Tag Archives: bikes

15 projects that could make Central Seattle streets and sidewalks safer

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The roster includes a proposal to make E Olive Way safer through street and sidewalk improvements -- this Northwest Urbanist essay makes the case (Image: The Northwest Urbanist)

The roster includes a proposal to make E Olive Way safer through street and sidewalk improvements — this Northwest Urbanist essay makes the case (Image: The Northwest Urbanist)

Fifteen fantastic ideas for “large, but not too large” projects to improve streets and sidewalks around Capitol Hill, the Central District, and across Central Seattle were considered Monday night in the latest round of Neighborhood Street Fund proposals.

The East District Neighborhood Council, whose role these days pretty much boils down to figuring out which grant proposals should make it out of the local rounds and into the priority list at City Hall, will choose five of these to join 60 other proposals from around the city moving forward to SDOT’s “high level design & cost estimate” vetting process. It can be a long and winding road from the council selection to an actual funded construction project. One recent plan that finally became reality can be found along 12th Ave.

February 23, 2016 Neighborhood Street Fund (NSF) call for applications
March 2016 Briefings for Neighborhood District Councils on NSF Program
April 17, 2016 Deadline for submitting NSF Proposals to SDOT
May 2016 Screening of proposals by SDOT and selection of 5 projects by each of the 13 Neighborhood District Councils for further evaluation
June – August 2016 SDOT conducts a high level design & cost estimate of the 65 projects selected by the neighborhood District Councils.
September 2016 Each Neighborhood District Council prioritizes its own list of projects.
September – October 2016 The Move Seattle Citizen Oversight Committee evaluates all proposed projects and makes funding recommendations to the Mayor & City Council.
November 2016 2017 Budget adopted
2017 SDOT designs projects
2018 SDOT builds projects

Details on the proposals under considerations are below: Continue reading →

Now open: Electric Lady, the Central District’s first e-bike dealership

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IMG_0309

The ride took a little longer than planned but Electric Lady is now open on E Union just west of 23rd Ave.

Of course Alex Kostelnik ended up with a bitchin’ 206-504-ROLL phone number for the new shop.

The man behind 20/20 Cycle just up the road will now try his hand at addressing the nascent mainstream market for cargo and electric bikes. CHS talked with Kostelnik about his venture last June:

Electric Lady*, inspired by and named in the glow of amazement Kostelnik felt as his wife gave birth to his first child 10 months ago, will feature electric cargo bikes, a full line of new bikes, kits, gear including handmade bike bags and panniers, “and the best touring rack selection in Seattle.” The Lady will also sell Kostelnik’s handmade Kalakala bikes and he’s working on which folding bike and single-rider electric bike brands to feature. The new bike section is set. Italian classic Bianchi, the oldest bike manufacturer in the world, will house its line inside the coming Central District store. *Kostelnik is also a recording engineer so the name is also inspired by Electric Lady Studios, of course, the legendary Greenwich Village studio constructed for Jimi Hendrix.

The Electric Lady showroom is a showcase for cargo “city trekking” bikes designed to carry commuters, and families, and sometimes more than a 100 pounds of stuff plus a rider.

The time for electric has also come, Kostelnik told CHS, thanks to a technological leap forward with new mid drive motors that make for a more natural ride and don’t involve managing a throttle, plus improved lithium ion batteries that squeeze charging time down to a couple of hours.

IMG_0271The new bikes are an investment with price tags ranging from $3,000 to $6,500. Electric Lady also plans to sell kits to help riders on a more limited budget create DIY trekking machines. “I don’t want to be Banana Republic,” Kostelnik told us last year.

What makes ten-year-old 20/20 Cycle work will also be a big part of Electric Lady. Kostelnik said that longtime 20/20 employees Chris Gilliam  and Robb Kunz are part of the Electric Lady ownership. Meanwhile, the shop will also have a new neighbor in The Central building when Squirrel Chops cafe+salon opens next door later this year.

Electric Lady will be open at 2207 E Union Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 7 PM for the next few weeks before celebrating with a grand opening planned for April 24th and expanded hours. You can learn more at electricladybicycles.com.

Good Weather bike shop coming to second floor Pike/Pine space

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Screen Shot 2016-03-30 at 10.35.58 AMBad conditions stymied Brandon Waterman’s first concept for a Pike/Pine bike shop, but he didn’t have to look far for a new opportunity. Good Weather is on its way.

Capitol Hill’s newest bike shop and repair space is slated to open in May above Purr on 11th Ave between Pike and Pine. It’s the same building Waterman, a designer by trade, was eyeing last year before he had to put the brakes on the Alley Cafe project due to seismic retrofitting expenses for the alley space.

