It’s the final day to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Sound Transit’s Ballard to West Seattle light rail line. Cascade has a form letter you can quickly send to support bike access as a priority for station access.
More details from Cascade:
As leaders across the region prepare to make key decisions on the Ballard to West Seattle Link extension alignment, it’s critical they hear from caring neighbors like you that Sound Transit must:
Invest System Access Dollars to connect stations to the Seattle bike network
Plan early for bike-route specific construction impacts
Develop world class bike parking to match the world class transit system
Make bike parking free and abundant
Accept and embrace that people will continue to bring bikes on trains
Ensure new station areas improve the current biking conditions, and not degrade them
Baking bikes into light rail means studying the impacts now, not just an afterthought later.
In the closing days of public comment (through April 28) on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, please take action to tell Sound Transit to bake bikes into the plan.
The 520 Bridge Trail will be closed late Thursday through late Sunday, WSDOT announced Wednesday. The trail under the bridge leading to Lake Washington Boulevard will also be closed.
The trail closure is a major disruption for people who rely on this bridge, as all detour options add a lot of time and effort. For example, a bike trip from UW campus to downtown Kirkland takes about 45 minutes via the 520 Bridge, but 1:40 if traveling around the north side of the lake (according to Google’s bike travel estimates). Remember that you can put most bikes on the front of a bus.
Details from WSDOT:
To keep riders and pedestrians safe as we pave and move soil nearby, we will close the trail across Lake Washington and the temporary trail under SR 520 from 3 a.m. Thursday, April 28 to 10 p.m. Sunday, May 1 at 10 p.m. Pedestrians and bicyclists should plan to take alternate routes across Lake Washington.
Bob Svercl (bobco85) is back with another local bike route guide. This time, he’s connecting the Interurban North Trail in Shoreline to the Burke-Gilman Trail in Lake Forest Park.
For anyone who wants to get a good idea of what to expect before trying this for the first time, Bob’s videos are very detailed and include both maps and on-the-street footage. Be sure to check out his other Seattle-area bike route videos, too, as he’s built up quite the archive at this point.
“For the first time since the Bicycle Friendly States ranking began in 2008, a state other than Washington claimed the top position,” wrote the League of American Bicyclists in their summary of their 2022 Bicycle Friendly States report. However, Massachusetts and Oregon should enjoy their victory while they can because Washington has already taken major action to address the area where the state was docked most of its points: Funding. The 2022 ranking is based on data from 2021, so it does not include Move Ahead Washington, the major transportation funding measure passed in March. Move Ahead Washington includes $1.29 billion for “active transportation” projects.
Washington’s reign as the top state in the Union for bicycling is the result of a lot of hard work from advocates and some WSDOT staff and state legislators. But being the most bike-friendly state has for long been a rather low bar. Our headline for the last ranking in 2019 (they did not release rankings in 2020 and 2021 because, well, you know) was “Other 49 states still seemingly uninterested in being more bike friendly than WA.”
But that is changing. Massachusetts took the top spot in 2022, and Oregon took spot number two. If they want to keep Washington from reclaiming the top spot in 2023, once Move Ahead Washington is accounted for, they are going to need to do something big. I hope they do, because having real competition for the top spot is great for everyone.
Washington’s report card recommends that the state invest more federal Highway Safety Improvement Program funds into projects to increase safety for nonmotorized users. Other than that, it mostly praises actions by the state such as its efforts for include environmental justice in its transportation planning and its creation of the Safe, Healthy, Active Streets program during the pandemic.
The private market for homes in the Seattle area has been climbing out of reach for many people for many years, and there is no reason to believe it will become affordable any time soon. Meanwhile, the wait lists for existing affordable housing units is very long and getting longer. The city has spent all these years arguing about what to do rather than taking real action. Most of the debate has been about where increased private development should be allowed as though private development was the only tool available to reduce housing costs. But there is another way: Social housing.
The House Our Neighbors coalition, led in large part by Real Change, kicked off a signature drive today to put Initiative 135 on the Seattle ballot in November. You can get involved in the effort by volunteering or hosting a fundraiser. And if you see someone collecting signatures, add your name.
I-135 would establish a Public Development Authority tasked with building and operating affordable housing. The authority would receive public funds, but it would also have the ability to bond against rent payments to fund further development. Because units are fully owned by the public, they can remain affordable permanently. I-135 does not include any funding, a decision the creators made in order to avoid violating Washington State’s rule limiting ballot initiatives to only one subject at a time, according to Publicola. Instead, it would establish an authority and structure that could be funded later via the city budget or another ballot measure.
When people can’t afford a home, they are kicked out into the street. Our social safety nets are torn to shreds, and many people fall straight through. We need to be using every tool possible to make more homes that are truly affordable, and social housing is one of them.
The proposed Public Development Authority would operate differently than the existing Seattle Housing Authority, which relies on federal investment and financing options. It would also be different than existing non-profit low-income housing developers because the public would own the properties, giving the PDA access to financing options only available to governments. House Our Neighbors explained it this way on their website:
Current affordable housing models and interventions serve a vital role and they need all the resources they can get. A lot of funding for affordable housing is reliant on the federal government, and restricted by the financing available to them, primarily the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and public housing (Section 9). We can create housing not reliant on these funding models, and work alongside these affordable housing strategies to pull more housing off the private market.
This is a very exciting concept. Our city has so much wealth, we need a mechanism to use just a little bit of it to help keep people in homes.
This is also a transportation issue because people need to be able to afford to live in Seattle, especially the parts of the city with great walking, biking and transit access. Building a quality bike network is great and all, but not if only the wealthy can afford to live close enough to easily use it. Biking is an affordable, fun, healthy and extremely efficient way to get around, and more people should be able to safely and easily bike for daily transportation. One way to increase access to safe bike routes is to build more of them. Another way is to build more homes near the quality bike routes we already have. Both of these strategies are needed.
UPDATE: WSDOT announced Thursday that the planned trail closure has been cancelled. “This weekend’s work on SR 520 is canceled. The trail across Lake Washington will be open tonight through Monday morning.”
Map of the closed trail sections (green) from WSDOT.
The walking and biking trails on the 520 Bridge across Lake Washington and under SR-520 near the Arboretum will be closed from late Thursday until early Monday.
Crews will be installing drainage. From 10 p.m. Thursday, April 21 until 5 a.m. Monday, April 25 the SR 520 Trail over Lake Washington and the path under SR 520 will be closed.
Bike/Ped: From 10 p.m. Thursday, April 21 until 5 a.m. Monday, April 25 the SR 520 Trail over Lake Washington and the path under SR 520 will be closed.
