Peak Seattle@PeakSeattle
As soon as you're done reading this post, I want you all to get in your cars and drive exactly 10 MPH down a quiet residential street by you. Just one or two blocks is all you need to do. I did it myself, because I felt it was important to really understand what 10 MPH means, and you should understand it, too.
Why? Because that's the speed limit Seattle wants us to start obeying. And you need to understand how agonizingly slow that is. This is thanks to a new state law that Ferguson signed a year ago, as described in the Capitol Hill blog:
tinyurl.com/2j37sezp
"A new state law allowing “shared streets” designed, engineered, and constructed to emphasize pedestrian and bicyclist safety — including 10 MPH speed limits and the ability for those walking and rolling to safely cross a street anywhere they want — is about to get off on the right foot in Seattle.
The Seattle City Council’s transportation committee is taking up legislation Thursday to change the city’s municipal code..."
Now, in fairness, they're not applying this to every single street. Not yet, anyway. But mark my words, they will expand it, because they've done it before.
Remember six years ago when COVID hit? The left saw the opportunity to advance all kinds of agendas that they never would have been able to pass otherwise. One of them was when Mayor Durkan announced that ridiculous "Healthy Streets" program, which gets a mention in the article. The city put up signage and physical barriers to block us from using select residential streets that we pay for. Since we were not allowed to use our parks, they told use they're going to turn some of our streets into temporary "parks."
I mean, this is Seattle. If people can identify as whatever they want, why can't a street identify as a park? To this day I don't understand why recreating on a street is safe during a pandemic, but it's dangerous to do so in a park.
The unspoken reason was they were doing this because they had turned over our actual parks to the vagrants and tweakers and criminals, because they had kicked them out of the homeless shelters. They didn't want them hanging out in close quarters because of the virus. We wouldn't want them to be doing anything unhealthy, right? Never mind that those people were hanging out in tents doing deadly drugs and sharing pipes and needles the whole time.
Meanwhile, and I'll never forget this, I took my kid to go play at a park near us had been shut down. There wasn't a soul around. And yet, after a few minutes, I see walking towards us from 100 yards away a city worker with a vest on. She told us we had to leave the park. I said, "Really? What about that guy in the tent in the trees over there, does he have to leave?" And she said no.
I didn't want to cause a scene because I had my kid with me, and I could tell she hated having to tell us that. But I don't think there's ever been a time where I despised my city leadership more than at that moment. These power hungry maniacs stole from us a much needed fun afternoon that I could have had with my child.
Anyway, as soon as they announced that program, I correctly predicted that even though they were saying it's a temporary thing for the pandemic, they were going to expand on it as well as make it permanent.
And to this day, those streets still have the signage and barriers up. I've been ignoring these signs for years. The only time I respect them is when I see someone actually playing in the street, especially if it's a kid. And that's pretty much never.
Back to present day. The article goes on to say, "The change will open up a new era of pavement markings and paint, bike resources, planters, and bollards in Seattle"
Oh boy, I can't wait!
Also, if you click on the “first-in-the-nation” hyperlink in the article, it'll take you to a piece by The Urbanist (surprise!) that provides a definition for "shared streets:"
tinyurl.com/339c6554
(Out of space, see the remainder of this post in the comments)
