Seattle Bike Blog

Bad news for biking PNW travelers as BoltBus shuts down – UPDATED

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

July 1, 2021

MAJOR UPDATE: After posting yesterday and sending a question to FlixBus, the company announced that “ALL FlixBuses operating in the PNW are planned to have 🚲 racks available beginning July 14th!”

This is big news. FlixBus operates lines all over Washington and Oregon (and maybe to British Columbia when Canadian travel reopens?), even going places that BoltBus did not. Like Ellensburg, Spokane, Leavenworth and Wenatchee. For example, I can imagine FlixBusing to Ellensburg, then biking back to Seattle via the Palouse to Cascades Trail and camping along the way. This opens a lot of new opportunities for bike adventures.

You have to register a spot for your bike when you buy your ticket. No spots are available on the website yet, but hopefully that will change in the next few weeks.

https://twitter.com/FlixBus_USA/status/1410714073507852290

Original post:

This old bike didn’t mind being shoved into the baggage compartment.

BoltBus was wonderful for three reasons: It was cheap. It ran multiple times a day. And they would let you shove your bike in the baggage compartment for free.

The bus service, owned by Greyhound, is apparently shutting down all its service across the continent, the Seattle Times reports. The official website says, “Effective 6/7/21 the BoltBus services are currently being operated by Greyhound in most markets while we undergo a few renovations.” But the Times reports that “Greyhound Lines, its parent company, has scuttled the BoltBus brand and has no plans to get it going again.”

As just a bus service, it wasn’t too remarkable. Greyhound, Amtrak and FlixBus also travel to many of the same destinations. But its lax attitude about bringing bicycles is what made it an amazing way to travel between major Pacific Northwest cities on a very low budget. So not only did you save some bucks on transporting a bike, but you also didn’t have to pay for transportation when you got there.

The Amtrak Cascades is still the best way to travel with your bike in the Pacific Northwest. They have bike storage in their baggage car, and you just have to pay a fee to reserve one of the spots. But the train schedule is limited, and tickets are a bit more expensive.

If you want to bring a bike on a Greyhound bus, they make you box it up and charge you a significant oversize baggage fee. The hassle plus the fee essentially make it impractical to bring your bike on the Greyhound, especially if your plan was to bike to the bus, then hop on your bike to get around your destination. Bike boxes are big and unwieldy, and many people don’t know how to disassemble and reassemble their bikes quickly on a downtown sidewalk. It’s an impractical limitation that essentially makes Greyhound buses off-limits for bike travel unless it’s truly the only option.

You can also take FlixBus, a service that sounds a lot like Boltbus and that even has an option you can check to bring a bike. The problem is that no trips seem to have an open bike space (suggesting that the Seattle-based buses don’t actually have bike racks). Former Mayor Mike McGinn and I had a Twitter exchange with FlixBus in 2019, and the company said it hoped to install bike racks on the Seattle-based buses in early 2020. But then, you know, some things happened that may have sidelined that work. Hopefully Flixbus does add those bike racks to the Seattle routes, because then it could be a great option. And since they also go to Ellensburg and Spokane, there are even more opportunities for FlixBus bike adventures.

But there was something great about just shoving your bike into the baggage area of a Boltbus. Sure, it was hardly the tender loving care many might prefer, but there was no extra fee and no need to reserve a spot. Just bike up, shove it in, and go. Then straighten out your bent fender when you get to your destination, and bike away. Sometimes you just don’t need to overthink these things.

Do you have a favorite way to travel to other big Pacific Northwest cities with a bike? Let us know in the comments below.

tags: amtrak cascades, boltbus, flixbus

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Transit returns to full-capacity this week

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 30, 2021

Transit is back. Over the next couple days, agencies around the region will relax many of their COVID precautions as the bulk of Washington State’s restrictions end.

Like many of you, I’ve still been treating transit as an essential-trips-only service. I didn’t want to take a limited spot from someone who needed it more than I did. If biking was a practical option, I biked. I have taken the bus a handful of times, but it hasn’t been a regular part of my transportation mix like it was before the pandemic.

