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Scigliano: Seattle’s bike investments have so far neglected equality

The most recent draft Bicycle Master Plan map.
The most recent draft Bicycle Master Plan map.

Equity is one of the key factors driving creation and prioritization of the Bike Master Plan update. And while that might seem like a no-brainer — everyone deserves safe streets — a story today by Eric Scigliano at Crosscut points out many of the ways that implementation of bike facilities since passage of the 2007 Bike Master Plan have skipped the city’s lower income neighborhoods.

The story first points to the types of facilities installed and concludes that the miles and miles of sharrows installed on busy city streets really only helped the strongest and most fearless people on bikes — if they helped anyone at all.

But then the stories turns its gaze to southeast Seattle, showing how the 2007 plan not only included fewer projects for the Rainier Valley, but that the most useful projects — MLK and/or Rainier Ave — have yet to be implemented.


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But, of course, it’s not just safety and access for people on bikes that has been neglected in Rainier Valley:

The disregard for South End bicyclists and pedestrians extends far beyond the master plan. Last February and March, student researchers from the UW School of Public Health studied signals and street-crossing conditions on three arterial stretches with similar traffic volumes: NW Market Street in Ballard and Rainier Avenue in Columbia City and Rainier Beach. They found that Columbia City, whose population is 33 percent white, had the most pedestrian fatalities and collisions, closely followed by Rainier Beach, which is 25 percent white. Rainier Beach had the most jaywalking. But in Ballard, which is 85 percent white and has a median household income about 55 percent higher than both Rainier Valley neighborhoods’, “walk” signals lasted 10 to 60 percent longer relative to street width than they did in Columbia City and Rainier Beach.

“This means that in Ballard, pedestrians do not have to walk as fast to make it across the street successfully as they do in the Rainier Valley neighborhoods,” the authors concluded. More than a third of valley residents interviewed said they couldn’t get across the street in the time allowed. Given the short signals and many blocks between them there, jaywalking may be the most rational response.

Deb Salls, the executive director of the nonprofit Bike Works, which cosponsored the study, was shocked to find that SDOT officials weren’t shocked at these discrepancies. Just a glitch in the algorithm, she says they told her.

Read more…

Transportation Justice

Though the story never uses the phrase, it’s about transportation justice. People in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to die or face serious injuries from traffic. Elderly people and children are also more likely to be injured or killed in traffic. So, put those together, and the dangers facing low-income children and elderly people are simply unacceptable.

But, as with many other neighborhoods, residents in low-income areas are not always enthused about road safety and bike lane projects on their streets. We saw this with the Othello/Myrtle project, which pointed out how much more the city’s conversation about safe streets needs to be focused on equity. After all, if bike lanes are perceived as a white tool of gentrification imposed on low-income areas by the elites at City Hall, they are going to — rightfully — face resistance.

Adonia Lugo attempted to document a variety of opinions about bicycling and road safety in Rainier Valley through her Seattle Bike Justice Project. It shows that, especially in a neighborhood with so many cultures and people from countries across the globe, opinions about bicycling vary widely. Before a strong, neighborhood-centered movement for safe streets in Rainier Valley can be developed, there need to be a lot more chances for people of all cultural backgrounds to get together and talk and work together.

Bike Works has long been that place, but now efforts are growing through Rainier Valley Greenways to engage even more residents. In fact, the group’s fancy new website is almost entirely geared around gathering people’s thoughts on road safety on the streets near their homes.

Forterra has observed the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways model of resident-organizing and is beginning to use the methods to reach out to residents in Federal Way to engage citizens about safe streets and neighborhood greenways there. And because Forterra has resources a low-budget resident group doesn’t, their outreach efforts in Federal Way includes lots of translation work to reach even more cultures.

Will the new Bike Plan be better?

So, will the new Bike Master Plan be better about equity? It certainly aims to be better, but whether that is put into action on the ground is yet to be seen.

However, at a recent meeting of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board, Bike Master Plan update team members gave presentation about their still-developing prioritization system. Through a complicated algorithm the weighs factors from network connectivity, density of destinations and equity, many of the projects that scored the highest were in southeast Seattle. So while the system is still in-development, it appears that the equity measure will, indeed, raise the prioritization of Rainier Valley road safety.

