Seattle Bike Blog

Alert: New Burke-Gilman Trail detour at Stone Way is not bikeable or accessible – UPDATED

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 25, 2024

The intersection of Stone Way N and N Northlake Way.
UPDATE: SPU wrote to say that as of Friday morning, the intersection detour returned to its previous state. “I’m writing to let you know that SPU removed the detour today at 7 a.m.,” spokesperson Brad Wong wrote. “This specific area has returned to the status it’s been for the past six weeks. The removal was part of the project workplan. We expect to fully reopen the intersection of North 34th Street and Stone Way North in mid to late October.”
The detour in place as of Wednesday afternoon (September 25) to get people walking and biking on either N 34th Street or the Burke-Gilman Trail has no crosswalk and no curb ramp, leaving users of the region’s most popular trail without any clear direction or safe option to get to the other side.
I just happened to be riding down N 34th Street today when crews were changing the detour at the intersection with Stone Way N and the Burke-Gilman Trail. They routed us down the sidewalk and onto N Northlake Way, a street without bike lanes or consistent sidewalks. There was also no clear way to get back onto the trail on the other side of the closed intersection. But hey, maybe I was just there are the wrong time. So I swung by a little bit later after the fences and everything were set up, but the problems were still there.
There is no ramp on the northeast corner of Stone Way and Northlake Way, creating a challenge for accessibility and bicycling. Reinhard Spiegelhauer, a German public radio reporter, was interviewing me about bicycling in Seattle when we came across this detour, so he’s taking a photo of me taking a photo, which is very meta.
All trail users are routed down to the intersection of Stone and Northlake. Not only are the sidewalks very skinny, but the sidewalk on the east side of the intersection has no curb ramp, so there is no way to get a bike up or down to the road level without hopping the curb. There are also no markings at the intersection to designate a crosswalk of any kind, and there is no stop sign for people driving. Trail users are basically just told to disappear. Here’s a rough sketch I made from memory:
Not to scale, obviously.
Confident bike riders can hop the curb and bike with traffic on Northlake, but what about everyone else? The Burke-Gilman Trail is an accessible route designed for people of all ages and abilities, and this detour is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. Especially since the solutions seem fairly easy.
At a minimum, there needs to be a temporary ramp on the east corner, and a coned-off walking and biking area along the north side of the Stone/Northlake intersection so that people walking and biking can follow the shortest and simplest route around the closure. The hedges are also quite overgrown along the east sidewalk, constraining the already skinny sidewalk space and reducing visibility. Stop signs and perhaps coned lanes for westbound traffic on Northlake would also be wise since this is now a very confusing area, and the driving route no longer follows the lines painted on the road (see the top photo). It’s not immediately clear to anyone where they should be going, but I noticed that people driving westbound were not stopping. There is already a stop sign for eastbound traffic.
The thing is, Seattle Public Utilities already knows all this because they have been creating Burke-Gilman detours for this project for years at this point. I’m not sure how this one slipped through their process. Seattle Bike Blog also did not receive a construction detour notice, which has been common for this project in the past and makes me think this one didn’t go through all the usual steps.
Hopefully fixes can come quickly before anyone gets hurt, and changes can be put in place to catch these things in the future before they go into effect.

8 comments on Alert: New Burke-Gilman Trail detour at Stone Way is not bikeable or accessible – UPDATED

tags: Bike Route Alert, detours, seattle public utilities

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Congrats to Timothy Egan on the WA State Book Award

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 24, 2024

Timothy Egan won the 2024 Washington State Book Award in general nonfiction for A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. Congrats to him on what is so far an excellent read. I recently started it even before the Washington Center for the Book announced the awards.
I am very pleased and humbled that Biking Uphill in the Rain was named as a finalist for the award, and I’ve been having a great time reading through some of the other great books on the list. I’m dual wielding Egan’s book and memoir finalist Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, and then I’ve got fiction finalist I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer by Robert Lashley on deck.
So if you’re looking for a good read as the nights get longer, go check out the winners and finalists.

No comments on Congrats to Timothy Egan on the WA State Book Award

tags: biking uphill in the rain, timothy egan, washington center for the book

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Taking the train to Portland with my kid and a folding bike

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 24, 2024

A biking, walking and transit bridge is so much quieter and more pleasant.
As something of a last hurrah before the school year began, my kid and I took a trip down to Portland for no purpose other than to have fun. So we needed to travel by what may be my favorite method: Taking the train with a folding bicycle.
Our Brompton folding bike is not just any folding bike. It also has a simple attachment that allows us to also carry a kid. My first-grader barely fits, her knees just inches from bumping against the handlebars. So this trip was also the last hurrah for this kid seat set-up, which has served us very well (thank you Ben, a Seattle Bike Blog reader who gifted us this seat after his kid grew out of it). I previously hauled her up the gravel Cascades to Palouse Trail to go camping and see the Snoqualmie Tunnel.
Unlike the camping trip, our trip to Portland was all about combining transit and biking. We packed all of our stuff into one big Brompton bag (a Swift Industries Gilman bag, sadly discontinued) that fit on the front so that getting on and off the train was as simple as detaching one shoulder bag, folding the bike, and then carrying them on as luggage. We started by biking to the Link station in the morning to take the train to King Street Station. On light rail, the kid struck up a conversation with a woman who told her there were giant cat statues all around Portland and then showed her photos of a few of the cats she found when she was there recently. My kid was immediately more interested in these cats than any of the ideas I had floated to her in the days before we left, and she kept talking about them for the rest of the journey. This is one more reason why transit is amazing. These kinds of community interactions just cannot happen when you drive.
(more…)

