Morning Crank: Bike Plan Scaled Back, Meinert Buys Mecca, and a Few Questions About the Mayor’s Junk RV Crackdown

Healthy skepticism: The gray blobs are “study areas” where bike lanes may one day go, if funding materializes and politics allow.

1. Last week, the Seattle Department of Transportation released an update to the city’s Bicycle Master Plan Implementation Plan that—as I reported on Wednesday—attempts to address complaints from bike advocates by committing to “study” several routes in South Seattle (along Beacon Ave. S., Martin Luther King Jr. Way S., and between downtown Seattle and Georgetown) that were omitted in a draft version of the plan released earlier this year. Those projects, according to the update, may be built at some point in the future, if unspecified “additional funding” becomes available, perhaps in the form of also-unspecified “new grants and partnership opportunities.” (Bike advocates, as you might imagine, aren’t holding their breath.)

In addition to identifying those “study areas,” the updated plan still gets rid of miles of long-planned protected bike lanes, pushes other bike projects back several years or indefinitely, and eliminates about a dozen projects that were in the most recent update, back in 2017. And it replaces an already delayed two-way protected bike lane on the east side of Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle with a one-way northbound lane on the west side of the street—another setback for a project that was supposed to open last year but which was delayed until 2021 on the grounds that a two-way bike lane might slow down transit on Fourth Ave. during the “period of maximum constraint.” (The report now cites “parking impacts” as a reason for the latest change).

Some other changes since the last version of the plan include:

• A 1.27-mile “safe routes to school” neighborhood greenway to the Orca K-8 school in Southeast Seattle that was identified as “low risk” and scheduled for completion in 2021 is now listed as “TBD”;

• The two-mile North Admiral Connection in West Seattle, which had been removed in the earlier version of the plan, is now back and in the “planning phase,” with a “TBD” completion date.

• Two center-city projects—a quarter mile of protected bike lane on 9th Ave. and a quarter-mile “south end connection” to the Center City bike network in Pioneer Square—will be completed this year, a year ahead of the schedule in the earlier plan.

• Two projects on Capitol Hill—a 0.8-mile stretch of neighborhood greenway (plus 0.1 miles of protected bike lane) along Melrose Ave. and a 0.8-mile stretch of protected bike lane along Union —are now scheduled to open in 2021, a year after the draft version of the plan said they would be finished.

• A half-mile “interim” protected bike lane on 8th Ave. downtown, which was scheduled to open this year, is now listed as a “permanent” PBL that will open in 2023.

• A 0.6-mile safe routes to school connection to Stevens Elementary School on Capitol Hill that was scheduled to open in 2020 is now listed as “TBD,” with 10 percent of the design completed.

• The 1.4-mile Missing Link of the  Burke-Gilman Trail, which has been delayed forever by lawsuits from industrial businesses in Ballard, has been divided into three segments, the last of which is now scheduled for completion in 2021, rather than 2020.

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6 thoughts on “Morning Crank: Bike Plan Scaled Back, Meinert Buys Mecca, and a Few Questions About the Mayor’s Junk RV Crackdown”

    1. @doug Is the Meinert purchase of Mecca is “bad news”. Its been, what, a year+ plus since allegations against Meinert were published in local media. To date isn’t that all there is: allegations? At the same time Meinert has a many years long C.V. of supporting progressive causes, and putting his money on the table in support, too? is this guy really a bad guy or did he get caught up in a hyper #metoo maelstrom? Not saying I know, just barely remember the story from a year ago, and it all died pretty quickly. Been years since I’ve been to Mecca, remember it as a pretty cool place.

      1. Ha! “Progressive causes.” Dude fought hard against the $15 minimum wage. He also rolled out a series of lies against Mike McGinn, while supporting Ed Murray for mayor.

        None of that really matters, though. 11 women have credibly accused Meinert of sexual inappropriateness, including rape. ELEVEN WOMEN.

        I’m sorry that you “barely remember” the story, but I’m pretty sure those 11 women do.

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