The furor over adding bike lanes to Roosevelt Way Northeast continued last week after the city put part of the plan on hold.
The issue – particularly parking along 10 blocks from Northeast 75th Street to Northeast 85th Street – had already generated the most comments (43) in Maple Leaf Life’s half-year history, and more than 100 comments to the Seattle Department of Transportation.
On Thursday Josh Cohen, PubliCola’s BikeNerd, laid into Maple Leaf for at least temporarily blocking the bike lanes there:
It’s a shame that SDOT caved to a small contingent of NIMBY Maple Leaf residents who are too selfish to give up half of 10 blocks of parking in order to make bicycling safer and easier.
That post spurred a spate of discussion. “Local residents are very concerned about parking, which the Maple Leaf Community Council’s Board reflected in our letter to SDOT. But our primary concern is the impact on traffic and transit along Roosevelt,” wrote Joshua Newman, a board member of the community council.
David Miller, also of the community council, added: “We raised questions about transit throughput and SDOT realized they made a design error in this stretch and needed to study those intersections in greater detail. SDOT decided to postpone the study to 2011 so the travel studies wouldn’t be complicated by the fact 15th NE is currently closed to through traffic to remodel a bridge.”
Even more of the discussion can be found at the Seattle Bike Blog.
If cycling grows the the point where begins to make a substantial impact on our shared automobile/oil dependence I’m sure that it will become cost effective to liscence cyclists, and that this will be a good thing.
Liscencing is just an accountability mechanism after all. I’m with you on this, Uncle Robbie.
@Uncle Robbie-I look forward to the day when licensed drivers obey traffic laws and we can do away with motorcycle cops and the State Patrol. And everyone gets a pony. In the meantime, to borrow a phrase, bikes don’t break laws, people do, and they do so on foot, biking, driving, or flying.
@MLBob, auto travel is subsidized by every taxpayer, much more so than what’s spent on alternate modes, whether we’re talking about bikes, transit or the shameful lack of sidewalks in our community. This dependence on cars is less than 100 years old, certainly not inevitable; and when gas prices spike again as they will as certainly as it rains in Seattle, people will be wishing they had other choices to getting gouged at the pump.
I live for the day cyclists are required to be licensed and obey traffic laws.
@MLB
Many maple leaf residents on the north side of 80th have neither front of property parking nor alley access to their property.
Their “public interest” could be in regaining automobile access to their property by reducing 80th to one lane. Should they have the right to do this by a neighborhood vote? I see problems with this definition of the public interest.
@Doug –
It’s all in the definition of what is in the public interest. My public interest is that the property tax and vehicle taxes paid are better going towards having parking for people in front of their house so they don’t have to haul their groceries and kids blocks to get home. That to me is more in the public interest than catering to a very small minority of bike riders who will use the bike lane. As a citizen, I prefer that my tax dollars go towards maintaining the streets and parking areas for people in the Maple Leaf neighborhood over bike lanes.
It should be as simple as being up to a public vote of the residents that live in the neighborhood.
The bike lanes along Rosevelt (near whole foods) had made the driving lanes way too narrow…and the cars parked on the sides of the road are now parked in the driving lane (nearly all of them have at least part of a tire in the driving lane – over the white line).
In my view, government is almost always being wasteful when it provides subsidies to private parties such as special tax breaks or even free parking in front of my house. When the government builds a road or a bike lane it is providing a service needed by the community, but in all governments initiatives, private parties become winners and losers. Citizens must keep government honest by making sure that the public interest is protected.
This is why I defend the bike lane. Can someone please explain to me the public benefit of free parking in front of my house? I mean, I like it, but is it my govenment’s job to provide this to me?
At what cost?
Doug Campbell
@Nickbob
I hear you. Believe me, I am against raising or adding any type of tax until the gov’t officials can prove to me that they can manage finances and spending wisely, which is very doubtful in my life time. My suggestion of a tax was a sarcastic rant and was not serious.
My overall comment above may sound a little harsh, but it’s very annoying to hear people like Cohen bash the residents of Maple Leaf when he does not even live here. That type of “I know what is best for you attitude” really gets old in this city.
@MapleLwafBob-“Lets put a financial value on each parking space that the bike lanes will eliminate and then require all bike riders in Seattle to take a test and register themselves as bike riders. Then we can require that bike registrations be renewed each year and put a tax on top of the renewal charge”
Interesting notion, parking spaces are free for autos but charged for bikes. No, gas taxes don’t pay for all road work, as property owners bike riders also pay for streets and deserve consideration for use. And as Doug so calmly noted, everyone on a bike is not driving a car, so traffic congestion is reduced by making the streets safer and easier to bike. But if charging for that space is applied anywhere, even as suggested here, then expect it to be applied across the board on every street every day for every vehicle- a nice tax for homeowners and car owners alike. Be careful what you ask for, MLB.
@ML Resident – You live in your block. I do not. It’s hard to match what you are telling me with what I observe. We should create a more scientific counting process, perhaps. But … don’t you and your elderly neighbors not have any off street parking available or alley access?
