Newly-announced Federal RAISE (“Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity”) grants will help fund several interesting walking and biking projects around the region, including planning work for an ambitious trail from the Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal to La Push on the Pacific Coast.
The City of Port Angeles led a successful grant application for the full trail planning project, receiving their full $16,130,000 request. This means they should have the resources now to bring the entire 200-mile trail project to 100% design, making it ready for construction. The trail will span many different municipalities, tribal lands and counties in addition to Olympic National Park, but it already has major head starts working in its favor. It combines the Olympic Discovery Trail, an iconic but unfinished rails-to-trails project, with the relatively nascent Sound to Olympics Trail while also adding spurs and a loop to reach Poulsbo, Kingston and Port Townsend.
But beyond the local benefits of this trail, it will also serve as the Pacific Ocean terminus for the transcontinental Great American Rail-Trail.
The good news is that the horrific increase in pedestrian deaths Washington State saw in 2021 did not continue to increase in 2022. But that’s the end of the good news in this story. Preliminary counts in a recent report from the Governors Highway Safety Association show that an estimated 130 pedestrians were killed in Washington State in 2022, a decrease compared to the state’s shocking total of 144 deaths in 2021. However, the 2022 count is still far above the 101 deaths in 2019, and the national trend showed the count continuing in climb in 2022 over 2021.
UPDATE 6/27: In response to a reader’s question, I have updated the chart above with additional data from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, which also has more updated counts compared to the GHSA report. Unfortunately, the WTSC has counted 136 pedestrian deaths in 2022, down from 146 in 2021 but still horrifically far above the 50 deaths in 2013.
Nationally, pedestrian deaths rose 77% between 2010 and 2021 while all other traffic deaths rose 25%, and the U.S. likely crossed a grim total not seen since 1980: More than 8,000 pedestrians killed in a single year.
The chart should be setting off top level emergency alarms in every transportation department and regulatory office in our nation. Something has changed dramatically since 2010, and no it isn’t iPhones. Most of the world is seeing fewer traffic deaths, and they bought iPhones, too. Dangerous vehicle designs, especially among popular SUVs and pickups, are likely among the biggest factors behind this increase. Vehicle size and weight has increased dramatically, and those increases have come at the expense of people outside of them. “Light trucks,” an official vehicle category that includes everything form minivans to pickups to SUVs including so-called “crossover” SUVs, now make up more than 75% of all cars sold in the U.S. according to Transportation Alternatives in New York City. The average weight of a passenger vehicle has increased from 3,200 pounds in 1980 to 4,200 pounds today. “Supersized vehicles,” as Transportation Alternatives calls them, are 41% more likely to kill a pedestrian that they strike compared to a sedan traveling at the same speed. But this effect is multiplied by the fact that supersized vehicles are less maneuverable and have worse driver visibility than most sedans, making their drivers 3–4 times more likely to hit a pedestrian while turning compared to sedan drivers.
“Between 2014 and 2019, 43% of children killed on New York City streets were struck by SUVs or larger vehicles,” Transportation Alternatives wrote. “Between 2019 and today, that number rose to 77% of children killed. In 2022, a record number of children were killed by traffic violence in New York City, and more than 80% were struck by SUVs or larger vehicles.”
This photo from 3:13 a.m. during the 2012 Nine to Five is a good representation of my mindset around that time. I’m assuming we needed a photo in a shopping cart for the challenge, though I can’t honestly be sure. It was a weird night.
The Nine to Five is a classic, legendary Seattle event that has been making its return in recent years. It is a wonderful counterpoint to the Fremont Solstice Parade bike ride. Rather than celebrate the long day of sun, the Nine to Five celebrates the short night.
Riders will hit the streets from sunset to sunrise, scouring the city to collect an eclectic and unpredictable list of items and to complete random challenges. Just keeping your mind functional while trying to, say, find a tutu somewhere in Seattle at 3 a.m. is probably the hardest part. But it was so fun. I’ve never been so happy to see the sun rise.
You can register online for $25 per person. Up to five people per team. It starts at Gas Works Park, and there are meetups throughout the night to get additional checklists. Check out the website for more details on what to bring.
The Nine to Five ran for years as an event by Go Means Go, which disbanded in 2014. The new Nine to Five is organized by a couple fans of the ride who decided to restart it in 2019 only to have the pandemic squash the momentum. But they say they had a decent turnout last year and are hoping to keep it going. I wish everyone involved the best of luck. Here are some words of advice from the 2012 winners: “we’re old & have basements, married hoarders (ahem, collectors), ride cargo bikes. Oh, and sobriety. If only that night.”