But now I am vaccinated, and so are more than 70% of eligible King County residents. It’s time for transit to reopen to full capacity and regain its place as the go-to way to get around town (well, other than biking and walking of course).

Riders will still have to wear masks and give the bus driver space (I mean, you should have been giving the bus driver space even before the pandemic), but the signs blocking off every other bus seat will be going away. Perhaps most importantly, buses will allow passengers until they reach normal capacity limits. This makes relying on transit much more practical for more people and more trips because it really sucks to get passed up by a full bus.

Many lines are still operating at reduced service levels compared to 2019, so if you haven’t been taking the bus since the pandemic started, you may find that your every-7-minutes bus is now a 15-minute bus (or your 15-minute bus is now every 30 minutes). So check the schedule.

I understand that many people probably still feel anxious about getting on a crowded bus. This has been a traumatic time, and feeling wary of crowds seems very natural. The good news it that studies have not found much evidence linking transit use with the spread of COVID even before vaccines. I hope these results hold as capacity increases, though the fact that the cities studied (like New York) have very high transit use gives me hope.

Starting in mid-April, there is no apparent correlation between increasing bus ridership and COVID numbers in New York. Chart from “Public Transit and COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Research and Best Practices” by Sam Schwartz Consulting.

(more…)

tags: community transit, covid-19, king county metro, kitsap transit, pierce transit, sound transit, washington state ferries

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Watch: Riding the new Green Lake bike lanes

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 25, 2021

Crews are nearly finished upgrading one of the most important bike routes in Seattle. East Green Lake Way N may have a terribly confusing name, but it forms a hub of sorts for north end bike routes. The Interurban North regional bike route and routes from Greenwood, Northgate, Ravenna, the U District, Wallingford and Fremont all lead to Green Lake. It’s also among the few flat options in the area.

I filmed a bike tour of the new lanes that walks through many of the changes and the history behind them. Watch above.

Before the upgrade, the street had a skinny paint-only bike lane that disappeared in many places. Especially when the lake was busy, biking northbound could be a stressful experience as people would often drive across the bike lane to turn or park. And the worst was when people would swerve into the bike lane to pass a car waiting to make a left turn. The bike lane also completely or mostly disappeared at bigger intersections like Ravenna Boulevard, Green Lake Drive N and West Green Lake Way N.

So when SDOT went to repave the street, they also fully reimagined how the bike route works. Three vital intersections got major remakes, and the northbound bike lane has shifted to the west side of the street to create a two-way bikeway. Though one-way bike lanes on either side of the street are typically preferred, this is a good example of an exception to that rule. Because the lake side of the street has far fewer driveways, placing both bike lanes on that side dramatically reduces the conflict points for people biking northbound. (more…)

tags: green lake, green lake way, Let’s Ride Bikes, sdot, videos

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Watch: City Council candidates debate safe streets and transit

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 23, 2021

Candidates for the open City Council Position 9 seat debated safe streets and other walking, biking and transit issues yesterday during a Move All Seattle Sustainably forum. Nikkita Oliver, Brianna Thomas and Sara Nelson attended. As with the recent mayoral forum, Erica C. Barnett moderated. Watch below (you can read the automated transcript with video time stamps here).

The August 3 primary is coming up quickly, and ballots will be mailed July 14. If you have moved recently, the easiest way to vote is to register or change your address online ASAP so that your ballot is mailed to the correct place on July 14. The deadline to register or change your address online in King County is July 26, though you can register and vote in-person through Election Day.

tags: 2021 primary, city council position 9

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State will no longer revoke driver’s licenses due to failure to pay fines

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 22, 2021

Excerpt of the court decision (PDF).

Washington State is reinstating about 100,000 people’s driver’s licenses after Thurston County Superior Court found it unconstitutional to revoke a license due to failure to pay a fine or appear in court for a non-criminal moving violation. The state’s Department of Licensing will not appeal the decision.

