Seattle Bike Blog

Seattle’s mixed history building neighborhood greenways

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 10, 2024

Neighborhood greenways have a hit and miss history in Seattle. Sometimes they create fantastic all ages and abilities walking and biking connections, and sometimes they are so heavily compromised that they do very little. So as Seattle prepares to create a new transportation plan and craft a new transportation funding measure, we should probably get a handle on what works, what doesn’t and why.
Ryan Packer at the Urbanist posed the issue in a recent post:
Seattle’s greenway network turns 12 years old this year, with the 39th Avenue NE greenway in Wedgwood one of the very first corridors that the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) upgraded when it tried out the idea in mid-2012, right after N 43rd and N 44th Streets in Wallingford. At the time, Seattle was following in the footsteps of Portland, Oregon, which officially started branding its bike boulevards “neighborhood greenways” in 2009, but which had been implementing projects like them going back to the 1980s.

As Seattle starts to consider the next iteration of the 2015 Move Seattle levy, which expires at the end of the year, the city has an opportunity to reassess how neighborhood greenway infrastructure has been implemented, and how big of a role the continued expansion of the network should have moving forward. With significant gaps still remaining in the on-street bike network, and many miles of bike lanes still in need of upgrades in the form of physical protection and signal infrastructure, 2024 could be a key decision point.
Read more…
Most (or perhaps all) of the worst neighborhood greenways in Seattle have one thing in common: They were created not to build new connections for people but rather as a way for SDOT to avoid building bike lanes and better crosswalks on a nearby arterial street. Many of the city’s worst neighborhood greenways were started for the wrong reasons and had project-breaking limitations baked into them from day one.
A great (or terrible?) example is the stretch of neighborhood greenway on 17th Ave SW in Delridge. Picture this: You’re biking along, following the helpful signs pointing the way along the neighborhood greenway when all of sudden there is a staircase in the middle of the road.
Photo from a 2016 ride shortly after the route opened. Not only is this a poor feature for a bike route, but it also neglects the “all abilities” goal.
(more…)

tags: 2024 transportation funding measure, beacon hill, delridge, neighborhood greenways, parks and recreation, rainier valley neighborhood greenway, ryan packer, sdot, seattle transportation plan, the urbanist

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What does Seattle’s new City Council mean for safe streets?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 8, 2024

Seattle has a very new City Council, and the changes aren’t even complete yet. Five coucilmembers are new, and a sixth interim councilmember will be appointed soon. For a nine-person governing body, that’s a lot of turnover all at once.
Washington Bikes asked all the candidates for their stances on various bike issues, and none of the councilmembers ran on being anti-bikes. Here’s their scorecard summary:
WA Bikes also asked candidates about issues specifically affecting their districts. Here are those responses:
Councilmember Rob Saka (District 1), will chair the Transportation Committee after the previous chair, Alex Pedersen (District 4) chose not to run for reelection. It will be very interesting to see how Saka chooses to lead this committee, which has seen very different leadership styles throughout the past decade. Pedersen’s time as Transportation Chair was notable largely for its relative inactivity. Former Councilmember Mike O’Brien had been a very active Transportation Chair, packing agendas, calling additional special meetings and regularly going overtime with his patented “I want to respect everyone’s time” warning. Pedersen, in contrast, usually had relatively sparse agendas and rarely used the committee to try to influence SDOT’s operational work such as questioning individual project designs. Before O’Brien, former Councilmember Tom Rasmussen had also been fairly hands-on with SDOT, willing to get in the weeds on project details with SDOT staff.
(more…)

tags: alex pedersen, bob kettle, city council, dan strauss, jenny durkan, joy hollingsworth, mike o’brien, publicola, rob saka, tammy morales, teresa mosqueda, the urbanist, tom rasmussen, transportation committee, washington bikes

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Fremont Bridge bike trips were nearly back to pre-pandemic levels in 2023

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 4, 2024

Travel patterns are still out of whack, but the number of bike trips across the Fremont Bridge in 2023 were up more than 13% over 2022, which was itself up more than 11% over 2021. Altogether, the number of people biking across the Ship Canal has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels, with 902,926 counted in 2023. That’s nearly 190,000 more trips than 2021.
That total still lags behind the astounding record set in 2019, when 1,187,146 trips were counted, but it is getting closer in line with the years preceding 2019 when the annual counts flirted with the 1 million mark. The Fremont Bridge is largely a measure of cross-city trips headed between the city center and the north end, but it has typically been our single best point for taking the city’s biking temperature because so many different bike routes all converge at this single point. The counts include both sidewalks, not just the side with the display.
However, the increase in people working from home since the start of the pandemic hit the Fremont Bridge bike counts hard because of its outsized role connecting homes to offices. The numbers are increasing as major employers try to get more people to work in their offices more often, but it remains unknown whether or when the center city workweek will return to the activity levels seen before the pandemic hit. As of 2022, Seattle had work from home rate far higher than the national average (25.4% for the region and 36% for the city versus 15% for the national average). Before the pandemic, the work from home rate was about 6.5%, according to Census data reported by Axios. Census data is released annually in the late summer, so comparable 2023 data is not yet available. It’s not just the office workers themselves who are a factor here, but also all the people working a wide variety of jobs that keep a bustling employment center functional. Service workers typically don’t get to work from home, those jobs simply disappear along with their associated bike trips across the Fremont Bridge.
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tags: bike counter, fremont bridge, work from home

