Spokane St Bridge bike counts are down this year for obvious reasons, but climbing back up, as more people try riding across the river for excercise or to get to essential jobs.
With drastically fewer people working downtown, the daily pattern is really different: more weekend riders; lower morning and evening commute hour peaks; more mid-day riding.
Too bad we don’t have data for neighborhood routes within West Seattle. Casual observation shows an amazing increase.
We are happy to see that the City recognizes the role biking can play to mitigate impacts of the West Seattle high-rise bridge closure by creating an aggressive but realistic bike mode share goal. To get acheive the goal of 10% of trips across the bridge at peak hour by bike, it will be necessary to make biking routes safe, comfortable and efficient.
But…
SDOT’s proposed funding and scope of projects to improve biking is insufficient. It will take fully funding the spot improvements list we provided in April. While we appreciate the inclusion of many of our suggestions in the Reconnect Seattle Survey, we are disappointed to see that the City intends to implement only a handful of spot improvement projects, spending less than $1M [up to 10 projects at less than $100,000 each.] This is woefully inadequate to attract the numbers of new bikers and sustain their comittment to cycling for the years of the bridge project.
And…
Paint and post improvements need to be complemented with programmatic support. The City must act to support people from a range of backgrounds so that people of all ages, abilities, languages, ethnicities, genders and races can equally rely on biking as a safe, affordable and sustainable way of getting around during the bridge closure.
See our latest proposals to the City, 200812 reconnect WS – bike mode shift , made in collaboration with Duwamish Valley Safe Streets, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, Cascade Bicycle Club, and endorsed by 350 Seattle, Transit Riders Union, The Urbanist, Feet First and Lime.
