Seattle’s antidote to aggressive driving on neighborhood greenways

It’s actually not illegal at all–Although the streets are narrow, they are for two-way traffic and so people can park facing either direction.

People are not so brazen about this illegal practice in other parts of the country, but there is a strong regional tolerance of it.

This used to be said of other things…

Of all the things that bother you, the one pedantically illegal but not actually dangerous to anyone or anything is the behavior you think we need to brow-beat out of drivers?

Your priorities aren’t confusing. They’re wrong.

Anything that reduces the overall safety of roads we should be against. For Vision Zero to take hold, we all need to take ownership over the small things that decrease road safety.

If you are parked faced the wrong direction, you know have to pay attention to two lanes of traffic when pulling out. The far lane (the one you actually want to be in) is going to be right in your blind spot, increasing the likelihood that you may hit someone – especially a person riding a bike.

It’s actually fairly dangerous when it comes time to pull out of that parking spot. Especially if there is another vehicle parked in front, the driver’s line of sight to oncoming traffic is virtually nonexistent since their seat is on the wrong side of the vehicle and their mirrors are facing the wrong direction. Maybe just cross your fingers and gun it hoping you don’t cause a head-on collision?

Actually my experience is that most cars will pull over even for cyclists to pass because the streets are that narrow.

I note that most of the time, a driver of a car coming at me on a narrow neighborhood street gives the parked cars on his right far more room than he gives me on his left while not tempering his speed at all. That is, he’s equidistant between cars and doesn’t seem to budge on that room.

I hope you know it was rude for you to be in their way. Ha ha.

I have been guilty of this when driving my wife home when she was having a bad shellfish reaction. A nice older lady was riding down the middle of the street…we were desperate to get home and call an ambulance. To my unending shame, I honked until she moved over. If you’re out there old lady, I’m sorry!

Portland drivers are the most inept bunch of of people ever to occupy the driver’s seat. I’m glad I cut my teeth driving elsewhere where it’s expected and demanded that you can can confidently pilot and park an automobile.

In Amsterdam they are already slow.

“We can’t make NE Going or SE Clinton magically narrower. ”

Why not? I can think of a bunch of ways to do that. Not to take away from the idea of diverters, but why dump on street narrowing? We even had a statewide taskforce study this issue here some twenty years ago. An interesting report, btw.

September 1, 2010 at 10:42 am
9watts
Portland also has a little known ‘skinny streets ordinance’ which even folks at the City I’ve talked to don’t know about. http://www.oregon.gov/LCD/docs/publications/neighstreet.pdf?ga=t
And from a book “Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities” comes this quote: “Portland, Oregon is one of the few cities in the United states that is actively pursuing and changing their street standards. The Skinny Streets Program has been vigorously implemented in both established communities and new ones since 1991. [really?] By reducing local residential street with by as much as 12 feet (3.6m), skinny streets have become a cost effective way to preserve livability and neighborhood integrity. Most streets are designed to be no more than 20 to 26 feet (6-8m) wide depending on neighborhood parking needs.” (p. 134)Recommended 0

Hear hear. Such a bad, dangerous habit that encourages motorists to gun it past you on a neighborhood street when you’re between parked cars. I cringe every time I see a rider not holding their own line on a street.

It’s because they were kept that way due to DOT policy: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/rowmanual/manual/4_6.asp

25 ft is standard. There are some places where misguided policies only allow parking on one side (UDistrict), but for the most part it’s 25ft with parking on both sides.

The people above complaining about wrong-way parked cars are kind of missing the point. This is a narrow, residential street. *No one* goes “blazing” out into wrong-way traffic. Because of the narrowed width, you move slowly whether you’re on a bike or in a car.

Some people dislike it for biking, but it works really well with proper arterial bike infrastructure and Seattle’s hills. For example, Seattle’s 39th Ave Greenway (aka Wedgwood Greenway) is a gentle slope up a big hill. Heading north, you can putter along at slow speeds up the hill. Heading south, you can either bike slowly on the greenway (useful if you’re biking with a kid or just not in a rush, for example), or you can bomb down the adjacent arterial (40th Ave NE) at car speeds. 40th doesn’t have any actual bike infrastructure, but it is a 2-way street with only two lanes and parking on both sides, so there’s very little opportunity for drivers to go faster than 25-30mph.

We’re still figuring out our arterial bike infrastructure (see http://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2015/04/27/city-tries-new-bike-lane-design-for-collision-heavy-roosevelt-intersection/ , for example), but I think we’re in a good place regarding greenways. If we could only get SDOT to make heavier use of real diverters..