@Doug, to say that the most a resident will be inconvenienced by parking removal is “to park across the street” is absolutely false. Last night I came home at 7:30PM and parked 1.5 blocks from my home on Roosevelt and that was with parking currently allowed on both sides of the street. If the cars parked on the West were moved to the East I would have parked 3 blocks away! As one gets closer to 75th the parking needs get greater as there are currently 2 apartment complexes w/o adequate parking, and the end lot is already approved for a mega apartment complex without adequate parking. The same is true as you get closer to 85th going north as the Park and Businesses require street parking.
All that is to say, if you remove parking from either side of the street people will be forced to park several blocks away from their homes.
This is not all the time, but imagine returning with your groceries, or compost bags, or even your kids in tow, walking several blocks to get into your home, and then leave your car “safely” parked somewhere down the road and trust that it will be there, or in one piece, when you do your return hike the next morning.
I guess residents could install bike racks on the back of their car, so that after parking they could ride to their homes in the new bike lane. A few of my neighbors are 70+, so that might prove a bit of a challenge for them.
Then we must juggle.
I thought there was supposed to be new parking on the south edge of the park.
One of the impacts of removing parking on the east side of the street is then there would be no parking adjacent to the park.
Figuring a solution here will be a bit of a juggling act.
As a Maple Leaf resident since 1986, I can bear witness to the fact that Roosevelt is not a mad house when it comes to parking. There is no time day or night when all cars parked on both sides of Roosevelt from 75th to 85th could not fit on one side of the street or the other (except during the annual Maple Leaf social!). If the city determines that there is a need for an uphill bike lane in these ten blocks (requiring removal of a lane of parking) parkers will be displaced no further than across the street.
I’m glad there will be a pause to study the traffic issues more carefully. Removing parking on the east side of Roosevelt could make more sense than removing it on the west. This would resolve the issue of tight bus turns from 80th, and the resulting bike lane on the east side of the street would only block the frontage of lots which also have rear alley access.
As to cyclists’ need to ride on the city’s arterials, MapleLeafBob, this is required for the same reason that motorists drive on them. The cross streets to arterials are blocked with stop signs, allowing safe unimpeded progress though intersections. This is bike riding used as an efficient in-city transportation method, not as recreation! Do you commute on your bicycle?
Finally, with regard to congestion, Roosevelt is much more congested than it was in 1986 when I moved here. We should remember, however, that every commuter who switches from an automobile to a bike leaves a lot more space on the road for the vehicles remaining. By creating a successful bicycle commuting route through the neighborhood, we may be preempting the need for four lanes of automobile traffic in the same corridor ten or twenty years into the future.
Doug Campbell
Who is Josh Cohen? Oh ya, thats right, a completely bias individual who does not even live in Maple Leaf.
Roosevelt is already a mad house with normal traffic and buses. Trying to retrofit bike lanes is absolutely ridiculous. Move the bikers over to side streets. Why should the safety of drivers and buses suffer to please bicycle riders who are the minority group travelling along Roosevelt?
Or in the normal way of doings things in Seattle, why don’t we just raise taxes (on bike riders). Lets put a financial value on each parking space that the bike lanes will eliminate and then require all bike riders in Seattle to take a test and register themselves as bike riders. Then we can require that bike registrations be renewed each year and put a tax on top of the renewal charge.
Side note: I ride a bike and actually LIVE in maple leaf.
Street parking is hard enough as it is because people own too many cars. One of my neighbors, a 2 person household, has six but only has driveway space for 2. The rest are parked on the street. Coupled with those who buy condos and then use their garage as a bonus room instead of parking their vehicle inside has made for one heck of a mess.
That said, I still can’t sympathize with the bike riders because far too many of them refuse to obey the law when it comes to stop signs/signals, pedestrian right of way, and general road safety.
Calling Maple Leaf Residents and the Community Council “NIMBY” just shows how little Josh Cohen, PuliCola’s BikeNerd, knows about the actual issues.
The issues involve safety for all road users, bus headway times, commuter needs, level access for elderly and disabled, pedestrian safety, parking for Park users, local business’s access, AND for some residential parking needs.
The City for more than a decade has said it absolutely needed a second southbound lane in the AM peak hours between 75th and 80th on Roosevelt Way NE. No parking has been allowed between 75th and 80th West side during morning peak hours for all that time. Now all of a sudden, they no longer need that travel/commuter lane? Either they’ve been duping the residents all along, or they have screwed up now by removal what has been a key part of traffic control and flow for more than a decade.
Maybe Josh Cohen thinks that traffic and congestion have just magically improved all of a sudden, so a bus/commuter lane is frivolous now. Or maybe he just isn’t thinking at all.
((On Thursday Josh Cohen, PubliCola’s BikeNerd, laid into Maple Leaf for at least temporarily blocking the bike lanes there:
It’s a shame that SDOT caved to a small contingent of NIMBY Maple Leaf residents who are too selfish to give up half of 10 blocks of parking in order to make bicycling safer and easier.))
—It’s not just about losing some places to park.
It’s about congestion, room for buses to safely maneuver and traffic delay. I don’t think these are selfish concerns.