Seattle Bike Blog

The Washington State House of Representatives is debating their response to the Senate's transportation funding bill this week, and the latest version (PDF) not only removes the e-bike tax but also exempts the Ballard Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail from environmental review. The House still needs to pass their modified version of the Senate [...]

After the Washington State Senate approved a transportation funding bill that includes a 10% sales tax surcharge on many e-bikes, Sara Morimoto and Harrison Jerome concocted an idea: They would ride e-bikes from Seattle to Olympia to urge the House to reject the Senate's bike tax. The bike tax would need approval from both chambers [...]

Well, it was worth a try. The WA Senate's Environment, Energy and Technology (ENET") Committee decided not to vote on the House bill to exempt the Ballard Missing Link (and maybe a small subset of other Seattle trail sections) from the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA"), the basis for the neverending court cases holding up [...]

The WSDOT e-bike rebate program is nearly ready to accept applications. The pilot program, which the department has named WE-Bike," will take applications starting April 9 and ending at noon April 23. Recipients of these instant rebates" will be selected using a lottery system after the end of the application window, so there should be [...]

WSDOT will fix an extremely bumpy section of the 520 Trail in Redmond just in time for the light rail openings in May, so be prepared for detours April 16-18 and 22-24. Caused by tree roots and years of neglect, some of these sections are so bumpy they are almost comical. But especially for a [...]

I was invited on KUOW's noontime show Soundside today to talk about the Washington Senate's e-bike tax, and I found myself focusing heavily on making the case for protecting our state's bike shops. Give it a listen. At one point, Libby Denkmann cut through all the noise and asked this question: Would money raised from, [...]

Inspired by the guy in our alley the other night who was honking maybe 20 feet from where my kid was sleeping, I created this informative decision tree flow chart that is fully comprehensive and covers all potential car horn usage scenarios. This should forever solve the question: Should I honk my car horn? Car [...]

Community advocacy group Eastside Urbanism is running an online survey right now to help them identify the top community priorities they should push for in their advocacy for a stronger Vision Zero Action Plan in Bellevue. A majority of Bellevue's City Council shamefully bent the knee to demonstrate loyalty to their true boss the landowner [...]

Seattle officially opened the long-awaited downtown waterfront bikeway as far north as Pier 62 beyond the aquarium Saturday. Much of the path has been open for weeks, but the final curving piece underneath the Overlook Walk to Pike Place Market has finally completed the connections to Belltown via Elliott Way and to Pier 62. It [...]

I almost cried when I saw this chart during SDOT's Vision Zero presentation to the City Council's Transportation Committee Tuesday. Preliminary traffic safety data for Seattle from 2024 shows half as many pedestrian deaths as the modern high point in 2021 and zero traffic deaths of people riding a bicycle. Ten deaths of people walking [...]

The Seattle City Council's Transportation and Budget Committees will hear about SDOT's plan for the first year of transportation levy expenditures and will decide whether to lift their legislative hold on about half of the levy funds budgeted for 2025 work. First, SDOT's new Interim Director Adiam Emery will present the 2025 Transportation Levy Delivery [...]

The main section of the waterfront bikeway will officially open with a March 8 celebration and bike ride. The ribbon cutting is 10:30 a.m. near Pier 62, then the celebration goes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the pier and up and down the bikeway. Best Side Cycling is also hosting a 5-mile group [...]

The under-construction infill Link light rail station at N 130th Street recently got its official name: Pinehurst Station. Sound Transit anticipates that 90% of station users will get there by walking, biking or taking the bus. Recognizing that the streets leading to the station do not currently support that level of walking and biking, Seattle [...]

A few weeks ago, my spouse Kelli and I were talking about how to bring together the desire for large old trees in our city and our need to better calm traffic and improve biking and school walk routes. Watching the story unfold this week about folks protesting to stop the removal of a western [...]

Despite the threat of an atmospheric river (or perhaps thanks to it for some of you wonderful sickos), 2,034 people registered for Cascade Bicycle Club's Chilly Hilly 2025. The annual winter ride around Bainbridge Island is the club's longest-running tradition, dating back more than half a century. People who sign up for a ride the [...]

If you want to share the joy and empowerment of bicycling with the next generation, Bike Works is currently seeking volunteers to help out with their after school and weekend programs. Our needs include biking with youth, helping in our youth mechanics programs, bike fleet maintenance, assisting in various youth events and administrative tasks," said [...]

Construction work on a busy block of Fremont Ave N between N 34th and 35th Streets is scheduled to start this month and last for much of 2025. The work just north of the Fremont Bridge is part of the Route 40 transit and multimodal project, and Seattle Public Utilities will also use it as [...]

For more than a century, Washington State has funded portions of its transportation work using gas taxes. But due to inflation, politics and the rise of electric vehicles, gas tax revenue nationally and in Washington State has continually fallen in recent decades. The state's current gas tax rate is at or near it's lowest point [...]

