How candidates for Seattle Mayor said they would achieve Vision Zero by 2030

7 for 7. Screenshot from the forum livestream by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

This is the final post covering candidate responses to biking and safe streets questions during a recent forum hosted by a large group of transportation and urbanism organizations. We previously covered the race for City Council District 2 and the races for the citywide City Council Positions 8 and 9.

None of the candidates for Seattle Mayor said they use a bike as their primary mode of transportation. That means no candidates for the three council seats or mayor are primarily bike riders, which is kind of a bummer. However, every candidate signaled during the lightning round that they support building more protected bike lanes to complete a safe bike network." That means every candidate for mayor and city council that attended this forum answered YES to this question.

Unlike the forum for the citywide council seats, the mayoral forum included several juicy questions relevant to biking and safe streets. As with our previous coverage, we're leaving the interesting questions about housing and transit for other outlets to cover. Find the candidates' responses below, which I have lightly edited for clarity. Also, I wanted to give everyone who worked on this event a shout out. It has provided a wealth of insight into these races.

Of the eight candidates who will be on Seattle's August 5 primary ballot (register to vote or update your registration address online), Ry Armstrong, Clinton Bliss, Bruce Harrell, Joe Mallahan, Joe Molloy, Isaiah Willoughby and Katie Wilson attended the forum. Only Thaddeus Whelan did not attend. A handful of other candidates have withdrawn. Bliss is the only candidate who is not using Seattle's democracy voucher program, and Harrell is the only candidate with an independent expenditure spending money on his behalf, according to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (info as of press time).

What are your top transportation priorities?

Video starts at 2:05:40.

Ry Armstrong: First, anyone too hot in here? Everyone doing okay? Drinking water. [Moderator starts singing Nelly] That's right, Crystal. I think my top transportation priorities for this election are going to be focusing really on buses. In my experience, I think the experience of a ghost bus or waiting to get somewhere where you need to get there is super frustrating, and then you end up having to pay $7 for a Lime or god forbid $40 for an Uber to get to where you need to go to live your life. I think we want to build that trust in community that buses will show up on time, be safe, and get you where you need to be. And that means investing in that bus infrastructure and that technology. So for me, buses are rad, and I want to invest in them. I think that would be a top choice. Also looking at ST2 and ST3 delays that is going to, I think, critically harm our city, and so we want to make sure that we are on Sound Transit to make sure that that's moving forward as much as possible or finding the progressive revenue to fill in when federal funding eventually gets pulled for those projects if that does happen."

Clinton Bliss: Yes. I think transportation needs to be done in concert with all of our other infrastructure. I think as we grow, we need to think about this all together. Sorry, am I talking close enough? [Moderator: You're great.] Okay. All right. If I had my way, I think I would put all traffic underground [Bliss laughs], but I would like to start with our main city corridors and really put traffic underground, I think, and make the city streets so that they are open to foot traffic, pedestrians. And then regarding mass transit I feel like that needs to be discussed and look at the cost but I wonder about overhead for that part."

Bruce Harrell: You know I want to first of all thank everyone for being here, for participating in democracy. I think the first thing on transportation we have to just sort of put it in the context of the lens, and the lens I like for it is safety. All the projects have to be safe. The second part of that will be reliability. So if you look at bridge maintenance for example in the levy how much money we put in there, over $34 million per year for bridge maintenance. We have to have a reliable system. Thirdly, connectivity. So when we talk about protected bike lanes, we talk about sidewalks and we put $200 million in there for sidewalks. Everything has to work together. So the lens by which we will approach our transportation needs will be safety, reliability, and connectivity. And we did a pretty stellar job of putting that together. And I have many transportation advocates that have supported us doing this work and helping build that levy, and I want to thank you."

