Category: Washington Bike Law

Don’t Miss Washington Bike Law’s Bike Everywhere Day Celebration Station May 18

Don’t pass us by without stopping… our Celebration Station will be open 7 am to 9 am May 18, 2018. We’ll be across the street from our office at Second and Cherry on the Second Avenue Bike Lane.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (SNG) will be joining us on May 18. SNG is the grass-roots based Safe Streets Advocacy organization that is probably in your neighborhood. Get involved with SNG!

Also joining us for the third year will be World Pizza… who can resist fabulous free breakfast pizza?!

We’ll also have world-famous Cherry Street coffee. Fuel up. We’ll even have water.

But wait, there’s more… you can win fabulous prizes… like T-shirts, flat repair kits, our famous waterproof Bike Law spoke cards, stickers, and more!

Come on down… or up. Come by and say hi!

The PeopleWay

A lot of #BikeNYC commuters, when you ask, will tell you that they first started cycling during large-scale disruptions to the city’s subway system – the transit strikes of 1980 and 2005, the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and in the days after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

It’s not often cities get advance notice of such disruptions. Next year when the MTA shuts down the L-train for 15 months to repair damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy, Brooklyn residents will lose a critical transit link to Lower Manhattan. New York City knows this is coming, and needs to do better than its currently woefully inadequate plans to make those 15 months bearable for transit riders – and for everyone else who lives or works along the affected sections of the route. So kudos to Transportation Alternatives for getting out in front of the #LTrain shutdown with its PeopleWay campaign.  Part of the campaign to pressure the city to improve its response to the shutdown includes running weekly biketrains – group bike commutes meant to be inviting for newer riders. I (Kimberly) might be biased — I co-founded  NYCBiketrain, from which TA’s #Biketrain effort draws some inspiration – but they are a great way to invite new folks who think biking might work for them, but could use a little support to get started.

Here in Seattle, transportation advocates are looking at our city’s plans  for when light rail nudges our buses out of the downtown transit tunnel and onto surface streets. And we are seeing signs of the same woefully inadequate response from city and regional agencies. The bus shift to the surface is just one reason we can’t wait for the #BasicBikeNetwork – are you listening, Seattle DOT, Metro, SoundTransit, Mayor Durkan? We need to prioritize moving people over moving cars, today and tomorrow. It doesn’t take a physicist or a transportation engineer to see that establishing dedicated space for people busing and biking that cars cannot easily impinge on is the most efficient way to do that.  It’s also the most fair. PeopleWay Seattle, anyone?

Let’s #ConnectSeattle!

Lots of other people noticed the small section of truly physically protected bike lane south of downtown I recently pointed out on my Twitter. Even my little Twitter account got 65 ♥!

Here’s the deal, though, this section is still REALLY SCARY. Here’s the area just south of these Jersey Barriers (and hey, there’s even a few flex-posts left standing):

My Twitter post even got a response from Dongho Chang:

But what he linked to  hasn’t been updated since November of 2017.

Moreover, here is the fine print:

This is not acceptable. We already had one person killed on this key piece of bicycling infrastructure.

Let’s #ConnectSeattle and let’s do it BEFORE another person dies to motivate actual action.

Happy Monday After a Good Weekend of Bikecitement

Washington Bike Law was the Title Sponsor of Bike Works‘ Annual Fundraising Dinner on Sunday.  I’m pretty sure that we weren’t the only ones who had a good time, but we did have a good time… and for a great cause.

If you don’t know about Bike Works, check it out!  And even if you do, check it out, it’s probably even more awesome than you thought.

Here is program director Tina Bechler who was “wheely” good in getting the crowd to realize how amazing Bike Work Programs are… along with the impressive youth who come through those programs:

If you have a couple minutes, you should watch this video about Bike Works. It’s hard to convey how amazing this organization is, but this video shows it pretty well.

To top off this off, on my ride into work this morning, I found the the non-protective spring-loaded plastic cones on a fairly scary bike lane on East Marginal Way had been replaced by big cement barriers… Nice!

This is particularly pleasing because I had no faith in those cones as I watched them regularly get mowed down.

Thanks Dongho! Now let’s protect the rest of this route… and other routes so that everyone can feel safe riding in Seattle.

TV is the Thing This Year… Handle With Care

Let’s start this post with a soundtrack…

So, what does this song have to do with bikes?

What does this look like to you?

Apparently Tee Vee is STILL the thing here in the USA.

I learned from Bicycling Magazine (which basically lifted a CNN report) that Dutch bicycle manufacturer Vanmoof figured out how to solve a problem with damages in shipping.

More than 25 percent of its bikes were damaged in delivery. The problem was especially bad when shipping to the U.S.

The solution? Reconsider the packaging. “We asked ourselves, what do Americans really love? What would prompt couriers to be delicate with a parcel?” VanMoof co-founder Taco Carlier told CNN. Damages dropped by 80 percent since then, according to the company.
Inside this box…

Is actually this bike:

Nicely done VanMoof!