Act Now: New Transportation Plan Must Prioritize Safety for People on Bikes

Two teenage girls with brown skin stand astride their bicycles, smiling. Behind them is a street and some tall trees. The Seattle Transportation Plan (STP) will guide the city’s bike planning and implementation for the next decade and must prioritize safety, equity and connectivity. Right now, it’s not. Seattle needs a transportation plan that creates a complete network of safe, accessible, comfortable, and convenient bike routes throughout the city. We must prioritize climate-friendly transportation modes, and we must provide equitable access to biking, walking, rolling, and transit throughout the city, with investments prioritized in communities that have been neglected and that are most impacted by climate pollution and traffic violence. SDOT has only just begun creating the new Seattle Transportation Plan, and we already have concerns. A street with people riding past on bikes, a bus stop, and two people boarding a King County Metrobus. The Seattle Transportation Plan updates and combines the city’s bike, pedestrian, transit, and freight master plans into one plan. It  determines how and where each of these modes can fit into Seattle’s streets. So far, planning for bike routes doesn’t include safety, equity, and connectivity filters. That’s a big problem. Two small children ride bikes in a protected bike lane down a wide city street. SDOT knows where people are getting hit, injured, and killed while riding bikes in Seattle. If we don’t prioritize those locations, people will continue to be killed. And traffic violence, like so much else in our city, is disproportionately killing and harming people of color, disabled people, elders, low-income people, and unhoused people. Each number is a person, and each death has rippling effects on their family, friends, and community. We must do better. This plan will inform the next transportation levy and be incorporated into Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan, so it’s critical that it advances Seattle’s safety, equity, and climate goals. Act now to tell City Council that Seattle’s new Transportation Plan must prioritize safety for people on bikes. Read more info here.

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