City The Bicycle Master Plan Meeting
Yesterday’s post about Seattle’s upcoming Bicycle Master Plan generated a ton of comments, so we sent new Stranger intern Lena Baisden to last night’s public meeting about the plan. Here’s her report. (Got a report of your own? Post it in the comments. Want to listen to audio of the meeting? A guy named Dave Maass recorded it and put it online here and here.)
Ironically, there were not enough bike racks to house all the bikes at the City of Seattle Bicycle Master Plan Public Meeting last night at Gould Hall on University of Washington campus.Bill Schultheiss, an engineer for Toole Design Group, the company Seattle hired to implement road changes in order to make Seattle the most bike-friendly city in the U.S., said that the turn out was the largest he’d seen in any city. (We have a call in to SDOT to see how much Toole is getting paid.) Tammy Sufi, another representative from Toole Design Group, announced the head count was over 450. That’s a ton of concerned folks gathered in one place to discuss the ever-mounting list of biker concerns. Unfortunately, the discussion I witnessed was not a two-way street…
Toole Design Group, along with SDOT and members the Citizen's Advisory Board, ran the meeting — which consisted entirely of a 45 minute Power Point presentation on the city's Bicycle Master Plan in the main hall, along with workshops in 6 conference rooms addressing topics such as: Navigating bike paths and trails (or "wayfindingā€¯); conversations on what biker's road signs should look like; what roads need maintenance for pot hole and debris; downtown bicycle access; and bicycle networking issues in both north and south Seattle. Citizens were asked to mark on blown up maps the areas they felt needed improvement and "voiceā€¯ all other concerns on note cards placed by an exit door.That's it? That's all we were there to do? The city and its contractor were there to get insight into how they could better the roads for bikers — which is great, don't get me wrong. However, there's so much more to this issue. This involves politics, money, timelines, global warming, and the huge chasm of unawareness hanging between motorist and bicyclists, just to name a few.
A few people in the audience attempted to verbalize their concerns during the meeting. They were politely directed toward the note cards.
If we had been given the opportunity to publicly voice our concerns, there are three issues I would have brought to the forefront. First, at the beginning of the presentation, Sufi said that the next meeting would be either in November or December. At the end of the meeting, she said it might not be until January. I want to know why the time range widened in less than an hour's time.
Second, the presentation listed "Data Collecting & Fieldworkā€¯ as slated for Spring/Summer 2006, and Sufi said they were only about "halfway doneā€¯ with this first step of the Master Plan. I want to know if they really think that they can still implement all these changes and make Seattle the number one bike-friendliest city in the U.S. by 2007, especially when timelines are already sliding as demonstrated above.
And finally, I would have addressed Sufi's statement concerning making the most of the dollar and coordinating these biker improvements with preplanned street maintenance. I would have asked what SDOT's priority is: coordinating with pre-existing street maintenance plans to get the most out of their budget or getting these critical changes made in a timely manner.
Now, I'm curious if I'm the only one whose frustrations over these issues have not been quelled by drawing on maps and taking up concerns with the wall... or, I mean, note cards. Perhaps at the next meeting in November, December, January or who knows when, I'll be able to give voice to these concerns.
(Also, if you didn't make it to the meeting and want to give your feedback, you can do so online here.
Gould Hall is on the UW campus, which doesn't follow Seattle or King County laws, only State and Federal laws.
Be glad we even have bicycle racks.