|
|
|
2022 Year-in-Review
We’re making progress on the issues that you said mattered most. At Seattle Neighborhood Greenways we are a bottom up organization, where our volunteer-led coalition sets our priorities for the year. And to make progress it takes all of us — staff, volunteers, and allies. Thank you for being a part of it! We hope you will take a moment to reflect on what we were able to accomplish together this year in our top five focus areas:
This year we had five major focus areas:
-
Vision Zero: Our efforts to keep everyone safe on our streets won $50 million to fix part of Aurora Ave and commitments from the Mayor and new SDOT Director to prioritize safety over other concerns.
-
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Our all-BIPOC work group conducted extensive outreach, engagement, and relationship building and released a report of BIPOC community solutions for community safety on our streets and in our public spaces.
-
UnGap the Map: Our campaign to connect every neighborhood with safe and convenient bike routes saw successes with the opening of new paths in Uptown, Green Lake, and the U-District, but setbacks in South Seattle where they are needed most.
-
Cafe Streets: We successfully advocated to make permanent this program that has supported over 300 small businesses converting car-parking to community space.
- Healthy Streets: The Mayor reaffirmed the city’s commitment to make 20 miles of healthy streets permanent including Alki, and we won funding for permanent improvements to Lake Washington Boulevard.
Vision Zero
We believe that everyone should be safe traveling on our streets — no matter how you get around. Sadly, last year was the deadliest year on Seattle streets since 2006, with 31 lives lost — and this year is proving tragic as well. These crashes disproportionately claim the lives of our Black, elderly and homeless neighbors and are geographically concentrated in SE Seattle. But together we are holding the city accountable to make progress:
North Seattle neighbors in the Aurora Reimagined Coalition successfully won $50 million to fix part of Aurora Ave, Seattle’s most dangerous street, from the state legislature as part of the Move Ahead WA transportation package.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! is an all-BIPOC workgroup of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. This group is dedicated to organizing BIPOC communities to gain full and free use of our streets and public spaces with solutions that arise from and directly serve our communities. This year…
-
WSOS conducted extensive outreach and engagement this year, developed working relationships with groups and organizations led by and serving BIPOC communities, hosted community events, and participated in public events that engage Seattle's BIPOC communities. WSOS conducted community outreach and engagement with BIPOC community members at events around the city including Seattle’s MLK Day March; Honoring Black Wall Street; Umoja Fest; Summer of Solidarity; Juneteenth, Malcolm X Day; Back On the Block; Healthy Through Heat and Smoke, and the Garfield Centennial Celebration.
-
WSOS organized community safety listening sessions and town halls with BIPOC-led groups — including CID Coalition, Chu Mihn Tofu, Eggrolls, Black Prisoners Caucus, Surge Reproductive Justice, NAACP Youth Council and the Solidarity Budget Coalition — to hear from Black youth, Queer/Trans community members, and BIPOC residents from the Rainier Valley and CID.
-
Through this deep community engagement and listening, WSOS crafted an extensive report of findings detailing how street safety is more than safety from vehicles and outlining a slate of BIPOC community recommendations. We submitted this report to SDOT to help the city advance more equitable policies and practices.
-
With partners in the Helmet Law Working Group, led by Central Seattle Greenways, WSOS won repeal of King County’s helmet law that was enforced as a harassment tool against BIPOC and unhoused communities.
-
Unfortunately, the city moved Parking Enforcement back from SDOT to SPD — for now. The City Council will be discussing where to permanently locate this division next spring, and we plan to make the case that housing it within SDOT will result in the best safety and equity outcomes.
UnGapTheMap is our campaign to create safe bike routes for people of all ages and abilities that connect every neighborhood. This year we…
-
Celebrated the opening of the Green Lake Outer Loop envisioned by Green Lake Wallingford Safe Streets, bike lanes connecting to Climate Pledge Arena in Uptown advocated for by Queen Anne Greenways, and the 15th Ave NE protected bike lane connecting U District with Lake City Way.
-
Improved the design to close the downtown waterfront trail gap on Alaskan Way after Downtown Greenways hosted a ride to bring attention to the issue.
-
Eliminated a dangerous gap in the plans to build a bike lane on Eastlake Ave connecting the U District to South Lake Union.
-
Fought back against the decision to delay south end bike routes for MLK Way, 15th Ave on Beacon Hill, and the Georgetown To South Park Trail.
-
Envisioned and established SDOT’s new "Even Better Bike Lanes" to use concrete barriers, not floppy plastic posts, to protect bike lanes to make them safer and more comfortable.
