Seattle Bike Blog

WA Bikes endorses Moon for Mayor + more across the region and state

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 27, 2017

WA Bikes has endorsed Cary Moon for Seattle Mayor.

The politically-active sibling organization to Cascade Bicycle Club released its latest round of 2017 endorsements Tuesday, and Senior Policy Director Blake Trask said the organization will be writing more about their choices over the next week.

The choice of Moon for Mayor puts WA Bikes at odds with Transportation for Washington, who endorsed Jenny Durkan. TFW is the politically-active sibling to Transportation Choices Coalition. TFW is focused primarily on transit, but also includes biking and walking in their mission. The organization had endorsed Jessyn Farrell in the primary. TFW and WA Bikes are on the same page on most their choices, so the Mayor disagreement is notable.

Seattle Subway, which has endorsed Moon, expressed surprise at the TFW endorsement of Durkan, since their transit-loving members strongly favor Moon.

In Seattle, WA Bikes had already endorsed Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena González for their City Council Positions during the primary and continue to support them in the general election.

Seattle Bike Blog has not yet endorsed a candidate for Mayor or City Council Position 8 (of course you should vote for Lorena Gonzalez for Position 9). Let us know what questions you want Seattle Bike Blog to ask Moon, Durkan, Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda in the comments below.

You can also see Moon and Durkan debate their visions for a livable Seattle at the Mayoral Forum on Arts and the Environment noon Monday at KEXP.

The deadline to register to vote online is October 9. Ballots will be mailed October 18. The election is November 7.

Here is the cheat sheet for the rest of the WA Bikes endorsements:

tags: 2017 general election, blake trask, cary moon, jenny durkan, washington bikes

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Missing Link community design reaches major milestone + Public workshop Thursday

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 26, 2017

The latest designs include new and upgraded traffic signals to help everyone, whether biking, walking, driving a car or driving a truck.

The design for the Ballard Missing Link continues to move forward, reaching a major milestone that puts it on track for construction starting in winter 2018.

You can check out the latest design details and weigh in at a design workshop 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Ballard Eagleson VFW.

Of course, the design work is all contingent on a good outcome from an ongoing lawsuit once again trying to delay or derail the project that has reached two decades of debate and legal battles. The lawsuit has already added another truckload to the Missing Link document mountain (this must be the most-documented 1.4 miles of trail in the world). A hearing is currently scheduled for October 16. A pre-hearing conference is scheduled for Friday.

Former Mayor Ed Murray announced the trail compromise in February flanked by local industry representatives and trail supporters, saying, “Today’s major announcement ends 20 years of lawsuits, studies and counter studies.” Seattle Bike Blog asked whether the compromise included a promise not to sue, and Murray said, “I feel pretty good that we have a track record [of getting lawsuits dropped].” So much for that.

Now it falls to Mayor Tim Burgess and Seattle’s next mayor to carry this compromise forward to the end and finish it. I hope they learn from Mayor Murray’s experience and realize that trail appellants won’t stop suing even if you agree to a compromise.

Yet the compromising continues despite the lawsuit. That’s above and beyond what trail supporters and SDOT need to do if the courts are going to decide it all anyway. Dropping the lawsuit probably should have been a condition of compromising. But the city has been actively courting the opinions and needs of appellants, anyway. And that’s the best the city can do at this point: Bring as many people as possible into the design process, address as many concerns as possible, and then build it.

Details of the community design should help ease many trail opponents’ worries about the project. The number of parking spaces removed has been greatly reduced in the latest design. While original estimates from the environmental mega study put the parking space removal count at 344, the design team was able to squeeze in 186 more spots. So the trail will now displace fewer than half as many parking spots as originally announced. (more…)

tags: ballard, missing link, sdot

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City will build a few blocks of very needed Pike/Pine bike lanes this weekend

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 22, 2017

SDOT crews will install five blocks of protected bike lanes on Pike and Pine Streets downtown this weekend, making a vital connection to the under-construction 2nd Ave bike lane in the heart of the downtown retail core.

If the weather holds out and work goes smoothly, the bike lanes should be open Monday. Once completed, the bike lanes will be the most significant bike improvement downtown since 2014, when the initial section of the 2nd Ave bike lanes opened.

Since it is a significant change in a busy area, volunteers from Cascade Bicycle Club and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways will be on the ground during the morning and afternoon commutes to help educate folks about the changes. If you want to help (especially for the afternoon shift), sign up online. (Full Disclosure: My wonderful spouse Kelli is one of the organizers.)

As we reported last month, the plans fall just short of making a complete connection either to Capitol Hill or to South Lake Union via 8th Ave. At least for a while, there will be a gap after 6th Ave on Pike Street where the bike lane disappears. Heading west on Pine, people will also need to shift from the right side of Pine Street to the new left-hand bike lane at 8th Ave, which could be confusing and disjointed.

Several readers were upset after reading my August post because they felt I was praising SDOT too much for a project that actually falls short. While it is certainly frustrating that this project will not actually connect to any other bike lanes, don’t overlook how big a deal even this short stretch is. I believe you can simultaneously be disappointed by a project’s shortcomings and excited about the parts that are included.

