Bike Everywhere Day 2022 is May 20, but there are also bikey events throughout May to help encourage more people to bike or to simply celebrate how great it is to bike around this beautiful place. This is the first full-on Bike Month since 2019, as the pandemic cancelled most Bike Month events in 2020 and 2021. So get out there, meet people and show your support for local bike events.
Every day during busy travel times, people turning left from southbound 9th Avenue N block the bike lane and crosswalk across Mercer Street. This happens every signal cycle, forcing people to try to find a path through the mess of cars and trucks just to get across the street. It has been this way for years.
After witnessing this blockage every day on the way home from my kid’s preschool, I became convince that there is a $0 fix to the problem. Well, “fix” is maybe the wrong word. But for $0, the city could make the bike lane and crosswalk much more usable. It is such an obvious solution that I’m sure I am not the first person to think of it (though I did suggest it a half decade ago when it opened). I made the video above to explain the concept.
Mercer Street’s traffic signals have a so-called “Intelligent Transportation Systems Program,” which is supposed to dynamically adjust the signal timings based on the needs of street users. But it is not very “intelligent” if it allows this complete failure to occur every single day for years on end. The problem is that the ITS Program is designed to prioritize vehicle movement, not to make it easier to walk or bike. This is the same system that steals crosswalk time and gives it to cars.
It’s time for some old-fashioned human intervention.
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.
