Seattle’s 2025 District 2 council candidates on biking and safe streets
4 for 4. Screenshot from the forum livestream by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.All four of the candidates for Seattle's open District 2 City Council seat attended this week's forum on transportation and housing issues, hosted by a wide coalition of organizations and moderated by Crystal Fincher. A fifth candidate, Takayo Ederer, seemed poised to be the most conservative candidate in the race based on her recent Republican campaign contributions, but she has withdrawn.
As you can see in the responses below, none of the candidates are running against safe streets projects or against improving biking in southeast Seattle. None of them said during the lightning round that they ride a bike as their primary mode of transportation, though Adonis Ducksworth complained (as a joke) that they should have asked about his favorite mode, skateboarding. Jamie Fackler spoke about being hit by a car while biking to work in the past.
All candidates also spoke of the need to redesign MLK Jr. Way S and Rainier Avenue S to be safer for all users. This is an especially important question since beginning design work on a north Rainier project between MLK and S Jackson Street was included in SDOT's levy workplan released earlier this year (called the RapidRide R Bicycle Facility Alternatives Analysis). Having a strong, supportive voice in the D2 Council seat is vital if we are going to finally make that section of the street safe for all users, a need highlighted in a horrible way Sunday when someone ran a red light and struck a 6-year-old child in a Rainier Ave crosswalk at S Charles Street.
Below are the candidate responses to the biking and safe streets questions. I'll leave coverage of housing and transit issues to other outlets (though of course there's some overlap). I have lightly edited the responses for clarity.
What are your top transportation priorities for District 2?Jeanie Chunn: I think safety is one of my top priorities for transportation, as well as looking at ensuring that we have safe, reliable, increasing bus routes, bus lanes. And then safe bike routes running north-south into D2. I take the light rail, as I mentioned, as my main source of transportation. It was actually my requirement to my realtor. I said, I want to live within a 15-minute walk to the light rail station. And when I walk to the light rail station, there's an area that has no sidewalk. Obviously, I'm an able-bodied person, and that's good for me. I'm fine. But I think about people that are in wheelchairs and won't have access, and we need to make sure that our city's safe in order to access that transportation."
Adonis Ducksworth: My priorities are to stop people from speeding on Rainier and MLK by prioritizing bike, pedestrian, and transit safety on those arterials. Plus stopping people from speeding throughout the neighborhoods. I've been doing outreach and engagement for the DOT, as well as policy, going all the way back to 2012 up until now recently. So I would be one of first candidates on City Council since Rob Johnson to actually have transportation experience. Another thing I want to do is, I want to empower the professionals at SDOT to do the work that they know works to keep our streets safe, and also hold the DOT accountable for their plans that they set out to do rather than the pushback they get from the NIMBYs."
Jamie Fackler: I was hit as a pedestrian on Rainer Avenue South not far from where a six-year-old child was hit on Sunday by a Jeep just at the I-90 on and off ramps there just north of I-90. So for me, prioritizing the work that's scheduled to happen is going to be a priority. We're about to stand up a new light rail station on Rainier, and we've got large density there with new apartment buildings, hundreds of units, and arguably one of the most dangerous light rail stations and intersections in the city with freeway on and off ramps. And so for me that's going to be a real priority. And then focusing on fixes at our light rail stations on MLK that are also incredibly dangerous."
Eddie Lin: I do want to clarify my answer earlier. I think light rail is generally safe. I think our buses, most of our bus lines are safe, but there are some safety issues with some of our bus line lines. But it's the roads that really aren't safe. You know, there was a six-year-old child that was hit. There was an elderly couple that was hit at MLK and Alaska with a casualty there. We've had multiple casualties there. So, we really need to slow down traffic. And that can mean narrowing our two-lane roads. Those are the most dangerous. Those are where people are traveling above 40 or so. And accessibility, making sure that our sidewalks, our roads or our transportation system is accessible for all."
Question: What is your specific plan for improving safety on MLK and Rainier?Ducksworth: Specifically on MLK, I think we we need to stop people from speeding. We need to figure out what to do with the outside lane, and that could be a number of things. A conversation to have with the community. That'd be great for buses, bikes, or some other form of transit. The other thing we can do for folks who are pedestrians and people who are driving. So, I've been a part of the work that the DOT and Sound Transit have been doing for the past year, almost two years, trying to pilot and figure out how we can make things safer with the train coming through. Where we're landing right now is with gates, pedestrian gates, as well as gates for people turning left. So, that is on MLK. And on Rainier, I think it's a conversation we have we need to have with the community. So, we've got education, engineering, or enforcement. My preference is for engineering, but right now folks are looking at different enforcement methods, including cameras. We do know that the speed cameras in the school zones actually do slow cars down. But these are conversations we have got to have with the community."
