Seattle Bike Blog

Beacon Hill community group’s recommended bike detours during 15th Ave S construction

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 20, 2024

Routes by Bob Svercl: East and West.
SDOT is hard at work building a major improvement to bicycle access on Beacon Hill: Protected bike lanes on 15th Ave S and Beacon Ave S. When completed, this will be one of Seattle’s most important bike route improvements in years. But first, folks need to get through construction.
The city’s official bicycle detour points folks biking southbound up 14th Ave S, which is also the designated route for most buses and cars. You can ride this route, but the bike lanes are incomplete and the construction detours mean it will be even busier than usual. That’s why community group Beacon Hill Safe Streets has put together a set of different options for folks trying to avoid car traffic between Jefferson Park and the Jose Rizal Bridge. One stays to the east of the closure, and the other stays to the west.
The east route is probably the best option for most trips. It follows the Mountains to Sound Trail and the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Greenway on 18th Ave S, which already has signage and traffic calming. If you are heading to the business district near Beacon Hill Station, Jefferson Park or beyond, I’d recommend this route. This is definitely the route to take if you are heading to or from the Mountains to Sound Trail further east.
But for many North Beacon Hill trips, the east route is too indirect. Fortunately, there’s a decently low-traffic west option via 12th Ave S. Unfortunately it is very steep, especially the blocks closest to the Jose Rizal Bridge. There is a low-quality door zone bike lane in the uphill direction, but mixed traffic lanes for flat and downhill sections. Thanks to Safe Route to School projects around Beacon Ave S near 13th and 14th Avenues S, there are path connections and an extra-wide sidewalk along with improved crosswalks for connecting across busy Beacon Ave at 14th.
Bob Svercl of Beacon Hill Safe Streets made a helpful set of video guides for the routes:
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tags: 15th ave s, beacon hill, beacon hill safe streets, bob svercl, sdot

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Major Burke-Gilman detours in Fremont and Ballard end as sewer work progresses

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 18, 2024

Seattle’s least-discussed infrastructure megaproject has wrapped up a pair of multi-year, trail-disrupting closures in Fremont and Ballard in recent weeks. Work on the $561 million Ship Canal Water Quality Project has taken place in multiple locations, including bike-route-disrupting closures on Stone Way in Fremont and near Fred Meyer in Ballard. Work at both sites is wrapping up, and conditions have been restored to the way they were before construction began.
As Hanoch at Best Side Cycling demonstrated in a recent video (above), the Ballard Fred Meyer section of the Burke-Gilman Trail is back to its pre-2020 design, including the odd half-concrete section and the awkward double-ramp curb cut at the intersection with 11th Ave NW. It is much better than the sometimes awful trail detour conditions during construction, but I was hoping that work would have improved some of this section to meet modern design standards.
The half-concrete section between 9th and 11th Avenues NW is a bit confusing because people don’t know if we should treat the whole thing as one trail or if the concrete section is for walking and the asphalt section is for biking. I’ve never witnessed or heard of any dangerous situations arising from this confusion, but it is awkward. I’m a firm believer that the trail should always follow trail rules (all users stay to the right and pass on the left) except where the walking and biking spaces are adequately separated, like sections on and near UW campus east of the University Bridge.
Screenshot from the Best Side Cycling video. The natural path to the trail from the rider’s perspective would go straight through the raised section of the curb.
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tags: ballard, best side cycling, burke-gilman trail, fremont, ship canal water quality project, wallingford

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Seattle prepares to pass budget with huge increases for safe streets + What CM Saka should do about Delridge

