This Wednesday, October 6th, in room 202 of the Good Shepherd Center will be a whirlwind tour of everything going on in the community. It should be entertaining and we encourage everyone to come out.
From 7:00 to 7:15 we’ll quickly do an introduction round table and mention budget cuts impacting Wallingford such as the closure of the Fremont District Coordinator office.
We will then vote on a N Green Lake Way road diet proposal if we can reach consensus before the meeting. The basic idea with road diets is to reduce cars from 4 lanes to 3 lanes while adding bike lanes. This improves safety for bikes and pedestrians while calming traffic. When well implemented as the road diet was on Stone Way N the results are all good, with no restriction of automotive throughput. A great study of the effects of the Stone Way N road diet is available online. The proposal for Green Lake Way N amounts to finishing the job and is detailed here.
And that’s just the first 15 minutes! Here’s the rest of what we’ll be covering:
- 7:15 – 7:45: Gas Works Park sediment investigation status from Judith Noble for the playground that was promised in the Pro Parks Levy.
- 7:45 – 8:15: Farmers Market site selection progress from Judy Kirkoff – process and investigation status for proposed sites, plus selection of a community council representative for the site selection working group.
- 8:15 – 9:00: Transfer station status update and discussion with SPU (Bill Benzer). Focus will be on proposed zoning changes which would extend the transfer station so it is adjacent to residential Wallingford.
It seems very helpful to have this community meeting announced in this handy and very popular means of cuommunication for many in Wallingford.
i am curious about the heading — that it will be a whirlwind tour of EVERYTHING going on in Wallingford. I see no info, update or even mention of the SHARE homeless shelter at GOG which began 3 weeks ago and got more comments on this blog than any other topic EVER! How is this NOT one of the everything going on in Wallingford?
Um… because the world hasn’t come to an end in, as you point out, almost a month? Maybe that has something to do with it?
Could you please explain further the purpose of the vote on the N Green Lake Way road diet. Who is voting on it? And what will a yay or nay vote mean insofar as getting the project completed? Thanks.
Calling it a “road diet” and “traffic calming” is very misleading. When 50th got its so called road diet(with no bike lane) the calming effect was major backups, and 51st, 52nd, and 53rd becoming major speedways. The traffic goes somewhere.
Steve
Re: Community council meeting. Sorry for any misunderstanding: I am prepared to talk about the sediment cleanup at Gas Works Park but have no information on the children’s playground. For that issue please see David Graves in the Parks Department.
Judith Noble
Steve@4: Has 50th undergone a road diet? I’m pretty sure it hasn’t.
Regarding the SHARE situation- the council helps represent the neighborhood to the city government. We also side towards issues where we have more neighborhood consensus. The SHARE shelter situation is a contentious issue between neighbors and the church, so the council has not gotten involved so far. If you have a particular ask of the council please contact wccprez at wallingford dot org and I can work with you on either contacting the right people in city government or having the council help out.
50th street reconfiguration wasn’t a road diet as I understand it, just a reconfiguration to prevent accidents. 50th was over capacity before the reconfiguration, and it’s over capacity now. I don’t see how the reconfiguration would have made cut throughs on 51st through 53rd worse since that side of the street remained 2 lanes while gaining a turn lane. It may be that cut throughs are worse because of all the density that has gone into Ballard. The swerving and accident rates before the reconfiguration were really terrible, and I think that 50th street does feel safer now.
The Green Lake Way N road diet vote would be by the WCC board, but as there’s no time for discussion this month we’ll table the vote if there’s any opposition or ask for changes. What the vote would do is ask SDOT to study extending the Stone Way N road diet to that stretch of road. SDOT has agreed that the section is worth studying if the neighborhood councils for Wallingford and Green Lake support the concept. SDOT is very aware of the throughput issues at the 50th and Stone Way N intersection and will not approve any road diet proposal that impacts throughput there. One possibility is that they have the road diet only going from 52nd to 55th, not impacting the intersection at all, but the proposal includes the intersection as well in the hopes that they will come up with a light reconfiguration that actually improves throughput (particularly on 50th).
Road diets are great, but there is a fundamental flaw on Stone Way: the bike lane is between the parking strip and the road. This leaves bikers open to both hazards: car doors being opened unexpectedly and drivers sideswiping them.
Having lived in Europe, I’ve experienced a better way: put the bike lane between the sidewalk and the parked cars. Not only does this make it easier for bikers to get on/off the bike lane, but it is also safer.
We know whom to contact in the city; many have. You said you represent the neighborhood to the city. Read the 4 threads of neighbor comments on this blog please – over 100 comments in each thread and decide- are people in Wallingford concerned? What besides the GOG debacle are they concerned about?
Cathy – of the several hundred comments, how many were made by the same 5 or 6 people?
I’m not sure why bike lanes are inside parked cars in most of the U.S. and outside in Europe. Does anyone know why one method is chosen over the other?
In terms of GOG, we all have read the threads, which are long not just because of interest, but because the changes have divided the neighborhood. Given the divisiveness of the issue I don’t see what function we could play, beyond being a neutral forum for discussion. Do you think that would be valuable?
Yes, I do. Isaid so in the blogs and also in my visit to the office.
The GOG minister moderated the first discussion and a long tiem highly invested church member the second one. A neutral mod woudl be helpful.. there are still 15 homeless peopel loose at 7 am supposed to leave the neighborhood– when I am nto working my little part time jobs I see almost daily new peopel hanging around in the neighborhood inside the boundaries. That, ot me , is a probelem.
The whoel other side of this is that there is likely much which a neighborhood which is respected and listened to and treated politely may do to ease and/or improve conditions fo rhomeles speople in the area.
@Doug:
A few years back 50th used to have 2 lanes in each direction. I don’t know if it was an official “road diet” or not, but one of the eastbound lanes was eliminated and replaced with a center turn lane.
I’m on 50th and I must say traffic is completely horrendous, and gets worse by the day. I don’t know if that’s because of the road diet, or all the condos and other growth which has cropped up in Ballard over the past few years.
Also since parking is allowed most of the time in the right lane heading westbound, technically the road is just one lane in each direction.
We need to push for the relocation of the transfer station to Interbay; building a bigger one in the present location solves no problems.
Really dumb
bmacke@13: 50th does not have a continuous center turn lane. It comes-and-goes, which probably doesn’t help with traffic flow.
Also, having a bike lane between parked cars and sidewalks is not a good solution. You still have to deal with the “dooring” dangers from passengers exiting cars (who are less likely to expect a bicycle approaching from their side) and bikes would be less visible to cars making right turns (and left turns from oncoming traffic). It probably works better in some parts of Europe due to the ubiquity of bicyclists.
True, the center turn lane on 50th does only run from 7/11 to Stone Way. It’s hard to complain when I don’t really have any better solutions to suggest. Traffic would probably flow better westbound if no parking were allowed at all on 50th.
Could someone type up the results of the meeting and let people know where they are?
If you post times, locations etc re the meetings in advance in this blog, my guess is that more people will attend. When we know what is going on and when and where.. we are able to schedule and attend.