Welcome, and News on the Fremont Bridge Project

My name is Matt Stevenson and I recently volunteered to serve on the board of the Fremont Neighborhood Council to address bicycle commuting issues. Towards that end, I attended the Fremont Bridge approach replacement project open house at B.F. Day School Wednesday night. I talked to several of the engineers from Parsons-Brinckerhoff and was pretty disappointed by their lack of attention to the bicycle issue. I had a lengthy discussion with Darrel Chambers about a variety of concerns including the double-blind right turn problems for south and north-bound traffic on the bridge, striping on 34th and Fremont, and a few others.

On the Florentia Street problem, I drew a diagram illustrating the current situation and what I consider to be some workable alternatives. He quickly became frustrated and said "Look, our main objective is to fix this bridge." To which I replied "Who are you fixing the bridge FOR? Fremont and the surrounding neighborhoods have the highest concentration of bicycle commuters in the state, and the Fremont bridge carries a huge volume of bicycles." I pointed out that this fact warrants increased attention to bicycles in the design process. He was dismissive of Census data, calling it "fuzzy," and said he wanted to see "real numbers."

I mentioned this to Rob Gorman, the Project Manger for the City of Seattle, and he said that Cascade Bicycle Club has generated numbers on bicycle commuters. However, he said this with a clearly discernible sneer, so my suspicion is that they are not figuring heavily into their deliberations.

I was somewhat taken aback by this attitude, but I did the Census research myself and I'm sending the numbers and a map to both of these guys today. If you would like to see the map, go here and click on the "bicycle commuters" link.

I also sent an email to Peter Lagerway at City of Seattle and asked him if the City has done any "bicycle traffic counts" on the Fremont Bridge, and if so, why the engineers have not yet seen them. If the City has not yet done these counts, I asked him when they are planning to do them. This seems like a pretty critical piece of information to me, particularly in light of Mayor Nickels' stated desire to make Seattle "one of the most pedestrian and bicycle friendly cities in the nation."

I'll post responses as I get them.

Cheers,

Matt