This cycletrack creates a safe link between two separated paths that run from 110th up to the King/Snohomish county line. Some riders would turn around once they reached the road at 125th, but are now offered a safer way for them to continue for much farther.

Don’t we all want to create more ridership, regardless of age and ability? To ignite the passion for riding that we all have? Why limit it to those who can ride as fast as cars? Let people enjoy riding; whether that be in a cycletrack, on a path, or in the road.

Here are the top 8 causes of car-bike collisions:

1. Car left-cross
2. Car right-hook
3. Bike swerves left or turns left from far-right
4. Bike runs traffic-control
5. Car door opened into bicyclist path
6. Car noses-out/runs traffic-control
7. Wrong-way bicyclist!
8. Over-taking side-swipe

The cycle-track does not stop left-crosses, right-hooks, bike swerves or illegal left-turns, bikes running red lights, or car nose-outs/failure to stop.

The cycle-track reduces visibility of the cyclist at intersections, aggravates turning and crossing conflicts, demands additional signal phases (increasing congestion), increases the risk of hitting pedestrians walking to or from parked cars.

The cycle-track introduces new problems: conflict with wrong-way cyclists or pedestrians, lanes too narrow for passing/overtaking/two-abreast. Right-of-way for peds? right-of-way for bikes? right-of-way for cars? Multi-phase signals, added time and congestion.

The 2-way cycle-track addresses one and only one problem–getting hit from behind, the least common car-bike collision.

What could we do to reduce or eliminate ALL of the conflicts above? Ride assertively in the lane. Reduces side-swipes, nose-outs, right-hooks, left-crosses, doorings, and guess what? true rear-enders. Visibility, predictability. no false security.

As a cargo biker I get stopped a lot to chat with people new to biking or cargo biking. Usually it is a lot of “Wow, I had no idea that was possible on a bike!” and then after a test ride they’ll most often say “It was great! Although, I can’t imagine riding in traffic with kids on this sorta bike, especially up hills.” Now, I do it all the time but I’ve been cycling *way* longer than they have and no amount of comforting or “It works for me!” is going to persuade these nice folks to put their family at risk (even if the perception of risk isn’t justified or grossly blown out of proportion.) I’d like to think cycle-tracks are potential avenue to these folks on the road consistently for certain kinds of trips. And then we let the magic of biking take over and they’ll pick up Forester’s book one day and figure out on for themselves how to integrate both means of cycling.

In my word I build and ship products but in order to do that I need prototypes vetted with real people in their normal everyday context. Cycle-tracks have worked in other cities but those cities aren’t Seattle – will it work here? Hell if I know, but we need a pilot project w/ usage data before we can shoot this thing down or promote it as the tool to win-over the next generation of cyclists. I’m willing to see how this plays out and then make an assessment as to whether bi-directional, uni-directional, or none of the above is going to do it.

While I personally have no problem riding in traffic and I sympathize idealogically with vehicular cyclists, I think it’s more important to concentrate on outcomes and the most effective way to reach those outcomes. In this case the outcome we’re looking for is to massively increase bike ridership. How do we do this? Around the world countless examples show that the most effective way to do this is to separate bikes and cars. This is the model we should pursue. Seattlites certainly are “special” but this city is not unique. The infrastructure that will lead to huge leaps in ridership has been proven throughout the world, we just need to work towards bringing more of it here.