The time to comment on the Bicycle Master Plan Draft update is over.
Or is it?
According to the Cascade Bicycle Club’s blog, the Seattle Department of Transportation “received more comments on the NE 65th Street protected bike lane than any other project proposed in the draft Bicycle Master Plan Update.”
Not a surprising observation to hear, especially after a less-than-stellar open house on the BMP Draft on June 13 at Roosevelt High School, and a “small business owners/residents meeting” held on June 23 at the Varsity Restaurant on NE 65th St.
We think it is a fair point to make, for all sides of the issue of NE 65th Street’s place in the BMP Update, that there is a lot of confusion around the issue.
Which is why we are grateful to see that a neighborhood town hall regarding NE 65th St and the Bicycle Master Plan Update is being held at the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center (6353 Ravenna Ave NE) on Monday, August 12, from 6:45-8 PM.
Click the image above to view the Neighborhood Town Hall invitation in full.
If you yourself are not able to attend this meeting, and/or would like to read about it after the fact, the Ravenna Blog will be providing live coverage of the events. We’ll post the link here on Monday the 12th.
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If we may be so bold: If you are planning on attending the meeting, please consider taking an alternate mode of transportation than your usual. The journey might give you some insight into the concerns of others in the area.
Green pro bike democrat glad you posted this notice.
Looking forward to learning more about the proposed bike corridor.
I am for it over all. I am not sure 65th is the right place, maybe 68th or 70th would be better?
But I like the idea of friends who bike being safe and sound on their commutes.
I biked for 15 years and think this is the technology of the future. Unless the Jetsons actually comes to pass. 🙂
Come to the meeting and discuss it!
I would love to attend the meeting, but unfortunately I have a board meeting that evening for work. Likely won’t be getting back home to the neighborhood until 8:30 (My wife and I own a house in Bryant on 28th Ave NE between 55th and 60th). I submitted comments to the recent survey sent out by the RBCA. I will see if my wife can go ahead of me with comments.
I am fully in support of building out bike infrastructure in our neighborhood, including along the 65th St commercial corridor. My wife and I do almost all of our getting around town for shopping via public transit, bike and walking. We do some shopping along 65th (primarily at Third Place and the pub downstairs), but generally don’t find ourselves lingering along the corridor since its such a completely unpleasant experience. Its more like walking along a freeway than a neighborhood commercial corridor. We wind up spending our dollars outside the neighborhood in places like Old Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Capitol Hill, etc. You know – places you can walk around and not feel like you are fourth in priority after cars, cars and cars. We would prefer to spend our dollars locally. Unfortunately, 65th Street as currently designed is a pedestrian- and bicycle (and thus retailer) horror show.
Bike infrastructure has been shown to have significant positive benefits for sales foot traffic for neighborhood commercial districts. Customers who arrive by bike spend more at businesses they frequent than drivers (Portland 2012 study). Bike lane infrastructure has the most bang for job buck benefit out of all types of public works (UMass 2011 study). There is a positive correlation between bike lane infrastructure and property values (U-Cinicinnati 2011 study) Even DRIVERS prefer streets with segregated bike lanes – http://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/car_users_would_prefer_separated_bike_lanes_too_study_finds
So on one side of this issue we have academic studies, data driven analysis and decades of real world experience in how to design successful urban spaces that priorities multi-modal infrastructure – and in particular making sure pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit-riders have equal priority to cars (as opposed to the current paradigm on 65th Street where cars trump everything). On the other side, knee-jerk, anti-change reactionaries – who scream the loudest just like every other time something different is proposed. It gets a little infuriating to have to see positive developments in our neighborhood potentially derailed by people who – quite frankly – have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
The overall goals of the draft update of the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan are laudable. However it needs more work in three areas: (1) extending the prior bicycle network, (2) vetting individual routes, (3) phasing the implementation.
We applaud the goal of extending bicycle facilities to better serve families, children, seniors, women, and others who have encountered barriers in the past, especially safety. Bicycling should be for more than commuters and recreationalists. It should serve a variety of local destinations with greenways and cycle tracks.
