Bikeways

Seattle Bikeability Tours - more

Inspired by the folks at the awesome Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center and their bikeability checklist concept, the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board went on a series of bikeability tours in the first half of 2004. Seattle covers 84 square miles (not including water), making it three-fourths again bigger than San Francisco and more than triple the size of Manhattan. So we biked it in six pieces roughly like these.

For each sector, we evaluated the sector itself as well as the downtown commute experience associated with that sector. Each ride had one or two planners/leaders (generally who lived in that sector) and five to ten of us total. We started in January and February with the south half of Seattle, the far-less-biked part, which was good strategically and psychologically. We rode each tour at an easy pace and stopped often to discuss and photograph things. We looked at a combination of nice scenic routes, nasty broken commuter links, and everything in between. In spite of our best efforts to not take the whole day, each tour was a 9-3ish day, including a ravenously eaten lunch.

Bottom line, we had a great time and learned a ton. Our board's City Council member liaison, Richard Conlin, joined us on one of the tours (on a chilly February day, no less), and has invited me to present our findings to the Transportation Committee. I've done three presentations so far, up for a period at the Seattle Channel's website (see 3/12, 4/27, and 7/13/04). The opportunity has been a great one (and nothing better than prepping a presentation to get you informed on a topic), we've provided new information to the Council, as well as had a platform for advocating for more and better bikeways. Check out the photo albums when I put them up: southwest (January), southeast (February), northwest (March), northeast (May), east central (June), west central (July). Some bonus photos too, snapped on return viewings.

A few bike map links

Bike maps make for a fascinating study of cartographic "symbolization" -- the choices of the various lines and symbols, along with their sizes, colors, and types, that convey relevant geographical data on a map. Unlike most road (car) maps, you always need to consult the legend, and there are some common customs but no standardization. Bike paths are often green but may be red; dashed lines as opposed to solid ones could mean "trail" "future" or "caution"; and so on. The bike-relevant realities are complicated too, not just maps, but that'll be another post.

A lot of bike maps are found in pdf format on city (and state) web pages, which is great, because not so many years ago it was more voodoo to try and track them down, they would go out of print, be distributed through limited outlets (like bike shops), or you had to identify an obscure local official to call to get one. Yay for webbification of local government, easy searchability, and pdfs!

If any links get broken, be sporting and post a comment indicating the correct link. Here are bike map links (caution: most files big pdfs) for: Seattle (north and south), King County, WA, Portland OR, Vancouver BC, Eugene OR, San Francisco, Davis CA, Denver (back), Boulder, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City (Manhattan-Bronx-Queens, Brooklyn-Staten Island).

And for the next level entirely of bike route planning, check out the amazing, like-Mapquest-for-bikes-but-better, BikeMetro.com for Los Angeles and southern California.

Bike maps

If I can figure out a good way to get map pdfs up, maybe in a photo album, and/or some hyperlinks? I'll put some up. Seattle, King County, Portland, NYC, Vancouver BC?, and on from there.

Shop by Bike

Shop by Bike, funded by a mini-grant from the CarSmart Communities program of the Seattle's Strategic Planning Office (since re-org'd), was a project focusing on bike parking at Seattle's supermarkets. Volunteers in various neighborhoods biked to nearby Seattle supermarkets, armed with a checklist and a camera, and evaluated bike access and bike parking there. That was in 2001. Various bike-parking bloopers were observed. A letter was then sent to each of the 72 supermarkets, with store-specific suggestions for improving bike parking, where needed. In 2002, the stores were reevaluted. Some actually followed our handy advice -- nice. I'll post a photo album including some "before" and "after" pictures.

As an added thing, with the idea of encouraging bicycling for errand trips such as grocery shopping, people attending Bike to Work Day booths or Bike Expo in 2002 got handy shopping list pads and/or hip, safety-enhancing in-spoke reflectors with the cool Shop by Bike logo (a Chicago/Chicagoland Bike Fed creation).

Seattle Bikeability Tours

Coming up, I'll add photo albums and captions about the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board's Bikeability Tours. We did 6 montly bike tours of 6 six sectors of Seattle. We looked at the existing, planned, and needed bike facilities in these sectors (and the downtown commute from each), and observed, discussed, took pictures, and then ate pizza. I learned a lot, especially about the underserved southeast and southwest neighborhoods, and I'm learning more as I compile findings for presentations to City Council's Transportation Committee (I've done three of the six so far).

New photo albums up

Four photo albums now up include a too-small one from a recent trip to New York City (not enough time to see all the many nice new bikeways there), one from a King County bike trails camping trip last November, and one from the Seattle Critical Mass Ride last month.

Also up is an album on Pike Place Bike Place. This was a bike parking advocacy project, inspired by Chris' and my love of the market and the need for bike parking there, in which a set of 8 inverted-U bike racks were installed by SDOT on a huge curb bulbout at Western Ave and Virginia St, across from Victor Steinbrueck Park (a "before" pic here). Paul Dunn of Friends of the Market was an early adopter, knowledgeable market denizen, and all-around person of wry humor involved in seeing it through. Initally the hope was to get better bike parking near the pig (under the eaves by the ATM, where bikes park now), too, but that hit more resistance and is a more complicatedly multi-purposeful spot. The Pike Place Bike Place was a nice, bite-sized, successful, as well as life-affirming, bike advocacy project. In large part because the people who tend and inhabit the market are so great. Wacky historic pix too. And a Seattle Times/Pacific NW Magazine column about it here.

Bikeway photos to share

Check out the photo albums at left.

I love taking bike 'facilities' pictures. A digital camera is a great bike advocacy tool. You can capture, better understand, and communicate about what you see. A picture conveys things words really just can't, helps makes a case, and can sheds new light on a subject even for the person who took it.

The bicycle environment is a user interface of sorts, and no one is more expert at assessing the interface than the people who use it: bicyclists. So often, traffic engineers, urban planners, consultants, elected officials, whoever, never use the system and don't know what it's like or what makes it workable. So the user -- the 'non-expert' -- can communicate a lot of useful information to the (supposed) experts.