Seattle Bike Blog

Watch: Best Side Cycling tours the new 15th Ave NE bike lanes + What can we learn from its shortcomings?

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 11, 2022
The new and improved 15th Avenue NE bike lanes opened last month, and much of the project is excellent. But the opening celebrations have been a bit dampened due to the city’s decision to ignore people’s requests to help them cross the biggest barrier to biking on this route: Lake City Way.

I have been a bit slow to write about this project because the city has put safe streets advocates in a bit of an awkward bind here. On one hand, they did build nearly one mile of new protected bike lanes. As important as it is to watchdog transportation projects, it is also important to celebrate wins. This is a mile of bike lane that is now part of our city, and that’s great. People will be able to travel by bike more comfortably and, hopefully, more safely. The bike lanes also significantly reduced the crossing distance for people walking across this street, which is far too wide for the relatively low amount of car traffic it carries. Bike lanes are not just about biking, they are part of a complete street that is safer for all users.

It is worth celebrating every time the city makes our streets significantly safer than they were before, and most of this project does so. I feel like I need stress that there’s a full stop after this sentence, even though I know you can sense the word “but” coming soon. This street is safer, and if this project works as well as we all hope then as many as 10 people will be spared from serious traffic injuries or death every year from now on. That’s a huge and very real improvement.

But (there’s that word) the project has some major shortcomings that undercut the effectiveness of the rest of the improvements, and it’s difficult to want to heap too much praise on the city because of them. However, the problems happened during the previous administration, and I hope that SDOT and Mayor Bruce Harrell can learn from these issues and avoid them in the future.

The highest-level takeaway is that SDOT and the mayor need to listen to advocates, who were genuinely engaged in this project’s design process. Mayor Jenny Durkan chose to completely shut out and ignore community members who volunteered their time and energy to engage with this project and suggest improvements. This was a major problem with Mayor Durkan’s leadership in general, and it’s consequences show up once again in the way this project turned out.

Project shortcomings

The paving plan near Lake City Way.

The biggest and most obvious problem with the street’s design is that all safety improvements end one block before reaching Lake City Way, one of the most dangerous streets in Seattle. The paving project continues all the way to the busy street, but the bike lanes and their related street safety benefits end at NE 80th Street. As the new roadway approaches Lake City Way, it balloons out from two general traffic lanes to four despite the fact that traffic volumes actually drop from 10,000 vehicles per day to 8,000 according to the city’s 2020 Traffic Report (based on pre-pandemic 2019 data). Even 10,000 vehicles per day is not much at all for an arterial street, and 8,000 will easily fit in two lanes. As the new lanes are added, all safety elements disappear. It is an enormous missed opportunity to keep people safe.

But to make matters worse, people made it very clear to the project team during the design phase that this was not good enough. Two years ago, when there was definitely enough time to make changes, I summarized what I had been hearing: (more…)
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tags: 15th Ave NE, best side cycling, sdot

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The Bikery’s free Help Desk is here to answer your Seattle bike commute questions

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 9, 2022
The volunteer-powered Bikery has long provided resources for people to obtain and learn how to repair bikes. Their 30 or so regular volunteers share their bicycle mechanic knowledge with the community through the shop on Hiawatha Place S near S Charles Street. But the organization’s latest service hopes to reach beyond the mechanical to help answer people’s other questions about bike commuting, like with route to take or what kind of bike they need.

“There are probably some barriers keeping people from transitioning from car to bike,” said project founder Jordan Sampson. Yet the Bikery’s volunteer base was full of people with lots of experience getting around the region on bike. “There’s knowledge about urban cycling that we weren’t really tapping into.”

The Bikery’s Bike Commute Help Desk is a “100% free service” (though of course donations are always welcome) designed for people who are considering trying to commute by bike or who struggled with their first attempts and would like advice. Send an email to [email protected] and ask your questions. The Help Desk will work to get you answers or connect you with a volunteer in your area who can help.

Most people who are biking now got started with help from someone who was already familiar with biking. It’s so much easier to have someone guide you through the process of getting started than to try to figure it all out alone. It would be amazing to see the Help Desk serve that function for people who don’t have a close friend who’s already into biking.

What the Help Desk needs most now are users. So help them out by spreading the word. If someone you know is interested in bike commuting and you aren’t in a place to advise them, point them to the Help Desk. You could also spread the word at your workplace.

If you’re interested in volunteering with The Bikery, email [email protected]. They are always looking for people who help staff the shop, though they also have other events and tasks. And then maybe you’ll be able to help someone through the Help Desk, too.
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tags: bike commute help desk, bikery, jordan sampson

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UW Press committee has approved my Seattle bike history book

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

August 5, 2022
The UW Press faculty committee has unanimously approved Pedaling Uphill In The Rain for publication. If all goes according to plan, it should be available in spring or summer of 2023.

