A specter is haunting Seattle—the specter of a War on Cars. All the powers of Old Seattle have entered into a “holy” alliance to win this war: Seattle Times publisher and city council president, columnist Joni Balter and developer Kemper Freeman, Rainier Club regulars and suburban slobs.
Where is the advocate for increased bike and pedestrian safety who has not been branded an anti-car “militant”? Where is the politico who has not used the “War on Cars” rubric as a tool for demonizing the nondriving classes, for marginalizing our city’s walkers, bike riders, and mass transit users?
The mindless repetition of this “War on Cars” falsehood—by car advocates harboring a phony, self-serving sense of victimhood—has led to a situation in which this “War on Cars” is acknowledged by most Seattleites to be real. Because of this regrettable specter, it is high time that cyclists, pedestrians, and their transit-riding comrades openly publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of a “War on Cars” with a manifesto of and by the nondrivers themselves:
I. The car-driving class must pay its own way!
For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. They balk at the mere suggestion of hiking a car-tab fee, raising the gas tax, or tolling to help pay for their insatiable demands, even as downtrodden transit riders have seen fares rise 80 percent over four years.
No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air. Our present system of hidden subsidies is the opiate of the car-driving masses; only when it is totally withdrawn will our road-building addiction finally be broken.
II. All power to the people’s transit
If Seattle is to become a people’s paradise, our buses, rail, streetcars, and ferries must stretch into every neighborhood, running reliably, affordably, and at all hours of the day and night. Since mass transit serves the masses, the mass of our transportation dollars must hereafter be spent to meet its needs.
III. The pedestrian and bicycle classes must be protected. And served!
The history of transportation is the history of struggle between the drivers and the nondrivers whose lives and limbs have literally been crushed. Between 2000 and 2009 in King County, 19 cyclists and 238 pedestrians lost their lives to cars, while injuries sent another 423 cyclists and 1,656 pedestrians to our hospital wards for two days or more after being hit by cars. If there is, in fact, a “War on Cars,” then the cars are winning—as a look at recent headlines confirms. Saturday, September 10, brought the death of a young cyclist in the University District, and Sunday, September 11, brought the death of a woman biking on the Olympic Peninsula while wearing a helmet and a bright protective vest. Both were killed in collisions with cars.
The bikers and walkers, which neither slurp government dollars nor consume natural resources at the pace of the drivers, demand safer streets and sidewalks. As the Economist suggested on September 3 when responding to Seattle’s spate of recent cyclist deaths, cars on streets with bike lanes must be subjected to “traffic calming” methods already used in European capitals like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Portland. When cars must slow down below 20 miles per hour, they kill less than 5 percent of collision victims. And the busiest bike lanes must be physically protected from the four-wheeled instruments of death through concrete buffers, rows of trees, or other barriers. In some places, whole streets—yes, whole streets, we have plenty to spare—must be closed to cars, creating bike and pedestrian malls and paths of the kind found throughout more forward-thinking, class-conscious cities.
We make these demands because, unfortunately, we must. Our epoch, the epoch of the car, possesses this distinct feature: It has created a simplified antagonism. Seattle as a whole is now more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly fighting each other—car driver and nondriver.
This antagonism traces directly to the creation of the modern car driver, a privileged individual who, as noted, is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil. But the same subsidies that created this creature (who now rages about the roads while simultaneously screaming of being a victim in some war) can—and must, beginning now—be used to build bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and other benefits to the nondriving classes.
September 11: About three miles west of Port Angeles, a Mercury Sable driven by a 65-year-old woman struck a woman riding her bicycle along Highway 112, according to the Peninsula Daily News. The cyclist had been wearing a helmet “and a neon-yellow safety jacket” when she was hit from behind. She died from the injuries.
September 10: Robert Townsend, 23, was delivering a sandwich for Jimmy John’s just after 6:00 p.m. Riding his bicycle south on University Way Northeast, he collided with a Hyundai Sonata that was coming from the opposite direction and turning left onto Northeast Campus Parkway. “As far as I could tell, the car’s windshield was hit pretty hard and there was a terrible pool of blood in the middle of that intersection,” says witness Tyler Brown.
Townsend soon died at Harborview Medical Center, according to the Seattle Police Department. The driver was not cited at the scene, and a final determination of fault could take months. “For us, this is as serious as a murder,” says SPD sergeant Sean Whitcomb. “About the same amount of care and detail goes into this type of investigation.”
