Whether you’re headed across the river or continuing on the trail, you can do better than the official detour.
A 700-foot section of the Green River Trail is getting repaved and upgraded in Tukwila and will be closed April 8 until summer.
The official detour is a bit confusing, routing people onto very busy roads that have no bike lanes and are significantly out of the way. However, there are also parking lots that provide an almost-direct connection around the closure. People will likely be better off not following these detour signs and improvising a route instead.
I don’t know the whole backstory here, but I’m guessing that they can’t sign an official detour route across private parking lots without significant agreements and perhaps also payments. So instead you get this absurd detour route. This also highlights how relying on a single trail rather than building a network of bike routes holds back the true potential for biking in this and many other areas. People need safe routes to get to all the destinations on these busy streets away from the trail, too.
The project includes “700 linear feet of concrete multi-use trail improvements within the right-of-way of the Green River Trail, including but not limited to clearing and tree removal, excavation and embankment, concrete paving, landscaping and irrigation, decorative concrete treatments, and lighting and camera systems,” according to the City of Tukwila.
The news out of the Bellevue City Council this week was extremely disappointing. The council decided to backtrack on their Vision Zero commitment and all but toss out most of the Bike Bellevue network that was developed over a period of years following significant public outreach and study. In the process, they also left their city’s staff exposed to further personal and professional attacks (see section 2).
The ambitious Bike Bellevue plan may be doomed
The Bellevue City Council has decided that most of these streets should remain dangerous.
Bellevue’s City Council voted to only consider reallocating general purpose travel lanes as a “last resort,” Ryan Packer reported for the Urbanist. During the meeting (the video is posted below), Councilmembers kept repeating over and over that they were opposed to any projects that would “remove travel lanes.” An attempt to pass a motion banning the removal of travel lanes failed 2-5 (Councilmembers Jared Nieuwenhuis and Conrad Lee voted in favor), but a motion to consider projects that would remove general purpose travel lanes only “as a last resort” passed 6-1 (Mayor Lynne Robinson opposed). Several councilmembers, including Dave Hamilton, made it quite clear that they don’t see themselves ever supporting any projects that would remove travel lanes. “I can’t imagine ever thinking it’s a good idea,” he said.
This vote, however, is in direct and clear conflict with essentially every official city transportation policy document, including (but probably not limited to) the 2020 Vision Zero Strategic Plan, 2023 Vision Zero Action Plan, 2022 Mobility Implementation Plan, and 2023 Downtown Mobility Study. All of these documents state that Bellevue has adopted a “safe systems approach” to traffic safety, which explicitly relies on redesigning dangerous streets to reduce speeding and improve safety for all road users.
“Today, we know that one of the most effective approaches to improving safety on streets is to use road reconfigurations…to narrow travel lanes, reduce the number of vehicle lanes, or both, while providing space for bicyclists and pedestrians,” states the Bellevue Vision Zero Strategic Plan (page 25, PDF), which the City Council adopted in 2020.
“The Bellevue Transportation Commission examined the attributes of the Safe Systems approach and concurred that Safe People, Safe Streets, Safe Speeds, Safe Vehicles—as well as the supporting elements of leadership, culture, partnerships and data—all help contribute to reducing the frequency and severity of crashes,” states the city’s 2023 Vision Zero Action Plan (page 4, PDF). “This holistic approach accepts that people will make mistakes and that crashes will continue to occur, but it aims to ensure these do not result in serious injuries or fatalities.”
The core misunderstanding throughout the entire council meeting was that more lanes does not equate to better traffic, especially in an urban or even suburban environment. That is a simplistic and outdated way of thinking about how streets work. In reality, people and their movements are much more complex, and streets that are flexible are more efficient than streets that prioritize straight-ahead movement over every other movement. People are not Hot Wheels following the same track from A to B. Some people need to turn left and some people need to cross the street, and some people are walking, and some people are biking, and some people are in wheelchairs, and some people have strollers, and some people are making deliveries, and having too many travel lanes makes these non-straight-through movements slower and much more dangerous.
For example, this is why NE 65th Street in Seattle can now move 5% more vehicles after SDOT reallocated nearly 25% of the street space to create protected bike lanes and safer crosswalks (study PDF). People can turn left now, which makes it a better street to drive on. They reduced speeding by up to 75%, reduced collisions by 63%, and eliminated serious injuries and deaths. And they did all this while moving more people in cars and dramatically more people biking, walking and rolling. This is not a “last resort” solution, it’s a common sense solution that is backed by data rather than feelings.
