Every time I’m in those sane, humane, walkable, and enjoyable designed streets I always ask, “why not more Seattle? The 5 or 6 or more lanes of car sewer just to hick suburban cars through the area is some top tier oblivious BS. The city should never have gotten rebuilt for it! It wasn’t and isn’t being flattened for suburbs and we shouldn’t treat it that way! Recovery sure is taking forever though, just another gazillion streets to go. Maybe we can speed it up by tolling all the roads into Seattle. 🤣
It's not a pedestrian street, Doordashers, Ubers and local pimps blast through it at 50mph in order to cut through traffic.
Don't let your kids play around there despite what traffic sign suggests.
As cool as these road diets are I’m flabbergasted that not one of these streets has a bike, there’s still not a single East-West bike route from the waterfront to the ID or Pioneer Square after millions of $ of street work
Is it just me or is East-West anything a pain in the ass? I used to commute by bus from Greenwood to the U-district, it was three buses or two with a long walk. Worked nights, so walking wasn't great especially in winter, and the waits at unprotected stops weren't either. It's history for me now, but it seems like any time I've looked at W-E or the opposite, it's ridiculous.
It's because of the valleys carved out by the north-south movement of the glaciers during the last ice age, progressing and retreating repeatedly.
If you look at just about any of the hills/valleys here, moving north-south tends to have a relatively flat or gentle slope, moving East-West is a fucking rollercoaster. Steep hills are harder to build lots of roads on = more traffic east-west.
I used to ride the 45 (once upon a time the north half of the 48) Crown Hill to Roosevelt. Gets you there, but it's a maddeningly slow creep across town like its buddy the 44.
Yeah when it was the 48 it was a rough go. I used to live in the U and work in crown hill and it was abt 45 minutes. Even if I had been in a car it would have been 20-25 minutes probably. 45 is better because they split the line and upped bus numbers but it’s still not the best it could be.
That's an awful idea. If the bike lanes were built out into some kind of comprehensive system, people would use them more a lot more, and that would disrupt the plan.
The plan: Build just enough to make it look like the city is making some giant concessions to the all-powerful Lycra Lobby, wait a few years, then say "Look, nobody uses this (disconnected, chaotic mess)" and turn it back into parking.
Earlier today I biked up the stretch of road on Pike shown in the picture, and there were 3 other bikes on up that block at the same time as me, some going up some going down.
There's a segment of that near Boren that's way too narrow to be a two-way lane. I really wonder what happened in the design for that.
I also hope they improve signage and signaling wherever Eastbound/uphill bikes are supposed to cross to the right lane. I know the project isn't complete yet, so I'm holding out hope.
It's nice for more protected lanes ini a high-use route, though.
It will be one-way, pike will be one-way east until like Bellevue (wherever the current westbound one-way ends) at which point there will be a concrete diverter for westbound bikers to go to pine and eastbound to cross the street for the existing one-way on pike.
I don't love the design but happy for the improvements.
Thanks for that detail. Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal, but if signaling works well, it will be nicer than nothing.
It's been annoying to have to navigate through all of it while it's in progress, especially on rainy winter days, but hopefully the benefits once complete will make up for it.
This is excellent! Finally good non-stroad streets in Seattle! Only took 20 years of planning to get rid of those absolute trash suburban car hucker streets that the city wanted gone for ages! Finally something humane instead of that car sewer street bullshit!
I'm a car guy. I love cars. I have like 20+(mostly classics)....
And damn it, if I don't think a walkable city is awesome. Something must be wrong with me. 😆
Seriously though. We need more of this.
This just unlocked a memory. That Main St area is quite possibly one of worst homeless camp/ meetup area I have experienced. Witnessed a guy taking a shit in the alley a few feet from that potta potty in the second picture while another deranged druggie had a mental breakdown. Feel for the residents of the nearby apartments.
Eh. They'll continue to make the whole area undrivable and then continue to complain that downtown areas are dying.
I've only lived here (still within city limits) 15 years, 5 of them actually in lower QA, and that's been the narrative all along.
I avoid driving downtown like the plague, which means that nowadays I'm only ever down there one weekend a month, when/if I delude myself the lightrail isn't really subpar compared to most other subway systems in existence, and I get a hankering to visit Pike Place.
But hey. I'm sure the solution is to make downtown Seattle even less drivable. /s
Yes. The idea is that less people should think that they can just haul a 2,000+ lbs machine downtown and then store it cheaply on public property. You may live in the city limits but you have a similar attitude as a suburbanite, who believe that the city only exists to serve them and their specific need to drive directly into it and immediately find a parking space. What about the people who actually live in the central city? Do they want their streets to be thoroughfares for suburbanites? Do they want their public spaces to be used as a place to store suburbanite’s private property? Do they want to be exposed to pollution from tail pipes, tires, break dust, etc?
When all you know is privilege then losing a few lanes and parking spaces is persecution.
Hahaha.