But the City Council and SDOT will still have discretion over the projects that actually happen. So even if the plan suggests that protected bike lanes on Rainier Ave S from the Skyway border to Rainier Beach is the top project, will the city leaders make it happen?

For more of our thoughts on needs in Southeast Seattle, see post 1 and post 2 about the Bicycle Master Plan drafts.


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6 responses to “Scigliano: Seattle’s bike investments have so far neglected equality”

  1. Fnarf

    I’ve been following similar discussions in Los Angeles, where the same sort of transportation inequality persists, not just in the provision of facilities but in the very unequal harassment of cyclists of color in South LA neighborhoods. I think the solution is twofold: to recognize the value of cycling to low-income people, as a way to get around without having to spend a fortune on cars, insurance, and gas; and most importantly to get the community you’re trying to serve involved. LA has several cycling clubs based in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color — Black Kids on Bikes, East Side Riders, etc. Does Seattle have clubs like this? We should get some. And they should get involved not just in fun rides but in political advocacy for their communities. Does the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board sought out South Seattle members and groups, or tried to provide support for forming them?

    Ultimately it’s not going to come from a roomful of white liberals in lycra and raingear deciding what to do for poor people, people of color, people in that neighborhood I pass through on LINK on my way to the airport. I’m not saying that white people in North Seattle have no role, or white people in Columbia City for that matter. But we KNOW the community is there, and we know they ride bikes, too; we have to give them a voice. This segregation of services is embarrassing in 2013.

  2. RTK

    No big surprise here.

    During the meeting this week about the BMP / NE65th cycle track both SDOT and Mayor McGinn stated that equity of distribution of projects across the city would play a big part in which projects move forward.

  3. Zach Shaner

    I give the city the benefit of the doubt on this, because if the reverse had happened – strong investments in the R.V. prior to neighborhoods like Fremont and Ballard, the city could have rightfully been accused of not following demand when deciding where to place facilities, but rather trying to induce it in neighborhoods with lower demand while bike-heavy neighborhoods got nothing. I don’t fault the city for chasing demand, but we’ve grown enough as a city that we can now both chase and induce demand. Furthermore, creating a true network that makes the whole city accessible to people on bikes requires a strong coverage emphasis that was (mostly innocently) lacking in prior plans.

    That is not to say, however, that the BMP doesn’t fail South Seattle. It does. Though it does some good things, connecting Link to Columbia City via a Ferdinand greenway, and proposing a cycle track on MLK, Rainier will always be the elephant in the room. If the Mayor is serious that safety and equity will drive BMP implementation, then it’s indeed a social justice requirement that Rainier be a priority. It’s a fast, dangerous, hostile-to-humans street all the way from Jackson St to Renton (though it’s tolerable from Seward Park Ave S to Renton Airport). At a bare minimum, Rainier needs a road diet, solid transit signal priority, longer walk signals, and an adjacent greenway on the zig-zag route,but a separated facility would be fantastic.

  4. The piece’s headline claiming “bigotry” is… frankly a bit of a troll, especially compared to the reasonable tone of the rest of the article.

    1. Tom Fucoloro

      It is a bit more complicated, I agree.

  5. pqbuffington

    Actually, the Crosscut headline may be a bit too polite… here is a list of housing covenants and their racial restrictions:

    http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm

    Although the demographics have shifted considerably since these restrictions were supposed to end*, the greater point being that Seattle not-all-that-long-ago was an officially segregated city and unofficially we still very much are. The “… glitch in the algorithm…” defense should very well raise an eyebrow as rarely have separate maths ever been equal.

    As for the “inducing demand” argument, I will yield my response to the better wit (money section begins at 4:24):

    http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-6-2013/full-pedal-racket—citi-bike

    And not to just pick on Seattle, here is a link to a horribly sad and infuriating map of Chicago:

    http://makingmaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/bunge_runovermap.jpg

    Not sure what algorithm they were using.

    *It was not until 1968 that The Fair Housing Act made these actions fully illegal

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