle Master Plan.
Below is the agenda for the April meeting. Stay tuned for updates.
Seattle’s bicycle movement emerged from chrysalis Tuesday transformed into its newest state, and it put on a powerful display inside City Hall.
I highly recommend watching the testimony and the very interesting Committee conversation, during which Councilmembers Mike O’Brien, Rob Johnson and Kshama Sawant all had powerful things to say in support of the bike plan and safe streets. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is not a member of the Transportation Committee, but she was active during the rally before the meeting.
I’ve been covering the bike movement in this town long enough to observe how the popular, grassroots energy behind the idea of a safer and more bikeable city is always evolving to meet the needs of the day. New people get engaged and emerge as leaders, people who have been engaged for a while level up and become stronger advocates, and some people grow cynical, burn out or move away, leaving voids that are not always filled. But despite setbacks here and there, the movement continues to grow stronger and more intersectional, connecting safe streets, bike lanes and transit with housing, public health, environmental justice and social justice.
The bike movement in this town, like so many other movements, has been a very uneasy place in recent years. A lot of the volunteer energy behind it shifted after Donald Trump got elected, as it should have. In my experience, people who believe everyone has a right to safely move around on our streets also tend to believe that everyone has a right to safely live in our nation.
But that doesn’t mean people stopped caring about safe streets, as was clear Tuesday at City Hall.
And it feels like the movement finally found its footing after a few years of being unsure how best to advocate under Mayor Jenny Durkan, whose 35th Ave NE decision finally showed people her true intentions as executor of Seattle’s bike plan. (more…)
Draft map from the 2019 Bicycle Master Plan Implementation Plan (PDF)
26 miles of bike facilities are gone completely, and another 27 are at risk. That’s the harsh reality of the latest iteration of the Bicycle Master Plan Implementation Plan (the “Bike Plan Plan”).
The result is what could be a more transparent bike plan the city has put forth in the years since voters approved Move Seattle, but it’s not visionary. The latest plan officially abandons the goal of keeping the 20-year Bicycle Master Plan on track for completion and will leave massive gaps in the citywide bike network even if every project included is constructed on schedule. And given our recent experience with Mayor Jenny Durkan cancelling the 35th Ave NE bike lanes, that’s hardly a sure thing.
SDOT will present this plan to the City Council Transportation Committee 2 p.m. today (Tuesday). Stay tuned for updates from that meeting or watch via Seattle Channel.
By the end of 2016, the 20-year Bicycle Master Plan was 28% complete (it started at 22% in 2013). One year later, it was 29% complete. One percent per year is dismal progress. It’s hard to imagine how the project list in this latest update puts the city within 5 years of achieving Vision Zero or on track to fulfill its ambitious Climate Action Plan goals.
There is one measure, though, where Seattle is making huge progress: Ridership. And that’s the most important one. The city’s annual bike counts saw an incredible 12% increase in 2017-2018, almost certainly powered by the boom in private bike share services coupled with significant bike route improvements like the 2nd Ave bike lane extension and the Westlake Bikeway. This is amazing, and despite all the other frustrations in this update, let’s not lose sight of this success. Seattle’s efforts to help more people get around by bike are working. We need city leadership to build on this success, not fight it.
In addition to the big bike network cuts, the plan highlights another 27 miles “with known risks,” which could be due to partnership dependencies (such as project where Sound Transit also has a say), where Federal funding is unknown or where the politics could be sticky (car parking!).
But as easy as it is to get angry or discouraged when looking through the latest plan, at least advocates can now see what the city is actually planning rather than being repeatedly blindsided by disappointing setbacks and cuts. The new plan may also provide a much-needed solid step for bike and safe streets advocates to stand on after years of what has felt like free fall. Because this is now Mayor Durkan’s plan. (more…)
Supporters donned green scarves to show their support for the Bicycle Master Plan during a 2013 public hearing.
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s decision this week to scrap planned, designed and contracted bike lanes on 35th Ave NE has drawn a major backlash as people are dismayed to hear that Seattle’s mayor is abandoning the Bicycle Master Plan in order to serve cars.
The Mayor’s Office and SDOT leadership dramatically misread Seattle’s true feelings about bike lanes, street safety and the need to take bold action to fight climate change. If they thought this was going to be the easier or “safer” move politically, then they don’t know Seattle at all.
It’s true that the anti-bike lane organizers around 35th Ave NE have been louder in the past year than those arguing in favor of the bike lanes (though the pro-bike lane side had some great actions, like last year’s moms ride in response to a sexist tweet from the anti-bike lane camp). But the critical error the mayor made here was to forget or ignore the larger picture of how we got here, which included years of organizing and thousands of hours of engaged public participation to create the plans and pass the levy to build these bike lanes. The Bicycle Master Plan was an enormous, multi-year project, and the Move Seattle Levy was an incredibly bold funding package that put biking, walking and transit first. Both sailed into law on a popular wave.
