Tag Archives: beacon bikes!

Biking on Beacon: Why did the neighbor cross the road?

…To get to our brand new park!

Jefferson Park is a wonderful community gathering space located in the heart of Beacon Hill.  It offers amazing views, brand new tennis courts, playground, cricket, lawn bowling, golfing, a community center, and soon we will have a skate park and spray pad (which would not have gotten much use this summer, somewhat diminishing the sting of construction delays).  But the irony is this community nexus acts as a physical division within our neighborhood. The golf course is not permeable by car or foot, while the park is surrounded by arterial and collector streets (Spokane, Columbian, Beacon) that are wide and unsafe to cross except at stoplight-controlled intersections.  Due to the current configuration it is difficult to access the park in a safe and efficient manner without getting in your car and driving there, which I must say, though I love my car, does take the neighborhoodiness out of things a bit—when was the last time you had a meaningful interaction with a neighbor when driving past them on 15th?

Neighbors have noticed that many people try to access the park by foot by crossing Spokane between Beacon and 15th Ave. S. (at 16th, 17th, Lafayette, and Alamo).  Though legal, crossing Spokane at these intersections across 4 lanes of fast-moving traffic with no marked crosswalks and difficult sightlines is not the most relaxing stroll to the park.  A solution proposed in Beacon Hill’s Bike and Pedestrian Circulation Plan is to create a safe pedestrian crossing at Lafayette Ave. S.  The first step to adding a new pedestrian crossing is data collection.  Within the past month folks from Beacon B.I.K.E.S. have conducted pedestrian crossing counts and even shot a nice video at the proposed crossing.

The results from the counts indicate that during peak hours around 20 people per hour will cross Spokane at these dangerous intersections.  This is considered a high enough rate by SDOT to justify a pedestrian crossing.  SDOT will soon be conducting their own counts and studies and hopefully we will get the crossing installed next year!  Of couhttp://youtu.be/dvqw7D8-6aYrse, it won’t happen without a lot of community support, so if you are interested please contactBeacon B.I.K.E.S. and send an email to Peter Hahn (SDOT director) letting him know this is something the neighborhood needs.

See you at the Park!

Cyclists enjoy neighborhood bicycle ride

The folks at Seattle Neighborhood Greenways have posted a great set of photos of last Saturday’s Beacon B.I.K.E.S./Spokespeople neighborhood bicycle ride. The ride began and ended at The Station on 16th Ave. S., and took a 5 mile route around Jefferson Park, down Beacon Avenue, on the Chief Sealth trail, and back up through Jefferson Park to The Station. See the photos of the happy cyclists touring North Beacon Hill.

Tour the neighborhood on your bike Saturday

Beacon B.I.K.E.S. is hosting a neighborhood bicycle ride this Saturday along portions of the future Beacon Hill Greenway. The ride will be a safe, slow-paced 5-mile loop (see the route in the map below) with few hills, suitable for riders of all ages, and will feature destinations such as Jefferson Park, local businesses, and two community farms (Alley Cat Acres and the future site of the Beacon Food Forest).

The ride will start at 2 p.m. at The Station coffee house, 2533 16th Ave. S. and finish at 4 p.m. at the Beacon Hill Library, 2821 Beacon Ave. S.

Questions? Email Dylan at dylan@beaconwalksbikes.org.

(Thanks to Christine Cole for the news!)


View spokespeople beacon ride in a larger map

Love your BIKE! for Valentine’s Day

Beacon BIKES is hosting Love Your BIKE!, a Valentine’s Day open house at the Beacon Hill Library, with special guest speaker, KUOW commentator, Adventure Cyclist columnist, and Beacon Hill neighbor Willie Weir. Weir will tell “Tales of Bicycle Love,” including stories of his many cycling adventures and destinations.

The evening will also include an open house discussion of the current plans and ideas to improve pedestrian and bicycle circulation on the Hill, and sweet and savory Valentine treats for all.

The event is from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Monday, February 14, and is open to all, including children. The Beacon Hill Library is located at 2821 Beacon Avenue South.

For more information, contact Frederica Merrell, frmerrel@seattleschools.org.

Opinion: Biking and walking are viable options on Beacon Hill

Map on Everytrail website, showing safe bicycle routes to MacPherson's produce market. The map includes videos with commentary about the route and reasons why certain paths were chosen.
Beacon BIKES! is excited about our upcoming community-wide biking and walking information event on Saturday, November 20 (at Beacon International School, 2021 14th Avenue South, from 10:00 am until noon)!  To celebrate biking as a viable option on Beacon Hill and in Seattle in general, I thought I would show how safe and easy biking can be in and around our neighborhood.

Many years ago I lived in Davis, California, which is known as the biking capital of the U.S. (Their city logo is even a bike!).  In Davis, biking is just the easiest way to get around, not only because it is a dense city and flat as a pancake, but because there is an amazing bicycle infrastructure to keep biking safe for everyone.  As a result, 17 percent of the population commutes by bike (compared with the less than 3 percent in Seattle).  I bring up Davis because what is interesting to see is that when that many people are biking, they stop identifying as cyclists—they are just people who happen to get around town in the easiest manner available, by bike.  So that is our goal at Beacon BIKES!, to make biking so safe and easy that even your grandma will want to hop on a bike to head to MacPherson’s for her afternoon errands. 

“If we get out of our cars more often, we become more neighborhood-oriented.”

We are not a bunch of spandex-clad aggro bike advocates, but rather neighbors who want to see you on the streets walking or biking to your local destinations.  If we get out of our cars (and yes, we all have cars too) more often, our options for what are viable trips change and we become more neighborhood-oriented.  We go to Red Apple instead of Safeway, The Station instead of Starbucks, and we see our neighbors along the way!

