Cascade Bicycle Club is hosting a regional bike advocacy summit dubbed the “Big Ideas Festival” 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at their Magnuson Park headquarters.
The event is free, but you should RSVP online so they can plan on you.
A connected network of quality bike lanes in downtown Seattle? A trail spanning and connecting major population and job centers on the Eastside? Following young people’s lead on bike advocacy and safe streets? These and more are on the schedule for Saturday.
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Yours truly will be on a panel to talk about Seattle’s downtown bike network. Will I be for it or against it? There’s only one way to find out…
Comments
4 responses to “Saturday: Cascade hosts bike advocacy ‘Big Ideas Festival’”
Can’t attend, but my big idea would be to suspend a bike/pedestrian/e-bike trail under the West Seattle Freeway Bridge to facilitate people getting on and off the peninsula. Too big?
That’d take a lot of energy to get up to, though… Frankly, I’m fine with the existing trail over the low-level bridge. But, then, I don’t go to West Seattle very often; are there any other problems I’m not aware of?
With some of West Seattle’s biggest neighborhoods way up on the hill, the idea of staying elevated up to the point where the freeway lands is at least potentially appealing. It only gets you so much, of course: the freeway viaduct isn’t nearly as high as the hill! But the existence of the freeway does sometimes impose steep and indirect routes to cover those vertical feet. A path along or under the freeway would hit the surface a bit south of Manning Street and perhaps dump you onto local streets at Fauntleroy (side-street Fauntleroy) and Charleston… bypassing the 5-way, Avalon, and the narrow/steep pedestrian bridge that you might otherwise take to get to the same spot. The hills from there on remain challenging…
Problems this could solve: The lower bridge opening or worse, getting stuck open (it happens) requiring a long detour to 1st Ave South Bridge, getting across several sets of active RR tracks to get to and from SODO and Georgetown, having to share the roads with with heavy freight semi-truck traffic entering and exiting the Port of Seattle terminals, navigating the 5-way intersection at Spokane/Chelan/Delridge/West Marginal Way, getting drenched by rain (this is a problem for some potential bike commuters), to mention just a few. The trail could drop down from the bridge at 5th avenue and connect to the SODO Trail that runs just east of the Light Rail, but currently dead ends at S. Forest Street. Or it could drop down onto 6th Ave S. and connect via S. Forest to the SODO Trail and provide a route into Georgetown.