But the cyclist likely had right-of-way southbound on University Way Northeast. There are no green arrow lights that would give the Hyundai driver a free left turn onto Campus Parkway. Whitcomb confirms what most road users already know: “When two vehicles going the opposite direction have a green light, typically the one that is making a turn must yield to oncoming traffic.”
Pete Marino, the Illinois-based spokesman for Jimmy John’s, says the company requires its delivery riders in Washington State to wear helmets—and, Marino added, “Robert was wearing one at the time of the accident.”
July 28: Mike Wang, 44, was riding in the northbound bicycle lane on Dexter Avenue North in the late afternoon when an SUV struck Wang, killing him. The driver then fled the scene. Wang was wearing a helmet at the time.
July 22: John Przychodzen, 49, was wearing a helmet and riding on the shoulder of Northeast Juanita Drive traveling to his brother’s house for dinner in Kirkland when a truck struck and fatally wounded him.
Chris Davis, an attorney who specializes in representing cyclists and pedestrians hit by cars, says the number of those cases coming to him “has been increasing steadily over the last couple years.” Typically, he’s had one dozen to two dozen of each type of case annually. But recently his number of such cases climbed by 20 to 30 percent.
Why more cases?
In part, Davis credits more cyclists on the road—including some who “ignore laws.” Also out there, Davis adds, are more “ignorant motorists to endanger cyclists.” Yes, confrontational cyclists can contribute to the problem, Davis says, but he thinks that overall “anti-cyclist sentiment” is the major factor in the increase in cases he’s seeing.
“Motorists will become frustrated and crowd bicyclists and not give them enough room, come up on the bicyclists fast and out of frustration,” he says. “The frustration translates into actions, sometimes intentional acts against the cyclist.”
Davis’s experiences—more injuries, more clients—appear to be borne out by citywide data that shows more collisions.
According to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s 2007 bicycle and pedestrian collision report (which appears to be the most recent such report produced by the city), the number of collisions between bicycles and vehicles showed an uptick over six years. While there was an average of about 275 collisions per year from 2002 to 2005, that number rose to an average of 349 per year in the next two years (roughly a 25 percent increase). The following years were also up, according to separate data reported last month by the Seattle Times. The newspaper reported an average of 328 collisions per year from 2008 to 2010.
Fatalities from bicycle and car collisions have also risen: The city report shows only two fatalities in the four-year span from 2002 to 2005 (half a fatality a year on average, as macabre as that may sound). But over the next five years, according to the city’s and Seattle Times‘ reports, bicycle collisions resulted in 10 fatalities. That is, on average, four times as many fatalities a year. And that average is borne out again this year, where as of last Saturday, two cyclists had been fatally hit in Seattle.
At the same time cyclist collisions and deaths have risen, the anti-bicycle rhetoric has grown more divisive and violent. Who is behind it? Consider the words of Michael Cornell, chair of the Green Lake Community Council.
“Bicyclists are militant and looking to cause a conflict whenever they can,” he said at the group’s community meeting on January 12 in the company of Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen. Seattle spends volumes more on car infrastructure than on bicycles or pedestrians, yet Cornell has complained of the “radical agenda against cars,” saying, “I call it the war on cars and the people who need them,” and describing the pro-bicycle agenda as a “war waged on people who drive cars.”
So cyclists are all militant.
They’re seeking out conflict.
They’re specifically waging war on drivers.
And… now there’s an uptick in drivers killing them.
Go figure.
But Cornell is hardly alone in ramping up the anti-bicycle-rider rhetoric.
Seattle Times columnist Joni Balter is equally divisive, if not as inflammatory. “Increasingly, cars are being shoved aside,” Balter wrote in a recent editorial, “as evidenced by efforts to jack up commercial parking rates, the constant plea for more light rail, and significant transfer of asphalt to bike lanes.” Shorter Balter: Funding non-car infrastructure is an attack on drivers… the same illogic some Christians use to claim same-sex marriage erodes the traditional penis-in-vagina kind. According to the US Department of Transportation, the number of passenger vehicles on the roads has increased by four million since the 1960s, yet always the victim, Balter bleats as if cars are an endangered species.
In a cavalcade of logical fallacies, Balter uses the Seattle Times as a platform to instigate more anti-bicycle sentiment. For instance: “Every new bike lane can make a road less appealing to a car or a truck. Bicycles prevail, freight mobility takes a sorry hike” (false dilemma). Also: “Bike and pedestrian lobbies, whose efforts began before the arrival of [Mayor Mike] McGinn, are already getting improvements that infuriate some motorists” (association fallacy). She asks “whether this group of citizens can impose their will on the rest of the place” (argumentum ad populum).