7 comments on Taking the train to Portland with my kid and a folding bike

tags: amtrak cascades, brompton, portland

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There’s finally a bike lane through the brick section of Pine St near Westlake Park

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 20, 2024

There is now a complete and connected protected bike lane on Pine Street from Melrose Ave to 1st Ave. It addresses the awful intersection with Boren Ave and as of this past week includes a bike lane through the brick-paved section near Westlake Park.
The change is part of the larger Pike Pine Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements project with half the funding coming from the city of Seattle and the waterfront lid and half from a set of investments that neighbors won as part of the Washington State Convention Center expansion.
There is now a painted line through the crosswalk area directing people on bikes to the new curbside bike lane. A row of planter boxes separates the bike lane from a handful of on-street parking spaces for loading or taxis only. During my observations, these spaces were mostly being used by people making deliveries, though uses will change during other times of day.
The new design addresses an issue through this brick section where there was space for multiple lanes of traffic but no lane lines or rules to control use of the space. So if there were a backup of cars waiting to turn right onto 4th Ave, for example, people heading straight would merge to the left to go around them. The problem is that people biking were also trying to use that left “lane,” leading to conflicts and scary close calls. Under the new design, people on bikes can fully avoid the merging issue, which feels much more comfortable. I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable letting my 1st grader ride through here on her own bike under the previous design, but now I would. That’s the power of all-ages-and-abilities bike lanes, if a first grader can comfortably do it then so can most other people.
Bike riders will need to look out more closely for people crossing the street, especially if they walk between the parked cars. Visibility is reduced as a tradeoff in the new design, an issue that can only be fixed by either restricting or removing the loading zones. Hopefully this proves to not be an issue, but it’s worth observing closely in these initial weeks to see if adjustments are needed.
(more…)

6 comments on There’s finally a bike lane through the brick section of Pine St near Westlake Park

tags: pine, sdot, waterfront seattle, westlake park

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Testing the in-bus bike racks on the new RapidRide G

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 19, 2024

The RapidRide G started service this past week, promising six-minute headways between downtown and Madison Valley via Madison Street. But you go to other sites to learn about the implications for transit service. I’m here to talk about the bike racks inside the buses.
That’s right, inside. The new RapidRide G buses have a couple tricks that no other bus in Seattle has. First, it has doors on both sides, which are needed to serve the center platforms on Madison Street the way the First Hill Streetcar does on Jackson Street. Second, it has bike racks inside the coach rather than on the front. So I of course had to try it out.
OK OK, Snohomish County transit riders, I hear you yelling, “Swift has had those racks for years!” It’s true. Community Transit’s Swift bus rapid transit coaches have very similar bike racks inside. But this is the first time such a bike rack has been used by King County Metro. These “SpinLock” racks are made by the Woodinville-based company Sportworks, which also makes the racks for the front of buses. In fact, Sportworks pioneered the whole bike racks on buses idea, and King County Metro was among the first to roll them out fleet-wide.
Anyway, back to RapidRide G. People with bikes should enter through the back door, which is clearly marked on the side of the bus. All riders can tap readers on the platform or inside the bus to pay, so there is no need to go up front by the driver at all. Once inside, lift the front wheel up enough to roll it into the bike rack. An arm on top with a wheel on it will automatically hold the wheel in place, so once the wheel settles into the groove of the rack, you’re done. It is significantly easier to use than the racks on the front of the bus because you only need to lift the front wheel and do not need to operate the arm to hold it in place.
(more…)

9 comments on Testing the in-bus bike racks on the new RapidRide G

tags: bike racks, king county metro, rapidride g, spinlock, sportworks

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Thursday: Central Library hosts Anna Zivarts talk about ‘When Driving Is Not An Option’

By

Tom Fucoloro

| Posted

September 18, 2024

Site Note: Our ancient and no-longer-supported calendar plugin finally died for good this week, so the Seattle Bike Blog Events Calendar is out of service until I find a replacement. As a result, you may see more event notices posted as regular posts.
Register via the Seattle Public Library event listing.
Anna Zivarts is giving a free talk 7 p.m. Thursday (September 19) at the Central Branch Library downtown about “how improving our transportation system with nondrivers in mind will benefit everyone.”
I reviewed Zivarts’ book When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency when it was released back in May. “In her book, Zivarts punctuates the hard data and research with people’s personal stories, creating a deeply humanized analysis of the scattered and often dangerous state of nondriving transportation in our nation and how we can make things better,” we wrote.
The talk comes a week and a half before the start of the Week Without Driving, an annual challenge Zivarts has been growing through her work with Disability Rights Washington. The challenge can be an enlightening moment for many people who are used to relying on their cars, but it is especially useful for transportation policy decision makers.
Thursday’s event will include live-captioning and ASL.

1 comment on Thursday: Central Library hosts Anna Zivarts talk about ‘When Driving Is Not An Option’

tags: a week without driving, anna zivarts, events, seattle public library, when driving is not an option

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