Earlier today, the Mayor’s Office informed us that long-standing and contracted plans for building protected bike lanes on a stretch of 35th Avenue NE have been canceled. Instead of safety improvements, which included bike lanes, the Seattle Department of Transportation will paint a center turn lane. car parking will be removed from one side of the street.

We are disappointed with Mayor Durkan’s decision today.  It undermines the previous decisions of SDOT, city policy and the will of the community – by bending to a vocal minority who used tactics of fear and misinformation. It sets a dangerous precedent for safety projects across the city. Improvements to the 39th Avenue greenway in no way equate to a safe, designated bike lane on our busy neighborhood arterial. We ask the city to identify how people on bikes, of all ages and abilities, are meant to safely access the places they eat, shop and play in their neighborhood.  

Over the last year we have advocated on behalf of the countless people in our neighborhood who support the plan to update our busy neighborhood connector, 35th Ave NE, so that it will work better – including adding a protected bike lane.

We even participated, reluctantly, in a failed “mediation” between vocal opponents to the project as designed, who wanted to keep parking over making safety improvements. Despite the mediation process resulting in no agreed upon compromise, the city today announced they will move forward with a design they floated during that process. It still removes parking. It doesn’t include a safe, designated place for people on bikes. This new design simply does not achieve the stated goals of the project: to update the street to serve the needs of all users.

This little vetted, last minute “compromise option” serves to keep cars moving too fast through our neighborhood, without making the street safer for all users – and it doesn’t even address the top priority of people who opposed the original design.

This outcome is a blow to anyone who engages genuinely during the city’s design process. It shows that the desires of a small minority in the neighborhood was to stop the bike lane – at any cost, even that of their central campaign ask (to remove parking).

The impact is bigger than just this 1.2 mile stretch of arterial street in Wedgwood/Ravenna/Bryant: We are very disappointed in Mayor Durkan’s lack of accountability to the people of Seattle who voted in favor of the Move Seattle Levy and who provided community input when the Bike Master Plan was drafted. We are concerned about the precedent this sets for future projects that include bike lanes and for the implementation of the City’s own Vision Zero plans and Complete Streets Ordinance.

Despite the outcome, our advocacy – and the community we’ve built along the way – has left us thankful. We know there is a tremendous amount of support for the bike lanes that our neighbors provided over the past year, despite the misinformation and ugly tactics used by people who are against bike lanes. Our advocacy work started with a group of Wedgwood, Ravenna, and Bryant neighbors and spread to others throughout the larger Seattle community who care about safe transportation and mobility options, the environment, livability, and equity.  Thank you for your support.