It’s Monday morning and you’re biking to work. You’re riding along the Burke-Gilman Trail when you encounter a big patch of broken glass threatening to flat your tires and ruin the start of your week. So what do you do? Well, if you’re Stephanie Frans, you swing by Counterbalance Bicycles to borrow a broom and clean the mess up. Thank you, Stephanie, for saving the day!
Mayor McGinn spoke at the Spokane Street Viaduct completion ceremony last December. Photo courtesy of SDOT
The City recently completed its largest transportation project in three decades, the Spokane Street Viaduct, and managed to come in under budget.
These cost savings, achieved through favorable bidding climate and strong oversight of the $163 million project, will now be used to invest in various transportation projects, the city announced today.
Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle Department of Transportation Director Peter Hahn announced that these funds, totaling$11.75 million, will be invested in sidewalks, basic road maintenance, upgrades to the city’s traffic signal system, work to complete the Burke-Gilman “Missing Link” and support for Seattle’s updated Transit Master Plan.
“We are working hard to capture these savings and spend them on the things that Seattleites care about,” stated McGinn. “That’s why we are using these dollars to support pedestrian safety, invest in basic infrastructure upgrades, road maintenance and planning for the future. I thank our Department of Transportation for their stewardship of taxpayer dollars in their work to bring in Spokane Street under-budget.”
The work that will be funded by these savings include:
- Major road reconstruction – $3.5 million
- Freight corridor improvement – $1 million
- Repair of two city-owned retaining walls – $700,000
- Additional funds for crack sealing program, a pothole prevention technique – $200,000. This nearly doubles the Mayor’s budget for crack sealing to $450,000
- Bike Master Plan implementation- $1 million
- Sidewalk improvements/Pedestrian Master Plan implementation- $1 million
- Neighborhood Street Fund – $1 million
- Adaptive Traffic Signal study and work on recommended projects – $2.5 million
- Support for Transit Master Plan implementation – $800,000
- Only in Seattle funding for infrastructure investments in neighborhood business districts – $50,000
The funding for this work is included in Mayor McGinn’s Supplemental Budget proposal to the City Council for the first quarter of 2013.
“By completing the Spokane Street Viaduct project under budget, we are able to fund needed transportation investments elsewhere in Seattle,” said Hahn. “These resources will help make walking, driving and biking easier and safer for everyone.”
On Friday, Jan. 25, members of the NE Seattle community, Friends of the Burke-Gilman Trail and Cascade Bicycle Club met with representatives of Children’s Hospital and their design team to take a look at their proposed Burke-Gilman Trail connection.
Architect Jim Keller walks community members through the proposed designs
As part of the public benefit of Children’s Major Institution Master Plan and its Livable Streets Initiative, Children’s wants to provide a pedestrian, bicycle- and wheelchair-friendly connection from the Burke-Gilman Trail to Sand Point Way NE, just south of NE 50th Street.
A combination of bridges and a shared-use path, the connection would link the Bryant and Laurelhurst communities and also provide better access to public transit along Sand Point Way NE.
The general design was approved in April 2010 but Children’s has continued to refine the design through a public open house and various meetings through December 2012.
At the meeting on Friday, Children’s Director of Transportation and Sustainability Paulo Nunes-Ueno and landscape architect Jim Keller walked participants through the two concepts designs and welcomed feedback.
The connections in the concepts differed from one another in that one takes users on an elevated bridge across a parking lot to Sand Point Way NE while the other connection is a less-elevated, windy path through parkland.
In designing the connection, the landscape architects and geoengineers are dealing with a few environmental challenges such as environmentally critical areas, steep slopes, tree removal, parkland and the impact of retaining walls.
While there are trade-offs, Nunes-Ueno said the Burke-Gilman trail connection will benefit the health and welfare of the greater community.
In building the connection, Children’s will:
- provide an ADA-accessible public connection to the new intersection on Sand Point Way, the newest and safest pedestrian and bike crossing along that street;
- preserve the existing significant trees and landscape;
- improve the Environmentally Critical Area;
- remove invasive non-native plants from the public property;
- remove diseased trees and replace them with appropriate native species in healthy condition;
- provide ongoing maintenance, allowing Friends of the Burke-Gilman Trail to focus on other areas of need along the trail;
- design new impervious surfaces and site development using Green Storm Water infrastructure engineering methods.
“The design concept has been subjected to extensive public review and comment, which is still ongoing,” said Todd Johnson, Vice President of Facilities at Children’s. “We’re still shaping the design based on input.”
There will be an open house regarding this project on Saturday, Feb. 2 at 10 a.m. at University of Washington’s Gould Hall. The design team will present the concepts to the general public then and field community input.
