Neighborhood Street Fund applications are due today Monday November 19th so there’s still time to get yours in and potentially win a grant for your street improvement project.

The City’s website lists the following guidelines for proposals:

• Any transportation-related improvement in the city’s public right-of-way with an anticipated cost between $100,000 and $1 Million is eligible for consideration.
• Projects can fall into various categories such as: art, community placemaking, and safety improvements.
• Past projects have included sidewalk repair, pedestrian lighting, bike safety improvements, or festival streets and can all be reviewed on our Past Projects page.

Here’s my idea to improve safety in my neck of the woods: turn the intersection of Bridge Way and Woodland Park Ave N into a four way stop with bump outs to shorten crossing distances for people walking.

It’s an increasingly busy intersection with hundreds of apartments added within a few blocks and hundreds more on the way. Nonetheless, the intersection does nothing for people and walking besides wish them good luck with five lanes of traffic. At the very least crosswalks would be nice, but the skewed geometry of the intersection and unnecessary second Bridge Way lanes in each direction invite further intervention in the form of bumps outs. The two downhill Bridge Way lanes especially aren’t really wide enough to fit. It’s a tight squeeze with the parked cars. The intersection should clarify that there’s only one lane in each direction there (plus a turn lane) rather than the four implied (and five with the turn lane). The means striping farther up the hill to merge the two downhill lanes into one.

Woodland Park Avenue used to host a streetcar line back in the day which is why it’s wider than neighboring streets. The right-of-way is 66 feet (according to City zoning maps) instead of a standard 60 feet and more of that right-of-way is road space rather than sidewalks.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been planning a set of repaving projects in the Green Lake area for around two years now. We first wrote about them in April of last year, when the department released initial plans that added bicycle facilities to a few key routes as a part of the repaving process–this saves money in a bike budget that is currently strapped for cash.

N 40th St is a high-speed 30 mph arterial with few pedestrian crossings and street parking on both sides of the street, obscuring sight lines. Low bicycle traffic currently on the street is not surprising given these factors, but the street could provide a direct connection across Wallingford over I-5 where one does not exist currently.
 
As part of repaving, SDOT proposed eliminating street parking on one side of the street and adding a protected bike lane in the uphill direction only. People on bikes riding downhill would continue to need to ride in traffic. Wallingford Ave N would be the point at which the bike lane switches to the other side of the street.