Seattle Bike Blog

SPD: How an officer recovered a stolen mountain bike in Cal Anderson

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 5, 2016

Seattle Police Officer Drew Fowler was on bike patrol in Cal Anderson Park Saturday when he spotted a high-end mountain bike in the hands of a suspected thief.

Officer Fowler stopped the man and asked if he could have a look at the bike’s serial number. The man let him, according to Seattle Police, and the officer found it listed as stolen on Bike Index.

The officer confiscated the bike and the suspect was arrested for possession of stolen property. The bike was reunited with its owner thanks again to Bike Index.

There are several lessons in this example of bike theft enforcement. First, it is very hard to get someone on bike theft, but much easier to get someone on the lesser crime of possession of stolen property. Even when someone has a stolen bike and a set of bolt cutters in his backpack (as with this case), it’s still impossible to prove he was the person who stole it without witness or video/photo evidence of the theft itself. (more…)

tags: bike index, bike thefts, capitol hill, drew fowler, spd, stolen bike recoveries

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Celebrate the Eastside Trail with rail spike removal Friday, summit Saturday

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

January 4, 2016

Images from King County.

From the Master Plan

It’s very difficult to overstate how huge an impact the Eastside Trail will have on regional bikeability and livability.

Traveling through or very near city centers, neighborhoods and employment centers in Woodinville, Kirkland, Bellevue and Renton the trail itself will revolutioninze non-motorized transportation east of Lake Washington.

Add to that existing and future trail links to Redmond, the Burke-Gilman Trail, the Sammamish River Trail and across the 520 Bridge, and the regional trails will finally resemble and function like a real network (which reminds me, have you seem Zach Shaner’s awesome dream regional trail map designed like a transit map?).

If you are super excited about the possibilities here, then join the celebration 12:30 p.m. Friday near the Kirkland/Bellevue border as the first railroad spike is removed (more details below). After the ceremony, bike the Cross Kirkland Corridor with Cascade Bicycle Club for Happy Hour at the wonderful Chainline Brewing.

As we reported previously, King County will remove the rails from about 1.3 miles of the corridor stretching from the existing Cross Kirkland Corridor southern terminus into the heart of Bellevue.

But even with the rails removed, the trail won’t really be bikeable until a hardpack gravel interim trail surface is completed. King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a November statement that the first section of interim trail could be open “in two years.”

If you want to get even more involved, the county is hosting an Eastside Rail Corridor Summit Saturday in Bellevue. The agenda (PDF) includes panels on transportation and land use, business development along the trail, and breakout conversations to help set near- and mid-term goals.

More details on Friday’s rail removal ceremony, from King County: (more…)

tags: bellevue, cascade bicycle club, chainline brewing, cross kirkland corridor, dow constantine, eastside rail corridor, eastside trail, king county, kirkland

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Seattle Bike Blog’s top stories of 2015

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 31, 2015

Launching the Let’s Move Seattle campaign next to a timber-supported bridge that needs replacing, feet from where Brian Fairbrother died in 2011

In 2015, Seattle Bike Blog posted 359 stories, which is actually fewer than in 2014. But that doesn’t mean I worked less. Instead, I quietly allowed my personal rule of two posts per weekday to slip in order to give myself the freedom to focus more on bigger stories.

And I think it worked, since traffic to the site went up 25 percent even though the number of posts went down 18 percent. Lesson: Quality trumps quantity, even on the Internet.

So big thanks to all of you for reading! I am so lucky to have the greatest job in Seattle (the country?). Writing about biking in such a beautiful city simply never gets old, and my list of interesting things to write about keeps growing faster than I can write them. All you awesome biking activists and artists and event planners are just the best. Thanks for keeping me busy!

2015 was a big year for biking in Seattle, even though relatively few big new bike lanes were built. Because 2015 was the year we finally took a big step towards filling the biggest piece missing from nearly every city’s safe streets plans: Funding. (more…)

tags: year in review

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Watch: KCTS on ‘Fixing’ Rainier Ave

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 30, 2015

KCTS IN Close covered the city’s work to fix Rainier Ave this week. And though much of the information may not be new to readers of this blog, it’s great to see it explained in such a concise and clear video.

