Bicycle activists and SDOT bribe you into accepting bad road design

Seattle bicycle activists, with the support of the Seattle Department of Transportation (an organization run by bike activists), are trying to bribe you. The bribe is just a $5 gift card to Starbucks (paid for by a grant) and it’s for a reasonable cause: promoting safe driving, bicycling, and pedestrian behavior. But, like much of what they do, it’s ill-conceived.

Last week, activists and city volunteers passed out “opposite tickets” to people obeying traffic laws in areas where the city has created mass confusion with their bike lanes. Several months ago, SDOT created bike lanes on Second Avenue, a street that’s been labeled “notoriously dangerous” for bicyclists. They did this rather than institute a “bike diet” that would have bicyclists travel down a street that isn’t so dangerous.

SDOT’s work has been derided as confusing to drivers and bicyclists. The traffic signals are confusing to people who don’t know what to expect, and it’s lead to drivers turning into bike lanes when they shouldn’t, and bicyclists riding into intersections when they shouldn’t. (To be fair: this isn’t all due to the poor design. Bicyclists seem to follow traffic laws only when it’s convenient to them; drivers don’t often pay attention to some pretty basic rules, either).

Related: The real reason Seattle will lower speed limits to 20 mph

But rather than fix the confusing elements of Second Avenue, volunteers handed these “opposite tickets” in the form of $5 Starbucks gift cards to people who are already following the traffic laws. And SDOT took the opportunity to pass out literature promoting Vision Zero, along with the gift certificate bribe.

These people are already following the law. They don’t need extra incentive. They will continue to follow the traffic laws, unpersuaded by the possibility of getting another gift card. This is about persuasion, though. The argument is that now that we’re rewarding good citizens, the bad ones – the ones who are breaking traffic laws – will feel an incentive to follow the law.

Here’s why this won’t work:

1) The problems we’re seeing aren’t simply drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists acting badly; it’s symptomatic of a poorly designed stretch of road that is confusing (and ugly).

2) A $5 gift card to Starbucks is rather meaningless to most people. It’s not enough to convince people to change behaviors.

3) If you came up with a bribe that would actually change behavior, people know that a once-in-a-blue-moon stunt like this is seldom going to land in their hands.

Related: Is this Seattle’s most insane bike lane idea?

I have two simple solutions to the problem of the dangerous stretch of Second Avenue that will lead to saving lives and even more revenue for the city: fix the mess you created and ticket people who continue to break the law (turns out a pricey ticket is more of a behavior-changer than a $5 gift card to Starbucks).

I know fixing the mess SDOT created seems hard to do considering how big of a mess they created, but I’m sure they can come up with a plan the second time around.