Watch: Seattle mayor and council candidates debate housing and transportation issues
I did not make it to Wednesday evening's mayoral and council candidate forum because it was my 40th birthday, and my spouse Kelli and friends threw me a wonderful party complete with embarrassing photos of my middle school frosted tips.
However, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways streamed the whole thing, which you can watch here:
Pro tip, if you are watching in a web browser, expand the video description and scroll down to show transcript." Then you can use your browser's find function (ctrl-f or cmd-f) to search for topics you are interested in. I also downloaded the YouTube-generated transcript (.txt) for those who just want to read it, though it will not always be clear who is speaking and there will be some transcription errors.
The forum was hosted by a wide coalition of transportation and urbanism groups: Ampersand Bicycle Club, Beacon Hill Safe Streets, Be:Seattle, Bike Works, Cascade Bicycle Club, Disability Rights Washington, Feet First, Friends of Little Saigon, Futurewise, House Our Neighbors, Jackson Park 4 All, Lid I-5, People for Climate Action Seattle, Rainier Valley Greenways-Safe Streets, Real Change, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, Seattle Subway, Soapbox Project, Transit Equity for All, Transit Riders Union, Transportation Choices Coalition, The Urbanist, and Washington Bikes.
One high-level win from the forum was that every candidate in every race signaled during their lightning rounds they support building more protected bike lanes to complete a safe bike network." Of course, we have learned from experience that leaders who answer yes to that question in general do not always back it up with yeses when specific projects face some community opposition. But this does mean no candidate who attended the forum is signalling at this point that they plan to make fighting bike lanes a part of their campaign.
Rather than make this post a mile long, I will be posting follow-up posts from each race with specific quotes from each candidate about where they stand on biking and safe streets. I will update this post with links as I get them posted, so stay tuned. If you attended or have watched the video, let us know in the comments below any moments that stood out to you.