Category Archives: Seattle

5pm madness

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Just like werewolves get wild at full moon, and gremlins get really angry if they are fed after midnight, inner cities are a madness jungle at 5pm in the US.
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Drivers block the intersections, stop at crosswalks, invade bike ways, and honk the horn for no reason.
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Adrenaline pumps up, anxiety jumps, futile attempts to advance are tested, and resignation skyrockets because you are stuck in a traffic jam.
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And in places like Manhattan this is the norm.
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A couple days ago a fellow biker asked me “Do people just get crazy when they’re driving?”.
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This is the result of 50 years of wrong transit policies by misguided politicians. And there are simple solutions that could solve it in a matter of months, here are some I’ve seen working in other countries:

  • Build free, big parking lots outside of downtown and have fast public transportation take you there.
  • Pedestrianize popular streets which, by the way, will have a positive impact on those retailers sales.
  • Every month, the police department should start a new awareness campaign. The sheriff appears in mass media warning drivers they are going to enforce something, lets say, blocking intersections. After a week, every single car that blocks an intersection gets a ticket no matter what. And after a month, we move to another campaign. In half a year transit safety improves exponentially without installing any additional infrastructure.

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Community driven urban design

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For several years I wished a gap on Seattle’s University bridge bikeway was fixed. It was something very obvious and that clearly endangered all the cyclist. And I wasn’t alone: It was very clear when the Seattle Department of Transportation created a public map to let people report fixes. That specific point was full of reports and, lo and behold, it got fixed almost immediately.

In these times when budgets are always under scrutiny, it’s vital to prioritize adequately what gets done and how. Another tool widely used here is Find it fix it, a mobile ap you can use to report potholes and other elements in need of a fix, and you can rest assured the SDOT will fix it on a timely manner.

Additionally, Seattle’s Greenways is an initiative that empowers neighbors to decide which streets should be made safer.

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Shame and sharrows

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It is no secret that urban infrastructure takes generations to be implemented city wide. Thus, if you want to correct a big mistake now the changes won’t be happening any time soon. That is why everywhere in the US you see lots of sharrows and only a few segregated bikeways.
If you pay attention you’ll notice that in the previous decades driving was THE mean of transportation. That’s why you see highways going through downtown and dividing cities, streets without sidewalks, and a shamefully low number of segregated bikeways that provide for an equally low percentage of bikers.
But going back to the 50s, 60s and 70s, when politicians and people only cared about cars, some urban designers tried hard to provide even a minimum cycling infrastructure. I can imagine how hard urban designers had to fight in order to get sharrows approved when everybody was crazy about oil and cars.
That’s why I really despise new sharrows being installed instead of segregated bikeways, but I’d like to praise the few great designers who envisioned a multimodal world half a century ago.

shameAndSharrows

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The Bike Shredder

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The Bike Shredder is how i call this piece of urban design I use most days. Well, I shall say I don’t use it any day. Actually, most bicyclist just don’t. I tried it once and it is just scary because it offers a false sense of security, while exposing you to drivers with a very narrow field of view.

As you can see, the bike way detaches from the road where bicycles and cars are about to turn right. I’m sure most drivers who don’t use this intersection frequently think that a bicycle is turning right as the bike way detaches, but then, we actually turn left and join the road again on the traffic light, where most cars turn right. Also, notice there is neither protection nor paint by the traffic light.

It’s a crying shame that such a dangerous design was installed. but hey, I think it can be very easily fixed!. Here are my five cents: All we need to do is extend the bike way until it joins the sidewalk and merge both bikeways past the crosswalk but installing signals so bikers give priority to pedestrians. So simple, yet so easy to make secure!.

theBikeShredder

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Guess which color are bikeways in Seattle

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Patterns are used all around public infrastructure to help us remembering what should we do. Therefore, using different materials, colors and designs prevents drivers from remembering to look for bikes. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands know this well, that’s why they always use the same color and shade, and they have a very limited number of designs. However, consistency seems to be impossible to find in Seattle because the city is rather focusing on expanding its cycling facilities instead.guessWhichColorAreBikewaysOnSeattle

Paint Allergy

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Strange as it sounds, I often see people driving in the middle of a two way road. They can easily cause an accident, but they aren’t drunk or high. So what’s happening?. Simply put, the white lines that guide us in our journeys are not there, and this is often found around the city.

And the crazier thing is that in order to solve this issue all we need is some paint, to make sure our roads look like roads, instead of minimalist abstract paintings.

paintAllergy

Green is the wrong orange

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Every couple of days I witness a biker or a walker on the brink of being run over by a car. How come?: Seattle’s orange traffic lights are green!.

Incredible as it sounds, Seattle gives green lights to cars turning into crosswalks which have a green light too, resulting in a very dangerous situation that could be solved easily by making sure cars are given an orange light when turning into crosswalks with a green one, like the rest of the civilized world does.

This is a simple fix that requires no additional infrastructure, so please, Seattle, fix it!.

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Seattle’s Critical Mass

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Seattle’s Critical Mass beings at 5:30ish at the Westlake Center. There, bikers socialize and, little by little, we ride in a big circle while also ringing our bells. At some random point, when most have joined, we depart without a planned destination.

Seattle’s Critical Mass always happens, rain or shine, although attendance greatly depends on the weather, ranging from tens to about a hundred. During these rides we try not to go through steep hills but sometimes there isn’t a more suitable options (or things are too chaotic to avoid them).

Still, you always get to meet people and discover interesting parts of the city. During my first Seattle’s Critical Mass I ended up on a birthday party on the other side of the city at 3am, but in other occasions we ended up riding around the International Fountain, visiting a p-path on the top of a building, and so on.

seattlesCriticalMass

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