Mayor-elect Wilson shakes up SDOT leadership + City needs to get back on pace to keep up with the transportation levy’s demands

With Mayor-elect Katie Wilson less than two weeks from assuming office, we are already seeing signs of change within SDOT leadership. Interim Director Adiam Emery will not continue in that role, with Wilson tapping Angela Brady of the sprawling Office of the Waterfront, Civic Projects and Sound Transit to take on the Interim Director role.

Essentially every new mayor picks a new SDOT Director. Transportation is a massive part of the city’s budget, and SDOT’s work inevitably becomes political because the streets are the part of the public realm people interact with most.

Before outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell picked Emery for the interim role, she was a Deputy Mayor in his administration. So it is not at all surprising that Wilson would make a change. But Brady will be the second interim director in a row, and the department is coming up on a full year without a permanent director following the February 2025 departure of Greg Spotts.

Though 2025 was a huge year for bike project completion, development of new projects has slowed compared to the heightened pace set by Spotts. Emery’s SDOT has not applied the brakes on project delivery, but it is no longer accelerating like it was. It is vital that SDOT does not fall behind in developing and delivering projects promised to voters who approved the ambitious 2024 Transportation Levy. Failing to scale up delivery after the Move Seattle Levy passed in 2015 was a disaster for the department, which went through an extended period of rudderless leadership amid the extended Mayor Ed Murray scandal followed by Mayor Jenny Durkan’s year-long hesitancy to pick a new SDOT Director. The department does not seem rudderless under Emery like it was in 2017–19, but they have a lot of work to get done before the levy expires in 2032. Under-delivering in the early years will make it nearly impossible to catch up in the later years, and the department is already behind on some of the 2025 projects outlined in their first levy delivery plan. However, to put things in perspective, a year after the Move Seattle Levy passed we wrote, “The biggest story for biking in Seattle in 2016 can be summed up in one terrible word: Delayed.”

SDOT needs a leader with a focus on efficient project development and delivery, someone who can make sure there is always an ambitious yet achievable number of projects in planning/outreach, technical design and construction. The next director, whether interim or permanent, also needs to be willing to take on big and difficult projects like a safe remake of Rainier Ave between S Jackson Street and MLK Way, one of the projects that was supposed to go into planning in 2025 but is behind schedule.

Brady has been working on the Central Waterfront project since 2012 and was the project manager for the Mercer Corridor Project before that. In 2022 she became the Director of the Waterfront Program, which Mayor Harrell expanded in February of this year to become the somewhat confusing mashup known as the Office of the Waterfront, Civic Projects and Sound Transit. Seattle Bike Blog has been quite critical of both the Mercer and Waterfront projects over the years, though it’s hard to say with such massive projects whether Brady is responsible for the many issues on those streets. Most of the problems for both projects stem from there being just too many damn traffic lanes, decisions that came baked into those projects before they were handed to city staff. So I am hopeful that selecting Brady is not a signal that Mayor Wilson wants to see more projects like the eight-lane Mercer Street or nine-lane Alaskan Way.

Wilson has also hired Alex Hudson to serve as a transportation advisor, the Urbanist reported. Hudson is the Executive Director of Commute Seattle and was previously the ED of Transportation Choices Coalition before running for Seattle City Council District 3 in 2023, which she lost to Joy Hollingsworth 53–47.

Wilson’s transportation decisions are being guided in part by a transition team (PDF) that includes representatives from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Cascade Bicycle Club/Washington Bikes. Lee Lambert is the Executive Director of Washington Bikes, which not only endorsed Bruce Harrell for mayor but also paid to send mailers promoting that endorsement to Seattle voters. Including him in the transition team is a signal that Mayor-elect Wilson does not plan on holding a grudge, which is great. Anna Zivarts, author of When Driving Is Not An Option and friend of Seattle Bike Blog, has been co-leading the transportation-focused group of the transition team.

But beyond agency leader decisions, Wilson also acknowledged the recent hit and run killing of Alley on Beacon Hill and pledged, “Making our streets safer, especially for the most vulnerable road users — people walking, biking and rolling — will be a high priority for my administration.”

https://bsky.app/profile/wilsonforseattle.bsky.social/post/3ma2uc5jhdk2q

#SEAbikes #Seattle

When a fool could do some good, what does he do instead?

#BruceHarrell #MayorofSeattle #Seattle

https://southseattleemerald.org/voices/2025/11/30/doom-loop-legacy

Progressives notch another win as Katie Wilson tops incumbent Bruce Harrell for Seattle mayor

SEATTLE (AP) — First-term Seattle Mayo…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Amazon.com #BruceHarrell #DistrictofColumbia #DonaldTrump #Elections #GeorgeFloyd #IDStateWire #Idaho #Inc. #KatieWilson #LocalNewsforApple #ORStateWire #Oregon #Politics #Racialinjustice #Seattle #U.S.DemocraticParty #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesgovernment #Us #USA #WAStateWire #Washington #ZohranMamdani
https://www.newsbeep.com/250090/

Seattle's Mayor Bruce Harrell has posted his concession speech to the Seattle Channel.

It's always great to see democracy in action... oh and gotta thank our lucky stars Bruce didn't finish defunding the public access channel to give more money to the cops otherwise we might not have been able to see it. 🥴

https://www.seattlechannel.org/videos?videoid=x182184

#BruceHarrell #Seattle #KatieWilson

A local chud posted this so I am unironically stealing dis shit.

Yes, buckle up a new dawn is upon us!

Welcome Comrades!

#Seattle #BruceHarrell

Bruce Harrell is basically a darker complexion Biff from Back To The Future.

I fully expect him to thank us for letting him be our homecoming king by mistake tomorrow.

#Seattle #BruceHarrell #BiffTannen

To restore public trust, Seattle city government needs a renewed commitment to transparency

A great city like Seattle should never have anything to hide from its people. That’s why one of the best things city government can do to earn the public’s trust is to act with transparency and make public information as freely accessible as possible. Doing so is also a way to support and encourage more independent journalism by providing all news outlets with equal access to public information.

Seattle has a history of being a leader on government transparency efforts, and since launching the Open Data Program in 2010 the city has hosted a huge amount of public information on its data.seattle.gov website. Many key datasets are updated regularly or even live and are open to anyone in the public to peruse. The idea was that the city had nothing to hide from the people, and it would be easier for everyone if they just made the information available rather than requiring people to file constant public disclosure requests (“PDR”). Open data is one powerful part of running a transparent government. The city also just in general needs to be more forthcoming and proactively open about program and project developments as well as political decision making.

The city has lost its way over the past decade or so as more and more public information has receded back behind the obscure and slow PDR process. This is especially true for the Seattle Police Department, as Erica C. Barnett at Publicola has been documenting, but it’s also true for other city departments. For example, it took a PDR by Ryan Packer to learn that the Seattle Parks Department and the Seattle Department of Transportation had invested staff time and public money into designs for a safer Lake Washington Boulevard before Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told them to scrap those safety updates. Before the PDR was fulfilled, simple media questions asking why the safety upgrades were scrapped went either unanswered or only vaguely answered. There is absolutely no reason SDOT and the Parks Department should ever obfuscate some roadway design plans or refuse to provide the public with an explanation for project changes. A similar process played out over efforts to close the nude beach at Denny-Blaine Park. These are not state secrets, these are our public parks.

