It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Set your browser to time theft mode.
First up, I did not include this video in the last Bike News Roundup, and there was almost a popular uprising against me. So here it is. Please end the sit-in at my house.
Bike News Roundup: How to build a bike lane on a bridge
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Pronto Cycle Share launches: What you need to know + Updates
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Image from Pronto Today is the big day. Pronto Cycle Share is scheduled to unlock its docks at 1 p.m., thus introducing an entirely new public transportation system to the streets of Seattle.
Seattle will be the first major Pacific Northwest city to launch a modern public bike share system, which allows people 16 and up to check out a bike for short, one-way bike trips around the city center and the University District.
While Portland and Vancouver, B.C., balked at launching their systems, Mayor Ed Murray put his full support behind the system to get it launched in 2014. It was an ambitious goal that required pulling together a whole lot of pieces, including bringing on Alaska Airlines as the major system sponsor and forging a new supply chain for the bikes and kiosks themselves after Alta Bicycle Share’s old supplier Bixi went bankrupt.
Crews have been working hard in recent weeks to install the 50 stations and build up the 500 hill-climbing and rain-ready bikes that make up the system. Meanwhile, annual membership numbers have continued to grow, and Pronto expects about 1,000 members by launch time.
The system will kick off with a media event in Occidental Park at 11 a.m. Then members who signed up will get the chance to be the first to ride the bikes, moving them from distribution sites to docks around the city at noon.
Many bikes have already been distributed to station docks around town, but the stations will remain locked until 1 p.m. Annual members receive key fobs in the mail that they use to check out a bike, giving them unlimited 30-minute rides. After 30 minutes, you’ll be charged $2. After an hour, you’ll be charged $7. You can always dock, then wait three minutes and undock the bike to get another free 30-minutes if you need more time.
You do not need to be a member to use the system. Anyone with a credit card can also simply swipe their card at any station to buy an $8 day pass or $16 3-day pass. At least for the first couple months, clean helmets will be available at each station to check out for free.
Early registers need to accept new terms
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Bike News Notes: Fund set up for kid hit on MLK + Seattle hiring Active Transportation Manager + Bike Expo is dead
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A crowd-funding campaign has been set up for the child struck while crossing MLK near Genesee in late September. By the time of this posting, just under $22,000 had been raised.You can contribute to the fund here.
SDOT searching for an Active Transportation Program Manager
Here’s a pretty awesome job listing from the City of Seattle. They’re looking for someone to help increase the number of people biking, walking and taking transit. Sounds like a good goal to me. Details: (more…)
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After 2 collisions at same 2nd Ave parking garage, city makes changes
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After the second person in just one week was injured by a person turning across the 2nd Ave protected bike lane into a parking garage between Pike and Union, the city has made changes to improve visibility.Most early efforts to improve the bike lane focused on the signalized intersections, which makes sense because that is how Sher Kung died just days before the new bike lane was installed.
But the garage entrances have been a different issue because they are mid-block and there are no signals. Instead, the city has used green paint and symbols of people biking to tell people they should look for people on bikes before driving across the bike lanes. But not everyone follows those rules, and obscured visibility does not make it easier.
That could have been the issue Wednesday morning, when someone driving turned into the path of a woman headed south in the bike lane. She collided with the car and had to be hauled away in an ambulance. The Seattle Times reports that she “suffered hip pain but not serious injuries.” But it could have been a lot worse.
The city responded before the end of the day by pushing parking further back from the garage entrance to give people turning a better chance to see someone headed down the bike lane. They will also be adding signage to make it more clear to people turning into the garage that they need to look for and yield to people in the bike lane. (more…)
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Pronto members will give bikes inaugural ride Monday + Cascade offers beginners class for Pronto users
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Bike share really is coming to Seattle, and it’s happening in less than a week. The Pronto bikes are gonna be introduced in style Monday, with members biking them out to docks around the city.The launch will kick-off with an event in Occidental Park at 11 a.m., then members who signed up for a chance to give bikes their first rides will hop on a Pronto bike and take it to a dock. So I don’t know what you’re planning to do to celebrate Seattle’s first official Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but biking around Prontos sounds like a lot of fun (I’m in St. Louis, so I’ll miss it, sadly).
In other Pronto news, the organization announced via Twitter that crews have installed all 50 stations already, and they are working to get the bikes ready to roll out. This is really happening, Seattle is only five days away from being the first big Pacific Northwest city to have a public bikes system.
Free Pronto Street Skills class
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One of too many
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This story is a bit longer than a typical post on this site. Brandon reached out to me after Sher Kung died and said he wanted people to know what life is like for all those people who are critically injured but not killed in traffic collisions. You might see their counts tallied in a news story or a city report, but what is it like through their eyes? How have their lives changed? Brandon’s story is just one of hundreds that happen every year in Seattle.
Brandon Blake holds the ketubah he crafted joining him with his wife Sabrina. Brandon’s brain injury has not stopped him from continuing his art. Brandon Blake bent down on one knee and reached his careful hands to the floor, his fingers curled under the the injured body of a small bird his cat Lois carried in through the kitchen window then plopped in her food bowl. His eyes softened and he shushed comforting words into his palms as he rose to his feet and carried the bird out to the second-floor back porch of his apartment, where he said some parting words and lightly let it go.
“There you go!” The bird flapped its wings and took flight without hitting the ground. He turned back towards me sitting inside, but his beaming face shifted as concern took over. “He probably won’t last too long out there.” Indeed the little bird seemed destined to join the hundreds of millions of birds killed by cats every year.
He sat back down on the bright orange sofa facing me and let out a shrug. “That’s life with indoor-outdoor cats.” But that shrug wasn’t as easy for Brandon as it might be for others, and just a few months ago he might have broken down into tears.
“I get so emotional about these little birds, these little consciousnesses,” he said gazing at his now-empty palms. But since “carmageddon” on Dexter Ave July 25, 2013, Brandon has been slowly discovering a renewed, yet somewhat different, consciousness inside himself. (more…)
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