Seattle Bike Blog

Saturday: R+E Cycles celebrates 50 years in the U District

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 28, 2023

1970s photo from R+E Cycles.

R+E Cycles is turning 50 years old, and the storied bike shop and frame builders behind the Rodriguez and Erickson custom bikes will be celebrating by hosting the return of the free Bike and Pike expo for the first time since 2019.

Bike and Pike runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday (March 4) at R+E Cycles on the Ave between NE 56th Street and Ravenna Blvd. “Come join us for coffee, beer, bicycles, and a chance to converse one-on-one with some of The Northwest’s cycling gurus,” R+E wrote in the event description.

There will be a special guest this year. Ángel Rodriguez is heading to back to Seattle from his home on the side of a volcano in Panama. In addition to building bikes, Rodriguez was a major Seattle bicycling booster throughout the city’s biking boom years of the 70s and 80s (I interviewed him for my upcoming book Biking Uphill in the Rain). So welcome back to Seattle, Ángel!

More details on Bike and Pike from R+E:

We’re Turning 50!
And we want celebrate dang it! We want you to join us, along with R+E Cycles founder, Angel Rodriguez in person for the long awaited return of R+E Cycles Bike and Pike expo. It’s been a long 3 years, so let’s kick the 2023 cycling season off right!

Come join us for coffee, beer, bicycles, and a chance to converse one-on-one with some of The Northwest’s cycling gurus at The Seattle Bike and Pike Expo of 2023.

At R+E Cycles, we love Seattle, and the small companies that actually produce their products here. In October 2008, I asked our friends at Pike Brewing Company in Downtown Seattle if they would like to put on an event here in Seattle with other Seattle based entrepreneurs (and personalities) and they were just as excited about it as we were.

The flavor of Seattle Small Business is unique
But that flavor really gets diluted when an event gets overwhelmed with big firms that have unlimited advertising budgets. We thought it would be great to put on a smaller event that showcased unique Seattle companies and their products, while at the same time raise money for a local charity. This is why we started the event.

Over the last fourteen years, the Bike and Pike has been a great success! We’ve raised over $56,000 for Food Lifeline here in Seattle, and had lots of fun doing it. You’ve helped us raise enough for almost 195,000 meals! Thank You!

Want to go to an event this March that’s bicycle oriented and highly focused on Seattle based small businesses? The 2023 Seattle Bike and Pike Expo is for you!

tags: angel rodriguez, bike and pike, erickson bicycles, events, R+E Cycles, rodriguez bicycles

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Draft of SDOT’s Vision Zero review suggests internal reorganizing and more funding, but it feels small compared to our traffic violence emergency

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 27, 2023

On his first day on the job, SDOT Director Greg Spotts pledged a “top-to-bottom review” of the department’s Vision Zero program to figure out why traffic injuries and deaths are increasing, especially for people walking and rolling. He assigned employees from outside the Vision Zero team to perform the review, and they released a draft of their findings Thursday.

The document is mostly designed to be inside-facing, meaning it is intended to guide the department on how it can better deliver safer streets. But it also notes a few areas where the department needs outside help, mostly in the form of clear leadership and better funding for safety initiatives.

Most of the findings are probably not news to regular readers of Seattle Bike Blog, but it’s good to see them confirmed. For example, they found that when the city makes safety changes to streets, streets get safer.

“We found that safety interventions and countermeasures used by SDOT to advance Vision Zero make our streets safer,” the report notes. In fact, the report does not in any way place the blame for Seattle’s lack of safety progress on the existing Vision Zero program team. Every time it analyzes the team’s work, it finds that they are effective. The team has produced valuable data highlighting problem areas that need safety fixes citywide, and the relatively few projects they have led have made those streets safer. The problem is that they are just a small team with a very modest budget. A few miles per year will not get us to Vision Zero any time soon, especially at a time when deaths are on the rise nationwide. One way to put it is that the national and statewide trend of increasing traffic deaths is overpowering Seattle’s Vision Zero efforts in recent years. But that’s not an excuse, it’s a call to action.

Vision Zero is supposed to be a department-wide goal, and that’s where the work often falls short. The report offers a list of strategies for doing better. “We also identified dozens of potential opportunities to improve SDOT’s Vision Zero efforts – by strengthening policies and improving policy implementation, streamlining decision-making, improving project delivery, and moving more quickly toward broader implementation of proven interventions where they are most needed.”

(more…)

tags: bruce harrell, greg spotts, sdot, vision zero

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Alert 2/25-26: The 520 Trail will be closed (along with the rest of the bridge)

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 23, 2023

Map of the final design.

