First time at the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board

I attended the monthly Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board meeting for the first time this month.

This is a mayor appointed board of 12 people who advise the mayor, SDOT, the city council, and others ranging from SPD to DPD on bicycle issues.

Their meetings are open to the public, from 6-8pm on the first Wednesday of the month in City Hall, but the doors to City Hall lock promptly at 6pm so you have to get there early.

The first thing that amazed me is that there were only 22 people in the room, 2 were David Hiller and Patrick McGrath from Cascade Bicycle Club(CBC), 4 were people applying for positions on the board, then there were the board members, a couple guests, and Seattle Department of Transportation(SDOT) folks.

One surprise was that one of the board members first found out about Bryce's death from Erica Barnett's "fixie" article in the Stranger which was the fifth news article and three weeks after the accident where a dump truck ran over two cyclists and killed one kid (Bryce) who had recently moved to Seattle. If this is the group advising the Mayor, maybe the cycling community can help keep them better informed.

It was cool to get so much information. The SDOT presenter, Pete Lagerway gave out a lot of bike count data, work that SDOT did this year and work that SDOT has planned for next year.

It sounds like we WILL get Green bike lanes (like the blue lanes) just south of the Fremont Bridge at Florentia, at Dexter & Denny, at 145th & Linden, at Fremont next to the Waiting for the Interurban statue, and at Greenlake Way & 50th. We will NOT be getting Green bike lanes at Eastlake and Fuhrman because it doesn't meet SDOT's guidelines for using them.

SDOT is also trying to create a bicycle boulevard from the interurban south with stoplights that let pedestrians and bicycle go straight and force cars to turn at 80th & Fremont, 85th & Fremont, and 105th ... down to either Linden or 8th (if I understood it right) to get to the Burke Gilman and then to Dexter to get downtown.

This year they have already added 19.5 miles of sharrows, bike lanes, or sharrows and bike lanes and they finished the chief sealth trail.

If you'd like to join them, the board is having a bikeability tour of the chief sealth trail and Beacon Ave S. sharrows on Oct 21. meeting at Uwajimaya at 10am.

I came away realizing that this group has the ability to request a represenative from DPD, SDOT, SPD and others to attend or present at their meeting and that this group gets listened to by SDOT and it looks like a worthwhile group to try to get involved with.