Emery on a recent visit to the Central District’s Avole (Image: SDOT)
A Harrell administration deputy mayor is leading the city’s transportation department. Adiam Emery stepped into the role leading the Seattle Department of Transportation last month after serving as deputy under Mayor Bruce Harrell working on transportation initiatives.
Emery is serving in the role as Greg Spotts left Seattle City Hall after two years that included completion of the $144 million RapidRide G line on Madison and shepherding a $1.45 billion transportation levy to approval with voters last fall. The “15-minute city advocate” Spotts made the move from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest with a “Vision Zero” agenda and a philosophy around “self-enforcing” roads.
“I’m honored to return to SDOT and continue the City’s important work to help everyone in Seattle get where they need to go safely and easily,” Emery said in the announcement of her appointment. “As we move forward, my focus is on delivering the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Levy, strengthening partnerships, and ensuring our transportation system works for all.”
The new interim director’s priorities will include “safer travel” and “Vision Zero Action Plan efforts” including expanded pedestrian head-start signals that are reported to be active at 80% of the city’s traffic signals, more No Turn on Red restrictions now installed at 130 new intersections in 2024 for a total of around 300 in the city, and “a commitment to safety in every project.”
Emery will be responsible for implementing the city’s plan for delivering projects under the $1.55 billion transportation levy approved by voters this fall.
A roster of Capitol Hill and Central District-area projects are included in the 2025 plan but do not mistake it for a list of projects that will be completed this year.
“The Levy Delivery Plan shares projects starting planning, design, construction, or maintenance in 2025,” SDOT says about the process. “Because some projects take 3+ years from inception through construction, work in 2025 lays the foundation for next 8 years.”
Some $16 million in safety spending will include “HIGH-COLLISION SAFETY PROJECTS” at Broadway and Pike, Broadway and Union, and Harvard and Pike among dozens of other locations across the city, according to the plan.
Officials say they will also start planning a new “12th Ave S Safety Corridor” and work will begin on “Safe Routes to School Program” improvements at 13th Ave and E Yesler Way for Bailey Gatzert Elementary and along 10th Ave E for the Bertschi School.
“Transit Corridors and Connections” projects to “connect people safely to transit hubs, including Link light rail stations and bus stops; and Start Design on spot improvements” will include implementing a 24th Ave Bus Only Lane, undetailed “Broadway Safety Improvements,” and E Jefferson St/9th to 12th re-channelization, the SDOT plan states.
Emery is also pledging to prioritize “future-ready streets” by “investing in infrastructure that supports downtown activation, major events like the Seattle FIFA World Cup 26™, and long-term mobility needs.”
Emery was born and raised in Ethiopia before her family moved to the United States “to pursue our college educations.”
Emery’s selection is formally an interim appointment until the mayor can make a fulltime selection approved by the council but she appears ready to step up to the responsibility.
She says her work on the city’s transportation challenges is shaped by her life — and loss.
“In 2003, my life changed when my sister was killed by a hit and run. The pain and loss never goes away, and it made Vision Zero my north star,” Emery said. “As SDOT Division Director, I signed policies expanding pedestrian head-start signals and lowering the speed limit to make streets safer. I live and breathe this. Seattle is my home – my kids were born here – and I’m inspired by the progress we make every day.”
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Unfortunately I’ve noticed a number of unintended consequences from some of the changes…
Lower speed limits has resulted in it being more common for a small subset of drivers to act much more recklessly – weaving in and out using the center turn lanes, passing into oncoming traffic and speeding more…
The pedestrian pause has definitely increased red light running as drivers now know they have a few extra seconds before cross traffic starts and that they won’t be T-boned.. I now expect that at least 2-3 cars will go through the red…
More stop signs has led to more people simple ignoring them.. It has become quite rare that I see drivers come to an actual stop if they aren’t forced to because there’s someone directly in front of them… otherwise they may tap the brakes a little.. but just blow right through. 2 way stops on lower traffic streets are the worst… Almost zero drivers understand that cross traffic does not have a stop sign too… even the ones that deign to slow will cut you off as they think they have the right of way..
I saw within the time I was waiting to cross the street 2 drivers swerve into the crosswalks to go around the barriers so that they could go straight across Madison at 18th where it is now right hand turn only… Unbelievable.
Without at least some enforcement none of this works. It is unfortunate, but all some people understand is punishment. If they are allowed to get away with bad behavior they will simply continue it.
People ignore the no turn on red too. Also sometimes it backs up traffic – including buses for those anti car folx
Correct, buses at 5th and Jackson turning north onto 4th all make rights on red.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Ever the Seattle problem. With Vision Zero, (an unattainable goal without rebuilding the city) we’ve cut/pasted a bunch of concepts from other cities that don’t necessarily work here. All we’ve considered are – what are some new ideas and did they reduce deaths in those places? We have completely ignored the uniqueness of our existing roads (they are skinny af), and the human factor, something that is culture specific. If people are going to visit from other cities and drive here, you have to account for the fact that your transportation department has such a vastly different way of organizing roads that you actually create risk through confusion. You can see this in the numbers (they fell last year, finally, but not enough to change the upward trend).
