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| Sidewalks on 166th Ave NE are so narrow kids have to hike on garden beds |
The traffic and safety on 166th Ave. has been under the watchful eyes of citizens, city council and administration for years. In the 2007 election one of Brian Seitz's campaign pledges was to slow the traffic and widen the sidewalks and bike lanes on 166th with 4:3 conversion. The conversion was partially implemented. (Brian lost to Dave Carson by 200 votes). Objections were concerns of trucks and buses plugging up traffic. Carson and Cole were particularly focused on freight and buses. Sue Stewart said Metro bus slowdowns on a conversation wouldn't be significant. She works for Metro in Safety. A few weeks ago, Councilmember John Stilin strongly indicated the conversion should be completed.
When you look at the video, picture a bicyclist coasting down the hill between the kids and a car. No wonder so few bicycle here. It's surprising to see so many pedestrians using the sidewalks. Drivers often react by swerving away from small groups.
Do you think 166th can take the traffic? Do you think the city should finish the conversion? The city put in red lights to improve safety at key intersections. Should the city build safety improvements on 166th with proceeds from red-light tickets? What do you think?
Opinion and photography by Bob Yoder
In the video you can see shrubs that are overgrown onto the sidewalk and the kids have to walk closer to the road because the shrubs and trees are overgrown. Every few years someone from the City comes to my neighborhood and puts notices on each door that our shrubs are growing too close to the sidewalk and that we have to cut the shrubs or they will do it for us. Why hasn't the City done this all along 166th so that kids have more room to walk?
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, people have been walking up and down 166th for years. How many people have been hit by cars in the past 20 years? Doing the 4-to-3 lane conversion will create a constant stream of cars that will trap drivers on the side streets for 5-10 minutes while they wait for a break in traffic. Try getting onto 166th in the morning from NE 99th Street (the street just south of RJH on the west side of 166th) on mornings when school is in session. I've had to sit there for 5 minutes because the stream of cars just doesn't stop and I only get out when someone lets me out. Imagine that happening all along 166th - especially on the steep areas where making a left across traffic to go downhill to Redmond will be dangerous or impossible.
I think it's a bigger problem that there's not a single crosswalk between the bottom of the hill and the Junior High. Crossing 166th is like playing a deadly game of Frogger.
ReplyDeleteMy wife parrots what you say about the traffic issues from RJH. She thinks LWSD should connect the two drive through lots for better ingress/egress flow. What do you think? I asked the past principal and he agreed.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen anyone hit by a car on 166th but I have seen a bike tangled in the middle of the road by Assembly of God, from a crash. I also heard a kid hit someone just south of NE 100th St. when it was dark and raining. I think we should ask the cops what the record is here. They have a good handle of accidents in the red-light intersections. I'm sure they could tell us....but do they want to? Thanks for the comments. Who's next? Please share!
@ Ingunn. I hear ya! That section is where a kid hit a man and a bicyclist got hit. Anyone asked the cops about the others?
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Anonymous and Ingunn regarding the overgrown shrubbery and the lack of crosswalks. Another issue I see is that drivers are speeding both up and down the hill. I wish there was a better way to designate that this is a NEIGHBORHOOD not I-405 or 520. The speed posted is 30 MPH or 20 MPH when children are present. I am always tailgated when I go the speed limit up and down that hill. I actually live on the steep part of the hill and just like Anonymous, I too have to sit there for at least 10 minutes to get out.
ReplyDeleteIf a conversion is not the answer then I think a combination of trimmed shrubbery, reduced car speed, and more crosswalks would help alot.
By the way, I have seen more car accidents and near hits of pedestrians crossing at the intersection of 166th and 85th.
Thanks for this post Bob. People had the same concerns about not being out to get out of their side streets when the conversion was first proposed. Having a center lane to pull into makes it much easier than trying to pull out left across two lanes of speeding traffic into two lanes of speeding traffic.
ReplyDeleteEash year I attended RJH [yes it was a bit back :O)] a student was hit by car. Just because it has not happened recently is not a reason to ignore this safety hazard. Do you want your son or daughter, wife or husband to be the one injured that finally implements change? I sure don't.
As the last Anonymous poster says, the issue is speed. Try driving 30 mph [the posted speed limit on 166th] and see how many people wave thanks. They don't. The speed up, pass you and give you a glare. This is crazy. This is walking neighborhod, something that makes Education Hill the wonderful place it is.
We need traffic calming on 166th and 104th now. This is not a freeway.
With regard to the traffic backup at RJH, at least some of the traffic issues in the morning could be alleviated by appropriate signage in the Northern dropoff. There are two lanes: a pull through lane on the left, and a drop off lane on the right. Everyday I see cars sitting in the dropoff lane (after they've dropped off their kids) waiting to exit the school. This creates a backup all the way back to the entrance and onto the street. If people would just drop off their kids and then pull into the pull-through lane to exit, there would be plenty of space and no backup.
ReplyDeleteThe 'rechanneliztion' project on 166th is a complete fiasco, and the incompetents responsible for it should be fired, with the salary budget thus saved earmarked for undoing the damage they have wrought.
ReplyDeleteThe total failure of traffic planners to come up with solutions to improve the flow of north-south traffic on Willows, RedWood, or Avondale has turned 116th St/172nd Ave/111th St/166th Ave into an arterial, and the clumsy efforts made by Redmond's traffic planning department have made matters much worse. Traffic now backs up all the way from 80th to 104th after work, and the brain-dead placement of islands next to bus stops merely proves that the designers were clueless.
In terms of any conceivable metric of utilization per unit area, the bicycle lanes on 166th are unjustifiable, and should be removed immediately, along with the islands.
Bicyclists are Redmond's most ridiculously overserved minority, and a rigorous study to free up the space wasted on empty bike lanes elsewhere is long overdue--we may have once been the 'Bicycle Capital of the Northwest', but that was before we became the undisputed tacky downtown apartment complex capital of the region.
Someone with more sense than the current traffic department needs to look at the irrational and inconsistent speed limits on our streets--111th, with zero driveways or houses facing it has a limit of 25, while 51st, with driveways, has a 35 mph limit--higher than 166th or Redmond Way.