The reason it was so hard to get this information is that Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office was at the center of it. They have made a habit of obscuring the flow of information, which is not just bad for the public but was also bad for Mayor Harrell. It didn’t work. Instead, every time it took a PDR to reveal major details about a public project, it made them look untrustworthy. This is how he got the nickname “Backroom Bruce,” which dogged him during the campaign. Hiding public information is almost always more damning than whatever the information says.

As it appears Katie Wilson will be Seattle’s next mayor, there are going to be a lot of people like me talking about what the new administration should prioritize. I will of course have thoughts on how a new administration can make our streets safer and more accessible for biking because that’s what Seattle Bike Blog does. But being extremely transparent from day one is one of those priorities that can benefit all the city’s work. I urge the incoming administration and the whole city government leadership chain to embrace a fresh approach to public information. Doing so would also set clear expectations for all the non-government workers who interact with City Hall, whether they are paid business lobbyists, individuals or community organizations.

The good news is that the city probably doesn’t need to invest heavily to build new transparency tools from scratch because many of the tools are already available through data.seattle.gov, Seattle Channel, Legistar, various department-specific data portals, or from project webpages on city websites. Mostly, we just need everyone to use them more often. Every project over a certain size needs to have a webpage that houses all relevant documents, and city staff should be more broadly empowered to share information without requiring too much executive oversight (some oversight is needed since department heads and the mayor need to be aware of what’s going on within the departments they oversee). If it’s a hassle or time-consuming to update a city webpage (a complaint I’ve heard from various city staffers), then the city needs to figure out how to make it easier. Essentially, if a document would be available to a PDR, then it should probably be on the project website. Project updates should always be transparent about what has been changed since the previous update. Reporters should never need to use the Wayback Machine to uncover project cuts. We will still find out the information, and the city will look untrustworthy in the process.

Oh, and please bring back the Seattle City Directory? It should never be difficult to figure out who works for who and who holds what public job. Relying on Publicola for a public directory is absurd.

All city news is not good news, so the public may discover problems through the city’s increased transparency efforts. However, this is a feature, not a bug. If there’s a problem, then we need to deal with it, and Seattle should do so in an open and honest manor. It’s much better to have problems come to light in the open than to discover later that city officials knew about the issues and didn’t let the public know.

Finally, transparency can only truly work if city employees are given clear expectations and can trust the mayor to support them. If staffers are afraid of retribution from above for sharing public information, then they will of course be less likely to do so. Then again, if city employees are living in fear of retribution from above then that’s a sign of a much larger leadership problem.

We live in a time when the Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives will stop meeting entirely to prevent the release of public information that could tie the President and many other powerful people to a pedophile ring. Operating with real transparency is just one of the many ways Seattle can and should conduct itself in stark opposition to the Republicans in DC. Seattle has nothing to hide.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

The state of our divided Seattle bike movement

I am writing this post before King County Elections releases the November 11 ballot count, so the result of the Seattle mayoral election is still unknown. It has been torture waiting for the result, but perhaps it is also a unique opportunity for some honest reflection on the current state of the Seattle bike movement as a political force. Voting is over, so there are no more voters to win over, yet without a result the finger-pointing and arguing stage hasn’t yet fully begun.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but the recent Shifter video and the unstated subtext bubbling below the Life After Cars event last week has had me thinking a lot about this odd moment in which the local bike movement is split on the most important political position in the city: Mayor. Seattle Bike Blog and the Urbanist enthusiastically endorsed Katie Wilson while Washington Bikes endorsed Bruce Harrell. It’s the first time since writing this blog we have been fully in opposition about a major election (in 2021 WA Bikes dual-endorsed Harrell and Lorena González while Seattle Bike Blog sole-endorsed González).

When you look back through Seattle’s modern bike history (about 1968-present), it’s amazing what bike folks can accomplish when people are united and pulling in the same direction. But when bike folks are divided, things can get bad. We saw this play out in Seattle but especially across the U.S. during the “vehicular cycling” era in which many “avid cyclists” organized against the creation of bike lanes and even sometimes trails because they were convinced that cycling is safest when people learn to bike on roadways like they are driving a car. The result was that any momentum from the 60s and 70s to invest in bike lanes and develop safe bike infrastructure standards was set back by decades. Why would a politician, even a good one, use any of their political capital to build a bike lane that a bunch of bike riders would protest alongside any upset drivers? Maintaining the status quo is politically easy, and making change is difficult. Political leaders need to know that bike supporters will have their back when the “bikelash” comes.

Seattle’s current split is far less significant than in the vehicular cycling days (documented at length in a recent Not Just Bikes video and touched on in my book). The difference, I’d argue, is more about competing theories of change than it is about competing philosophies about cycling itself. Washington Bikes and Seattle Bike Blog both support investments in safer cycling infrastructure and expanding bicycle education and using bikes for direct action through efforts like the Pedaling Relief Project. The big difference is about whether to seek influence through an existing problematic power structure that has been pretty good for bike lanes or to support a bike-riding candidate seeking to create a whole new path to power filled with potential and unknowns. Should the Seattle bike movement be part of the establishment or part of the change? Does power come from the people or from corporate sponsors? Is this a growing pain for a movement that is getting more mainstream and therefore has a wider range of political affinities, or is it a sign of trouble? Can all of these be a little bit true at the same time?

It’s undeniably good that both candidates courted voters who care about cycling. We did not have a mayoral candidate who was out there campaigning on the promise that they would tear out the bike lanes, and that alone is a sign of the bike movement’s power and the popularity of cycling and safe streets among Seattle voters. It has been obviously beneficial to the cause of increased cycling infrastructure that WA Bikes has had a friend in Mayor Harrell these past four years. If Harrell manages to pull out a close victory as the last ballots are counted (and perhaps recounted), he will absolutely owe some of it to the tens of thousands of dollars WA Bikes spent on mailers supporting him as well as their messages of support to their very large email list. WA Bikes reached significantly into a demographic that you would expect to be strong for Wilson: Bike riders.

But this is also the exact scenario I fear most because I think infighting within the Seattle bike movement would be intense and could leave lasting scars. If the margin for defeating Wilson ends up within the feasible WA Bikes influence range, things could get ugly. People calling out WA Bikes for failing to even dual endorse a bike-riding candidate and longtime transportation advocate has already been a constant buzz in recent months. If it ends up being decisive, well, grievances will be uncorked.

Maybe this is a fight that needs to happen. Hashing out disagreements is an important part of any social movement. In some ways, this is how Seattle Neighborhood Greenways initially came to be. It wasn’t an opposition group to Cascade Bicycle Club (back then Cascade was a political org, but a merger and major reorganization in 2015 turned Cascade into a non-partisan 501c3 org and WA Bikes into a politically-active 501c4 org). But as I wrote in my book, Cascade was in crisis in 2011 over the organization’s political actions. Cascade initially backed Greg Nickels in the 2009 primary, but then backed the anti-establishment candidate for mayor Mike McGinn during the general election (CORRECTION: I initially wrote that Cascade had backed McGinn over Nickels in the primary, but this was not accurate. I regret the error.). This is around the time I started Seattle Bike Blog (July 2010), so one of my first big tasks was to report on the chaos within Cascade and in some ways play the mediator. Several people at the time described it to me as a “civil war.” At one point, the Board of Directors fired the Executive Director because he refused to fire the club’s Advocacy Director, then a bunch of members organized against the Board and all but forced them to resign en masse. To outside observers they looked like the dog that caught the car. Cascade had been building their influence over decades and finally got a bike-riding champion elected mayor, then promptly imploded under the pressure of their own success.

