The vast majority of Seattle voters support the city’s safe streets efforts, including pedestrianized streets, on-street café seating, bus lanes and bike lanes. According to a recent survey commissioned by the Northwest Progressive Institute in partnership with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, it’s not even close.
The survey, conducted online by Change Research (methodology), asked likely voters in Seattle how much they support various value statements, infrastructure changes and policy ideas. And the results are very vindicating for the city’s safe streets movement. Opinion is not actually very split about many concepts that people assume are controversial, such as bus lanes, bike lanes and even fully closing streets to cars. People are confidently for them. I wish we had survey results for these questions from 10 years ago, because I think public opinion has massively shifted.
Among the infrastructure questions, support for protected bike lanes was the most divided, but even those had 71% support versus 26% opposed. Of course that 26% can still be very loud, which is why organizing to support bike lane projects is still so important. But it is important to understand where the majority opinion lies.
Interestingly, people were also very supportive of moving traffic enforcement duties from the Seattle Police Department to the Seattle Department of Transportation. 73% supported the idea while only 17% opposed it (10% were not sure). Many instances of police violence start with a simple traffic stop, whether it’s “jaywalking” or biking without a helmet or driving with a broken taillight. It is very encouraging that Seattle is ready to make a dramatic change to the way we enforce traffic safety laws. I hope Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell and the City Council see this result and are encouraged to take bold action.
Seattle Bike Blog does not usually do bike tutorial stuff. There are many other excellent YouTube channels and online resources if you want to learn about bike maintenance and such. However, the vast majority of YouTube fix-a-flat tutorials start by having you take off your wheel. There is an easier way.
So when I got a flat biking my kid to the playground recently, I figured that was a good opportunity to show you all my favorite method for fixing a flat. This method is easier than replacing the tube and chucking out the old one. It’s also a lot cheaper and saves a tube from going into a landfill. It is even easier than rolling your bike to a bike shop unless you just happen to be very close to one.
The total time for me to fix the flat and record this video was 15 minutes, and the total cost was 20 cents for the patch (assuming you already have levers and a pump). While you probably could remove the wheel, replace the tube and put it back on in less time, this method completely avoids dealing with the chain, the brakes, the quick quick release, and all the other frustrations that come with taking a wheel on and off. So I think this is the easiest method for fixing a flat, even (or especially) for beginners.
This method only works if the location of the puncture is obvious. If you pump up the flat tire and can hear air escaping from a puncture, then this method is perfect. If the hole is so big you can barely get it pumped up before it goes flat again, then the hole is too big to patch and you need a new tube. If it is a slow leak that goes flat overnight, then you will probably need to spend more time finding the hole and are best taking the wheel off. However, if you picked up a piece of glass in the middle of a ride, chances are good that this method will work.
With $20 million in federal funding, Seattle now has enough money to complete a long-planned E Marginal Way rebuild in SODO. Final design is scheduled to be complete in early 2022, with work beginning later in the year. Construction should be complete by 2025.
The funded phase stretches from S Atlantic Street near T-Mobile Park to the West Seattle Bridge, and there is a continuous and protected bikeway the entire length connecting the downtown Alaskan Way Trail at the north and the West Seattle trail network at the south. Plans for a multi-use trail between the West Seattle Bridge and Diagonal Ave S in Georgetown have been moved to a later Phase 2.
The $20 million in federal funding comes from the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program, and an additional $7.1 million comes from the Move Seattle Levy. The Port of Seattle and the Freight Mobility Strategic Investment Board will also contribute funds to the project.
“The grant funding will enable us to do both the safety improvements and the road reconstruction at the same time,” SDOT wrote in a press release. “This means that there will be fewer disruptions to freight traffic during construction.”
The project has such a high price tag primarily because the entire roadway will be reconstructed to accommodate heavy trucks from the Port. The existing sidewalk will also be reconstructed and brought up to accessibility codes. The new protected bike lane will travel along the east side of the roadway for most of the route. Between S Horton Street and the West Seattle Bridge, an additional two-way bikeway will travel along the west side of the street to connect the West Seattle trail network to the new bikeway.
