New bike lanes through South Lake Union

The city unveiled some new bike lanes today along 9th Avenue through South Lake Union. It's an alternate to Westlake, which keeps bikes off the trolley lines. I noticed the restriping preliminaries for the past couple of weeks, but only because I walk on foot down part of 9th when I'm walking to work from the bus. I don't know how many cyclists know about this, but I suspect not many. Anyway, there is some intriguing, somewhat confusing signage at the crosswalk of 9th and Denny - looks like some sort of alternative bike crossing signal has been installed, with a lot of bike striping.

Rain-snow-hail

I rode the bus Friday, because the weather service threatened snow. And sure enough, even as I took this picture of a cyclist riding by my bus stop Fridy afternoon, it started snowing. (Rather difficult to take a picture of snow wtih a cell-phone camera, I might add.)

Snow, in April?! In North Dakota, maybe, but not in Seattle. Enough with the erratic weather, already.

Light change slows us down

The city must have changed the way the traffic lights function at the intersection of Westlake and Dexter/Fremont, because this is the second time I've been trapped on the south side of Dexter while the Fremont Bridge is up. As you can see, I had a lot of company.

Earlier this year, when the Fremont drawbridge went up, you could hit the pedestrian crosswalk button and get a green light to go across even when all the traffic was stopped. In other words, you could cross to the safer side of the road and hang out on the wide sidewalk in front of the bridge while the bridge took its slow time going up and down.

But now, pedestrians/bikes on the south side of the intersection don't get a green light until well after the bridge has gone down and a full cycle of traffic has gone through the intersection. The result: a bunch of us cyclists piled up on the narrow, busy south side of the intersection, waiting for the light to change. Annoying.

Slow start to a year's commute

The unusually chilly spring we're having is keeping me guessing. My goal is to ride twice a week now -- three times if possible -- and take the bus on other days. Meanwhile, I do an OK job fitting "errands by bike" rides in on the weekends.

My friend John wants to do the STP again, I can tell, but I've decided this year that I don't want to commit that many hours to bicycling. It's not that I don't love it, it's just that I want to grow a good vegetable garden this year and have enough energy left over for commuting and errands. Those seem like good planetary goals, and riding my bike 50 or 100 miles every weekend leaves little energy for other things. Maybe next year.

We ordered pizza the other night from a new Ballard location that makes all deliveries by bicycle! It was really good pizza, too. I think the place was called Snooze Junction. I didn't get a good look at the delivery guy's bike, as it was dark, but he had a heck of a headlight on it.

Winter is almost over?

Let me be recorded that I rode my bike to and from work for the first time this year on Feb. 22. It helped that I was able to get out of work a bit early. Still, it was pretty dark by 5:45 p.m., so the headlights were necessary. In another two weeks, it will be much better because of the start of daylight savings time.

Not that many cyclists out there. Some, not a lot.

Winter hiatus

Well, I'm sad to say that I did stop riding my bike to work a few days before Thanksgiving, for the season. I own a bus pass now, and I know how to use it!

Although I felt fairly safe riding home, it was taking an extra 10 minutes to get home via my very low-traffic, but poorly lit, back route. The low light caused me to slow down significantly, and so I was getting home at 6:40. This, in turn, was making my family just a little crazy with worry. So I decided to buy a Metro bus pass instead (useful for lots of other reasons!) and stick to biking during daylight hours.

So now I'm using the bike instead to run errands around the neighborhood -- to the library, the hardware store, the grocery.

It's been a funny winter, weather-wise, and of course it's far from over so it's hard to say how it will turn out. But we've had long stretches of dry weather punctuated by extreme days of incredibly high rainfall. This is what the climate scientists said would happen. Are the predictions coming true, or is it just a coincidence? Will we ever know?

Traffic

I had to drive the car on Tuesday - a complicated family schedule made the car a necessity - but I observed, while driving down Aurora Avenue, that traffic is pretty slow at this time of day. In fact, it took me 21 minutes to get to work. Usually it takes me 32 minutes if I ride my bike.

I rode to work on my bike Wednesday, but not Thursday - predictions of steady rain in the evening were all too true. Time spent walking to, waiting for, then riding, the bus from work to home: about 40 minutes. Normal bike commute time from work to home: about 45 minutes. (I'm slower on the way home because it's dark and there's a big hill to climb.)

I took my bike Friday. So, 1 day of driving, one day of busing, 2 days of biking. I never would have guessed I could ride so frequently in November, normally our wettest month.

