General Meeting, 2/13/17

Meeting Date

1) Thanks for joining

2) We heard from Summer Jawson of SDOT about the proposed Little Saigon/CID/Jackson Place greenways. Greenways are neighborhood streets that are designed to encourage walking and biking, by introducing various traffic calming measures. We were presented with two options for the new east-west greenway through the Little Saigon and CID neighborhoods. You can read more here: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/CIDJudkinsGreenway.htm

While it seemed like our neighborhood preference was to use Weller St, King St may be the winner in the end since it has the most support from the directly impacted neighborhoods and there is a proposal to make King St a "festival street."

3) We were more interested in discussing the new north-south connectors and how they would spill into our neighborhood. We asked for a project update when SDOT is ready to talk more about the north-south scenarios but it sounded like the community preference was to get the developer at the Rainier-Dearborn apartment project to upgrade the alley so it could be incorporated into a greenway. Of note, Hiawatha Pl S is already a neighborhood greenway (that's why there are only east-west stop signs at the traffic circle at Hiawatha and Charles, to give priority to walkers and bikers on Hiawatha).

4) We heard from SDOT's Sam Woods about the protected bike lane project on Dearborn, which will close vehicle access west-bound on Dearborn at Rainier. I feel like the logic behind closing Dearborn was better explained during this meeting than in the past. Basically, they are prioritizing movement on Rainier, and by eliminating that vehicle exit, they can drop one of the traffic phases at that intersection. Cars will be able to turn left from Rainier onto west-bound Dearborn while cars can turn south on Rainier from Dearborn at the same time. Peds and bikes will be allowed to cross east-west Dearborn during that cycle.

5) Sam acknowledged that traffic flows will change in our neighborhood, but the hope is that traffic will be enough of a headache that cut-through traffic will find a new route, ultimately calming traffic for us neighbors.

6) Sam said that a new traffic study was commissioned after our first meeting that confirmed most of the traffic in our neighborhood was from cut-through drivers. Sam said that she would email me that study, I will be sure to follow up and I will share it with you all when I receive it!

7) It looks like we will be getting the improvements to the Charles/Rainier intersection that we have requested (left turn light from Rainier, dividing line for right and left turn lanes on Charles, and priority ped light on the south-side crosswalk). We will continue to ask for red light cameras and I stressed that there is a lot of neighborhood support for red light cameras at Charles or Dearborn on Rainier. More info here: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/dearbornpbl.htm