Cascade Bicycle Club is hosting a regional bike advocacy summit dubbed the “Big Ideas Festival” 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at their Magnuson Park headquarters.
The event is free, but you should RSVP online so they can plan on you.
A connected network of quality bike lanes in downtown Seattle? A trail spanning and connecting major population and job centers on the Eastside? Following young people’s lead on bike advocacy and safe streets? These and more are on the schedule for Saturday.
Yours truly will be on a panel to talk about Seattle’s downtown bike network. Will I be for it or against it? There’s only one way to find out…
Hikers on the trail. Photo from the Tekoa Trail and Trestle Association
The John Wayne Trail appears safe from legislative giveaway, at least for now.
The Tekoa Trail and Trestle Association (“TTTA”) from the far east end of the statewide John Wayne Pioneer Trail (AKA the Iron Horse Trail) sent an email to supporters Tuesday announcing that Rep. Joe Schmick does not plan to reintroduce legislation that nearly gave away the state trail to adjacent landowners last year.
As we reported previously, that trail giveaway was attached to the Capital Budget and, therefore, did not go through the normal hearing and public process before getting passed. A typo in the law made it invalid, however, and delivered a wake-up call to people and communities who love it and dream of a more developed and usable trail someday. This includes Ted Blaszak, President of the TTTA and member of the Tekoa City Council. Blaszak has worked tirelessly on the issue in recent months, essentially organizing a campaign of urgent trail support from the ground up.
The series of public hearings on the trail in recent months, co-organized by the TTTA and Rep. Schmick’s Office, gathered feedback about the trail and got landowners and trail supporters in the same room. Some of the concerns about the trail have to do with inadequate weed control and illegal uses, including dumping.
Many of these issues could be helped if there were more users, but a lack of development of the trail, water access and a restrictive permitting process present significant impediments to use. (more…)
When the city finally upgraded the old skinny paint-only door zone bike lane on 2nd Ave in 2014, it was an incredible increase in biking comfort downtown. But almost immediately after opening one thing became clear: The array of signals hanging on just one street post was confusing people.
Most of downtown Seattle has traffic signals on the sides, not hanging over the center of the street. When the only information you need to convey is start or stop, this isn’t such a big deal. But when the new bike lane and left turn signals joined the walk and through-traffic signals, the post simply got overloaded with info. There could be a walk signal, a green bike, a red left arrow, a “No Turn on Red” sign and a green circle (later changed to an up arrow) all grouped next to each other.
The result was some people in cars turning left across the bike lane when bikes had the green and some people on bikes going through a red because they were looking at the green up arrow. Most people followed the signals correctly, but “most” just isn’t good enough when such serious safety issues are concerned.
So as part of the city’s regular signal maintenance program, SDOT has started replacing the old signals with a more modern style spanning 2nd Ave. This way each lane gets its own signal, making it abundantly clear who should go and who should wait.
“We are focusing on 2nd Avenue because it’s the one over time that’s been having problems,” said Seattle Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang. “We would like to do all of them all the way [from University] down to Cherry.” (more…)
See more about Patano Studio’s C.A.P.ITOL HILL PARK concept here.
In some places I-5 is a trench. Other places, it’s a wall. Every once in a while, a bridge spans the rushing flow of motor vehicles or a street travels under the immense elevated wonder. But more often than not, I-5 divides communities, destroys biking and walking connections, and covers nearby blocks with constant air and noise pollution.
Aside from the tax dollars we spend to keep I-5 functional, we also pay an immense cost to deal with its other negative impacts on our communities. The freeway also occupies acres of some of the most valuable land in the city.
I know that when a major piece of infrastructure has been such a core part of a city for 50 years it can be hard to imagine things being different. From Denny Way to Lakeview, there’s just no way to get from South Lake Union to Capitol Hill. That’s just how it is.
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
As Capitol Hill Seattle reported in November and the Stranger expanded on this week, there is renewed energy behind the idea that we can lid I-5 in the center city area, complete with an expanded Convention Center, new biking and walking connections, acres of new park and maybe even an arena and affordable housing. (more…)
If you bike across the Fremont Bridge regularly, then you know this terrible merge lane well. People biking are routed down a ramp into what becomes a shared bike and right turn lane. You have to be extremely on guard, but there’s also an element of simply hoping that anyone merging to go right sees you.
Well starting tomorrow (Friday), the city and Ride the Ducks have made plans (PDF) to route the notoriously-dangerous amphibious vehicles onto the Fremont Bridge, using this turn lane to access 34th Ave N en route to Lake Union. The route also has them turning right from 34th at Stone Way, turning across a bike lane and crossing a sometimes sketchy intersection with the Burke-Gilman Trail.
The vehicles have huge blind spot challenges in large part due to their very long front ends. This is perhaps highlighted best by a terrifying collision where the Duck driver didn’t see a man on a motorcycle downtown and ran over him at a traffic signal. The company says they have installed cameras to help drivers see.
But even with cameras, it feels very worrying to route these things into an already-dangerous bike merge lane. (more…)
Tunneling for the Northgate Link extension is on schedule for completion this year, meaning station construction work will begin shortly after. So now is the time to make sure bike parking and safe bike route connections are not only included in the final design work, but are high quality.
Sound Transit is hosting an open house for U District Station — formerly “Brooklyn Station” — today (Thursday) from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Neptune Theater. You will get a chance to see the 90 percent design, which will include more granular details than previously seen.
What types of bike parking will be included? How will people with bikes access the trains? How will the streets around the station (especially Brooklyn) connect to major bike routes?
Go to the open house and be sure to give feedback. Details from Sound Transit: (more…)
