The news out of the Bellevue City Council this week was extremely disappointing. The council decided to backtrack on their Vision Zero commitment and all but toss out most of the Bike Bellevue network that was developed over a period of years following significant public outreach and study. In the process, they also left their city’s staff exposed to further personal and professional attacks (see section 2).
The ambitious Bike Bellevue plan may be doomed
Bellevue’s City Council voted to only consider reallocating general purpose travel lanes as a “last resort,” Ryan Packer reported for the Urbanist. During the meeting (the video is posted below), Councilmembers kept repeating over and over that they were opposed to any projects that would “remove travel lanes.” An attempt to pass a motion banning the removal of travel lanes failed 2-5 (Councilmembers Jared Nieuwenhuis and Conrad Lee voted in favor), but a motion to consider projects that would remove general purpose travel lanes only “as a last resort” passed 6-1 (Mayor Lynne Robinson opposed). Several councilmembers, including Dave Hamilton, made it quite clear that they don’t see themselves ever supporting any projects that would remove travel lanes. “I can’t imagine ever thinking it’s a good idea,” he said.
This vote, however, is in direct and clear conflict with essentially every official city transportation policy document, including (but probably not limited to) the 2020 Vision Zero Strategic Plan, 2023 Vision Zero Action Plan, 2022 Mobility Implementation Plan, and 2023 Downtown Mobility Study. All of these documents state that Bellevue has adopted a “safe systems approach” to traffic safety, which explicitly relies on redesigning dangerous streets to reduce speeding and improve safety for all road users.
“Today, we know that one of the most effective approaches to improving safety on streets is to use road reconfigurations…to narrow travel lanes, reduce the number of vehicle lanes, or both, while providing space for bicyclists and pedestrians,” states the Bellevue Vision Zero Strategic Plan (page 25, PDF), which the City Council adopted in 2020.
“The Bellevue Transportation Commission examined the attributes of the Safe Systems approach and concurred that Safe People, Safe Streets, Safe Speeds, Safe Vehicles—as well as the supporting elements of leadership, culture, partnerships and data—all help contribute to reducing the frequency and severity of crashes,” states the city’s 2023 Vision Zero Action Plan (page 4, PDF). “This holistic approach accepts that people will make mistakes and that crashes will continue to occur, but it aims to ensure these do not result in serious injuries or fatalities.”
The core misunderstanding throughout the entire council meeting was that more lanes does not equate to better traffic, especially in an urban or even suburban environment. That is a simplistic and outdated way of thinking about how streets work. In reality, people and their movements are much more complex, and streets that are flexible are more efficient than streets that prioritize straight-ahead movement over every other movement. People are not Hot Wheels following the same track from A to B. Some people need to turn left and some people need to cross the street, and some people are walking, and some people are biking, and some people are in wheelchairs, and some people have strollers, and some people are making deliveries, and having too many travel lanes makes these non-straight-through movements slower and much more dangerous.
For example, this is why NE 65th Street in Seattle can now move 5% more vehicles after SDOT reallocated nearly 25% of the street space to create protected bike lanes and safer crosswalks (study PDF). People can turn left now, which makes it a better street to drive on. They reduced speeding by up to 75%, reduced collisions by 63%, and eliminated serious injuries and deaths. And they did all this while moving more people in cars and dramatically more people biking, walking and rolling. This is not a “last resort” solution, it’s a common sense solution that is backed by data rather than feelings.
Councilmember Lee spoke against “getting rid of car lanes for the benefit of bicyclists because one is suffering from the other.” But dangerous streets are bad for people in cars, too. Safe streets are not zero-sum calculations where any gain by one group must come at an equal loss from another. This isn’t a sport, it’s a city. Complete streets are about making streets that work for everyone.
Bellevue’s streets are not simply “pipes for cars,” as former SDOT Director Peter Hahn used to phrase it. They are part of the community. But the conversation during the council meeting never included any discussion of modern street design. The whole meeting could have gone so differently if only they had invited an expert in safe streets design to present about how modern safe streets work. But they didn’t. They irresponsibly scoffed at and dismissed the most effective and affordable method of improving safety on Bellevue’s streets, and then sent the city’s Transportation Commission misguided direction. It was depressing to watch.
I hope the Bellevue City Council takes the time to review their own Vision Zero plans and consult with safe streets experts (rather than politically-powerful developers), because there’s really good stuff in them such as this enlightening and relevant section about the history of street design in Bellevue (page 36 of the Bellevue Vision Zero Strategic Plan, PDF):
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