Though it may seem counterintuitive at first, this is good news for traffic safety in our state. Revoking a license should be reserved for people who have demonstrated that they are a serious danger behind the wheel and pose a threat to public safety. It should absolutely not be used as a way to further punish people for being poor.

One of the biggest challenges to stopping repeat dangerous drivers is how to stop them from continuing to drive regardless of the status of their license. It is not a great idea to pack prisons full of bad drivers, but there needs to be some significant deterrent for the small percentage of people who continue making dangerous decisions such as repeat DUI drivers. One such deterrent is to make it a significant offense to drive with a suspended license.

However, when licenses can be suspended solely due to failure to pay a fine, then the penalty for driving with a suspended license becomes a penalty for being poor. That is not at all what that infraction should be trying to accomplish. The act of driving even though a court has decided you are too dangerous to drive is a serious threat to public safety. Driving without paying a ticket is not a serious public safety threat. These acts should never be treated as equal.

Michelle Baruchman at the Seattle Times summed up the problem well:

Previously in Washington, a driver who received a speeding ticket or another kind of moving violation, could pay the fine or request a hearing. If the individual either did not respond to the citation or failed to appear in court, their driver’s license would be suspended.

People caught driving with a suspended license for noncriminal offenses were charged with a misdemeanor crime that led to 90 days in jail or another $1,000 fine — adding to existing debt and making it harder for drivers to get their licenses back, [ACLU Senior Staff Attorney John] Midgley said.

In its complaint, the ACLU argued the “severe and life-altering” impacts of the law would often “trigger a cascading set of adverse consequences” felt acutely by people with lower incomes. Wealthier individuals could retain their licenses “even though they are guilty of the exact same infractions.”

The court decision effectively speeds up a change that was already coming. A new state law that takes effect January 2023 will rewrite the conditions for having a license revoked. Senate Bill 5226, passed earlier this year, removes failure to pay as a reason to revoke a license. However, the new law retains failure to appear in court as a reason.

Having your license suspended should mean something. Licenses should be entirely about a driver’s demonstrated ability to operate a car safely. If a license is revoked, it should be due to that person’s past dangerous decisions behind the wheel and nothing else.

tags: department of licensing, suspended licenses

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Cascade will host an August (not so) Chilly Hilly

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

June 21, 2021
With iconic images of dozens of people biking off the ferry together, Cascade Bicycle Club’s Chilly Hilly ride has signaled the start of the bike events season for nearly half a century. As the name suggests, the February ride around Bainbridge Island is often cold and rainy, though riders warm up quickly pedaling up the many long climbs around the beautiful island just across Elliott Bay.

Chilly Hilly 2020 was held just days before the pandemic shutdown began. The 2021 ride was cancelled due to pandemic restrictions this winter, but now the club is trying to make up for lost time by holding the ride August 1. This will make it the only Cascade major event that will not have missed a year. It also sets up Chilly Hilly 2022 to be the 50th Anniversary ride.

Chilly Hilly rarely (never?) hits its rider cap, but that might not be the case this year. There are only 2,500 spots, and those might sell out for an August 1 event. There is no day-of registration, and registration closes July 23.

More details from Cascade:
Traditionally the start of the riding season in the Northwest, Chilly Hilly returns in 2021 as a summertime spin for its 49th year. The 33-mile route around Bainbridge Island starts with a scenic early morning ferry ride across Puget Sound from Seattle, or you can join the crowd directly on Bainbridge Island. Join us for the ride Bicycling Magazine named “one of four classic rides” in the nation. It’s guaranteed to be hilly (though a lot less chilly) and always a heck of a lot of fun. So get the dust off your bike and get ready to tackle some hills and enjoy some chilly treats in town afterwards!

Registration Includes:
- A scenic cruise on a Washington State Ferry (Seattle start)
- Free food stop at Battle Point Park
- Route support
tags: cascade bicycle club, chilly hilly, chilly hilly 2021

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