Yet the bicycle facility maps have several issues. First, suggested greenways and cycle tracks should be placed in the context of current bicycle routes and facilities – existing bike paths, bike lanes, sharrows, etc., and routes from the Seattle Bicycling Guide Map. Only this way can we see it all networks together.
Second, close examination reveals that many of the individual facilities suggested have not been adequately studied or vetted. For example, are there steep hills or other impediments? Is there adequate street space, or if not, will parking space or traffic lanes or property have to be taken? What is the projected usage, especially versus alternative usage, which in some cases may include transit or trucks as well as cars? What are the financial requirements? What community input / decision making political / processes may be needed?
Third, the diverse character and impact of the suggested facilities leads us to conclude that they need to be more than lines on a map. For example, you might classify them as candidates for a phase I, phase II, or phase III implementation. Phase I facilities would be those without significant obstacles – inexpensive and with good community support and projected usage, such as conversion of existing bike lanes to cycle tracks or easy-to-do greenways in areas of increasing cycling. Phase II projects would be encountering more financial need, or controversy, or ambiguous data, or significant competing usage, etc. These will need design / alternatives studies and a significant community process with probable delay. Phase III projects would likely encounter major obstacles, so that they are more aspirational at present and may require many years before conditions are ripe.
We conclude that it is premature to put lines on a map without indicating the diverse challenges they represent. Even then, if this is to be just an update, not a new bicycle plan, the suggested facilities should be for illustrative purposes only, not part of a formal plan until they have been more adequately studied. In fact at this point it would be appropriate to include alternative suggestions for facilities and routes.
An hour and 15 minutes? That’s it?????? That’s all the time this bumbling Magoo and his SDOT pals have for a discussion of something that so drastically affects a major transportation corridor and the people who use it? Sure looks to me like the fix is in.
Speaking of knee-jerk reactionaries…Here’s sniffing up your old bicycle seat, David. Too bad you can’t seem to get over your sense of entitlement and self-righteousness. The roads here weren’t built for bicycles, they were built for cars. Surprisingly, cars use them. A lot. Even more so now that Seattle has prioritized “density” in areas where the infrastructure has remained unchanged, but has NOT prohibited the new residents of that “density” from owning internal combustion vehicles. And you know what? It’s going to get worse, not better, even when the Roosevelt light rail station opens, because the population here continues to increase AND bring their cars.
The rest of us are just thrilled that you and your wife “do almost all of our getting around town for shopping via public transit, bike and walking.” Seriously. We’re happy for you. Too bad you can’t see past the end of your own needs to realize that not everyone can do that. But I’m sure you won’t mind explaining how you “wind up spending our dollars outside the neighborhood in places like Old Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Capitol Hill, etc.” without a car. Do you bike to all these places where you spend your dough? What do you do when you need supplies that can’t be hauled on a bus? Ballard and Capitol Hill are a along way from NE 65th. What’s the safety factor like down there at 3rd & Pike at 9pm when you’re waiting for a transfer?
I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you don’t have one kid who needs to be at soccer practice and another kid who needs to be at ballet in another part of town, and in the winter when the sun goes down at 4:15pm and it’s cold, ugly and wet outside you take them there and pick them up later on your bike. Huh?
This isn’t a question of “something different” being proposed. It’s a question of existing road capacity, infrastructure and safety. There are no plans to widen NE 65th.
You want to ride a bike, rock out, dude. Nobody’s stopping you. But you want the roads to bend over and accommodate you? Not so fast. First maybe you ought to read the statistics on Cascade’s own web site, or re-read pro-bike Times editorialist Jonathan Martin’s op-ed piece last May, in which he stated (while arguing for a downtown cycle track), “About 3 percent regularly bike commute, and more polls (including this Cascade Bicycle Club one from January) have found that more would if it were a bit easier, and safer.”
THREE PERCENT!
Three percent of “commuters” on bicycles. That’s it. That’s all you got. Oh sure, the terminably insufferable whiners at Cascade have their “poll” alleging that “more would.” How many more? Can we drive that up to 3.5 percent? Four percent, maybe? OMG, can we even begin to dream of 5 percent? What a nice, flowery way of saying “we are completely insignificant.”
