Pronto Cycle Share just had its strongest week of new membership sales since autumn October 2014, though the system still has more work to do to catch up to its 2015 membership levels.
124 people signed up during the system’s Pronto Week promotion, General Manager Demi Allen said. That puts membership levels on the upswing for the first time since the end of summer 2015, when many people who signed up before the system launched chose not to renew.
“We were pretty happy,” Allen said of Pronto Week sales. “We’re just going to stay on the marketing. And obviously the the objective is to sell more new memberships than we lose through renewals.”
The system also had its strongest ridership week of the year, perhaps because Pronto Week happened to coincide with the Viaduct closure when people were looking for other transportation options. But rides are still lagging behind 2015 levels along with memberships, so there is a lot more work to do.
Ride ‘Free’ Day May 20
After a rough start to the year for Pronto’s public image, the system still has a lot of work to do to win back support and gain new riders. So with sponsorship from Chipotle (also in need of an image boost right about now), Pronto will offer its first ever Ride Free Day on Bike Everywhere Day May 20. (more…)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two guest posts by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways this week. Their map conceptualizing the connectivity potential in the city’s bike planning is brilliant. If you like this vision or are frustrated by the city’s recent bike plan cuts, be sure to check out the calls to action at the bottom for Tuesday.
In Part 1 of our story, we left Tim wondering how to commute by bike with his baby daughter and left Shirley stranded with her children trying to cross Seattle’s most dangerous street, Rainier Ave S. In Part 2, we explain how to rescue them.
The city has a good plan.
Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan is a 20-year plan (2014-2034). The plan “Proposes a network of bicycle facilities throughout the city that provides a way for people of all ages and abilities to travel by bicycle within their neighborhoods, from one neighborhood to the next, and across the city.” The plan’s performance targets include quadrupling the ridership by 2030, getting to zero traffic fatalities by 2030, and having “100% of households in Seattle within 1⁄4 mile of an all ages and abilities bicycle facility by 2035.”
Unfortunately,when it has come to implementing the bike plan, the public feels the city is falling short. Much has been written about the implementation plan already (Stranger, Seattle Bike Blog, CHSBlog, etc), but to recap why people are disappointed:
The bike implementation plan pretends downtown doesn’t exist. The city makes no commitments to connect our major job center and our densest neighborhoods.
Less is being built after passing the Move Seattle Levy than was originally projected before the levy was passed. This may be due to simple over-promising, but now people like Shirley and Tim are understandably disappointed.
It seems that the routes which have been selected to be developed first in neighborhoods are low hanging fruit rather than the routes people need most to be able to safely get around.
So what would a robust implementation of a bike network look like?
Our city is growing fast. Our urban villages, the places our city has designated to grow the fastest, desperately need better transportation connections. We must build a network of trails, protected bike lanes, and neighborhood greenways that link our fastest growing neighborhoods together. We must provide safe, time competitive, and comfortable routes that entice people of all ages and abilities to try biking for some of their daily transportation needs.
Here’s a purposefully-not-to-scale concept map of a connected bike network that links all of Seattle’s Urban Villages (PDF):
Using Move Seattle Levy money, over the next 10 years, the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan proposes more than 120 miles of greenways, multi-use trails, and protected bike lanes (PBL) designed for people of all ages and all abilities. Details here. The City of Seattle has followed a set of Urban Center & Village Plans for the past 20 years to prioritize its departmental work plans. The 20 year Comprehensive 2035 Plan will continue to base work plans on the Urban Village strategy. Details here.
Hey, look! It’s Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Executive Director Cathy Tuttle on the Bike Everywhere poster.
Bike to McGraw Square tomorrow (Friday) morning between 7 and 9 a.m., and you’ll get free coffee, a bagel and probably some swag.
Commute Seattle hosts the event every year, though I feel like we got fried chicken one year (or was that a dream?).
