(Image: @bobco85)
For as long as there have been “protected” bike lanes on Capitol Hill, there have been cars and delivery trucks parked and blocking them. Tired of inaction by Seattle Police and the Seattle Department of Transportation, one interested transit advocate launched an experiment to find out what would happen if simple — but stern — signage went up to try to keep one stretch of Capitol Hill bike lanes clear.
The answer? “Back to the drawing board,” Bob Svercl posted about the trial run.
In the experiment, Svercl put up signage on the Pike bike lanes near Boren in an attempt to keep the routes clear of drivers using the paths as parking spaces.
“DO NOT BLOCK BIKE LANE — 24 HOUR ACCESS REQUIRED,” the signs read.
1/2 Quick story: being tired of encountering drivers parking in the bike lanes at each side of Pike & Boren on Capitol Hill and absolutely no response to reports/FIFI/etc from @seattledot, I did a little experiment a week ago by installing my own signs @carbikelanesea #SEAbikes pic.twitter.com/Yvg08aZDVX
— Bob Svercl (@bobco85) March 19, 2023
The city typically frowns on guerilla street safety projects. A rogue crosswalk marking busy crossing points along E Olive Way was removed last year. A project to formalize the markings was later included in a federal “Safe Streets” grant. Other efforts like this phony stop sign in an E Crescent traffic circle have been simply removed.
On Pike, the separated bike lanes joined the street in 2019. The project to overhaul Pike and Pine between the Waterfront and Capitol Hill will also include the bike routes.
The city might want to consider also adding something like the guerilla bike lane signs along with other new measures to keep the lanes clear. According to Svercl, the messages worked — for a little while.
The uphill sign was effective, Svercl said, but disappeared after a few days. On the other side of the street, things went a little better but even that sign was eventually doomed. “Downhill sign lasted but was run over many times until it eventually broke off,” Svercl writes.
Undeterred, Svercl is vowing to continue to search for a solution without the city’s help.
We’ve asked SDOT for more information about whether similar signage has been considered and what more can be done to help keep the city’s bike lanes clear.
UPDATE: SDOT pointed to this Seattle Bike Blog post to show an example of “educational” signage it has posted in the past
UPDATE: An SDOT spokesperson says the existing Pike and coming Pine separated bike lanes will be better protected under the Waterfront project reconfiguring the streets that will also add “a concrete buffer with planter boxes” along the lanes.
The spokesperson said SDOT has also tried temporary “educational” signage in the past like when it opened the “bikeway” on Broadway.
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Bikers have way too much power in this city. Despite $10s of millions in bike lanes, bike commuters make up only 3% of commuters. What a waste.
Because the only measure of the relevance of a form of transportation is the commute mode share.
(Of the dozens of bike trips I made in recent years, I don’t think any of them were for my commute. I’d do a lot more if we had high-quality, gap-free infrastructure for anywhere I actually wanted to go.)
They build literal protected bike lanes and I still get almost ran over on a sidewalk right next to it.
“Almost” Compare that to the thousands of people killed by cars every year and your complaining starts looking pretty ridiculous.
So the city must never try to make a bike commute better or safer so more people can choose to bike, great take.
You feel safe in your car don’t you? Well that 3% deserves to feel safe too.
You nailed it. “Feel”. So much pearl clutching in this subset. You’re fine. Rub some dirt on it. Lane blocked? Go around and get back to your business.
I’m being snarky, yeah, but my point is still valid – the lobby for peds and bikes in this city is overreacting to the numbers. Bottom line is that we are a relatively safe city compared to other cities in America. This, in spite of our crazy narrow streets and bizarrely entitled peds and bikers, both of which put these (vulnerable) subsets in jeopardy. We have recently experienced a spike, but we have also recently imposed a 25 mph speed limit, closed a bunch of streets (irrationally), and imposed other SDOT efforts to achieve the impossible “zero deaths”. The response to the recent increase has been reactionary, lacking self-reflection and unscientific. All efforts have been focused on controlling the picture with more rules limitations, rather than altering the system to allow for coexisting. The result is increased frustration and anger on all sides of the issue, and this is only going to make things worse for the most vulnerable if we are all on the road together.
I appreciate your tone! All I’m trying to say is that SDOT has kinda created this mess. Some of the issue is the hyper-reactivity associated with fear campaigns (Seattle is crazy dangerous for bikers!) that aren’t associated with reality (it’s actually relatively safe). I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t try to protect people on foot and bike, just that we’re doing the wrong things. The efforts that have been made often cater to easy political wins (who doesn’t want zero deaths?) without including more nuanced research (how do you build infrastructure that gets the behavior we want without forcing it?). The emotional component is real and unavoidable. I’m advocating for reimagining the safety of the vulnerable – create thoroughfares for both cars and bikes that allow true separation. A plastic stick in the road is not separation. Remind peds and bikers that the humans in cars sometimes make mistakes and they need to account for this. We have created a false sense of security and a sense of entitlement among the vulnerable, and it is causing deaths.
Feeling safe and being safe are not the same. Hate to break it to you but bikes will always be losers when interacting with cars. The fact that a car can enter a protected lane means what? A sign won’t save your skin. You’re relying on drivers to keep you safe. That’s a terrible bet.
A quick search shows Seattle SDOT budget is M$718, 3% is M$21 per year.
You’re the type of person to buy a new car every 3 years. You’re the waste.
10s of millions is a drop in the bucket for a city where billions and billions are spent on car infrastructure every year
Most studies show that adding bike infrastructure increases business traffic. Also, reports of commute satisfaction show that walkers and bikers tend to enjoy their commute more than driving. Add on health, climate, and air pollution benefits and the equity aspect that bike facilities can double as ADA facilities and I just don’t see how there is so much opposition to them…
Most people seem to think that signs and warnings are a necessary feature of a responsible citizenry until it pertains to them. Then, they become an optional suggestion and the serious reasons become lost to self-absorbed inconvenience.
Honesty it’s easier to ride back a street from Broadway and it’s crazy one sided bike lane of death. So much money blow that would be better spent fixing huge pot holes on 10th.
Guess its back to corking intersections and assaulting cagers — every Bike Activist on the Hill, unironically.
How about tickets…. the only thing that will make some people quit…
Oh and a slight correction, the stop sign on E. Crescent wasn’t phony… it’s always been there and remains, the incorrect thing was that after it had been run over, someone replaced it with a pole that not only had a stop sign on it, but also had a “photo enforcement” sign attached and no, that intersection is definitely not photo enforced…
But according to Seattle we don’t need off street parking on Capitol Hill because of all the transit there. The city says people living in large apartments won’t have cars!
I think it is easy to jump into an us versus them battle between motorists and cyclists. As someone who get around with both, I can understand both sides. I think that we can all agree that if we zoom out from this perspective, there is an underlying problem of education and enforcement.
Many folks may legitimately be unaware of the rules or updates to traffic revisions, and many others may be aware and choose to disregard the rules for whatever nonsense selfish reasons. Thinking about the recent right-on-red debate. It may be helpful that driver license renewals should require written tests, and perhaps driving tests. Simply passing each when a license is first acquired, and never again is eroding driver responsibility and understanding. It’s a continued learning experience.
Regarding enforcement, there is an underlying downward trend of ticketing. Admittedly there is nuance on how to enforce, and whether ticketing is the right thing; or whether it is conducted by police, parking enforcement, or an different entity.Additionally there are considerations of equity and marginalization of monetary punishments as well. However there is very low enforcement risk to people that illegally park in bike lanes, across driveways, at intersections, in center turn lanes, and double park just by simply depressing their hazard (I can park anywhere I find convenient regardless of the considerations of anyone but me) lights.
The sense of entitlement, and the me-first culture is infuriating and dangerous.
Yep.. there’s hardly a moment when the entire no parking side of the street in front of the Madison Safeway isn’t totally full of illegally parked cars that block up the street and make it dangerous for everyone… I don’t see the need for nuance, just tickets, lots of expensive tickets….
So why not ask the city to make more parking?
Got doored right in front of one of those signs last week.
Want to get doored? Want to get slammed by a car making a right hand turned?
Just ride in the biked lane.
You have as much right as any car to own the lane, so own it.
That sucks. I’ve had it happen to me. That said, there is never going to be a way to prevent this from happening. It will always, for the rest of your life, be a risk associated with riding a bike where cars exist.
So cyclists make more space on the road for drivers by commuting on a smaller vehicle in a seperated area, and all drivers can do is piss and moan that cyclists exist? Scratch and dent every car in the bike lane, so drivers really have something to bitch about!
Are ppl here on chs really asserting the right to block bike lanes? There is so little hope left for the hill
Is it impossible to imagine that some bike infrastructure in Seattle is poorly designed? There are always gonna be pricks. There are always gonna be folks that think the rules don’t apply to them, just this once. These people sometimes ride bikes and sometimes drive cars.
Right now, you’ve got people like Nandor thinking that everyone in a car is some kind of ignorant savage trying to kill everyone, and that pricey tickets will make them stop. You’ve got people like Dan here advocating for property damage, like “that’ll teach them a lesson”. You’ve also got people at SDOT that think (I’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth) that if they make driving hard and inconvenient enough, people will actually stop driving. We also have this ridiculous zero death policy (I voted for it, unfortunately, imagining something other than what we got) that is creating hyperbolic reactions to our traffic issues.
