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Bike Month’s crazy-packed calendar continues with fundraiser rides, free breakfast for bike commuters and even a baseball game.
Here’s just a taste. See more on our Events Calendar.
Want free breakfast and coffee Friday morning? As advertised on Seattle Bike Blog, all you gotta do is ride your bike to McGraw Square (5th and Stewart) between 7 and 9 a.m. Pretty cool, eh? (more…)
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Communities across Washington State have been expanding the bike education programs in their schools, thanks in large part to the work of Washington Bikes and the state’s Safe Routes to School program.
The education effort is one more way that Washington communities big and small, conservative and liberal, have embraced bicycling as a healthy and affordable way to get around. Bike education of youth is an often-overlooked but important part of creating a safe and booming bicycle culture.
Beyond that, bike education also helps create a safer driving culture. If all people behind the wheel know what it’s like to be on a bike, they will know better how to drive around them.
WA Bikes’ Seth Schromen-Wawrin describes how the education program has had an impact on just one of the many communities implementing it: La Center. (more…)
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Pretty well, it seems:
Today was National Bike-to-School Day. Kids all over Seattle biked to class this morning. That’s not all that unusual, but there were definitely more than most days.
And Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda joined one of two bike trains to Alki Elementary this morning. West Seattle Blog was there, of course: (more…)
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There are (at least) three important bikey meetings Wednesday evening (tonight!), all at the same time. If you have time, swing by one of them and give your input to make bicycling in Seattle better.
A workshop at Garfield Community Center at 23rd and Cherry will give residents the chance to weigh in at a fairly early stage in the development of the city’s transportation budget. The more people can be there to make sure safety safety safety is the city’s top priority, the better the final budget could turn out.
And as NE Seattle Greenways put it on Twitter during a neighborhood meeting last night, not only is an investment in safety the right thing to do, it also makes financial sense:
Meeting details: (more…)
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The Broadway Bikeway is finally ready to (mostly) open.
The two-way protected bike lane will stretch all the way from Yesler Way to Denny Way, connecting Yesler Terrce, First Hill and Capitol Hill. The city is scheduled to fully open the bikeway Wednesday, though no official celebration is currently planned.
While the opening is a huge step for biking in these key, dense, central neighborhoods, use of the lanes will still be limited due significant construction at the north end of of the bikeway near the future Capitol Hill Station. That construction detours people on bikes to other streets and will be in place in some form or another for the rest of 2014.
To recap, the Broadway Bikeway was created in large part as a way to avoid the bike safety problems created by the South Lake Union Streetcar on Westlake. That streetcar was built in the curb lanes of Westlake without providing a safe bike facility. Even before it opened, people started crashing when their wheels got caught in the tracks, leading to a lawsuit that was later thrown out.
But the bikeway goes well beyond just being mitigation for the streetcar tracks, it is also the first significant stretch of protected bike lanes in the city’s busy central neighborhoods and provides a much more comfortable space for people to bike on bustling Broadway than the previous street design, most of which had no bike lanes at all. (more…)
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Seattle will build a protected bike lane on 2nd Ave downtown before Pronto Cycle Share launches later this year, Mayor Ed Murray announced during the Cascade Bicycle Club Bike to Work Breakfast Tuesday.
The pilot bike lane project will be built in part with help from the Green Lane Project and will stretch from Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square, the mayor said.
The announcement puts the city on a much faster track to start building its downtown bike lane network than was previously discussed, and the news seemed to surprise even many bike advocacy insiders.
The mayor hinted at the news during a press event Monday announcing Alaska Airlines as the major sponsor for the newly-named Pronto Cycle Share system. When Seattle Times’ Mike Lindblom asked the mayor about whether he was concerned about launching bike share before there are protected bike lanes downtown, Murray said, “I may have something to say on that at the Cascade Bicycle Club breakfast.” (more…)
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