Part of what we will be doing on the 20th is providing maps for safe routes to schools (and other destinations) for you and your children on Beacon Hill.  We will have a bunch of blank maps; you show us where you live, and we draw you a safe route to your destination of choice.  In the spirit of this, I have begun to compile a series of virtual tours of routes that I use to safely get around and off of Beacon Hill, both by myself and with my family.  All the routes I map either start or end at the library or light rail station.

I use the program Everytrail to map all the routes.  Here are my preferred routes to MacPherson’s (family-friendly) and Lowe’s (mostly safe, but involves biking on South College Street for a couple blocks).  Clicking on these links will take you to the Everytrail website (click on the “View Full Screen” button on the bottom right of the map to get the best view of the route). For all the routes I use the following criteria:

  1. Whenever it makes sense, use non-arterial streets or multi-use trails
  2. Whenever it makes sense, take the least steep street possible
  3. Try to make all arterial crossings at signalized intersections

I also frequently take advantage of the light rail to get back up the hill after biking off the hill.  I have more routes already mapped and more planned for future posts.  In the meantime, let me know the destinations you would like mapped in the comments section.  Happy Biking!  See you on Saturday!

Rummaging and planting among this weekend’s activities

Beacon Hill can always use more trees like this. Volunteers will plant trees on Columbian Way this Sunday. Photo by go-team in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
A few events this weekend (and Monday) we would like to remind you of:

As always, you can keep up with Beacon Hill events on our Events page.

Beacon BIKES! update

Photo by Two Ladies & Two Cats.
Ryan Harrison sent this announcement with information and an invitation from Beacon BIKES!:

As many of you know, there is a growing movement among Beacon Hill residents interested in safely getting people of all ages and abilities around and to destinations within our neighborhood on foot and bicycle.  This propelled Beacon BIKES!, a growing group of community members, to obtain the knowledge and expertise of a consultant to bring our collective vision to fruition.  (Links available describing some of our ideas can be found on the September 3rd posting on this blog.)

Friday, we chose Alta Planning + Design as our consultant from among three enthusiastic applicants.  Beacon BIKES! believes that pedestrians and cyclists encounter similar obstacles in getting around our neighborhood and that facilities that address both modes make the most sense.  This philosophy is in line with Alta’s belief in “integrating all modes of travel (including walking and bicycling) into the daily lives of residents and creating healthy, safe, and sustainable communities.”  Most importantly, they offer an interactive approach geared to keeping the neighborhood informed and involved throughout the process.

All this is great news, but in order for this to work, we’ll need anyone and everyone to chime in at our monthly Beacon BIKES! meetings to make this a uniquely Beacon Hill plan. The next meeting will be held at the community room of the Library at 6:30 PM on Monday, September 13th.  SDOT representatives will be in attendance, so the more Beaconites there, the more seriously our work will be taken.  If you’re not involved already, you will want to be after this meeting!

In addition, there will be opportunities to participate through community forums, walks and other interactive outings to make this circulation plan for us and by us.

As always, you can prepare for the next Beacon BIKES! Family Bike and Pedestrian Circulation Plan meeting by visiting our Facebook page: Beacon BIKES!

You may also contact Sandra Woods or Brian Dougherty of SDOT and our City Council members to let them know you are a participant in and support our Family Bike and Pedestrian Circulation Plan.

Be sure to check back to the blog for updates.  We hope to see many of you at the meeting.

Thanks Beacon Hill!

Opinion: Pedestrian crossing at Beacon and Lander demands attention

Since the light rail station opened last summer, the crosswalk at Beacon and Lander has become the busiest on Beacon Hill. The majority of the people exiting the station are headed west to go to the bank, Red Apple, the southbound bus stop, or home. All of these people must cross Beacon, and many get very creative in the process. Because the crossing is way out at the corner and runs diagonally to the corner away from Red Apple and the bus stop, many people choose to just cross through the middle of the street. Because the crosswalk—which now has flashing beacons and signage, but once only had markings on the pavement—is at the intersection with Lander, there is not only north-south traffic moving through but also people turning onto Beacon from Lander. With the long crossing, the multitude of car approaches, and the scurrying light rail riders, it is ripe for an accident.

The other day I camped out at the crosswalk from 5:00-6:00 pm and filmed about 16 pedestrian crossings when cars were around. I put them together and, with very little editing, made this video:

This was not a “best of” video, but simply what you see at every rush hour here. After bemoaning the miserable state of our most popular Beacon crossing, I started to think about how the pedestrian infrastructure at all the other light rail stations in Seattle seemed satisfactory and even exemplary. Yesterday I decided to take a ride on the light rail and check out each station and then do a little compare and contrast with what we have been dealt. The results from this foray are here:

Apparently Sound Transit is only responsible for putting things back the way they found them, and Seattle’s Complete Streets Ordinance—which requires attention to pedestrian safety among other things—does not apply to them when they do their repave this summer. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been working with Beacon BIKES! to improve this crossing, but they have limited funds. I am suggesting that Sound Transit work with us and SDOT to improve this crossing as part of the repave this summer. If you want to get involved please email me at dsahearn@gmail.com, and attend the next Beacon BIKES! meeting on Monday, June 21, at 6:00 pm at the Beacon Hill Library, 2821 Beacon Avenue South.

Be Safe!

(This is Dylan’s first post for the Beacon Hill Blog. Thanks, Dylan! — Editor.)