It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! This is an open thread.
First up, a quick and clear comparison of the benefits of well-used bike share (and sidewalks) vs car parking spaces in New York City. “The Citi Bike dock and the parking spots take up roughly the same area with much different results,” video maker Luke Ohlson told CityLab. “In just over an hour, there are nearly 200 bike trips taken compared to 11 car trips.”:
Tomorrow is your last chance to vote for the best community-generated park and street projects where you live.
The city revamped its community-generated park and street improvement program this year, turning the old Neighborhood Parks and Street Fund into Your Voice, Your Choice. Neighbors from all over the city submitted about 900 ideas for improvements over the winter, and a community and feasibility process whittled the list down to a handful for each City Council district.
But each district only gets $285,000, so only a few projects will actually get funding and become reality.
You can vote online or vote in person at any library or community center before the end of the day tomorrow (Friday). It only takes a couple minutes. You can only vote for projects in one district.
Attention holiday bike adventurers: A half-mile section of the Snoqualmie Valley Trail near Fall City will be closed for culvert work now through July 7.
From King County Parks:
Snoqualmie Valley Trail will be closed for a culvert replacement near Fall City beginning Monday, June 27 through Wednesday, July 7. The closure begins at SE 39th Pl and continues for one half mile south.
It’s hard to tell from Google Maps, but getting around the closure will likely require quite a detour, traveling down the Fall City-Carnation Road to the Fall City-Snoqualmie Road until you reach 356th Dr SE. From there, you can climb back up to the trail.
If anyone has better advice for a detour, let us know in the comments below.
One lid concept by Parsons Brinkerhoff and the Burrard Group, shared by the Lid I-5 event page.
I-5 is a giant barrier between downtown and our city’s densest neighborhoods, Capitol Hill and First Hill. Land is so immensely valuable in this area that building a top over I-5 (essentially a giant bridge that feels like city land) is an effective way to create new space for affordable housing, park space and other public uses.
This includes the possibility of continuous biking and walking connections on top of I-5.
The full Lid I-5 vision is likely going to require a long-term effort because this will be a massive project. But there are potential short-term wins within reach, including an effort to get a feasibility study funded at least in part by the Convention Center public benefits package. The City of Seattle has offered to take the lead on the effort, Lid I-5 says.
You can get plugged in and check out some of the latest concepts for the lid at an open house 6–8 p.m. today (Tuesday) at the Cloud Room on Capitol Hill.
The Ballard Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail is headed back into litigation.
But despite the pending legal action, the city is still working through the community design process that was was part of the February compromise agreement between SDOT, trail supporters and a group of longtime trail opponents.
The city is hosting three drop-in community design workshops starting this week and culminating in an open house next month. The image above lists the times and dates for each meeting, including a map of the segments under discussion. You can drop in at any point during the workshop, according to a Cascade Bicycle Club email.
“Cascade is working with a diverse set of neighborhood, maritime and industrial stakeholders on the Missing Link Design Advisory Committee (DAC) to ensure that freight and industrial needs work together with a safe and connected trail,” Cascade wrote.
The DAC is tasked with working through all the nitty-gritty details with stakeholders, including how to make sure driveway crossings safe for everyone while also maintaining access to businesses. SDOT and Mayor Ed Murray successfully convened such a group to create the Westlake Bikeway.
Once again, Cascade will intervene on behalf of the city to help with legal work defending the Missing Link plan, though they have gone with a different legal team this time (Matthew Cohen and Rachel H Cox of Stoel Rives).
It should be harder to successfully stop or delay the project now that the city has completed a massive $2.5 million Environmental Impact Statement that studied the trail alignment options, traffic and the surrounding area at intense detail (the study spent about $340 studying each foot of the proposed trail and, including appendices, clocks in at one page for every 4.7 feet of trail). But after decades of public debate and legal action, an idiom about counting chickens comes to mind. (more…)
From left: Mike McGinn (speaking), Jessyn Farrell, Nikkita Oliver, Bob Hasegawa, Cary Moon, Jenny Durkan. Erica C Barnett (far right) moderated. Former candidate Andres Salomon (far left) looks on.
Did you know there’s a primary August 1? That’s not very far away. So if you haven’t been paying attention to the open Seattle Mayoral and City Council Position 8 races, now is the time to get caught up.
The deadline to register or change your address online is July 3. That’s the Monday sandwiched into a potentially very long weekend, so don’t wait. In-person voter registration ends July 24. Ballots will be mailed July 14.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and a long list of partners hosted a candidate forum focused on transportation and housing Thursday. Erica C. Barnett of The C Is for Crank moderated. The full video and a recap of the mayoral forum is below. Stay tuned for a recap of the City Council Position 8 forum next week.
Seattle Bike Blog has not yet endorsed in this race. We want to follow-up with candidates before we do that. So below is my honest read of the candidates’ performances at this forum and in general. I looked for the good things everyone said and tried to highlight challenges for their campaigns. So if you can’t handle a little criticism of your favorite candidate, you won’t like this post. But, as a word of caution, like basically everyone I suck at political forecasting. So please feel free to disagree with my assessment of the race in the comments below.
Seattle has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to quality candidates for these positions. My home state, for example, appears to be on the verge of passing a law that would make it legal to fire a woman if she takes birth control. So when the “worst” of the top-tier mayoral candidates stands out because he believes municipal bank financing is “the solution, actually, to all of our problems,” we’re doing alright. I mean, I like the municipal bank idea, too.
For a blow-by-blow recap of the evening, check out #GrowingSeattle on Twitter.
