SEATTLE — According to a Walk Score ranking, Seattle fell from seventh to 13th place among large cities for being the most bike-friendly.
“We actually lag behind some major cities that have some pretty difficult weather patterns. So we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Murray said.
Though the methodology changed between the time those two rankings were made, Murray said he agrees with the current measurement that there should be more efforts to produce protected bike lanes.
“When I was 14 years old riding my bicycle, I was hit by a car, spent months in the hospital and to this day live with the damage that was done to me in that accident,” he said.
Last August, a cyclist was hit and killed by a box truck downtown.
In 2013, there were 421 collisions involving bicycles, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation.
There were 32 bicycle collisions per 1,000 cyclists, which was an uptick after six years of seeing steady decline.
Murray has since launched Vision Zero, a program to reduce speed limits downtown to 25 miles per hour by the end of 2015.
The program also eliminates some right-hand turns for drivers and adds more bike lanes.
Elizabeth Kiker, the executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club, said the biggest frustration of cyclists is when drivers don’t pay attention.
Kiker said the city’s efforts to improve safety are exciting.
Citing the 2nd Avenue protected bike lane as an example, she said, “[Drivers] are moving through there faster and at a better rate. And it is again the perception, ‘No I’m not, because I lost a lane of traffic.’ But because people understand where they are, where the cyclists are, and how people need to get there, it actually moves more smoothly than it did before.”
Drivers in turn said that cyclists often don’t obey traffic rules.
“Blowing traffic lights, yes, and then also not wearing colors, no lights on their bikes,” said Bradley Domhoff.
But another driver, Emily Viehauser, said she sympathizes with cyclists. She said she knows the streets are not safe for them.
“I’m always afraid, so I’m always looking to the right to see, is there a pedestrian, is there a bicycle coming?” she said.
Part of the initial confusion over protected bike lanes was where drivers should park their cars. The cars are supposed to be parked on the inside of the bike lanes, during designated hours.
But there are many parts of the city where old bike lanes still exist, with cars parked on the outside of the lane. Then, sometimes those bike lanes disappear, forcing cyclists and drivers to share a lane.
Kiker said ideally, there would be just protected bike lanes throughout the city.
In retraining everyone how to walk, bike and ride with new layouts, she said, “We’re all going to get where we’re going faster, when we can interact well with each other.”
KIRO