“Hopefully we’ll evolve into a second space that people can roll up to, but in the meantime, we’re excited to be getting our vendor relationships and thoughts aligned in a super unique and fun space,” Waterman said.

Waterman’s original project was envisioned for a unique space on the backside of the building, home to Purr and Vermillion, down the alley off E Pine between the East Precinct HQ and the Sunset Electric building. Without a street level space, Good Weather staff will help customers carry their bikes up to the second floor.

Waterman says Good Weather will be an approachable shop with mechanics who will fix-up an old Huffy or send out customers with a brand new ride. The shop will start with tune-ups and repairs with the retail side to follow. “We’re going to sell quality bikes that deeply considers the city we’re in and balance functionality with streamlined good looks and great colors,” Waterman said.

Velo’s exit from Pike/Pine left few nearby options for bike services, though that is changing. Good Weather is one of a trio of recent bicycle community and culture-focused projects in the area. In November, Metier opened its massive, 12,500 square-foot gym, cafe, cycling shop, and company HQ on E Union. A month later, a crew that gathered around Seattle’s bike polo scene opened Peloton bicycle cafe and repair shop on E Jefferson just off 12th Ave.

“We’re super excited to join 2020 as well as the newer Metier and Peloton in helping people ride more and believe there is plenty of room for us to make something special and long-lasting,” Waterman said.

For more information visit goodweatherinseattle.com.

City adds bike share stop to serve Broadway light rail riders

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186dbc75-f9d8-460d-820d-eb8687eca623Now that the City of Seattle is the proud owner of a bike share system, it’s hoping to show off a new, more flexible, more useful era for the human-powered transit system. Just in time for Saturday’s opening of Capitol Hill Station — and after a little advocacy — a Pronto station is being moved to the newly re-opened one-way Denny at Broadway:

You asked, we answered! As a part of ongoing efforts to place Pronto stations near transit hubs, we are relocating our Frye Art Museum (Terry & Columbia) Station smack dab in the middle of the new Capitol Hill U-Link Station at Broadway & Denny in time for tomorrow’s U-Link launch!

This move will make Pronto accessible to folks connecting to the light rail and streetcar stops surrounding the station. Added bonus? It’s right on the protected bike lane!

Sorry, First Hill.

City Council approves Seattle bike share’s public takeover

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Seattle’s bike share network will come under City of Seattle ownership with an eye on expansion as City Council members voted 7-2 Monday to save the indebted system.

After tacking on amendments to improve bike lane infrastructure downtown and ensure that bike sharing reaches low income neighborhoods, City Council members approved a plan for the City to takeover Pronto with a $1.4 million investment while reserving another $3.6 million for future expansion of the system next year under a new operator contract.

Council member Mike O’Brien, who ushered the buyout plan through the transportation committee last month, said the system was worth saving as thousands of riders were already relying on it as a mode of transportation.

The vote comes after months of debate on what to do with the insolvent bike share system owned by the nonprofit Puget Sound Bike Share. While the $5 million was already earmarked for Pronto last year, the systems financial shortcomings weren’t known outside the bowels of City Hall. The system would have ceased operations on March 31st without the city investment.

By spending $1.4 million, Seattle will immediately acquire 26 stations from Pronto as well as all remaining hard assets. The City already owns 28 stations after purchasing them with a federal grant. The City would also seek out a new operating contract as Pronto’s current contract with the company Motivate ends at the end of 2016. Motivate could still submit a bid to continue running the service. Continue reading →

Seattle Food Rescue riding Capitol Hill to save good things to eat from the trash

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Seattle Food Rescue volunteers Lucas, right, and Arthur (Image: CHS)

Seattle Food Rescue volunteers Lucas, right, and Arthur (Image: CHS)

America has a major food waste problem. That’s why for the past two years Seattle Food Rescue—a small volunteer non-profit organization of mostly college students — has been biking to grocery stores around Central Seattle picking up excess consumable food and delivering the goods to food banks and community partners around the city. Now, Seattle Food Rescue is partnering with Capitol Hill Housing to bring groceries right to the doors of residents at several properties.

“In an ideal world, all the food waste would be diverted from landfills to people who need it,” said Tim Jenkins, founder of Seattle Food Rescue. “That’s where we’d like to be headed.”

Jenkins a recent graduate of the University of Colorado who moved to Seattle in 2014, got the idea for Seattle Food Rescue from his time volunteering with Boulder Food Rescue, a very robust version of his operation which boasts around one hundred bike-riding, food-rescuing volunteers.

