Streets For All Seattle launched today
Cascade Bicycle Club, Sierra Club Cascade Chapter and Great City join a coalition of community, labor, transportation and environmental groups in proudly announcing Streets For All Seattle, a new campaign calling for adequately funding multimodal transportation initiatives in Seattle.
The Streets For All Seattle supporters believe that walking, bicycling and transit should be the easiest means of transportation in Seattle. But the current situation shows pending cuts in Metro service hours and insufficient funding for the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans.
The Streets For All Seattle coalition has identified a number of potential funding sources – to the tune of $30 million dollars – for walking, biking and transit infrastructure. The group looks forward to working with the Seattle City Council, Mayor McGinn and partners to create dedicated funding mechanisms for multi-modal transportation initiatives in Seattle.
Our take is Seattle is a City that has a problem getting anything big done and with the perception of itself. For those readers that don’t live here, there’s a Northwest passive/aggressive style. You’d think a City that has a B rating from Cascade and a Top 5 from Bicycing Magazine wouldn’t need another organization to lobby for pedestrian and cyclists monies.
While the press releases are going out about this, across the lake Mercer Island is trying to ban cyclists from riding in groups on their streets. Same people are fighting the Missing Link and Stone Way while other bikeways go apparently unnoticed.
We don’t want to buzzkill the announcement and will shake hands tomorrow with the people working on it at the Bike to Work Breakfast. It’s when we see sharrows where cyclists don’t ride we wonder how many lobbyists are spending their time in boardrooms instead of riding the streets with us.
There is definitely a bike and pedestrian friendly change in the States. We noticed it when we started this blog, but we’re a long way from big Transportation Secretary statements to feeling safer riding down Alaskan Way.
Here’s an idea, along with your press releases to the traditional media, host a Bike Blogger Summit and hear their ideas on making the streets for all. Talk to them about what their blogging, where they’re riding, and get their input. They reach an alternative media audience. It started at the Seattle Bike Expo with the Bike Culture Panel and we’re up for it.
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