Won funding for bike routes in South Seattle through the City Budget.
Café Streets
Thanks to your support, and letters from over 700 Seatteites, the City Council passed legislation to make cafe streets permanent! This legislation will:
-
Support the 300 small businesses have benefited from the cafe streets program since we advocated for its launch in 2020.
-
Bring cafe streets and food trucks to more communities by reducing fees and red tape.
-
Improve these spaces by requiring accessibility for people with disabilities, improving designs, and creating barriers from traffic.
-
Encourage more walking by creating interesting, vibrant, and welcoming streets.
-
Help us continue to build relationships with small businesses, which historically have been some of the most skeptical stakeholders in conversations about converting street space to uses other than moving and storing cars.
-
Advance the conversation to create pedestrian-only streets for Pike Place Market, Ballard Ave, The Ave in the U-District, Capitol Hill and more!
Healthy Streets
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we pushed for open streets as one solution to emerging community needs. The city has experimented with over 25 miles of these streets that are closed to through-traffic, but OPEN to people walking, rolling, and biking in the street. We believe that Healthy Streets should be the new default standard for the city’s Neighborhood Greenways program, and that all communities should have access to these family friendly spaces.
-
This December, Mayor Harrell reaffirmed the city’s commitment to make 20 miles of healthy streets permanent (putting Seattle in the top 6% of American cities).
-
Working with Councilmember Morales, we won funding from the Seattle Parks District to make permanent improvements to the beloved Lake Washington Boulevard — South Seattle’s most popular park that is currently used as a speedway for cars.
-
West Seattle neighbors won permanent improvements for the Alki Point Healthy Street.
-
Green Lake Wallingford Safe Streets won permanent improvements to the Green Lake Healthy Street through the construction of the Green Lake Outer Loop.
-
Greenwood and Lake City neighbors won permanent improvements for their healthy streets.
-
We are advocating for robust additional traffic calming standards to ensure these spaces feel safe and welcoming for all.
This truly is a people-powered movement, and we wouldn’t have made this progress without you. Thank you! If you are looking for meaningful ways to make a difference in 2023, I encourage you to volunteer, donate, and spread the word about this work by following our social media accounts.
|
|
|
|
Members of the WSOS workgroup: Alex Lew, Liletha Williams, Dee Haile, Ethan Campbell, Ardell Shaw, Renee Releford, babygirl Releford, Michael (Renaissance) Moynihan, Clara Cantor, KL Shannon, & Dawit Ayana.
|
|
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Releases Inspiring Report on BIPOC Community Safety
Everyone deserves freedom of mobility and safe access to public streets. And safety should be defined by the people who feel most unsafe, not the people shielded from harm. Solutions for community safety should also be defined by the people who feel most unsafe.
Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) not only have the least access to safe, healthy, and affordable transportation, we are disproportionately harmed by unsafe streets and punished disproportionately by an unjust system of traffic enforcement. Traffic enforcement, which represents nearly one-fifth of all public encounters with the Seattle Police Department, is used by police to threaten, harass, and murder Black people and other POC for simply existing in public spaces.
Despite this, BIPOC voices have historically been left out of conversations about traffic safety and enforcement, and experience betrayal or misplaced trust from public systems. So what does community safety mean to Seattle’s many diverse BIPOC communities? And what would help people feel more safe on our streets and in our shared public spaces?
In 2020, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways launched Whose Streets? Our Streets!, an all-BIPOC workgroup, to help find answers to these questions and advocate for BIPOC community safety. Our organizers include 14 Black, Indigenous, POC, and queer/Trans community members with expertise in transportation, planning, research, police accountability, anti-racism work, community health and development, environmental justice, culturally-specific social services, and more. We intentionally center BIPOC voices, experiences, and leadership in everything that we do. We’re also working to build community advocacy and organizing skills and confidence through peer-to-peer skill sharing, mentorship, and support.
Since our launch in 2020, we’ve developed working relationships with groups and organizations led by and serving BIPOC communities, worked collaboratively to host community events to bring BIPOC community members together, and participated in public events that provide a platform to speak to and engage with Seattle’s BIPOC community on a larger scale. We hosted individual conversations and small-group listening sessions and conducted surveys within the BIPOC community asking people to share their perceptions of and solutions for community safety. We also highlighted community priorities and topics of community concern, and delved more deeply into those subjects: parking enforcement, police stops, and automated enforcement.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Just released a powerful report summarizing what we heard. Click here to read the report in full.