Joe Mallahan: Forgive me, I'd just like to say, En primer lugar, decir agrades. Agrade ser a El Centro permetir este evento. Roberto Maestas, Bob Santos, Larry Gossett, Bernie Whitebear, los tieron un ejemplo a todos de como lugar la justicia sucial mediante la accion colectiva. [Editor's note: I transcribed this section spoken en Espanol as closely as I could according to what he said, but my Spanish is not great so mistakes could be mine. He thanked El Centro for hosting, then thanked those who have fought for a just society with collective action. Watch the video to hear for yourself.] So, thank you to El Centro. I think my two biggest issues are are safety and when I talk about safety I'm primarily talking about bus safety that people aren't hesitating to ride the bus system because they feel unsafe. And the second thing is facilitating and incentivizing investment in housing in transit centers. So, to me, those are my two biggest issues. [Mallahan's phone rings]. Sorry about that."

Joe Molloy: Thank you for the intro music, Joe. And thank you for hosting this. Thank you to everybody for being here. It's a privilege to get to talk on this stage about these sorts of things. Both of the main issues tonight, housing and transportation, to me are issues that need to be framed through a generational lens, right? Even though we have short-term problems and needs, we still need to be looking at our solutions through 50 and 100 year timelines, right? Because if we're not creating our solutions for our long-term goals, which for transportation, for housing, these are things that everybody in here probably will not see the full development of, but that's where we need to be framing. So of course safety, reliability and connectivity are important things. Of course they are. We made regressive steps through COVID. We had free transit here. We need to get back to that. It's 8% of the bus revenue comes, from King County Metro's numbers, they say 8%."

Isaiah Willoughby: Hello my name is Isaiah Willoughby. Thank you for everybody being here and thank you to all the mayor candidates. And I'm from District 2. I grew up here. I'm from Zion Preparatory Elementary. When the question is, Do we own parcels here? My mom has three houses here. So I don't own it but my mom owns it. Her name is Willoughby. I'm from Franklin. So we live here. My vision for transportation is my vision for Seattle is where every [microphone problem]. Hello. [Appears to read notes from phone.] My vision is where every resident whether they walk, roll, bike, ride transit or drive can move safely, affordably and reliably. That means expanding our bus, rapid transit and light rail networks, improving ADA accessibility, and making sidewalks and bike lanes continuous and safe across all neighborhoods. We must prioritize infrastructure in South Seattle and underserved areas that have been historically neglected. Transportation justice is climate justice, racial justice, and economic justice all at once."

Katie Wilson: Hi everyone, Katie Wilson here. Great to be here. I feel like this is an audience that can handle a little wonkiness, so I'm going to say, Mode shift.' And basically that means that as our region keeps growing, we keep adding people to our city, we cannot keep adding cars. We need to make it efficient, reliable and safe for people to travel by other modes, by transit, by walking, by biking, by rolling. And so under this rubric, that's a lot of things. That means improving our public transit system. That means making it more competitive with driving. And frankly, it also means having the data. We actually don't have, at least not published on the city website, any mode shift data since 2019. So we don't know how we're doing. Although I think given the way that vehicle miles traveled and other metrics have been going in the last few years, we're probably not making progress."

How will Seattle Achieve Vision Zero, which is the goal to have zero people killed or seriously injures in crashes on Seattle streets by 2030?

Video starts at 2:19:47.

Harrell: So if you look at the framework by which we built the levy out when I talked about safety, you will see a lot of training dollars in there. So the first thing we have to look at is making sure everyone knows the rules of road and be very consistent there. We also have to build hard structure. If you look at the light rail for example, if you look at my executive order where I looked at some of the stations and looked at the safety issues that we have to do, we put in about $9 million in transit safety as an example. So, we put hard money in for safety infrastructure on transit and around our light rail stations. The third piece of this is simply going to be we have to enforce the laws. Now, we train before we enforce, but there are people out there that are still speeding. Now, I've been elected for 16 years. I've had some tough conversations when we were talking about protecting bike lanes. We were proud that we didn't have a bike death last year because some of the hard work of the advocates in this room. So, I only have a one minute, so I'll just end there."

Mallahan: I think we we should invest more in automated traffic control. We shouldn't have police officers spending time enforcing speed limits, but we don't have effective speed limits and speed limit mechanisms in the city of Seattle. So, let's invest in technology and create a system where if you're speeding, you're going to get a citation, and it's as simple as that. On another note, we don't have enough police officers, and we have a dysfunctional and demoralized police force who aren't delivering what we want them to deliver. And so my commitment is to be an activist mayor in terms of managing our relationship with the police and creating a community connection to the police. I commit to do 50 ride-alongs with police to reintegrate them with the community and to establish community policing."