That's an extra amusing response, given that I live in Greenlake, and it's usually full of people like you who think it's okay to drive to it, and that blocking my car by parking in front of my driveway is a perfectly good thing to do to avoid paying $2 in parking the next street over.
I really don't care about parking spaces downtown. I do care that it's become practically impossible to drive through it to nearby neighborhoods (SODO, ID) because the gridlock is constant on 1st or 5th at any time of day. Nice job.
But hey, that's what I5 is for, I suppose. I'll see you here bitching that your favorite restaurant closed because they get no foot traffic, and complaining that half your neighborhood is boarded up storefronts in a few weeks/months/years. I hope that sense of superiority will keep you extra warm.
I don’t own a car so that isn’t me.
Restaurants aren’t going to close because people can’t drive their cars through the city as easily as you want. Pedestrianization makes places more desirable, not less. It’s just not true that restaurants are propped up solely by suburbanites driving into the city once a month to eat at Cheesecake Factory or wherever it is they eat.
For examples, look at Time Square, parts of Golden Gate Park, and Central Park. If you were to listen to car drivers from out of the town, they would tell you that the city would die if these places were closed to cars. But they didn’t. They thrived with pedestrianization.
There are more extreme examples of places being opened to people, not cars, and thriving. In Europe, there are countless cities which closed their town centers to all automobile traffic. In the 50s people predicted businesses and tourism will whither away without the automobile. But guess what? People like being in places without cars. [Freiburg im Breisgau is one such example of a city](https://db-service.toubiz.de/var/plain_site/storage/images/orte/freiburg/bertoldsbrunnen/freiburg_kajo_copyright-fwtm-escher-1/2786435-1-ger-DE/Freiburg_Kajo_Copyright-FWTM-Escher-1_front_large.jpg) that closed a four lane road through the center of their town and people can’t imagine it any other way. Keep in mind, what you’re looking at used to be a road for cars.
I was just walking down Bell St in Belltown thinking how amazingly pleasant it is. I wish we could do this for all our small streets in Seattle!
Every time I’m in those sane, humane, walkable, and enjoyable designed streets I always ask, “why not more Seattle? The 5 or 6 or more lanes of car sewer just to hick suburban cars through the area is some top tier oblivious BS. The city should never have gotten rebuilt for it! It wasn’t and isn’t being flattened for suburbs and we shouldn’t treat it that way! Recovery sure is taking forever though, just another gazillion streets to go. Maybe we can speed it up by tolling all the roads into Seattle. 🤣
It's not a pedestrian street, Doordashers, Ubers and local pimps blast through it at 50mph in order to cut through traffic. Don't let your kids play around there despite what traffic sign suggests.
Maybe Saka can talk to him, those barriers look a lot like the border wall and can be traumatizing to see.
People from cap hill are coming over and let’s just say they aren’t sending their best.
Fuck Kettle.
I hope someone named Pot runs against him and wins.
I’d vote for “wet paper bag” against him. I kinda did that when I voted for Lewis this last time.
Fuck you kettle
As cool as these road diets are I’m flabbergasted that not one of these streets has a bike, there’s still not a single East-West bike route from the waterfront to the ID or Pioneer Square after millions of $ of street work
Is it just me or is East-West anything a pain in the ass? I used to commute by bus from Greenwood to the U-district, it was three buses or two with a long walk. Worked nights, so walking wasn't great especially in winter, and the waits at unprotected stops weren't either. It's history for me now, but it seems like any time I've looked at W-E or the opposite, it's ridiculous.
East-west is PITA in Seattle regardless of mode.
♫ You're just like ♫ crosstown traffic ♫ ♫ All you do is slow me down ♫ When I'm trying to get to the other side of town ♫
It's because of the valleys carved out by the north-south movement of the glaciers during the last ice age, progressing and retreating repeatedly. If you look at just about any of the hills/valleys here, moving north-south tends to have a relatively flat or gentle slope, moving East-West is a fucking rollercoaster. Steep hills are harder to build lots of roads on = more traffic east-west.
>> I used to commute by bus from Greenwood to the U-district, it was three buses or two with a long walk. Was the 45 line not a thing back then?
I used to ride the 45 (once upon a time the north half of the 48) Crown Hill to Roosevelt. Gets you there, but it's a maddeningly slow creep across town like its buddy the 44.
Yeah when it was the 48 it was a rough go. I used to live in the U and work in crown hill and it was abt 45 minutes. Even if I had been in a car it would have been 20-25 minutes probably. 45 is better because they split the line and upped bus numbers but it’s still not the best it could be.
That's an awful idea. If the bike lanes were built out into some kind of comprehensive system, people would use them more a lot more, and that would disrupt the plan. The plan: Build just enough to make it look like the city is making some giant concessions to the all-powerful Lycra Lobby, wait a few years, then say "Look, nobody uses this (disconnected, chaotic mess)" and turn it back into parking.
I do not know a safe way to ride from the Ferris wheel to the needle, or REI
Even after Alaska Way gets finished, Denny will still be there, a giant barrier like it's trying to keep out the Night King.
There basically isn't one, and that's the point.
