The RapidRide G started service this past week, promising six-minute headways between downtown and Madison Valley via Madison Street. But you go to other sites to learn about the implications for transit service. I’m here to talk about the bike racks inside the buses.
That’s right, inside. The new RapidRide G buses have a couple tricks that no other bus in Seattle has. First, it has doors on both sides, which are needed to serve the center platforms on Madison Street the way the First Hill Streetcar does on Jackson Street. Second, it has bike racks inside the coach rather than on the front. So I of course had to try it out.
OK OK, Snohomish County transit riders, I hear you yelling, “Swift has had those racks for years!” It’s true. Community Transit’s Swift bus rapid transit coaches have very similar bike racks inside. But this is the first time such a bike rack has been used by King County Metro. These “SpinLock” racks are made by the Woodinville-based company Sportworks, which also makes the racks for the front of buses. In fact, Sportworks pioneered the whole bike racks on buses idea, and King County Metro was among the first to roll them out fleet-wide.
Anyway, back to RapidRide G. People with bikes should enter through the back door, which is clearly marked on the side of the bus. All riders can tap readers on the platform or inside the bus to pay, so there is no need to go up front by the driver at all. Once inside, lift the front wheel up enough to roll it into the bike rack. An arm on top with a wheel on it will automatically hold the wheel in place, so once the wheel settles into the groove of the rack, you’re done. It is significantly easier to use than the racks on the front of the bus because you only need to lift the front wheel and do not need to operate the arm to hold it in place.
Site Note: Our ancient and no-longer-supported calendar plugin finally died for good this week, so the Seattle Bike Blog Events Calendar is out of service until I find a replacement. As a result, you may see more event notices posted as regular posts.
Anna Zivarts is giving a free talk 7 p.m. Thursday (September 19) at the Central Branch Library downtown about “how improving our transportation system with nondrivers in mind will benefit everyone.”
I reviewed Zivarts’ book When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency when it was released back in May. “In her book, Zivarts punctuates the hard data and research with people’s personal stories, creating a deeply humanized analysis of the scattered and often dangerous state of nondriving transportation in our nation and how we can make things better,” we wrote.
The talk comes a week and a half before the start of the Week Without Driving, an annual challenge Zivarts has been growing through her work with Disability Rights Washington. The challenge can be an enlightening moment for many people who are used to relying on their cars, but it is especially useful for transportation policy decision makers.
Thursday’s event will include live-captioning and ASL.
Years after the final train rolled down the rails, a Federal agency has approved a nearly 12-mile section of abandoned railroad for use as a trail extending the reach of Snohomish County’s iconic Centennial Trail all the way to the King County line. Snohomish County has announced that they will resume planning work for the trail in 2025 with the vision of connecting it to King County’s in-development Eastrail and, therefore, the Sammamish River and Burke-Gilman Trails.
Once complete, the Centennial Trail would span the entire length of Snohomish County. Skagit County also owns sections of the same rail line with the potential to develop it further north. In Arlington, the Centennial Trail connects to the Whitehorse Trail, a rail-trail leading to Darrington and the beautiful Mountain Loop Highway (note that the section near Arlington is currently closed due to significant slide and washout issues, though the County is working on it and hopes for construction permits soon). Down south, the City of Woodinville has already been removing the rails from their two-mile stretch connecting from the county line and planned Centennial Trail South terminus to the Sammamish River Trail near NE 175th Street.
“As of August 2024, Snohomish County concluded abandonment and railbanking of the rail line from the City of Snohomish to the King County line,” Snohomish County Parks wrote in a project update last week. “With this milestone, the County will resume trail planning in 2025 for the phased development of the trail over the next decade.” They anticipate a phased build-out because “the proposed alignment traverses areas with steep cross slopes, bridges, trestles, sloughs, and other natural features which offer a beautiful trail experience but complicated construction.” The county estimates the cost to fully build out and pave the 12-mile trail section to be $100 million, according to the Snohomish County Tribune. They currently have $2 million budgeted for design work.
King County and municipalities like Kirkland have sped up the opening of their trail sections by building them first as mostly lower-budget gravel trails that use as much of the existing rail infrastructure as possible. The ultimate plan is to fully pave the trail, but that work will take a long time and is significantly more expensive. Perhaps Snohomish County could look into a similar strategy if funding for a paved trail is not found in the near-term.
