This morning, the train tracks on the Burke-Gilman Trail Missing Link claimed yet another victim. Reader Ted came across a woman who took a very bad spill in the same spot so many people have crashed before her. After helping her and waiting for medics to arrive and take over, he took this photo and sent us the following note:
Hi Tom,
Sorry for the downer but I gotta vent.
Real shitty start to bike to work month this morning. This woman’s face was so bloody she could hardly talk. She couldn’t tell me her name.
I started riding again after the paramedics got there and just started bawling out of nowhere. It is really a crime to make a “bike trail” in such a dangerous spot.
Ted
He’s right. It is a crime that plans to fix this dangerous missing link in such a popular bike trail has lingered now for two decades. This isn’t a game. People are getting hurt. (more…)
There’s now a humble counter ticking away everyone who bikes up or down 2nd Ave through the heart of downtown Seattle.
Commute Seattle’s Jessica Szelag unveiled the display this morning, which is a gift to the city on a beautiful first weekday morning commute of Bike Month.
Even with construction at 2nd and Pike blocking access to the 2nd Ave bike lane (the construction company’s own Bike Month gift to commuters), 212 people had biked past the counter before 8 a.m. Monday when the cover came off.
With the Viaduct closed, Bike Month is starting with even more reason to bike: Unpredictable traffic and buses. And since the Viaduct won’t reopen until the tunnel boring machine passes completely under the elevated highway and WSDOT deems it “safe,” well, it may be best to go ahead and get used to getting around without it.
The start of Bike Month is a sobering time, though, because it is also the anniversary of Lance David’s death. David, a husband and father of twins, collided with a truck at E Marginal Way and S Hanford Street May 1, 2013.
Friends visited the ghost bike memorial May 1 to freshen up its flowers and pay their respects. There are still serious road safety issues on E Marginal Way that the many West Seattle and South King County commuters have to navigate each day.
For the cost of three bus rides, you can ride Pronto Cycle Share for a month.
For the first time, Pronto is offering a monthly payment option rather than paying a lump-sum for a whole year. Especially for people on a tight budget, the $7.95 monthly payments are much more accessible.
You can now get unlimited biking for an entire month for less than the cost of Netflix.
And if you buy your membership during Pronto Week May 2 – 8, the cost drops even more: Only $6.25 per month or $63 for a year. (Note that you have to commit to a year in order to get the monthly rate, and this deal is only for new members.)
SDOT Director Scott Kubly once joked that a bike share member who uses the system often might make their money back through reduced wear on their shoes. And if you live, work and play mostly within the limited Pronto service area, that might actually be true.
After weeks of tough construction closures, the 2nd Ave bike lane — downtown’s sole sliver of low-stress bike lane — has mostly reopened. And with new raised driveways, planter boxes and traffic signals, the pilot project created in 2014 is officially here to stay.
There is still more signal work to complete, but most the physical upgrades are in place and ready just in time for the viaduct closure and Bike Month.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct is closing Friday for two weeks as Bertha tunnels precariously under its foundation. As people who drive and take the bus (especially in Viaduct-dependent West Seattle) fret about the threat of huge traffic backups, there is one dependable way you can take control of your own commute: Bike.
Aside from the fun and adventure of biking across town every day, a bike commute takes nearly the same amount of time every day regardless of traffic. In a city where a single highway seafood spill can bring the entire motor vehicle system to crawl, dependability is a huge reason so many people have switched to biking.
You don’t need to wait until 2033 for light rail service to free you from traffic. You can take control yourself today. All you need is a bike that works and the will to give it a shot.
While the viaduct closure will impact many commutes, we’re going to focus on West Seattle for this post since it is the most Viaduct-dependent.
And thanks to the wonderful people at West Seattle Bike Connections, we have an extremely handy map to share for anyone interested in giving a downtown bike commute a try. The map below compiles three popular route suggestions the group posted recently to get people ready to the Viaduct closure. If you click on any of the route lines, you’ll see a link to view that route in detail on RideWithGPS. From there, you can even download turn-by-turn directions. Pretty cool, eh? Thanks, WSBC! (more…)
Seattle’s Josh Cohen has a must-read story out on Next City looking at how too many bike advocacy groups around the U.S. struggle (or even resist) embracing equity as the core of their work.
But Cohen also interviews several more recent leaders in the bike advocacy movement who get it, like Show Roll Chicago’s Oboi Reed and Cascade Bicycle Club’s Ed Ewing. And they have great advice to those organizations willing to listen, soul search and make big changes to their funding priorities, staff and board members.
“Until these organizations look like America, we’re not going to see much change,” Julian Agyeman told Cohen. Agyeman is a professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. That has proven to be a big pill to swallow for many organizations.
After all, a lot of organizations started as bike ride clubs mostly serving white men. The League of American Bicyclists (formerly the League of American Wheelmen) explicitly banned non-white members and racers in the late 1800s, so our nation’s biggest bike advocacy organization has a disgraceful history of segregation just like so many other American institutions.
It’s too easy for bike advocacy organizations to see diving into the social equity work of other community groups as “mission creep.” But the ability to have tunnel vision focused only on biking is a product of privilege. If biking is your top concern in life, don’t forget to step back and count your blessings.
“Instead of looking at it as ‘hey how do we increase biking in this community of color?’ we’re looking at ‘what are the needs of this community and if we better understand the needs, how does the bike help support those needs?’” Ewing told Cohen. “The biking is secondary. The community needs are primary.”