This is why people in Seattle are sick and tired of this crap. Cyclists “share” the roads with, as Martin writes, “two-ton cars” and “multi-ton trucks,” yet shoulder no responsibility. No license, no registration, no proof of insurance – required of all vehicle drivers – and thus no fees going towards the improvements they demand. They prefer instead to strangle critical road capacity for their own benefit, not to mention siphon off funding that could go to real road improvements ($4 million a year at last count), including those that benefit cyclists. For what? For who? Three percent. Apparently, the other 97 percent of us can just go fish!
I don’t think so.
My suggestion: Move to Amsterdam or Copenhagen. They’re both lovely cities, and not unlike Seattle in many respects. Public transportation is already in place and goes everywhere. And everybody bikes there, including me!
http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/
Alby: I’m going to ask to keep your words more civil if you’re going to comment again on this site. “Here’s sniffing up your old bicycle seat, David” does not qualify.
I would venture to guess that less than 3% of roads in Seattle are accomodating to bicycles. Safety for all is a priority. Move to Copenhagen or Amsterdam? Come on, really? Do you mean that? People cannot just move as they please from country to country. You must know that. So, let’s make the city in which we live, and that we love, safer for all. A few bike lanes seem like a fair compromise. You will still be able to drive your car. No one is taking that away from you. And please, check your blood pressure!
Ballard’s actually a really pleasant 7mi (about 45mins) bike ride away from 39th & 65th, with almost no hills. You can take the Burke Gilman the majority of the way. I suggest you try it some time, it might change your perspective.
As far as hauling stuff, that’s what cargo bikes are for. They work for kids, too. That’s how I haul my kid around. If I really need to haul more than 200lbs, that’s what zipcar is for. I haven’t needed to use zipcar in about 2 years, though. We have a thriving cargo bike culture here (see https://seattledrt.wordpress.com/ , for example). Some people even use inexpensive kid trailers for hauling stuff. Plenty of options.
If you decide to let your kid have soccer practice on one end of town and another have ballet on the other end.. well, that’s your decision. No one forced you to plan your life like that.
A trip to Capitol Hill is a pretty darned short and easy if you make it multi-modal. Bike 15-20 mins to U District, and then hop on the 49 for another 15 mins. Roughly twice as long as driving with no traffic, and probably about the same (or faster!) with traffic.
We are a dual family – both bike and drive. I commute to work by bike most days. My wife has to drive to work due to time, location, and health constraints. She is the one who bears the brunt of all these road diets and changes, and significantly longer commute times, due to poorly planned SDOT plans like this one. We also find the attitude of many of the single cyclists to be tiresome and quite out of touch with family needs. We love cycling whenever and wherever we can, but we need our car as well for many of our errands, doctor visits, transporting elderly parents, and other sorts of needs that simply were not there before we had kids.
I do not use many of the “sharrow” bike lanes because I do not have a death wish. Nor do I think that the wholesale destruction of car arterials helps us cyclists, because I won’t ride on them now that I have kids who who be very, very sad if I were to die in a bike-car accident. We are lucky to live close enough to the BG so I can make it into work, but not everyone is.
Most of these changes are geared exclusively to to the single, athletic, hard-core cyclist, and not to the everyday family commuter. It is obvious that arterials are being deliberately targeted even when it makes no sense (125th St, for example). This is why there is such strong pushback outside of the Cascade Bicycle Club crowd, a group I am no longer a member of due to the polarization and narrow thinking. Non-athletic bike commuters, delivery trucks, car commuters, buses, pedestrians, etc are all just as important as the Davids and Shauns and other 20-something young Turks out there. It is too bad that SDOT has become so overrun by this crowd that they are ignoring the needs of all commuters, and putting plain joe cyclists like me in more danger, not less.
Saying that theses changes are being made primarily for the “single, athletic, hard-core cyclist” is incredibly far from the truth. These “changes” will greatly benefit all users of the road – including myself. I am the everyday “family commuter.” I might not have children of my own, but I bike to work in my work clothes, with my parents, to run errands and to travel the neighborhood with the kids that I nanny. SDOT is working to keep me safe by making these improvements, as well as all of the other users of the road.