If you don’t design the roads for flow (and SDOT has intentionally tried to make traffic worse), you pump all your drivers with cortisol and send them loose. People don’t make good decisions while driving stressed out. This creates risk as well.
For all the people advocating for enforcement, there is a level of frustration that will overwhelm the risk of a ticket, and you just can’t control this kind of behavior without flooding the streets with cops. Raise the penalty then? Disproportionate cost spread on to poor communities, and any group that might be statistically more likely to commit traffic infractions (like high school boys).
If we’d have been more creative when we started all of this instead of just copying Copenhagen and Portland, and maybe accepted that cars are here, and we have to work with them instead of plugging our ears and shouting at them, we’d have a chance at getting somewhere, but for the moment, we’ve just blasted through millions in property taxes without doing anything more than making Seattle more miserable to be in. We haven’t even necessarily focused on places that have a history of pedestrian deaths. Consider the dumb speed lumps on Lake WA Blvd. There has never been a pedestrian death on that road, but the bike lobbyists at SDOT have been pearl-clutching about cars on that road forever, and finally found a way to kill yet another commute route by usurping funds appropriated to end pedestrian deaths.
Over and over we shoot ourselves in the foot by elevating the virtuous signals and loud politicians, without really fixing much at all.
If drivers had behaved in the first place, there would be no need for traffic calming.
By the way, Lake Washington Boulevard isn’t a commute route. It was built as a pleasure drive and has never been a good right-of-way for anything else. If driving it doesn’t give you pleasure, don’t.
I commuted on this route for 7 years. Show up at 7 am and tell me hundreds of drivers are cruising north for pleasure. It’s a commute route, pretty or not. You can’t just say it’s something when it is for so many people. Doesn’t matter what the intent was 100 years ago when the city has ballooned in size, and you’ve clamped down Rainier Ave S to be a parking lot. SDOT has turned it into a commute. Also, I just gave you lots of reasons why drivers behave how they do. Do you want results, or just shame from behind a keyboard?
lmao, you are so cooked from driving you think Lake Washington Blvd is a commute route, like, no wonder you’re so steamed and rudderless.
I don’t agree with you at all… We do not need to bend to poor drivers – flood the streets with cameras not cops 99% of this dumb fuckery can be caught and ticketed with them. I don’t care in the slightest if teen boys get a lot of tickets.. and Lake Washington Blvd is largely a park… the thing should be one big speed bump.
I’m not saying anybody needs to “bend to poor drivers”. I’m saying that if you want results, you should reach for the most effective solution. The way we have been approaching traffic safety is akin to spanking a child to change behavior. I’m advocating for an approach more akin to working within a child’s psychology to change their behavior. You get some results with spanking, but you get some side effects, too. This emotional response (“bending to poor drivers”) ignores that there are reasons tied to that driving that are tied to the structure built by SDOT. You have no choice but to acknowledge this, because people are telling you that this structure does this. It’s willfully ignorant to continue trying to beat it out of people instead of building structures that acknowledge the human factor.
And on LWB, try living in Seward Park or Rainier Beach and working on the other side of that road. You might have empathy for the hundreds of people that use the road to commute. You can disagree all you want, but SDOT has absolutely destroyed all commutes (LWB, Rainer, I5) from south to north (and probably all commutes, period) intentionally, and drivers are now more in a hurry, frustrated and angry than ever, and you can just point a finger and expect it to change. Doing so tells me that you don’t really want a functioning system, it tells me you just want to be right. The data supports this reality.
Nope. Disagree 100%. What we are doing right now is giving the little brats the list of rules then leaving the room and ignoring them as the run wild… there’s almost no enforcement of traffic laws and egregiously entitled drivers know it. They definitely need a lot of time outs.
Cool, but being dismissive doesn’t help your argument. You cannot enforce it enough to make a change. People will always break the rules, and if your system makes people drive angry, pedestrians will die.
Cool, but people simply shouldn’t be allowed to get away with being antisocial, just because they are behind the wheel of car. Your system makes everyone less safe.
Nope. Disagree 100%. And so do the DOTs of many states with lower death rates for pedestrians. Counter to Seattle’s prevailing “wisdom”, many car-centric cities actually have very low death rates for pedestrians, like Lincoln NE, Durham NC, and … Vegas, where everyone is high or drunk all the time. I’m not saying that being car-centric is how you achieve this, but I am saying that force feeding and agenda on tight roads has yielded more pedestrian deaths and wasted tons of money, and you can’t just ignore this because you enjoy being contrarian. https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/28/sdots-top-to-bottom-review-of-vision-zero-barely-skims-the-surface/
Perhaps SDOT could do something about the center turning lanes becoming de facto short-term parking for Amazon and Uber drivers. This is a hazard, I’ve had near-misses with drivers opening doors or walking around their vehicles, not to mention makes it harder to actually make mid-block turns for parking entrances etc.
This comes with the anti car initiative, unfortunately. Some people who lacked foresight abolished SDCI requirements for parking to match the growth, in hopes that people wouldn’t be using cars after we grew. Now there isn’t enough parking for delivery, so they have to use the center lane.