Big thank you to everyone who has supported my work during the past couple years. I think the book is really good, filled with forgotten stories that might shift your perspective a bit on the role biking has played in the development of Seattle. I can’t wait for you all to get the chance to read it.

Thanks also to all of you who continue to read Seattle Bike Blog even though posting has been slower than usual. Writing a book is a lot of work, it turns out. The longer it gets, the more unwieldy it gets, and seemingly small tasks can easily take hours just because there’s so much material to work through. So when days go by without posts here, it’s probably because I’m working somewhere deep within the manuscript.

I have learned a lot about how my writing mind works through this process. People might think that writing is the act of sitting down at a keyboard and typing out letters, but that’s not true at all. Much of my writing happens in my head as I bike around town or while I’m reading source material. During that time, I am constantly thinking about the significance of information and stories and how they connect together. By the time I am sitting at the keyboard, I already have most of what I’m going to write figured out. Due to this, I have found it more difficult than expected to split my daily writing time between the book and the blog. It’s not as simple as minimizing the book document and opening the new post page because the bulk of the work behind writing doesn’t happen while I’m sitting at the keyboard. To get out a quality post, I needed to be thinking about it on my bike ride to pick up the kid or while drinking my morning coffee. I was able to balance the two some days, but on days where I was really focused on the book, I had to let the blog go quiet. So for anyone who has been wondering why the blog’s been a quiet, now you know.

The manuscript is with the publisher now. I’m not completely finished with it yet, though. It will go through copy editing, which will surely require more work. I also still have a lot of work to do organizing images and figures as well as a long list of miscellaneous tasks. But I can see the finish line, which feels great after nearly three years of work.

Stay tuned for more book news, and take care.
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tags: pedaling uphill in the rain

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Last chance to comment on the scope of the Seattle Transportation Plan

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

July 28, 2022
Friday (July 29) is the last day to comment on a key phase in the development of the extremely important Seattle Transportation Plan. Comments on the scope of the plan will help guide the environmental review process. We need to make sure this plan is as bold as possible to set the stage for major investments in walking, biking, transit and safety.

This is different than the plan’s survey and comment map, which will accept submissions through the end of August.

If you haven’t commented yet on the environmental study scope yet, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways has created a handy form you can use to support their list of 5 suggestions. Their sample letter:
Dear SDOT,

Before moving forward with SEPA analysis for the Seattle Transportation Plan, please revise the proposed alternatives in the following way:
1. Delete Alternative 2 which would be a failure of our necessary climate goals. Seattle must be a leader on a just transition to a sustainable future, and failing to do so by 2044 should not be studied as an option.
2. Add a bold Alternative 4. We need a new alternative that makes bold progress in the next decade, rather than waiting for 2044. We need an alternative that rapidly makes walking, biking, and transit the most convenient, safe, and comfortable ways to get around Seattle. Let’s plan for an accessible city for all where sidewalks and crosswalks are ubiquitous. Let’s plan for a bike friendly city where every street is safe to bike on. Let’s plan for a city where frequent transit is prioritized over the movement of cars. Let’s plan for a city where our streets are recognized as public space for play, community building, trees, gardens, cafes, and so much more! In short, let’s plan for a future that is more sustainable, equitable, safe, affordable, healthy, accessible, and thriving.
3. Plan for an affordable 15 Minute City. Please revise the alternatives to plan for a city where everyone has an affordable home, and where daily needs are within a short walk or roll. These strategies must be developed in concert with the land use plan to be effective and equitable.
4. Improve the “themes” used to evaluate the alternatives. Please improve the universal design theme away from app solutions and towards the needs of non-drivers and people with disabilities. Please add public space, kid-friendly, elderly-friendly, and noise pollution as new themes to better help understand the outcomes that different alternatives would create.
5. Reduce the over-emphasis on vehicle electrification: The draft alternatives envision a large role for the City of Seattle in promoting private electric vehicles. SDOT should instead focus on what it has the most control over: prioritizing investments and street space so that walking, biking, and transit are the most convenient, safe, and comfortable ways to get around.
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tags: seattle neighborhood greenways, seattle transportation plan

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Mayor picks LA’s Greg Spotts as next SDOT Director

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

July 27, 2022
Greg Spotts. Screen capture from Seattle Channel.

