If you have never heard Willie Weir and Kat Marriner spin a yarn, get yourself to Cascade Bicycling Center in Magnuson Park 7 p.m. tonight (Tuesday) for an evening that promises laughs and heartwarming positivity.
Seriously, these are special people, and Seattle is lucky that they call our city home when they aren’t traveling the world creating new stories to bring back.
Unlike many of the far-flung places that make up many of their stories, tonight they are focused on one very close to home: The John Wayne Pioneer Trail (AKA the Iron Horse Trail). This rail-trail crosses the state, though sections of it are big need of improvements.
So not only will you get to hear some great stories tonight, but your $10 suggested donation will go to the Friends of John Wayne Pioneer Trail.
They will then take their talk on the trail hosting an event Wednesday in Ellensburg and Thursday in Spokane.
Don’t be one of those people who thinks their vote doesn’t matter because they are not in a Presidential swing state.
Today is the last day to register to vote online in WA if you want your ballot mailed to your home. Due to Indigenous People’s Day, you should also be able to mail in your registration form (PDF) so long as it is postmarked tomorrow (October 11). There are ways to vote if you miss this deadline, but they are all more of a hassle.
While I can’t imagine a vote that feels more satisfying than adding my lowly vote to what will hopefully be a mountain of WA votes against Donald Trump, there are so many other issues on the ballot this year that need your support, including a very rare chance to revolutionize public transportation across the region for generations to come.
Unlike with last year’s Move Seattle vote, Sound Transit 3 (Proposition 1) is a regional package with voters across King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties weighing in. It will only pass if Seattle and other transit-supporting cities and neighborhoods go very hard in favor of it.
Every vote will matter to overcome resistance from people like the GOP candidate for Governor Bill Bryant, who recently filmed a commercial where he is driving alone in a traffic jam while talking about how he thinks traffic sucks and that’s why you should vote for him. He doesn’t support regional Proposition 1 to expand transit and give people options around those traffic jams. He also doesn’t seem to see the irony in demonstrating the exact behavior that causes traffic jams: People driving alone. (more…)
This Monday and Tuesday, October 10-11, from 7:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. each day, grinding and paving work is scheduled to occur along a section of the Burke-Gilman Trail through campus. The work site will extend from Snohomish Lane (near the UW Power Plant) to just north of Whatcom Lane (near the overpass to the E1 parking lot), and is highlighted on the map below.
During this work, a moving “caravan” of equipment and workers will require approximately 150 feet of length and half the width of the trail at any given time. Flaggers will be stationed at each end of the caravan to facilitate safe passage for trail users around the work site.
Please travel slowly and carefully through this area, and adhere to the instructions given by flaggers. People on bicycles should walk their bicycles or ride very slowly around the work site.
Due to the nature of the work, it may be noisy in the immediate area.
If you have any questions regarding this project, please contact Erik Brihagen at 206-685-1493 (desk) or 206-255-5902 (mobile).
Thank you for your partnership while we accommodate this safety improvement project.
Could this be Seattle’s new bike share bike? Image from Bewegen’s bid documents.
Though it’s not final, Seattle has indicated that it intends to select a young Quebec-based company to launch an all-new electric-assist bike share system.
That means both Motivate, the current Pronto Cycle Share operator, and the existing Pronto equipment are out if the deal goes through. The city is now negotiating directly with Quebec-based Bewegen to finalize a deal.
As we explore below, the differences between the bids are huge, representing very different theories of how bike share can work in Seattle. In some ways, the city’s decision to pursue the all-electric option shows a Seattle Department of Transportation still looking to innovate and experiment, though that comes at the expense of increasing station density and expanding the reach of the system.
Bewegen scored highest among the six bids returned (PDF), according to analysis by the city’s bid review team. Motivate came in second and Shift Transit (using the same equipment provider as Citibike in New York and Divvy in Chicago) came in third.
Seattle’s City Council approved a buyout plan for Pronto in the winter, including $5 million to expand the system. One of the conditions was that there would need to be an open bidding process to ensure the city gets the best deal and to ensure that Motivate does not get any special treatment.
SDOT Director Scott Kubly has been recused from the whole bidding process. Kubly caught a lot of heat for failing to file an ethics disclosure related to his previous work as President of Alta Bicycle Share, the company later bought out and turned into Motivate. Kubly has never worked for Motivate, and the investigation found he has no financial ties to the company.
Last month, SDOT’s Chief of Active Transportation Nicole Freedman, who had been heavily involved in the bike share buyout process, left to become Director of Transportation in Newton, Mass.
The wonderful, smart and very friendly Kyle Rowe has moved from his spot as general bike planning superhero at SDOT (he has worked on many small-budget bike safety projects in addition to working on the city’s bike work plan and the much-improved bike map, which we just wrote about). So if Motivate is really out, then there will pretty much be a complete turnover in the bike share staffing from the ground up when the new system launches. Is that a good thing? Well, I can’t say for sure.
Meet noon Sunday at Northgate Community Center to join.
It’s been an awful couple weeks of traffic violence in the area. Last week, Central Seattle Greenways hosted a memorial walk on Capitol Hill for Max Richards, who was struck and killed while walking his dog.
Last month, RC Rogers died while biking in a mysterious crash near his NE Seattle home.
Days later, someone driving a pickup struck and killed a man biking near Northgate Mall. That man’s family has requested privacy, and we are respecting their wish.
Wednesday, a 75-year-old woman was struck and killed crossing a street in Bellevue.
Our deepest condolences go out to all their loved ones.
But condolences aren’t enough. It’s clear we are not acting quickly enough to keep people safe as they travel around the city and region. Traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable, and both Seattle and Bellevue have set the goal of eliminating them. Well, we can’t wait any longer. (more…)
A familiar scene on Seattle Streets. Image from Google Street View.
In an obvious handout to the lucrative “notice of bike lane closure” sign-making industry, Seattle now requires 72 hours of advance notice before closing a bike lane or neighborhood greenway for construction.
This is obviously not a complete solution to the problem of bike lanes suddenly ending, requiring often stressful merges into lanes mixed with motor vehicles. But at least you should have some warning now if a bike lane you depend on daily is going to close soon. And that’s something.
We’re still waiting for better rules requiring construction work to provide temporary biking and walking paths of comparable comfort and directness. It is simply not acceptable that people walking and biking should have to assume added personal danger in order to accommodate a construction project for someone else’s profit. Inconvenience is acceptable because this is a city and that happens. But danger is not OK.
That’s the principle behind this graphic we put together two years ago using Streetmix showing the order that lanes should be closed for construction: (more…)