Councilmember Lee spoke against “getting rid of car lanes for the benefit of bicyclists because one is suffering from the other.” But dangerous streets are bad for people in cars, too. Safe streets are not zero-sum calculations where any gain by one group must come at an equal loss from another. This isn’t a sport, it’s a city. Complete streets are about making streets that work for everyone.
Bellevue’s streets are not simply “pipes for cars,” as former SDOT Director Peter Hahn used to phrase it. They are part of the community. But the conversation during the council meeting never included any discussion of modern street design. The whole meeting could have gone so differently if only they had invited an expert in safe streets design to present about how modern safe streets work. But they didn’t. They irresponsibly scoffed at and dismissed the most effective and affordable method of improving safety on Bellevue’s streets, and then sent the city’s Transportation Commission misguided direction. It was depressing to watch.
I hope the Bellevue City Council takes the time to review their own Vision Zero plans and consult with safe streets experts (rather than politically-powerful developers), because there’s really good stuff in them such as this enlightening and relevant section about the history of street design in Bellevue (page 36 of the Bellevue Vision Zero Strategic Plan, PDF):
Did you know that Cascade Bicycle Club not only hosts bike rides on streets but also advocates for investing in infrastructure to make streets safer for biking? What a scandal!
What’s not to like about a refreshing bike ride on a Sunday morning?
Turns out, it’s not so simple.
I’m picturing a colorful video of a happy family riding bikes that turns black-and-white while their eyes all start glowing red. What horrible truth have they uncovered?
Well, Cascade is paying for event permits and police staffing and then charging people to participate. And maybe, if things go well, they will even raise some extra money on top. An event promoter hopes to make money by hosting an event. But that’s not all. They are even going to use any extra funds to support their stated mission: Improving bicycling.
But the policy the Ed Board is suggesting here would be a major infringement on free speech. Why would a board that claims to believe in the First Amendment and the importance of free speech be arguing that the city should deny permits to an organization because that organization engages in public policy advocacy? I was genuinely shocked when I read this.
Are they arguing that any organization that tries to influence the transportation levy should not be able to receive street use permits? Or just the organizations they disagree with? The Downtown Seattle Association will surely lobby the city about the transportation levy, so should they also stop receiving street use permits? Should unions be denied permits for marches and rallies? Should marathon organizers be banned from lobbying? Imagine a city official saying, “You better shut up or you can kiss your permits goodbye.” Now THAT would be a scandal.
I think y’all should probably go ahead and take this one back, cuz I suspect you haven’t fully thought through the implications of the policy you’re suggesting here. Or if you still stand by it, boy, what a sad state our city’s only remaining daily paper is in.
Some history
WSDOT and SDOT used to fund these kinds of rides, making them free to everyone. There’s a whole section about it in my book. I would actually prefer the free public-hosted version. But imagine the Seattle Times editorial if SDOT did this exact same event using public funds: “We shouldn’t spend honest tax payer money on such frivolities! The city should leave these kinds of events to Cascade Bicycle Club!”
Cascade itself was even founded initially to organize a Bicycle Sunday-style event on Mercer Island more than 50 years ago, then it immediately shifted into an advocacy organization that raises money in part by holding paid events. This is how Cascade has always worked. It’s how they market it. There’s nothing secret or hidden about it. It’s weird that the Ed Board decided today that it is some kind of scandal.
A rentable cargo bike I saw last year in Amsterdam.
Cargo bikes and heavy-duty bike trailers are bulky and pricey, but so useful. While some people, like yours truly, are going to invest in cargo-hauling bike solutions, most people may not find themselves in situations where they need to haul stuff around by bike often enough to justify the cost and space required. And depending on people’s living situations, there may just not be a great place to store a large bike or trailer at home. This is where something like a cargo bike share system would be amazing.
It may not be a surprise to learn that there are already cargo bike share services in some of the world’s great bicycling cities, such as ones I noticed in Amsterdam by a company called Cargoroo. But Amsterdam has a long history with cargo biking and a dense city with a very high bicycling rate. The question is whether something like that could work in Seattle.
Muhammad Hasan wants to find out. A grad student at UW’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, Hasan has is currently seeking responses to an online survey about “a rentable grocery bike program in Seattle.” The concept at this point seems a bit open and is mostly focused on improving access to bikes for larger grocery runs specifically. The goal is “to explore the feasibility and societal impacts” of such a program.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed Seattle Transportation Plan (“STP”) is now in the hands of the City Council, who can make some final changes before adopting it as official city policy. The STP will supersede the 2014 Bicycle Master Plan, so it’s important to take a close look at its vision for the next 10–20 years of bike improvements across the city. To do so, Seattle Bike Blog will post a series of six stories focusing on different areas of the city. You find other areas as well as other STP-related stories through the 2024 Seattle Transportation Plan tag.
