Get Involved in Exciting Advocacy in 2022!
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways 2022 Priorities
Despite another challenging year, together we made huge strides in 2021. With your help, we'll go even further in 2022 towards creating a city where every neighborhood is a great place to walk, bike, and live.
We are a bottom up organization, where our volunteers help set our priorities for the year ahead. This year we have five major focus areas:
- Vision Zero
- Whose Streets? Our Streets!
- UnGap the Map
- Cafe Streets
- Stay Healthy Streets
We are also working on three other citywide efforts including Safe Routes to School, the 15 Minute City, and Home Zones. And, as always, our amazing volunteer coalition is working on dozens of neighborhood projects around the city.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is a grassroots, people-powered movement. We do what we do because of the energy, ideas, and hands-on involvement of our volunteers and our local neighborhood groups. Get involved here – no experience necessary!
Vision Zero
The City of Seattle committed to Vision Zero – the goal to have zero traffic deaths or serious injuries on city streets by 2030 – but our pedestrian safety crisis peaked in 2021 with 31 people killed. We fought for and won funding to permanently triple the Seattle Dept. of Transportation’s Vision Zero budget, which will vastly increase the number of critical safety projects that are built starting in 2022! This year, we’ll push for a greater emphasis on safety in funding and planning our street improvements, and focus on three corridors that are especially dangerous: Aurora Ave N, MLK Jr Way S, and the Georgetown to Downtown connection through SODO. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Sign up to get updates about this campaign
- Join local advocacy groups focused on Aurora Ave N (Aurora Reimagined Coalition), MLK Jr Way S (Rainier Valley Greenways-Safe Streets) and SODO safety (Duwamish Valley Safe Streets).
- Email Clara@SeattleGreenways.org for more information.
Whose Streets? Our Streets!
Street safety means more than safety from speeding vehicles — streets need to feel comfortable and welcoming for everyone. Our BIPOC working group is collaborating with organizations across Seattle to remove the police from traffic enforcement (and move necessary enforcement measures into SDOT, among other solutions), prioritize non-punitive methods for making streets safer, abolish the enforcement of actions that don’t harm other people, and invest in communities. In 2021, we built important new relationships and celebrated the movement of 120 parking enforcement officers from SPD to SDOT. In 2022, we’re partnering with SDOT and Vision Zero to conduct a series of listening sessions and public engagement to produce a report on public safety as defined by BIPOC communities experiencing harm. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Sign up to get news and updates related to WSOS events and activities.
- Lend a hand to our data collection and research efforts! Contact WSOS@SeattleGreenways.org
- Join our workgroup! We’re looking for BIPOC members, especially people with strong community connections, or with specific skill sets in communications, facilitation, and events. Members are paid for their work. Contact WSOS@SeattleGreenways.org.
UnGap the Map
Many bike lanes in Seattle start and stop, stranding people on bikes in the middle of scary intersections. A bike trip is only as comfortable as its scariest section, and if we want to be a city where people of all ages and abilities can choose to bike comfortably and conveniently to get where they need to go, we need to #UnGaptheMap. In 2022, we will push for a citywide comfortable, connected bike network in Seattle’s long-term planning (including the Seattle Transportation Plan), as we organize locally around specific priority gaps and install DIY wayfinding signage to help people navigate the streets now. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Sign up to get updates about this campaign.
- Join local neighborhood advocacy groups working to close specific routes including Beacon Ave S, 12th Ave S, Eastlake Ave, and more.
- Email Clara@SeattleGreenways.org for details on city planning and wayfinding projects.
Cafe Streets
During the pandemic, Seattle has piloted allowing small businesses to use parking spaces or even entire streets for restaurants and retailers to stretch out and operate safely. This program has helped over 250 small businesses stay open, and people stay connected to each other safely. We successfully advocated to make the permits affordable and extend them through spring 2022 (Update: now January 2023!).