Amid all that infighting, neighbors worried that the bike movement was going to blow its chance to take advantage of a rare opportunity for change started creating their own small neighborhood groups focused on supporting safe streets. They sidestepped the Cascade chaos and focused on the real goal: Safe streets. They were enormously successful, and the groups eventually formed into Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, a bottom-up organization in which the main org exists largely to support the advocacy work of the neighborhood groups. Greenways groups along with Cascade (once it got its shit together) were able to set in motion the foundations for today’s bike network such as the creation of the 2014 Bicycle Master Plan (at the time probably the best such plan in the nation), a pilot protected bike lane on 2nd Ave downtown, and the inclusion of unprecedented funding for bike improvements in the 2015 Move Seattle levy. It’s remarkable in retrospect that the Seattle bike movement was able to so deftly navigate such an awful implosion at Cascade and come of it stronger than before.

Now we have almost the opposite dynamic at play. WA Bikes supported the establishment candidate this time, and many of the people in their base are angry about it. My read is that it’s probably better for WA Bikes (and its sister organization Cascade) if Wilson pulls off the win. WA Bikes is significantly out of step with a large portion of its own base on this one, and I’m sure folks will organize some kind of response. Harrell supporters can get mad at Seattle Bike Blog and no critical bike movement infrastructure will be seriously damaged (this is the power of independent media). But we need WA Bikes and Cascade.

As I mentioned in the Shifter video, it’s a small miracle that Cascade (and WA Bikes) exists the way it does. It has so many more resources to dedicate to advocacy than most other bicycling organizations in the country because its early organizers made the decision to direct the revenue from the club’s hit rides back into the club and its advocacy efforts. It was a volunteer-run organization for a long time, and it kept pumping out hit after hit with its rides. A huge number of people have participated in Cascade events, and Cascade is often a person’s first contact with cycling. It is a powerful presence culturally and politically, and it’s not something that could be created today if we were starting from scratch. It’s a special institution that belongs in part to everyone who rides a bike here, which is why I think people are feeling so angry, hurt and sold out. In a town where corporate profits are constantly prioritized above the people, it’s painful to see that even the bike club is acting on the same side as the ultrawealthy megadonors behind the Harrell campaign and his not-so-independent PAC. If in 2011 they were the dog that caught the car, in 2025 they are the car.

I know that the bike movement in Seattle is strong enough and cares enough to navigate whatever is ahead. I hope this post can help provide a basis of understanding about what happened last time there was a big disagreement over local politics within the club as well as some of the dynamics at play. No matter what happens (if anything happens at all), we will come out stronger so long as everyone keeps their eyes on the end goal: More people bicycling safely.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Awoke much earlier than i hoped, struggling with insomnia this week. This is good news though from #TheSeattleTimes - #KatieWilson is catching up to #BruceHarrell and might actually win! :)

Bruce Harrell - 116435 - 50.7%

Katie Wilson - 112135 - 48.9%

https://www.kuow.org/stories/it-s-a-coin-flip-experts-say-seattle-mayor-s-race-still-too-close-to-call

#Seattle #Politics #PNW

#BruceHarrell–#KatieWilson vote shift from the primary to the general election (election night data only) with arrows. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jason.weill5486/viz/ComparisonKingCountyWANovember2025GeneralPreliminaryResults/Voteshift?publish=yes #seaElex #waElex #seattle #SeaElection #electionViz #dataviz

Ahh this old routine.

Haven't seen this smear campaign since the last time a young person took on a sitting Amazon Basics corporate ass Seattle mayor.

#Vote #KatieWilson #BruceHarrell #Seattle #PNW #ElectionDay2025

Get your ballot to a drop box + How to print a replacement ballot or register in-person

It may be too late to rely on the post office to mail your ballot ahead of the November 4 election, so anyone with a ballot still lying around should fill it out and get it to a ballot drop box (King, Pierce, Snohomish) by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Also send this info to your friends and family who are less engaged than you are.

Any registered voter who has lost their ballot can complete and print a replacement ballot online (King, Pierce, Snohomish). You can also register and/or vote in-person now until the polls close by going to a voting center, though check the open hours before going (King, Pierce has unlisted extended hours until 6 p.m. Monday and 8 p.m. Tuesday, Snohomish).

Check out our endorsement of Katie Wilson for Seattle Mayor as well a compilation of endorsements around the region from Washington Bikes, Transportation for Washington, the Urbanist and the Transit Riders Union. If you’re having trouble deciding who to vote for, seeing where these four very different orgs landed can give you a good idea. One surprise to me, for example, was that all four orgs endorsed Claudia Balducci for King County Executive while only the Transit Riders Union dual endorsed Girmay Zahilay. That race may end up being the closest major race on the ballot, and many people (including yours truly) are having a hard time deciding because they’re both great. So if you care a lot about transportation policy, maybe these endorsement results are your tie-breaker.

This is a moment in Seattle history. We have not elected a mayor like Katie Wilson in modern memory. She is a genuine bike and bus riding grassroots community organizer and an effective coalition builder. Perhaps most remarkably, she is not overly egotistical, a problematic trait that nearly all successful politicians share. She doesn’t always make everything about Katie, she centers the work and the partners who make it happen. She is also not afraid to take a chance on a new idea (like ORCA Lift and the JumpStart tax and social housing), and she has a remarkable success rate gathering the community and stakeholder buy-in to make them happen. She is the kind of politician people say they want but rarely get a chance to elect. A mayor who leads from within rather than on high. Electing Katie Wilson could be a chance to redefine the path to power at City Hall, a once-in-a-generation kind of event.

Don’t sit this one out or rely on some promising polling to get Katie to the Mayor’s Office. A handful of ultrawealthy people and companies are spending huge amounts of money to attack her and shift the race back in Harrell’s favor. But we can defeat them with people power by volunteering for the Wilson campaign to get out the vote (for example, you can phonebank from your own home). If nothing else, contact all your friends and family to urge them to vote and offer to answer their questions.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Wild Bruce Harrell is still a leading Seattle mayor candidate.

That man held a pregnant woman at gun point over a parking space and is still allowed in the democratic party.

Wild.

#Seattle #PNW #BruceHarrell

Op-Ed: WA Bikes explains why they endorsed Bruce Harrell

Editor’s Note: Seattle Bike Blog has enthusiastically endorsed Katie Wilson for Seattle Mayor, and we wrote in a recent roundup of advocacy organization endorsements that “WA Bikes snubs several bike champions.” In conversations with Washington Bikes Executive Director Lee Lambert, I offered space for an op-ed explaining their decision. WA Bikes is a nonpartisan organization that endorsed more than 70 candidates across the state this election cycle. It is distinct from its charitable sister organization the Cascade Bicycle Club and is funded largely by revenue from the annual Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic.

By Washington Bikes

Our Endorsement Process

At Washington Bikes, our endorsement process is rooted in research and a focus on what matters most — delivering real, measurable improvements for biking, safety, and equity. In 2023, 2024, and 2025, Seattle has seen historic investments in bike infrastructure, and much of that progress is thanks to the leadership of Mayor Bruce Harrell.

Over the last few days, we’ve received questions about our endorsement of Bruce Harrell for Mayor. Rather than simply responding directly back to the people who emailed us, we wanted to be more transparent and share the message with others who may be wondering.

We support candidates who not only articulate a strong vision but also follow through — securing funding, advancing projects, and creating lasting, tangible change. Our endorsement process includes early endorsements of champions, and considers positions on bike policy (which may be learned through our questionnaire or in-person interview or the candidate’s record on bike-related issues), their approachability and willingness to engage on bike safety, their viability, and their experience and years of leadership within the community.

Our Endorsement: Why We Stand by Mayor Harrell

Based on his results for people biking, Washington Bikes is proud to endorse Mayor Bruce Harrell for re-election. During his first term, Mayor Harrell didn’t simply talk about bike safety — his administration funded it, built it, and set Seattle up for even greater progress ahead.

Let’s be clear: we don’t agree on every decision. For example, Lake Washington Boulevard clearly needs to be safer for people walking, biking and rolling. But the massive progress and improvements towards a safe, connected Seattle bike network over the last four years are undeniable.

Let’s look at the receipts:

• Sent a $1.55 billion Seattle Transportation Levy to voters, which included over $130 million for protected bike lanes, and $160 million for Vision Zero — a funding source that targets projects that will make our streets safer, frequently for people biking and walking. This is also a Levy that is federal government proof — a major shift from the prior Levy — and ensures stability and progress even when federal funds fluctuate.
• Approved the Seattle Transportation Plan (STP), which grew the number of miles in the planned bike network and set protected bike lanes as the default for new bike lanes.
• Completed over 13 miles of NEW protected bike lanes across the city, including high impact projects with organized opposition to them, such as: the first protected bike lane to and through SODO, known as the Georgetown to Downtown Protected Bicycle Lane. Additionally, the Georgetown to South Park Protected Bicycle Lane, Alaskan Way West Side Protected Bicycle Lane, and East Marginal Way were built during his tenure.
• Installed six miles of concrete barriers to add real physical protection to existing painted bike lanes, with a total of 30 percent of the existing bike network to be converted over the Levy’s span.
• Advanced more safe bike routes to construction or design: Eastlake protected bike lanes as part of Rapid Ride J (3.7 miles), Renton Ave S (1.7 miles), Roosevelt/ Pinehurst Way NE (1.35 miles), S Henderson St. (0.87 miles) Beacon Ave Middle Segment (2.36 miles), Highland Park Way SW (0.59 miles), and 4th Ave Extension to Seattle Center (0.7 miles).
• Staying the course on completing the Burke Gilman Missing Link along Shilshole Ave NW — the Mayor’s office has continued to appeal the lawsuits that stand in the way of completing the Missing Link on the most simple, safe and connected route.
• Equity-driven Levy projects moving forward, like 14th & Director in South Park, 130th Avenue N, Aurora Avenue bike lanes, and Beacon Avenue South.

These achievements are not small wins — they represent transformative progress in connectivity, safety, and accessibility, particularly for South Seattle communities that have long been underserved.

But an endorsement isn’t just backward looking. We view Harrell as well-positioned to implement the current transportation levy, which is the major funding source for new bike infrastructure and the key to completing Seattle’s bike network. After all, his staff crafted it, and he gave it his stamp of approval when he sent it to the city council.

Vote Harrell for a Safer, More Connected Seattle

Washington Bikes supports Mayor Bruce Harrell because he’s proven that leadership, collaboration, and accountability deliver results. From record-setting investments to long-awaited project completions, his administration has achieved incredible progress delivering safe, equitable bike networks across Seattle.

Vote Bruce Harrell for Mayor. Let’s keep Seattle moving forward — on two wheels.

About Washington Bikes

Washington Bikes is a statewide 501c4 organization committed to building a transportation system that works for everyone. We focus on long-term policies and investments that create safer streets and better access across Washington, including statewide wins such as the Safety Stop, the Vulnerable Road User/Safe Passing Law, and ensuring bicyclists have the same rights as cars on our roads.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Who transportation orgs are endorsing in the 2025 general election + WA Bikes snubs several bike champions?

Skip ahead to the endorsements:

1. State Legislature
2. Counties
3. Cities

Ballots are hitting mailboxes across Washington State, and Seattle has the opportunity to elect a mayor who is a people-powered champion for biking, walking, transit and affordability in Katie Wilson. While incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell is embroiled in a campaign finance scandal over apparent collusion with his big money “independent” PAC that’s spending huge amounts on attack ads, Wilson’s campaign has volunteers knocking on doors all over Seattle. Join the Wilson canvassing effort to send a message to major funders (including wealthy Republican funders) that they cannot buy a Seattle mayor. Seattle Bike Blog has endorsed Wilson and even helped organize a bike rally for her campaign.

Ballots are due back by 8 p.m. November 4. The deadline to register or update your registration online is November 27. After that, you can still register and vote in-person at a vote center up to and including election day.

In all the years I’ve been doing these endorsement roundups, the transportation organizations have mostly aligned on candidate choices. But this year, that changed. Transportation 4 Washington and especially Washington Bikes have both taken turns toward centrist candidates in some key races even when there is an outspoken champion for biking and transit in the race. The biggest discrepancy is that both orgs endorsed Bruce Harrell for Seattle Mayor while the Urbanist, the Transit Riders Union and Seattle Bike Blog have all emphatically endorsed Katie Wilson. The WA Bikes PAC run by Washington Bikes even spent more than $57,000 on mailers to Seattle voters touting their endorsed city candidates, including Harrell, as “pro-bike champions” who are “pro-bike” and “pro-safety.” Secretly killing shovel-ready safety upgrades on Lake Washington Boulevard doesn’t seem very “pro-safety” to me.

It’s not just Seattle Mayor, though. Washington Bikes also endorsed Jon Pascal for Kirkland City Council over his enthusiastically bike-loving challenger Kurt Dresner. I mean, you can read their transportation promises for yourself. Pascal wants to “ease congestion” and “balance” sidewalk and bike lane improvements while “recognizing that vehicles remain an essential form of transportation.” Dresner talks about working for Kirkland’s “large nondriving population” (he’s clearly not only read Anna Zivarts’ book, he’s working her lessons into his platform!) and how “owning and operating a car today is incredibly expensive, and traffic crashes injure and kill millions each year.” He’s not some outside candidate, either. Kirkland’s Mayor Kelli Curtis and Kirkland City Councilmember Amy Falcone have endorsed Dresner, as have State Senator Vendana Slatter and King County Councilmember (and WA Bikes-endorsed candidate for Executive) Claudia Balducci. (UPDATE 10/20: Transportation for Washington has also endorsed Dresner). I don’t understand how a bike org can snub a candidate who has put this much care into embracing the core mission of safe streets.

So we find ourselves in a situation where Seattle Bike Blog is telling you to vote against the candidate listed on the WA Bikes PAC mailer you received in your mailbox. It feels very odd.

I have gathered endorsements from several organizations working for safer streets and better transit in our area: The Urbanist (URB), Transportation for Washington (T4W), Washington Bikes (WAB), and the Transit Riders Union (TRU). Once again, the Urbanist did an exceptional job of explaining the reasoning behind their choices, so if you want more details on a specific race I highly recommend reading their write-up.

Note that Cascade Bicycle Club (CSC), Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (SNG) and Transportation Choices Coalition are 501(c)(3) non-profits that can accept tax-deductible donations, and U.S. law allows them to endorse ballot measures but not political candidates or parties. Cascade and TCC’s respective sister organizations Washington Bikes and Transportation for Washington are separate 501(c)(4) non-profits that can endorse candidates. I only included “no endorsement” if an org specifically noted it, such as the Urbanist’s snub of Lynn Robinson in Bellevue. (UPDATE 10/20: T4W has updated their endorsements list to include Kurt Dresner in Kirkland and a dual endorsement of John Hines and Anders Ibsen for Tacoma Mayor).

State Legislature

Legislative District 5 State Senate

• Victoria Hunt — WB, URB

Legislative District 26 State Senate

• Deb Krishnadasan — WB, T4W

Legislative District 33 State Representative Position 1

• Edwin Obras — URB

Legislative District 34 State Senate

• Emily Alvarado — WB

Legislative District 34 State Representative Position 1

• Brianna Thomas — T4W

Legislative District 41 State Representative Position 1

• Janice Zahn — WB, T4W, URB

Legislative District 48 State Senate

• Vandana Slatter — WB, T4W, URB

Legislative District 48 State Representative Position 1

• Osman Salahuddin — WB, T4W

Counties

King County Executive

• Claudia Balducci — WB, T4W, URB, TRU (dual)
• Girmay Zahilay — TRU (dual)

King County Council District 1

• Rod Dembowski — WB, T4W

King County Council District 3

• Sarah Perry — WB, T4W

King County Council District 5

• Peter Kwon — WB
• No Endorsement — URB

King County Council District 7

• Maya Vengadasalam — TRU

King County Council District 9

• Jude Anthony — TRU

Pierce County Council District 5

• Bryan Yambe — WB, T4W

Pierce County Charter Review Commission

• Devin Rydel Kelly — TRU

Snohomish County Council District 5

• Sam Low — WB

Whatcom County Council District 2

• Elizabeth Boyle — T4W

Whatcom County Council District 3

• Jessica Rienstra — T4W

Cities

Auburn Mayor

• Nancy Backus — T4W

Bainbridge Island City Council District 7 North Ward

• Joe Deets — WB

Bellevue City Council Position 1

• Vishal Bhargava — WB, URB

Bellevue City Council Position 2

• Naren Briar — WB

Bellevue City Council Position 4

• Pradnya Desh — WB

Bellevue City Council Position 5

• Claire Sumadiwirya — WB, URB

Bellevue City Council Position 6

• Lynne Robinson — WB, T4W
• No Endorsement — URB

Bellingham City Council At Large

• Jace Cotton — WB

Bellingham City Council Ward 2

• Hollie Huthman — WB
• Leah Wainman — T4W

Bellingham City Council Ward 4

• Skip Williams — WB

Bellingham City Council Ward 6

• Andrew Reding — WB, TRU

Bothell City Council Position 3

• Jenne Alderks — WB, T4W, URB

Bothell City Council Position 5

• Brittany Miles — T4W, URB, TRU

Bothell Proposition 1

• YES — URB

Bremerton Mayor

• Jeff Coughlin — WB
• Greg Wheeler — T4W

Bremerton City Council District 3

• Christy Cammarata — WB (dual)
• Michael Simonds — WB (dual)

Bremerton City Council District 7

• Matthew Baptiste-Cerra — WB, T4W

Burien City Council Position 1

• Hugo Garcia — URB, TRU

Burien City Council Position 3

• Sam Méndez — T4W, URB, TRU

Burien City Council Position 5

• Sarah Moore — WB, T4W, URB, TRU

Burien City Council Position 7

• Rocco DeVito — WB, T4W, URB, TRU

Edmonds City Council Position 1

• Chris Eck — WB

Edmonds City Council Position 3

• Alex Newman — WB

Ellensburg City Council Position 1

• Nancy Lillquist — T4W

Ellensburg Proposition 1

• YES — TCC

Everett Mayor

• Cassie Franklin — WB, T4W

Everett City Council District 1

• Sam Hem — T4W

Everett City Council District 2

• Paula Rhyne — WB

Federal Way City Council Position 2

• Martin A. Moore — T4W

Gig Harbor City Council Position 2

• Patrick Ammann — WB

Gig Harbor City Council Position 3

• Emily Stone — WB

Issaquah Mayor

• Lindsey Walsh — WB, T4W, URB

Issaquah City Council Position 1

• Kelly Jiang — WB, T4W, URB

Issaquah City Council Position 6

• Kevin Nichols — WB, T4W, URB

Kenmore City Council Position 2

• Tracy Banaszynski — WB

Kenmore City Council Position 4

• Nigel Herbig — WB, T4W, TRU

Kent City Council Position 2

• Satwinder Kaur — WB

Kent City Council Position 6

• Andy Song — URB

Kirkland City Council Position 1

• Jay Arnold — WB, T4W, URB

Kirkland City Council Position 3

• Shilpa Prem — URB

Kirkland City Council Position 5

• Neal Black — WB, T4W, URB

Kirkland City Council Position 7

• Kurt Dresner — URB, TRU, T4W
• Jon Pascal — WB

Lake Forest Park City Council Position 3

• Josh Rosenau — WB, T4W, TRU

Lakewood City Council Position 1

• Ellen Talbo — WB

Lynnwood City Council Position 2

• Isabel Mata — WB

Lynnwood City Council Position 3

• Josh Binda — TRU

Mount Vernon City Council Ward 2 Position 2

• Hannah Oliver — T4W

Newcastle City Council Position 6

• Paul Charbonneau — URB, TRU

Olympia City Council Position 6

• Robert Vanderpool — WB, T4W

Olympia City Council Position 7

• Paul Berendt — WB

Port Townsend City Council Position 1

• Dylan Quarles — WB

Poulsbo Mayor

• Ed Stern — WB

Pullman City Council Ward 1 Position 7

• John-Mark Mahnkey — T4W

Pullman City Council Ward 3 Position 5

• Tawny Szumlas — T4W

Redmond City Council Position 4

• Melissa Stuart — WB, T4W

Redmond City Council Position 6

• Menka Soni — WB, T4W, URB

Renton City Council Position 1

• Mike Westgaard — URB, TRU

Renton City Council Position 2

• Carmen Rivera — WB, TRU
• No Endorsement — URB

Renton City Council Position 6

• Paul Dutton — TRU

Richland City Council Position 6

• Kurt H Maier — WB

Sammamish City Council Position 3

• Sid Gupta — WB

Sammamish City Council Position 5

• Lin Yang — WB, TRU

Sammamish City Council Position 7

• Karen Howe — WB

SeaTac City Council Position 2

• Caitlin Konya — TRU

SeaTac City Council Position 4

• Mohamed Egal — T4W, TRU

Seattle Mayor

• Bruce Harrell — WB, T4W
• Katie Wilson — URB, TRU, Seattle Bike Blog

Seattle City Attorney

• Erika Evans — URB, TRU

Seattle City Council District 2

• Adonis Ducksworth — WB, T4W
• Eddie Lin — URB

Seattle City Council District 8

• Alexis Mercedes Rinck — WB, T4W, URB, TRU

Seattle City Council District 9

• Dionne Foster — WB, T4W, URB, TRU

Seattle Proposition 1

• YES — URB

Seattle Proposition 2

• YES — URB

Spokane City Council District 1, Position 2

• Sarah Dixit — WB, T4W

Spokane City Council District 2, Position 2

• Kate Telis — WB, T4W

Spokane City Council District 3, Position 2

• Zach Zappone — WB, T4W

Tacoma Mayor

• John Hines — WB, T4W (dual)
• Anders Ibsen — URB, T4W (dual)

Tacoma City Council District 2

• Sarah Rumbaugh — WB, T4W

Tacoma City Council District 4

• Silong Chhun — URB
• Sandesh Sadalge — WB, T4W

Tacoma City Council District 5

• Zev Rose Cook — URB

Tacoma City Council District 6

• Latasha Palmer — URB

Tukwila City Council Position 1

• Verna Seal — URB

Tukwila City Council Position 3

• Hannah Hedrick — TRU

Tukwila City Council Position 5

• Kate Kruller — WB

Vancouver City Council Position 1

• Kim D. Harless — T4W

Vancouver City Council Position 2

• Erik Paulsen — T4W

Woodinville City Council Position 1

• Michelle Evans — WB

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Packer: City staff created shovel-ready design for Lake Washington Blvd safety upgrades before Mayor Harrell cancelled them

Staff at both Seattle Parks and SDOT worked together to fully design a series of planned street safety upgrades to Lake Washington Boulevard, including additional speed humps to slow speeding and a redesigned intersection at S Orcas Street. The existence of late-stage design documents and internal communications uncovered by Ryan Packer at the Urbanist demonstrate that the city was planning to go ahead with the previously announced safety upgrades to the street as recently as the spring before Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told them to cancel them.

Final design documents represent a lot of work and public investment to create a plot ready to be handed off to a city work crew or contractor. Usually public debate happens during earlier phases of design, such as the concept images Seattle Bike Blog posted in a previous story. The concept phase gives the public enough information to have an informed debate before investing a ton of time and money into the minute details needed to create a final construction plot. For a final design, staff must study the existing conditions to make exact measurements and check for any needed repairs to existing infrastructure like damaged pavement or curbs. They also need to determine the locations and access needs for any other utilities (the new design can’t obstruct a gas or sewer cover for example). They have to make sure water drainage will still function correctly and safely, and they have to analyze all the turning angles and line markings to ensure every detail meets the relevant engineering standards. It’s a huge amount of work, and something the city only does if they actually intend to build something because it would be a big waste of precious staff time and taxpayer money to go through all this work for nothing. A February Teams chat documented both that staff were intending to move forward with construction and that the mayor’s office stopped them:

With the intersection changes fully designed, city staff asked superiors if the city move forward with issuing a work order for it in a late February Teams chat.

“Yes, that should work from an outreach standpoint. The only consideration is if the mayors office wants that pulled from the project, but we won’t know until march,” was the reply from Jordan Hoy, leading the Lake Washington Boulevard project for Seattle Parks. It was also Hoy who raised questions about a proposal to remove an all-way stop near Mount Baker Beach from an earlier set of changes to the corridor, a move that also seemed to go against what the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) had determined was warranted at the intersection.

When Mayor Harrell’s office cancelled the project over the summer, they tried to hide their decision by announcing a dramatically reduced project list without acknowledging that anything had been cut. Seattle Bike Blog and others had to use the Wayback Machine to find archives of older versions of the project webpage to determine what the mayor’s office had removed. The list included most of the safety upgrades, including the Orcas intersection.

Within a couple weeks of the reduced and changed work on the street, which included some new center line reflectors and new fog lines on the sides of the road, Bradley Hawkins was struck from behind and injured while biking home from a trip to the mountains. The person who hit him did not cross the newly-reflectorized center line or slow down, then fled the scene after the collision. He was struck so hard that multiple pieces of the damaged car were destroyed as well. He had some bad scrapes and back pain, but luckily his injuries were not more serious considering the speed of the impact. He was struck in an area what was scheduled to get speed humps before the mayor cancelled them. His injuries should be a wake-up call to city leaders that this work has real life consequences.

These documents, uncovered through a public information request because the city is still obscuring the truth around the handling of this project, further make the case that Bruce Harrell isn’t up for the job of mayor. The public bears the consequences of the mayor’s anti-safety decisions like these whether they are injured, killed or simply feel unsafe accessing our streets and parks. Now it is time for the mayor to bear the consequences of his decisions as the public heads to the ballot box. Vote for Katie Wilson!

Ballots will be mailed tomorrow and are due back by 8 p.m. November 4. The deadline to register or update your registration online is November 27. After that, you can still register and vote in-person at a vote center up to and including election day.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Under Mayor Harrell’s leadership, bike, walk and bus improvements that required years of outreach can be removed without any notice – UPDATE: The bus lane is saved!

When neighbors asked the city to make Lake Washington Boulevard safer for people walking and biking, the city kicked off a half-decade public outreach process that stalled out once Bruce Harrell became mayor before concluding with a lackluster plan to add some speed humps and a couple stop signs. Then without any outreach at all, Seattle Parks this summer announced they were cancelling the rest of the speed humps and stop signs after building just a handful of them.

But when a few business and property owners asked the city to allow cars to use the bus-only access point to westbound Union Street from Madison Street that was part of the extensive RapidRide G project, SDOT got to work making it happen without any public outreach at all. How will allowing car traffic affect crosswalk safety? How will the change impact safety for the eastbound bike lane? I cannot tell you because there is no project website, and SDOT has not yet responded to my requests for more details even though the project is already under construction. The only reason we even know this is happening is because someone from Central Seattle Greenways saw workers jackhammering away and asked them about it (Ryan Packer was also asking questions even before work began).

UPDATE: SDOT released a blog post announcing they will go ahead with the elements to allow the Route 2 bus to use the lane, but will not open the street to car traffic. Good work everyone who helped sound the alarm! The bike lane changes are staying, including the diagonal crossing at 11th Avenue.

When Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck heard about the surprise change, she went there herself and talked to the work crews to find out what’s happening. Then she posted a video saying that she “disagrees with SDOT’s decision” and her staff is working on what to do “before this Saturday” when crews are scheduled to conduct more work.

https://bsky.app/profile/councilmember-amr.bsky.social/post/3m263tlgg2c25

The Transit Riders Union also has an online petition going to “Save our Union St bus lane!” that has 2,145 signatures as of press time. CHS also reports that TRU is planning a protest rally at the site 8 a.m. Saturday morning.

There are multiple layers of insult at work here. There’s the fact that the city would choose to allow cars to drive in what is currently a car-free access point to the Pike/Pine business district. Worse, the city is doing it without any public outreach or even any prior notification. Even worse still, the city is demonstrating a gross double-standard in which community efforts to improve our streets for walking, biking or transit are forced to slog through an endless public process while a change that benefits car drivers at the direct expense of everyone else does not require any public notice at all. Worried about your kid getting killed while biking to the park? Organize a big public campaign, get your fix into the annual city budget, then engage with a public outreach consultant for one to five years and then maybe the city will fix the issue or at least do a little something that is better than nothing. Are you a property owner who wants to allow cars in the busway? Just fire off a few emails and it will happen with no process at all.

“Over the last few months, communications were restarted primarily at the request of Dunn & Hobbes, the owner of the Chophouse property, Hunters Capital, and Madrona Real Estate along with business representatives on 12th Avenue north of Madison Street,” an SDOT spokesperson told Capitol Hill Seattle. They went on to stress to CHS that the project is intended to help people driving into the heart of Capitol Hill from the Eastside and other wealthy Seattle neighborhoods. “While development in the area is meant to maximize the appeal of dense urban living, coming off the impacts of COVID and challenges of major street and sidewalk construction, representatives had specific concerns about customers who drive from the Eastside or neighborhoods like Madison Park and Madrona […] They are having a hard time getting to their destinations or are confused by the new traffic pattern.”

This is a pattern for the city under Mayor Harrell. When SDOT repaved Denny Way, there was hardly any discussion at all about adding desperately-needed bus lanes as part of the very high-budget project despite our city’s stated goals of prioritizing walking, biking and transit improvements when making transportation investments. The city was only forced to give their unconvincing reasons for excluding the bus lanes after hundreds of people clowned on them by racing (and defeating) the 8 bus while playing leap frog and line dancing and performing other silly displays of bus inefficiency on the street. As Ryan Packer at the Urbanist put it, “What’s easier than adding a bus lane in Seattle? Deleting one.” This little bus lane on Union Street is itself worth fighting for, but it is also representative of a larger recurring problem with Mayor Harrell’s SDOT that has been getting much worse since the departure of former SDOT Director Greg Spotts. Harrell is demonstrating how he will handle transportation issues in his second term when he no longer needs to convince voters to pass a major transportation levy, which is why Seattle Bike Blog has endorsed his opponent Katie Wilson.

Allowing cars through here will have a direct negative impact on biking and walking because people will now have a whole new source of car traffic to cross that wasn’t there before. There will be new conflict points and new delays. From what I have been able to discern, no bike groups were consulted about the changes or how to handle the new crossing. People heading east on Union need to transition from a one-way bike lane on the south side of the street to a two-way bike lane on the north side of the street. Before workers destroyed it this week, that transition happened near the bus lane, so people biking east only have to cross a single bus-only lane to get from the one-way lane to the two-way lane:

But by allowing oncoming car traffic, the city also feels the need to change the bike lane transition. It sounds like SDOT is rolling out their go-to solution that everyone hates: A diagonal bike lane crossing through the middle of an all-way stop intersection. I cannot confirm the details because SDOT has not published materials about them, but an SDOT spokesperson told CHS they would be “redirecting people biking eastbound to the north side of Union St sooner, to shift the crossing from midblock to the all-way stop controlled intersection at 11th Ave and Union St.” So I assume it will be the mirror version of the 9th and John intersection near Denny Park (UPDATE: Workers have repainted the bike crossing, confirming that it is such a diagonal crossing. Thanks Matt Baume!):

Navigating an intersection like this is a dramatically worse biking experience than crossing a single bus-only lane. It is both less safe and less inviting to use. It’s not the worst possible bike crossing, but it has some significant issues. The problem with these diagonal crossings is that people biking have a very long crossing and must watch for threats in a 270-degree range the whole time because there are four different places where someone in a car could blow through the stop sign or proceed out of turn because they don’t understand that you are going to bike diagonally. Biking safely in a city requires riders to always be on the lookout for someone in a car who is not following the rules because you bear the consequences of their mistakes, and these diagonal crossings have so many possible conflict points riders have to watch for all at the same time. Would you feel comfortable letting an 8-year-old child navigate through this intersection on her own? Because that’s the all ages and abilities standard we are supposed to be trying to achieve, and it falls short here.

SDOT should cancel work on this project and restore the previous condition. Then if they want to put forward a proposal to reopen it to car traffic, they can make their case to the public about why we should invest public money to make it easier for more people to drive cars into the heart of the Pike/Pine business district and listen to people’s feedback. If they can’t make a good case, then they shouldn’t do it. Maybe realigning the bike lane is the best option for bus and street operations for reasons I can’t figure out on my own. That’s totally possible, but they haven’t given folks any chances to understand what is happening or why, so the public’s only real option is to demand that work stop. I’m not saying it needs endless outreach, but there should be some happy point between zero notice and a half decade of consultant-led meetings. And the same standard should apply to walk, bike and transit improvements as well. Propose a change, listen to feedback, make a decision.

I will update this post if I hear back from SDOT (I asked for project design drawings and whether they had conducted any outreach).

https://bsky.app/profile/mattbaume.bsky.social/post/3m26egjfuss2r

#SEAbikes #Seattle

"This is not the time for hope" is Harrell's "please clap." Just needs the publicity.

https://kolektiva.social/@MHowell/115305789210926277

#seattle #politics #harrell #mayor #wilson #BruceHarrell #KatieWilson #cascadia #casPol #casPolitics

Mayor Harrell’s growth plan for Seattle is inadequate, but Council has a chance to make it better

Seattle’s horrific housing crisis continues to destabilize individuals and families who struggle to keep up with rising costs of living. Many continue to get priced out of housing entirely, pushing them into a deadly life trying to survive on the streets. For a city as great as Seattle, failing to meet this challenge over the past two decades is our biggest shame.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed One Seattle Plan, his update to the city’s comprehensive plan guiding growth and new housing, would continue our city’s insufficient effort to get housing prices and availability under control. It keeps the vast majority of our city off-limits to the types of dense housing common (and beloved) in parts of our city and in cities across the world, like small apartment buildings and “stacked flats.” It continues the city’s problematic strategy of locating the majority of new housing in giant and expensive apartment buildings along our busiest, loudest, most polluting and more dangerous roadways. The mayor’s plan even continues to prioritize housing cars over housing people by maintaining most parking requirements for new residential buildings, which force builders to either sacrifice precious lot space that could be used for more homes or build expensive underground garages that drive up unit prices. The plan effectively ignores that Seattle’s car ownership rate has fallen dramatically and consistently over the past decade since the previous comprehensive plan update.

The City Council will hold a public hearing tomorrow (September 12) starting at 9:30 a.m. for remote comments and 3 p.m. for in-person comments in Council Chambers at City Hall. You can also submit comments via email to council@seattle.gov. Seattle Neighborhood Greenways also has an online petition supporting amendments for “a more affordable, equitable, and walkable Seattle.”

The Council has the opportunity to make some significant corrections in the right direction, and they will consider 110 amendments to the plan (PDF). They can, for example, add up to eight more neighborhood centers to the plan, which would increase the number of places where significant new housing could go (Amendment 34). They can also eliminate parking mandates citywide (Amendment 7) or at least near frequent transit (Amendment 86). They can allow stacked flats citywide (Amendment 89). They can legalize corner stores on all lots (Amendment 66). They can even encourage builders to protect mature trees by allowing them to build higher structures if they preserve a qualifying tree (Amendment 91). There are also a bunch of amendments to modify or expand the boundaries of various neighborhood centers, and the Urbanist has a good rundown of those.

The Urbanist also put together a cheat sheet for those who don’t have the time to read through hundreds of pages of documents packed with indecipherable zoning jargon:

For those that just want to cut to the case, here is a cheat seat for amendments to support and to oppose:

SUPPORT AMENDMENTS

• RINCK – 1, 2, 7, 34, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 69, 72, 76, 84, 95, 98
• STRAUSS – 5, 6, 8, 25, 29, 30, 33, 42-C, 43, 46-A, 47, 48-C, 49-C, 64, 73, 92
• SAKA – 11, 13, 23, 36, 77
• HOLLINGSWORTH – 19, 68, 78, 79, 80, 107, 108, 109
• NELSON – 52, 60, 63, 65, 74, 86, 89, 91
• KETTLE – 50, 61, 70, 90, 94, 96
• SOLOMON – 83

OPPOSE AMENDMENTS

• SAKA – 35, 37,
• HOLLINGSWORTH – 38
• RIVERA – 39, 40, 41, 81 93, 102
• KETTLE – 51, 97

It’s remarkable that Councilmember Maritza Rivera managed zero good amendments and six bad ones. Her District 4 includes the University District, one of the city’s densest and fastest-growing neighborhoods. To be on the wrong side of so many of these growth decisions is troubling. Our city, including people in her district, are in a housing crisis, and her only contributions to the conversation are to try reducing new housing boundaries in the wealthiest parts of her district and add even more regulatory red tape to new home construction. She does not propose a single measure that would improve housing affordability for any her constituents. What an absolute shame.

