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It’s time for Commute Seattle’s annual Light Up your Ride event. Get a free doughnut, cup of coffee and other likely reflective and blinky swag tomorrow morning (Thursday). All you have to do is ride a bike. Easy!
Commute Seattle will be at the south end of the new Westlake Bikeway in Lake Union Park from 7 – 9 a.m. So give yourself some extra time to stop.
More details from Commute Seattle: (more…)
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It wasn’t your imagination. October really was the rainiest on record.
So by now you are used to getting wet as you bike around town. It’s not so bad, right?
Well, if you need some extra motivation to leave your warm, dry house and hop on your bike in the rain, it’s not too late to register for WA Bikes’ Ride in the Rain Challenge.
Log all your bike trips for the month of November on the Ride in the Rain website (even if it wasn’t raining at the time). You can also form or join a team to help keep each other accountable.
Once you get used to biking in the rain, you won’t want to get around any other way. Sure it can kinda suck sometimes. But it’s also empowering to know you can get around under your own power year-round, rain or shine, and still mostly have fun doing it.
For many people, nothing breaks through that heavy, dreary feeling that comes during a dark fall and winter like a daily adventure on your bike. I know that’s the case for me.
Any hey, it’s also an excuse to invest in better rain gear or other rain-friendly clothes. After all, you’ll save at least that much money by biking instead of driving or taking the bus.
So if you are motivated by tracking your rides online, sign up for the Ride in the Rain Challenge! From WA Bikes: (more…)
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The Bewegen e-assist bike share bike is heavy, boxy and clumsy, but you can climb James Street from 2nd to 5th without even trying.
I was hoping my recent test ride of the Bewegen e-assist bike would help me make up my mind about the philosophical differences between the top two bike share expansion proposals, but I’m basically still in the same spot. Sure, an e-assist bike can climb James St, but is that better than having more stations in more places? Maybe.
The bikes did turn heads. After easily cruising up James, I was walking the bike along the sidewalk on 5th in front of City Hall and a woman stopped me and asked how I got up the hill so easily. She thought I was some kind of endurance athlete.
“It has a motor,” I told her, and her eyes lit up. She bikes to work sometimes, but these last couple blocks of hill really make it hard to get to her office. The idea of being able to check out a public bike that could cruise up the hill without a huge effort clearly had her interested.
If the city chooses to go forward with the Bewegen proposal (an action that would also require City Council approval), they will be betting that there are many more people like her who aren’t interested in biking up the hill to work on a Pronto or even their own personal bikes. And the fact that I spontaneously ran into someone exactly in line with their intended market during my short trip around the block was a good sign, even if it’s not a scientific survey.
Compared to a Pronto bike, the Bewegen is very heavy and clumsy. It’s hard to turn around in place, and the steering feels a bit twitchy. Your posture when riding is so laid back that Pronto feels like a racing bike by comparison. But that may not be a bad change. (more…)
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It is 2016. Nearly every month this year reached the hottest global average on record. Cities across the world and across our nation are working to remove downtown highways that divide and depress their vital economic and cultural centers.
Yet Seattle of all places is still preparing to build a new surface highway between the glorious Elliott Bay waterfront and its downtown core despite warnings from major transportation advocacy groups warning that such a wide roadway would put people walking in danger and would make the city’s waterfront less desirable and accessible for yet another generation. On top of that, the groups pointed out that the wide planned road would induce more motor vehicle trips and increase the release of greenhouse gasses, directly in conflict with the city’s stated greenhouse gas emission goals.
Waterfront Seattle, lead by Seattle along with regional and state partners, released its final environmental impact study Monday, and it shows that planners chose to completely ignore the advice of these groups. Their vision for Seattle’s waterfront “boulevard” remains the same as before: Up to 37 yards of motor vehicle traffic separating our historic downtown from the waterfront:
It would take as long as 30 seconds for a fit and able-bodied person to walk from curb-to-curb between Pioneer Square and the new waterfront promenade. For our slower-moving neighbors — including many kids, seniors and people with mobility challenges — the walk may take so long that they will only be able to make it to a mid-street island before the light changes. They will then need to wait in the middle of this highway for a second round of traffic to go by before continuing their journey to the waterfront.
This is a slap in the face to these neighbors. It is an institutionalized insult that tells people walking on the waterfront (or to the ferry terminal) that they are not important or valued, especially if they are not physically able to race fast enough to beat the signal countdown.
This plan is wildly counter to the vision most people want from their revamped waterfront, I’m pretty sure. The multi-billion-dollar tunnel highway was supposed to allow us to reclaim our waterfront. Instead, we’re also getting a highway on top of our tunnel highway. If this surface highway plan is constructed, our future waterfront will be less accessible from most of downtown than it is today with the loud, shaky and unsightly Viaduct.
We cannot let this happen. The environmental review and design process has gone horribly wrong, blinded by a windshield perspective that has led planners to miss the big picture: The Viaduct removal project is about reclaiming our waterfront. It is not about filling our waterfront with cars. (more…)
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Simply put, Cascade Bicycle Club will not be able to replace Ed Ewing.
“We’re not going to be the same without him,” said Cascade’s Executive Director Elizabeth Kiker. And it’s true.
Ewing is best known for starting the club’s Major Taylor Project, a small idea that was just supposed to be an after-school activity but turned into a youth-empowering, community-building institution reaching 450 students in 14 schools in the south end of Seattle, south King County and Tacoma.
“I’ve been having a really honest gut check with myself and where I am in my life,” Ewing said.
And with the Major Taylor Project cruising, perhaps it’s time to move on to new challenges. His last day will be November 4.
“The Project is in really, really good shape,” he said. “What do great leaders do? They know when it’s time to go,” he said. “You make sure members of the team and the work are held in equal importance … and can stand alone without you.”
In the near term, Major Taylor Project Coordinator Rich Brown will be moving up to take on more responsibility. And the project is at the point now where it is hiring former students, which Ewing is very excited about.
Major Taylor is itself an impressive feat, but it’s Ewing’s leadership within Cascade that has made him such a powerful guiding light for an organization striving to be a better community partner beyond the mostly-white audience it draws with many of its major events. Through Major Taylor, Ewing developed a community-building theory where an organization like Cascade can be a meaningful partner in communities of color where they had limited presence before.
“[Major Taylor] is an opportunity to partner authentically with and within communities of color,” he said. It never felt helpful for while-led organizations to come into communities of color with a program the organization decided was the solution to that communities problems, he said. Instead, he urged the club to “build relationships in the community authentically … then ask them, ‘What are the goals of your community, and how can we support those goals?’” (more…)
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After five years operating a second location in Fremont, Recycled Cycles will return to being a one-shop bike mecca.
KOMO’s Lindsay Cohen noticed the telltale sign in the shop’s window: The Fremont location will close October 31.
But fear not, the flagship U District shop isn’t going anywhere.
@lindsaycohen @seabikeblog thanks for all the support over the past five years! The udistrict shop will remain open.
— Recycled Cycles (@recycledcycles) October 26, 2016
The Fremont expansion was part of a 2012 bike shop boom in Seattle that further solidified Fremont’s status as a hub of bike-related and bike-friendly businesses.
Recycled Cycles has put incalculable butts in saddles in the past 22 years. Whether you’re looking for a new bike or for a used part to keep your aging wheels rolling, Recycled Cycles is a valuable resource. It’s used bike part bins are the stuff of legends among do-it-yourself folks.
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