How safe are e-scooters?

Last week, Council members Mosqueda and O’Brien staged a rally for to promote introducing electric scooters to Seattle. They even invited leading scooter-share companies Bird and Lime to sit at the committee table in Council Chambers and give a nearly uninterrupted sales pitch — with no hard questions following. Mayor Durkan has been much more pessimistic on the idea, frequently citing the number of mayors who have told her to resist e-scooters as long as possible because of the injury rate. Before Seattle gets into the e-scooter game, shouldn’t we know something about how safe they are? Let’s dive in …

Continue reading

Council and SDOT establish timeline for downtown bike network buildout

It’s been a frustrating couple of years for downtown bike commuters. After the city adopted the Center City Bike Network plan in 2016 with a goal of having the network implemented downtown by 2020, later that year it put the plan on hold while it worked on the “One Center City” plan. Then the One Center City plan came out last year, including a recommendation for a two-way protected bike lane along 4th Avenue to be implemented this year. But in April SDOT announced that the 4th avenue bike lane would be postponed until 2021, after the “period of maximum …

Continue reading

Burke-Gilman Trail “Missing Link” gets the green light from the Hearing Examiner

Today the Seattle Office of the Hearing Examiner released its decision on the latest appeal of the city’s attempt to complete the “missing link” of the Burke-Gilman Trail through Ballard. The examiner affirmed the validity of the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which clears the project to go forward unless it is appealed further up the line.

Continue reading