Thank you for proving my point about the kind of spittle-fueled, narrow-minded knee-jerk reaction that is completely typical for the “roads are 100% for cars” crowd. Like Tip O’Neill, give ’em just enough rope, and they’ll eventually hang themselves. Please, please, please show up at the community meeting and scream at everyone. You’ll just make it easier for the rest of us to look even more completely sane and reasonable.
The roads are not for cars. They are for people. People who yes – drive -but also who walk, bike and take public transit. For far far far far too long, 100% priority has been given over to car as a mode of transportation, and everything else eats scraps. If it was up to me, 100% of roads would have bike lanes. But folks aren’t asking for that – they are being quite reasonable – all they are asking for is just their fair and equitable share of our public rights of way.
More and more, this seems less like anything rational, and more like emotional tantrums from an old guard that can’t deal with the fact that 21st century urban live has CHANGED around them.
And though its none of your business, I do indeed bike and take transit to most everywhere in the city, including when I am going shopping. Believe it or not, I’ve even taken the bus to Home Depot for supplies. And on those rare occasions when I do need a car to haul something, its easy to grab zipcar – which allows me to rightsize my car use depending on if I need a hatchback, pickup or cargo van. And that’s not even getting to options like a taxi, Uber, or Car2Go.
I completely agree with Alby. If there is any more obnoxious, self-entitled, parasitical group of people in Seattle than the bicycle crowd, I sure haven’t met them.
Hi there!
Come for a ride with me and my kids some time or for a ride with some of the other bicycling families in the area, and see if you still feel the same way. We’re nice people, and we would prefer that you’re not mean, like your comment.
Says Alby, ” Too bad you can’t seem to get over your sense of entitlement and self-righteousness. ”
Define Irony.
As an avid transportational cyclist with many years collision free experience…I’m hoping to make it to this event because I’m curious how the planners will defend what I understand to be a single sided cycletrack. Cycletracks do an excellent job of protecting against the very rare overtaking collision, but seem to increase the already vastly greater likelihood of collision at intersections.
The 2 block installation at Sand Point and 65th is a right hook fatality waiting to happen…
Of course, if motorists like Alby would put down the phone, pay attention, learn our sensible roadway laws, and obey them as rational adults for a change, we probably wouldn’t need to be having this conversation…
I think one thing that shrill cranks like we’ve seen in this thread forget, is that improving streets for biking also improves streets for other users. Witness the road diet on Stone Way, which has dropped speeds, reduced accidents and made the street safer for pedestrians, cyclists AND cars.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/docs/StoneWaybeforeafterFINAL.pdf
Agreed. Similar improvements for all have been seen on 12th Avenue in Squire Park, along 12th Ave between Union/Madison and Yesler. The road was put on a road diet, eliminating one of the lanes of traffic. Traffic has slowed, its safer to bike down, and pedestrians feel safer. Which has had positive spin-off benefits for local small businesses located along 12th Ave, with a significant increase in the number of retail businesses which have opened along 12th.
Prior to the road diet, 12th Ave was a virtual freeway and lined with marginal businesses.
The City plans something similar along 23rd Ave through the Central District, with the reasonable expectations that similar improvements in the retail corridor along 23rd Ave will occur.
You can either learn from real-word experiences and empirical data, or you can go with “truthiness” from your gut.
The north-south greenway along 39th Ave NE is an excellent route for bicycles.
I encourage this network of greenways to be significantly extended, to include east-west routes as well.
It seems much safer for all to continue to locate these greenways on non-arterial streets, and it does not incur much expense in terms of painting and signs. Of course provision has to be made whenever a greenway crosses an arterial street, and bicyclists (and motorists) do need to exercise caution at all intersections.
Another reason to locate bike routes on non-arterial streets is that this will virtually eliminate the problem of buses being stuck behind slow-moving bicyclists.
