Imagine a network of calm, mostly residential streets near your home, neighborhood school and local business district optimized for safe travel on foot and by bike for people of all ages. Interested? Of course you are!
It’s an idea that has appeal extending far beyond the flimsy Seattle border, where groups in nearly all corners of the city have formed and continue to grow with a shared mission of planning and advocating for neighborhood greenways. Kirkland resident Glen Buhlmann is initiating an effort to spread the idea near his home, and he hopes the idea takes root all over the Eastside.
If you live anywhere on the Eastside, then get to Kirkland Fire Station #22 Wednesday evening for a groundbreaking meeting of Kirkland Greenways! The meeting gets under way at 6:30 p.m. and will include some mapping activities and give residents an opportunity to plug-in, get involved and get inspired.
More details from Kirkland Greenways:
Come join us to learn what greenways are and mark up maps of Kirkland and the rest of the Eastside with your neighborhood destinations, existing safe walking and biking routes and dangerous conflict areas. Then help us work with the City of Kirkland and the other Eastside cities to turn these proposed greenways into reality.
Bring your kids! Bring your neighbors! Bring your grandparents!
Imagine your neighborhood, knitted together with quiet residential streets where children and adults safely walk, ride bicycles, play and run. Imagine these streets are close to where you live and connect you to the places you want to go — the grocery store, your favorite coffee shop, your community center, your child’s school. Imagine traveling along a whole network of these streets across the entire Eastside designed first for children and adults who are walking and biking. Places where people are alert when they drive, and open their car doors carefully after they park.
That’s Kirkland Greenways! Come help us turn this into reality for Kirkland (and Redmond, and Bellevue, and Sammamish, and Issaquah, and Woodinville, and …)
Date/Time: Wednesday Feb 20th, 6:30 – 7:30
Location: Kirkland Fire Station #22 (Houghton), 6602 108th Ave. NE, Kirkland, WA
Comments
4 responses to “Neighborhood greenways take root on the Eastside”
I wonder what route the organizers would recommend for people interested in walking or biking to this event. Are there low-traffic, low-speed streets that could be negotiated by a willing-but-wary person on a bike? Are there sidewalks and curb cuts to allow a person with a wheelchair or a walker to get there? How much of the bike route suggested by Google Maps is reasonably comfortable to ride? If I put my bike on the bus at Montlake to take advantage of free passage across 520, where should I get off, and how do I get from the bus stop to the event? I don’t think there’s a map or an app that can answer these questions – not yet.
They do have some suggested directions at the bottom of their facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/events/138256489673647/
Beautiful! How did I miss those stunning multi-modal directions? Excellent.
Park or rack your bike at Montlake, take the 255, which stops right in front of the firehouse.