Seattle bike activists justifiably livid with Mayor Murray

The activist bicycle community in Seattle is upset with the mayor — and they’re absolutely right to be.

After promoting an outrageous expansion of bike lanes in a city where it will dramatically hurt traffic, Mayor Ed Murray has put the brakes on many of the projects. The mayor’s plan went from 36 miles of protected bike lanes to 25 miles. Neighborhood greenways have been reduced from 52 miles to 32 miles. Downtown Seattle, in particular, won’t be getting what was promised.

Related: Seattle cyclists angered over city’s latest bike plan

In an updated plan that is barely in English, we’re told:

As mentioned earlier, the 2015-2019 and the 2016-2020 BMP Implementation Plan project lists differ in the number of downtown bicycle facilities due to the desire to develop a cohesive long-term multimodal transportation plan prior to building bicycle facilities that may not comply with overlapping modal needs.

This essentially means they’re doing what they should have done before they announced the ridiculous plan of 36 miles of protected bike lanes: they’re studying the streets to make sure the bike lanes make sense. I support this move. This is smart planning. But it’s planning they should have done before trying to cater to the bike activists, in order to get their support for the Move Seattle transportation levy.

The bike community has every right in the world to be upset with the sudden change in plans. They were promised something, they supported the mayor, then had the promise taken away.

As much as I disagreed with the plan as proposed, it’s a disingenuous move to take the plans away after people supported it.

Perhaps ironically, this was the exact type of scenario I predicted with the Move Seattle plan. The Seattle Department of Transportation put out a list of project plans that you thought they’d support if you passed the levy, but there was absolutely no mandate that they take on the projects at all. And it was clear that the project list was set up in a way to get people to support the plan; the city has no intention of completing all those projects the way they proposed.

Justifiably angry commenters on the Seattle Bike Blog called this about-face “a load of crap,” and wonder who could be held responsible. Start with yourselves: you should have known this was coming. But the ire should be turned towards the mayor’s office; you were used, and as much as I’m ultimately siding with the mayor on this update in plans, it’s wrong to use constituencies and not follow through.

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