For 2016, we have to make sure the city not only extends the safety project, but also includes people on bikes in the improvements. On a busy street like Rainier, that means protected bike lanes.

As plans for a north-south neighborhood greenway in the Rainier Valley develop, it has become clear that Rainier Ave is the only reasonably flat and direct option for a bike route in the neighborhood. While neighborhood greenways can be great for connecting homes, schools and other destinations, Rainier is the only option for a direct and mostly flat citywide connection — the kind of bike route people use travel between neighborhoods or to major employment centers.

Rainier Valley Greenways leaders have been making the case for protected bike lanes on the street, even demonstrating several blocks of such bike lanes for Park(ing) Day. It was wonderful and worked perfectly.

Let’s make Rainier Ave safe and vibrant for everyone.

tags: kcts, rainier ave, rainier valley, rainier valley greenways

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After big election wins, Howell leaves a more grassroots-focused Cascade

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 29, 2015

Howell (right) delivering a crowdfunded Kona to Yang Fan, who returned Howell’s stolen bike after unknowingly buying it through Offerup. Photo from Howell via Facebook.

To many grassroots bike activists in the Seattle area, Brock Howell may have been until recently the face of Cascade Bicycle Club.

Howell left Cascade in November shortly after an election where the club’s advocacy team was a major part of the Move Seattle levy win, and seven of eight Cascade-endorsed City Council candidates won their seats.

A seriously hard worker (“like hey, dude, you gotta sleep at some point”), Howell has been a major force behind the club’s grassroots-empowering advocacy efforts since joining the staff in 2013.

Though he credits his predecessor Craig Benjamin for framing up the idea, Howell has been a major force behind the club’s Connect Seattle teams along with fellow advocacy staffers Robin Randels and Kelli Refer (who, full disclosure, is my wonderful spouse). Fueled by the club’s innovative Advocacy Leadership Institute (“ALI”) — which trains everyday people to become effective campaigners and advocates — the Connect teams are led by engaged community members determined to make change.

“The whole point of ALI is to get more people trained to do great organizing,” a much more relaxed Howell said recently over beers. The big shift in thinking here is that volunteers should get a core say in what is important and how to make the changes needed to get there. (more…)

tags: brock howell, cascade bicycle club

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Congressional Report: US street design sacrifices people biking and walking to move cars

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

December 28, 2015

Here’s a depressing fact: In 2013, 885 Americans drove away after killing a person who was walking. One in five “pedestrian fatalities” are hit and runs (for “cyclist fatalities,” it’s about one in six). This statistic speaks volumes about the state of personal responsibility and value of human life on our nation’s streets. But these roadway values are consistent from the pens of roadway engineers all the way to the steering wheels of a fleeing hit-and-run suspect.

These are among the many troubling — though perhaps not surprising — findings in a recent Government Accountability Office report (PDF) US Representatives Rick Larsen (WA-2), Peter DeFazio (OR-4) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC) ordered last year. Essentially, these Representatives saw that people walking and biking in the US are not seeing the same safety increases as people driving, and they wanted to know why. And they got their answers.

The GAO report finds several issues we already know about, such as the roles distracted driving and alcohol play in many collisions.

And though the walking and biking share of traffic deaths is rising, “limited data on walking and cycling trips also makes it challenging to develop a performance-based approach to addressing pedestrian and cyclist safety,” according to the report. Though we have decent primary commute trip mode data thanks to Census surveys, we have almost no data about non-commute trips, the report notes. Remember, fewer than 20 percent of all trips in the US are commute trips.

But the real guts of the report come from Federal Highway Association officials who acknowledge that roadway design in recent decades — including wider and straighter lanes and corners — have attempted to move more motor vehicles faster at the expense of walking and biking safety: (more…)

tags: eleanor holmes norton, FAST Act, government accountability office, peter defazio, rick larsen

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