Anyway, here are more details from Commute Seattle:
In celebration of National Bike Everywhere Month, Commute Seattle is hosting its 6th annual Bikes & Bagels event from 7-9 a.m. on Friday, May 13 in McGraw Square (Fifth Avenue and Stewart St in Downtown Seattle). Bike commuters are encouraged to stop by for free Caffe Vita coffee, wood-fired bagels from Eltana, free bike tune-ups and raffle prizes. We will be joined by our partners at Seattle Department of Transportation, Pronto Bikeshare, Velo Bike Shop, Zipcar Seattle, and volunteers from Cascade Bicycle Club.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This guest post from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways was a collaboration by several biking parents with the help of SNG staff. It may be inconvenient for city leaders to hear, but disconnected safe bike route islands do not make Seattle a great bike city. If you are not willing or able to bike in busy traffic, Seattle is leaving you behind. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Shirley Savel bikes with her two-year-old son on her bike and her 12-year-old daughter riding along. But Rainier Ave is a big barrier for biking families in her neighborhood. Watch: Where the Greenway Ends.
Biking in Seattle today requires skill and bravery. For someone new to biking, not comfortable jockeying with fast moving traffic, or trying to bike with their children, finding a safe route to work, the store, or school can be incredibly challenging – if not impossible.
Despite repetition by mainstream media and SDOT (Seattle Department of Transportation), Seattle is not currently a great city to bike in. The myth of greatness is part of what is holding Seattle back, and needs to be put to rest. To help bury this myth, let’s hear from mothers and fathers trying to bike with their families in Seattle.
Who is Shirley Savel?
Shirley Savel is a mom from the Rainier Valley and bikes daily with her 12-year-old daughter and two-year-old son. She blogs about about biking with her family and shares her experiences:
“Sure, we bike because it can be fun, healthy, and we need to get places, but more importantly it’s an economic necessity for our family. During two very rough periods of unemployment, rather than paying bus or train fare we biked. Biking saved my family from homelessness. Even after finding work, biking has remained an integral part of balancing our family budget. (more…)
A 48-year-old man biking in Ravenna was critically injured in a collision with someone driving a King County Metro VanPool vehicle this morning on NE 65th Street near Ravenna Boulevard.
Though few details have been released, Seattle Police say the person biking and a person driving the van collided shortly before 7 a.m.
KIRO TV photos from the scene show a red King County Metro VanPool vehicle with a broken windshield stopped in the eastbound lane a half block east of Ravenna Blvd. The damaged bicycle was pictured near a crosswalk at Ravenna Blvd.
The man injured was transported to the hospital, but we currently have no information about his condition. We are hoping for the best and will update when we learn more. (UPDATE 12:30PM: Seattle Fire says the patient was a male who was transported to Harborview Medical Center in critical condition. I have updated the story and headline to reflect this.).
SPD’s traffic collision investigators taped off the area to conduct an investigation. A drug recognition expert was on the scene, as is typical for serious collision investigations. SPD towed the van from the scene. (more…)
We’ve been writing a lot recently about Seattle’s delayed downtown bike lane plans in large part because it is the biggest employment center in the state and the single biggest missing piece in so many city-wide and regional bike routes.
But downtown is also its own unique and interesting place, packed with wonderful small business, works of public art and hidden public spaces.
In that vein, Cascade Bicycle Club is hosting a free after-work scavenger hunt May 16, sending people out to find downtown’s “hidden gems” before ending at the Crocodile for music and drinks (Full disclosure: My spouse Kelli is an organizer, and Cascade is a SBB sponsor).
Meet at Westlake Park for a rolling start between 5 and 5:45 p.m.
And since the event will mostly (entirely?) take place in the Pronto Cycle Share service area, you don’t even need to bring your own bike to participate. There aren’t too many bike events that can say that!
In addition to exploring downtown in a way you perhaps haven’t before, you will also help Cascade’s advocacy team collect data on preferred bike routes between various points. So this event could be a chance to take your frustration about the city’s downtown bike lane delays and channel it into fun.
The event also happens to be the evening before Seattle City Council’s Sustainability and Transportation Committee is scheduled to discuss the slashed short-term bike plan (2 p.m. May 17 at City Hall).
Pronto Cycle Share just had its strongest week of new membership sales since autumn October 2014, though the system still has more work to do to catch up to its 2015 membership levels.
