Comments on: Not Quite There

By: Oran

Oran — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:24:22 +0000

Ha ha. I was actually one of the crews who helped install those sharrows by marking their position. We drove a truck with flashers and used it to shield us from traffic.

There are only a few crossings in the area over/under I-5. You have the 40th/Burke Gilman Trail down the hill, 45th, and 50th.

By: padua

padua — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:21:59 +0000

When I first saw the sharrows on 45th in the U district my first thought was to spatter red paint blood stains on them. Who would take a freeway access street on a bike?

By: doug

doug — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:23:11 +0000

i live up on 47th in the u-district and thought the same about the 45th st sharrows. however, after thinking about it, i realized that they probably put them there because there are few roads crossing i-5. 50th is another one that is far from optimal.

since i rarely have a reason to go to wallingford directly from my home, i admit i have little reason to find alternative routes. as such i usually take 45th which is easier than it looks: the traffic on it is soooo bad, it’s easy to keep up with (and pass) cars. i wouldn’t recommend it for “regular people” who aren’t bike obsessed, though.

By: Bicycle News Roundup, 2/25/09 | Austin On Two Wheels

Bicycle News Roundup, 2/25/09 | Austin On Two Wheels — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:30:58 +0000

[...] The Seattle Transit Blog makes a very good point about the perception of bicycle infrastructure: is it an amenity, or is it a vital piece of infrastructure? [...]

By: Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:09:19 +0000

Copenhagen has a bike lane on nearly every street, and the traffic signals take bikes into account as well.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:19:23 +0000

The same thing applies to sidewalks and pedestrian paths. Unfortunately transportation planners tend to treat biking and walking as an afterthought and casually block their routes in ways they would never block an active auto traffic lane.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:06:57 +0000

http://www.cascade.org/Community/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=12345&STARTPAGE=3

Planning stage for April

By: Adam B. Parast

Adam B. Parast — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:41:29 +0000

Great. Keep me in the loop.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:14:06 +0000

I should add that some of us over at the Cascade Bicycle Club are organizing a photo-report of poor infrastructure, focusing on Sharrow implementaion, that will go to SDOT in the near future.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:12:05 +0000

Bicycle infrastructure IS transportation infrastructure. Bike to Work Day 2008 brought out ~23,000 bicyclists in our region in one day. 2007 numbers on one day in Seattle (there are 2008 number which are higher but are not posted yet) is 2,200. Put all those bicyclists in cars or on buses and you’ll see a difference.

I am a daily cyclist and it’s how I get to work. Good bike infrastructure helps get people out of cars. I started by combining bus/bike trips. Many people I know do the same, or use a train/bus combo. Bike infrastructure is inexpensive compared to driving and the impact it has on roadways. In fact, SDOT likes that bicyclists complain about road problems called in by bicyclists because it alerts them to upcoming problem areas for autos. We are a “first response” to dangerous situations in some cases! :-)

Sure, I’m cute, but I’m also a regular road user who bikes 20 miles a day to get to/from work because it’s faster than taking a bus. We’ve got to stop looking at all bicyclists as having “just a hobby.” Many people have refused to get on a bike to go anywhere – and that’s the problem with poor bicycle infrastructure. But the more people who try it, and find it’s actually a viable alternative, will make the option safer. I rarely have a problem when bicycling and usually it’s a vehicle who endangers me that creates the unsafe situation.

By: John Jensen

John Jensen — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:01:06 +0000

Mike, there isn’t a battle between bike trails and light rail lines. If some people want to bike long distances, let them. While making themselves healthier, they are also eliminating a car from the road and pollution from the air. The cost to taxpayers is negligible.

And run light rail down the interurban? I mean, I wouldn’t let a bike trail stop a major transit expansion either, but we already have a major N-S trunk that will connect Seattle to Everett one day.

As for the bicyclist “breaking the law”… I think you missed the point of the picture. Which is that giant truck sitting in a bike lane’s path. Your disdain for bicyclists seems very emotional. I’m not sure why that is, but that’s not really the best mindset to have when we’d like a serious discussion about the regional transportation fabric and its alternatives.

By: Mike B

Mike B — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:38:33 +0000

Bicycles aren’t necessary infrastructure. How about we convert all those banked right-of-way-now-bike-trails that USED to be interurban lines and make them light rail lines again? It would save money since many portions of the ROW are still intact. Maybe 100 bicyclists an hour or 2500 commuters an hour? What is more important to combat traffic and climate change? Heck, we could put a multi-purpose trail NEXT to the rail line to make people happy. Bicycles are cute and sound like a great idea for a large scale transportation option, but unless you force people at gun point, they’re not going to change. Not all the bike trails in the world would get me to bike from Downtown Edmonds to, say Shorline, Ballard, Seattle, etc.

And looking at that picture, isn’t that bicyclist breaking the law? Looks like they’re going down a one way street in the wrong direction.

By: octopus

octopus — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:39:51 +0000

Well SDOT needs to be serious about maintaining clean arterials, including the shoulders. There are still main roads with a fair amount of gravel in the bike lane, even after calls to SDOT.

Plus I find sharrows on the oddest streets, where I as an experienced urban cyclist, would never venture anyway ( 45th through the U-district ). I also agree about the establishment of bike lanes that are then treated as a parking lane for large construction equipment and such , without any detour or facility for bypass. If its a travel lane ( whether bike or car) than it needs to be treated as such AND maintained as such…

By: JPF

JPF — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:58:35 +0000

Heh — I was a student at UW for years and saw this every other day as I biked home! But the problem here is much deeper than a poorly-designed bicycle lane. The problem is that this road, and the interchange it leads to, were originally designed and constructed to work one way (with vehicular through-traffic), then later re-configured to work another way (barred to through-vehicles, but with bicycles allowed through). Yet, the road was never fully reconstructed, or even redesigned with all uses under consideration.

This seems to be typical of SDOT — take the infrastructure they have, and apply as many band-aids as needed to get it to work they way they want it to. And this not only applies to bike infrastructure, but to motor vehicular traffic as well — there are countless signalized intersections that work in ways non-conforming to the MUTCD* because SDOT added a left-turn signal here, banned a through-movement from this lane at this-and-such a time, etc.

The problem isn’t just that SDOT needs to get serious about bikes (which it does), but that it needs to get serious about how infrastructure works in general. And to do that, it needs to spend more resources on design.

*Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices