People still prefer the city’s fully-designed Burke-Gilman Trail plan on Shilshole, though that project remains held up in a web of legal challenges. So if the city decides they must move forward with a route along Leary Way and Market Street instead, they want to see much more separation between people walking and biking than what has been shown in early designs.
SDOT released the outreach summary report (PDF) for Councilmember Dan Strauss’s Burke-Gilman Trail Missing Link alternative on Leary Way and Market Street this week, and the responses are fairly straightforward and uncomplicated.
It seems tough to misread this chart. Folks do not like the idea of simply widening the sidewalk on Market Street and calling it a trail. No other point in the entire feedback report got more support than this. People riding bikes don’t want to try to bike through a crowded sidewalk in a business district, and people walking, rolling or hanging out on sidewalks don’t want people biking there either. I can’t imagine business owners love the idea of their front doors letting out directly into the path of a designated bike trail, either. This is just not how it’s supposed to be done.
The feedback report specifically points to Seattle Bike Blog at the reason for this result, noting, “Seattle Bike Blog published an article encouraging readers to share their feedback with SDOT about the project. This included a note to share specifically that SDOT should separate the path for people walking and people biking in front of businesses. This may have led to a higher number of comments for this particular theme.” First off, good work, everyone. But second, we were not the only ones making this point. A group of folks at the Ballard Landmark retirement and assisted living building as well as Carter Subaru and real estate developers Teutsch Partners have been fighting the Leary concept, and they also list a lack of separation between pedestrian and bicycling spaces as a problem. “There is no divider between the Missing Link and the sidewalk,” notes the NoLinkOnLeary website. “This makes the path more dangerous as pedestrians won’t know where to expect to meet bicyclists and scooters.” So it’s not just the Seattle Bike Blog readers who see the problem here, which is why that bar is so much longer than the rest of the chart. It’s a point of cross-community agreement.
One Leary, the results were a little muddier. Support for the project outpaced opposition 2 to 1, but the amount of opposition is notable. This is most likely from the NoLinkOnLeary campaign. Separating pedestrian and bicycling spaces is still the top point of agreement, though there is big support for safer intersections and crosswalks. The report notes that there was a lot of support for adding missing crosswalks at Vernon and Ione, which were points Seattle Bike Blog had suggested.
Again, separating modes was the top suggestion for the short section on 17th between Shilshole and Leary, though preserving trees made a good showing here.
Finally, the general feedback question showed a huge response for “prefers another route.” The reports explanation notes that most of these folks preferred the Shilshole route because it is more direct and has fewer conflict points such as driveways and busy commercial sidewalks. Cascade Bicycle Club has been consistent that while they support safety improvements and a bike route on Leary and Market, they do so in addition to their continued support for the trail plan on Shilshole. However, it wasn’t just bike riders pushing for Shilshole. The NoLinkOnLeary group has also been pushing for Shilshole as their preferred option. Someone at the Ballard Landmark even posted a poem about putting the trail on Shilshole in the window as well as signs pointing people to the NoLinkOnLeary.org website.
SHILSHOLE, OH SHILSHOLE,…