Work on a neighborhood greenway connecting Crown Hill to North Seattle College is underway, according to SDOT.
The construction will last six months and includes new traffic signals crossing Holman Rd at NW 92nd Street and Greenwood Ave at N 100th Street.
Bike commute data shows that bike-to-work rates drop steeply north of Holman Rd, a busy road without bike lanes and very few safe crossing options. The city repaved the road a few years ago, but chose not to adequately address the street’s major biking and walking access issues.
This neighborhood greenway route augments recent Safe Routes to School projects and several Neighborhood Street Fund projects led by dedicated neighbors in recent years. The western terminus at North Seattle College will connect to the Northgate biking and walking bridge scheduled to open in 2020.
As Emry was transitioning out this summer, FreeRange sported an all-woman staff: Moira ó Cearnaigh, Shawna Williams, Kathleen Emry.
Kathleen Emry is calling it quits. After 21 years of owning and operating the quaint FreeRange Cycles bike shop in Fremont, she has handed over the keys to Shawna Williams.
Emry had been talking about a potential retirement for a while now so at first, I didn’t quite believe it. But in June, the 700-square-foot shop was already showing signs of change. There was a new face behind the counter and the space, once teeming with 21 years worth of trinkets — art, postcards, stuffed animal, photos — felt surprisingly bare.
“One day I came in and found all my stuffed animal chickens piled up in the backroom!” Kathleen Emry said with laugh. “That’s good though. I want Shawna to make it her own. I want the shop to represent her vision.”
The little shop that could
For Emry, her vision for a shop started in the 1980s. She hadn’t grown up biking. She and her three sisters had shared one Western Flyer among them as kids, and she didn’t start biking again until well into her adulthood. But after stepping foot into Wright Brothers Cycle Works for a bike fix, she knew she had found her calling.
Intrigued by bicycle mechanics, Emry signed up for some bicycle maintenance classes and found herself working for Wright Brothers before long.
“I remember walking in and taking classes and thinking, ‘I love working with my hands’,” Emry said. “At the time I had just completed a Masters in ministries and had come to the realization that being an out queer in the Catholic Church wasn’t going to work. My philosophy is to be one’s authentic self in the world today and for me, the best way to do that at that time was to nurture my gifts, and that was working with my hands.
“But things brew with me. It takes time for me to manifest things.” (more…)
Alex Hayden was a husband and father of two who Gray Magazine described as “kind, funny, creative, and a true editorial photographer” in a memorial post.
Someone driving a pickup truck struck Hayden from behind while he rode in the bike lane on Rainier Ave just south of the Seattle city limits Saturday. The person driving fled the scene, dragging his bike down the street. Hayden died Tuesday from his injuries.
Our deepest condolences to his friends and family.
The King County Sheriff’s Office says a 51-year-old woman suspected in the hit and run has turned herself in. She has not yet been charged, and the Sheriff’s Office is still searching for a passenger who was reportedly in the truck at the time of the collision.
Hayden has not yet been identified officially, but word of his death has spread quickly as people impacted by his life learned the terrible news. Friends established a GoFundMe campaign to support his family.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, Hayden was biking south on Rainier Ave S in Skyway around 4:30 p.m. when the person driving the pickup struck him from behind in the 10600 block. The suspect then continued a little further before turning onto S Lakeridge Dr. Officers later found the pickup in SeaTac. A suspect was turned herself in Sunday, about 20 hours after the collision. We are not naming the suspect because charges have not yet been filed. She is in King County jail on $100,000 bail for investigation of felony hit and run.
Map of the planned downtown bike network. Routes included in the City Council resolution are highlighted in peach.
The downtown bike network has been significantly delayed so far under Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration, but there is hope to turn things around and get major pieces of the network constructed in 2019.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Cascade Bicycle Club are gathering support for a City Council action to require SDOT to complete bike lanes on 8th Ave, 9th Ave N, Pike and/or Pine St, 12th Ave S, King St, and a south downtown pathway between 2nd Ave and the International District. The Transportation Committee will consider the resolution noon Wednesday at City Hall.
Some of the projects would be pushed ahead of schedule, though the 4th Ave bike lane planned for this year will remain delayed. But if SDOT can deliver the proposed set of projects by the end of 2019, downtown would become accessible by bike to many more neighborhoods at a time of serious traffic and transit constraints.
The text of the City Council resolution calls for completion of these segments “by no later than December 31, 2019.” So SDOT could deliver segments much earlier than that if the department puts its heart into the work and gets the political support to make it happen.
Where construction activity limits the ability to install permanent bike lanes, the resolution calls on SDOT to “make every good faith effort to establish “all ages and abilities” temporary connections.”
Seattle’s bike share ridership keeps climbing. Image: SDOT.
People in Seattle took more than 208,849 bike share trips in May as use of the bikes increased steeply throughout spring. In total, people took 1.4 million rides between late July and mid-June, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation (PDF).
To build on this astounding success, SDOT is updating its permit to allow four companies totaling 20,000 bikes, about double the number on the streets today. And the increase comes with some extra permit fees to vastly increase the amount of designated bike parking space in the city to help make sure bikes are parked appropriately.
The permit plan heads to the City Council Transportation Committee Tuesday. If approved, it is then scheduled to go before the full Council for a vote July 23 and would go into effect August 31. Here’s a look at what is in the new permit rules: (more…)
The most significant change to the existing trail will be an expansion of the park space and rounding of the trail route at the mouth of Smith Cove. Design image from Expedia.Concept image of the rebuilt trail, from Expedia.
Construction of the huge new Expedia campus along the Seattle waterfront includes a rebuild of a section of the Elliott Bay Trail as the path transitions from industrial Interbay to the waterfront.
The new trail will soften what today is a sharp turn in the trail at the mouth of the Smith Cove Waterway, which should be a significant improvement to the trail, creating separate walking and biking paths and expanding the surrounding park space.
But trail and utility work will require a detour for more than a year. Originally scheduled to begin in mid-July, the detour start has been pushed back to August 1. Expedia has also made changes to the initial detour plan, which now includes a temporary trail along the low-traffic Alaskan Way W between W Galer Street and the grain silos. Though the detour route is less scenic than the current trail, it is actually a little bit shorter: (more…)
