Recent Stories with tag road diet

To fully understand the city of Seattle's economy, character, and beauty, you sometimes have to head out on the water.

The Port of Seattle has been conducting educational tours of key Port facilities to alert community leaders and media to the importance of Seattle's maritime industry and the many issues challenging that industry.

This past Wednesday, the Port hosted Ship Canal 101, an afternoon cruise from Fishermen's Terminal to the Fremont Bridge, then to the Hiram Chittenden locks, and back to the Terminal. The tour was narrated by many of the business owners and employees of the--surprisingly--large number of businesses in this short, narrow corridor.

There's no doubt that such tours are good PR, but that aside, there's plenty to learn.

Leaving from Fisherman’s Terminal, you get a great view of the size and scope of the city's Pacific fishing fleet. For all the talk of Seattle as a biotech center, a software empire, and aviation powerhouse, a large chunk of the city's economy is still tied up to the docks at the terminal, one of the major fishing ports along the coast prized for its protected freshwater berths (salt water is murderously tough on steel hulls), access to repair facilities, and transportation to waiting markets. The Port estimates that the activity at the port annually generates 4,000 jobs, half a billion in wages, $200 million in business revenue, and $37 million in state and local taxes.... (more)

Every so often, people who like to think of their reality as fact-based (most everyone, then) throw up their hands and ask what is to be done about people who "don't get it," as if there's some formula. This isn't a partisan viewpoint; it reflects biases we all have, which tend to show up in how we intuitively imagine consequences of action. But sometimes how we imagine builds those biases.

If you force "four busy lanes of traffic into two," after all, anyone can see that a congested crawl will be the result. In a feeble economy, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know you need to make substantial cuts to keep the state's deficit down. If you want to save on electricity, even a child could tell you that the best thing is to turn the heat down.

Except none of that may be true.

It's based on what is easy to visualize, rather than what isn't. In the case of a road diet, the third, bi-directional turn lane gets overlooked, but left-turning cars block traffic in a four-lane model--and it gets worse the busier the street gets. So far as deficits go, consider a liquidity trap--again, harder to visualize than simply cutting to make fit. And that electric bill? "Making retrofits, for example, saves far more energy than turning down the heat a few degrees."... (more)

Friend-of-The SunBreak and commuter cyclist Charles Redell writes in that initially he was sad to hear that the Magnolia Community Council, Queen Anne Community Council, and the North Seattle Industrial Association had formed the 15th Avenue West Transportation Coalition.

They're protesting the city's decision to put W. Nickerson St. on a "road diet": "essentially, removing one eastbound and one westbound lane, adding bike lanes or sharrows, and adding a center turn lane," sums up Publicola.

But then he read the Magnolia Community Club's letter to SDOT (pdf), which, he thought, took things too far. It opens with president Randall Thomsen saying that, "I write on behalf on the Magnolia Community Club, which represents the approximately 24,000 residents of Magnolia."

The MCC, after all, is made up of a dues-paying membership ($10 per year minimum), and while not listing its membership on its site, is able to convene its general meetings at the Blaine School Cafeteria and has 13 fans on Facebook. In any event, Redell lives in Magnolia, and he bridled at their claiming to represent his views.

So he did what anyone would do, and commented on the Magnolia Voice blog. Redell pointed to the previous opposition to the Stone Way road diet, and to SDOT's study (pdf), two years later, showing that the project reduced speeding and accidents for cars and bikes, while maintaining acceptable traffic volume.... (more)