If we zoom out a little bit, the implications of this project are remarkable. When combined with the under-construction downtown waterfront bikeway, the E Marginal Way bikeway would create a fully complete and protected bike route from Alki to downtown Seattle and beyond. If the waterfront bike lanes are indeed connected to the Elliott Bay Trail like they should be, then there will be a connection through Interbay to the Ship Canal Trail (and therefore the Burke-Gilman Trail) and the larger regional trail network. Then if the Duwamish Trail is finally connected to the Green River Trail, wow. In a few years, it should be feasible to bike more than 50 miles from the northern border of King County in Woodinville to the southern county line beyond Auburn almost entirely on trails or protected bike lanes. Suddenly, connecting the Foothills Trail in Pierce County to the Centennial Trail in Snohomish County feels within reach.
Combined with the EasTrail work underway over the next few years, the number of new additions and connections for the regional trail network are enormous. So many people have worked on so many different pieces of walking and biking improvements across the region, and they’re all coming together in the next few years. Get ready.
Today is the final day to submit comments on the revamped Environmental Assessment for the RapidRide J project, which includes a redesigned Eastlake Ave E. There are a lot of excellent improvements included in the project, which would finally build desperately-needed bike lanes on this vital bike route along the east side of Lake Union.
But the design is still sorely lacking at one of the most important places: The south end of the University Bridge. The current design would make essentially no improvements to the existing skinny, paint-only bike lanes. Perhaps more importantly, it would do little to improve the intersection with Fuhrman Ave E, which is an intersection of multiple bike routes. It is an excellent candidate for a protected intersection.
I talked about the lack of protection in this area in a long video about the Eastlake design plans back in early 2020 (starts at 15:49). There are definitely options for recapturing the space needed for protection here, the project team just needs to genuinely prioritize safety. The current design prioritizes car movement, which is not acceptable.
Today (November 22) is the last day to submit comments about the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the project, and Cascade Bicycle Club has a handy online tool you can use to voice your support for better bike lanes on this block. Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is also calling for more protection on this block. Here’s the text of Cascade’s sample letter:
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the RapidRide J-Line. I am writing to request that protected bike lanes extend along the full length of Eastlake Ave E, including between Harvard Ave E and Fuhrman Ave E.
This project and its accompanying multi-modal improvements serve an important role in connecting major hubs of our city, and we want to ensure its implementation improves safety and mobility for all people biking, walking, rolling, and taking transit in this area.
The protected bike lanes along Eastlake Avenue fill an essential missing connection for people traveling between the University District, Eastlake, and downton and to the homes and businesses along the way.
However, I am concerned to see that the lane protection currently ends prematurely at Harvard Avenue. This means that for the last block of Eastlake, people on bikes are required to ride on a striped bike lane, with no physical protection from vehicles. Dropping the protected bike lane in this area is especially concerning due to the volume of vehicle traffic that travels at high speeds in connection with the I-5 highway on-ramp.
Bike routes are only as comfortable as their scariest section, and dropping the protection for people riding bikes in the most dangerous intersection will deter even experienced riders and will not encourage new riders. It also presents a real safety risk for vulnerable road users, at a time when the number of people losing their lives while walking and biking in our city is going up, not down. Fully protected bike lanes are critical for maintaining safety throughout the entire corridor, creating better bike network connections, and ultimately increasing ridership.
Every effort should be made to increase the utility, safety, connectivity, and attractiveness of the city’s bike network to make bicycling a viable option for more people, and more trips. We appreciate the work that has been done to this point to plan for a designated bike route along the Eastlake corridor: there is much to like about the designs to date. With a small fix to this one block section, Seattle will have another world-class bikeway that prioritizes safety.
Thank you for prioritizing the safety of vulnerable road users in this project.
This election is only open to voters who live in Seattle’s City Council District 3 (PDF map), encompassing Capitol Hill, the Central District, and some surrounding areas. If your registration is up-to-date, you should have received your ballot in the mail this week. You can check the status of your registration or update your address via the King County Elections My Voter Information website. That site also has a tab for “December 2021 Recall Election,” which will tell you if your address is included.
Even if you don’t like Kshama Sawant’s politics, District 3 voters should say NO to the special recall election underway now through December 7.