Molloy: I mean Katie already said it a little bit, and Katie's going to be the expert on transportation stuff in this room as she should be. It's multimodal, right? If 2030 is the goal to have zero deaths then how do we reduce the number of cars on the road? That's going to have the most one-to-one reduction in deaths. How do we protect multimodal through protected bike lanes, we need spots for these little scooters and things to go, too. They block disability access and people in wheelchairs all across the city. And then, this is another one that I don't know if everybody wants to hear, we need to get people inside. The more people we have living on the streets, the more pedestrian deaths we have on the streets, and the more danger it presents to the people living in tents on the streets that somebody has a bad day and ends a life. So, we need to get people inside as well."

Willoughby: [Again appears to be reading from notes on his phone, which I don't think others have been doing.] So what I would do is I would redesign dangerous streets. I would prioritize street redesigns that slow cars, protect pedestrians and cyclists, replace five lane arterials like Rainer Ave, Aurora, with safer human-centered designs, protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, narrower car lanes, and raised crosswalks. Implement road diets, reduced lanes, and high crash corridors. I will lower speed limits and enforce them intelligently. Enforce a 20 mph citywide speed limit on residential urban streets. Deploy automated speed cameras with equity guidelines more places, especially near schools, parks, and transit corridors and use camera fines to fund pedestrian safety improvements in underserved neighborhoods."

Wilson: A good point, Joe, about homelessness, I think. We are not nearly on track to meet our Vision Zero goal of zero traffic fatalities or injuries by 2030. And how we get there, there's a lot of different parts to this, but the big thing is safe transportation infrastructure. That means building out our Bicycle Master Plan so that we have a connected network of protected bike lanes. And that means building sidewalks. And that means traffic calming measures. This is personal for me. Before, I answered that my primary form of transportation is transit, but before I had my child, I was a bicyclist. I biked everywhere and I still walk everywhere. And so, close calls all the time. We have Rainier, MLK, 4th Ave South, Lake City Way, Aurora. These are our five most dangerous corridors in the city. They've been our most dangerous corridors for a long time. So there's no excuse for not making safety fixes ASAP."

Armstrong: I think Vision Zero is such a beautiful utopian future that is possible, and I want to see that for our city. I think the number one issue I see around Vision Zero is going to be South Seattle light rail. It is so dangerous that it is at street level. We either need to make it lower or higher to separate that plane of mobility. And then finally I think transit is a public safety issue. I walk on 14th Avenue on Capitol Hill, and it's like pitch black suburbia, and I'm like, Why are there not street lights in one of the richest cities in the history of humanity? So, I think if we invest in that sort of safety infrastructure and prioritize pedestrians and people who roll. I didn't own a car until last year because I had to for my job. Otherwise, I would love to just get around this city using the beautiful infrastructure we have as long as it's reliable and safe and it can get me where I need to go."

Bliss: I think transportation and safety overall we need to focus on separating pedestrian, bicycle and vehicles and mass transit. All of those do not go well together. We need to have in general rights of way that are separate. This is why I think it would be wise in Aurora or Rainier Avenue. Put that 20 feet under at the level of parking garages. Make that a big green space, and have large buildings surrounding that. I think that would make a big difference in making our city safer and more livable."

Pike Place in front of the market recently closed to general traffic. Do you support making this pilot permanent? What other streets would you prioritize for reducing or eliminating vehicle traffic to make places for people to gather?

Video starts at 2:26:46.

Mallahan: Well, first off, I think the Pike Place experiment is a great one. It's a huge pedestrian flow. What we've accomplished with the overpass down to the waterfront and the new waterfront is really transformational for Seattle. And so, I can credit the mayor a little bit for that, and I can credit me. And the reason is, when I ran against Mike McGinn, I was pro tunnel. And the reason I was pro tunnel is we need to connect the community to the saltwater and the environment that is the Salish Sea. And we've accomplished that to a large degree now. In terms of other places, there's high streets all over the city. I don't I don't have a particular perspective on that, but it's certainly a reasonable goal to find avenues or adjacencies to high streets to make pedestrians only. It creates great community. It's creates great commerce. I'm all for that."