Here’s the problem – main arterials tend to better connected with cross-arterials, they tend to be more level (generally speaking), and they tend to be where the bulk of commercial businesses are located. Its why they are arterials. Moving bike lanes off main arterials deprives local small businesses of the positive economic spinoff benefit of being located along bike lanes. Bike lanes are public infrastructure investments – and as such, the economic development benefit of those infrastructure investments should be part of the planning.
There is no reason that bikes should be relegated to second-tier citizen status on the roads we all pay for. There is no reason that safety improvements (like bike lanes) should not be made on main arterials for bikes which have a completely legal right to share the road. Its even more egregious in the context of decades of road planning that has given over public roads to 100% car use. Enough is enought – its time to share.
This is about fairness and equity for ALL users of our public roads. Bikes, pedestrians, public transit and cars.
It would be great if all that are using the streets would also help pay for them, bikes should have a license fee to use the roads, a great start to help pay for all of these bike lanes, something you will never hear bikers bring up-stricter guidelines would be great also, are you a bike or a car, I cant read your mind when you change from one to the other when a cross walk is suddenly easier to cross the road and I have to slam on my brakes because at a whim you now want to walk your bike across the street and not ride like you have been for the past 10 blocks.
N.E. 75th St. is a much better street for a cycle track. The City Traffic Engineer is recommending that it be made one way in each direction with a turning lane in the center and bicycle lanes on each side. This can be done because it’s forty feet wide for its entire distance, has one bus routes for ony 15th Ave. N.E. to 25th Ave. N.E., and businesses are located at only two intersections: 25th Ave. N.E. and 35th Ave. N.E. The Traffic Engineer opined that on-street parking there is not substantially used.
N.E. 65th St. is 36 feet wide between 20th Avenue N.E. and 35th Avenue N.E. It has seveal bus routes, many bus stops, and will be a designated transit corridor to the Sound Transit Station. Bike tracks are at least 12-14 feet wide. (5 feet for the bike lane in each direction and at least two feet for the curb or barrier to separate them from motor traffic. The bike track is wider than that at N.E. 65th St. between the Burke Gilman Trail and Sand Point Way N.E.. and at Linden Avenue at N.E. 130th) 36 feet of roadway minus 12-14 feet of bike track leaves 22 to 24 feet for all other vehicles. METRO requires 11′ wide lanes for buses on arterials; its buses are 9 1/2 feet from mirror tip to mirror tip. 11 feet x 2 lanes takes 22 feet of the roadway. That leaves at most two feet of width for parking (including parking for the handicapped or emergency vehicles), for bus stops at the curb, for loading zones, for turning lanes, for curb lanes to facilitate right turns at signals etc. [Most likely those two feet will be used for white guide lines as done on the tracks built.] All vehicles will travel with buses in a single lane in each direction; whenever a bus stops, all following vehicles stop; whenever a garbage truck stops, so does the whole caravan behind. Ditto as to turning vehicles; everyone waits until the turning vehicle has yielded to on-coming vehicles and pedestrians going in a parallel direction whose path the vehicle may cross. Bus riders will have to walk across the cycle track with its speeding cyclists in order to get to the bus, stopped in the vehicular lane, or when alighting from the bus. The congestion will slow emergency vehicles, which will stop in-lane too, and the aide workers will have to direct traffic into the sole remaining lane in either direction to get around the stopped aide car or fire engine.
Look at the numbers. N.E. 65th St. carries 11,000 – 14,000 vehicles each weekday through Ravenna. It has about 100 bus trips. The buses pick up or let off about 1750 passengers on a weekday. The turn-over of on-street parking on N.E. 65th St. from 15th to 35th Ave. N.E. in Ravenna amounts to an estimated 500 vehicles weekdays. Many of them have handicapped decals. All these people are to be severely inconvenienced so that a few cyclists — less than one-half of one percent of those using N.E. 65th St. now — can have a special track set aside for themselves. These cyclists could easily use the greenway on N.E. 68th St. and N.E. 60th St. or the proposed cycle lane on N.E. 75th St.