Cars are being forced off the roads, Balter insists (falsely), and oooh, it just makes her so angry! And she’s hardly alone.
Portland radio host PK on Jammin’ 95.5 pushed the pedal to the metal in 2006, announcing: “If you are a cyclist, you should know I exist, that I don’t care about you. That I don’t care about your life,” the blog Bikeportland.org reported (the station never released an archive). “When I hear on TV that a cyclist has been hit and killed by a car, I laugh, I think it’s funny.”
While some people foment anti-cyclist rage, others are content to merely blockade spending on transit infrastructure. Seattle’s prime non-mover-and-shaker is city council president Richard Conlin, who twice in 2010 voted to suspend the city’s Transit Master Plan, thereby delaying rail planning. Conlin was also the city’s chief advocate for a $4.2 billion deep-bore tunnel that lacks transit, and was for years a leading voice to stop the monorail project. And last year, Conlin advocated advancing construction on the new, wider 520 bridge in an effort to head off transit advocates from tweaking the design to accommodate light rail.
His pro-roads/anti-transit agenda lumps Conlin in with some rather unsavory company: the right-wing think tank Washington Policy Center, which has claimed that “Seattle’s war on cars is a war on drivers”; Fox News, which relentlessly drums up the “Seattle’s War on Cars” meme; and wingnut local blogger Stefan Sharkansky, who takes aim at Mayor McGinn for “punishing people for driving.”
All the sort of violent rhetoric that can’t help but have a violent end.
If money is ammunition in the war on cars, then cars have most of the firepower. The pie chart above cites the city’s spending on various transportation projects. Only $18.4 million—about 7 percent—of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s $270 million in expenditures last year was dedicated strictly to bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Another 6 percent, approximately, goes to transit, such as paying for buses in the downtown ride-free zone. But the vast majority of the city’s transportation dollars—more than 85 percent—is dedicated to projects that solely fund vehicle infrastructure (such as parking programs) or primarily fund vehicle infrastructure (such as the Spokane Street viaduct and other major road construction). While the latter may include some pedestrian or bicycle amenities, the projects primarily serve cars. “It is false to argue that there is a war on cars,” says SDOT spokesman Rick Sheridan. “When you consider the spending on road building, maintenance, traffic signs, and signals, we spend a significant percentage of our budget on vehicles.”
Wallingford resident Doug stepped outside his home on August 26 to discover that city transportation workers had painted a giant bicycle on his street. “I now live on a giant bike path,” he said. “We are winning the War on Cars!”
Indeed, between 2000 and 2009, car use declined in Seattle by 7.7 percent, according to the American Community Survey. During this same period, transit use increased 10.9 percent, biking increased an astounding 59 percent, and walking increased 4.4 percent. US Census data shows that in 2009, nearly 40 percent of Seattle’s population walked, biked, bused, or carpooled to work. That number is only going to increase as the city becomes easier to navigate without a car.
For instance, voters approved a funding package in 2008 to extend light rail north to Northgate and east to Redmond. Two years prior, Seattle voters passed the nine-year, $365 million Bridging the Gap levy, applying a parking-lot tax that funds transportation maintenance and improvements. Since then, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has added roughly 180 miles of bike lanes to city streets and a series of green “bike boxes” that give cyclists right-of-way at signaled intersections. In 2009 alone, SDOT added 26 blocks of new sidewalk to city streets, 40 new “countdown” crosswalk signals, and repainted more than 800 crosswalks. In the last few years, several road diets have eliminated vehicle lanes and replaced them with bicycle thoroughfares on 125th Avenue Northeast, Stone Way North, and other streets around the city—despite the protests of petulant neighbors who bray as if their freedom were under siege. Meanwhile, a First Hill streetcar connecting the International District to Capitol Hill is set to begin its circuit in 2013.
All the while, gas prices are rising and parking rates costs are increasing. The carless commuters see victory on the horizon.
Our heroes are fueled not by petrol, but by the inspiration from King County Council member Larry Phillips, who pushed past a phalanx of suburban Republican lawmakers to approve a $20 car tab fee this summer that will save commuters from a 17 percent cut in bus service. To put that victory in perspective, consider this: Metro’s average monthly ridership is up 3 percent from 2010. (In May alone, the number of weekday bus and van trips exceeded predictions by 22,115.) “The best thing King County can do to recover the local economy is to keep buses on the streets so that people can get to work,” Phillips says.