Recalling her would set a terrible precedent to set for our city’s elected government system. Sawant won the 2019 election, and was elected to serve a full four-year term. People who don’t like that’s she’s a socialist or whatever can support a different candidate in 2023. That’s how our city democracy works.
There is too much real work to do in our city to spend a ton of energy on mid-term recall elections like this. A recall is a BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY kind of tool for when the public has no other means to prevent an elected official from further harming our city or as a response to a particularly egregious malfeasance. None of this applies to Sawant.
The supposed “charges” that form the legal basis for the recall are very flimsy. For example, she used City Hall printers to print materials supporting a Tax Amazon ballot initiative that never happened. This was not an appropriate use of public printers, but she owned up to the mistake and paid a fine. Don’t tell me you’re going to recall our most senior Councilmember over the use of a printer. Other charges say she participated in a summer 2020 protest march that went by the Mayor’s house and she opened the City Hall doors to another protest group. I would say that supporting protests against police brutality was a good thing for a Councilmember to do, and opening the doors of City Hall to the marching public was an effective and way to make her point that our city government belongs to the people. Even if you don’t agree with her tactics, these are not reasons to recall a Councilmember.
Seattle Bike Blog has endorsed Sawant many times. She is the senior member of the Council, and she has been a consistently positive vote for biking and safe streets efforts. But again, these aren’t even the most compelling reasons to vote NO. This election is not asking whether you like her politics, it’s asking whether we need to disrupt our government and the four-year term cycle in order to cast out someone who was legitimately elected in 2019.
Additionally, it is concerning and undemocratic for the recall campaign purposefully delay submitting their signatures until after the deadline to put the issue on the higher-turnout general election ballot in November. They are hoping that fewer people vote because then they have a better chance of sidestepping the younger voters who have long been strong Sawant supporters. If they were really so concerned about harm from Sawant’s ongoing presence on Council they would have tried to get the recall onto the ballot as soon as possible. Instead, they delayed in an expensive effort to get a less democratic process. No voter should support these tactics.
“The Aurora Avenue extension, if authorized by the voters, must be paid for not in money alone, but in the blood of the children who are entitled, first to safe passage to their schools and second, to safety in their parks—a thing which this speedway would absolutely deny.” — Front page editorial in The Seattle Times, November 2, 1930.
From a front page editorial in The Seattle Times, November 2, 1930 (PDF).
Despite the rather desperate pleas from residents in Fremont, Wallingford and Green Lake as well as the entire Seattle Park Board and The Seattle Times, King County voters in 1930 approved plans to extend Aurora Avenue through Woodland Park and along the planned pathway for Green Lake Way. The decision set in motion the creation of a pseudo-freeway that destroyed hundreds of homes, divided Woodland Park, separated neighborhoods and become the most deadly street in Seattle. We are still dealing with the negative consequences of this decision to this day.
But a small, relatively low-budget project currently in development could help fix at least one of the many problems the Aurora Extension created by reconnecting the biking and walking loop around Green Lake. The west side of Green Lake is baffling to new riders trying to navigate their way around the lake. The bike route just sort of disappears, dead-ending into a freeway. The only option is to take the very busy path around the lake, but signs say anyone with wheels can only go one-way. A one-way bike route doesn’t work. What is going on here?
The problem is that in addition to digging a trench through Woodland Park, the Aurora Extension also demolished the west segment of Green Lake Boulevard, which was a vital part of the Olmsted Brothers’ design for the park.
1910 Olmsted Brothers plan for Green Lake Boulevard.
SDOT’s Green Lake Outer Loop project, urged by a community campaign by the Green Lake and Wallingford Safe Streets group, would utilize an extra lane on Aurora to complete the two-way bike route around the lake. SDOT’s plan is to install a jersey barrier to protect the bikeway from highway traffic, then connect the bikeway to the recently-completed bikeways at the north and southwest sections of the lake.
The project team is collecting feedback on the idea via an online survey that you should definitely complete.
Below is a look at the plan for the Aurora section of the bikeway and three options for West Green Lake Drive N. (more…)
The vast majority of Seattle voters support the city’s safe streets efforts, including pedestrianized streets, on-street café seating, bus lanes and bike lanes. According to a recent survey commissioned by the Northwest Progressive Institute in partnership with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, it’s not even close.