Children’s hopes to build the Burke-Gilman connection as soon as Children’s Phase 1 hospital expansion project is completed.
In a press conference today, Mayor Mike McGinn, Councilmember Tom Rasmussen and Seattle Department of Transportation officials announced a series of road safety improvements to streets and intersections in Ballard. They also announced that the City will conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement study for the project to complete the “Missing Link” of the Burke-Gilman Trail in Ballard.
“We are eager to complete the Missing Link, and conducting a full EIS is the best way to break the legal log jam on this project,” said McGinn. “We are also moving ahead on safety improvements on the street that can be implemented quickly to help everyone share the road.”
“For over a decade the City has been working to complete the Burke-Gilman Trail. I am confident that with careful planning both bicyclists and freight and industrial traffic will be able to co-exist successfully in Ballard,” added Rasmussen, chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee.
The first segment of the Burke-Gilman Trail opened from Gas Works Park in Seattle to Kenmore in 1978. Since then, the City of Seattle has worked to extend the trail westward to Ballard and Golden Gardens. Currently, the trail is not constructed between 11th Avenue NW and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, creating a gap between segments of the trail. City records show there were 45 bicycle crashes that were responded to on Northwest 45th Street between 11th Avenue and Shilshole Avenue NW in a four year period (2008-2011). That location, part of the “Missing Link,” is the highest bicycle collision location in the city.
In 2003 the City Council adopted a plan to close this “Missing Link” along the Shilshole alignment. Since then, opponents of the project have gone to court to impede its construction. Earlier this year the City’s Hearing Examiner reversed, in part, her previous affirmation of the SEPA Determination of Non-Significance for the Missing Link Project, and remanded it to the Seattle Department of Transportation to prepare an EIS, limited in scope to traffic hazards in the segment of the project along Shilshole Avenue Northwest, between 17th Avenue NW and Vernon.
SDOT has decided to undertake the preparation of a full EIS for the entire project, which the City believes is the most expeditious path to take in the interest of the project. This process will begin in 2013, but will take several more years to reach its conclusion due to the likelihood of further legal appeals over adequacy of any new EIS. A comprehensive EIS is therefore the best approach to expedite the process, by doing the most extensive environmental review, which will be more difficult to challenge legally.
In the meantime there are a number of improvements that need to be made to address safety concerns for bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as vehicular traffic, in the general area where this trail project is proposed. SDOT has prepared specific recommended improvements that will be constructed in 2013 or 2014. These improvements include:
- Advisory bicycle lanes on NW 45th Street and other safety improvements on that section of roadway
- Installation of striping and signage to create a traffic island and a 4-way stop at Ballard Avenue NW and 17th Avenue NW
- Striping and signage at NW 48th Street and Ballard Avenue NW to improve vehicular line of sight and slow speeds.
- Shoulder maintenance and replacement along degraded sections of the shoulder along Shilshole Avenue NW.
- Installation of a curb ramp to allow bicycles access to the sidewalk to queue for the existing bike lane headed north on 24th Avenue NW at the intersection of Shilshole Avenue NW / 24th Avenue NW and NW Market Street. Current conditions provide very limited queuing space for bicycles.
These improvements are independent from the proposed trail project, and are intended to either enhance public safety or provide routine roadway maintenance. The City will coordinate with, and take input from, bicycle and freight stakeholders in the implementation of these and any additional safety projects.
“The Burke-Gilman Trail is a busy, multi-use trail that provides an important connection to residents and businesses in Ballard. I’m glad to see that the City is moving ahead with its plans to close the Missing Link and with these other safety improvements,” said Davidya Kasperzyk, Founding Board Member of Friends of the Burke-Gilman Trail.
If you’re in town, please join Mayor Mike McGinn, Councilmember Tom Rasmussen and Seattle Department of Transportation officials this afternoon underneath the Ballard Bridge, where they will announce significant road safety improvements to the “Missing Link” of the Burke-Gilman Trail.
The Missing Link section of the Burke-Gilman Trail refers to the area where the trail ends at Ballard’s Fred Meyer and people are left to find their own route to the Chittenden Locks where the trail picks up again. The Missing Link also includes the most dangerous rail road track crossings in the city, on Shilshole Avenue below the Ballard Bridge, which is the cause of numerous bicycle crashes every year.
It is at this location, underneath the Ballard Bridge at 4500 Shilshole Avenue Northwest, where the Mayor and other city officials will announce new road safety improvements, as well as detail the next steps the City will take on the “Missing Link” of the Burke-Gilman Trail in Ballard.
Join them Thursday, Dec. 27, at 2:30 p.m.
