Bikes 01 Aug 2007 01:22 pm
Stone Way Likes Bikes
Josh and I are going to ride around Fremont with the SeattleLikesBikes.org crew tonight. We meet at 4:30 at Gasworks, then ride to Fremont. We’ll ride our bikes through Fremont where the city says we ought to ride them, following all laws. If you’re on a bike, come join us! Josh and I will have an early dinner in Fremont somewhere afterwards.
One or two of you are probably asking, “But Cam, your hip and foot are all messed up. How are you going to do this?” The plan, in a word, is aspirin. Plus I see my LMT tomorrow. Besides, it’ll be good for the cabin fever. I’ll probably only do a lap or two anyway. It’s going to hurt, but I’m okay with that, because this issue makes me really mad.
I’ve written my share of letters about the Stone Way bike lane debacle. But with mega-wealthy landowner Suzie Burke throwing her weight around, a little polite letter-writing doesn’t seem like enough to me. I want to help show City Hall that bicyclists will come out and act in support of the Bike Master Plan. Riding a bike where the city is claiming I should ride it? That sounds to me like some very mellow direct action indeed. And it sounds like fun, too.
I’m also curious: certainly this spineless reversal by the city looks like it’ll have a terrible effect in those blocks. But though I’ve been through Fremont by tandem a fair number of times, we don’t usually go up Stone Way, so I’m not sure exactly how terrible it is. (Who would want to grind up Stone Way without bike lanes? Not me.) This evening, I’ll find out for myself first-hand.
What I and many other cyclists want is a connected network of adequate bicycle street facilities. Does the Burke-Gilman connection north have to be on Stone Way, and not a nearby street? Eh, I could be persuaded, though it’s my belief that the Bike Master Plan as written has been thoroughly scrutinized by people who know what they’re talking about. The bottom line, though, is this: it’s got to have that connection. Six blocks of gap? No good. Won’t do.
In vaguely related news, oil prices are at an all-time high. Quoth the BBC, “Oil prices have climbed to a record high of $78.71 a barrel amid worries about whether oil supplies can meet global demand… The Department of Energy said that oil inventories had fallen by a higher-than-expected 6.5 million barrels in the week ending 27 July. Analysts had been forecasting a far more modest fall of about 700,000 barrels.” Just a wee bit off there.