Capitol Hill will not be getting a “Stay Healthy” street designed to give people more space to walk, run, roll, and spread out during the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions but your neighbors might want to join you in creating a Stay Healthy Block.
The city has announced it is making the permitting process free for non-arterial, residential street closures to encourage more open space in the city during the pandemic:
If your organization wants to apply for a permit, keep these things in mind:
- You can go to our Stay Healthy Blocks website to apply now.
- You’ll be responsible for notifying neighbors, closing the street with barricades and printable signs we developed, and monitoring for safety.
- You’ll also be responsible for ensuring compliance with public health guidelines.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is also giving the effort a boost by offering a limited number of free signs and volunteer support to organizations looking to create their own Stay Healthy Block.
The new initiative builds on the Stay Healthy Streets effort that has created routes closed to “through motor vehicle traffic to provide more space for distancing, exercise, and recreation. Officials also hope the routes can help connect people to services and businesses without the need for cars or public transit. The streets remain open to “local traffic” and deliveries and the rules are in effect 24×7.
In the Central District, the route includes 25th S starting near Judkins Park north to E Columbia, E Columbia between 12th and 29th, and a finger on 22nd Ave stretching north to E Howell.
In May, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced the routes will be a new permanent part of the city’s infrastructure. The Stay Healthy Blocks, meanwhile, are only temporary.
Learn more at the Stay Healthy Blocks website.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
FYI – if you are considering applying for one of these, don’t expect it to change people’s behavior much…. all that is done is to put a little A frame sign up at each end of the block. Most people who want to cut down your street simply ignore it.
My street has been a stay healthy street from the beginning. Plenty of people who don’t live here or happen to be making a delivery still use it as their parking lot, and a shortcut through the neighborhood, and lots of them speed, despite there being traffic calming. The signs periodically disappear, when they aren’t just being ignored…..
As with much of what is done here in Seattle, it has good intentions, but relies on the ridiculously Pollyannaish idea that people will just do things because they are asked and that there aren’t tons of people who just don’t give a crap about anyone but themselves and feel completely entitled to just do whatever is most convenient for themselves. Unless there were to be some kind of enforcement – which in the current climate, to expect that would be laughable, not to mention it would be basically impossible anyway or some sort of much more inconvenient barriers installed – which would also likely be impossible, because residents, delivery and emergency vehicles still need access, this program will never really be anything more than an empty gesture.