It’s not the parking reform, it’s the developers who have been awarded alley vacations with little scrutiny and then refused to accommodate loading zones because they think every square foot that doesn’t earn rent is a waste of space.
ahem … the developers answer to SDCI, who makes the rules, according to the desires of the city council.
they are not blocking the turns. They never do. Nor block the street cars. Or any other thing.
I would ride my bike up to Broadway, but it got stolen outside qfc. Thankfully the homeless don’t steal cars, so that’s my answer.
What’s wrong with parking there? They are making important deliveries, it’s a city street not a freeway. If you think its hazardous, then you are driving too fast for a neighborhood.
Future ready? They can’t even fill the potholes. Repair our roads, then we can talk about “future ready.”
SDOT filled 25,000 potholes in 2023, and the counts go up every year.
How much more unsustainable car subsidies would make you happy?
Seattle chose to go with a paving option about a dozen years ago which was supposed to be cheaper,… unfortunately the method does not handle the sort of winter conditions we have been experiencing during this period.
Once a pothole forms? The entire road is weakened.
It was pointed out at that time that the likelihood of the outcome we are now seeing was very likely.
There was a great comment in the final report on outcome of the decision about how “new technologies will fill the gaps” –– there are definitely some holes in that!
But, the car subsidies! Not sure what those are, but sounds like sick burn!
Something that people high on their own ‘car free’ smug make up, forgetting that their comfy little walkable urban lifestyle is entirely dependent on a whole network of roads and vehicles that bring all the necessities to keep them warm, fed and entertained…
Drive yourself or not, you ‘use’ the roads and have a vested interest in maintaining them.
The rub is, its not like any of this has to do with commercial or industrial traffic, and the focus is almost entirely on individuals who are having cows about this
And to general smugness about 20 years of making do without a car…you know how you find vindication when naysayers tell you that youre hosing yourself and your life will be lesser if you dont do as all others do, and then its actually pretty good?
Its like that, and this is the 2nd on the list of not doing the common thing paying off. And it isnt without effort or issues, there are tradeoffs, but Im a cooperative shareholder, barely any debt, i make 65k a year and make it work with my wife who cant work anymore, and thats partially due to not dropping 500 a month on total car expenses.
You think that not repairing the roads because it’s “unsustainable car subsidies” as Matt appears to be suggesting, wouldn’t affect everyone, even non drivers… OK, then..
P.S. Just to be clear, my stance hasn’t changed… while I’m under no illusions that modern urban life could exist without motor vehicles, I’m still dead against self centered idiot driving…Having to be extra alert and not going places super fast is a fact of life if you choose to drive around cities.
What are you talking a out? You must not get out much if you think “filling 25,000 potholes” has so much as dented our crumbling roads. There are so many streets that are crumbling to gravel in this town that as they are I doubt they’ll be usable in a couple decades time.
And “car subsidy?” Whatever you’re smoking you should put it away, pal. I cycle.
The “No Right on Red” signs are already ubiquitous, including at some intersections where they are clearly un-necessary. Remove those, and don’t put up any more unless there is a real safety issue. Optimizing traffic flow helps to prevent driver frustration, and so it is a safety mechanism.
” Optimizing traffic flow helps to prevent driver frustration, and so it is a safety mechanism.”
Really? THAT is your reasoning?
Back to Reefer Madness, Road Rage edition.
It’s safer for pedestrians to give uninterrupted ROW to vehicles.
It’s absolutely incredible how thoughtless drivers are to consider their own frustration above anything else at all, ever. Never at all regretted the choice to stop driving and orient my life around that material fact because look at these people!
I long for the good ‘ol days when you could throw trash out the window on the freeway. Smoke in the grocery store. And of course, crosswalks are there to tempt people into walking in front of cars. Lean on the horn to get them to move because you are in the box stuck waiting.
Stupid, stupid drivers. They all should just be like me, ME, I say! How dare they have feelings! They should just ignore them and just do what I did. Burn your cars! Wait, burn the people in the cars! Can’t afford to live near your work, and there’s no train that goes from your home to work? You dumb dummy! BURN!!
You’re gonna smoosh a pedestrian over it.
Making it more convenient to drive isn’t going to reduce traffic, it’s going to increase traffic.
Making driving something that isn’t confusing or unnecessarily restricted will save lives by making it easier to drive safely. If you want results, work WITH people. If you want to be a progressive firebrand in the comment section, shame people for not behaving like you want them to.
okay…
But smooth and unencumbered vehicles in traffic trickles down to the pedestrian because car collisions are unsafe.
Right on red is a relic from a time when there was less traffic and no traffic sensors, just timers. Most of the time when people make a right on red they are doing it wrong.. You aren’t supposed to try to beat traffic to get out on a red.. you are only supposed to do it if there is nothing in or approaching an intersection – no vehicles, no pedestrians. If you are intently staring left looking for a little gap to jet into, you shouldn’t be making the turn. As far as I’m concerned it should be illegal pretty much everywhere.