Since Wednesday, a citizen backlash has gone from a single energized individual to a facebook group with over 100 friends, a google group with at least 27 members a lot of activity, and some press.
Why the backlash? A few years ago, on Stone Way, a handful of businesses stalled a much needed safety project for over a year. Today, a business group is threatening to stall or block similar measures for Nickerson Street, and now Seattle councilmember Tom Rasmussen says that the Nickerson road diet gives him “indigestion.” Those businesses along with a community club and a neighborhood organization are claiming that they represent the entire neighborhoods of Queen Anne and Magnolia in opposing the road diet. This has engergized some concerned individuals in those neighborhoods who really want the road diet.
Our friends over at Cascade are running a Tums for Tom campaign to write the councilmember and offer him antacid. While it is fun to think of Tom’s office flooded with hundreds of bottles of Tums on Tuesday, we’d like to remind the good councilmember of some recent history:
Tom,
SeattleLikesBikes was there when the road diet was to be implemented on Stone Way. Freight businesses claimed that there were too many trucks that created a safety hazard. Local businesses claimed that they’d be forced to close and that the change was a big surprise to them. Pedestrians were tired of not being able to cross the street. Cyclists wanted a place to ride. Neighbors wanted their crosswalks back. We held a protest bicycle ride to request that the city continue to follow the Bicycle Master Plan and implement the road diet. Some business owners picketed our protest ride, one with “Bikers are Bullies” signs.
We engaged those business owners in a conversation, if you can call them yelling at us while we tried to calmly discuss our differences. We found that they had most of their facts wrong, and they were scared and unwilling to back down. A year of studies showed that the road diet would make traffic flow more smoothly and that it wouldn’t cause the doomsday scenarios that the business owners feared.
It is distressing that business worries put the lives of their neighbors at risk. In the year of the study, pedestrians faced a higher risk of being hit trying to cross the street. In our protest ride, a pedestrian was legally crossing the street and was nearly run down by a motorist who sped up to pass illegally and dangerously close to him. SDOT reports that the road diet has reduced collisions with pedestrians on Stone Way by 80%.
Today Nickerson poses similar hazards to pedestrians as Stone Way did before the road diet. To see the problem, stand at 12th or 13th on the north side of Nickerson and try to cross to the south side of Nickerson (where the trail is). Now that gives us heartburn. We are some pretty hearty urban cyclists and aren’t intimidated by much, but that scares us!
Please push the road diet forward, don’t let it take a fatality before the city fixes this dangerous road!
Sincerely,
SeattleLikesBikes.org