Touting the city’s downtown cycle track plan, Bicycle Master Plan update and neighborhood greenways progress, Mayor Mike McGinn presented the city’s transportation Action Agenda progress report to the City Council today.
The mayor is again pushing hard for an expedited plan for high capacity transit to Ballard and a streetcar extension through Eastlake to the University District. These projects were mostly delayed by Council action during the fall budget process. The Ballard project could result in a new Ship Canal crossing for people walking, biking and using transit. The Eastlake streetcar project would likely include a redesign of the street that could very well include a cycle track (you know, that would connect really well to a Westlake Ave cycle track!).
The action agenda also compiled completed projects from 2012, including:
Hey, Seattle, what? You don’t like the bike maps anymore?
We will have more information soon about the city’s plans for 2013 bike projects. In the meantime, here’s the full Action Agenda Progress Report:
Comments
6 responses to “Mayor presents 2013 transportation Action Agenda progress report”
I thought the stats about pothole-filling and road-paving were interesting – they filled a lot fewer potholes and paved fewer miles of road in 2012 than in 2011 – and I don’t think it’s because the roads got better. I guess my feeling that roads have gotten worse in the last year or so is confirmed by real data though.
There are some great projects and aspirations in that report. Good to see. However, I would like to see the “by the numbers” section include numbers with $ signs in front of them, and some pie charts. Looks like bike and ped improvements were a tiny tiny itty bitty fraction of the total amount spent in 2012, even including the much appreciated Pothole Rangers, compared to huge costs for bridges, streetcars, major roadway projects. 12 blocks of sidewalk? How many blocks still do not have sidewalk? At that rate, how many years or decades or centuries will it take, or will it ever advance? There must be more than 12 blocks a year that are reaching the end of their useful life.
Given the numbers are in the low two digits, you’d think they could break out the bike lanes and the sharrows.
Sharrows are damn near useless, I don’t understand how they are equated with bike lanes. Seems like a rather nefarious way to pad the bike lane numbers. They should definitely be listed separately.
It is great to learn that Seattle is reaching for Vision Zero, which I only learned reading this today. That’s fantastic.
Here in NYC we’re a long way from even acknowledging there’s a traffic safety problem, though the state DMV did finally begin to use “crash” instead of “accident” in its reporting on traffic crashes very recently.
I know that planning is not the same as implementation, but at least your leaders will publicly acknowledge that safety should be among the highest priorities. This is another of a growing list of reasons we’ll be moving back as soon as we can.
In Seattle we are great at identifying problems and setting lofty goals. Actually achieving the goals (or even making meaningful progress towards them) is not our strong suit.