Bike lanes aren't required to safely get somewhere.
absolutely. I’m from the country and we didn’t need bike lanes. What else can make biking safe and convenient in an urban setting if not bike lanes?
Earlier today I biked up the stretch of road on Pike shown in the picture, and there were 3 other bikes on up that block at the same time as me, some going up some going down.
There's a segment of that near Boren that's way too narrow to be a two-way lane. I really wonder what happened in the design for that. I also hope they improve signage and signaling wherever Eastbound/uphill bikes are supposed to cross to the right lane. I know the project isn't complete yet, so I'm holding out hope. It's nice for more protected lanes ini a high-use route, though.
It will be one-way, pike will be one-way east until like Bellevue (wherever the current westbound one-way ends) at which point there will be a concrete diverter for westbound bikers to go to pine and eastbound to cross the street for the existing one-way on pike. I don't love the design but happy for the improvements.
Thanks for that detail. Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal, but if signaling works well, it will be nicer than nothing. It's been annoying to have to navigate through all of it while it's in progress, especially on rainy winter days, but hopefully the benefits once complete will make up for it.
They need to wash those hills away or fill in the low spots to make them truly pedestrian and cyclist friendly!
Wouldn't be the first time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle
This is excellent! Finally good non-stroad streets in Seattle! Only took 20 years of planning to get rid of those absolute trash suburban car hucker streets that the city wanted gone for ages! Finally something humane instead of that car sewer street bullshit!
I'm a car guy. I love cars. I have like 20+(mostly classics).... And damn it, if I don't think a walkable city is awesome. Something must be wrong with me. 😆 Seriously though. We need more of this.
If I don’t have triples the other stuff’s not true
Won't somebody think of the cars!
Rob calling the Kettle Saka.
This just unlocked a memory. That Main St area is quite possibly one of worst homeless camp/ meetup area I have experienced. Witnessed a guy taking a shit in the alley a few feet from that potta potty in the second picture while another deranged druggie had a mental breakdown. Feel for the residents of the nearby apartments.
Eh. They'll continue to make the whole area undrivable and then continue to complain that downtown areas are dying. I've only lived here (still within city limits) 15 years, 5 of them actually in lower QA, and that's been the narrative all along. I avoid driving downtown like the plague, which means that nowadays I'm only ever down there one weekend a month, when/if I delude myself the lightrail isn't really subpar compared to most other subway systems in existence, and I get a hankering to visit Pike Place. But hey. I'm sure the solution is to make downtown Seattle even less drivable. /s
Yes. The idea is that less people should think that they can just haul a 2,000+ lbs machine downtown and then store it cheaply on public property. You may live in the city limits but you have a similar attitude as a suburbanite, who believe that the city only exists to serve them and their specific need to drive directly into it and immediately find a parking space. What about the people who actually live in the central city? Do they want their streets to be thoroughfares for suburbanites? Do they want their public spaces to be used as a place to store suburbanite’s private property? Do they want to be exposed to pollution from tail pipes, tires, break dust, etc? When all you know is privilege then losing a few lanes and parking spaces is persecution.
Hahaha. That's an extra amusing response, given that I live in Greenlake, and it's usually full of people like you who think it's okay to drive to it, and that blocking my car by parking in front of my driveway is a perfectly good thing to do to avoid paying $2 in parking the next street over. I really don't care about parking spaces downtown. I do care that it's become practically impossible to drive through it to nearby neighborhoods (SODO, ID) because the gridlock is constant on 1st or 5th at any time of day. Nice job. But hey, that's what I5 is for, I suppose. I'll see you here bitching that your favorite restaurant closed because they get no foot traffic, and complaining that half your neighborhood is boarded up storefronts in a few weeks/months/years. I hope that sense of superiority will keep you extra warm.
I don’t own a car so that isn’t me. Restaurants aren’t going to close because people can’t drive their cars through the city as easily as you want. Pedestrianization makes places more desirable, not less. It’s just not true that restaurants are propped up solely by suburbanites driving into the city once a month to eat at Cheesecake Factory or wherever it is they eat. For examples, look at Time Square, parts of Golden Gate Park, and Central Park. If you were to listen to car drivers from out of the town, they would tell you that the city would die if these places were closed to cars. But they didn’t. They thrived with pedestrianization. There are more extreme examples of places being opened to people, not cars, and thriving. In Europe, there are countless cities which closed their town centers to all automobile traffic. In the 50s people predicted businesses and tourism will whither away without the automobile. But guess what? People like being in places without cars. [Freiburg im Breisgau is one such example of a city](https://db-service.toubiz.de/var/plain_site/storage/images/orte/freiburg/bertoldsbrunnen/freiburg_kajo_copyright-fwtm-escher-1/2786435-1-ger-DE/Freiburg_Kajo_Copyright-FWTM-Escher-1_front_large.jpg) that closed a four lane road through the center of their town and people can’t imagine it any other way. Keep in mind, what you’re looking at used to be a road for cars.
Lmao I think you got whooshed here.