Already delayed by the city’s backlog of street improvement projects from a plan for a start of construction last summer, work on the Melrose Promenade project is finally underway. But there are more construction delays to come.
The city says the ongoing concrete workers’ strike will mean work on many key elements of the planned overhaul will have to wait.
“No Park” signs have gone up in work areas along the route and work is beginning on drainage and electrical systems near Melrose Ave and E Pine. Continue reading →
As pollsters queried Seattle voters to try to sort out who would win in the city’s hotly contested political races in November, they also asked about some of the ideas behind the policies including one concept once nearly unheard of in neighborhood business districts — should Seattle trade lanes of traffic and parking spaces to create safer, more active, and more walkable streets?
Gordon Padelford, executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, hopes the big winner from November’s election will take notice of the results.
“Seattle is challenged by having really bold visions while not being able to follow through,” Padelford said.
“Bruce Harrell, when he puts his mind to something and decides it is the right thing to do, he’ll back it.”
According to SNG and the polling work from the Northwest Progressive Institute, more than 80% of Seattle voters support safe walking and biking routes to schools, and more space for outdoor dining and retail to support small businesses. More than 70% support “wider sidewalks and planting strips to give people more room to walk and plant more street trees,” dedicated bus lanes, and separated, dedicated bike lanes. Continue reading →
In December, the City of Seattlewill identify potential sites for “Urban Pedestrian Zones” with limits on cars and investments in walk and bike-friendly enhancements.
But the Seattle Department of Transportation has already lined up changes that will help make busy streets safer in one area of Capitol Hill.
The new stop signs at 13th and Pine are part five new Pike/Pine locations for new 4-way stops to be installed “in coming weeks” around the neighborhood’s nightlife and entertainment core.
“Based on the large number of people walking and driving through these intersections, we are adding 4-way stop signs at five intersections in this area to improve safety for pedestrians and to create a consistent traffic control network in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood,” an SDOT spokesperson tells CHS. Continue reading →
CHS examined the two candidates who are vying to be Seattle’s next mayor through the prism of what the future may hold around transit and transportation on Capitol Hill. The races for Seattle’s two citywide city council seats may feature some starker contrasts than in the mayor’s race, with similar stakes for pivotal decisions around the future of transportation in the city.
In the race for Position 9, the seat Council President M. Lorena González is vacating, the candidates offer pretty different visions of what government can and should accomplish. Nikkita Oliver, the lawyer, poet, and community organizer in the race, has built an ambitious campaign platform heavily based on the idea that the city should reform and expand its current revenue base to include new forms of progressive taxation. Sara Nelson, Fremont Brewing co-owner and former council aide to Richard Conlin, has primarily argued that the city should do a better job with current revenues. Continue reading →
The next mayor of Seattle will face a bevy of transportation decisions, from whether to finally connect Seattle’s two disconnected streetcar lines to what the next version of the $930 million Move Seattle transportation levy, expiring in 2024, will look like. While they note the strongest contrasts between them on issues like homelessness and increased revenue, they also will likely treat the area of transportation very differently depending on who occupies the mayor’s office in City Hall in January.
With Bruce Harrell having served on the city council for twelve years, four years as council president, and M. Lorena González, currently in her second year as council president and her sixth on city council, the best way to know how they’ll treat the areas of transportation and public transit is by looking at their records. González has made transportation more of a focus during her council terms.
Last year, it was González who proposed an amendment that allowed a compromise to occur between councilmembers who wanted Seattle’s transit benefit district sales tax to stay flat at 0.1% and others who wanted to see it increased to 0.2%. That compromise likely kept hundreds of Capitol Hill bus trips per year on the road that would have been cut by Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposal.
Harrell, on the city council from 2007 to 2019, didn’t make transportation a signature issue. He does stake a claim to the city’s action on improving conditions along Rainier Ave S, one of the most dangerous streets in the city. “This is the beginning of what we’re gonna do with Rainier Avenue. We’re gonna take our street back,” he told a crowd gathered at a protest on the street in 2015, as the city prepared to rechannelize a key segment of the street through Columbia City and Hillman City, which reduced collisions significantly on the stretch. Continue reading →
With the weight issue resolved, the sidewalk expansion and concrete planter boxes are back in the plans for the overpass
By Ryan Packer
A key segment of the $39 million plan to remake Pike and Pine Streets between Pike Place Market and Capitol Hill will proceed as it was originally envisioned. That project, now formally called the Pike Pine Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements project but which will likely continue to go by the catchier name Pike Pine Renaissance, is one facet of the larger Seattle waterfront revamp and is on track to start construction next fall with plans for a 2024 opening.
This summer, we reported that the plan to connect and upgrade bicycle and pedestrian facilities on both of these corridors had hit a snag on the I-5 overpass along Pike. The Washington State Department of Transportation, which controls the bridge, had determined that expanded sidewalks and concrete planter boxes to separate the bike lane would put too much weight on the bridge structure.
