As transportation chair for the Wallingford Community Council I’ve been closely following the roadway redesigns being done as part of repaving arterials in Wallingford and Green Lake. Most changes break down into familiar cyclist vs parking battles, but one design feature stands out as a terrible idea for both cyclists and residents- the current SDOT plans for adding protected bike lanes around the 5-way intersection of Stone Way N, N 50th, and Green Lake Way N.

The intersection is rated “F” for vehicle throughput by SDOT and regularly backs up with traffic, flooding side streets and school zones with vehicles. …

40th, 50th, and Green Lake Way north of 50th are all to be repaved next year, which includes a full redesign of the streets that is happening now. Current plans swap out parking lanes for bike lanes, with protected bike lanes added to 40th and a cycle track added to Green Lake Way.

In the Green Lake Way cycle track both directions of bike traffic will be on the lake side of the street. The transition between the cycle track and the bike lanes is up for debate, as is reconfiguration of the 50th and Green Lake Way intersection. I …

Pro-HALA folks paint San Francisco as our nightmare future if HALA doesn’t pass, where all housing near jobs costs millions of dollars. Anti-HALA folks paint Ballard as our future if HALA passes, where existing residents are driven out by a construction tsunami and we are left with luxury housing that is 95% tech bros (plus 5% reserved for a few token “poor” people that win the MHA lottery).

I sat down with some Wallingford HALA proponents, looking for win-win solutions to housing affordability in Seattle. Here are some ideas we came up with:

Collaborate with homeowners on affordable ADUs and …

The effect of the upzone to urban villages that HALA proposes is clear as we have already seen it happen in Ballard. Older homes and apartments will be shredded and displace thousands, driving out current residents and turning neighborhoods into unlivable construction zones as the transformation takes place. Further, all the new people that move in will swamp our already overloaded transportation systems and schools, driving up property taxes as we try to catch up and further damaging housing affordability and livability in our city. Do we really need to destroy Wallingford in order to save it, as Rick argued?…

I started writing for Wallyhood this past spring when Jordan took off because I valued a Wallingford community site and wanted to explore writing as a creative outlet. I was also hoping to form constructive relationships with the city in getting good things to happen for Wallingford.

Constructive relationships with the city proved impossible, largely because the city no longer has anyone assigned to support neighborhoods. It’s all downtown meetings based on city functions without visits to neighborhoods when making plans. To be successful with advocacy, you must be like the Seattle Bike Blog or the Seattle Transit Blog and …