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 14, 2024

From an SDOT presentation to the City Council’s Special Budget Committee (PDF).
Thanks to Seattle voters, in 2025 the city is poised to invest $21 million in new sidewalks, $4.2 million in sidewalk repairs, $8.6 million in Vision Zero, $1.6 million in Safe Routes to School, $9.8 million in new protected bike lanes, and $1 million to upgrade existing bike lane barriers. To deliver all this, they are also going on a hiring spree, so if you know anything about building sidewalks you should keep an eye out for job listings.
The sidewalks funding line is particularly eye-catching and is the result of a decision to front-load sidewalk construction early in the first four years of the levy. Not only will this result in more sidewalks sooner, it should also help prevent sidewalks from getting cut in future years if some unforeseen issue arises that leads to cuts in the levy spending plan.
SDOT could get an even faster start if the Council dropped their proposed proviso on about half the levy funds for 2025 ($89 million), which would prevent the department from accessing those funds until they have presented a spending plan that the council approves. The council could instead request a spending plan by a certain date without holding up the funds, and they can always take action at that point if they want to change something. SDOT has a huge amount of work to complete in just eight years, including the time-consuming process of finding, hiring and onboarding new staff. Getting a slow start on Move Seattle projects was a huge problem for the previous levy, and a mistake the city should not repeat. The Council should not get in their way unnecessarily.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways has put out an action alert urging folks to contact Councilmembers with a set of asks outlined at the bottom of this post. You can find documents regarding the Council’s budget amendments via the 2025-26 budget’s Legistar page. Many are within the “proposed consent amendment package,” though the final outstanding changes are in the “amendments for individual vote.” You may also need to reference Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget, which is found on a completely different website. The Council is debating amendments this week and will make their final votes on Tuesday and Thursday next week.
As part of the consent package, City Council has proposed creating a new $7 million per year Council District Fund within the SDOT budget for “neighborhood-scale traffic safety improvements and other district transportation priorities at the direction of the City Council.” In other words, a council slush fund. This would be a rare diversion from the usual way council and mayoral duties are divided in Seattle since Council rarely ever “directs” a department. Usually, the council is limited to providing (or placing conditions on) funding and setting official policy, but the actions of the departments nearly always go through the mayor.
I know “slush funds” have a bad rep, but I’m very interested to see how this new fund works in practice. It could be nice for Councilmembers to actually be able to respond more quickly to reasonable smallish requests from constituents. It’s frustrating for everyone when, say, a group of neighbors ask for a stop sign only to run into a dead end trying to get it onto SDOT’s workplan. But I’m sure the quality of return the public gets from these investments will vary greatly depending on the Councilmember directing the funds. I am also very interested to see what happens if a councilmember directs a project that the mayor opposes. Whose “direction” will win?
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tags: 2024 budget, Delridge Way SW, rob saka, sara nelson, sdot, seattle neighborhood greenways

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CM Saka budget proposal would create plan to end service on SLU Streetcar

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 13, 2024

Seattle’s official 20-year plan for transit, which the City Council approved in the spring, shows streetcar connections to the South Lake Union line as well as along 1st Ave to Lower Queen Anne and SoDo. There are no other streetcar additions in the plan, and even the Broadway extension is no longer included.
The future has become even bleaker for the low-ridership South Lake Union (“SLU”) Streetcar line as Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka has proposed funding a plan for how to wind down and end service on the line. The budget changes would no actually end service, but they set the stage to do so as early as next year’s budget. The action could set up the city to finally make a decision about the streetcar once and for all.
As Seattle Bike Blog argued in August, Seattle decided in 2015 to make the SLU streetcar a dead end when SDOT chose RapidRide bus service on the Fairview/Eastlake/Roosevelt corridor rather than a streetcar extension. The streetcar line’s operating budget sits at $4.4 million per year to serve about 500 weekday trips on average. Ridership peaked in 2017 before SDOT added transit-only lanes to Westlake Ave to coincide with expanded King County Metro bus service along much of the streetcar’s route. In my previous post, several SLU transit riders said they just hop on whatever comes first, a bus or the streetcar. The under-construction RapidRide J line will further improve bus transit service in the SLU neighborhood when it begins operations as early as 2027. So even those 500 daily riders would likely not be stranded without the streetcar. Metro just deleted the Route 20 bus with little fanfare, for example, and that deletion (as well as other bus route changes and deletions) had a bigger negative impact on access to transit than closing the SLU Streetcar would.
Additionally, construction for the South Lake Union light rail station is expected to shut down SLU Streetcar service for eight years, so it makes sense for Seattle to decide sooner than later whether the city sees a future for the streetcar beyond that construction. If the city wants to preserve service they could build 2,000 feet of additional track to bypass the Link station closure, but that would only make sense if we are committing to this thing long-term. If not, then we may as well get the tracks out of the roadway and focus on creating efficient bus pathways. Removing or covering the tracks would also eliminate major hazards for people riding bicycles around the neighborhood, preventing injuries and improving bike circulation within the neighborhood. Removing the tracks may even lead to more new bike trips per day than the streetcar would carry if it kept operating in its current state.
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tags: 2024 budget, bob kettle, center city connector, city council, rob saka, south lake union, south lake union streetcar, streetcars