Molloy: Yeah, so this is a good question. I absolutely support that, like shutting down Pike. I was a gig driver, a delivery driver for about two and a half years, struggling to find other work. And when I was doing that, I was supportive of making Pike Market inaccessible to cars. It's dangerous. So Ballard Avenue comes to mind. The section in Capitol Hill where they do the farmers market-is that John or Olive right there?-is another. Yeah, another great one. But really with this in mind, this is an issue to plug in this community specifically. We have networks of people who are spending 30, 40, 50 hours driving around our city. Getting feedback from our app workers, from our drivers, about what sort of roads are truly inaccessible, what needs improvement. [microphone dies] Creating a pathway for that kind of connection so that we can know who's affected most by our roads and what we should keep open."

Willoughby: [Reading from phone] Hello, my name is Isaiah Willoughby. So I would expand car free zones permanently pedestrianize Pike Place, Post Alley, parts of Capitol Hill or the Waterfront. Create new car-free corridors in dense neighborhoods like U District, Rainier Beach, or Chinatown. I would open streets on weekends, closing key streets to cars for walking, biking, art, and small business activities. I would make Stay Healthy Streets permanent. I would formalize and expand Seattle's Stay Healthy Streets program. I would turn low traffic neighborhood streets into greenways with landscaping, art, play zones, slow traffic limits."

Wilson: On Pike Place, absolutely. And instead of crediting the mayor or Joe Mallahan, I'm going to credit all the advocates who spent years and years and years fighting for that. I think that every neighborhood should have a car-free area. Now, I understand that it's a sensitive issue and, you know, often businesses are afraid of what's going to happen to their customer base. So, we need to do it sensitively. I think piloting it is a good way to do it. Definitely what Joe mentioned here, Barbara Bailey Way, I think the portion of Denny Ave on Capitol Hill is ripe for that. Superblock on Capitol Hill in the Pike-Pine area, the Ave in the U District. We can do more on Lake Washington Boulevard, I think. And around the city, let's do this. I mean, there's cities around the world which have done this, and it just is such a huge boon to people's quality of life."

Armstrong: Thank you, Katie. Yes, superblock. It's like you're my neighbor or something up on Capitol Hill. I think the superblock's a great idea. Those stop signs on Pike when you're going there, especially late at night when nightlife is active, is not a safe place to be for a car coming through with a bunch of pedestrians. It's a recipe for disaster. Further I think Pike Place should be permanently locked off from cars unless maybe early morning deliveries, but world-class cities can figure this out, and they do that, and I think we could do that in Pike Place, especially if we can connect the streetcar along First Avenue or the waterfront so that people can get easier access to that space. Finally, I think even more importantly, we do not know what the future will hold for this country and our region. And so protecting with bollards such an important place where so many pedestrians are. I want to be proactive in making sure that we are safeguarding the heart of our city which is for me Pike Place Market and the gayborhood, which we love."

Bliss: So, I think the current process of blocking off streets is just going to make more traffic somewhere else. And I think we need to think systemically about this. Again, I would vote for bike lanes. I would recommend those go through predominantly single family areas where there's less traffic and close those streets to just residential use. And then as before, I would recommend that on our very busy streets, we put the cars down under where we can have more capacity and make it so the pedestrian flow can be safe up above."

Harrell: So, I never worry about who gets the damn credit on anything. So, forget that stuff, number one. But I will ask the question, How come no other mayor did it? Let me just ask you the question. I was very fortunate to travel with Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, to a G7 conference to talk about us being one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the nation. And you hear me talk about it, if you look at what we put in the levy. When you look at the sidewalks, for example, we will do 250 blocks within the first four years, 350 new blocks of sidewalk. We put in for Vision Zero double the amount of the prior levy. We were very aggressive. When you look at what we're trying to do at Westlake at the Overlook Walk, we look at what we're doing with our Safe Routes to Schools for our kids. So under my administration, with your help, we are going to be one one of the most walkable cities with a walkable score to be the envy of other cities in this country. And that's why we made the shift from Pike Place just to sort of show what can be done when we think smartly."