Seattle Bike Blog

Good bike lights are empowering

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 7, 2023
A foggy evening ride.

Good bike lights are empowering, pun intended. But really, with the end of daylight savings plummeting evening commutes and dinnertime grocery runs into darkness, many readers may be spending a lot of time biking around town at night for the first time. But with a good set of lights, a little darkness does not need to be a reason to leave your bike at home. In fact, some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a bike happened at night. Having lights and whatever other reflective stuff helps you feel confident riding at night is an incredible feeling. Add in proper rain gear, and nothing can stop you from getting around by bike.

Speaking of night riding, Commute Seattle is hosting their annual Light Up Your Trip event from 3–5 p.m. Wednesday (Nov 8) in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. You an score free safety gear, food and more.

The good news for bike light buyers these days is that technological advancements in LEDs and batteries mean that a good set of lights is easier to find and more affordable than ever. When I first started writing this site, awful little lights powered by watch batteries were still very common. Now you can get powerful lights in all kinds of form factors, which is great. The downside, of course, is that with so many choices and no clear standards (in the US anyway), it can difficult to know what to choose. So while I have written versions of this post many times before, here is my updated advice for 2023:
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tags: bike lights, daylight savings time

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Parts of the temporary Marion Street walkway will be repurposed as Sound-to-Pacific Trail bridges

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 6, 2023
Photo courtesy of Steve Durrant, Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative.

The new Marion Street Pedestrian Bridge to the revamped Seattle Ferry Terminal is set to open this week, and crews removed the temporary walkway over the weekend. But thanks to a creative exchange the Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative facilitated between the City of Seattle and Clallam County, that temporary walkway will not go to waste. Five of the spans are heading across the sound so they can be repurposed as part of the Puget Sound to Pacific (“PS2P”) trail system, a vision for 200 miles of trails from Bainbridge, Kingston and Port Townsend Ferry Terminals to the Pacific Ocean at La Push.

The deal was fairly simple: The City of Seattle donated the spans to Clallam County in exchange for the county funding the work to take them away. So instead of being sold for scrap metal, they they will be reused to help complete a regional trail that will ultimately connect to Seattle via the ferry. Even though Seattle and Clallam County do not share a border, they share an interest in this trail. There are many missing rail trestles along the planned trail route, and rebuilding those spans will likely be among the more costly elements of the trail construction effort. For now, the spans will be stored until they are needed.
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tags: clallam county, puget sound to pacific collaborative, Puget Sound to Pacific Trail, steve durrant

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Mayor helps celebrate 1.2 million pounds of food transported by the Pedaling Relief Project

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 3, 2023
From left: Mayor Bruce Harrell, U District Food Bank ED Joe Gruber, and Cascade ED Lee Lambert.

Volunteers for the Pedaling Relief Project have hauled 1.2 million pounds of food by bike since 2020, all to support local food bank operations. That’s equivalent to about 1 million meals.

“It helps us and the other food bank partners achieve their mission at a time when volunteerism is not keeping pace with the growth in need for our services,” said U District Food Bank Executive Director Joe Gruber of the Pedaling Relief Project during a celebration press event Friday morning. “They’ve responded to our need for more volunteers creatively and thoughtfully.”

Seattle Bike Blog has been cheerleading for Maxwell Burton and the Pedaling Relief Project since the start, and I am amazed by the sheer volume of volunteer power people bring to this effort every week even years later. It’s a really cool thing to be part of, and everyone should be proud of their contributions. To join a Pedaling Relief Project team, check out their online schedule. They currently partner with the U District Food Bank, Byrd Barr Place Food Bank, the ACRS Food Bank, White Center Food Bank, and Food Not Bombs. Cargo bikes are of course welcome, but they also have trailers that are compatible with almost any bike. The Pedaling Relief Project and Seattle Bike Blog are also teaming up to produce Cranksgiving November 18.

By using bikes, volunteer riders across the area have prevented about 18,000 pounds of carbon from being released into the atmosphere, all while having fun, building community, and helping to put food on people’s tables. “We believe we are the largest carbon-free food delivery program in the country,” said Cascade Bicycle Club Executive Director Lee Lambert, “and I’ll keep saying that until I’m proven wrong.” He said he hopes to see communities across the country copy their model.

Mayor Bruce Harrell said he felt “giddy” during the event, praising the project as “a perfect alignment of what makes this city great.” The project “has taken the best of our values, environmental sustainability, thinking about those who are most vulnerable…and put them together.”

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Why Counterbalance Bicycles is closing their iconic trailside shop

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 2, 2023
From the Counterbalance Bicycles website.

Counterbalance Bicycles is closing, ending a 16-year run in a trailside space that has become almost a part of the Burke-Gilman Trail itself. The shop is just barely off the trail where it crosses NE Blakely Street near U Village, a post Counterbalance has held since moving there from its original namesake location at W Roy Street and Queen Anne Ave (AKA the Counterbalance).