“The most powerful listening session, for me, was the one we did with BIPOC youth,” said WSOS member KL Shannon. “It was planned, led, and facilitated by youth from our team working together with the NAACP Youth Council. It was amazing to see our youth speaking out about their experiences and the injustices they see and sharing their brilliance. It was so inspiring.”
What We Heard
BIPOC communities, and the Black community in particular, experience an overwhelming amount of fear and anxiety just existing out on the street and in public places, and getting from Point A to Point B. This anxiety is a major factor in just about every transportation decision made. The primary concern participants shared is harassment and fear of harassment – by police especially, but also by other people in positions of power such as bus drivers or fare enforcement officers, and by other members of the public.
Additionally, people feel safe when they have a roof over their heads, a stable job with a thriving wage, and access to healthcare and social services. People feel safe when they know and feel connected to their neighbors, and experience a sense of community belonging that involves both support and accountability. Community networks formed on shared values, language, racial identity or shared experiences create a sense of community connectedness that feels safe. And conversely, being in spaces with mostly white people creates anxiety and BIPOC feel they have to be alert at all times.
See the full report for additional themes related to transit, street infrastructure, walkable communities, environmental health, policing, and more.
Community Solutions and Recommendations
We were inspired by the thoughtful and transformational solutions and recommendations we heard from community members for policing, transportation, and community safety.
Conversations ranged widely and highlighted how much all of our struggles are interconnected. Solutions like affordable housing, access to jobs, and social services will impact mobility. Establishing community patrols and response teams and providing support for youth will increase access to and safety in public spaces.
Key themes also included expanded transit service, free transit for all, basic street infrastructure for people walking and biking, slower vehicle speeds, and improved maintenance.
What’s Next?
Join us in-person on January 16 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshops, rally, and march, where we’ll be doing a community report-back on our work!
We’re currently distilling our findings into a set of advocacy recommendations, as well as continuing to work on priorities identified in 2022: parking enforcement, automated enforcement, traffic stops, and housing for all.
Check us out at Our-Streets.org or on social media! Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
|
|
|
|
You make it possible for our coalition to push for – and win – lasting changes like cafe streets that enrich our communities. Your passion, advocacy and financial support all power this progress.
|
|
Victory! Seattle votes on
cafe streets and food trucks
We did it! Thanks to your support, and letters from over 700 Seatteites, the City Council just passed legislation proposed by the Mayor and Councilmember Strauss to make cafe streets permanent!
This is a big win for everyone who wants to make our streets and neighborhoods more vibrant and welcoming.
More than 300 small businesses have benefited from the cafe streets program since we advocated for its launch in 2020. Not only will they get to keep their spaces open, more businesses – including food trucks – will be able to participate.
Our win comes after a multi-year effort to reform costly, difficult and inequitable rules blocking the use of cafe streets. The final victory didn’t come without an additional fight – as Councilmember Pedersen pushed to undermine the rights of food truck vendors.
Seattle has 1.6 million car parking spaces (five for every household), and one fourth of our land is used for streets. With imagination and political will, we can build a future where everyone can get where they need to go, safely — and where our streets provide public spaces to gather and build community.
|
|
Year-end Giving Match
When you support Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, you power a coalition of changemakers making every neighborhood in Seattle a better place to walk, bike and live. Donate today and your gift will be matched, dollar-for-dollar! Gifts through the end of the year will go twice as far thanks to a special $14,000 challenge from our board of directors. Together we can see our vision for safe streets through.
|
|
Thanks to our newsletter sponsor
& new partner!
Building on their award-winning commute program and world-class Seattle Campus, Expedia Group’s Destination Seattle program is a new initiative focused on supporting a more people-centered, vibrant city. As part of this work, Expedia is proud to support Seattle Neighborhood Greenways in advocating for a people-centered Pike Place Market and more vibrant, safe, walkable Seattle neighborhoods. Stay tuned for SNG+Expedia events, panels, and advocacy opportunities in the year ahead!
|
|
|
Actions & Upcoming Events
|
|
Get involved in your neighborhood!
Each of our local neighborhood groups around the city are working on a wide variety of projects focused on racial and climate justice. Sign up to get connected to hyper-local advocacy and events today!
Join our people power movement.
We're stronger together.
|
|
|
|
|
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is a people-powered nonprofit working to make every neighborhood a great place to walk, bike and live.
Want to stay up-to-date with our latest activities and events? Connect with us on social media!
Invite your networks to join us as well! Forward this newsletter and tell them to follow us on social media and subscribe to our e-news below.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
