Mayor Ed Murray unveiled his proposed 2017-18 budget last week amid protests over mostly non-transportation elements like police funding, funding for the city’s homelessness emergency and the city’s ongoing affordable housing crisis. The mayor and the majority of the Council also angered many of the protestors by blocking them from entering the Council chambers even if they arrived hours early and signed up to speak during public comment. It was a rather messy day at City Hall.

Accordingly, those issues are likely to be the dominant issues under debate during this budget session, as they should be. But as we do every year, we will take a look at the transportation elements of the proposed budget and highlight some areas for improvement.

The 2017-18 transportation budget proposal reflects something of a reshuffling of budget lines and amounts to reflect Move Seattle levy revenue. And Move Seattle did certainly save the bike budget. For example, the mayor’s budget one year ago had to assume the previous levy would expire and that no new levy would pass to replace it (the budget was proposed before voters approved the levy), and that budget essentially zeroed out the sidewalks budget and slashed the “bike trails and paths” budget down to about $1.3 million.

But the people of Seattle passed Move Seattle by a resounding margin. So instead of these very tough cuts, the proposed 2017 budget includes an impressive $11.9 million for new sidewalks on top of $4.7 million for the Pedestrian Master Plan and $800,000 for school safety. These sidewalk additions deserve lots of praise and support from the Council. That’s a big increase. (more…)