We compiled this map based on the press release. Red is the trail closure area. The blue and orange lines are the two detour routes. Click here to view on Google Maps
King County Parks will remove 40 poplar trees along the Burke-Gilman Trail in Lake Forest Park starting next week.
This work will require trail detours for two weeks, so be prepared. Luckily, the detours don’t look bad, using nearby low-traffic streets.
A portion of one of the trees fell onto the highway in an August windstorm, King County Parks says. When they looked into the problem, they determined the trees were dying and posing a hazard. They will be replaced with 40 trees of species that are “more suitable to the locations.”
Details from King County:
Beginning Oct. 26, King County Parks will set up temporary detours around segments of the Burke-Gilman Trail in Lake Forest Park while crews begin removing 40 hazardous Lombardy Poplar trees. (more…)
For nearly ten years, the Bikery has gathered bike-fixing tools and community knowledge in Central Seattle, serving as a safe space where anyone can fix their rides.
Now located in the ArtSpace Hiawatha building where the Central District, the International District and north Rainier Ave come together, there’s a renewed push to invest in the non-profit (read more about them in this great Grist story).
You can support the Bikery by contributing online to their crowdfunding campaign (there are some pretty sweet rewards), or you can go party with them 7 – 10 p.m. Saturday at the Bikery Bash.
If they meet their campaign goals, the Bikery hopes to make these improvements: (more…)
Pronto is just one year old, and already people have pedaled the equivalent distance from the earth to the moon and halfway back. That’s not too shabby considering the average trip on Pronto is less than 20 minutes and only 14 percent of Seattle residents live within an easy walk of a station.
Well, that could all change, but it’s going to need your support. We’ve already outlined the city’s plan for a “massive” expansion of the bike share system. If funded fully, the system could be within an easy walk of 62 percent of Seattle residents. The expansion is especially focused on access to transit and reaching more low-income residents.
Mayor Ed Murray proposed funding for the expansion with a $5 million one-time budget expenditure in 2016, hopefully bolstered by more funding from a Federal grant request.
You can support the mayor’s budget funding today at a public hearing on the 2016 budget. 5:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers in City Hall.
The Seattle Times Editorial Board has come out against the Pronto proposal arguing in part that we should build out the Bicycle Master Plan first. That’s rich coming from a Board that also doesn’t want to pass Move Seattle, our city’s current effort to fund all kinds of transportation improvements including the Bicycle Master Plan.
Pronto is urging members to support the budget at the hearing and by emailing City Council. Here’s the email they sent: (more…)
The Seattle Times Editorial Board put all their backing behind Bertha and the SR 99 deep bore tunnel highway, a multibillion-dollar, cars-only underground toll road that bypasses downtown Seattle — our state’s biggest employment center. They are not worthy of your trust when it comes to transportation projects.
So when the Times says to vote against Prop 1 (“Move Seattle”) because it isn’t “chock full of big fixes, specific big projects,” you should respond, “Yes, and that’s exactly why this plan is so smart.”
The real solution to Seattle’s transportation crunch is a lot more walking and biking, and much more efficient transit. There is no debate about it. We can’t keep squeezing more cars into our city, and burying them won’t solve the problem. Our city cannot handle the cars it has, and it cannot grow if our new residents have to bring cars, too. It’s that simple.
Even if Bertha had worked perfectly rather than turning into a disaster, it would still be a huge waste of money, proposed and promoted by people willing to ignore common sense and real life experiences in truly multimodal cites because they were blinded by a hopeless belief that one big silver bullet could fix Seattle’s chronic transportation problems.
Protect your neighbors
The good news is that it does not take a megaproject to make walking and biking safer and more inviting to more people for more of their trips. What we need are thousands of relatively small improvements in every neighborhood in our city: (more…)
A flyer for the upcoming open housesPhoto of the trail conditions monitoring bike, from SDOT
In recent weeks, workers have been biking a crazy bike outfitted with instruments to measure trail conditions all over the city.
The results are just one tool the city will use to craft its Trails Upgrade Plan, which will guide investments in repaving and redesigning Seattle’s great, though sometimes incomplete or deteriorating trail system. For more on that plan, see our previous story.
The plan also depends on people like you giving input on the most needed work, and you have two chances next week to tell staff in person:
Seattle quietly opened 1.5 miles of new or upgraded protected bike lanes in Ravenna and the U District recently. The low-budget projects cut a couple corners, but still add huge value to bike safety and mobility in some of the city’s bikiest neighborhoods.
Let’s start with Ravenna (post about Campus Parkway bike lanes coming soon, stay tuned). I swear I did not stage the super happy photo above. What you can’t see is the middle school kid biking home solo in the protected bike lane on the other side of the Ravenna Boulevard median. This stuff really does work. Create a long, connected and truly safe bike route, and the city opens up to our youth and everyone else who doesn’t feel comfortable mixing with traffic.
The physical changes to Ravenna Boulevard itself aren’t all that significant. The bike lanes were already wide with quality painted buffer space. But just adding some plastic posts every few feet does a lot. They are not as good as a curb or planter boxes, but the posts are effective at keeping people driving from using the bike lane as a passing lane. And they cost way less to install, which is how all this work was done on a $200,000 budget (that might sound like a lot, but it’s very cheap in terms of transportation infrastructure).
Perhaps the single biggest improvement to Ravenna Boulevard itself is this new stop sign at the I-5 ramp: (more…)
