Seattle Bike Blog

Trail Alert: Year-long County wastewater project could create some Elliott Bay Trail delays

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 12, 2017

The Denny Way Regulator Station Upgrade project area, from the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks (project update PDF)

King County is beginning work this week on a delayed waterwater regulator project in Myrtle Edwards Park that could disrupt the Elliott Bay Trail.

The project worksite entrance is at the south entrance to the trail near the Sculpture Garden, an area that can get congested with people biking and walking.

The County says flaggers will control traffic during “temporary periods of trail narrowing.”

A 2014 detour at this spot caused a small headache as crews installing a sculpture tried to get people biking to walk their bikes on the shared biking and walking path adjacent to the closed bike trail. But the delays were nowhere near as frustrating as the annual Hempfest closure in the park.

The Elliott Bay Trail is not only a wonderful waterside bike route, it’s also a major transportation corridor for people biking to get around the city and region. When crews treat it as a transportation corridor, things go well. When crews treat it as solely a recreational area or park, people trying to get home from work tend to get cranky.

More details from the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks (PDF): (more…)

tags: bike route alerts, construction, denny way regulator station, elliott bay trail, myrtle edwards

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Cascade still putting together Director search, announces 2017 ride schedule

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 11, 2017

Emerald City Bike Ride 2016 on the I-5 Express Lanes. My fantastically wonderful spouse Kelli (who, full disclosure, works for Cascade) is pictured.

Cascade Bicycle Club starts 2017 without an Executive Director, but it still has a bold events lineup that includes the return of the Emerald City Bike Ride.

Though the date and route details are still TBD, last year’s Emerald City Bike Ride on the 520 Bridge and the express lanes of I-5 was awesome. So it’s great news that the ride is returning, since biking on freeways would be a great annual tradition in Seattle (well, at least until my dream of the I-5 Express Trail comes true).

Cascade will also spend much of 2017 searching for a new Executive Director to replace Elizabeth Kiker, who resigned in November effective December 31. The club has no interim Director. Instead, “The Cascade senior leadership team is currently serving in place of an interim Executive Director,” Communications Director Brent Tongco said. Senior staff and the Board are in the process of drafting a job description to guide their search.

Coincidentally, Portland’s Street Trust (formerly the Bicycle Transportation Alliance) fired its Executive Director Rob Sadowsky, Bike Portland reported yesterday. So the biggest bike advocacy organizations in both major cities are currently without permanent Executive Directors at the moment and will likely be searching to fill the spot at the same time.

As of today, registration is open for a few of Cascade’s 2017 rides. The rest will open over the next couple months.

More details from Cascade: (more…)

tags: cascade bicycle club

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Don’t stop the Broadway streetcar and bikeway now

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 10, 2017

From a June 2015 SDOT/Alta presentation to the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board

Today, the First Hill Streetcar and Broadway Bikeway end unceremoniously at Denny Way just before reaching the North Broadway business district. People biking are forced to choose between merging into mixed traffic on the busy commercial street, trying to navigate using side streets with poor business access and poor crossings at busy streets like John/Olive, or riding on packed sidewalks.

Not only are all these options bad for bike access to North Broadway businesses, they also undercut the usefulness of the existing stretch of the bikeway extending south to Pike/Pine, Seattle U, First Hill medical centers and Yesler Terrace.

The Broadway Bikeway will be be an incomplete bike route until the city extends it beyond Roy, as the city has planned. The project has $14 million in grant funding, and the current plan calls for the remaining $10 million to come from a local improvement district.

But the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce pushed back on the Broadway extension plans in December, according to Capitol Hill Seattle.

“If we want to see Broadway thrive … the streetcar is actually the best way to undermine that,” the Chamber’s Executive Director Sierra Hansen told CHS. Hansen singled out the bikeway for conflicting with delivery vehicles: (more…)

tags: broadway, broadway bikeway, broadway streetcar extension, capitol hill, capitol hill seattle, first hill streetcar

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Bike News Roundup: The first cargo bike ride at the top of the Space Needle?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 9, 2017

It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s a collection of some stuff floating around the web recently. You may find some good stuff here that fell through the cracks during the holidays.

First up, The Pedal-Powered Talk Show visited Seattle, and hosts Boaz Frankel and Phillip Ross claim to be the first people to ever ride a cargo bike at the top of the Space Needle (in three parts):

(more…)

tags: bike news roundup

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Memorial for Nellie Yelli Saturday + Treza Hafzalla charged with Vehicular Homicide, Hit & Run

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 6, 2017

Nellie Yelli. Photo from the memorial event page.

Friends, family and neighbors will gather tomorrow (Saturday) morning to remember Nellie Yelli, 62, who was killed Sunday while walking in a Green Lake crosswalk.

The memorial, organized by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, begins 11 a.m. at 82nd and Wallingford Ave N, the intersection where she was killed. More details are available on the event page.

Our condolences to her friends and family.

Treza Hafzalla, 27, was charged Thursday with Vehicular Homicide and Felony Hit and Run. Hafzalla allegedly failed to yield to Yelli, who was halfway through the crosswalk when Hafzalla struck her with her GMC Jimmy. Yelli died at the scene. Police found Yelli’s grocery cart stuck in the grill of Hafzalla’s SUV, according to the charging document.

Hafzalla allegedly called her boyfriend after parking her SUV a mile from the scene. But instead of taking her home, he drove her back to the scene where she was arrested. Hafzalla is suspected of DUI, though blood tests were still pending as of the time charges were filed.

More details on Saturday’s memorial: (more…)

tags: deaths, green lake, memorial walks, n 82nd street, nellie yelli, seattle neighborhood greenways, treza hafzalla, wallingford ave n

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2016 was the year of bike plan delays, will 2017 be any better?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 5, 2017

One of the relatively few 2016 bike plan projects completed on schedule, the underwhelming Columbia St neighborhood greenway is not likely to have much of an impact on bike mobility in Seattle. Pictured: The route’s odd crosswalk swerve at 14th Ave.

The biggest story for biking in Seattle in 2016 can be summed up in one terrible word: Delayed.

After riding an incredible safe streets funding high for a few months following the November 2015 passage of the Move Seattle transportation levy, popular hopes for real action on safe streets projects slammed into the rocks. In spring 2016, SDOT released a revised short-term bike plan that dramatically slashed planned projects.

Not only did the revised plan include fewer miles of protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways, but the projects it did include failed to complete the most-needed connections in the city. Downtown and the south end were particularly hard hit.

To advocates who had worked so hard to pass Mayor Ed Murray’s transportation levy based on promises of bold action on safe streets, the revised plan was a slap in the face. Dozens of people, organized by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Cascade Bicycle Club, protested the cuts by holding a rally at City Hall.

Rallying around the phrase “We can’t wait,” protesters made the case that the city has the plans and funding needed to take bold action to improve safety on our streets and stop fatal or injurious collisions before they happen. The time for waiting is over, they said.

The city chose to wait. The miles of planned protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways for 2016 were cut by 35 percent, then the city failed to deliver half of the projects that remained in the slashed plan before the year ended.

To illustrate the point, here’s how the 2016 plan looked in spring of 2015 (note that in this version of the plan, Westlake, Roosevelt and Dearborn were completed a year earlier. The Pinehurst Way NE bike lane was completed in 2015, a year early): (more…)

tags: #WeCantWait, bicycle master plan implementation plan, ed murray

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