News Aug 3, 2022 at 3:50 pm

The City Is Rolling Out a Promising Pilot Program

How could the flex posts have let this happen? Matt Baume

Comments

1

"But be warned: The parking enforcement team doesn’t work 24/7, which means there are some hours of the day during which drivers can park wherever they want without fear of legal repercussions."

Right, like the truck drivers who deliver the comic books you write about.

2

A more pervasive issue than cars parked in bike lanes is people using the passenger side of their car to load and unload all their shit while parked next to a PBL. They seem pretty unaware that they and their stuff are blocking a bike lane. You see this all the time on westbound N 34th between Stone Way and Fremont Ave. Perhaps a more substantial barrier between the parking area and the bike lanes will help, but I’m not counting on it.

3

How can SDOT and a Stranger author completely miss effective Bollards as a solution? By not having visited other cities where they've been installed and are effective, is one. The Stranger authors ignorance is excusable, but this borders on gross negligence on the part of SDOT.

Check out the World Bollard Association@WorldBollard
https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1548317032449318912?s=20&t=ClXw0B4NU40TymE9y1QxNg
and for fun: https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1553782811877851142?s=20&t=ClXw0B4NU40TymE9y1QxNg

5

@4: I doubt that's going to happen.

8

My immediate thought upon seeing Toronto's low wall concrete barriers: it's like a mousey-sized Shinkansen.

https://www.cycleto.ca/sites/default/files/civicrm/persist/contribute/images/Runnymede%20court%20Kanchan%20_3_.jpg

10

Planters are nice where there is space. Because plants are nice. And they are vaguely 18x18. Also usually have person-sized gaps which can be useful sometimes. Something that big could also help a little with road noise (a lot of which comes right from where the car tires hit the road).

The armadillos seem useless. Not any different from the plastic tube things.

The normal-sized curb seems to me to be falling into a too small to feel like much protection/cause cars to slow down at all and to big for a street sweeper to run over them but still a trip/bike crash hazard.

12

Are they going to come up with a way to clean the PBLs so they remain safe?
@4 Bike licensing and registration programs have been shown to cost more to operate than they generate. And Bike users cause much less wear and tear on the roads than cars and trucks. So if you're expecting riders to pay their fair share, we already do because most of us also own cars and buy things that are taxed. And those funds go to roads.

13

These bike lanes are useless. I'm both a driver and cyclist. Stronger enforcement of traffic laws for both bikes and cars would do much more to improve the situation. The bike lanes a re dangerous to cyclists. They trap you in the worst pavement where trash collects, storm drains, present barriers that can been run into on both sides. One of the bigger problems is people exiting cars from the passenger side directly onto the path of bicycles. They dramatically reduce the amount of parking which is already scarce. The best thing the city can do to improve bicycle safety is spend the money on repairing all terrible pavement. You have to ride a mountain bike to safely travel in Seattle. The people designing the current bike lanes clearly are not cyclists. You can't engineer intelligence into cyclists or drivers. Motorized bikes and scooters need to be outlawed and helmet laws need to be enforced. The best bike lane is a white line on good pavement that is respected by both sides. You'd have to be blind not to notice all these plastic pylons that are broken off.

14

All of these pictures just reinforce to me that I need to always carry a can of spray paint and an emergency car window breaker every time I ride a bike in Seattle. People fucking die swerving around assholes like these.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.