Seattle Bike Blog

Pedaling Relief Project nears milestone: Hauling 1 million pounds of local food bank donations by bike

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 6, 2023

A Pedaling Relief Project crew riding for Byrd Barr Place in June 2021.
Seattle Bike Blog has been cheering on the Pedaling Relief Project since it first started as a “disaster relief” effort to help food banks handle the tumultuous period when the COVID-19 pandemic began. With many people suddenly out of a job and social distancing requirements complicating the usual methods for distribution, food banks had to scramble to not only meet demand but also invent new ways of getting food to the community.
Since then, PRP has grown substantially and is now a year-round fixture at many food banks around the area. And as Cascade Bicycle Club noted in a recent blog post, the project is nearing an incredible milestone: 1 million pounds of donations all hauled by bike. A million pounds! That sounds like a number you would make up if you were exaggerating. It’s equal to about 100 elephants or 5 fully-loaded 737 Max airliners or 10 average American houses or 1 cumulus cloud.
It gets truly humbling when you take a step back, though. In a time when our society’s most selfish assholes and grifters are given the disproportionate share of public attention they crave, food bank operators and volunteers (whether working inside or on their bikes) have been innovating on the fly to actually help people and make their communities stronger and healthier. They have developed a reliable, efficient, expandable and emission-free logistics system capable of moving a million pounds of necessary goods. And they didn’t require any new tech. Bicycles, simple trailers and teamwork is all it took. Well, and a lot of organizing by Maxwell Burton.
Each location’s PRP group is always welcoming of new riders, making it a great way for people to get involved in their community and meet some other wonderful volunteers. It’s also really fun. You don’t need a trailer or cargo bike to participate. Learn more and sign up on the PRP weekly volunteer page. Here’s a video from a recent Food Not Bombs food rescue ride:
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tags: cascade bicycle club, maxwell burton, seattle pedaling relief project

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Oregon considers bill to make it easier to fund school bike buses

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 5, 2023

Transportation is a major challenge for school districts across the country, and Seattle is no exception. Bus driver availability and funding is a major deciding factor setting school walk zones and start times. Organizing student transportation is a huge undertaking, and lacking transportation can be a barrier for school access to some families.
A small part of a giant bike train to Seattle’s Bryant Elementary on Bike-to-School Day 2013.
House Bill 3014 in Oregon State offers an interesting idea for at least easing some of the challenge by building on one the city’s most positive success stories in recent years: Bike buses. The city has a long history with bike buses, but P.E. Teacher Sam Balto (AKA Coach Balto) has elevated the effort by leading weekly bike buses and documenting them in fun and inspirational TikTok videos. In short, a bike bus is just a group bike ride to school that travels a set route at a set time so kids can bike with the added safety and fun that comes with riding together. Parents and organizers handle intersection safety, corking to allow the group to pass through together. It’s wonderful.
Oregon’s HB 3014 would allow schools to fund alternative school transportation efforts like bike buses and receive reimbursement from the state’s school transportation program. I am not familiar enough with Oregon State law or the state of its larger school transportation system to comment on that bill’s text specifically, but the underlying idea is very interesting. Read Bike Portland’s story for more details on the politics behind the bill.
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tags: bike bus, bike portland, bike to school, oregon, sam balto, seattle public schools

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Alert 6/5-9: Port is repairing Interbay Trail bumps + Planned detour has very tight squeezes – UPDATED

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 1, 2023

One of Seattle’s most unique bike routes threads a path through the middle of the Interbay rail yard, at times squeezed just a few feet and a chain link fence away from rail lines. In terms of width, condition and amenities, this section of the Elliott Bay Trail is far from Seattle’s best bike route. But the fact that it exists at all is somewhat amazing.
The Port of Seattle, which operates the trail, is making some much-needed repairs to the bumpy trail surface June 5–9, and there is no room in this constrained trail corridor for users to squeeze by the work zone.
UPDATE: The Port wrote in an email to Seattle Bike Blog that a favorable weather forecast means they hope to limit the closure to 20 hours starting early June 7.
That means trail users will need to detour from a trail that has no good detour options. The Port has posted signs outlining their detour plan, so I gave it a test ride.
Without any additional signage, these instructions are both confusing and missing very important details, especially heading northbound. Hopefully the Port will install step-by-step detour signs. I followed the instructions heading northbound, turning right at the crosswalk and right at the Galer Street Flyover, which put me here:
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tags: 15th Ave W, Bike Route Alert, elliott bay trail, interbay, port of seattle

