Looking for bike share app download links, an up-to-date list of companies in operation or rules on where to park? We’ve got it all and more in our Seattle Bike Share Guide.
Spin staff were biking around Monday helping people learn about the new service.
People took 1,000 rides on Spin bikes during the company’s first two days of operations, the company said via Twitter Wednesday:
Seattle, we’ve officially crossed 1000 rides in barely two days. Thank you for all your support and here’s to the next thousand! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/g9hgpq4gWJ
A snapshot of available bike locations as of Wednesday afternoon, following two full days of use.
The launch Monday is the young company’s largest venture, so it’s pretty impressive to see their bikes get solid use so quickly out of the gate while they are still putting more bike on the streets and squashing inevitable bugs in the system.
As a comparison, Pronto saw 3,134 rides in its first week of operations, but averaged only 394 trips per day over the course of its first year. July and August weeks saw more than 4,000 rides on Pronto.
Of course, it’s hard to compare the services based on the number of bikes alone. Pronto had stations, so getting a bike was dependable if you knew where the stations were. With Spin, dependability will increase as the number of bikes increases. They are limited to 500 for the first month, but a sustainable number is much higher than that. In a press release Monday, the company said they have their sights on 10,000 bikes eventually.
Both Spin and LimeBike have said they wish they could go bigger at launch, but the city’s rules are written to ease into the water rather than jump into the deep end. LimeBike has a couple bikes in circulation, but their real launch is still on the way (they said they hoped to be launched by Friday, so stay tuned). In a month, the companies can add other 500 bikes. The next month they can add another 1,000. After another month, the limits will be lifted, assuming things are going well. So think of the service as it is as a beta test of the concept. (more…)
WA State Ferries has proposed a dramatic fare hike for people pulling a bicycle trailer.
For the Bainbridge and Bremerton runs, for example, a person biking with a trailer would have to pay $16 during peak season, a 73 percent increase over the current passenger plus bike fare of $9.20, Cascade Bicycle Club’s Vicky Clarke wrote in a blog post. The $16.10 fare would be almost the same as driving a car onto the ferry ($18.20). The costs on the San Juan routes could add up even more because a person with a trailer would have to pay $6.40 – $7.95 for each inter-island ferry ride, which is currently free if you bike.
The way the proposed rule change is worded (PDF), any bicycle trailer (even a little trailer used to pull a child) would be classified the same as a motorcycle or car trailer (“stowage”). So hauling a kid or some camping gear in a bicycle trailer will add as much to your fare as towing an ATV in a trailer behind your car or truck.
“The proposed bike trailer reclassification boils down to an unprecedented fare increase on a small number of ferry users,” wrote Clarke. “It’s a change that will impact a few people greatly – like families with small children, bike tourists and people who use a bicycle as their sole mode of travel – while generating a negligible revenue increase to the system.”
Cascade is urging people to comment on the proposed changes by the end of the day Friday. They even created a handy online form you can use. (more…)
Annotations by Seattle Bike Blog. Base image from SDOT’s draft update for their Right of Way Improvement Manual.
Nothing costs a dollar anymore.
But that’s all it costs to ride one of those bright orange or lime green bikes popping up on sidewalks and bike racks around Seattle.
See our new Seattle Bike Share Guide for questions about how to get started and where to park. We will keep that page updated going forward as rules or services change (you can find a link in the navigation bar above).
Spin (the orange ones) are already distributing their bikes around the city and have activated their app. The company has called a press conference at City Hall at 10 a.m. Seattle Bike Blog will be there, so stay tuned for updates.
LimeBike has also said it is ready to launch and confirmed Monday morning that they received their permit. UPDATE: LimeBike is rolling their bikes out this week, with a few in circulation as of Monday afternoon. They hope to be up to 500 by the end of the week.
The companies are allowed to have 500 bikes for the first month, 1,000 the second month, 2,000 the third month, then the cap is lifted. See our previous post for more details on the city’s pilot permit. The pilot will run for six months, giving the city time to see how things go and develop permanent rules.
Spin sent out a press release announcing the start of service and said they hope to ultimately have 10,000 bikes in service in Seattle: (more…)
Seattle Bike Blog has not yet endorsed in the mayoral race. See our coverage of the June mayoral forum on transportation and housing here. The August 1 primary ballots are in the mail.
When I received Nikkita Oliver’s answers to a couple key follow-up questions recently, my heart broke.
