Rainier Valley’s Shirley Savel was recognized for her work demonstrating a Rainier Ave protected bike lane
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways hosted their annual volunteer appreciation party late last week. And aside from booze and snacks, the night also included a list of people and campaigns that have helped further the cause of safe streets in our city.
People were invited to vote for their top choices, but all the nominees are impressive and deserve recognition. You can read more about each nominee in the SNG facebook album. So without further ado, here are the safe streets champions for 2015: (more…)
Map of 2010-2014 collisions from the project’s draft existing conditions report (PDF)
Eastlake Ave is a white knuckle bike ride. Even though it’s also the only reasonably flat street that directly connects the city center to the University Bridge, there are no bike lanes. Instead, people have to try to navigate the busy street in a wide shared lane, often squeezed between car traffic and parked cars.
Dozens of collisions between people biking and driving happen every year all along the street. Far more collisions occur between people driving or between people driving and people walking.
In total, there were 229 collisions on Eastlake between 2010 and 2014, according to the project’s draft existing conditions report (PDF). 97 people were injured.
And these dangers on Eastlake Ave are huge impediments to people who want to bike, but are not willing to mix with cars on busy streets. The dangerous and stressful conditions also hurt Eastlake businesses because the road is so clearly focused on moving people through, not to, the commercial areas.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The city is moving forward with plans for a Roosevelt to downtown high capacity transit project mostly along the Roosevelt Way and Eastlake Ave corridors, so this is the time to make sure biking, walking and efficient transit are the top priorities. Funded in part by the Move Seattle levy, this project is an example of the kind of change people want to see in our city. Passing the levy with such a strong margin was a mandate to be bold and finally connect these major missing links in our bike and transit networks, improving walking safety as we go.
But even with such a strong voter mandate, bold changes won’t happen without clear direction from the public. You have two chances this week to get involved and help make sure bike lanes on Eastlake not only happen but are high-quality and safe:
It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Lots of good stuff floating around the web these days, so let’s get started.
First up, this 1995 video by the Seattle Department of Engineering (now the Department of Transportation) is a pretty fascinating glimpse into safe streets efforts in Seattle 20 years ago. It even includes actual tree hugging. If you don’t have 15 minutes, fast forward to the 12:30 mark for the bike stuff and a cameo by Bill Nye.
Streetcars and bikes have gotten off to a rough start in Seattle. Planning that neglected bike safety has led to many injuries, especially on Westlake Ave and Jackson Street. We have written about the need for protected bike lanes when streetcar tracks go in, and we will continue pushing for them.
But in this post, we’re going to look at what it will be like to take your bike onto the First Hill Streetcar when it begins service (there’s still no official start date for the delayed line). And so long as the streetcar’s not at crush-capacity, it might actually be pretty easy.
Unlike the South Lake Union Streetcar, which has no designated bike space, the new streetcar trains have two bike hanging spots. And the space across from the bike hanging area is an open accessibility priority space, so a hanging bike probably won’t get in everyone’s way like on Link light rail (especially if you’re a taller person).
And because all the streetcar stops load at street level, there are no stairs or elevators to navigate to roll on. So it’s easier to get on than Link and no need to do battle with a sticky bus bike rack arm. This could prove to be the easiest bike-on-transit option in Seattle. (more…)
Bikes vs Cars is a new documentary that attempts to lay out the global and local problems caused by car culture and car infrastructure in our cities and how people in cities across the world are pushing back, often while pedaling around their cities on two wheels.
The film is screening at the Grand Illusion in the U District December 4 – 10, and the 7 p.m. Saturday show will include an after-film chat with yours truly and some other bike advocates, including Kelli from Cascade.
The name of the film is a pretty big turnoff, for sure. It’s a faulty framing for having a complete and productive transportation conversation. What about walking? Transit? And I suspect that will be at least part of what we talk about Saturday. I was able to see an advance screening, but I won’t give away too many of my thoughts ahead of Saturday’s chat. You just have to join.
If you really want to read a review, Seattle’s own Josh Cohen wrote a review recently for Next City.
This is part two of a series looking at the first year of usage data from Pronto Cycle Share. Pronto organized a “data challenge,” and the submissions they received go deeper than you might expect.
The Pronto Data Challenge received a whole lot of heavy statistics and graphs from insightful people trying to figure out what Seattle bike share users can teach us about cycling in the city, and more. We touched on this a bit in Part One, and we will dive deeper later in this series.
But today, we’re going to take a step back with Daniel Muldrew, who decided to take bike share station data and turn it into music. Before we explain how it works, let’s listen to Independence Day, 2015:
