Concept from a 2012 report on the Greenwood Ave transit and sidewalk upgrades
The city is in the final stages of designing a big upgrade to Greenwood Ave N between N 90th and 105th Streets, a busy street with few sidewalks and inadequate bus stops.
Billed as a transit improvements project, most the sidewalk improvements will be on the east side of the street to provide a connected walkway through the area. Bike lanes will continue on the street, but the city plans to build a handful of new Dexter-style bus islands to reduce conflicts between buses and bikes and give buses a place to stop in-lane for fast loading and unloading. The five new bus stop locations are marked in this diagram:
Protected bike lanes were considered early in the process, but appear to have been dropped. To learn more about the project and give your input, here are the open house details from SDOT:
Greenwood Transit & Sidewalk Project Open House
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Greenwood Library 8016 Greenwood Ave N
Though few people in our nation can say they have never had a friend or family member who has been involved in a serious traffic collision, the Schulte family’s past year has been unimaginable.
One year ago, Judy and Dennis Schulte were killed when a drunk driver plowed into them while out on a walk with their daughter-in-law Karina and week-old grandson Elias, who were both seriously injured. To remember those killed, support the survivors and continue the call for safer streets and an end to drunk driving, a community walk this afternoon will kick off Safer Roads Awareness Week.
The walk meets at Top Pot Doughnuts on 35th at 3 p.m. For more details, see our previous post.
The victim was crossing eastbound after a vehicle in the left northbound lane stopped for him. However, the person driving the pickup in the right northbound lane did not stop and hit him.
After several days in the hospital, he passed away Friday evening shortly after 9 p.m., according to the Sheriff’s office.
Our condolences to his friends and family.
Photo from the YouCaring crowdfunding page
UPDATE: The man has been identified as Caleb Shoop.
“He was absolutely beloved of everyone who ever knew him,” said Ben Shoop, Caleb’s father told Bothell Reporter. “He embodied the spirit of giving to others.”
Shoop was an Inglemoor High School graduate and was very active while attending school. He participated in marching band, track and field and water polo. He volunteered for Ski for All, an organization that works with teaching disabled children and veterans how to ski and snowboard.
He was hoping to become a firefighter.
Caleb’s memorial service is at 1 p.m. March 29 at the University Place Presbyterian Church, located at 8101 27th St. W University Place.
A crowdfunding campaign has been set up to help the family cover any costs. Any money left over will be donated to Ski for All, a charity where Caleb volunteered.
The following message from Caleb’s Mom was posted to the crowdfunding site:
From Caleb’s Mom on Facebook, March 21st: Tonight we said goodbye to our sweet boy Caleb, or Kaleb VonShoop as he liked to be called, who passed away gently, surrounded with love and prayers, at 9:16pm. Thank you to the army of people who held us up the last few days, prayed over him, wept, sang, and reminisced with us as we honored his memory. We were stunned at the sheer volume of friends and family that flooded the halls of Harborview this week to sit with us and honor our child’s life. Please say a prayer for the organ recipients that are in surgery tonight as well.
Preliminary design concept, from the Beacon Bike Park group
Tuesday is shaping up to be quite a packed bike meeting day. The Safe Roads Awareness Week kickoff walk is in the afternoon, then an open house for the second Ballard neighborhood greenway is in the evening. But if mountain biking is your passion, you may want to attend the Cheasty Greenspace Mountain Bike Pilot Project meeting on Beacon Hill.
As we reported previously, the Cheasty project (once known as the “Beacon Bike Park”) received approval from the Parks Department to move forward as a pilot project to test the concept of having mountain bike trails in an urban forest. While Seattle does have the I-5 Colonnade mountain bike park in Eastlake, the Cheasty Greenspace is different. It’s a steep green area in a part of the city with few other forested areas (on border of Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley).
However, the Cheasty forest has some fairly intense issues with invasive plant species, and has long had issues with dumping and littering (the Cheasty MTB group has more information on their website). There are also few usable trails through the area for people on foot or bike, making it difficult for residents to access the woods. (more…)
Six months ago, John Demaree was driving around town when he got an idea for a joke.
He was sitting in heavy traffic behind a car with one of those window stickers depicting stick figures of family members, sometimes even pets. But in this sticker, everyone was wearing Mickey Mouse ears (perhaps something like this).
He wanted to make a parody of it for the work truck of his commercial property maintenance business, Demaree Services. He also wanted a joke that comments on how, on the streets, “everybody is mad at everyone else driving around,” he said in a phone conversation.
The result is a decal with icons of a person walking, a person biking and a person in a wheelchair with tally marks next to them: Six people on foot, two people in wheelchairs, ten people on bikes.
But not everybody finds the joke funny. Twitter user @nothe spotted the truck and posted a photo of it, writing, “what the hell is up with the pedestrian/handicapped/bike tally here?!?” (more…)
From SDOT’s 2014 neighborhood greenway work plan. Route 3 exists, Route 13 will be studied this year (the exact route could change during the design process)
The city will host its first open house to get community input on a second neighborhood greenway in Ballard, this time a north-south route.
The meeting is 6 – 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Ballard High School Commons Room. The presentation starts at 6:30.
The city is considering a route somewhere in the 16th, 17th or 18th Ave NW area that will connect all the way from the Burke-Gilman Trail Missing Link (someday hopefully an actual trail) all the way up to Soundview Playfield near Whitman Middle School in Crown Hill.
The route should clock in just over two miles and will be a milestone for Seattle neighborhood greenway building: It will be the first route to intersect a pre-existing neighborhood greenway.
The NW 58th Street neighborhood greenway opened last year, and a bicycle counting machine measured nearly 15,000 trips in January alone, almost a quarter as many bike trips as the busy Fremont Bridge.
The 17th Ave NW neighborhood greenway will also be a chance for SDOT to get some feedback about what did and did not work on the 58th route so they can make sure the new route is even better. (more…)
Protected bike lanes were considered early in the process, but appear to have been dropped. To learn more about the project and give your input, here are the open house details from SDOT:
