Seattle Bike Blog

Mother killed on 2nd Ave was attorney who helped bring down Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 30, 2014

Photo by Lars Halstrom

Just one wrong turn — one missed glance into bike lane on 2nd Ave — and a man driving a box truck struck and killed Sher Kung Friday. By witness accounts, the man driving the truck jumped into action and tried to help her, but became distraught when he realized it was too late. He made a left turn right in front of her while she biked in the skinny painted bike lane, and it killed the young mother.

The outpouring of grief has been remarkable. It comes from those who watched it happen, those who knew her and those who bike downtown every day and know that it could have easily been them instead of Kung. A flower memorial sprung up within hours of the deadly collision, and a couple ghost bikes followed shortly.

The corner where she died is also the site of the Garden of Remembrance, a memorial to Washington residents who have given their lives in military service. And though Sher Kung did not die on a battlefield, her young legacy will live on through the lives of American service members who can now be true to themselves while wearing their uniforms.

Kung worked as a legal fellow for the ACLU and helped win a case that was instrumental in the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. An AP photographer took this shot of Kung standing next to Margaret Witt after a federal judge ruled that Witt must be reinstated to the rank she had earned before she was discharged for being gay. (more…)

tags: 2nd ave, deaths, sher kung

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Truck strikes and kills woman biking on 2nd Ave

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 29, 2014

A woman biking died today after colliding with a large box truck at 2nd Ave and University Street in downtown Seattle.

Exact details of how the collision happened are not yet clear, though police say the driver of the truck was making a left turn when the collision happened. The bike lane is on the lefthand side of the street on 2nd, which is a one-way street southbound.

We send our deepest condolences to her friends and family.

The tragedy comes barely more than a week before completion of a road safety project on 2nd Ave designed to solve the well-known problems with the skinny, paint-only bike lane. One of the biggest problems with the current design is the tendency for left-turning motor vehicles not to yield to people biking in the lane next to them.

The city has been prepping the street to open new protected bike lanes on 2nd Ave as soon as September 8. The new bike lanes will put either a row of plastic reflective posts or a row of parked cars between moving car traffic and people biking.

The lanes will also come with new traffic signals that give left-turning cars and people biking different signal cycles to prevent conflicts like the one that happened this morning. When bikes have a green, turning cars would have a red arrow and vice versa.

We will have more updates on this tragedy soon. Below are details from SPD: (more…)

tags: 2nd ave, deaths, downtown

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Where should Seattle create a pedestrian plaza next?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 28, 2014

Screenshot from StreetFilms (watch below)

Mayor Ed Murray and new SDOT Director Scott Kubly have their eyes out for bold pedestrian plaza opportunities in the city’s right-of-way, Publicola reports. With New York’s extremely successful Times Square plaza project as their inspiration, Murray and Kubly would love to create a powerful Seattle public space:

We definitely LIKE the story we heard from a city hall insider that Mayor Ed Murray, evidently set on being Seattle’s version of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reportedly tasked his new SDOT director Scott Kubly with copying New York City’s pedestrian innovation in Times Square.

What did New York do in Times Square? Essentially, they had an area where so many people want to walk and hang out that they actually could not all fit on the sidewalks. Children were a rare sight, and people in wheelchairs and walkers had a particularly awful time trying to get around. Yet there was a ton of space reserved for cars, which spent most their time barely moving in the city’s iconic gridlock. So half a decade ago, the city did something unimaginable: They closed a part of Broadway to cars and reimagined it as an expanded public space. The result has been a success by essentially every measure, including traffic flow.

Here’s a great StreetFilms video about it: (more…)

tags: ed murray, pedestrian plazas, public plazas, scott kubly, streetfilms

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Poll: Nearly every resident wants safe routes to Washington schools

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 28, 2014

From the Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition

If you think it’s a bad idea to make walking and biking routes around schools in Washington State safer, congratulations! You are a rare find.

A statewide phone poll commissioned by the Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition found that a nearly unanimous 88 percent of state residents believes we should be planning our communities so that kids can safely walk or bike to school and stay safe from traffic.

And perhaps more importantly, state residents are willing to put their money behind their hopes for safer streets: 76 percent agree that “investing in safety of our transportation network, including sidewalks,bike lanes, to prevent collisions & injuries is a smart use of public transportation funds.” And when asked about whether Safe Routes to School funding is an important part of state transportation funding, 84 percent of residents said yes. When pollsters stressed that the state’s budget is limited, and some priorities need to be cut, 79 percent still said Safe Routes to School is important.

Washington Bikes sees the poll as a clear sign that residents want their lawmakers to include significant funding for the state’s very successful Safe Routes to School program in the next legislative session: (more…)

tags: barb chamberlain, blake trask, cascade bicycle club, childhood obesity prevention coalition, elizabeth kiker, safe routes to school, washington bikes

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More details on upcoming Fremont Bridge work, sidewalk closures begin Sept 2

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 27, 2014

The Fremont Bridge is one of the busiest bike routes in the city with about 5,000 bike trips recorded on summer weekdays. But using the bridge can be uncomfortable for people walking and biking because the bridge’s sidewalks are too narrow to handle the volume of people trying to get across.

And starting September 2, the problem is going to get so much worse.

We reported weeks ago that the city is repainting the historic draw bridge, a complicated process needed to prevent corrosion and keep it in good working order for a long time to come. In order to do the work, a traffic lane and sidewalk will need to be closed weekdays from 7 a.m to 3 p.m.

One sidewalk will remain open at all times, but be ready to be patient and go slowly because it’s gonna be packed well beyond capacity, especially if they close it promptly at 7. Even pushing it back to 8:30 or 9 would help avoid the morning rush. Bike counter data shows that the 8 o’clock hour is the busiest weekday hour.

The city also says there will be full overnight (midnight – 7 a.m.) closures September 6, 7, 13 and 14. Workers will offer two five-minute openings just for people walking and biking (at 1:20 a.m. and 2:20 a.m.), but this could create some serious problems for people who don’t know of another way to bike across the ship canal. (more…)

tags: construction, fremont, fremont bridge, sdot

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SDOT Director calls BS on the “war on cars,” has ideas for more resilient transportation system

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 26, 2014

Kubly introduces himself, from Seattle Channel

Incoming SDOT Director Scott Kubly continues to make a strong introduction to Seattle, and he recently dove deeper into his views on Seattle’s transportation challenges with Ansel Herz at the Stranger. Kubly explains why a growing city needs more transportation choices and pretty much puts to shame the entire idea that making streets work better for transit, walking and biking is somehow a “war on cars.”

Below is my favorite bit of should-have-been-obvious perspective Kubly brings to the Seattle transportation conversation. This is the framing we should use to make all our regional and city-wide transportation decisions, but it is far too rarely used. Kubly via Slog:

You’ve got a city that’s growing tremendously fast. You see it in all parts of the city. That’s a really good thing, but what it does is it puts stress on the transportation system. And this transportation system is pretty fragile. You can have one incident that sends the entire system into gridlock if it’s in the wrong place in the network.

This is exactly why investing in better transportation choices is so important. If someone crashes on I-5 or 99 anywhere within a handful of miles or so of the city center, our regional and cross-city transportation network collapses. And, of course, the mangled body of somebody’s husband, daughter, or grandmother is often the cause of the city-stopping delays. We pay a huge social, emotional and financial cost to keep this fragile car-dependent system moving. (more…)

tags: ansel herz, scott kubly, sdot, the stranger

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