“I really liked the food distribution model that was focused around bicycles,” said Jenkins. “So I took that model and brought it out to Seattle and I’ve been slowly but surely expanding it ever since.”

Originally, Seattle Food Rescue partnered strictly with several food banks in Seattle — the University District Food Bank and the Pike Market Food Bank in downtown to be exact –acting as a vehicle to get perishable foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables, pre-made meals like sandwiches and dairy products from grocery stores to food banks to be distributed. This focus fills what Jenkins calls a nutritional gap left by local food banks, who prioritize stocking non-perishable foods like canned vegetables and meats and staple dry goods like pasta and rice. Jenkins says his organization focuses on “anything that has a short shelf-life.”

In addition, Seattle Food Rescue only partners with small and medium sized grocery stores—not to be confused with corner stores—around Central Seattle, which Jenkins says are often overlooked by food banks who would rather focus their resources on bigger retailers who can offer a high volume of goods. Regular donors to Seattle Food Rescue include Capitol Hill’s Central Co-Op on Madison, the Broadway farmers market, and the Stockbox Neighborhood Grocery on First Hill, one of the first retailers to partner with the volunteer organization. Continue reading →

City Council may decide killing Pronto is best way to save bike sharing in Seattle — UPDATE: Pronto not dead yet

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Seattle Pride Parade 2015UPDATE 4:10 PM: With a focus on creating a transportation system with a strong element of social equity and a desire to recoup Seattle’s investments to date, a split vote of the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee Tuesday afternoon moved forward the plan to acquire and expand Seattle’s bike share system. UPDATE 3/4/2016: Confusion during the voice count has been cleared up and the committee vote now stands 4-2, giving the bill a small boost as it heads to the full council vote.

“We have 3,000 members today already that could transition into the new system,” committee chair Mike O’Brien said. “There’s significant value in that.”

Meanwhile, committee member Rob Johnson cited concerns around equity and Pronto’s relative success in its early period of operation in voting against Lisa Herbold’s substitute bill. The split 3-3 committee vote means the proposed bill will still move forward to the full Council for a vote on March 14th.

Herbold’s proposed substitute bill that would have seen Seattle put its bike share solution to rest and put the remaining $4 million earmarked for expansion into bike infrastructure around the city was roundly defeated in the committee vote. Following, a compromise plan to allow for a new bikeshare system in 2017 with some City involvement from Tim Burgess was also voted down. The committee is slated to vote on the takeover in this session.

In a poll of CHS readers, while the vast majority of all respondents ranked the Herbold plan as their top choice, among Pronto riders, the “Kubly solution” of acquiring the bike share ranked highest:Screen Shot 2016-03-01 at 4.59.59 PM

 

Original Report: Just as it seemed City Council members were ready to advance a $5 million plan to acquire and expand Seattle’s indebted bike share system, District 1 rep and transportation committee alternate Lisa Herbold is pumping the brakes. Members of the transportation committee were set to vote a plan Tuesday that would have the City acquire Pronto in a $1.4 million buyout from its current nonprofit owner, using the remaining $3.6 million to fund a service area expansion in 2017 that officials say will breath new life and equity into the system. Continue reading →

As City Hall considers bike share bailout, Seattle car sharing ready to expand

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As a Car2Go competitor makes ready to make its move in Seattle, the City Council could be ready to rescue Seattle’s bike share system and put Pronto on track for an expansion in 2017 with a committee vote on Friday.

A year after the Seattle City Council voted to allow three more “free-floating car share” vendors to join Car2Go, a BMW-backed competitor to Daimler AG’s Car2Go service is preparing to launch in Seattle after folding operations in San Francisco last year.

(Image: DriveNow)

(Image: DriveNow)

CHS has learned DriveNow has started hiring for its Seattle operations and is in the midst of setting up a downtown office. DriveNow’s all-electric BMW i3s were also spotted driving around Belltown this week. According to SDOT, DriveNow has not yet filed for a special parking permit that would allow drivers to park cars without paying street meters — a key component to free-floating car shares.

A spokesperson for DriveNow told CHS the company is “exploring the potential” of operating in a number of cities, but declined to comment on the recent hires or the cars seen in Seattle. DriveNow CEO Rich Steinberg previously said service would start in mid-2015.

Launched in Munich in 2011, DriveNow currently operates in several European cities. After its 2013 launch of U.S. operations in San Francisco, the company closed up shop last year citing insurmountable problems with the city’s parking regulations.

Bike bailout
Meanwhile back on two wheels, the city’s bike share plan appears to be to keep the system outside of the for-profit business sphere. Unless the City Council approves a $1.4 million rescue package for Pronto by March 30th, the system goes belly-up. Transportation committee members will once again be considering the deal during their Friday afternoon meeting.