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Publicola: SPD emergency driving policy now instructs officers to consider road conditions, safety of other road users

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 12, 2024

Excerpt of the updated SPD Emergency Vehicle Operations policy (full policy PDF)
Though you would hope it would have been common sense, the Seattle Police Department recently updated its emergency vehicle operations policies to specify considerations officers should make before choosing to drive above the speed limit, Andrew Engelson at Publicola reported. Officers should take into account the street’s “character,” such as whether it is a side street or a highway, and whether or not other road users will be able to react to their speeding police vehicle.
The changes are part of the continuing fall out from the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula in early 2023. Kandula was walking across Dexter Ave in a crosswalk when SPD officer Kevin Dave struck her while driving 74 miles per hour on the way to a reported overdose. Her death sparked outrage and demands for change.
Since the tragedy, SDOT has fully redesigned the fatal intersection as part of a larger Thomas Street redesign that includes a protected intersection at Dexter.
More details from Publicola:
In mid-October, the Seattle Police Department released new emergency vehicle operations (EVO) policies that instruct officers to “drive no faster than their skill and training allows and [what] is reasonably necessary to safely arrive at the scene.” The new rules were a belated response to community outrage after an SPD officer, Kevin Dave, struck and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a South Lake Union crosswalk while driving 74 mph.

The new guidelines also advise officers to consider specific factors before deciding whether to break speed limits or traffic laws when responding to emergencies – including the priority level of the call, whether pedestrians can see and respond to an officer’s vehicle, the “character of the location (i.e. freeway vs. side street)” and weather and road conditions.

The new emergency driving policy now more closely aligns with SPD’s pursuit policy, which directs officers to pay attention to various factors before deciding whether to pursue a subject. SPD’s previous policy was extremely vague and gave little specific guidance to officers about when they can engage in emergency driving other than “where there is a legitimate concern for the preservation of life” and “only when the need outweighs the risk.”

[Read more at Publicola]

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tags: jaahnavi kandula, publicola, spd

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A guide to biking in the rain and darkness

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

November 8, 2024

As darkness once again descends around us, your bicycle is a torch to illuminate the path and keep the monsters away.
It’s brutal to end daylight savings time the same week as we hold an election with foreboding implications. Nightfall has suddenly jumped an hour earlier, matching my emotional state. Though it is not the solution to the core causes of these problems, your bicycle could at least be medicine to help you through it all.
Even in non-election years, the annual fall time change is a shock for many people who find their moods affected by the sudden change in seasons (can we please stop the clock changes already?). For many, bike rides home from work have been plunged into darkness, and with the change in seasons comes more rain. Every year, some people choose to leave their bikes in storage around this time. I am here to urge you to try doing the opposite. Try embracing fall and winter biking as seasonal therapy. Getting outside no matter the conditions is empowering, especially once you have figured out all the gear solutions you need to make a rainy and dark bike ride not just manageable but enjoyable.
As the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” You do not need to suffer in order to bike through the winter. Finding the gear that actually works for you is an investment that will pay off as you save money by biking.
Every person’s body and sense of style is different, so there’s no single solution to suggest for you. Below is a list of rainy season biking gear, ranked roughly in order of importance in my opinion. Got advice I left out? Share it in the comments below.
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30 comments on A guide to biking in the rain and darkness

tags: autumn biking, daylight savings time, rain, winter biking

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