— Advertisement —

Support the MASS Coalition’s efforts to ease the pain from the 2021-22 Seattle transportation budget

Both Cascade Bicycle Club and the larger MASS Coalition (including Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Transporation Choices Coalition among others) they are part of have action alerts out right now asking supporters to call on city leaders to limit the huge cuts in walking, biking and transit funding Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed in her 2021-22 budget. (Correction: This post erroneously said TCC is a member of the MASS Coalition. While TCC has partnered with MASS and its members in the past, they are not a member.)

Specifically, the Move All Seattle Sustainably (“MASS”) Coalition is backing the “Solidarity Budget” led by a long list of community organizations and is specifically pushing for a list of transportation budget amendments (PDF):

  • Upgrade Rainier Avenue sidewalks in Southeast Seattle ($1 million)
  • Continue work on the Georgetown-to-South Park Trail ($1.8 million)
  • Cancel cuts to the Route 44 Multimodal Project connecting Ballard to the U-district via Phinney Ridge and Wallingford ($1 million)
  • Advance planning and early design for bike network connections in South Seattle, specifically a route through the Rainier Valley (along MLK Way) and a connection between Georgetown and Downtown, via SoDo ($400,000).

The mayor’s budget levies heavier cuts to walking, biking and transit than to car-centric budget lines. Perhaps the most egregious is an increase in the so-called “Intelligent Transportation System,” investments that do nothing to help people get around outside of a car and can even make conditions for walking and biking worse. Just look at the disaster that is Mercer Street.


— Advertisement —

Safe streets projects in Seattle have been huge successes. ITS projects have been either useless or actively bad. Why would we invest in repeating our failures while slashing the budgets for our successes?

Worse, when Seattle voters passed the Move Seattle Levy in 2015, they did so based on big promises about investing in walking, biking and transit. But the city front-loaded the car-centric projects, and now the walking, biking and transit projects are exposed to budget cuts. If they don’t get funded before the levy expires, projects will fall off the end of the list. The city needs to dedicate itself to the vision voters approved and deliver big improvements for walking, biking and transit.

So while the budget is certainly going to be tighter than in previous years, cuts should obviously come from car-centric programs that don’t help us meet our climate, traffic safety and equity goals. And pointless freeway-style electronic signs are a great and very easy place to start.

But there’s no way to sugar coat it, this budget is devastating for walking, biking and transit in Seattle even with these amendments. It’s going to take years of work to build back the funding lost in this one budget cycle. These amendments are just the start of that work, as the MASS Coalition notes:

These priorities by no means reverse ​all ​the transportation cuts the Mayor has proposed, which include cutting $21.5 million from planned bike and pedestrian projects and erasing $70 million in local match from multimodal transit corridors. However, these amendments would restore some of the walking, biking, and transit projects that we believe would have the strongest equity impacts and that communities have been most active in asking and advocating for.


About the author:


Related posts:

Comments

2 responses to “Support the MASS Coalition’s efforts to ease the pain from the 2021-22 Seattle transportation budget”

  1. Tim

    Mercer is no longer a disaster. The car lights no longer stay green after the ped lights turn red. At a few intersections, the ped lights turn green a few seconds before the car lights. The cycle light at 5th N (the only intersection that has one) still turns green with the car lights.
    Effectively things are close to how they were before the “intelligent” project. It’s no pedestrian oasis where you get instant greens on a beg button–but given the pedestrian volumes on the street it couldn’t really handle that, nor could any road with six lanes ever be considered an oasis

    1. “nor could any road with six lanes ever be considered an oasis”

      Yeah, the six lanes (expanding to eight lanes if you are crossing at 9th Ave N) is the disaster part….

— Advertisement —

Join the Seattle Bike Blog Supporters

As a supporter, you help power independent bike news in the Seattle area. Please consider supporting the site financially starting at $5 per month:


Latest stories

Bike Events Calendar

Apr
2
Tue
6:30 pm West Seattle Bike Connections mo… @ Online
West Seattle Bike Connections mo… @ Online
Apr 2 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
 ShareMastodonTwitterFacebookRedditEmail
7:30 pm NW Greenways Meeting @ Virtual via Zoom
NW Greenways Meeting @ Virtual via Zoom
Apr 2 @ 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Our regularly scheduled meeting, happens every other month. Please check NW Greenways Twitter account – https://twitter.com/NWGreenways, our Google Group – https://goo.gl/W9jmzW or our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/NWGreenways/) to confirm the meeting. ShareMastodonTwitterFacebookRedditEmail
Apr
3
Wed
6:00 pm Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board M…
Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board M…
Apr 3 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Monthly agendas can be found at: http://www.seattle.gov/seattle-bicycle-advisory-board/meetings/meeting-agendas The Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board (SBAB) advises the Mayor, City Council, and City Departments and Divisions on projects, policies, and programs that improve and/or affect bicycling conditions in[…]
Apr
4
Thu
7:15 pm Point83 @ Westlake Park
Point83 @ Westlake Park
Apr 4 @ 7:15 pm
Point83 @ Westlake Park
Meet up in the center of the park at 7ish. Leave at 730. Every Thursday from now until forever rain or shine. Bikes, beers, illegal firepits, nachos, bottlerockets, timetraveling, lollygagging, mechanicals, good times.ShareMastodonTwitterFacebookRedditEmail
Apr
6
Sat
9:00 am First Saturday Neighborhood Clea…
First Saturday Neighborhood Clea…
Apr 6 @ 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Every month volunteers gather to collect garbage and help beautify our neighborhood. On average, we collect about 15 bags of garbage per clean up, which means 1,000’s of small pieces of plastic that do not[…]
— Advertisements —

Latest on Mastodon

Loading Mastodon feed…