Pike and Pine streets connect the city's
densest employment, transit and

destination center with some of the
city's most densely populated

neighborhoods, and the streets are lined
with popular businesses. Seattle just

completed new bike lanes on Pike Street
between 9th Avenue and Broadway.

Broadway has protected bike lanes already. The sections that have been finished

demonstrate the potential of safe and
comfortable bike lanes in this corridor

and that's exactly why community members
have been working so hard to make sure

they become reality.
Brie: I'm Brie Gyncild. I
co-lead Central Seattle Greenways, which is

part of the larger Seattle Neighborhood
Greenways coalition and I was on the

One Center City Advisory Group. Central
Seattle Greenways is a local volunteer

organization of neighbors working to
make our streets better for people walking

and biking. We specifically focus
on the Central Area and Capitol Hill

We knew that this is an incredibly
important corridor to a lot of different

people in the community, not just people
who bike obviously. We wanted to make

sure especially with the businesses that
that their needs were met from the

beginning. We wanted to make sure that
when we were advocating for specific

design, we were actually understanding
the community's priorities. So we wanted

to hear from the community, we wanted to
hear from businesses, and we also wanted

to facilitate a sense of community
dialogue that has been missing in a lot

of the neighborhoods and with a lot of
projects in our city

So we brought everybody together to talk
together about how to build

streets that work for everybody. So
Central Seattle Greenways, Seattle Neighborhood

Greenways as a whole, the Eco District the
community council, a lot of

local organizations, neighborhood
organizations, came together to do

some early business outreach just to
find out how businesses felt. In 2017, we

went door-to-door and had a very generic
conversation with businesses about

street safety, and what they've been
experiencing and how they felt about

street safety projects. In 2018 we kicked
off our outreach with a pop-up protected

bike lane on Pike for Parking(ing) Day in
September, and then we followed that up

with door-to-door business outreach and
inviting those businesses to join us at

our community workshop in October. And
that was the that was really the

pinnacle of the effort, and it was a it
was a really inspiring evening. We knew

that not everybody could come to a
Thursday evening meeting so we also had

a community survey online.

I think there's tremendous value in
community members doing outreach to

other community members, right? I think
there's tremendous value in the business

community understanding that there
is no bikes versus business story here

that we all want the businesses from
these corridors to succeed and we all

want people to be able to travel safely
through them and to businesses using

those corridors. And it was while we were
doing that outreach that the Convention

Center opportunity arose. The Convention
Center expansion required vacating some

alleys and some underground areas under
streets, and as part of that process they

have to provide Community Benefit
commensurate with the value of that.

The Convention Center had put out a call for
projects, basically, and had a large open

house that showed all these projects
that were essentially going to be

competing with each other, and Gordon
Padelford of Seattle Neighborhood

Greenways took a look at that that night
and said, "You know, I think I think we can

do all of this and I don't think we
should be fighting with each other." So he

brought all of the organizations
together that were advocating for

specific projects and together we built
the community package and negotiated

with the Convention Center. And we're not
done because this isn't the permanent

design, and the actual alignment hasn't
been chosen yet. The interim bike lanes

have some problems, they have some issues.
We knew they would. Especially the gap

between sixth and ninth. But already it
feels a lot more comfortable biking up

the hill than it used to, so I appreciate
that.

Tom: Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Thank you so much.