Next we just need King County and the City of Renton to start work on connecting the Eastrail to the Green River, Interurban and Cedar River Trails in order to create a fully separated bike route from Skagit County to Pierce County.
At 45 densely-packed pages of information about the e-bike incentive program, this policy brief (PDF) is not very brief.
If you were waiting for Washington State’s rebate program to kick in before buying an e-bike, the state still has a lot of work to do before it is available. When it finally does launch at some undetermined point in the future, the state expects all 8,500 of them to be gobbled up quickly and doled out via a randomization system with most of the funding going to households making less than 80% of the area median income.
Of course, none of this means anything if Washington voters approve I-2117 in November, a terrible decision that would defund a laundry list of good investments such as clean air, transit, roads, wildfire prevention, ferries and, yes, e-bike rebates.
The state legislature funded an e-bike rebate program in 2023 using funds from the Climate Commitment Act. But more than a year later, the program has yet to select a vendor to build out the custom software infrastructure needed to handle income verification and voucher distribution. WSDOT’s Active Transportation Division noted in a recent blog post that they plan to select a vendor in November to start that work. Though they don’t say it in the post, this timing would allow them to see if I-2117 passes before committing to building out the software. So whether I-2117 passes or not, the campaign itself seems to have already delayed work on this program, harming local bike shops as people wait to see if they can get a cheaper e-bike later.
If I-2117 fails and the program can move forward, WSDOT does not yet have a timeline for when they expect the program to get up and running, noting only that they are “confident we’ll have plenty to report in our next legislative update due July 2025,” according to a WSDOT blog post. If you make more than 80% of area median income (find out here), then rebates would be limited to $300 at most and you would need to win a lottery of sorts to get chosen. $300 is not nothing, but it might not be worth it to you to wait. E-bike prices are much lower now than they were even a couple years ago, and they may very well increase $300 by the time this program gets going depending how the industry and consumer demand evolves. It’s impossible to know, but e-bike prices have been volatile since the pandemic began.
Despite the program delays, the team has been working to develop their plan and hire staff, according to WSDOT. They have learned from the logistical struggles in other places and worked with a University of Washington research team to publish a lengthy policy document (PDF) on how best to structure the whole thing based on best practices and the specifics of how the legislature wrote the law.
The research team concluded that the state should launch the program in phases focused on a few communities before launching statewide and that interested Washington residents should apply in advance through an online system that then selects recipients at random. They could then use the rebate only through a bike shop with a physical store in Washington that also offers on-site repairs and that will fully assemble and size-adjust the bike for the buyer. They must also offer a warranty of at least a year. Mountain bikes should be excluded from the program, but all three recognized classes of e-bikes should be included. Adaptive e-bikes designed for accessibility should also be included, which is great news because they can be really expensive and typically are not covered by health insurance. There should be no more than rebate per household. Rebates should be applied at the register, so buyers would not need to float the rebate amount while waiting for a reimbursement check from the state. This is especially important for low-income buyers who can qualify for up to $1,200 in rebates, an amount of money that qualified buyers may not have available. However, it does add layers of complexity to the system.
One wrinkle in their plan is that the program must, by law, dedicate 40% of the investments “to vulnerable populations within the boundaries of overburdened communities” as defined by the Washington Department of Ecology as well as some of the “highly impacted communities” identified by the Department of Health. However, they may find that one disparity in such communities is often a lack of access to bike shops. So it will be interesting to see how the program mitigates this problem. I don’t know if there’s enough funding here to incentivize new shops within our state’s bike shop deserts, but that would be a wonderful side-effect if it happened. A bicycle is an incredible source of very low-cost transportation, but only if the bike is working. In the Puget Sound region, Everett, North Seattle/Shoreline, South Seattle, South King County, Northeast Puyallup and South and East Tacoma are identified as overburdened by the Department of Ecology, while census tracts that at least partially contain tribal lands are also noted as “highly impacted communities” under state statute. The legal definitions here are overlapping and a bit difficult for me to follow, and it’s very possible that my descriptions in this paragraph are not inclusive of them all. Focused outreach and early rollouts of the program should begin in these areas of the state.
As captured on video by West Seattle Blog, Rita Hulsman chose to use her address to the crowd gathered Saturday for a memorial bike ride in honor of her late husband Steve to promote action to make sure traffic deaths like his do not continue happening to others (starts at 6:45 in the video):
“Steve would be so honored to see you here today to remember him. He was so skilled and passionate about bicycling, and I’ve heard from so many of you who used to cycle with him about how he was helpful and encouraging to others who found the very, very, very hilly routes that he rode to be maybe a little bit more than some people had bargained for. He was there to help people and encourage people along the way. Thank you for those kind words about him. It meant more than I can tell you in the months that have passed since his untimely death.
