Transportation jargon can be confusing. What is rechannelization? is that when you finally figure out the remote? What is a road diet? Gas station mini-mart food and coffee? Why call roadway re-striping to include a mix of lane types a road diet? That is a term using only a car driving perspective. From the perspective of people on foot, in wheelchairs and motorized scooters, on bikes, riding buses, driving trucks, a “road diet” is more like a “road feast“, or at least a balanced meal Here’s a new infographic showing their advantages, from Troy Heerwagen, a Seattle Neighborhood Greenways advocate. 
Month: February 2015
Spokane Street Bridge – open for ships, breathing and stretching
Bridge open tonight… time to stretch, chat, check for messages. What do you do when the bridge opens just before you make it to the gate?
Have you seen Kelli Refer’s little book Pedal Stretch Breathe – the Yoga of Bicycling? Bridge opening can be a good time to be present, to find contentment, even if you will be late for dinner, or in my case tonight, late for a yoga class.
“Bicycling has the capacity to shift the paradigm of the way you see and interact with where you live. Distance is transformed, community is redefined. Try to integrate the same mindfulness of a yoga practice into the act of riding a bike. See what happens. When you integrate a yoga perspective into your riding it amplifies the importance of the present moment and helps you listen to your body.” Kelli Refer
Connect Seattle – West Seattle Bike Connections
We are part of Connect Seattle – the West Seattle, South Park and White Center part. It’s a new initiative from Cascade Bicycle Club with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Connect Seattle is a long-term citywide campaign to create a complete network of bikeways connecting neighborhoods across the city so everyone can ride safely. The campaign is powered by a network of neighborhood groups led by teams of caring neighbors working together. Want to get involved? Join us at a meeting first Tuesday of the month or by email to westseattlebikeconnections (at) gmail (dot) com. 
Connect Seattle Summit – 5-Way Intersection
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality”. John Lennon
West Seattle Bike Connections represented West Seattle at Cascade Bicycle Club’s Connect Seattle Summit yesterday. Cascade is helping set up Connect Seattle groups around the city to develop campaigns for critical bicycle transportation improvements. We are already set up, so Brock Howell at Cascade invited us to be the group for the peninsula.
Cascade’s resources will help with a major push for one project in each area of the city. For West Seattle we selected the 5-way intersection near the West Seattle Bridge at Chelan, Delridge, Spokane and West Marginal Way SW.
The 5-way intersection along the Alki Trail is unsafe, confusing and time-consuming for all users including people on bikes, on foot, in cars and in the many trucks using Port facilities. It is a huge barrier to many who would like to ride this route to commute to SODO and downtown, or to connect between the Alki Trail and West Duwamish Trail and soon-to-be built Delridge/Highland Park Greenway.
The Seattle Bicycle Master Plan, with our input, identifies this as a “catalyst project”: When accomplished, it will dramatically increase the number of people of all ages and abilities using bikes here. Concepts were identified in an SDOT workshop last February, and vetted during the year, as announced in January.
If you have experienced the traffic jams on Spokane Street lately, you know how important this corridor is for freight movement and jobs in West Seattle and regionally. Getting more people out of cars and onto bikes helps truck traffic, too.
Come to our Feb 3 meeting to get involved! Tuesday, 6:30 pm, HomeStreet Bank, 41st SW & SW Alaska. Ten of us started strategizing at the summit. We’ll continue the work on strategies for raising awareness and funding.
SDOT has short-term improvements planned and funded for 2015. We want to push for the long-term “flyover” concept that adds a bike lane attached to the flyover ramp that goes from the Spokane Street Bridge approach to Terminal 5. The bike lane would go from the rise under the WS Bridge where the trails connect, crossing Spokane at the existing light, follow beside the Terminal 5 truck entry ramp and peel off before the RR tracks to land on the Alki Trail near the Chelan Café. No additional climbing required, and it goes over the whole 5-way intersection.
Similar to our alliance with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways for the Delridge/Highland Park Greenway and the 35th Avenue SW Safety Corridor Project, this alliance with Cascade Bicycle Club will give us the ability to reach all the decision makers who will need to approve and fund this project. Yesterday, SDOT Chief Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang and City Council Members Tom Rasmussen, Sally Clark and Mike O’Brien joined us for the summit. We really appreciate their investment time and attention to champion these projects. It shows what this coalition can accomplish together, making dreams reality.
West Seattle 12 ride
There is time to get out for this West Seattle 12s ride to burn off some nervous energy before the game and send the HAWKS some love.