A proposed bill in the State House would resolve confusion by establishing a new set of rules for a shared street." No existing streets would become shared streets by default. Instead, a local authority (such as SDOT in Seattle) can choose to designate certain nonarterial" streets as shared streets. On these streets: The proposed bill [...]

Pacific NW Magazine, the glossy magazine inside the Sunday Seattle Times, includes two excerpts this week from my book Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars - Out now in paperback. Go buy a copy while they are still on newsstands. Or you can check out the piece online [...]

Want a good deal on a used bike or want to find some unusual parts? Then get to the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall Saturday (February 8) for Cascade Bicycle Club's annual Seattle Bike Swap. There will be a bunch of bikes for sale on consignment and a wide variety of vendors selling all kinds of [...]

An upcoming paving project on Pinehurst and Roosevelt Ways NE is a chance for the city to upgrade the existing mishmash of bike lanes and sharrows to a complete set of protected bike lanes from NE 92nd Street to NE 117th Street/15th Ave NE. Potential upgrades may include new crosswalks, upgraded bike lanes, and improved [...]

Work is underway on a two-block rebuild of hilly Bell Street between Elliott and 1st Avenues that includes a two-way projected bike lane and a new intersection design at Western Ave. The project is estimated to take about five months to complete. The new bike lanes will connect to the one-way lanes on Elliott and [...]

Preorders have been shipped, and one person who selected local pickup" from the Seattle Bike Blog shop already has the new paperback edition of Biking Uphill in the Rain in their hands. Also, if you buy a copy of the book in either paperback or hardcover from our shop, I will sign it and add [...]

As one of the final acts for outgoing SDOT Director Greg Spotts, the department released its first annual workplan laying out the first year of projects that Seattle voters funded by approving a $1.55 billion transportation levy in November. We are aware there was a perception in 2016 that SDOT did not get off to [...]

Sean Duffy sailed through the US Senate nomination process to become the new Transportation Secretary this week. His first acts were to order a rewrite of the Federal fuel economy standards for pickups and SUVs (rolling back climate initiatives is a common theme among Trump's nominees, and Duffy has a history of denying human-caused climate [...]

Bike trips across the Spokane Street Bridge (AKA the lower West Seattle Bridge) have followed a very different pattern compared to the Fremont Bridge, mostly due to extenuating circumstances around the emergency closure of the high bridge as well as multiple extended closures of the Spokane Street Bridge itself to maintain the unreliable swing bridge [...]

A large section of the downtown waterfront bike lane quietly opened, connecting the Alaskan Way Trail toward West Seattle all the way up to Union Street near the aquarium. The northbound bike lane on Elliott Way up to Western Ave in Belltown is also now open, though you have to weave through the plaza area [...]

I am beyond tired of people acknowledging that Seattle needs more affordable housing and then not doing anything about it. Seattle voters have an opportunity to take action by voting YES on Proposition 1A by February 11. Ballots are in the mail. If you have moved since the November election, you can change your address [...]

Adiam Emery is moving from Deputy Mayor to Interim SDOT Director, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced. She will take over the top transportation role February 4 when Greg Spotts departs as he announced in December. Starting as an engineering intern, Emery held several roles within SDOT before joining Mayor Harrell's executive team with a focus on [...]

After 14 and a half years posting on the site once known as Twitter, Seattle Bike Blog stopped using the service this week. There is a lot of Seattle bike history buried in those Tweets, however, and I did not want to lose it all. For many years, the @SeaBikeBlog account was very active, and [...]

The number of people biking across the Fremont Bridge in 2024 clocked in at 931,637, up 3% over 2023 and the largest total measured since the COVID-19 pandemic. 2025 is shaping up to be a big test both for the downtown workplace economy as well as efforts to encourage people to commute by bike. Office [...]

After surveying 1,200 people (PDF) and writing a 50-page report (PDF), SDOT has determined that calming traffic and upgrading the walking and biking spaces on a handful of blocks at Alki Point has increased walking and biking use, has made people feel safer, and has not caused a parking crunch as detractors feared. The Alki [...]

Washington State's e-bike rebate program will launch in April, two years after the state legislature funded it as part of the Move Ahead Washington transportation package. The $5 million budget for the rebates is funded by emission taxes that are part of the Climate Commitment Act, which voters supported in November by rejecting Initiative 2117 [...]

I have been running in-house ads for a while now that say, Shop Local, Advertise Local," but I think it's time to expand on what I mean and wax about the state of being a local and independent journalist in 2025. I also hope to convince business managers and owners to rethink some of their [...]

Washington State is facing a revenue shortfall, so it is vital that legislators this session maintain the unprecedented" level of transportation safety funding outlined in the 2023 Move Ahead Washington package. As the state's transportation safety crisis shows few signs of slowing, safety funding should be spared from the cutting block. Preferably, the state would [...]