He isn’t our only trailblazer—Wallingford resident Cathy Tuttle is head of the group Spokespeople. She’s leading Seattle’s “greenway movement” to convert select nonarterial roads that connect neighborhoods into dedicated bike routes, where driving is discouraged. In 2009, Tuttle wrote a grant asking the city to turn 44th Street, between I-5 and Stone Way North, into a greenway. Her grant was awarded last year and Seattle’s first greenway will be open to riders by the end of November. Now at least five other groups in the city are organizing to build greenways in their neighborhoods.
Others can’t be left out: Seattle City Council member Nick Licata is a tireless advocate for the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans, which call for adding new sidewalks, crosswalks, and over 450 miles of new bike lanes to city streets by 2017; Representative Jamie Pedersen (D-43) pushed through a vulnerable roadway users bill this year that imposes up to a $5,000 fine and 90-day license suspension on drivers who kill other road users. And it goes without saying that behind all this is the invisible hand of the Cascade Bicycle Club.
But perhaps our greatest mmm-asscot is Seattle City Council member Mike O’Brien‘s perky ass, honed from 10 miles of bicycle commuting every day (O’Brien’s ass has only bused to work three days since taking office in January 2010). One of O’Brien’s goals is creating a dedicated bike route, like a cycle track, in downtown Seattle. “I don’t know what street makes the most sense,” he says, “but right now, it’s a little scary downtown. There’s a huge gap for new riders between what’s possible and what we have today.”
Keep your quarter; O’Brien’s ass is so tight you could bounce a brick off it. 
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I hope you all kill yourselves.
@151 & @152: Well said!
@154: Why?
Wasn’t he one of the jerks involved in that holiday-time altercation with a motorist because a bunch of CriticalMassholes decided to block the ENTIRE roadway, and one of them got hit? His version of the story was quite different than the one the terrified motorist told the cops after he refused to stop because the cyclists were threatening him and trying to get him out of his vehicle.
One of these days, a cyclista will pull that kind of stunt with the wrong driver.
Okay, You’ve all made your points.
What’s the average cab fare in downtown Seattle nowadays?
@149/TrollyTroll:
“People like MattC need to be put somewhere that will make society safer without them.”
Yes! Angry, intolerant, impatient people should not be allowed to pilot a 4000 lb vehicle down public roads at 60MPH!
Motorists kill 100 people a day on American roads. That’s as many people the foreign terrorists killed on 9/11, once a month for the last 30 years.
Roads are much safer with you, me and Mister G on a bike, bus, or walking.
Embrace your epiphany and see you on that bus!
@158 Sorry, but bull …. while motorists are indeed a common link between many traffic fatalities, it’s only a common link. Most causes are actually distractions or inebriation. If you want to make a case against alcohol sales, legal narcotics, cell phones, etc. you could with the traffic fatalities. As to who is safer, there is no clear picture.
But I digress, again, it’s EVERYONE (bike, car, walk) who just needs to start obeying the laws better, no one is blameless. So back to your bickering, it’s an awesome comedy of errors.
@RIGHT HOOK GUY
I’ve been riding my bicycle for 15 years. Most of the time was spent in Lafayette, Indiana, where no one rides their bikes. No one rides their bikes. I mean, NO ONE. I was ran off the road when I was 12 years old by a panel van. I was made fun of by passing cars and have objects thrown at me. Guess how many times I’ve almost been hit by a car doing a “right hook maneuver”? Um, never. Do you want to know why? Because I pay really, really close attention to all of the cars around me, if I’m traveling more than 15 mph, I make sure that I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, and I get the fuck out of the way if I have to.
I’ve been in very, very few dangerous situations on my bicycle involving other cars, and almost all of them took place in Indiana. Would you like to know why? Because I recognize that cars are way fucking bigger than me, way easier to see than me, and what harder to stop than I am (apparently you need new brakes if you actually think a car can stop better than you. Unless you’re riding one of those stupid, pointless, completely unsafe bikes that don’t have brakes.)
I mean, dude, I have bicyclists in Seattle do some ridiculously stupid things. I have seen motorists in Seattle do some ridiculously stupid things. When two groups of ridiculously stupid people come together, bad shit tends to happen.
