Seattle Cancels Bike Lane Plans

The city of Seattle is cancelling plans to add bike lanes to 35th Avenue NE.

"This represents a blow to the nearly eight years of community efforts to bring safety improvements to the Northeast Seattle arterial, and follows more than a year of contentious fighting between local safety advocates and business interests and their supporters," according to an article by Chris Priest, who also adds the opinion that the decision is another example of Mayor Jenny Durkan overruling earlier planning efforts and catering to business owners.

The article includes long passages both from the city's statement on the decision as well a statement from an organization that supported the bike lane, Safe 35th.

Instead of a bike lane, the city will reconfigure the street to add a turn lane. "So far, SDOT has not released any data, studies or engineering to indicate why they chose the turning lane alternative rather than adding bike lanes (which have extensive data, studies and engineering to support their inclusion in the design)," according to Priest.