Big thanks for Nic Laporte in Vancouver, BC, for inviting me to ramble about biking in Seattle on the Radio Free Urbanism podcast. You can listen wherever you get your podcast or watch via YouTube:
SDOT’s Find It, Fix It app is surprisingly powerful. You can report a pothole or broken walk signal or broken bicycle detector and SDOT crews will look into the issue as part of their regular maintenance process. Sometimes, you get results within days. Sometimes, especially if the problem is extensive, it does not get fixed, but it’s always worth a try. However, until recently, there hasn’t been an obvious way to report issues with bike lanes, bike racks or other bike-specific infrastructure. You could still report them under some other category (perhaps that pavement crack counts as a pothole?), but sometimes it just was not obvious whether your issue was reportable.
After some persistent bugging from the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board among others, SDOT recently updated the app to make it easier to accept work orders for bike facility needs. The change comes just a month before the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Levy kicks in, which will increase the department’s bike facility maintenance budget.
Find It, Fix It is the branding for the department’s work order tracking system. Longtime residents may remember the previous branding 684-ROAD, which still works if you prefer to file reports via phone call. It’s the same idea. The city has a maintenance budget, but they can’t possibly know about every location that needs work. So you can help by reporting it, and as a reward they city will fix it if it is within the scope of regular maintenance (for example, they might fill a pothole or crack, but probably won’t repave a whole roadway section).
So do your fellow bike riders a favor and start filing reports about slippery wet leaves or standing water (use the clogged drain category) or overgrown blackberry. You can also let the city know about damaged bike racks (especially important if they create a theft risk) or if there is a traffic signal that stubbornly refuses to detect your bike, use the traffic signal maintenance category to report it. I’m sure you’re not the only one dealing with these issues, but most people don’t know how to report it. You can be their invisible hero.
After you submit a report, you will be updates on the status of your reports within the app. Someone from the city may even call you to ask follow-up questions if needed, so be prepared to answer a call from a dreaded unknown 206 number.
If you have any Find It, Fix It success stories, share them in the comments below.
I am still in shock. I knew we had a good crowd Saturday morning as we sent Cranksgiving riders out into the city to buy food and necessities for local food banks, but I had no idea we were on the verge of turning all previous participation and donation records to dust. Riders crossed the 2-ton mark for the first time ever and kept on going.
242 people participated in the 15th Annual Seattle Cranksgiving food drive bike ride (224 riders and 18 volunteers), donating a total of 4,210 pounds of goods to Byrd Barr Place (1,373 lbs), U District (1,452 lbs) and Rainier Valley (1,386 lbs) Food Banks. All the donations were purchased at an array of food vendors and stores across the city and hauled by bike. Thank you to Cascade Bicycle Club’s Pedaling Relief Project, our co-host and organizing partner for the third year in a row. Thank you also to Bike Works for once again hosting and staffing the drop-off point for Rainier Valley Food Bank. And thank you to Central Cinema for being a fantastic afterparty host.
As inflation rises and grocery prices increase, the pressure on food banks increases as well. So it is even more remarkable that as food prices have increased, Cranksgiving riders have only increased their support. Last year’s haul of 3,699 pounds of donations was record-breaking, and I my goal this year was just to try to match it. Instead, they added another 14% on top.
Held in the middle of November, Cranksgiving is supposed to be a celebration of rainy weather biking, but it is mysteriously plagued by good weather. In the same week as our region was hit hard by a rainy wind storm, the rough weather paused for a few hours so Cranksgiving riders could have a beautiful day to ride. The donations were especially helpful because our amazing food security organizations have also been working hard to help folks affected by power outages that unfortunately spoiled a lot of food in home fridges.
At a time when hate for others has taken hold of the national government, Cranksgiving riders used their legs and their hard-earned money to demonstrate how we can be resilient and take care of each other by working together. Thank you to everyone who volunteered or biked this year, and thank you to all the amazing staffers and volunteers at all our region’s food security organizations.
The very long-awaited biking and walking bridge over SR 520 in Montlake will finally open with a community celebration 11 a.m. December 14.