I mean, just look at this new connection to Westlake Station. A protected bike lane will pass in front of the entrance, and the area left of the bike lane is planned as future TBD people-focused space (See also: Pike Pine Renaissance). This is genuinely awesome and exactly what the space outside this popular transit station needs:

Diagonal parking to future people space on pine pic.twitter.com/CK0uDU44rX

— Dongho Chang (@dongho_chang) September 21, 2017

(more…)

tags: downtown, pike/pine, sdot

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Man charged with killing father biking in Northgate had also killed woman walking in Marysville

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 21, 2017

Derek Blaylock was biking home from the bus stop on his way back from work when Kevin Brewer, 51, allegedly struck him with his pick-up truck and drove away from the scene. Blaylock died within an hour. He was 50 years old with a wife and two young children.

Our deepest condolences to his family and all his friends.

“On Tuesday morning, September 21, 2016, [50-year-old] Derek Blaylock dropped his son off at elementary school, parked his car, and rode his bicycle to the bus. He would never see his son again,” the King County Prosecutor wrote in the charging documents. He would be killed while biking on his way back that afternoon.

Blaylock would be the second person Brewer has allegedly killed while driving. He killed Nicole Cheek, a 58-year-old grandmother who was walking in Marysville in 2008, the Herald reported at the time. Brewer also left the scene in 2008, leaving Cheek for dead. Her body was not discovered for more than an hour. Brewer eventually came forward and pleaded guilty to felony hit and run. He said he fell asleep while driving and thought he had hit a mailbox. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and was released in December 2011, the Seattle Times reports.

Despite his time in prison, investigators found that “[b]etween 2007 and 2016, Brewer was responsible for at least 10 collisions in which the driving behavior was consistent with that of a driver impaired by alcohol or drugs, or by a fatigued/drowsy driver.” Brewer has sleep apnea, and friends told investigators that “he appears to doze off periodically,” according to the charging documents.

“He is well aware that he is at grave risk for falling asleep while driving,” the Prosecutor noted. (more…)

tags: crime, deaths, derek blaylock, kevin brewer, northgate

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Bike share ridership is booming + Spin launches better bike, Forbes says LimeBike valued at $200M

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 20, 2017

Free-floating bike share is working in Seattle. Or at least it sure appears that way according to the city’s first analysis of anonymized private bike share data.

In just two months, people have already taken 120,000 trips on the bikes. And because companies are steadily increasing the number of bikes on the streets, the number of rides each day continues to grow at a steep rate. 6,000 bikes are currently permitted, but SDOT’s Kyle Rowe told the Committee that he estimates the actual number on the ground now is closer to 4,000 and increasingly daily.

In fact, as bike share companies add bikes to Seattle streets, the number of rides per bike per day has increased, as well. This is a big deal, since the business model for free-floating bike share is essentially dependent on this virtuous cycle in which adding more bikes leads to each bike carrying more trips and making more money.

This is good for Seattle, since it gives companies a clear incentive to keep adding more service to the city. And, of course, it’s a good thing for the companies who need to make money to stay in operation and keep expanding. At what point will adding more bikes fail to further increase ridership? Nobody knows. But we likely have a long way to go before we reach that saturation point.

SDOT officials presented (PDF, video) the City Council’s Transportation and Sustainability Committee with a first look at two months of bike share activity in the city, based on data companies are required to report as a condition of the permit. The data adds LimeBike, Spin and ofo information together to look at the sector in general without exposing individual company operations.

The graphs they showed were astounding. Here’s the growth in rides per day: (more…)

tags: andrew glass hastings, kyle rowe, limebike, ofo, sdot, spin

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Seattle startup crowdfunding bike-focused vending machines

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 19, 2017

Rider Oasis has one machine in operation inside Peddler Brewing.

Seattle Bike Blog loves all our city’s local bike shops. But they all have one problem in common: They aren’t open 24/7.

And of course they aren’t. But what if you need a new tube for your morning commute? Or what if you get a flat in an area without a nearby bike shop? Or what if you’re just plain bonking in the middle of a long ride?

That’s where Rider Oasis comes in. The young company has plans to launch dozens of public-facing vending machines in the Seattle area stocked with bike-fixing necessities and pick-me-up snacks to keep people moving.

“Our goal is to have between 30 and 50 machines over the next two to five years,” said CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Mass. “We think there’s that much capacity within Seattle.”

Though Seattle is the first focus, “eventually the plan is to expand along the entire West Coast.”

The company has had one machine in operation inside Peddler Brewing for a while now, but the primary goal of the business is to have machines in locations accessible 24/7.

Bike part vending machines are not new in the world or even the U.S. Bikestock operates out of New York City and Bike Fixation has machines in Minneapolis. But the idea has not yet reached the West Coast in a big way, Mass said.

The company, which started as a UW business school project, has launched an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to get off the ground: (more…)

tags: aaron moss, rider oasis

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