Lin: Yeah, I think it's all of the above. Safety has to be a top priority. So, it can include road diets, narrowing some of our roads, including the medians that were put on Rainier down further south. I think that's a a good start. Traffic cameras can be an interim measure. They do slow down traffic, and those proceeds should be dedicated to long-term engineering solutions. There should be a lower cost for working families or lower income families who can't afford that high traffic ticket. There was a work group that was touring MLK and Alaska recently, and there's an idea to have raised medians for crosswalks to help slow down traffic going through that intersection. I would support the gates as well as the left turn lanes is certainly a major issue at the at Link light rail."
Fackler: Yeah, I think Adonis and Eddie are right there. I agree with with both of those approaches. But I think really we need to look to fixing light rail on MLK holistically and spending significant amounts of money. I would be interested in pushing on that, and pushing against Sound Transit to come up with funds to actually elevate or put that light rail below grade. I think that we should be putting pressure on them because it is a real travesty that's happening in there. I agree with all these other folks, but I think it is really worth mentioning what a travesty that is. As far as the intersections around the light rail stations, I'd be interested in shortening up the crossing times. We talked about raised sidewalks, but also doing lane reductions there so folks can get across the street faster."
Chunn: I feel like there's a bunch of things that we can do. I know there was a study done in 2020, the Toole report, and I'd like to take that off the shelf to understand why it's been on the shelf for so long, since this has been an issue on MLK. It does talk about road diets. It does talk about all the things that people have mentioned here. I would also think about, What are the immediate things that we can do to the off-ramp of I-90. Are there rumble strips?' Is there better lighting? Are there crosswalk signs that we could be enforcing there or just putting in in the interim to ensure that we can do have immediate safety while we look at more long-term solutions? I would also add, the traffic camera thing is really hard because we recognize under this current administration that information could be shared with ICE and we want to keep our communities safe. I also would say, if we do put that in there, I was thinking just like in Australia they have a program where you can pay $20 a month if you do get a ticket. And I would say if we put those traffic cameras in, it's about awareness. That first year all of that should be free. You just get a warning."
South Seattle has comparatively less safe bike routes than many other neighborhoods. What are your top priorities for bike safety in District 2?Chunn: Again, I'm going to mention the Toole report that was made in 2020 and the levy that was just passed. It's been 10 years, we approved another one 10 years ago, and D2 was left behind. We don't even have bike lanes and then those ones up north are being repaired. So, I think it is a priority talking to people that are out in community like Cascade Bike Club, thinking about how are we going to make that north-south route along MLK safe in order to get folks from Rainier Beach into Mount Baker light rail station. So that would be a priority. I'd gather the folks together that are bicycle advocates, that are pedestrians, that are, you know, working with SDOT, Adonis because you'll still be working there [the room laughs, including Ducksworth]. Just kidding. We'll make sure you're in the room. Gather the people and make it happen. I think it's a priority that we need to make sure that people are able to commute safely by bike."
Ducksworth: It's all about connections. So connecting Swift, Albro, Columbian, Wilson, making sure we get good connections going on there. But also better bike barriers. They seem to be working on MLK, they work on Dearborn as a way to keep bikes safe. And if you happen to be driving a car, I think it gives people driving cars a little bit more certainty, too. And so as folks as they see more of those things and we connect to places like out here on Beacon, and people feel safe and they see more of those and they see more people biking, they become a lot more comfortable around people riding bikes. So, yeah, let's make connections and let's build those better bike barriers."
Fackler: Yeah, definitely build the connections, make better bike barriers. I've been hit as a cyclist commuting to work. It's real important to me. We live in Rainier Beach. Our son was was looking at high schools and got accepted to Raisbeck a couple of years ago. And one real concern was how's he going to get to school, right? There's no connected bike lanes crossing the Boeing Access Road. There's even no sidewalks there. This is obviously Tukwila's jurisdiction, but there's an opportunity to really connect our community by working with these other jurisdictions to complete those bike lanes. Our kid didn't go to Raisbeck, and part of the reasoning was that there wasn't a good way for him to get there, right? So we need to give kids the opportunity to live a life that is outside of a car, that is on a bicycle and is on public transit."
Lin: Connections. There were a lot of bike lanes that were not connected. Thankfully now here on Beacon Ave it's a a really great connection from Alaskan to Beacon to North Beacon. Bike lanes make it safer for all users, not just bicyclists. They make it safer for pedestrians and for drivers as well. Then just bigger picture, the more we have denser walkable neighborhoods with corner stores, it makes it feasible for people to not be in their vehicles. The more we transition away from cars to biking to walking to transit, it's just going to make it safer for all, which is why we need the dense walkable neighborhoods and corner stores sort of throughout the city."