For the better part of a decade, folks trying to bike through Montlake have been dealing with a variety of different detours, and they’ve been stuck mixing with people on the sidewalk of Montlake Boulevard for years as crews work on a new biking and walking bridge to the east of the boulevard. The new bridge largely replaces the role of the old 24th Ave E bridge, though with much more style. Rather than leaving people to wind their way through alleys to reach the Lake Washington Loop bike route, the new trail will connect to a crosswalk at E Roanoke Street. It will also feed into the still largely unplanned future park at the north end of the Arboretum, located where construction staging equipment has been. I am not yet certain exactly how the south terminus of the new trail will work or how well it will connect to the Arboretum Trail, and none of the documents available online seem to show those details. I will update when I learn more.
People heading from the north will follow the same route as usual along the east sidewalk of the Montlake Bridge, then turning on Hamlin toward the 520 Trail. At the end of the block, there will be a new trail nexus with options to go across Lake Washington, across SR 520 toward the Arboretum, or back under Montlake Blvd and under SR 520 toward Montlake Playfield.
SDOT is hard at work building a major improvement to bicycle access on Beacon Hill: Protected bike lanes on 15th Ave S and Beacon Ave S. When completed, this will be one of Seattle’s most important bike route improvements in years. But first, folks need to get through construction.
The city’s official bicycle detour points folks biking southbound up 14th Ave S, which is also the designated route for most buses and cars. You can ride this route, but the bike lanes are incomplete and the construction detours mean it will be even busier than usual. That’s why community group Beacon Hill Safe Streets has put together a set of different options for folks trying to avoid car traffic between Jefferson Park and the Jose Rizal Bridge. One stays to the east of the closure, and the other stays to the west.
The east route is probably the best option for most trips. It follows the Mountains to Sound Trail and the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Greenway on 18th Ave S, which already has signage and traffic calming. If you are heading to the business district near Beacon Hill Station, Jefferson Park or beyond, I’d recommend this route. This is definitely the route to take if you are heading to or from the Mountains to Sound Trail further east.
But for many North Beacon Hill trips, the east route is too indirect. Fortunately, there’s a decently low-traffic west option via 12th Ave S. Unfortunately it is very steep, especially the blocks closest to the Jose Rizal Bridge. There is a low-quality door zone bike lane in the uphill direction, but mixed traffic lanes for flat and downhill sections. Thanks to Safe Route to School projects around Beacon Ave S near 13th and 14th Avenues S, there are path connections and an extra-wide sidewalk along with improved crosswalks for connecting across busy Beacon Ave at 14th.
Bob Svercl of Beacon Hill Safe Streets made a helpful set of video guides for the routes:
Seattle’s least-discussed infrastructure megaproject has wrapped up a pair of multi-year, trail-disrupting closures in Fremont and Ballard in recent weeks. Work on the $561 million Ship Canal Water Quality Project has taken place in multiple locations, including bike-route-disrupting closures on Stone Way in Fremont and near Fred Meyer in Ballard. Work at both sites is wrapping up, and conditions have been restored to the way they were before construction began.
As Hanoch at Best Side Cycling demonstrated in a recent video (above), the Ballard Fred Meyer section of the Burke-Gilman Trail is back to its pre-2020 design, including the odd half-concrete section and the awkward double-ramp curb cut at the intersection with 11th Ave NW. It is much better than the sometimes awful trail detour conditions during construction, but I was hoping that work would have improved some of this section to meet modern design standards.
The half-concrete section between 9th and 11th Avenues NW is a bit confusing because people don’t know if we should treat the whole thing as one trail or if the concrete section is for walking and the asphalt section is for biking. I’ve never witnessed or heard of any dangerous situations arising from this confusion, but it is awkward. I’m a firm believer that the trail should always follow trail rules (all users stay to the right and pass on the left) except where the walking and biking spaces are adequately separated, like sections on and near UW campus east of the University Bridge.
Screenshot from the Best Side Cycling video. The natural path to the trail from the rider’s perspective would go straight through the raised section of the curb.(more…)
