Month: July 2016

West Seattle Bridge Trail work included in Spokane St repaving coming up — thank you West Seattle Blog for reporting this under-the-radar project.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/pave_spokane.htm

We’ll be looking for more information on design and detours during construction.

 R.I.P South Park Tree. A long saga is over. The notorious narrow humped passage around the tree in the Duwamish Trail is gone.  The trail is back to its full, not-so-wide width. It is flat and paved where there was a hazardous obstacle.

This cottonwood had been growing into the trail and getting worse for 13 years, by some accounts. Al Jackson, Bill Gobie and others from WSBC really pushed over the past 7 months to get SDOT to eliminate this hazard and restore the trail.  We thank SDOT for  doing it, and getting it paved immediately.

We hope that it will not take this much pushing in the future when there is an obvious hazard encroaching into the bike and pedestrian part of a busy street right-of-way.

We know that after every windstorm the fallen trees blocking  traffic lanes are removed within hours, and dangerous leaning trees are cut down. We also see that sometimes fallen trees just stay in the bike lanes and across trails and sidewalks for days, even on bike thoroughfares like Dexter Ave N this year.

We saw this past winter that the vehicle traffic lane was promptly repaired when the South Park tree roots started humping that pavement, while the trail remained in its dangerous condition. We know that trees are not allowed to sprout and grow in the vehicle traffic lanes anywhere.  And we wonder if this condition would ever be allowed to continue so long in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods than South Park?

We hope that it is starting to sink in that multi-use paths and trails and bike lanes are traffic lanes, too, equally important for the people using them to get to work, school, home, to and from all the places people in cars and trucks are going?

We have re-scheduled our monthly meeting to Tuesday, August 9th, so we can participate in Night Out on the streets on the 2nd.
Same time 6:30 to 8:00 pm
Same place HomeStreet Bank, 41st SW & SW Alaska.

calendar listing

We need a well designed and well built Greenway  parallel to 35th Ave, with safe crossings of “I-35”.  Can you attend?
SDOT public meeting including parallel Greenway planning:
Thursday, Aug. 4, from 7 to 9 p.m.
at Neighborhood House High Point (6400 Sylvan Way SW).

Low stress bike routes along the north-south spines of West Seattle are our top priority for neighborhood bike travel within West Seattle. This meeting is about one of the key routes. Want to give input? A greenway here will connect people to public and parochial elementary schools, libraries, parks, playfields, clinics, and shopping. And it’s on a good commute route. It’s the only one currently funded for West Seattle. Let’s get it right.

Neighborhood Greenways and Vision Zero Want Your Input in West Seattle!

Let’s ride!

Forecast looks great. SummerFest will be our finish celebration. Come join us!

Details here.