showing Seattle’s track treatment.
Streetfilms’ latest video comes from our neighbors to the north in Seattle. The film takes a closer look at how the Seattle DOT is helping people who ride bicycles avoid a common problem — falling on streetcar and rail tracks.
The film features John Mauro from Seattle’s non-profit bike group Cascade (he narrates the short video below). Here’s a quote from the film that stood out to me (watch the vid below the jump):
“The Seattle DOT has taken a pedal-by-pedal approach to getting people across the cross by taking sharrows and marking every couple feet of the cyclist’s path.”
With all the streetcar and MAX light rail expansions going on in Portland, this is going to be an issue that local bike planners will be faced with well into the future. PBOT already does something similar to this, although less aggressive in design, at streetcar tracks on NW Lovejoy and 11th and on N. Interstate at the entrance to the Steel Bridge. In other places, they rely on cute signs like this.