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Crosscut: Seattle Police are leaders in violent use of bikes during protests

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

May 30, 2023

Seattle Police on bikes keep an eye on the 2013 MLK, Jr, Day march.
In our car-dominated American society, using a bicycle as transportation is a very positive thing to do both on a society-wide level and especially on a personal level. Obviously, as someone who rides a bike as my primary mode of transportation and writes a daily bike blog, I love bikes and view them as great and wonderful things.
But bikes are just tools, and they hold no inherent virtues or morals. They are most often used by people getting around in a healthy, fun and emission-free way. But as Seattle Police have demonstrated, bikes can also be used for violence. While bike patrols at one point were using bikes more as a way to cover more ground more quickly and nimbly than an officer on foot or in a car, the bike has increasingly become a military-style tactical weapon officers use along with body armor, pepper spray and other crowd-suppression tools used to combat protests. Crosscut and Type Investigations published a story about SPD’s use of bikes that looked into these more violent uses (they also made a podcast-style version of the story).
“There was some thinking that bicycle units are somehow going to be better because it seems softer,” Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Center for Protest Law & Litigation, told Crosscut. “But we have seen bicycle units act with extreme violence, attacking en masse, throwing their bikes down and charging crowds of people.”
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tags: bike cops, crosscut, protests, spd, type investigations

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32 Congressmembers including Rep. Jayapal urge adding walking and biking safety to vehicle safety ratings

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

May 26, 2023

Vehicle safety ratings in the United States don’t in any way factor in safety for people those vehicles hit. In fact, some of the methods used to score high in these ratings results in vehicle designs that make it harder for drivers to see other road users and avoid collisions from happening in the first place. The tests only score how vehicle occupants would be affected when a collision does happen. If you’re walking in a crosswalk, well, the “five-star safety rating” does not care about you at all.
This is completely backwards. The actual safest vehicle is the one that best avoids collisions in the first place. So it would have excellent driver visibility, for example, rather than a gigantic front end crumple zone blocking your vision of anyone shorter than 5 feet. It also wouldn’t have a wide “a-pillar” on each side of the windshield that makes it nearly impossible to see anyone about to walk, bike or drive in front of your vehicle. No safety test should prioritize the safety of one person over another, especially not a government-designed test.
The five-star safety rating looked at the classic trolley problem and came up with this:
But 32 members of Congress, including Washington’s Pramila Jayapal, are urging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to update its safety ratings to also account for the safety of people outside of vehicles. In their letter (PDF) to the NHTSA and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the lawmakers wrote, “we respectfully urge you to include pedestrian protection and visibility from the driver’s seat as key criteria for vehicles to score the highest safety star ratings.”
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tags: mike mcginn, nhtsa, pramila jayapal, vehicle safety ratings

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You should join the Bike Advisory Board (or any of these other boards)

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

May 25, 2023
Do you have 3–6 hours of available time each month for the next two years and want to learn more about how transportation stuff actually gets done (or not) in Seattle? Well then, you should apply for one of the city’s advisory boards. Yes, you. Members do NOT need to have special training or professional insight of any kind to serve on these boards. In fact, as someone who has attended many of these meetings as a journalist and observer, the most effective members are just regular people with a desire to listen, learn and hold the city accountable to its stated goals.
If you are interested in learning more about serving, SDOT is hosting an online Microsoft Teams meeting at noon on June 2. Applications for this round are due June 4 and will be considered for positions that become available over the next 6 months. You can apply for one or more of the following boards:
- School Traffic Safety Committee (STSC) 
- Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board (SBAB)
- Seattle Freight Advisory Board (SFAB) 
- Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board (SPAB) 
- Transit Advisory Board (TAB) 
The next couple years are going to be big for transportation as Seattle prepares and tries to pass a replacement funding measure for the Move Seattle Levy, which expires at the end of 2024. The city also has a lot of work to do to fulfill the promises made to voters back when they passed that levy in 2015. The advisory boards can play an effective role in helping to steward this work.
Also, if you join the Bicycle Advisory Board, you can say that you are on the same board Bill Nye once served on:

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tags: bill nye, sbab, sdot

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