Green Streets Design Progressing
On Tuesday the 18th of September the City of Seattle came to the community to present their progress in designing our neighborhood green streets. The landscape and planning firm of Geyer Coburn and Hutchins (GCH) presented the design to about twenty community members, interested parties from local bicycling activist groups and Sound Transit.
Two schemes were offered for NE 66th street. A big difference between the two schemes was the high school block from 12th Ave to 15th Ave. One scheme suggested converting the one way traffic with diagonal parking to two way traffic with traditional parallel parking. The alternate scheme retained the current traffic flow but added a westbound bike lane connecting to the light rail station. This bike line would be traveling in the opposite direction to the car traffic. Both schemes would have bike “sharrows” where cars and bikes are going the same direction. Both schemes had a variety of traffic calming features along all of NE 66th street. This included curb bubbles and raised crosswalks.
The design had larger landscape planters along 66th, Brooklyn Ave. and 14th Ave. Several residents are hoping for a more intensive green storm water option, especially along Brooklyn going south of 65th. The schemes had various sidewalk widths ranging from six to eight feet. Some residents questioned if eight feet was sufficient to support pedestrian traffic to the light rail station.
Parking came up as a concern for our neighborhood businesses who rely on adequate customer parking. This was concern was raised with the suggestion to merge two bus stations along NE 65th Street to a single larger station between Roosevelt and 12th on 65th. This stop reconfiguration would reduce parking along that block but more parking would be available on the two adjacent blocks.
A lot to consider to be sure. If you have comments please send them to landuse@rooseveltseattle.org and I will make to pass them along to the City and the designers.
Draft of the Roosevelt Streetscape Concept
John Adams
Land Use Chair