We are currently in the midst of the biggest social media shakeup in more than a decade, which got me wondering where exactly my readers were spending their scrolling time these days. I also realized that as Twitter interactivity rates declined and I grew increasingly concerned about that platform’s overall direction, I needed to diversify and redefine Seattle Bike Blog’s social media presence. So for the past month, I have posted about nearly every Seattle Bike Blog story to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Reels, Mastodon, Post News, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube Shorts. Note that I started all of this before the recent meltdown at Reddit, but I was not a regular Reddit poster before and I didn’t start posting there as part of this experiment.
In order to accomplish all these postings, I made some rules for myself:
I must spend some time on each platform attempting to find users who might be interested in Seattle Bike Blog and make an effort to use the appropriate tags.
Because making a quality post for each platform takes a lot of work, I was allowed to do a crappy job so long as something got posted.
I had to reply to comments (when needed) in as timely a manor as possible.
No paying for exposure.
I want to be clear that this story is about using social media as a journalist who runs an independent news site. My goals are to engage with Seattle bike folks, find interesting local bike happenings and news, increase general awareness of our work and increase traffic to SeattleBikeBlog.com. So perhaps others would have a different experience on these platforms if they had different goals.
People in Seattle took 3.7 million trips on shared bikes and scooters in the past year, a massive rebound from the 1.4 million trips per year when pandemic restrictions and many business closures were in place. During the busiest summer months, the daily rides averaged over 15,000 trips per day.
Six years into the city’s sometimes turbulent experiment with free-floating shared bikes (and eventually scooters), the devices continue to move a remarkable number of people despite significant price increases. And while scooter trips still outpace bike trips, the rides per device are now similar, according to SDOT data.
Most trips are destined for downtown and in nearby neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, First Hill, South Lake Union, Uptown/Lower Queen Anne and the International District. There are also significant hot spots in the U District, Ballard and Fremont—neighborhoods connected by the Burke-Gilman Trail—as well as popular spots along the Alki Trail.
The Fremont Solstice Parade is perhaps Seattle’s happiest day of the year, and that’s in no small part thanks to the explosion of brave creativity that is the pre-parade bike ride featuring hundreds of people using their bodies as art canvases.
The solstice bike ride is still an unofficial part of the Solstice Parade, but it’s an annual tradition that goes back 30 years to when the first two naked bike riders crashed the 1993 Fremont Solstice Parade. It’s a momentary almost magical space when social norms and people’s personal limits are suspended. People’s feelings of vulnerability transform into self-expression, and they form an art space unlike any other in the city when they group up and ride together.
There is no official painting party location, a tradition that ran for years up until the pandemic. Instead, people will be getting painted at various private parties around the area, will paint at home before riding to the start or may just paint up at Gas Works Park, where the riders are gathering. Here’s the tentative schedule of events from the Solstice Cyclists website:
Morning: Paint up, then ride to Gas Works Park.
1:00 -1:25 Form up at Gas Works
1:25-1:45 Ride from Gas Works Park to parade route
1:45-2:30? Loop on parade route as desired, then exit to Gas Works or beyond.
The official Fremont Solstice Parade starts at 2, and it is also a wonderful display of creativity. No motors or visible sponsorships are allowed. You get things like dance troupes, music acts, big hand-powered floats and large puppets. Below is a map of the parade route from the Fremont Arts Council. Note that the route does not make it to Stone Way N this year, likely due to the major construction project there.
Meet up in the center of the park at 7ish. Leave at 730. Every Thursday from now until forever rain or shine. Bikes, beers, illegal firepits, nachos, bottlerockets, timetraveling, lollygagging, mechanicals, good times.ShareMastodonTwitterFacebookRedditEmail
Celebrate the Buck Moon by adorning your bicycle with blinky & twinkly lights. It’s the height of summer – warm nights and easy riding with friends. Saturday July 20 Parking Lot at Mercer St &[…]
Meet up in the center of the park at 7ish. Leave at 730. Every Thursday from now until forever rain or shine. Bikes, beers, illegal firepits, nachos, bottlerockets, timetraveling, lollygagging, mechanicals, good times.ShareMastodonTwitterFacebookRedditEmail
Details from Seattle Parks: On scheduled weekends from May to September, a portion of Lake Washington Boulevard will be closed to motorized vehicles from 10 a.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday. “Seattle Parks and Recreation[…]
Details from Seattle Parks: On scheduled weekends from May to September, a portion of Lake Washington Boulevard will be closed to motorized vehicles from 10 a.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday. “Seattle Parks and Recreation[…]
