Aren’t greenways supposed to go somewhere?
My understanding is that we imported the concept from Portland and that the idea is that bike routes on residential streets are identified and prioritized for bikes by putting stop signs on all of the cross streets and speed bumps on the route. Naturally Seattle implements it half-way: we forget many of the stop signs and we are content with shadows and a few signs.
This fall stop signs and speed bumps appeared on 1st Ave. NW. As a resident I wasn’t consulted, but it didn’t seem to extend as far as may place so that wasn’t a surprise. I assumed that it was the lady at 70th who made a fuss demanding no parking signs for several years – but it doesn’t seem to go that far, either. The painting on the street suggest that eventually it will continue north of 85th, but for now we have a greenway between 85th and 73rd – really useful, no?
The ironic thing is that two blocks over is Greenwood with a good bike land all way from 100th to 50th. It sure would have been nice to use the money spent on paint and signs to improve that bike lane…
I assumed that the Seattle Greenways organization was behind this – and they might be but it isn’t obvious from their website. They appear to be a sock-puppet for SDOT, lots of photos of volunteers with those City=produced yard signs that Seattle likes to substitute for enforcement. They list neighborhood groups, but don’t have a list or map of greenways. Their page for Phinney Ridge shows 1st NW as an aspirational goal starting up at Carkeek and running to Woodland Park. I don’t know why this is a good idea, I don’t know if anybody in the neighborhood got asked about it, I don’t know why this is a better used of money than something like completing the Interurban, but evidently it made their list.
Now that it’s been built somebody needs to update things.