Oliver and the People’s Party campaign supporting her are doing something truly amazing right now. If you can’t see that because you’re too focused on that one time months ago she sure seemed to say she’d pause all development (she took that back) or because you’re tallying how many times she has voted in the past decade, you’re missing the forest for the trees.
The Oliver campaign is forging a new path to power in Seattle, based on people power and centering the experiences of people of color and people from other marginalized communities. She is running on a message of addressing the core problems in our city, not just treating symptoms. And people are loving it. I am loving it, too.
Cary Moon has a very strong and deep understanding of biking, walking and transit issues. Jessyn Farrell has been a champion for biking, walking and transit in Olympia and has a lot of experience to bring with her to this race. And we strongly backed Mike McGinn in the primary and general elections back in 2013. But none of them have built engaged movements even comparable to Oliver.
So when I reached out to Oliver and her campaign (along with the other top mayoral candidates) to ask how they plan to handle a set of specific biking and safe streets projects that will come up during the next mayoral term, I was really hoping she would see efforts to redesign our streets to prevent serious injury and death on our streets as one of those solutions to a core public health problem (traffic danger). Or at the very least, I was hoping she would support continuing these hard-fought, long-planned and long-awaited safety projects that are set to break ground next year, like the downtown bike lane network and completing the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail.
“I have to stress that our city is currently in a state of emergency around homelessness,” she said in a written response. “I believe it is the duty of our city leaders to prioritize addressing these exigent human service needs first. This may require us to put some projects, like construction of bike lanes on hold in order to ensure that we have the financial resources to address the state of emergency around homelessness in our city.”
But the real tough line that got me came when she called the Ballard Missing Link a “beautification project” that is “not an immediate need” during Candidate Survivor this week (17:25 in this video).
These are major priorities this blog has been writing about consistently since it launched in 2010, and that neighbors and safe streets advocates have been working on for much, much longer than that. Oliver saying she may pause these projects right as they are finally about to happen is just heartbreaking. I don’t really have a choice. Seattle Bike Blog cannot endorse her if she says she may stop or pause the core projects this blog has spent the past seven years writing about and advocating for.
That said, she did have other good things to say about some of these projects. And even more, if she changes her mind as she learns more about the projects, the injuries and deaths they will prevent and all the years of hard work neighbors and city staff have put into them, project staff and advocates could learn a lot from her leadership.
So this is a bit odd, because Seattle Bike Blog wants Oliver to make it through the primary and to give her time to keep working on her stances on these safe streets projects, but we also can’t endorse her because of those stances. And since you can’t vote for multiple people, that’s puts our primary endorsement in a tough spot.
That might make this very long post among the most unhelpful things you’ll read about this primary election. But it’s my honest take on the mayoral race at this moment, and the best I can do is lay it all out for you to pick through. If you have thoughts to add, share them in the comments.
Don’t give up on Oliver, join her
I’m not shutting this door, and I hope people reading this don’t, either. This is clearly not an area where her campaign is focused or has lots of specific expertise. And that is OK. I don’t think a candidate needs to already be an “expert” in transportation planning, so long as they are willing to hire good people, seek answers and make the right calls when the time comes. And having a leader who approaches transportation leadership from outside the typically white male dominated transportation planning world could be a huge asset. (more…)
The Burke-Gilman Trail Missing Link team has been working hard in recent months to gather very granular comments about the planned trail route to address safety and business access concerns section-by-section.
SDOT staff held a series of workshops on specific trail sections in recent weeks, and now they are hosting a big open house to discuss the project design as a whole. You can also comment online.
This is your chance to see the latest concepts and weigh in on specific design considerations. This is part of the community design process Mayor Ed Murray, many longtime project appellants and and longtime trail supporters have created together to finally finish this damn trail.
We want to hear your ideas. Join project design staff at an in-person event to help us better understand local conditions, opportunities, and challenges along the preferred alignment of the Missing Link:
When: Thursday, July 13 from 5 to 8 PM Where: Ballard Eagelson VFW Post, 2812 NW Market St, Seattle, WA 98107
King County Parks is doing some asphalt work on a section of the Burke-Gilman Trail in Bothell Thursday. So give yourself a little extra time in case of delays.
From King County Parks:
There will be upcoming trail asphalt pavement repair along the Burke-Gilman Trail on the west crossing of NE 175th St., across from the Ivorywood Apartments.
The duration of work is expected to take one day starting 8 a.m., Thursday, July 13. Trail users should be prepared to expect occasional short delays as the construction progresses. For safety reasons trail users may be asked to dismount their bikes and walk as they are escorted through the construction area by flaggers.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to improve this valued regional asset.
