Is this Seattle’s most insane bike lane idea?

Another day, another ideologically-driven, nonsensical bike lane plan being proposed by the Seattle Department of Transportation and I suspect they’ve been doing their hardest to make sure this one didn’t get out for us to ridicule and perhaps stop.

Mike Lindblom reports that SDOT wants to take away a lane from another highly congested stretch and turn it over to bikes, even though the demand is remarkably and embarrassingly low.

Under a proposed SDOT plan, Fifth Avenue in Seattle &#8212 the street that shares the road with the monorail no one takes &#8212 would lose a car lane for a dedicated bike lane that no one will take except the employees at City Hall.

Right now, you’ve got three lanes that are perpetually full during the morning and afternoon commutes (Fifth Avenue sees about 13,000 cars and trucks a day, on average). In fact, that whole area is incredibly congested with cars. It once took me an hour to get from Belltown to Eastlake in the middle of the afternoon. It normally takes about seven minutes.

But because SDOT Director Scott Kubly is a bike activist, as is Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, they’re using SDOT to push their anti-car ideology.

Is this the worst bike lane idea yet? It’s certainly a contender.

They’ll do whatever they can to push you out of your cars and into a bus or bike. They’re actively trying to create bad traffic conditions for drivers.

Don’t fall for the deceitful way they position this, either. They say they’re doing this to get the city ready for a future where the population grows; you can’t sustain the transportation needs of the future if you keep focusing on cars. That’s true; there’s no doubt. But they’re not giving more options; they’re taking options away.

Their strategy is simple: present a truth (that the current system can’t sustain a huge increase in population), but give a solution that does nothing to address that truth. Instead, give a solution that pushes an ideological view on what transportation should be.

If they wanted to give you more options, they’d give you that bike lane or Metro lane in addition to what we already have (or they’d put those bike lanes and Metro-only lanes in areas not already suffering from such extreme congestion). But if you take away a lane filled with cars, where do those cars go? They go from the three lanes to the two lanes, making traffic worse. Now, Kubly and the ideologues at SDOT think that will get you frustrated enough to get into a bus or bike. That’s what they’re betting on. But that hasn’t worked so far, has it?

Bike commuting is going down and right now, according to the city, it only represents 3.1 percent of the commuters. But they’ll keep pushing these bike lane ideas, pretending they’re meeting the demand of the public. And at the same time, they’re hurting the people they pretend to want to help.

How often have we heard about how expensive it is to live in Seattle? Well, when you make it so it’s near impossible to drive to work from outside of Seattle, you’re forcing people to live closer to work. So now, that Amazon.com engineer making $160,000 is thinking on his drive from Shoreline to South Lake Union, “Man, this is silly. Let’s just move to the city.”

So he and his family come to the city and they end up competing for the housing we have available; that drives rents up. Developers and landlords aren’t idiots. They know the guy making $160,000 can afford a $2,700, two bedroom apartment. So that’s what they charge.

Then developers see the shifts and say, “Oh man, let me jump in on that action! I’ll build a luxury apartment complex for all these employees who have given up on driving to work.”

The rents go up even more because the demand from high paid workers can’t keep up with the supply (remember: we’re not allowed to build too high up; it hurts the “character” of the neighborhood).

The impact on all this? The lower middle class folks and the poor can no longer afford to live in Seattle, so they get pushed out. A recent report shows how these people are leaving King County all together. They can’t afford it.

So good on you, SDOT and Mayor Murray! You say you’re on the side of the poor (and you know you can count on their vote), but push policies and projects that make it harder on them. You’ll keep them poor, say you’ll help them, and they’ll keep voting for you. (Actually – sounds like Kubly and Murray are pretty smart politicians!)

And in all this, the drivers, who don’t have advocacy groups on their side the way bicyclists do, well, we end up getting hurt so Kubly and Murray can live in a city they can bike to work to. Well, as long as it’s easier for them, I guess we’ll all have to deal with it.