Street Smarts and Road Rage: Your Chance to Guide the City

The Seattle Department of Transportation is offering a very unusual way for you to comment on traffic problems you may wish to see fixed in Wallingford. Do you want a way to safely cross Greenlake Way? Do you want faster traffic on N 45^th so you don’t have to wait for pedestrians or stop at red lights? Do you want bicycle-only streets? Well, here is an opportunity to sound off.

Rather than some multiple-choice questionnaire they are offering an interactive map where you can leave comments specific to a particular location. First, go to their website by clicking here.  You will see a map which you need to enlarge (+/- button in the upper right hand corner) and move around with the magic hand to finally get your screen full of Wallingford like the picture here. You will see a hopelessly confusing bunch of icons, but we’re here to help.

The blue, green and grey dots with a number tell you the number of community comments that are hidden behind that dot. Click on it and the map will zoom in to show the various comments at that location. You’ll have to zoom back out with the +/- button to go look at a different part of the neighborhood.

You can see blue comic strip speech bubbles, green two dashes and a grey icon with a pentagon-like shape on it. The blue bubbles are someone else’s comments. The green dashes are a line a neighbor has drawn to show where they want change. The grey icon allows you to draw an area where you might want something different to happen. Go ahead click on a few to see what your neighbor’s have already said. All are interesting. Some are quite expected and a few are downright amusingly goofy.

As the website says, when you are ready, click on the Comment Now button. It will offer you a chance to post one of the three types of comments you’ve already seen on the map. If you click on the blue bubble it will give you a green cross that you can move to the spot where you want to see a new crosswalk, a traffic signal, more street trees, a wider street, etc. Once you place it a box will open up so you can have your say. Similarly if you click on the green two dashes you can draw a line where you want change and once you’ve drawn it a box will open up so you can explain what and why. If you want to mark an area, such as where some streets intersect, click on the gray icon. See what others have already done to see what you might be able to offer.

Whenever you finish with a comment, line or area a form will open up to ask you for your residence zip code, your gender and your race/ethnicity.

Go ahead. Have your say. Before they take it down at the end of July, tell the Seattle Department of Transportation how you’d like to see them proceed with their next round of changes to our streets. If nothing else, read the comments that have already been posted to see what change your neighbors want.