Seattle Bike Blog

Would you bike on the ‘E?’ How about the ‘Eastway?’

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 4, 2019

As we reported previously, King County is trying to come up with a better name for the Eastside Rail Corridor, and they have narrowed it down to four finalists: The E, The Eastrail, The 425 and the Eastway.

You can let them know what you think of these names via their online survey.

First off, I’m glad the names are short. “Eastside Rail Corridor” is a mouthful, and it doesn’t do a good job of describing a corridor that no longer has very much rail since Kirkland and King County have removed most of it (though Sound Transit is adding some for a stretch in Bellevue).

I can’t say any of these names immediately jumps out, and part of the problem might be that they are trying to rename a corridor without pigeonholing it to a single use. So while Seattle Bike Blog has for years been referring to the trail portion of the corridor as the “Eastside Trail,” that name does not include potential transit uses alongside the trail. “Eastrail” is the only name the contains the word “trail,” but it does so in a way that could also be read as “EastRail.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what they name it. The people will decide in time what it will be called. If the official name is good, then it will stick. If not, people will find their own term.

Want to make your case for any of the four names here? Do so in the comments below.

tags: eastside rail corridor, eastside trail, king county parks

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2018 bike counts up 32 percent on 2nd Ave downtown after bike lane, bike share expansion

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 3, 2019

Bike counter totals (2nd Ave at Marion St)

The final counts are in, and 2018 is officially a new high water mark for biking in Seattle.

Looking at the real-time bike counter data from around town, biking was up significantly in Fremont and across the lower West Seattle Bridge. But the real eye-catcher was 2nd Ave downtown, which saw a 32 percent jump over 2017.

The 2nd Ave numbers are particularly exciting because they demonstrate how bike share and an expanded network of protected bike lanes can work together to seriously increase bike use in a very short period of time. The Belltown extension of the 2nd Ave bike lane opened in January 2018, around the same time that bike share companies ofo, Spin and Lime increased the number of bikes on Seattle streets to a couple thousand each.

It’s all but impossible to say which had a bigger effect on the increase, but it’s clear that the combination of bike share availability and safe, comfortable bike lanes works.

But bike trips weren’t just up on 2nd Ave. Both the Fremont and lower West Seattle Bridge saw significant increases.

(more…)

tags: 2nd ave, bike counter, fremont bridge, lower west seattle bridge

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People in Seattle have taken more than 2M Lime trips + ofo appears to be imploding

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 31, 2018

From the Lime 2018 Annual Report (PDF)

People in Seattle have taken more than 2,050,000 trips on Lime bikes since the company launched in summer 2017, according their annual report. That’s a pace of about 1.5 million trips per year for just one of the companies serving the city with shared bikes.

There are few precedents for an urban mobility service that has so quickly served so many trips. Transit services often take years or decades to plan and launch. So especially for a city that is facing a very near-term traffic crunch, a non-car service that can carry so many trips is a huge deal.

And we still have not seen the city’s bike share permit reach its true ambition. Motivate/Lyft is supposed to join Lime and JUMP/Uber, combining to reach as many as 20,000 bikes. And as other cities have shown, adding shared electric scooters to the mix could carry even more trips than the bikes. The city has so far been resistant to adding scooters. Ensuring and demonstrating that the devices will be safe on steep hills will be vital for companies trying to ease concerns at City Hall.

Meanwhile, Lime has expanded into car share with the launch of Lime Pods in Seattle. While this blog does not typically cheer on car services, I actually like car share. As someone who grew up in a car-depended suburb in Missouri, I know how scary it can be to make the leap and sell your car. When you’re used to having it, it’s hard to imagine life without it. Well, car share services can work like Nicotine gum. Knowing you have a car around if you really need it can make selling your car a bit easier. (more…)

tags: bike share, limebike, ofo

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Bike News Roundup: SDOT Baby

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 27, 2018

It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s some stuff floating around the web recently that caught our eye.

First up, a Seattle transportation wishlist in holiday song form by Laura Goodfellow:

Pacific Northwest News (more…)

tags: bike news roundup

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Seattle and Bellevue both make it on America’s Best New Bikeways of 2018

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 20, 2018

The 2nd Ave bike lane in Belltown, named America’s Best New Bikeway in 2018.

Seattle and Bellevue both turned heads nationally with protected bike lanes that opened this year, making People For Bikes’ list of “America’s 10 Best New Bikeways of 2018.”

Seattle’s entry, the fantastic 2nd Ave bike lane extension in Belltown, made the 2018 list on a technicality: It was a 2017 project that ran overtime and didn’t open until January 2018. But it is really great and worthy of the top spot on the list it won. It shows what the city is capable of when given a serious budget. Every new bike lane does not need to be as fully-featured as this stretch on day one, which comes with both financial and construction time premiums. But it should be the ultimate goal for our bike network to be as functional and complete as this bike lane someday, even if a lower-cost version makes more sense in the near-term.

Congratulations to the SDOT team that made this incredible addition to the downtown bike network happen. You never really got the victory lap and praise you deserved for it. So here it is, a year late. From People For Bikes: (more…)

tags: 108th ave ne, 108th ave se, 2nd ave, bellevue, people for bikes

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Mayor nominates Sam Zimbabwe to be next SDOT Director

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 19, 2018

Mayor Jenny Durkan and SDOT Director Nominee Sam Zimbabwe. Screenshot from Seattle Channel.

Mayor Jenny Durkan has nominated Washington DC’s Sam Zimbabwe to be the next Director of SDOT, emphasizing his experience in project delivery and multimodal urban planning during a Tuesday press conference.

If the City Council confirms him quickly, Zimbabwe could be on the job in the middle of January. That means he will get the keys to his office just as the city tries to adjust to the permanent closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and its downtown freeway exits.

Zimbabwe is currently the Chief Project Delivery Officer at DDOT, the same agency where Seattle’s previous permanent SDOT Director Scott Kubly cut his teeth.

“I’m a multimodal kind of guy,” he said, noting that in DC he mostly takes the train to work but sometimes bikes or drives. He has previously worked on transit oriented development and DC’s streetcar, which had troubles of its own. And, of course, DC has been a national leader in building protected bike lanes and growing bike and scooter share.

“As more people feel like they feel safe and comfortable taking care of some of their daily needs with a bike, the less divisive the bike questions have become,” he said.

Zimbabwe is stepping into a pretty tough spot. SDOT has had a terrible year. Staff morale is low, and the department has been massively underdelivering on promised and planned projects. As we reported earlier this month, the department has nearly stopped building bike lanes, managing to complete just a tiny percentage of the bike lane miles they had planned in 2018. (more…)

tags: jenny durkan, sam zimbabwe, sdot

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