Personally, as a cyclist and motorist, I find the layout of the bike lanes on Broadway and other places to be confusing and far from intuitive. I have accidentally done the wrong thing because it’s so poorly designed and I’ve been screamed at by self-absorbed pricks on wheels who can’t imagine I’m not evil. The polarization and reactionary attitude is only serving to destroy empathy, something this town already has in short supply.
If SDOT continues to pretend that it can force cars off the road by catering only to bikes, you will see increased deaths, just as we’ve seen in the last few years. People shouldn’t be parking in bike lanes, but maybe we should also give people somewhere to park, because Seattle has intentionally limited parking. Be mad at the city and the pricks with poor intentions and lazy rationale. Try to imagine that some people are just trying to get through their day in a difficult world.
New to cycling are you? Never had a close call because you shouldn’t have been in the road anyway, or right-hooked in a crosswalk because you didn’t move fast enough for the driver with important things to do? Knowingly parking in a bike lane tells me you obviously don’t care about your car anyway, so collect your reward.
I am not, no. Been on two wheels and also four wheels since 1998. Often commuting. And mostly in Seattle. Anything else?
Golly 1998, well you’ve certainly been around. Been run off the road while riding legally, or had your sister killed by an inattentive driver? I have! Got anything else stooge! People parking in bike lanes deserve much worse for endangering vulnerable road users!!
I’m sorry to hear that but I wasn’t sitting here minimizing your opinion by ignorantly slandering your (disingenuously purported) experience. That was you.
You might be surprised to know that I don’t disagree with you about the Broadway bike lane…. It’s an absolute design sh*t show… it’s awful for everyone and never should have been built.
As a cyclist I wouldn’t use it because it is stupid and dangerous, as a motorist I tend to simply avoid the entire Capitol hill area unless it is absolutely necessary – like I need to pick up a large and heavy piece of furniture necessary… so like once or twice a decade.. if that.
Well maintained bike lanes are oftentimes the best facilities for those in wheelchairs and scooters, we should be trying to build out this city for all users whether on foot or wheels of any kind
You have to be kidding me. How in the name of Satan do you expect to achieve zero deaths?!?! Ever wonder how many cycle deaths the NETHERLANDS have each year? No? I’ll tell ya. About 200, give or take a few. Here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/523310/netherlands-number-of-cyclist-road-fatalities/
The ONLY reason the Zero Death concept came around is because it cause people to say things like “It’s really scary that folks think any amount of death … is totally reasonable.” Obviously we should try to protect the vulnerable, but it is … frankly … moronic to imagine you could ever come close to zero. To campaign on this is nothing short of manipulative virtue signaling. We need to share a reality before we work through solutions.
Need a new idea? How about this:
Pull out a map
Look at every neighborhood in Seattle separately
Identify the major arterials and make them auto-only
Raise the speed limit to 35 and eliminate all unnecessary pedestrian crossings
Time lights to keep cars moving so that they don’t burn extra fuel stopping and starting – keep traffic moving
Go one street off this arterial and make it a one-way for cars
Put concrete blocks or bollards down the middle
Make a two-way bike path on the other side of the barrier
Connect these bike-ways to each other along relatively flat paths
Approach transit from the perspective of serving both methods of transit because we’re a goddamn city and a democracy and our elected officials should serve the whole
Defund SDOT and start over
Forcing all this stopping and starting is really bad for emissions and putting bikes and cars on the same road in a city with skinny lanes is putting cyclist lives at risk. Create separation and you fix both.
Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious – how do you determine what is a necessary and unnecessary pedestrian crossing? If you have these super-arterials that you’re describing, how do you have any ped/bike crossing? Do you have them spaced out like every three blocks and use the timed lights to allow for crossings? Just trying to visualize this and understand. What if your arterial happens to be a street with a lot of businesses on it – wouldn’t reducing ped xings mean that businesses would get less foot traffic?
Also – why look at every neighborhood separately? If they’re arterials isn’t the whole point that they connect to other neighborhoods?
Sounds like you want to move to Bellevue or something? This has been done all over suburbia and it’s a disaster. Everything that early dissenters of automobiles have warned about have come true, they clog our streets, use tons of real estate, and are unnecessarily dangerous. Cars are one of the leading causes of death in children, we should be looking at minimizing their usage and building cities that are walkable and bike-able.
The only solution to keeping cars out of bike lanes is an actual steel or concrete bollard or two that makes it impossible for a car to get in at an intersection (by constricting the width). If I were designing these, I’d make them about 12″ high, with a blinking orange light on them. Plenty of distracted drivers wouldn’t notice them, but the undercarriage of their car certainly would.
How about 24″ and then we aren’t unnecessarily damaging peoples’ cars?
Oh, but for Gregor, that would be part of the fun.
Okay, fine, 24″, or even 36″ I just thought we could save the city some money if they were just 12″.