Earlier this year, I became involved in advocating for safety improvements for bicyclists, for pedestrians and for other vulnerable users of our city streets. And I did that by speaking up at City Council Transportation Committee meetings. I am pleased that the full council passed a great transportation levy proposal that will come before those of us who live in Seattle this November. If you live in Seattle, I strongly encourage you to vote yes on the 2024 transportation levy.”
Ever since news broke of that horrible day in December when a person driving a Chevy Tahoe turned in front of Steve’s path as he biked the long and fast downhill on Marine View Drive SW in West Seattle, Rita has been focused on changing city policy to promote safer streets. She and I emailed a few times back in March because she wanted advice on identifying organizations working on safe streets. “Steve’s death is just senseless to me,” she wrote, “but advocating for action to make our roads safer for cyclists will, I hope, give me some sense of consolation.” She later donated the funds raised through a memorial GoFundMe campaign to Cascade Bicycle Club and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.
She didn’t stop there. As City Council Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka said in his remarks before the ride Saturday (2:30 mark in the video), Rita showed up to every committee meeting in which the 2024 Transportation Levy was being considered to testify in favor of increasing funding for safer streets.
“Rita showed up at every single transportation committee meeting where we discussed and considered the levy,” he told the crowd. “Her voice was well represented, testifying, holding me and my City Council colleagues accountable to make sure we have proper investments baked into the transportation levy to do more to protect the most vulnerable users. And my commitment is to all users. I want to thank Rita for her leadership, her passion, and making sure that the voice of your family is represented in this transportation levy.”
He added that if the levy passes, one of his amendments included building protected bike infrastructure named in Steve’s honor.
“Rita deserves better, the family of Steve deserves better, you all deserve better,” he said.
Even after a series of widely-publicized crashes on the Jackson Street streetcar tracks years prior, the City of Seattle failed to make the street reasonably safe for people riding bikes. So after Janet Ball and Eric Boris crashed there in two separate incidents in 2019, they sued the city for negligence. The city settled the joint case out of court for $5.75 million, with $5.5 million going to Ball (who suffered more significant injuries) and $250,000 going to Boris. In the settlement agreement (PDF), the city did not admit fault or commit to fixing the hazardous conditions in the blocks near the intersection of 5th Avenue, the Seattle Times reported.
The payment amount represents a significant increase over previous injury settlements related to people crashing on the First Hill Streetcar tracks while biking. Seattle settled with the family of Desiree McCloud for $500,000 after she died while biking on Yesler Way in 2016. Video showed her riding between the tracks moments before she suddenly crashed. She never recovered consciousness from her injury and so could not tell us what exactly happened, but friends, family and safe streets advocates (including this site) pointed to the streetcar tracks as the most likely culprit. Daniel Ahrendt was in a horrific collision in which he crashed on the tracks on Jackson Street and was then run over by a Metro bus in 2015. The city settled with him for $1.55 million.
Unfortunately, the more people are injured on these tracks, the more obvious and egregious the city’s liability becomes. Until the city takes real action to improve bicycle safety near the streetcar tracks, people will keep being injured and the settlements will likely keep getting bigger.
The complaint (PDF), put together by a legal team led by Catherine Fleming, is damning. It notes that the consultants hired to advise the city when developing the streetcar design warned of a hazard to people biking. “Rather than provide a clear and safe path for bicyclists on S. Jackson Street as its own consultants and transportation experts recommended, the City chose not to separate streetcars, the tracks, and buses from bicyclists,” the complaint states, citing a 2010 memo from Alta Planning + Design.
A minimum of 15 people crashed on the First Hill Streetcar tracks between the time they were installed in 2013 and the time of the incidents in 2019. I say minimum because there is no consistent way for people to document their crashes. When a collision involves another party, such as a car driver, police are typically called to make a report. But when someone crashes on the tracks, such reports are rare and inconsistent. It is now 2024, and not only are there no bike lanes on Jackson Street but most of the same hazards are still present as well. Next to nothing has been done to prevent similar injuries to those suffered by Janet and Eric.
Stay tuned for a follow-up story outlining some options for making the street safer.
