Top Urbanist Action: Improve The Roosevelt RapidRide

If you do one thing this week, it should be:

• Give SDOT A Comment About The Roosevelt RapidRide: This line is one of seven lines that the city is adding. It will be a critical connection to light rail for Eastlake and South Lake Union. We covered some of the initial design choices, such as scaling back bus lanes and bike lanes (also covered by Seattle Bike Blog). It’s still worth pushing Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) for a better design, forgoing parking, providing safe bicycle facilities, and giving buses full priority throughout the corridor.

Beyond that, you can get involved in urbanism in a variety of other ways:

• Tell SDOT To Make Space For People Biking: The comment period closes Friday this week for the project to improve East Marginal Way. This is a critical corridor for people biking. Seattle Bike Blog has the background.
• Attend A Design Review Meeting: You can tell the board that all the big projects in Seattle are building way too much parking.
  • On the 19th, there’s a meeting for a 28-story building on Third Avenue that might be an interesting addition to Seattle’s skyline. The meeting will be at Seattle City Hall, 600 5th Ave, Room L280.
  • On the 20th, there will be a meeting at Seattle University, 824 12th Ave, Admissions & Alumni Comm Bldg-Stuart T Rolfe Room A. This meeting will review two buildings. One building is at Yesler Terrace with a mix of affordable and market-rate housing. The other is on First Hill that includes a skybridge and 1:1 unit-to-parking ratio.
• Get Paid To Do HALA Organizing: Seattle for Everyone is hiring a Housing Outreach and Mobilization Coordinator. This is an opportunity to get paid to do good organizing and help implement the HALA recommendations.
• Fill Out SDOT’s Survey About On-Street Parking: SDOT trying to understand what people know about on-street parking. It appears like they’re testing the effectiveness of their advertising.
• Comment On WSDOT’s Statewide Transportation Improvement Program: The comment period ends Wednesday this week. This is a great opportunity to tell WSDOT they shouldn’t be widening roads. Instead they could be prioritizing projects that improve pedestrian and bike saftety or mitigate pollution, like highway lids.
• Tell The City To Ignore The NIMBYs and Build Housing At Fort Lawton: We have a great opportunity to build a lot of affordable housing in an excellent location. We covered the opportunity before. Unfortunately, there’s a loud vocal group of people who don’t really care about affordable housing. Right now the comment period is open on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and you can tell the city you support the plan. In fact, they could go even further by rezoning the parcels to allow more density.