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2023 Seattle bike and scooter share rides reach record 5.1 million rides as Lime consolidates its lead

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 2, 2024

Average daily trips by month, from SDOT’s shared micromobility dashboard.
Bike and scooter share services are more popular than ever in Seattle, and the number of rides in 2023 eclipsed even the wild days of $1 bikes back in 2017 and 2018. According to SDOT data based on real-time reporting from all permitted companies, people took 5.1 million trips on shared scooters and bikes in 2023, a 28% increase over 2022 and a 70% increase over the days of $1 pedal bikes in 2017-2018.
The bulk of the growth came from Lime, which has been the most popular and consistent service ever since Seattle started its experiment with dockless bike share in 2017. Lime represented about half of all trips in 2022, but they went on a tear in 2023 and increased their share to 64% of trips. This increase is perhaps even more surprising since the company also increased prices by about 8¢ per minute. It now costs $1 to unlock plus 44¢ per minute for an e-bike, which brings the cost of a 30-minute ride to $14.20.
Lime’s growth comes as its competitors struggle. Bird finally filed their long-anticipated bankruptcy last month. Bird is still operational, and the company says it hopes to continue operating after bankruptcy. Bird is the only company other than Lime to offer a proper bike share option. Veo, which operates a sit-down style scooter that technically counts as a bike, saw a decrease in rides from 425,500 in 2022 to 309,900 in 2023.
But perhaps most concerning for scooter riders is that Superpedestrian has officially shut down service in the U.S. after collapsing in 2023. The company shut off access to its LINK scooters December 26. LINK was the second-most popular service after Lime with 716,500 rides in 2023, down from 960,300 rides in 2022 when it rivaled Lime for the top scooter provider spot. Unlike Bird’s years-long decline, Superpedestrian’s collapse happened without much warning.
(more…)

tags: bike share, bird, limebike, scooter share, sdot, superpedestrian, veo

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Watch: Bob Svercl highlights 5 good and 5 bad things in 2023 Seattle biking

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 28, 2023

I would like to add a 6th good thing about biking in Seattle in 2023: Bob Svercl.

tags: bob svercl, videos

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Man killed while biking in West Seattle identified as Steven Hulsman

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 23, 2023

Steven Hulsman. Photo from his Strava profile, which notes that he had climbed 787,641 feet over 5,969 miles in 2023.
Steven Hulsman was biking a hilly route he has ridden countless times when someone driving collided with him and killed him Thursday evening. He was 66.
Our condolences to his friends and family.
Hulsman was a husband, father and grandfather. He loved riding hills like this one, friends say, and he was scheduled to lead a Cascade Bicycle Club free group ride along this route today (December 23). His friend and ride co-leader John Kugler lead the ride in his absence as a memorial to Steven.
“Steve was one of the kindest persons I have ever met,” Kugler told Seattle Bike Blog:
“He just cared about everyone. He was always delighted whenever someone new showed up for one of his posted Cascade rides (and he posted A LOT of them for many, many years). He always reached out to welcome everyone and learn about them. He was incredibly fit and he loved to climb up hills to keep fit. His “Hills of the West Coast” Cascade rides are always the hilliest rides on Cascade’s free ride calendar. He loved the Northwest and riding in the mountains, especially Rainier National Park, the North Cascades Highway and Artist Point/Mt. Baker. He loved the outdoors. He has ridden the Ride Around Mt. Rainier more times than anyone I know. Riders on RAMROD [“Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day”] are given numbers according to their age with the oldest getting the lowest number. One of Steve’s big goals was to someday ride RAMROD with a single digit ride number, i.e. to be one of the nine oldest riders. He always kept an eye out for the riders with the low numbers and cheered them on.”
UPDATE: Another friend, David Longdon, wrote a wonderful post about Steve on his site Northwest In Motion.
Hulsman worked for Washington State’s Chemical Water Quality Monitoring Program, a Department of Health program working to maintain clean drinking water. He also donated blood as often as possible for his entire life, and Kugler said he has donated close to 1,000 pints of blood.
“His loss will be felt not only in the cycling community and among his family and friends, but by the countless people he met and inspired throughout his life and countless others who never met him but whose lives were saved by his selfless care for the wellbeing of others,” said Kugler.
Stories about Steve, along with shock, dismay and sadness, have been pouring in since the news first started to spread. Many people have noted that Steve made them feel welcome and was always encouraging them during difficult rides. He was an extremely experienced ride leader who spoke about riding safely before every ride.
(more…)

tags: 46th ave sw, deaths, john kugler, marine view drive, steven hulsman, west seattle, west seattle blog

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