It’s amazing what people working together to make their neighborhood better can accomplish.
Over the past four months, caring neighbors in Montlake, Madison Park, Laurelhurst and Capitol Hill have come together as a community. They’re asking for the SR 520 replacement project to help reconnect our neighborhoods and make it safe, comfortable and convenient for everyone, from an 8-year-old child to his 80-year-old grandmother, to bike and walk in their neighborhood.
In response to this groundswell of overwhelming community support (and nearly 1,200 people like you writing the Seattle City Council telling them to get SR 520 right!), the City Council introduced a Resolution calling for the city to work with WSDOT to improve walking and biking connections in Montlake and to figure out how to build a shared use trail on the new Portage Bay Bridge.
But wait, it gets better. Councilmember Conlin has introduced an amendment to help ensure the biking and walking improvements work for people of all ages and abilities. This means they’ll build protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways instead of just slapping some paint on the road and calling it good.
Specifically, the resolution and Conlin’s amendment call for the Washington State Department of Transportation to:
- Develop options for a shared use trail on the new Portage Bay Bridge, while working to minimize the width of the bridge and its overall visual and environmental impacts;
- Redesign the north/south biking and walking connections from the University of Washington to south of Lake Washington Blvd to make them work for kids and families;
- Collaborate with city agencies and stakeholder groups to improve the project design before it is finalized; and
- Create an interim plan that ensures biking and walking connections will work during all stages of the project as it gets built in phases over the coming years.
Just a few months ago the plans for SR 520 had us poised to repeat the mistakes of the past, further dividing our communities and making it more dangerous for people to walk and bike in their neighborhood. Now, we’re poised to get SR 520 right. All because people worked together to make their neighborhood better.
montlake resident here, saw the plans at the recent 520 meeting last wed–uuuugggly. Before you leave can you please post a blog about this? this is a major connection hub for seattle cyclists (and pedestrians), and its looking fragmented – for instance in the plans there is zero connection from the new 520 trail, which will stop at montlake, to bicycle routes up capitol hill and downtown (eg the short trail that goes under 520 on the West side, skirts montlake playground to shoot you onto roads to eastlake and downtown, or send you up interlaken to go downtown.)
Maybe you can also explain why cascade bicycle club supports the portage bay trail when there is a great route up capitol hill (interlaken). Understand importance of shooting for moon, but the transportation office has not even budgeted money to connect to existing routes (eg phase ’2′ plans call for a tunnel to connect the 520 trail to the west side bike trail, but no money in the existing plan – even for this rudimentary connection). Still, I see how this would be great in the long run.
But before you go, most importantly — call out the 520 planners for the pedestrian and bicycle mess they have come up with! for more deets this might help: http://montlaker.com/
Please give this one a go before you leave, and good luck in the new job!