UPDATE: Committee chair Mike O’Brien decided to delay a vote on the plan until early next month so council members could focus on gathering more information.

Continue reading →

City Council to consider $1.4 million plan to keep Seattle’s bike share rolling

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Capitol Hill’s Pronto stations — we looked at the most-utilized Capitol Hill bike share stops here

In October, CHS reported on the City of Seattle’s plans to take over the Pronto bike share system to stabilize an underused system, expand it to more of the city, and transform the fleet into a new generation of bikes. Basically, to keep pace with cities from New York to Denver. All that has changed since then are the headlines.

Well… and, maybe, the timeline and price tag.

The City Council’s transportation committee Tuesday will take up the transition of the system from the third-party nonprofit that launched Seattle’s bike share and the $1.4 million needed to pull it out of the red, avoid paying money to the feds, and put the system on track for a 2017 expansion.

The City's planned timeline: 1. 2017 launch 2. Expanded service area w/ SE Seattle 3. Current scenario based on 100 stations 4. Open to Gen 4.0 electric. May sell or retrofit existing 5. Can recover 100% of op ex from sponsors & users, 2018

The City’s planned timeline:
1. 2017 launch
2. Expanded service area w/ SE Seattle
3. Current scenario based on 100
stations
4. Open to Gen 4.0 electric. May sell or retrofit existing
5. Can recover 100% of op ex from sponsors & users, 2018

The early draft of how the network might expand

The early draft of how the network might expand

Here’s how City Council staff describe the plan:

Puget Sound Bike Share, doing business as Pronto, launched a bike share system in Seattle in October, 2014. Due to ongoing operating losses brought on by debt service payments and operating overhead, the system is currently insolvent. The City seeks to purchase assets from Pronto and contract directly with the operator to keep bike share operational in Seattle. SDOT needs a portion of the funds allocated in the 2016 budget for bike share to purchase the assets.

Where would the money come from? $5 million in Seattle’s 2016 budget was approved for expanding the Pronto network. A federal TIGER grant, meanwhile, has allowed the city to purchase 28 of the system’s 54 stations.

Hold on there, CHS. Why spend money on an “insolvent” system? First, the City Council analysis explains what happened: Continue reading →

Those Smurfy Smurfin’ Broadway bikeway bollards are Smurfin’ gone

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Blue Bicycle Baracades
With all of the new-era Seattle Department of Transportation initiatives playing out around Capitol Hill, the neighborhood has some of the most colorful — and, sometimes, confusing — street infrastructure around. Some elements are loved. Some, not. Perhaps the most hated infrastructure of them all was hastily removed from Broadway over the weekend.

“Smurf turds gone from B’way bike lane,” was the subject line of one set of pictures emailed to CHS about the removal.

Thanks for the Smurf turd pics, Charles

Thanks for the Smurf turd pics, Charles

It’s true. Without warning, the plastic blue bollards of the Broadway bikeway were removed and trucked off by SDOT Saturday after failing in their one critical mission over the past 18 months. You had one job, Smurf turds.

A Broadway bollard in happier times (Image: SDOT)

A Broadway bollard in happier times (Image: SDOT)

Designed to protect bikers using Broadway’s separated bike lanes and evoke a “needle and thread” theme with other First Hill Streetcar infrastructure, the 21 bollards along the 1.2 mile bikeway instead proved irresistible to taggers and wholly mismatched in their battle to maintain a two-foot buffer separating bikes from parked cars along the route.The bollards were manufactured of molded plastic by Landscape Forms in Kalamazoo, Michigan and were filled with hundreds of pounds of sand. After their first eight months of being pushed around and falling down on the job, the bollards were fitted with braces. That didn’t really work either.

The removal appears to mark the end of the road for the bollards though SDOT hasn’t yet said why they were removed or if there are plans to replace them. Simpler white plastic posts now line the route. Meanwhile, the plan to extend the bikeway north on Broadway along with the streetcar tracks remains in motion. But it appears the bollards won’t be around to see the start of service for the First Hill Streetcar they were intended to accompany.

UPDATE 1/11/2016 — 11:11 AM: They live! Sort of. In our assessment of the bikeway Saturday, we didn’t notice that a few stitches remain in place south of Pine. SDOT says they’re staying — but the rest? Gone for good:

The removal is permanent for the area between E Pine and E Howell streets. In that area the blue “stitches” have been repeatedly struck and damaged.

White posts, used on bike lanes around the city, will replace them. The stitches south of there will remain.