Washington State is getting a Bicycle Safety Advisory Council to help watchdog and improve the state’s approach to keeping the thousands of its residents who bike safe.
The council is named in honor of Cooper Jones, who was killed while biking 20 years ago. His parents have David and Martha have been a strong force in advocating for better bike safety efforts in the state, according to a blog post by Washington Bikes.
The Council will be “the first interdisciplinary panel dedicated to examining causes of serious injury and death for people who bike and providing subsequent recommendations for prevention to the legislature,” according to WA Bikes. Here’s their full post about it: (more…)
The Beacon Hill bike cage shortly before it opened for business.
Sound Transit is offering a sweet deal on membership to two of its stations’ secure bike cages: Six months free if you sign up for a year.
The catch is that you have to sign up by the end of May to get the deal.
Secure bike cages are an alternative to the fairly ugly and inefficient bike lockers available at many major transit stations across the region.
The problem is that signing up for bike cage access is a huge hassle. You have to write a check for the reduced $25 price (a check is like a paper Venmo), print (yes, like, on paper), fill out (using an actual hand-held pen) and mail (good luck finding an envelope and stamp) the sign-up form (PDF).
After processing your paperwork and exchanging your check for counting stones (or however checks work), Sound Transit will send you an access code for the cage.
The good news about all this is that once you have a code, you can be pretty sure no thief is going to go through all this trouble just to steal your bike. And if they do, Sound Transit would know who they are because everyone gets a unique code.
Cascade Bicycle Club is hosting four rides from different ends of town that will converge at City Hall Friday for a rally to support a Basic Bike Network to and through downtown.
The rides are part of the annual Bike Everywhere Day celebration (formerly known as “Bike to Work Day”). As always, there will be more than 100 “celebration stations” hosted by volunteers, community groups and businesses all over the region. Some have food, some have coffee, and some are just there to cheer you on as you bike to wherever it is you’re going early on a Friday morning.
Tomorrow is a great excuse to help your friend or co-worker bike to work for the first time. Most days, people aren’t standing around cheering you on just because you’re biking to work. And there will be a much bigger “safety in numbers” effect tomorrow as many new people give bike commuting a try.
That safety in numbers effect will be in full force for the four organized rides, especially the ride down Rainier Ave from Columbia City to City Hall. That’s right, Friday is your chance to ride the flattest and more direct route from Rainier Valley to downtown without fearing for your life in heavy, stressful traffic. Even if you don’t live in Rainier Valley, this ride might be worth waking up extra early to join. See you in Columbia City at 7:30 a.m.
And if you don’t work a downtown job, give yourself extra time to stop by a bunch of stations on your way in. You’ll also want to take time to appreciate all the new people out biking your route to work or school or wherever you go. Because Bike Everywhere Day is like a glimpse into the near future, when the number of people biking has grown just a little bit more.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part One of a two-part series by NE Seattle Greenways leader and former mayoral candidate (“I ran for Mayor before it was cool“) Andres Salomon. In this post, Salomon gives an update on the need for NE 65th Street safety improvements. Part Two will cover potential designs that the city could build to make 65th much safer for vulnerable users.
The design of NE 65th St continues to be dangerous in the Roosevelt and Ravenna neighborhoods, resulting in numerous injuries and even deaths. The #Fix65th coalition is a group of concerned neighbors and community groups who have organized to advocate for safety fixes to NE 65th.
We can’t wait another two years for a safe walking and biking environment on 65th.
You have an opportunity to tell the city that we need to take the safety of our most vulnerable road users seriously during an open house 6 – 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Roosevelt High School. SDOT staff will provide updates on their NE 65th safety project and take public feedback. Please attend, and/or fill out the survey (launching tomorrow, stay tuned) to let the city know that you support bold safety improvements to NE 65th.
The history of this process has been both tragic and frustrating. Seattle’s Department of Transportation (SDOT) has never been responsive to requests for safety improvements on 65th, despite years of asking. When Andy Hulslander was killed biking home from work in 2015, neighbors were told that SDOT was studying improvements. However, not a single change was made to the corridor. (more…)
The moment Governor Inslee told bill supporters he would veto the rollout delay. Image from a video by the Governor’s Office.
In three months, it will finally be illegal to flip through Facebook or watch Netflix on your phone while driving a car in Washington State.
Though Washington was among the first state’s to ban texting while driving, the state has been slow to update it’s laws to outlaw other mobile device uses as the technology evolved beyond just text messaging.
It took several years of failed bipartisan efforts (House Democrats killed a similar bill in 2015 after Republicans passed it in the Senate) before the legislature finally passed SSB 5289 (PDF) this session to outlaw using a “personal electronic device” while driving. This includes holding the phone at all while talking (you can no longer just hold it in front of your face, which was actually legal before), watching video (this was also somehow legal until now), and using your finger to do anything more than activate a function on a device (so you can still answer a call on speaker, for example, or skip a song on Pandora).
Before signing the bill into law Tuesday, Governor Jay Inslee struck a provision that would have delayed the law’s effects until January 2019.
“We can’t wait that long,” he said, surprising the bill’s supporters and eliciting a round of applause. It was a moment of truly great leadership from Governor Inslee. Because he’s right. There’s no reason why people need another year and a half of streaming Netflix while driving. (more…)
Graph from a Bicycle Security Advocates presentation to the Seattle City Council.
Bike theft continues to rise steeply in Seattle. And that not only costs people money, but many people won’t replace their stolen wheels. At a time when our increasingly congested city needs more people to get around by bike, theft is a growing impediment.
Brock Howell’ Bicycle Security Advocates group has put together a presentation for the City Council’s Transportation Committee meeting 2 p.m. today (Tuesday) and will host a public panel discussion 6:30 – 8 p.m. this evening at Métier on Capitol Hill.
The basic question: What can we do to stop the rise in thefts?
Washington State is getting a Bicycle Safety Advisory Council to help watchdog and improve the state’s approach to keeping the thousands of its residents who bike safe.
