Cascade Bicycle Club, the Yes! Foundation, the White Center CDA and King County joined together to convert little used tennis courts into a unique “bike playground”. Opened on Saturday. Lots of kids riding around in the rain, learning about watching for traffic, using lanes, signaling, merging, yielding, stopping, and having fun! Take your young rider to Dick Thurnau Park (formerly Lnkewood Park) and try it out.
Scenes from the site of the proposed S Lander Street Bridge during 10 minutes on a Monday mid-afternoon. This is West Seattle’s connection to ST Light Rail, Beacon Hill, and major employers like Seattle School District HQ, Starbucks HQ, USPS in SODO. Freight, yes, but also people on buses, on bikes, and on foot.
At $140,000,000, this one bridge will cost more than Seattle is spending on all bike lanes, greenways and trails throughout the entire city over the next 8 years of the Move Seattle Levy, at current rates. For $140,000,000, thus bridge should work for everyone!
See SDOT’s “30% Design” proposal and comment in the online open house on the one-sided bike/ped sidewalk, and what needs to happen to make this work for bike transportation.
Good discussion in Seattle Bike Blog, with link to our comment letter after the previous open house.
Bring your young rider (~4 to 12 years old) and their bike to have fun and learn some riding skills! We’ll be on Alki Ave at 62nd across from Sunfish, 11 am to 4 pm.
Lots of other activities too, and the street along the beach will be wide open (not “closed”) for walking, riding, skating, skipping, jumping and running!
Could use volunteers for 2 hour shifts, too. Just show up and we’ll put you to work.
The bridge goes sideways, and so do the bike counts this year.
Up just 1.8% year to date over last year. June and July were lower, after an amazing Viaduct-closure boost in May. August was up. Pretty much the same pattern at the Fremont Bridge.
If you or someone you know decided ride in May during the Viaduct closure, and then went back to car or bus: What made you decide not to continue commuting by bike? 
Designed, with years of community input.
The next step: SDOT, the Mayor and City Council need to get it funded for construction.
Didn’t happen last year. Let’s let them know we want it in the budget this year! It’s a key element of West Seattle’s development in the “Triangle” east of the West Seattle Junction, and in the Bicycle Master Plan’s citywide routes. It is a major corridor for buses, bikes, trucks, and car traffic going out of West Seattle to downtown to Vashon Island. We need it, to help West Seattle absorb growth gracefully, and enable people in all those new buildings to safely walk, ride bikes and ride buses instead of driving everywhere.
Like, share, meet with us tomorrow to help develop support!
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/FauntleroyWySWBlvd.htm
6:30 to 8:00 at HomeStreet Bank, 41st Ave SW & SW Alaska Street.
You are invited!
Come plan for
Thank you, JIm Curtin and Dongho Change at SDOT and Fauntleroy Community Association, for the “fast and light” project at Endolyne Triangle at the intersections of 45th SW, SW Wildwood Place,and SW Brace Point Drive.
These inexpensive changes make a tricky set of intersection easier to negotiate by foot, bike or car. And, a new bike corral and customer parking spaces for people who ride to Endolyne Joe’s and the Original Bakery!
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.
![tree%20root%20with%20signs[3]](https://i0.wp.com/westseattlebikeconnections.sustainablewestseattle.org/files/2016/02/tree-root-with-signs3.jpg)
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.
