Seattle: An Amazon Bike Town
This is from our archives and resharing it today because of the topicality to Amazon’s choice of their new HQs.
In Issue 01 of our new Magazine, Mark V rode to and reviewed the Brave Horse Tavern, a restaurant in South Lake Union. SLU is a Seattle neighborhood that Amazon has claimed as its own and we’ve nicknamed it Wheezerville
So we’re sitting in a pseudo western saloon with the smell of BBQ in the air, eating seafood, surrounded by Amazon kids who don’t know a farrier from a furrier, and we’re watching out the window to see if the SLUT (the South Lake Union Transit trolley) will pass by as the music bounces directly from Motley Crue to OMD. Amazon (dot COM, bitches!) set up a company village in Seattle where warehouses and furniture stores used to be, like a college campus with scholarships for drinking. Brave Horse is at the top of some steps, stacked on another restaurant, and we wondered what went on in the building before its rebirth as a nerd frat. Before software or the Stratofortress, Seattle was a town made by swindlers, sailors, and the gold-rush, not cattle and cowpokes.
Yesterday the Seattle Times reported that Amazon’s new building further south and across town from SLU at Denny Triangle will get built with cycle tracks and bike parking. That’s great news for all cyclists, those riding to and from Amazon’s commissary at the Brave Horse, and may connect a potential 101 miles of cycle tracks in the city.
Cyclists are part of the fabric of Seattle, and so we’re thrilled to be creating a new cycle track that will make the ride to and from downtown safer and easier for all cyclists in the community,” said John Schoettler, Amazon director of global real estate and facilities.
While critical of how the city lacks a vision and instead defers to Amazon to map its future, the more cycle tracks the better. Bike advocates often ignore the fact that people are afraid to ride in traffic, opening protected lanes for will increase ridership.
An office worker near Denny Triangle said to me, “I’d ride a protected lane for sure.”
So will we.