Few other neighborhoods in the city got a bigger upgrade from the 2014 Bicycle Master Plan to the proposed 2024 STP than West Seattle. This is in large part due to the neighborhood getting kind of a second-rate treatment in the 2014 plan. Where the 2014 plan left vital gaps with little or lackluster proposed infrastructure—such as paint-only bike lanes or sharrows on SW Admiral Way, Beach Drive SW and 16th Ave SW—the 2024 calls for protected bike lanes.
The community group West Seattle Bike Connections (“WSBC”) has been very active in trying to provide feedback on the bike elements of the STP, and a good number of their top priorities did make it into the document. But they have concerns about whether they are listed high enough on the priority list to actually happen.
“We were happy to see these projects that are our high priorities on the catalyst list,” wrote Don Brubeck of WSBC in an email:
#5 SW Highland Park Way, connecting the Duwamish Trail to Highland Park
#7 Sylvan Way multi-use path connecting Delridge to High Point and Morgan Junction
#13 and #14 at the Alaska Junction and West Seattle Triangle for access to planned light rail stations and WS’ urban center.
They also scoured the “large capital projects” list (Appendix A) to find more of the group’s “top and medium priority routes” listed:
#41 Fauntleroy Way SW from SW Morgan to the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal.
#42 Fauntleroy Way SW Boulevard project from SW Edmunds to SW Avalon (already 100% designed, subject to light rail design)
#49 Highland Park Way SW multi-use trail (same as catalyst #5?)
#64 SW Orchard/ Dumar SW
#76 Sylvan Way SW (same as catalyst #7, and together with 49 and 64 creating the South Park to Highland Park route)
#69 SW Roxbury St multimodal project, a critical east-west serving the southern end of West Seattle and north edge of White Center.
#11 16th Ave SW
#19 SW Admirał Way.
However, they are concerned that of their community group’s top priorities, only Fauntleroy Way SW is currently listed as a top tier capital project in the STP. They also question how the plan determines project priority, noting some odd scores. “Projects for Admiral and Alki have higher equity scores than projects serving South Delridge and High Point,” said Brubeck. “A project that is an industrial drive on Harbor Island has one of the highest equity scores in the city…What criteria were applied? It all looks capricious and arbitrary.”
Got a bike (or…ahem…many bikes) that spend most of the time sitting still? Make some cash by renting them out.
That’s the basic idea behind Spokeo, a peer-to-peer bike rental company founded by Seattle’s own Chris Rodde. Rodde is one of the people behind Off Camber Productions, which puts on the popular MFG Cyclocross series among other bike events. After fielding tons of questions from traveling riders who were having trouble finding the right bike for rent in Seattle, Rodde started developing the idea that would become Spokeo.
“I started Spokeo at the end of last summer as a way to help get more people on bikes,” said Rodde. “I found that there’s no peer-to-peer bike share out there,”* and so he “saw an opportunity.” And right away, customers started finding Spokeo after struggling to find the exact kind of rental bike they needed available elsewhere. “One of the first customers was coming from Texas and was looking for a triathlon bike and couldn’t find one to rent,” said Rodde.
The short version is that Spokeo is like Turo but for bikes. And if you don’t know what Turo is, it’s like Airbnb but for cars. In fact, Spokeo uses some of the same ID verification services as Turo, which should weed out many potential scammers. Renters upload photos of themselves and their ID cards to the service and cannot rent a bike until they pass verification. Renters also accept a rental agreement that they are responsible for all theft and damage, which is common for such agreements. Spokeo also offers hosts insurance for up to $5,000 to cover worst case scenario theft or bike damage that the renter fails to cover.
Hosts can list bikes and related gear such as bike bags, bikepacking gear or bike racks for cars. You can even rent a rare Seattle Bike Blog-branded Brompton (I Iisted it to test out the site for this story and decided to keep it on there). Renters make requests through the site for certain timeframes, which hosts then need to approve. Payments are processed automatically through Stripe once a rental has been completed successfully, so no money changes hands in-person. Communication between hosts and renters is also conducted through the site.
Spokeo takes 20% of the rental earnings, leaving the host with 80%. Bike shops are also welcome to list their available rental bikes on Spokeo, and they may also be able to negotiate a better rate.
