Agenda – September 24, 2012
Doric Lodge 92, 619 North 36th Street at 7:00 pm
7:00 – Welcome & Introductions
7:05 – Announcements
7:10 – Review and Approval of Oustanding Minutes & Treasurer’s Report
7:15 – Transportation Forum Guest Speakers: Peter Hahn, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) Director, Bill Bryant, SDOT Transit Program Manager, Owen Kehoe, King Country DOT Transit Systems & Traffic Engineering
7:15 – Old Business – Sandwich board, FNC Mail
7:25 – New Business – Planning for October Candidate Forum
7:45 – Reports from Committee Chairs – Land Use, Transportation, Parks, LUDC
8:00 Adjourn
I’m a recent traslpnant to Seattle from Portland and find getting downtown from North Seattle to be very slow and frustrating especially with the construction going on at the south end of Lake Union. The prescribed routes as depicted by the signage are a joke. I have ridden the Westlake parking lot route, and Eastlake and neither one is very good. The parking lot is slow, a bit of a maze, and cars always do unpredictable things in parking lots. Eastlake is faster but also a bit hairy and the surface leaves much to be desired. If the city has any real interest in increasing bike commuting it seems like making it easy to get from the north end of town to the downtown core would be a high priority. The design showcased here for Dexter looks good, but it sure would make a lot of sense to have fast, smooth, accessible bike routes along Eastlake and Westlake with sensible connections to the downtown grid network. As it stands now I cannot picture a family that lives in north Seattle deciding to ride downtown on a nice sunny Saturday to take in museums or shopping. Until the infrastructure allows for and encourages that scenario, this particular link in the network is broken in my opinion. Sorry to rant with my first comment on this blog but I see so many great opportunities for biking along this general route and right now the infrastructure isn’t even in the ballpark for where it could/should be.
A lot has happened since the forum described here. What you’re riding through, I believe, is a construction zone for the new Eastlake track, currently unfinished. There’s a lot still to be done all over Seattle on lots of aspects of our transportation systems. Thanks for your comment.