City Re: The Bicycle Master Plan
I won’t be able to attend the Bicycle Master Plan meeting tonight—I’ve got a bad cold and I’m going to be at home tonight packing an overnight bag in case I’m arrested at work Wednesday afternoon (full details in the paper that hits the streets tomorrow), but here’s an issue I’d like to see addressed: How come there aren’t any fucking bike racks at Safeco Field?
There’s one—one!—in the parking lot across the street on the southwest side of the park, but there aren’t any on the sidewalks around the park. There’s no place to lock your bike on the north side of the park at all. So if your seats are in, say, the northeast corner of the park, you’re expected to lock your bike at the other side of the park and waste 20 or 30 minutes walking all the way back to your seats. There are no other options around Safeco—no parking meters, no signs posts. There’s nothing you can lock a bike to except for the occasional big, green garbage can.
If we want people to ride their bikes to Safeco on game day—and we do, right?—it would make sense to have bike racks all around the stadium, near every entrance. Every family that bikes to the park—which I like to do with my son—represents on less car crowding downtown on game days. Cyclists should be able to ride up to the gate nearest their seats, lock up, and stroll in. Cyclists should be rewarded for riding to the game, not penalized.
The sidewalks around Safeco are wide enough to accommodate bike racks, and if racks were strategically placed along parts of the street where there are no crosswalks they would serve a crowd control function as well, funneling people toward the marked crosswalks.
I think the bike racks are inside the attached parking garage.
But you bring up a good point, why are there none on the north side?