I can’t wait until I’m not living in this stupid fucking town anymore where everyone here seems to think that Seattle is the be-all and end-all of American Cities. Seattle kind of sucks for a lot of reasons: We have really stupid, convoluted politics, we have really stupid, ridiculously bad drivers, known of whom pay attention or seem to have ANY idea where they’re going, we have a bunch of entitled youngsters who are for some reason “pissed off” that they live in one of the most affluent, well-put together, well-run societies in the history of the world, and we have a bunch of vicious, low-intellect bike riders who think that riding a bike is, like, a fucking lifestyle or something. It’s a means of transportation, and, guess what, when cars are involved, a dangerous one. Because, guess what buddy, driving around in 1000 pound vehicles at 30 mph is dangerous. So until the fossil fuels run out and we plunge into the next dark age, GET USED TO IT
should read:
“Cars are way fucking bigger than me, way easier to see than me, and way harder to stop than I am”
I have never seen a group of people so oblivious to what’s going on around them than pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists in this fair city. I have seen cars nearly t-bone each other at 30 mph, and the people just wave and go their merry ways. I mean, the level of stupidity and obliviousness in this city is appalling. I was taught, as a child, to look both directions when crossing a street, and to never step in front of a moving car. I’ve seen mothers pushing baby strollers step in front of moving busses in this city. Unless this is some sort of fucked up form of natural selection, people in Seattle need to get off their phones, turn off their ipods, and look around them a little bit when they are navigating the public transportation areas.
The simple answer to all of this is more awareness by everyone. Bicyclists need to be more aware when they are putting themselves in dangerous situations; there should probably be classes for it (for instance, before riding a motorcycle, the operator has to take an extensive safety course because it is universally recognized that motorcycles are hard to see. as a motorcyclist, you MUST assume that no cars see you. So why do bicyclists feel like they don’t have to follow such simple safety protocols?). Drivers need to be more aware of bicyclists, and (this is crazy, I know) pedestrians need to look both ways before crossing the street.
My mantra when driving, walking or cycling is this: do everything that you can to make it so that no one else is effected by your actions. Never cut people off, never make people slow down, never step in front of moving cars. But, then, if everyone was as aware as me and as committed to not effecting people around them, the world would be a lot less fucked up of a place.
@160: shitsmonkey18:
Angry much? Go find someone who will give you a hug.
You can be paying really, really good attention walking and if I’m behind you I can still sneak up behind you and slap you in the melon. In fact I should, for all the BS you’re trying to spread about how falling victim to a motorist committing right hook is the cyclist’s fault. “Of course she was raped, did you see what she was wearing?”
Hooray for you and your rubber neck, all looking behind you and such. I for one keep my eyes front, to avoid cars, potholes, pedestrians and to be sure to stop at red lights. Right Hooks are pretty darn dangerous, and your recommended coping strategy can get cyclists killed (for those who want to see good web videos of safe biking I highly recommend you google “cycling savvy” and “Commute Orlando”).
You can get all chest thumpin’ n’ schlitz about your bicycling experience, but at the end of the day you are clearly just a frustrated motorist who had to brake once for a cyclist when making a right turn, and now have a bigaz chip on your shoulder. You’re scared, I know. And small minded people react strongly to fear (see above, RE: hug). But claiming that cyclists have to yield to the Almighty Automobile Under Every Circumstance Even When The Motor Vehicle Operator is Wrong and Reckless is simply dumb.
Dumb Douche! But with effort and study, you can overcome the ‘dumb’.
The overtaking vehicle is responsible for safe interaction with the overtaken. End of story. When a driver floors his gas pedal to get 10 feet in front of the bike, only to slam his brakes and cut his wheel, that’s not just reckless driving, it’s attempted murder.
@159
KittenDiddler:
Wha? All people in car accidents are drunk or distracted? How about maybe half those people were drunk and distracted, and the other half were killed by people driving cars while drunk and distracted. Let’s call that second group “collateral damage”, just to be cute.
Before you call “bull” on something true that you don’t believe because you-wish-it-wasn’t-true: Do a little research. Today I used this thing called “google” that lead me to something called a “reference” to things called “facts”: http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/09/19/st…
Wowzers. That was posted TODAY!
Now go use the google yourself. There’s no telling what you might learn! You’ll find out that the fact is that there is indeed a clear picture. Cars kill metric shit-tons of people, and cars are in turn driven by people. You want to change this fact, you have few choices:
1. Break the monopoly Cars have on transportation by:
A) Eliminating direct subsidies to cars from income and sales tax. Make motorists pay their fair share by funding highways strictly through fuel taxes.
B) Eliminate hidden subsidies. Fund all oil war efforts through fuel taxes. Fund subsidies to oil companies only through fuel taxes. The true cost of gasoline is more like $10 a gallon, look it up. As a sideline, look up how US income tax subsidized the export of refined gasoline to India and China when the recent recession was at its worst (Oh I just puked a little in my mouth).
2. Enforce strict liability for roadway deaths caused by motorists. I’m not talkin’ an eye for an eye here, I’m only advocating lifetime loss of driving privileges for taking a life.
