We did it! On Monday afternoon, Seattle City Council passed the SR 520 resolution, ensuring safe and convenient connections between neighborhoods for everyone.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but it couldn’t be truer than it is right now: It’s amazing what people working together to make their neighborhood better can accomplish.

Just a few months ago, plans for Seattle side of the SR 520 bridge replacement project did not include critical biking and walking connections. We were poised to repeat the mistakes of the past, further dividing our communities and making our city less safe for kids and less livable for working families.

Powerful corporations were pushing for a roads-only approach to the project with little concern for making our streets safer for everybody. Politicians were talking about the project making our streets safer but not taking the concrete actions to create what families need.

Fortunately, caring neighbors in Montlake, Madison Park, Roanoke, Portage Bay, Laurelhurst and Capitol Hill came together as a community and spoke up for a better future. They demanded the SR 520 replacement project reconnect our neighborhoods and make it safe, comfortable and convenient for everyone, from an 8-year-old child to his 80-year-old grandmother, to bike and walk in their neighborhood.

Everyone agreed: if we’re going to spend billions of dollars on a new 520 bridge, one that will stand long past our lifetimes, we have a responsibility to get it right.

When the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) asked the community for input on the project, over one thousand neighbors spoke up in support of investing in biking and walking connections to make their neighborhood streets safe for our children and continuing the regional shared-use trail across the new Portage Bay Bridge.

Cascade Bicycle Club worked hand in hand with these caring neighbors and our friends at Seattle Neighborhood Greenways to make sure our representatives heard this message loud and clear and knew how to fix the project.

We helped people like you write over 1500 letters to the Seattle City Council asking them to tell WSDOT to get SR 520 right. We delivered a packet of community letters showing overwhelming community support for improved biking and walking connections and technical guidance on how WSDOT could make these connections happen. And we worked with our City representatives and their staff on the language of a Resolution to make all of this a reality.

Now, we have a plan for a better future.

Our representatives heard our voices loud and clear and this afternoon the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a Resolution that will help ensure we get SR 520 right.

The Resolution calls on WSDOT to redesign the biking and walking connections to and through Montlake and the west end to make them work for kids and families, develop options for including a shared-use trail across the new Portage Bay Bridge, collaborate with city agencies and the community to improve the project design before it is finalized and create an interim plan ensuring biking and walking connections will work during the years of bridge construction.

Now, as WSDOT works to secure funding and complete the Seattle side of the SR 520 project, we’ve laid the foundation for the project to make it safer for kids and families to bike and walk on their neighborhood streets.

All because people worked together to make their neighborhood better.

Please thank the City Council for passing the SR 520 Resolution and making it safer for kids and families to bike and walk on our neighborhood streets.

It’s amazing what people working together to make their neighborhood better can accomplish.

Over the past four months, caring neighbors in Montlake, Madison Park, Laurelhurst and Capitol Hill have come together as a community. They’re asking for the SR 520 replacement project to help reconnect our neighborhoods and make it safe, comfortable and convenient for everyone, from an 8-year-old child to his 80-year-old grandmother, to bike and walk in their neighborhood.

In response to this groundswell of overwhelming community support (and nearly 1,200 people like you writing the Seattle City Council telling them to get SR 520 right!), the City Council introduced a Resolution calling for the city to work with WSDOT to improve walking and biking connections in Montlake and to figure out how to build a shared use trail on the new Portage Bay Bridge.

But wait, it gets better. Councilmember Conlin has introduced an amendment to help ensure the biking and walking improvements work for people of all ages and abilities. This means they’ll build protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways instead of just slapping some paint on the road and calling it good.

Specifically, the resolution and Conlin’s amendment call for the Washington State Department of Transportation to:

• Develop options for a shared use trail on the new Portage Bay Bridge, while working to minimize the width of the bridge and its overall visual and environmental impacts;
• Redesign the north/south biking and walking connections from the University of Washington to south of Lake Washington Blvd to make them work for kids and families;
• Collaborate with city agencies and stakeholder groups to improve the project design before it is finalized; and
• Create an interim plan that ensures biking and walking connections will work during all stages of the project as it gets built in phases over the coming years.

Just a few months ago the plans for SR 520 had us poised to repeat the mistakes of the past, further dividing our communities and making it more dangerous for people to walk and bike in their neighborhood. Now, we’re poised to get SR 520 right. All because people worked together to make their neighborhood better.

Join thousands of your friends and neighbors and tell the City Council to pass the 520 Resolution and support Councilmember Conlin’s amendment to make it safe for kids and families to bike and walk on their neighborhood streets.

The first steps to ending an addiction are coming clean, admitting you have a problem and asking for help. Last month, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) took these first steps.

When asked at a City Council meeting how they would work to make the Seattle side of the SR 520 corridor safe for people of all ages and abilities to walk and bike, Julie Meredith, the SR 520 Program Director for WSDOT, explained that their main focus is moving cars and admitted when it comes to walking and bicycling, “We don’t excel at that.” 

All you have to do is look at the dark, scary and dangerous trail under the Portage Bay Bridge to know WSDOT has a serious problem when it comes to making it safe for people to walk and bike.

But they did more than admit their problem; WSDOT asked the City of Seattle for help. Fortunately, the City of Seattle has the ability to help WSDOT get this project done right – but they need to hear from you today.

Thanks to “overwhelming support” from the community and nearly 800 people like you writing the City Council telling them to get SR 520 right, the Council is already working on a Resolution that will call for the City working with WSDOT to improve walking and biking connections in Montlake and build a shared use trail on the Portage Bay Bridge.  

But there’s no guarantee that the Council will pass this Resolution. They need to hear loud and clear that everyone, from an 8-year old child to his 80-year old grandmother, should have the freedom to safely walk and bike in and through the Seattle side of the SR 520 corridor.

Tell the Seattle City Council and Mayor McGinn to help WSDOT make critical biking and walking connections with the SR 520 replacement project >>