This year, we will build on the success of pandemic programs that kept small businesses open and enlivened our streets and communities, and work to create a permanent Cafe Streets program that is more equitable, safe, collaborative, accessible, and bold. We will use this as a launch pad for further pedestrian-only street policies and programs that make better use of our street space than storing and moving cars. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Sign up to get updates about this campaign.
- Patronize businesses with outdoor cafes, and business districts with shared outdoor cafe streets!
- If you have connections to small businesses that would benefit from this initiative, please contact Gordon@seattlegreenways.org.
Stay Healthy Streets
In response to Seattle Neighborhood Greenways advocacy, Seattle piloted open streets programs on Lake Washington Blvd, Alki Point, and 16 other neighborhood Stay Healthy Streets across the city. These programs close streets to vehicle thru-traffic, but OPEN them to people walking, biking, running, skating, scootering, and rolling! Local access, deliveries, and emergency services are still allowed.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stay Healthy Streets have given people extra space to recreate outside and get where they need to go while allowing each other to maintain a safe physical distance.
In 2022, in response to community requests, we’re building on the momentum of pilot open streets programs (including on Lake Washington Blvd. and Alki Point) and pushing for promised permanent implementation that complements other programs and creates more space for people on our neighborhood streets (see our take on how the city should evolve the program). We will push for quality baselines, expand the network into dense neighborhoods, and advocate for additional funding that will increase efficacy, as well as artwork and community elements. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Sign up to get updates about this campaign.
- Get involved in local advocacy for an open and accessible Lake Washington Boulevard.
- Email Clara@SeattleGreenways.org for more information.
Safe Routes to School
We believe that every child deserves to be able to walk, bike, or bus to school safely and comfortably.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is pushing for systemic solutions to help improve and streamline the Safe Routes to School program citywide. We’ve secured funding for a new full-time Safe Routes to School Coordinator for Seattle Public Schools. In 2021, Seattle launched School Streets, which close the street at the request of the school to thru-traffic, and increase space for people walking, rolling, and biking to school.
In 2022, we will work with the new Safe Routes to School Coordinator at Seattle Public Schools to identify and address systemic issues with school transportation, as well as continue to push for School Streets, better support for walking and biking programs, and school-specific projects. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Join the campaign here or email Clara@SeattleGreenways.org for details.
- Push for a School Street at your local elementary school by emailing the principal to request a School Street now!
- Share a photo or story of your students walking or biking to school! Tag us on Twitter (@SNGreenways) or Instagram (@seagreenways), and use the hashtag #SchoolStreet
Home Zones
With current funding, it’s going to take between 200 and 1,800 years to build sidewalks in all of Seattle’s neighborhoods. That’s way too long.
A Home Zone is a neighborhood that creates a holistic plan to discourage speeding, cut-through traffic while maintaining local access for neighbors, emergency vehicles, and deliveries. It is a cost-effective and community-focused solution to make residential streets safer to walk, bike, and roll on.
In 2021, we won a huge increase in funding for Home Zones in Seattle. This year we will push for a permanent program that is equitable, successful, and bold in responding to community needs. Learn more.
Get involved:
- Email Clara@seattlegreenways.org for more information.
- Join local advocates working on home zones in their neighborhoods.
15 Minute City
Everyone should have access to their daily needs within walking (or rolling) distance. That’s the deceptively simple idea behind 15-Minute Neighborhoods/Cities. Our city’s upcoming Comprehensive Plan update will shape land use for a decade.
In 2022, we will build relationships with organizations in housing and land use spaces and promote the 15 Minute City concept as an organizing principle for our future city planning. Learn more.
Get involved: Sign up to get news and updates related to 15-Minute Neighborhood campaign updates and activities.
Neighborhood Campaigns
Each of our local neighborhood groups around the city are working on a wide variety of projects from traffic calming to crosswalks — there are simply too many to list! The best way to get connected to hyper-local advocacy and events is to sign up to get involved involved in your neighborhood, and make a donation to keep us going if you can.
We truly are a people-powered movement, and we depend on you for all of our work. Thank you!