Seattle Bike Blog

After NE 75th St safety project: Speeding way down, safety way up, traffic delays … down?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 19, 2015

The NE 75th Street Road Safety Corridor project (PDF) has been a huge success by every possible measure. The street is safer for everyone, it’s more comfortable for everyone, and everyone is moving more efficiently.

When I say everyone, I mean everyone. According to a new city report, speeding is down 60 percent and high-end speeding (10 mph or more above the limit) has been nearly eliminated. Yet traffic is moving more smoothly at a consistent speed allowing the average person driving to move through the area in slightly less time than before the changes were implemented.

Making the street safer and adding bike lanes and a center turn lane made NE 75th Street more efficient. No longer does traffic get tied up behind someone trying to make a left turn, and the road screeches to a halt due to a traffic collision way less often than it used to.

And most importantly, fewer neighbors are getting seriously injured or killed. (more…)

tags: dan schulte, judy and dennis schulte, ne 75th st, road safety corridor

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SPD officer poses as bike buyer, busts downtown bike theft ring

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 19, 2015

UPDATE: SPD has now posted photos of the bikes.

Click to see all the photos

This is great. I sure hope you reported your stolen bike, because the police may have just recovered it.

More efforts like this could make stealing bikes to make quick cash via Craigslist a little less appealing. Kudos to whoever sent the tip to police, and big kudos to SPD for taking it seriously and following through.

Details from SPD:

A tip on Twitter led Seattle police to uncover a surreptitious showroom of stolen bicycles Tuesday evening in downtown Seattle.

Major Crimes Taskforce detectives began investigating a suspicious Craigslst seller earlier this week after receiving a lead through the department’s Twitter account, @SeattlePD, that a man was selling high-end bikes at deep discounts.

After detectives found the seller had at least 10 bikes posted online, an undercover detective, posing as an interested buyer, set up a meeting with the suspect.

The detective met the man around 6 PM Tuesday at 3^rdAvenue and Stewart St, where the suspect showed off one of his bikes. The detective told the man the bike wasn’t quite what he was looking for and asked if he had anything else. It just so happened the suspect had a partner-in-crime waiting right across the street with a second bike.

After showing off the second bicycle, the suspects brought the detective down to a nearby storage facility, where they were storing dozens of suspected stolen bikes. (more…)

tags: bike thefts, crime, spd

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Cascade Bicycle Club will not ditch political advocacy

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 18, 2015

The Cascade Bicycle Club Board voted Wednesday to maintain both its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations.

This means the club will not abandon its ability to endorse political candidates and help work with candidates’ campaigns for office.

We have reported several times on this debate within the club, which is not only the region’s largest bicycle advocacy organization, but one of the largest bike organizations in the country.

The club’s board had been considering an organizational change that would consolidate into one 501(c)(3) charity organization, which would be prohibited from direct political election advocacy. This could have made some organizational headaches go away.

But the change raised concerns that the club was moving away from advocacy and would reduce its power as an organization by removing the ability to elect bike-friendly leaders. With the coming district elections system for Seattle City Council and with the spreading interest in better bicycling and safer streets in smaller communities around the region, the ability to organize on the ground for elected officials will only get more powerful. (more…)

tags: 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), cascade bicycle club

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Move Seattle transportation levy could build half of city’s Bike Plan

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 18, 2015

Mayor Ed Murray announced a $900 million transportation levy today, two and a half times as big as the Bridging the Gap levy passed in 2006.

The mayor’s initial draft (PDF) of Move Seattle will now go through a public feedback phase through April. The mayor will then submit his final version to the City Council, who will have until August to submit their version to get it on the ballot for a November vote.

Affordability is one of the primary goals outlined in the draft proposal. How does a tax increase help affordability, you ask? Murray told the crowd and press gathered in front of the Bullitt Center that the plan would invest in “more affordable transportation options” like walking, biking and transit.

“We want to lower the out of pocket expenses for people,” said SDOT Director Scott Kubly, noting that on average 17 percent of people’s expenses go to transportation costs. Being able to get around more affordable is a huge piece to reducing the cost of living in the city. (more…)

tags: bicycle master plan, ed murray, move seattle, tom rasmussen

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Alert: Dexter will be closed near Mercer all day Saturday and weekday nights

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 18, 2015

If you plan on biking on Dexter Saturday, give yourself some extra time and be ready for a detour.

Workers will completely close Dexter between Aloha and Mercer starting 6 a.m. Saturday and lasting until 6 a.m. Sunday.

The street will also be closed nightly from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Monday through Thursday until mid-April.

There is no mention in outreach materials of any temporary bike lanes to help people biking on this major bike route get through the construction area. This seems like a great opportunity to build or test needed bike lanes on 9th Ave N between Aloha and Roy, which is a missing link between the Westlake parking lots and bike routes to downtown and South Lake Union.

Plans for the Westlake bikeway project include an improved connection to both 9th and Dexter, making the need for a complete and high quality bike connection on 9th even more needed: (more…)

tags: 9th ave n, construction, dexter, sdot, westlake cycle track

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Bellevue installs its first bike counters + First look at the data

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

March 17, 2015

I-90 Trail bike/walk counter near SE 34th St.

520 Trail bike/walk counter near NE 24th St.

The City of Bellevue and WSDOT have installed the city’s first ever electronic bike counters to track hour-by-hour usage of the I-90 and 520 Trails.

As we’ve seen with Seattle’s counters (the oldest being the Fremont Bridge counter), having daily and hourly data gives a much more clear insight into actual bike use. Previously, the only data came from hand counts conducted by volunteers for a couple hours on a couple days each year. Needless to say, the hand counts have a big margin of error.

Increased data is vital to making the case for more and better bike infrastructure and is a great way to track changes in the number of bike trips over time. In reality, the data starts to get really interesting the second year when there is already a baseline of data to compare.

I’m particularly excited to see what happens to the 520 Trail counts when the trail finally connects to Seattle and when needed bike lane connections in Kirkland and Bellevue are completed. (more…)

tags: 520 trail, bellevue, bike counter, I-90 trail, kevin mcdonald, wsdot

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