I encourage our City Councilmembers to vote yes on every measure that would allow for more housing and more affordability while voting no on all measures that would reduce neighborhood centers and add regulatory hurdles to building new homes. I love trees, too, but don’t fall for anti-housing advocacy disguised as supporting trees. We can encourage the protection of trees through incentives without effectively kneecapping the finances for new housing on lots across the city just because those lots have a tree. People are dying on our streets because we don’t have enough homes. Approach these votes with the seriousness necessary to make the right calls for our city’s future.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Man struck from behind while biking on section of Lake Washington Blvd where city dropped planned safety upgrades

If you’ve ever seen someone biking around town pulling a bright yellow or magenta cello case in a bike trailer, you’ve seen Bradley Hawkins. Even without his cello, he’s a self-identified “die-hard bicycle dude” who has been biking pretty much everywhere for a long time. But all that could have easily come to an end last week when someone driving a Hyundai Elantra ran into him from behind while he was biking on Lake Washington Boulevard on a section of road where the city under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s leadership recently cut some planned speed humps and intersection safety improvements. The person responsible never stopped, fleeing the scene and leaving behind a pile of broken car parts and a seriously injured Hawkins.

“I feel really lucky,” said a mobile but bandaged-up Hawkins when I spoke to him in his home a few days after the collision. Hawkins is a longtime reader and friend of the blog. His bike is damaged well beyond repair, but he somehow didn’t have any broken bones. He has pain between his shoulders and in his lower back, and he has scrapes and bruises all over, but it could have been a lot worse.

“If I had had the cello behind, I bet I wouldn’t have gotten hit,” Hawkins joked (or maybe he was serious, he did bike his cello to Friday Harbor once). But he was on his way home from a long three-day tour of Oregon and Washington “to see as many volcanoes as I could.” He started in Breitenbush and rode to Mounts Jefferson, Hood, Adams, St. Helens and Rainier. On August 13, he woke up on St. Helens and rode to Rainier before heading back to Seattle.

“It was starting to get dark around Renton, so I decided to go up Lake Washington Boulevard because I figured it would be safer,” he said. His bike had a bright front and rear lights as well as large reflectors on the back of his panniers and helmet, so he was fully prepared for night biking. In Renton, he rode a bit with a bunch of teens on Lime bikes and was feeling good about the world. As he got further north on Lake Washington Boulevard, he noticed the new center lane reflectors and lane-edge fog lines that the city added, and he said he felt like people were driving faster than usual.

“I’ve ridden Lake Washington Boulevard at all hours, and at least ten times at night this year, and I get the sense the cars are going a lot faster now,” he said. He worried that the new fog lines look too much like bike lanes even though they are not wide enough to be real bike lanes, and the shoulder space varies in width along the road. “Every driver is going to think that bicyclists need to be in that spot,” he said of the fog lines. “That was worse than nothing, putting those lines in.”

As he approached the fishing pier south of Mount Baker Beach, “I noticed somebody was not moving over and going at a clip, and I got hit from behind,” he said. “I somehow ended up in the grass on the side of the road, got on my hands and knees, lifted my hand up, and a car stopped.” The first person to stop came to his aid, then someone with EMT experience showed up and got him to lie back down until Seattle Fire Department medics arrived. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center and spent about eight hours there. The driver never stopped to render aid and remains at large.

“All that I know about them is from the parts that they left,” said Hawkins. He has a rearview mirror, a fog light, and two pieces of the front fender for a 2011–2013 Hyundai Elantra. It’s possible there was additional damage like a cracked windshield or dented hood, but it happened so fast Hawkins isn’t sure. Given the number of car pieces left behind, it was clearly a high-speed impact. Seattle Police arrived and started an investigation, but Hawkins hadn’t heard any updates on the case as of our interview.

As his ride-tracking app notes, it was an abrupt end to what had been his longest recorded ride:

A Seattle Parks project map from 2024 shows that the city had planned multiple speed humps on the segment of road where Hawkins was struck, including two within a few hundred feet of the location where the collision occurred. A series of speed humps had been installed in the southern segment of the project as a first phase of work, and rest were scheduled for installation this summer before the department suddenly backtracked in July and cancelled nearly all the remaining safety upgrades. When crews went to work in late July, they painted new wide stripes on the side of the street (that are not bike lanes) and added some reflectors to the dashed yellow center line. Neither the lane reflectors nor wider fog lines had been mentioned in public outreach materials before July. One of the new wide fog lines is visible in Hawkins’ bike wreckage photo from the scene.

Hawkins said the new center lane reflectors make the road feel more like a freeway, and perhaps they also make it so his lights and reflectors didn’t stand out as much. While we can’t know for sure whether speed humps would have prevented this collision, they do slow vehicle speeds, and speed is a top factor in both the likelihood of a collision and the severity of a collision. Unfortunately, the only person who knows what role the street changes (or lackthereof) played in the collision fled the scene and is still at large, so we cannot ask them (or get them to pay for Hawkins’ health care and bike replacement). Hit and run is a shameful crime.

It’s also shameful for the city, and in this case Mayor Harrell especially, to choose to remove safety from city park and street investments. Hawkins is far from the first person to be injured in a collision in this area, as Seattle Parks’ own study from 2024 clearly documented:

We don’t need to see anymore to call it: The Settle Parks 2024-25 Lake Washington Boulevard Renovations project has failed. The next mayor should commit to a complete redo under SDOT’s Vision Zero program, our city’s staff of professional street safety experts. The Board of Park Commissioners may also want to look into how the Parks Department blew this project so badly. Cancelling most the publicly-announced project elements and secretly replacing them with never-discussed and much less effective ones just weeks before construction is not good governance and points to some serious issues within the department (in my original story from July I had to use the Wayback Machine to figure out what had been cut because this information was not disclosed in the department’s communications). Seattle expects and deserves better from its Parks Department.

What happened to Bradley Hawkins is yet another reminder of what is at stake when we are planning and investing in street safety projects. We are talking about people’s lives. It’s not hyperbole, and it’s not “cars versus bikes” or any of the other garbage that too often weighs down these debates. Seattle Parks and Mayor Harrell made a huge mistake, safe streets advocates made it clear that it was a mistake, and then this happens to a guy who was just biking home to the Central District after a lovely vacation. Southeast Seattle deserves safe streets, and Lake Washington Boulevard should be an oasis where everyone can enjoy the lakeside without being put at risk of a serious traffic injury or worse.

In a complete coincidence, Seattle Bike Blog and friends are hosting a family-friendly bicycle rally for Katie Wilson tomorrow (August 23) on Lake Washington Boulevard. Meet at 11 a.m. near 43rd Ave S. This event was planned before Hawkins was injured, but his story will certainly add fuel to the community push for safety on this street and mayor who will take this work seriously.

#SEAbikes #Seattle