Riding in the dark

This really was the week that I expected to quit. And yet, armed with my flashing lights and a homemade vest striped with reflective tape, I went forth into the darkness each night at 6 p.m., riding across Westlake and along Dexter, then over to the Burke Gilman trail and on home in a new, winter-time route that takes me on back streets for a good portion of the way.

And it's just fine, thanks.

Still. Every afternoon, as afternoon fades to evening darkness, I fight a rising sense of panic that I am doing something irrational and I really ought to quit. Sitting at my computer in the newsroom, I cast my eye over to the window and notice how very dark it is out there. When it is time to go, I don my winter riding clothes in the locker room, thinking to myself, this is nuts. I should not be riding in the dark.

But then, when I get outside, some of the panic starts to fall away. The city is well-lit by streetlights, after all. My blinking lights in the back are visible for blocks. My front lights are more than adequate for illuminating dark stretches of roadway. My jacket is screaming fluorescent yellow-green, and my homemade vest glows in headlights.

I go down Boren to Republican, both side streets at the edge of the downtown core. I stop at the stop signs, pull in behind cars at the traffic lights. I get onto Dexter, joining a small group of other cyclists who are doing the same thing. We ride through the Mercer intersection and climb the hill, our tail lights flashing like some sort of moving Christmas-tree display.

I cross the Fremont bridge, where I count seven or eight similarly-adorned cyclists. I go left now, getting on the Burke-Gilman, which is very dark. I ride slowly, perhaps 9 or 10 mph. The trail is quiet. The darkness is pleasant in a private, almost secretive way that I had not anticipated.

Every commute is an adventure.

Bridge in the fog

These recent mornings have been especially beautiful because of the play of light and fog. The Aurora Avenue Bridge was as striking as a modern sculpture.

I'm tracking the amount of time it takes to commute, from my door to the bike cage and back. I took a different route home through the neighborhood yesterday - more hills, fewer cars, 37 minutes.

The ride to work this morning took 31 minutes.

Foggy morning on the Burke-Gilman

Not just my imagination

Yes, there really are more cyclists out there, according to this press release from the city:

SEATTLE – The number of bicyclist entering downtown during the morning commute jumped 31 percent since 2000, according to a recent count released today by the Seattle Department of Transportation.

“More and more people are choosing to leave the car in the garage and find a different way to get to work,” said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. “We are making it easier and safer to get around Seattle by walking and biking and we are starting to see the results. By taking a bike instead of a car, people are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and leaving the city and the planet a better place.”

In April, Nickels released Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan to significantly expand the city’s network of bike lanes, make it easier and safer to ride throughout the city and reduce greenhouse gases. The downtown count, along with surveys around other parts of the city, will set a baseline for the goal of tripling the number of bicyclists by 2017.

“The goal of this effort is simple,” Nickels said “We want to make Seattle the best and the safest city in the nation for bicycling.”

So far this year, the city has installed more than 18 miles of new bicycle lanes and shared-lane markings, or “sharrows”, and 30 additional miles of improvements are planned for 2008.

Seattle’s Climate Action Plan calls for an increase in bicycling as one means to reduce harmful greenhouse gasses and meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. A study of 2005 data released earlier this week shows that Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions had fallen to 8 percent below 1990 levels.

Signs I love

I do really love the way the city has "signed up" the Fremont Bridge area - although I've certainly seen motorists ignore this sign. Somehow, though, it tends to make the majority of them mind their manners.

It's getting a lot darker when I ride home now, and this marks the last week of daylight savings time. Still, I've been pleased at how well my new Cateye bike light has lit up the street in front of me. I feel both visible (to motorists) and capable of seeing the road. I run both the light and a white blinkie, side-by-side on my handlebars. Other cyclists have lights attached to their helmets, another good option.

I went to the Seattle Outdoor Fabric Store last week and bought several yards of highly reflective tape, some of which I've sewn onto my panniers. I think I'm going back today because I'd like to fashion for myself a super-visible vest. All the bike vests I've seen have been lacking in some way or the other (in my opinion) so I'm going to see if I can do my own. The problem is that the highly-reflective silver tape that works so well when a car's lights hit you is also the same color, more or less, as the road, so when it's dusk - not yet dark - you become invisible. Some combination of a bright base color, sewn over with strips of reflective tape, seems best. Construction workers wear vests like these, but they don't go down in back far enough, in my opinion. You want something that covers your butt.