Seattle City Councilmember Rob Saka this week took an unscheduled opportunity to reaffirm a 2021 decision by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to drop planned safety infrastructure in the North Delridge neighborhood. His remarks, which came in response to a public comment made at the council’s transportation committee, represented a detour from the meeting’s published agenda and resurfaced a debate that had Saka been involved in before he was elected to the council in 2023.
While Saka’s prior advocacy around the potential removal of a hardened median along Delridge Way near SW Holly Street has garnered considerable attention — particularly in the wake of his $2 million add to this year’s budget to implement changes there — his past advocacy against proposed traffic diverters on 26th Avenue SW has gotten less scrutiny.
i hear Rob Saka is whining that people are laughing at him for his bizarre obsession with a small traffic safety curb. that's why every DOOM LOOP cartoon will be about Curby from now on
— Brett Hamil (@bretthamil.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 9:02 PM
[image or embed]
The saga of 26th Avenue SW begins
In 2020, as part of efforts to improve the 26th Avenue SW greenway in West Seattle, SDOT proposed installation of traffic diverters at two key intersections along the street: SW Brandon Street and SW Genesee Street. At the time, greenway users were dealing with both the West Seattle Bridge closure and increased traffic impacts from construction of the RapidRide H Line project along Delridge Way SW. Diverters would have prevented the greenway from being used as a substitute for Delridge for the full length of the corridor; drivers would have been required to take a right turn at either Brandon or Genesee.
Longer-term, 26th Avenue SW is the only designated north-south bike route in the area. The 2014 Bicycle Master Plan called for protected bike lanes on Delridge Way, but the final design for the H Line project included only a southbound bike lane south of SW Juneau Street, and no bike facilities northbound. That leave no safe facility to connect to the West Seattle Bridge Trail or to the Alki Trail — other than transferring to a greenway.
The 2024 Seattle Transportation Plan doesn’t include any bike facilities on Delridge; 26th Ave SW is the main event, at least for people who live west of the corridor. If you don’t feel safe using the greenway, there are few options available to get around by bike in the neighborhood.
SDOT floats diverter designs
SDOT rolled out plans for the two traffic diverters with a relatively short notice before construction was slated to begin, but the City received intense pushback and almost immediately walked back the plan. A major concern was the fact that drivers wouldn’t be able to turn left to get onto Genesee Street to head to Alaska Junction, where most of West Seattle’s grocery stores, retail, and services are located.
A few months later, SDOT’s neighborhood greenway team held a public meeting, again floating the idea of installing the full traffic diverters at the two intersections but this time providing alternative options, including diverters that would have allowed left turns. Without physical barriers blocking drivers from heading straight, and instead just relying on signage, the alternative design would have been easier for scofflaw drivers to disregard, but would have assuaged many of the concerns.
As a third option, SDOT also proposed a “stay healthy street” that included no diverters at all, just signage recommending drivers take another route. The full video for this meeting is still available online.
It was at that fall 2020 meeting where Saka spoke against all three of the options proposed, as a resident on a nearby street.
“It feels like what you’re doing is jamming this down our throats. We don’t want it, we didn’t ask for it, and I think there’s a better way to go about all this,” Saka said then. “Namely, not going with any of these three options. In my view, they’re all terrible. We’re left with bad, worse, and worst. And that can’t be the solution. We don’t want what SDOT is selling here. The process should be community-led and community-driven, and instead it feels like, again, SDOT is ramming this down our throats without any input.”
That meeting itself was to gather input on the proposed options, none of which ultimately ended up moving forward at all. SDOT did say they would reevaluate the issue again after the reopening of the West Seattle Bridge in 2022. To date, that hasn’t happened.
Saka doubles down on diverter opposition
This brings us to today, where safety issues on the 26th Avenue SW greenway have not been resolved by doing nothing — which hardly comes to a surprise to safe streets advocates. Now, Saka is the chair of the Seattle City Council’s Transportation Committee, and this week a local resident brought up the current state of the greenway during public comment at the committee.
“Without those protections, I’ve seen the consequences firsthand,” North Delridge resident Max Baker told the transportation committee. “I’ve witnessed a person struck by a car south of Brandon Street, breaking their leg while the driver sped away. Another hit-and-run took someone’s life further south. And just this week, after a shooting at Greg Davis Park along the greenway, cars sped away on 26th, racing past the Delridge playfields and through the intersection at Genesee, where a traffic diverter was once planned. The city’s fixation on traffic throughput helped them escape.”
Though the meeting was scheduled to transition to a presentation on automatic speed cameras, Saka issued a direct response, after Baker raised his past advocacy against the diverters.
“My recollection from that phone call was that the overwhelming majority of community support explicitly rejected a then-proposal by the department to install a traffic diverter on 26th to prevent left hand turns on Genesee,” Saka said. “I understand it wasn’t a unanimous consensus or a unanimous view, but it is a view that I certainly championed at the time, and I will continue to champion today. It makes no sense. It’s a head scratcher, in my view, to install a traffic diverter and install left hand turns in a food desert, rendering Delridge the only single point of access to any fresh foods, vegetables, whatsoever.”
Only one of the three options presented in 2020 would have prohibited left turns onto Genesee, but at the time Saka had criticized all three, an issue he sidestepped this week to focus on alleged equity impacts to his neighborhood. As a neighborhood that lacks grocery stores, Delridge residents who get around without a car and chose to use a bike also need a safe way to access other parts of the city.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense from my perspective, to install such a drastic, draconian measure that has a significant impact on neighborhoods and communities, including in a food desert. That said: I welcome any feedback about how the department can make 26th safer, short of installing a barrier preventing left turns onto Genesee.”
So far during Saka’s term, he’s been successful in advocating for transportation improvements in specific areas, particularly those that have a nexus with the city’s gun violence epidemic. Traffic calming along Alki and Harbor Avenues and a reconfiguration of the on-street parking on those streets to discourage bad behavior have all moved forward, and Saka has also pushed for specific projects to be included in SDOT’s 2025 levy delivery plan.
The $1.55 billion levy also includes a plan to install bike infrastructure improvements in memory of Steve Hulsman, who was killed while riding his bike in West Seattle in 2023, which Saka added.
Whether a solution for 26th that makes everyone happy can be found remains to be seen, but for now Saka is standing by his past position that cancelling the traffic diverters was the right decision — a move that continues to play out today when it comes to the safety of people trying to get around in North Delridge.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