3. Fund non-motorized transportation sufficiently. Something Americans learned in the Nineteenth Century (then somehow forgot) is that monopolies are bad. Bad, bad. Let’s break the monopoly automobiles have on American transportation, Kay?
For all this right hook business, the car people need to see the bike lane as another lane of travel (erm… which it… is).
If you were on a 3 lane road, and you were in the middle lane, and you needed to turn right, you would cross the far right lane by looking to make sure you don’t hit anyone. Then you get into the turn lane. Same shit with the bike lane.
It’s not fucking hard to look over your shoulder and you do it all the time for cars already. Yes it alters your routine somewhat. Deal.
For the record, I never bike around Seattle. I just know how to look out for other people.
Bikes scare me, feels like they are aiming at me when I drive, it is scary I just want to goto my Seattle appts and leave. Seattle drivers are so odd about road sharing, it makes something simple a huge stress.
Bicyclists are extremely annoying when they’re
“driving” with cars, anyone who’s in a vehicle can admit that. However I will say cyclists seem to obey the laws at all times.
So I say put in more bike lanes. But if you think we’re going to approve shutting down “entire streets” and lowering the speed limits to 20mph, you’ve got another thing coming. Look at the traffic in this city.
I am a pedestrian, a bike rider, and a car driver. I also ride on the city bus sometimes. I just about equally use these forms of transportation on a weekly basis whether it’s for work, shopping, entertainment or whatever. I’ve been living in Seattle (Capitol Hill) for almost a year now and what I’ve witnessed is that it’s NOT about the mode of transportation but about the PERSON using that mode of transportation.
On a weekly basis I witness pedestrians jay walking or not obeying walk signals even in congested traffic, barely missing being hit by a car or cyclist. I see cyclists not giving a flying f*** about anybody and riding their bikes through intersections at red lights, stop signs or pedestrian yield signs! I also witness plenty of people driving their cars like a bat out of hell and simply not slowing down and paying attention to their surroundings, especially in the urban congested parts of town.
Look, we are ALL apart of this problem and until we can ALL be better commuters by respecting each other and paying attention on the streets, sidewalks, park trails, or wherever you may be – than nothing will change.
When a bike can run over a car and crush it killing all its occupants then car drivers will pay attention. Better start making way bigger bikes or stay the hell out of the way.
@157: Ahem…..so…cab fare in Seattle, like the real estate market, has become exorbitant?
@168 SaraJean: I no longer live in Seattle and haven’t for over 14 years, now, but I have seen the traffic. That’s why I’m asking.
168: actually devoting whole streets to bicycles has been seen to increase traffic flow, see Sydney or Copenhagen for examples. NYC is seeing dramatic gains from removing car surfaces as well.
counter intuitive but when you reduce car surface it can increase throughput. same for reduced speeds and higher parking rates 🙂
I take the lightrail to work everyday and I ride my bike to and from the gym at the end of every day from Beacon hill to Capitol hill. I drive my car when needed.
I have a lot more issue with bicycle riders than any. They don’t abide by the rules of the road and then they are pricks to car drivers when they (the bike rider) break the law and almost get hit. They want more street trails and I can get on board with that. However, they don’t want to pay for it. The car drivers do with licensing taxes. I have almost been hit by bicycles several times as a pedestrian and I think they should be licensed so they may be tracked for traffic violations and held accountable.
Then bike riders also feel the need to do the occasional protest and clog up city traffic. Do they honestly believe they are helping their situation? I am sure everysituation is unique and cars do need to be careful, but in my experiences on all ends of the issue, I am more disappointed with the cyclists.
I take the lightrail to work everyday and I ride my bike to and from the gym at the end of every day from Beacon hill to Capitol hill. I drive my car when needed.
I have a lot more issue with bicycle riders than any. They don’t abide by the rules of the road and then they are pricks to car drivers when they (the bike rider) break the law and almost get hit. They want more street trails and I can get on board with that. However, they don’t want to pay for it. The car drivers do with licensing taxes. I have almost been hit by bicycles several times as a pedestrian and I think they should be licensed so they may be tracked for traffic violations and held accountable.
Then bike riders also feel the need to do the occasional protest and clog up city traffic. Do they honestly believe they are helping their situation? I am sure everysituation is unique and cars do need to be careful, but in my experiences on all ends of the issue, I am more disappointed with the cyclists.
Thank you all for your rather disheartening information.
I will neither drive nor ride a bike through Seattle and take a cab during my next visit to The Emerald City.
I hope it all works out. Peace.
First, you bus riders are 80% subsidized. You are all freeloaders.