Now the project team has announced that the original design will proceed as envisioned. “The feasibility of adding weight to existing older bridges is based on a complex quantitative structural evaluation,” SDOT project manager Thérèse Casper said in a written statement. Continue reading →
The Pike Pine Renaissance plans wider sidewalks and concrete bike lane barriers on Pine Street over I-5
The Pike Street bridge over I-5 won’t be able to handle expanded sidewalks or concrete bike lane barriers
By Ryan Packer
Seattle’s waterfront remains a heavy construction zone as work progresses on the long-planned multi-lane boulevard and adjoining park, but a piece of the overall Waterfront Seattle project that gets much closer to Capitol Hill hasn’t broken ground yet.
The Pike Pine Renaissance project envisions streetscape changes to Pike and Pine Streets between 1st Avenue and Bellevue Ave, with the one-way street configuration in downtown extended all the way up the hill to Bellevue. Sidewalks in several areas will be expanded. The gaps between the existing protected bike lanes will be filled in, with the bike lane barriers beefed up with more solid and durable materials. That’s the original vision, at least, and the one that was reviewed by the city’s design commission last year when the project reached 30% design on its way to planned construction in fall of 2022.
But in the latest plans obtained from the city at the 60% level of design, a key segment of the project has been scaled back. While the wider sidewalks and concrete barriers for the bike lane are still planned for the I-5 overpass on Pine Street, the overpass on Pike Street is no longer planned as much of a makeover. Instead of concrete, the barricades look to be something like plastic posts only.
Ethan Bergerson of the Seattle Department of Transportation explained the reason for the change. Continue reading →
The fate of two Norway Maples along one of Capitol Hill’s most leaf-covered residential streets seems sealed— but some neighbors are hoping to influence the decision at the last minute. 13th Ave E, with its unique curving streetscape, features a lush tree canopy along most of its length.
But a project moving forward to replace two houses currently occupied as duplexes with five rowhouses has led the city toward the determination that two 40-foot-tall trees in the planting strip along 13th cannot stay. With the new homes comes rebuilt curb ramps, and ripping up the sidewalk to install new ramps will do too much damage to the trees, according to the City of Seattle.
“After more than a year of review of the project site and design requirements, there were no options to meet SDOT Traffic or Urban Forestry standards for public safety and accessibility without removal and replacement of the trees,” reads an email sent by SDOT Arborist Ben Roberts that was posted by a concerned neighbor at the site within the past few days. According to the city, a notice was posted alerting nearby residents that the trees would be removed, but that notice is no longer there as of this week. Continue reading →
A view from above Montlake from August 2020 satellite imagery (Image: Google Earth)
By Ryan Packer
At 24th Ave E and E Lynn Street, next to Montlake Bicycle Shop, an empty bucket is all that’s left of the crossing flags neighbors had added to the intersection to provide people trying to cross at a legal intersection where few drivers cede their right-of-way. People walking north along the west side of the street nonetheless need to cross here as the construction of the forthcomingSea Wolf Bakery has blocked the entirety of the sidewalk for much of the past year, with a trip around the block entailing dealing with a large hill.
A new traffic signal and marked crosswalks may not open in time to help with the Sea Wolf pedestrian detour, but they are coming.
A set of improvements along the 23rd Ave/24th Ave corridor, geared around improving pedestrian access and experience for transit riders, is set to start construction as soon as early autumn. Continue reading →
In the middle of 2020, when the Seattle Department of Transportation was still figuring out how to roll out pandemic-focused programs like the local-access-only Stay Healthy Streets, it was also installing a long-anticipated new neighborhood greenway to a street in Capitol Hill. The connection is a part of a Safe Routes to School project providing safer routes to Lowell Elementary and Meany Middle School. We covered the project at CHS as it was happening, but after an unconventional school year at Seattle Public Schools ended a few weeks ago, we decided to check back in on how the project has worked out.
The greenway connected to the one already in place along 21st Ave E and filled in a route envisioned on Seattle’s 2013 Bicycle Master Plan running east to west in Capitol Hill along E Republican Street. But to serve Lowell Elementary, the route takes a detour at 13th Ave E and connects with the back end of the school along E Roy Street. Users wanting to connect to Broadway can use one of Capitol Hill’s only pedestrian streets- but not during the start or end of school days during the school year.
The crossing improvements at E Roy Street and 12th Ave E, as well as at E Republican and 19th Ave E, featuring marked crosswalks on both sides of the street and flashing crossing beacons to alert drivers to stop for walking or rolling traffic, are probably the most notable changes that have come with the greenway. But E Harrison Street also received crossing improvements as part of the project, in recognition of the fact that there isn’t one singular route that neighborhood residents take to travel between Meany and Lowell. Continue reading →