SR-520 will be closed this weekend as crews install girders for the future walking and biking bridge that will cross the freeway heading toward the Arboretum, among other work.

The cross-lake trail will be closed along with the rest of the freeway this time. The work is scheduled to begin 10 p.m. Friday and end by 5 a.m. Monday.

The bridge trail may be open for an out-and-back ride from the Eastside, which is nice when the bridge is car-free and quiet.

More details from WSDOT:

Travelers should plan ahead and find alternate routes for their trips across Lake Washington this weekend. At 11 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24, crews will close both directions of State Route 520 and all associated ramps between Interstate 5 in Seattle and 92nd Avenue Northeast in Clyde Hill. The around the clock closure, which includes the SR 520 Trail, will extend until 5 a.m. Monday, Feb. 27.

During the weekend closure, contractor crews working for the Washington State Department of Transportation will place 30 girders, or support beams, over the highway for a future pedestrian and bicycle bridge. Seven girders will also be added for new HOV ramps that will lead to and from a new 3-acre lid under construction in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood. People can watch the weekend work on this construction camera during the closure.

The 72-foot wide bike and pedestrian bridge will be the first of its kind in Seattle. Lined with green space, trees and shrubs, the 14-foot path will be a new north/south non-motorized option to cross over SR 520 while taking foot and wheel traffic off Montlake Boulevard. Crews expect to open the new facility at the end of the year.

The work is part of the $455 million SR 520 Montlake Project. The project also builds three new eastbound lanes over Union Bay between Montlake Boulevard and the floating bridge on Lake Washington.

tags: 520 trail, Bike Route Alert, sr 520, wsdot

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Construction to build major bike improvements brings many months of tough detours on Pike and Pine

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 22, 2023

Crews building improved bike lanes on Pike and Pike Streets downtown will close existing stretches of bike lanes for months at a time. So while both bike lanes were already incomplete, biking there will get worse before it gets better.

Central Seattle Greenways has sounded the alarm about the sorry detour options for this major bike downtown bike route and “have written to [SDOT] Director [Gregg] Spotts asking for SDOT to do better.” Read the full Tweet thread:

It’s not specified in the outreach materials, but the official bike detour around this two block construction closure is a one mile round trip to Bell Street. We think that’s unacceptable, and have written to Director Spotts asking for @seattledot to do better. (🧵) pic.twitter.com/yCY7Nyaiwa

— Central Seattle Greenways (@CSGreenways) February 22, 2023

The group notes that a detour to Bell Street is much too far out of the way, so the only practical options for people biking are to mix with car traffic or ride on busy sidewalks. Neither of these options are good.

A construction notice from SDOT notes, “To build those improvements we will need to temporarily detour the existing bike lanes. Detours will be to streets with existing, similar facilities.” However, as Central Seattle Greenways notes, there are no nearby streets with similar facilities. This is why Pike and Pine are such vital bike routes. They are the only viable options for biking between downtown and Capitol Hill or First Hill in this corridor.

The best option by far would be to construct a temporary bike lane that goes around the construction zone. This is the gold standard for detouring a bike lane, and it should be the city’s go-to option whenever possible. It might mean removing one of the extra general purpose lanes or on-street parking, but safety is more important. (more…)

tags: downtown, pike, pike pine renaissance, pine

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Watch: Why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 21, 2023

With all the discussion recently about how people crash a car or truck into a Seattle building about twice a week, a commenter reminded me of a Not Just Bikes video from a couple years ago about why this rarely happens in the Netherlands:

tags: cars into buildings, netherlands, not just bikes, video

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I’m giving my first talk about my book Thursday (free, online) + Release delayed until August

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

February 20, 2023

Well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that publication of my book Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars has been pushed back to August due to delays in the proofing and printing process. I’m pretty bummed because I was really looking forward to spending the summer doing book release events and such. But I have seen the first draft of the proof, and it’s so good. I can’t wait for you all to see it. You can still preorder a copy, but it won’t ship until late summer now.

The good news is that the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild has asked me to be the guest speaker for their monthly lecture series Thursday. It’s free, online and open to the public. Register in advance to get the Zoom invite.

I’ll be talking mostly about the early chapters of the book, including a preview of some of the stuff I uncovered during my deep dives into the archives. Did you know there used to be a floating hostel with an on-board bike shop moored in Lake Union?

tags: biking uphill in the rain, history, pacific northwest historians guild

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