Second, when is the last time any of you saw a bicyclist stop for a stop sign?
You know, I just had a very evil thought, but one that would teach drivers to respect bicyclists. It would be very Draconian but I think sometimes that is the only way people learn.
It would be a proximity field setup around a bicycle and it’s rider by a device. If the proximity field were violated, you could have a device that emits a short field EMP or microwave blast. That will disable a car that gets too close.
The capacitor banks and magnetron would probably take about 15 to 20lbs on a bike but it’d be oh so worth it.
AMEN! And thank you!
As a senior pedestrian and sometimes cyclists I ask where the heck has the Health Department been on all this, for decades in denial about the health aspects and the social costs: from drivein everythings, fast junk food, continous snacking from bags and boxes and slurping sugary drinks to coroners, emergency response, police surveillance courts, rehab, and 2 car garages that could house many people
What STUPID design to make us share passageways with automobiles. Really!
And all that exhaust goes straight into our little ones faces and lungs.
This is much worse than smoking.
And the NOISE, OMG!
Cars need to get some skin in the game before they can interact with bikes and peds as equals. The unspoken factor is that a car can ultimately kill a human powered commuter with impunity, lined in a steel cocoon with seat belts and huge sense of entitlement, a motorist feels none of this inequity. Changing the game by placing power in hands of cyclists via Critical Mass and Random Acts of Violence seems to be hugely threatening to readers of this thread (cyclists and motorists alike) which indicates it probably has real power to effect change of attitudes.
Changing the game by placing power in hands of cyclists via Critical Mass and Random Acts of Violence seems to be hugely threatening to readers of this thread (cyclists and motorists alike) which indicates it probably has real power to effect change of attitudes.
You really want to start a war with cars? Really? You’ll lose that war, cyclista.
Kind of a weak article and perpetuating something that doesn’t really exist.
We need to consider a few things:
1. Weather: it rains and is dark here 6 months out of the year. Go to any hot bike commuting route on July 15 and count the cyclists. There are mass. Go back to it September 15th and the numbers are dwindling. Now go back to it on November 15th and there is maybe one cyclist every fifteen minutes. To improve the city congestion the money needs to be thrown at the light rail to get cars off the roads. Making more bike lanes is a band-aid fix. The people who want to ride are going to ride and the people saying “I really want to ride but it’s so dangerous” shouldn’t do it, ever. You’re either in or out. There’s no room for any in-between wishy-washy Seattleness on this topic.
2. Physical Geography and Greed: Seattle isn’t laid out properly for cycling. On top of that, the rampant development of the 1990’s caught us all off guard while we drank in the bars and hid in our homes. Developers raped and pillaged property that needed to be destroyed to make more room for DEDICATED bike lanes (not those stupid share ways). The 1990’s real-estate boom was the time to take action. It’s now too late to take that land back from the folks who are profiting from it. For good cycling master plans I would turn to Denver and check them out (forget Amsterdam and all the places always mentioned, they have a completely different social and economic structure than the U.S. And Portland? Give me a break-it sucks for cycling except for the kick-ass dedicated mountain biking near town).
3. Don’t wage a war on cars because that’s what our capitalist economy is designed around and it can’t be changed. You are then fucking with commerce as we know it and you may not be able to get your iphone repaired one day if the truck wasn’t able to deliver parts on time. Don’t have an iphone? Well then imagine it becoming harder to get bananas or diapers or whatever it is you need. You can’t win a war against oil no matter how hard you try, it’s what bike tires are made of!
I ride 4 to 5 times a week, 16 to 40 miles per day depending on my mood and the weather. All year long. I don’t bitch about it and accept it for what it is. I have been hit by a car and hope that never happens again because it sucks. But the bottom line is that Seattle’s climate, physical geography and economic greed (minority but strong) will never make it a decent cycling city, ever. There’s a small, core group of people who are willing to ride here all year long but they are less risk-adverse than the majority of the population (face it: Seattle is no longer an “outdoor hotbed” as it once was, it’s more known now for drawing introverted computer programers to the region to support the abundance of computer related companies. At least the Pruis’ seems to be selling well.). The numbers speak for themselves: count the cyclists throughout the year and do the math on how important this issue really is.
As a pedestrian, I’ve nearly been hit by a bicyclist several times. It should be illegal to ride on the sidewalk.
I really don’t know Seattle anymore.
Sigh.
I couldn’t read this. I am an anti-car militant. When your car encroaches on my personal space in the cross walk, I raise my hand at you, or shout obscenities at you. If you are close enough for me to touch your precious car, you are too fucking close. If you continue to encroach after being warned, I put a dent in your precious car. If you get out of the car I will fight you.