Greg Spotts will be the next SDOT Director, taking over the department in September. Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the decision on Beacon Hill today, describing Spotts as “a champion for innovative thinking, sustainable solutions, collaborative partnership building and transparent public engagement.”

Ryan Packer was at the mayor’s press conference announcing the pick, and reported for The Urbanist that Spotts described himself as a “creative change agent to help make Seattle more walkable, bikeable and transit friendly.” He also put a major emphasis on Vision Zero.

“One of my first priorities will be a thorough review of our Vision Zero efforts to reduce traffic-related injuries and deaths,” he said.

The Seattle Department of Transportation has been very quiet since the December departure of Sam Zimbabwe, seemingly operating under a “don’t make headlines” mentality. Few controversial projects have moved forward during the first half year of Mayor Harrell’s term, similar to the beginning of Mayor Jenny Durkan’s term. However, Durkan inexplicably waited more than a year to replace the SDOT Director, leaving Zimbabwe with no time to prepare ahead of a tumultuous year of transportation impacts that started in early 2019, including the closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and major disruptions in the downtown transit tunnel. Harrell has moved more quickly to pick a new Director.

SDOT functions best when it has clear direction from the top supporting its safe streets mission. The department has a lot of smart staff who truly want to make the city safer, more accessible and more sustainable. But they need to know their leaders will support them in that work.

Spotts will also oversee the development of the Seattle Transportation Plan, which will form the basis for the next major transportation funding package to replace 2015’s nine-year Move Seattle Levy. The next levy would need to be in place by the end of 2024, creating an incredible opportunity for Seattle to put a truly nation-leading transportation funding measure on a high-turnout Presidential election ballot.

We wish him the best and look forward to covering his Vision Zero review.

Watch the press event: (more…)
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tags: bruce harrell, greg spotts, sdot

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Washington’s streets continue to fail kids like Mikey Weilert

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

July 25, 2022
Photo from a GoFundMe for the family of Michael Weilert.

Michael Weilert stopped, pushed the button to make the crosswalk lights start blinking, waited to see that cars were stopping, then rode his bike across busy Pacific Avenue S in Parkland last Tuesday. But even though other people had stopped their cars at the clearly marked crosswalk, a 27-year-old woman drove a Jeep straight through and killed him.

He was only 13.

Our deepest condolences go out to his friends and family. They held a memorial (KING 5) over the weekend at the crosswalk where he was killed. You can contribute to a GoFundMe to help support his family through this time.

Mikey’s death is devastating. Several systems failed him and his family. The road is designed dangerously, the driver behaved negligently, and the police added pain and suffering after the fact.

Dangerous by design

The road, which is also State Route 7, is wide and hostile with multiple lanes in each direction. Even this crosswalk, which had been upgraded with a median “refuge” island and blinking lights, was not enough to make crossing the street safe. It is one of so many busy streets in our state and across the nation that prioritizes the fast movement of cars over the safety of anyone who needs to get across. As is clear from Smart Growth America’s new Dangerous By Design 2022 report, this is a problem across our nation that is getting worse.

Pacific Avenue has inherent safety deficiencies that are well-known to traffic engineers. In this case, the collision seems to stem from its “multiple threat” design failure in which even if one driver stops, there is no guarantee that the driver in the next lane will also stop. Here’s how Seattle’s Safe Routes to School Engineering Toolkit illustrates the problem:

From the Seattle Safe Routes to School Engineering Toolkit (PDF).

The good news is that we know how to solve this problem: Reduce the number of general traffic through lanes. Highway-style designs have no place on streets that go through communities. Traffic engineers across the world have found that one lane in each direction with turns lanes where appropriate can carry a large number of vehicles per day far more safely. WSDOT data shows that this section of Pacific Avenue (near 134th Street S) carries about 30,000 vehicles per day, which is a few thousand more than Rainier Ave S. Rainier was formerly State Route 167 and has been one of the city’s most dangerous streets thanks to its highway-style design. Seattle conducted a full before and after study (PDF) demonstrating a successful 2015 safety redesign on a stretch of Rainier. It found that the number of serious injury or fatal collisions plummeted in large part due to the elimination of the multiple threat problem. It took about a minute longer to drive on the street, but serious injuries and deaths went from 10 per year to 0. That is well worth a minute.

Mikey’s family has also called for what they are calling “Michael’s Law” improving the safety of crosswalks in the state, according to King 5 News. They don’t want anyone else to have to go through what they are going through.

But unless the state and local agencies put in the work to redesign streets, this will keep happening again and again on Pacific Avenue and other streets across the state that have the same problems.

Negligent driving

(more…)
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tags: active transportation plan, deaths, michael weilert, parkland, smart growth america, wsdot

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