Perhaps the Mayor and her office made the mistake of conflating a localized opposition with citywide opinion, so they decided to serve a small group of neighbors at the expense of a citywide bike network vision. And perhaps because the mayor was not around for the years of Bicycle Master Plan development and missed the big public displays of support for it, she has made a big mistake by underestimating how many people in Seattle expect SDOT to actually build what the bike lanes the plan promises.
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s vision for the future of Seattle streets is to reserve 100 percent of the street space for cars.
Mayor Jenny Durkan has officially abandoned the Bicycle Master Plan, which was approved unanimously by the City Council and funded through a vote of the people.
The Mayor has until recently only delayed Bike Master Plan projects, like essentially all downtown bike lanes. But the time for wishy-washy stances on bike lane projects is running out, and her office is finally admitting that they do not plan to build bike lanes, at least not bike lanes that have any opposition. Which is predictably almost all of them.
The 35th Ave NE bike lane saga will go down as one of the most unnecessarily frustrating public debates about bike lanes this city has seen, and the worst part is that the Mayor has now given people a template for how to cancel Bicycle Master Plan projects they don’t like. Get loud, make signs, feel free to get loose with the facts, and she’ll have your back even if you don’t really have a solid policy basis for your bike lane hatred.
The 35th Ave NE bike lanes are noted in the city’s Bicycle Master Plan as part of the priority-focus “citywide network.” SDOT will not build the bike lanes that were planned, designed and even sent to the contractor for construction. And they will not be replaced by a nearby facility (SDOT’s announcement makes a vague mention of “enhancements” to the existing 39th Ave NE neighborhood greenway, which is a steep eight-block round trip from 35th that does not function as an “alternative” or “parallel” bike route). Instead, they are just cancelled, and people in the neighborhood will not have a protected and comfortable way to access local businesses and destinations by bike. And there will now be a gap in the citywide bike network, which hurts bikeability for significant stretches of Northeast Seattle and Lake City.
This not only works against the city’s Vision Zero street safety goals, which requires bold investment in the Bicycle Master Plan to reach zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. It also works against the city’s climate change goals, which rely in part on shifting a lot more car trips to bicycles in every part of the city.
The Mayor is simply wrong here. She is acting against the will of the people as represented though our elected City Council and the 2015 Move Seattle Levy vote. She is prioritizing car movement and gasoline burning over safety and car-free mobility options.
Deleting these bike lanes goes against our Council-approved transportation policies. Will the Council push back or cede this power to her? If they don’t, then what’s the point of crafting city policies and passing them through that arduous City Council process if the Mayor can just choose not to follow them? Unanimous City Council approval should mean something.
At the very least, Councilmembers and the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee should make sure that now that the bike lanes have been cancelled, all Bicycle Master Plan funding spent on this project is returned to the bike budget for use on bike projects, including the $14,000 spent on a failed mediation attempt. Otherwise, this sure seems like an improper use of voter-approved funds. Plus, using Bicycle Master Plan funds to cancel bike lanes is just cruel.
And now that the Mayor has officially revealed her bike lane opposition, how do safe streets supporters respond? It’s a tough spot because Seattle has the necessary plans, policies and funding already on the books, the city just has a Mayor who refuses to execute them. We don’t have the time to wait out her term because we need to make safety and climate progress now. People’s lives and our city’s future are at stake.
Base image: SDOT’s Broadway bikeway and streetcar extension plans. As noted, the proposed car charger would be directly in the path of the bikeway.
After public pushback, including by many of you, Seattle City Light has dropped their plans for an electric car charging station on Broadway near Denny Way that would have been located in the path of a planned-but-delayed extension of the existing bike lane.
In an email to people who submitted feedback on the plan, the agency cited public concerns about the bike lane (and increased costs related to relocation) as primary reasons for the change. As Seattle Bike Blog and many others noted, the presence of a car charger would likely serve as an additional barrier to a sorely-needed bike lane extension on Broadway. Moving the charger if/when a bike lane is completed would also cost City Light unnecessary expenses.
Currently, the Broadway bikeway starts at Yesler Way and ends abruptly at Denny Way, spitting people biking into mixed traffic if they want to continue to the major business district at the north end of the street. The bike lane extension is still in the most recent implementation plans for near-term installation, but it has been delayed because an accompanying streetcar extension is also on hold. We have argued that the bike lane should be completed with or without the streetcar because it is noted as a major bike route in the city’s Bicycle Master Plan.
City Light’s car charger program already takes planned bus lanes into account, but not planned bike lanes. The agency has clearly listened to public feedback about this, which is great. Hopefully a policy update will include the Bicycle Master Plan for future siting decisions.
But the debate also raised more philosophical questions about the role of electric car chargers in the public right of way, the role of public entities in funding them, and whether locations with quality transit access is a smart place to locate them. And the answers are not exactly cut-and-dry. For example, the city wants encourage people, especially those without private garages, to use electric cars instead of gas-burning ones. But if you rely on street parking, how are you supposed to keep your car charged? So the city wants to jumpstart a solution. Obviously, the best option is, “Don’t have a car at all,” but that might not work for everyone. Electric cars are definitely not the solution, but they could be part of one. If nothing else, the local tailpipe pollution is better. (more…)