I really appreciate this article and of course any bike or pedestrian accident that results in injury or death is horrible.
As someone who drives and bikes, I would like to ask that bikers also take responsibility for biking carefully – in the same way I drive carefully and respect other people on the road.
I live on Capitol Hill and when I see people with no helmets, no lights at night, and no brakes on their bikes it is incredibly frustrating.
It is okay to give up some of your “coolness” to be safe on the roads. Let’s all do our part.
Not to sound insensitive, but roads were built for cars. We have paid for them dearly with our tax dollars. On my way to work yesterday morning, a cyclist blew through a stop sign at top speed, which is not the first time I have seen this. No hand signals when turning or going straight…blowing through stop signs and traffic signals. Where is the uproar when another driver gets hurt? There isn’t….because roads and signals were put there for DRIVERS. You want to keep your right to “ride the road”, you should be kept to the same laws of the road that the people they were built for have to abide by, or face the consequences, like we do. Pay better attention and obey traffic laws when riding your bike, or shut the fuck up!
I really appreciate this article and of course any bike or pedestrian accident that results in injury or death is horrible.
As someone who drives and bikes, I would like to ask that bikers also take responsibility for biking carefully – in the same way I drive carefully and respect other people on the road.
I live on Capitol Hill and when I see people with no helmets, no lights at night, and no brakes on their bikes it is incredibly frustrating.
It is okay to give up some of your “coolness” to be safe on the roads. Let’s all do our part.
Hey Bobito #184, Scary shit! You will put up your hand, then you will dent my car, then you will fight me. Fucking terrifying!!
Then you will find out how much cool stuff I carry in my Hummer, and get to meet a couple of my cop buddies. Then you will get to cool your jets in a cold cell.
See you at the cross-walks asshole.
Vroom-vroom
@179-” Random Acts of Violence”. Ohhh I like that. Any issue I disagree with or have no solution for should be met with a random act of violence. I like guns too so this should be fun!
@186/youresodumb
Not to sound insensitive, but roads were built for cars. “
That’s the fundamental problem. Write your congressional representatives and demand Complete Streets”. The 1% of federal transportation funds spent on sidewalks and bicycle facilities frankly makes driving easier on motorists.
“We have paid for them [roads] dearly with our tax dollars.”
If you mean fuel taxes, no. Fuel taxes do not even cover the cost of federal highways, not by a long shot. Those roads are for motorists only. Meaning: that portion of sales, excise, income and property tax that goes for roads also goes for highways, where bikes, pedestrians and horseback riders cannot go. For the slow, this means that non-motorists actually subsidize motorists As a car-free taxpayer (and at my income, a very highly taxed taxpayer), I cordially invite you to check your facts and until then STFU.
As for cyclists rolling through stop signs: I do it all the time. Always slightly to the right of a car doing the same thing. While the car slows to 10-15 MPH, I pretty much don’t even slow down, because 10 is my top speed. If that “California-roll car” were to hit someone, that’s 4000lbs times 10 MPH. Me, it’s 200lbs times 10 MPH. Do some math, dummy, the car is the killer.
….as a rusted out 1960 Peterbilt from Hell goes flying over the side of the doomed Alaskan Way Viaduct….
R.I.P., Cary Loftin.
I don’t think the war on cars is a cars VS bikes thing. I think its just a broke ass city trying to find ways to tax people. And if the people are going to imagine some green energy jihad, they’re going to miss the point. This is about expanding the city’s responsibility towards buses and bikes during an economic time at which the city can’t afford expanding.
The local economy has survived the financial crisis and I think we’ve forgotten how fragile the whole thing is. There are two kinds of people in Seattle: people who work for STBX/MSFT/AMZN and the people who serve them. Vast generalization I know, but there is not a lot of diversity in the money. So people are a bit uptight about their money because there is low security in it. STBX probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon but what if MSFT or AMZN were to take hits in the market place? That would effect everyone in Seattle. Not just restaurants but also non-profits and everyone who depends on the service industry.
Maybe I’m crazy. I don’t know. I’m talking out of my ass but I think we need to step back from the cars VS bikes thing and be smart about this.
The wearing of a helmet is completely irrelevant in an automobile-bicycle collision. Having it on your head should not make it “more okay” for you to be present on the road.
How nonsensical would the conversation be if, in response to running over a bicyclist, a motorist rebukes, “She wasn’t wearing a helmet!”
Next time, take the train!
A big bonus: it’s got a bar on board!