The business people know their customers, where they live, and how they get to their shops. They’re strongly opposed to the cycle track. The congestion will deter customers; taking away on-street parking will cause their customers to go where there is available parking, such as University Village and Northgate. The cyclists are far fewer in number than customers who now come by car and far less likely to stop by in inclement weather or to spend as much money. The business district is an important part of our neighborhood. It will suffer greatly and our neighborhood will lose an important asset.
I’ve rarely found your average old-school small business to have a particularly deep – or empirically analyzed – grasp on their trade area, how multi-modal transportation planning will affect their trade area, on modern methods of merchandizing, how to appeal to modern retail customers or any number of issues relevant to surviving (and thriving) in the 21st century retail landscape. So why should we accept that their opinions that their business will “suffer greatly” are at all particularly well-informed when its fairly apparent a number of these businesses are barely holding on as a result of their inability to advance with the times?
Capitalism means competition, and occasionally it means uncompetitive businesses fail in order to make way for entrepreneurs who can compete effectively. If these business owners think a bike lane is going to kill their business (as opposed to bringing in new – and frankly younger – customers), then they are in for a rude wake up call over the next 10 years – as businesses, and business districts – that can more effectively compete for modern retail customers wind up eating their lunch money.
These business owners have an opportunity to adapt to the times and make it in a 21st century retail and wholesale landscape. They can either seize it – or lose out to Amazon and the suburban big box stores. I see now reason we should prevent the build-out of a city-wide multi-modal transportation infrastructure in order to shield a handful of businesses from the competition of capitalism.
David, I will grant you I am no steve jobs when it comes to business however most of the small business in the Ravenna Area are doing well, my business is up about a third this year as are many stores in my industry. Many of us have been around for decades and have adapted to remain in business, we wake up unemployed every morning and the market place votes with their dollars. We sell products our customers need, give them personal service and hear their concerns every day. One thing we do know our customers arrive by car not by bike. We need access for deliveries and the side streets are already full in a mixed residential business district.
As much as we appreciate our customers in Ravenna we serve metropolitan seattle. A cycle track takes up one third of the road no matter how it is designed and all the parking. In sheer numbers while you are at work all of our parking and access to our businesses is blocked forever.
It is too large a sacrifice to ask. Cyclists are a small percentage of the use of the street even if their use was doubled, they cannot make up for the economic impact of removing the parking everywhere on ne 65, the gridlock of only one lane of traffic each way, and the impact on the side streets in the neighborhood for five miles. No one is asking to shield a handful of businesses, we ask that greenways be built on calmer streets that are safer for you. BTW I am successful because of how people are treated at Big Box Stores, they drive business to my store with poor service, poor installation and sales people who are not knowledgeable.
I doub the sincerety of statements about wanting locate bike lanes off arterials as being driven by concerns for bicyclists safety. As it so conveniently overlaps with that actual concerns about parking. Which are completely overblown.
At what point will the “streets are only for cars” crowd enter the 21st century? In 2213 maybe? And can you can the “I wake up every morning unemployed” schtick? Everybody here works hard and the quality of our work determines if we remain employed. You aren’t winning anyone to your cause with that kind of condescening nonsense.
“Bike tracks are at least 12-14 feet wide (5 feet for the bike lane in each direction and at least two feet for the curb or barrier to separate them from motor traffic.”
Please stop this. You *don’t* know what the plans for this road might look like. You’re simply guessing. It would not be suprising to see SDOT do a simple bike lane (5′, no buffer) in narrow locations. If you want to critique the actual design when/if SDOT comes up with a plan, by all means feel free.
Your statement is also incorrect. See NACTO’s design guidelines for raised cycletracks, where they use a 1′ buffer: http://nacto.org/wp-content/gallery/2012_guidance_images/2012guidance_raisedcycletrack.jpg . The point is, you don’t know. If you could stop misinforming people, that would be wonderful.
A one foot buffer would not comply with Washington standards. NACTO is not a standards-setting organization, it’s advisory, and it can’t override actual engineering standards. (But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see Seattle violate state standards, they build all sorts of hazardous bike infrastructure that endangers riders for the sake of motorists.)
