Bikeways

Seattle Bicycle Facilities Collaborative

On Sept 14, thirty-five bicycle transportation champions convened at city hall as part of a Seattle Bicycle Facilities Collaborative. The group (as six subgroups) will go on bikeability tours, combine findings, then re-convene on Oct 12 to develop a prioritized list of bike facilities needs, including on-street striped bike lanes. Councilmember Conlin's office and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington convened the collaborative (quite likely inspired by the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board's tours, which were in turn inspired by national efforts). The product of the process will include a Bicycle Legislative Agenda for Seattle. I and others hope it will also help kick-start a Seattle Bicycle Master Planning effort, similar to Bicycle Master Plans that have brought such excellent on-the-ground success to other US cities within a relatively few short years, much aided by the federal ISTEA/TEA-21 legislation.

Madison Park SR-520 bike connector

Will the city urge WSDOT to assess a Madison-Park-to-SR-520 bike connector in the SR-520 environmental impact assessment? The connector was in the Trans-Lake study all along until a few NIMBYs, masquerading as citizens concerned about wetlands, started complaining about the idea. It's a logical, short connector to build to the planned bike lanes on SR-520 from their easternmost touchdown in Seattle. Lake Washington Boulevard, which starts not far from there, is the most historic and among the most family-friendly bikeways in Seattle. For the past 40 summers, Bicycle Saturdays and Sundays have brought families on bicycles to a carfree Lake Wash Blvd corridor on select summer weekend days. In 2002, a full 32,000 people participated. The connector is a logical commute corridor too, for Eastside workers and residents to and from downtown Seattle or residential neighborhoods in mid-city and all points south. Seattle: Just have WSDOT study the thing. That's what the EIS process is for -- that's how you'll know whether the connector will be environmentally impactful or not. And it always seems perplexing and ironic that in no road-widening EIS is the environmental impact of the actual transportation that the new facility will induce ever considered.

Bicycle Advisory Committees

Various cities, counties, metropolitan planning authorities, and states have bicycle advisory committees (BACs). Some include pedestrians in their scope. Most don't quite have the imprimatur that planning, parks, and other long-standing official boards and commissions typically have, but many places they are the core groups making the environment better for bicycling on the local level.

From the vantage point of Seattle's, it would be interesting to compare notes and ideas, so here are some links. The top ten towns in Washington state for sheer numbers of bike commuters per the Census, that also have bike advisory committees, are: Seattle (5,840 bike commuters), Bellingham (850), Spokane (740), Olympia (430), and Bellevue (230). Ellensburg (350 bike commuters), Vancouver (320), Tacoma (260), Walla Walla (250), and Bremerton (220) are top bike commuter cities either without BACs or BACs below Google's radar screen. WashDOT and the Puget Sound Regional Council have BACs. So do a bunch of cities near Seattle -- including Kent, Redmond (trails), Bellevue, and Bainbridge Island.

Of interest to me as well are other big-city BACs. More links up when I Google/surf these.

Burke-Gilman Trail section groundbreaking

City officials dig in at NW 60th St and Seaview to celebrate the planned and funded "terminus" (but not last) section of trail to be built over the next year. Cheers and thanks to all! Including the mayor and city council, the Friends of the Burke-Gilman Trail, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, Cascade Bicycle Club, SDOT, WSDOT, PSRC, and especially, the people who have advocated for the trail since the early 1970s.

Fremont Bridge victory

After much interaction -- both handholding and headbanging -- with the civil engineers responsible for the the Fremont Bridge, Seattle bicycle advocates have scored a victory, achieving significantly better bicycle accommodation on the bridge approaches than was planned a year ago. I've been personally doggedly determined on this one, and have closely observed, photographed, and thought through the bicycle, pedestrian, and car interactions on and around the bridge. I even took a day trip to Portland to photograph good bikeable bridges, and many good ideas from there have made it into the Fremont bridge. All of which homework was very helpful in making all the little cases and points that come up in a discussion of a complex multimodal environment.

At the outset, the engineers were bike-naive and even bike-hostile. (As a rule, traffic engineers don't speak bike; car is their native and only tongue.) But as a result of advocates' emails to the director and mayor, organized by multiple bike groups and sent by scores of dedicated bike advocates, we were able to pry open a dialogue. Then, by engaging in hours of discussion, comment, criticism (objective, constructive criticism, of the product, not of people), over the months, we were able to gain, bit by bit, a better bridge. By no means what bicyclists would have designed, but within the context of the flatly stated limitations of the project, way better than the less-than-mediocre status quo.

Several learning points: Traffic engineers can be stunningly uninformed, but after a number of months of close-in intervention, they and their product can improve. (They are, after all, civil servants, and they are rational, if a bit obdurate, human beings.) Traffic/street design is surprisingly unrigorous -- it's amazingly hunch-based and open to trial and error. Considering what's at stake -- safety, health, community, differential allocation of public space to different users -- decisions are made in a rather stultified way. But the good thing about such a non-process process is that it can be influenced, in spite of itself.

Bike parking pix superset

The various bike parking photos in different albums are cloned and assembled here, in the album Bike parking superset.

Awesome bike/walk conference

ProWalk/ProBike in Victoria was great. Great connections social, informational, and conceptual. Learned more about Bicycle Master Plans, non-motorists' traffic safety-in-numbers, bike traffic reporting, as well as humor, patience, and fortitude. Bike and ped advocates everywhere struggle to free our streets from the chokehold of car-chauvinists, with lots of little and sometimes big successes along the way, both on the ground, and in the "culture." Finding humor, cameraderie, and community along the way (in spite of the pitfalls and knuckleheads) helps sustain us on the purposeful drive for healthier, safer, saner, and more human- and eco-friendly places. Olympic Discovery Trail pix and Vic pix here when up.

Off to ProWalk/ProBike 2004

Off to the wonderful bicycle & pedestrian conference in Victoria BC via combination of transit bus (Kitsap and Jefferson; full Seattle-Victoria connections here), plus ferries (WA and private), plus biking the brand-new Olympic Discovery Trail on the north Olympic Peninsula. A multi-modal carfree journey to a conference full of people who could appreciate same.

Some quick internal hyperlinks: Seattle Bikeability Tours; Shop by Bike/bike parking evaluation; Seattle's Fremont Bridge; Portland OR's bikeable bridges. More pix, captions, info to be added. Any photos on this site may be freely used for bicycle advocacy purposes. All but a few were snapped by me (Emily Allen).

Fremont Bridge and others

The Fremont Bridge is likely the most-biked bridge in the state of Washington, connecting the state's highest density of bike commuters with the Seattle downtown core. Major portions of it are about to be rebuilt for earthquake-proofing. If the city is serious about its commitment to bikes, it will see to it that the new structure's lane configuration is better for bikes than currently, like by striping bike lanes. So far, SDOT is dragging. A look at the existing Fremont Bridge here (when I put photos up); the future plans essentially duplicate the existing, so the deficiencies are slated to remain.

By contrast, Portland OR has done a great job making their Willamette River bridges highly bikeable and walkable. (Portland bridges photos link here when up.) New York City has recently made major bikeability improvements to a number of East River bridges, with excellent results. Vancouver BC has, too, as have other cities. (Multi-city bridge photos here when I put them up.) Seattle: Time to follow through on your stated commitment to a bikeable, sustainable city. And we're not even talking infrastructure in this case, just signs and paint -- decimal dust in the $30 million project.

Seattle Bikeability Tours - quick links

Quick links to the photo albums for the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board's 2004 Seattle Bikeability Tours: southwest, southeast, northwest, northeast, east central, and west central Seattle. More info up as I add photos and captions.