“The bike business has been amazing for me,” said owner Peter Clark, who has been in ownership of the shop since the beginning. “I’m super grateful I’ve been able to do this for as long as I have.” But after 20 years owning a bike shop, Clark said he is “just ready to do something else.”

Most everything in the shop is on sale, and they are tentatively planning to close for good on or around November 11 and be out of the space by the end of the month. They are currently open Tuesdays–Fridays from 10–6 and Saturdays from 10–5. Clark is seeking to sell the business to someone with “a serious offer.”

This a tough time for bike shops. The first couple years of the pandemic led to a huge spike in demand for bikes and parts, but supply was limited. Now supply is available, but demand globally has come down hard from its pandemic peak. Meanwhile, competition from online-based direct-to-customer companies keeps growing, a trend under way long before the pandemic.

“Universally everybody agrees this is a great place for a shop, but universally everyone agrees this is a terrible time to try to open up a retail shop,” said Clark. “It was a lot easier to get in 10 or 15 years ago,” but now “it’s harder to find competent staff and margins on items are chopped well below the operating margins as rents go up.” These are trends affecting bike shops everywhere, not just in Seattle.
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tags: bike shops, counterbalance bicycles

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So long, sharrow. Check out our new logo.

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 1, 2023
What I started Seattle Bike Blog in 2010, I chose an icon that seemed to best represent the experience of biking in Seattle at the time: The sharrow. Officially called a “shared lane marking,” SDOT had painted dozens of miles of sharrows in mixed traffic lanes across the city, including on many busy streets.

The sharrow itself is just a marking, and they can be used in ways that are helpful such as marking bike routes that cross driveways or identifying neighborhood greenway routes. But in Seattle, it seemed like sharrows were being misused as a way to pretend to make a street safer for biking without actually doing the difficult work of redesigning it to provide the space and protection people needed. Sharrows did not signify any changes in the rules of the road. People could bike on these busy streets before, too, but now they can ride over little pictures of bikes while they do it. Below is a classic example from the era on NE 45th Street in the U District, which gets bonus points for the equally useless “drive carefully” sign that might be funny if people didn’t actually get hit trying to cross this dangerous street:

From Street View. By the way, the little grocery store that opened in that old Simply Mac space is great.
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tags: sharrows, site updates

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November 18: Seattle’s 14th Annual Cranksgiving food drive scavenger hunt by bike

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

October 31, 2023
Download a printable version of the poster (8.5×11 PDF) you can hang at your workplace or anywhere else to help spread the word.

Sniff. Can you smell that? There’s a crisp coldness in the air, and is that a hint of cranberry sauce? That can mean only one thing: It’s almost time for Cranksgiving.

For the 14th year, Seattle Bike Blog is presenting a joyful day of bike adventures and good will to celebrate winter riding and support our local food banks. For the second year, Cascade Bicycle Club’s Pedaling Relief Project has partnered to present the event and help with organizing.

Start gathering at Byrd Barr Place (722 18th Ave in the Central District) at 9 a.m. Saturday, November 18. Ride starts promptly at 10 a.m., and riders must be back by 2 p.m. The afterparty will be from 1–3 p.m. at Central Cinema, located a couple blocks from the start. You can ride solo or form teams with up to four members each.

Cranksgiving is a welcoming alleycat-inspired scavenger hunt challenging you and your small team of bike riders to hit up a carefully curated list of grocery stores and food vendors around town to pick up items that three partner food banks have requested. You will also be given a few unexpected tasks to complete along the way. There is no set route, so this will also be a test of your city navigation skills. Your goal is to visit as many locations and check off as many donation items and bonus tasks as you can before the time is up, then join us for an afterparty at Central Cinema.

Our changes last year were well-received, so we are building on that formula to bring what is hopefully the best Cranksgiving ever. Some teams will head north toward U District Food Bank while others head south toward Bike Works, which is hosting our drop-off spot for Rainier Valley Food Bank. Then all riders will head back to the start/finish line at Byrd Barr Place Food Bank in the Central District. Be prepared to ride 12–15 miles in total. If that sounds a bit far for you, we are excited to offer an all-new Mini-Cranksgiving option with 3–5 miles of riding beginning and ending at Byrd Barr Place.

It is free to register at the start line and ride, but expect to spend a minimum of $20 on groceries for donation. It’s amazing every year to see how all those backpacks, panniers, baskets, cargo bikes and bike trailers filled with groceries add up. Last year, donations from 180 riders added up to an astounding 3,308 pounds of food, all hauled by bike. It’s such a positive and community-loving phenomenon to be part of.

What to bring:
- Any bicycle and a way to carry groceries.
- A bike lock.
- A pen.
- Some cash.
- A costume (optional)
We ride rain or shine.
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tags: bike works, byrd barr place, cascade bicycle club, central cinema, cranksgiving, cranksgiving 2023, events, rainier valley food bank, seattle pedaling relief project, u district food bank

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