Please provide a reference. I can’t find anything about cycletracks/buffered bicycle lanes in WSDOT’s documentation. WSDOT even links to NACTO here for design guidelines – http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/bike/designing.htm
Obviously, federal guidelines are lacking, but hopefully that’ll change soon based upon NACTO recommendations.
Great article, thank you again for writing.
This posting knocked my socks off
That’s going to make things a lot easier from here on out.
Now I feel stupid. That’s cleared it up for me
It’s always a pleasure to hear from someone with expertise.
That insight’s perfect for what I need. Thanks!
I’ve been looking for a post like this for an age
Haha, shouldn’t you be charging for that kind of knowledge?!
One of my neighbors just told me that a part of this project is going to be to remove the tree lane from Ravenna Blvd to install bike lanes. Does anyone know about this?
Wow.
Kellie, there is no way that is true. For a bunch of reasons:
1. That boulevard is Parks Department property, and was designed by the Olmsteds. There practically zero chance it would be altered in such a destructive manner. And definitely not without a fight from, oh, I would say, EVERYBODY.
2. It already has bike lanes.
3. And even if it didn’t already have bike lanes, the Bicycle Master Plan Draft update is an update of a DRAFT PLAN. There are no concrete plans — or funding yet, for that matter — for much of not all of the road infrastructure concepts in it.
PLEASE, Kellie, tell your neighbor that they are very misinformed. And they should definitely attend the meeting on Monday.
No one would be for that.
There is a plan to remove the street parking to put in separated bike lanes/cycle track on Ravenna Blvd. The problem is that the boulevard is very steep and narrow already, so it is not an optimal road for bike commuting for anyone but the very athletic. There *is* a lane one street over that is much flatter and has much less traffic that would be far more optimal as a bike route; in fact, it is the route that most cyclists currently use. Is *that* route in the Master Plan? Of course not.
I think this says all that I’m thinking: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/61-bicycles/
Come on really? Bicycles power the worlds transportation needs.
Check out Google Image Search: Bicycles Africa http://goo.gl/HnJWt6 for example. Insert your favorite non-white people country for more fun.
I don’t hear one person commenting on how a walker can get around. There is never any money at all to improve crosswalks and sidewalks near hospitals and medical centers. There is only money for more bike lanes and the bike lobby. They are taking over. They are a bunch of athletes, and I walk around with a walking cast and almost fall in the street everyday, let alone get into close confrontations with bikers who cannot follow any rules. The one guy was right. We are not Europe, and are not set up to be Europe.
Actually, a number of us are pointing out that NE 65th needs overall improvements for both walking and biking. And unfortunately, there _isn’t_ money for new bike lanes, which is part of the problem. Similarly, sidewalk improvements are critically underfunded (and forget about funds for building new sidewalks where there aren’t any!) If we’re going to rely solely on city funding for these improvements, we’ll be left waiting an awfully long time.
Meanwhile, Seattle Children’s Hospital has been pumping money into greenways, sidewalk improvements, curb bulbs, and crosswalks near around around their facilities. UW is funding improvements to their section of the Burke Gilman trail, which includes much better facilities for walking the trail (separation from cyclists). If your nearby hospitals and medical centers are neglecting funding for active transportation access, perhaps it’s time to put some pressure on them.
See also Seattle Neighborhood Greenway’s “Safe Routes To Health” initiative, which is trying to get hospitals on board with the idea of improvement all-ages-and-abilities access to local health care providers. http://seattlegreenways.org/safe-routes-to-health/
I hope that the Mayor will still attend tonight’s meeting at the community center, despite this morning’s shooting of the bus driver in Downtown Seattle (which has been widely reported).
Questions about that incident might be considered “off topic” for tonight’s meeting, but nevertheless, there will probably be some discussion about that.
I really hope people will keep questions about the downtown shooting to themselves. A neighborhood meeting in Ravenna/Byrant about the City’s bicycle master plan update is a completely inappropriate forum for a crime incident that occurred on the other side of the city.
Right away I am going to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast
coming yet again to read more news.
Enjoyable stuff, I changed template on my website and the rankings
took a huge slide
Do you participate in any discussion boards