Redmond and Bellevue, long synonymous with sprawling parking lots and endless highways, vertical spines of suburban hoity toity tasteless strip malls, are finally trying to shake off their addiction to the automobile. The new projects around 152nd Avenue NE, 156th Cycle Track, and Overlake Village Infrastructure are touted as the next big thing in making the area “livable”—because clearly, we’ve all been loving those car-infested corridors so much that it took decades to realize something was off. Here’s a look at the “ambitious” plans to reclaim some humanity from the asphalt wilderness.
152nd Avenue NE Main Street: The Quest for a Pedestrian’s Paradise in Car-Land
The 152nd Avenue NE Main Street project aims to turn a once soul-crushing stretch of road into something “pedestrian-friendly.” Imagine that: walking down a street where you’re not just waiting for a crosswalk signal like it’s an act of divine mercy. This project will roll out wider sidewalks, because, surprise, people do actually walk, and protected bike lanes, because it turns out bikes aren’t just a relic of the past. In addition, they intend to put in place an actual street grid like a real city!
The city planners are throwing in some landscaping and public art—likely to distract us from the decades of prioritizing cars over community. And yes, we’ll get street lighting that’s more than just the sad, dim bulbs that currently light up the vast emptiness of parking lots. It’s a bold move to try and inject some vibrancy into a street where, up until now, “scenic” meant looking at the back of someone’s SUV.
156th Cycle Track: Because Cyclists Deserve Better than Dodging Cars
For the brave souls who dare to bike in a city built for cars, the 156th Cycle Track is the beacon of hope we’ve been waiting for—or at least, it’s supposed to be. This project is designed to give cyclists a protected road of their own in this segment, so they no longer have to rely on sheer willpower and the kindness of strangers motoring around in their cages to avoid becoming roadkill.
The cycle track will connect the SR 520 Trail to Overlake Village, finally giving cyclists a direct route that doesn’t involve navigating a gauntlet of speeding vehicles and poorly timed traffic lights. It’s almost like the city realized that people might choose bikes over cars if they didn’t fear for their lives. What a concept.
Overlake Village Infrastructure Planning: Patching Up the Auto-Dependent Mess
And then there’s the Overlake Village Infrastructure Planning—an initiative that sounds like it’s about fixing the glaring oversights of a car-centric past. This grand plan includes stormwater management (because, who knew, we need to deal with rain too), better transit access (since our existing bus stops on the side of highways aren’t exactly welcoming), and—wait for it—parks and green spaces. Because after all that asphalt, we could use a little green, right?
This plan is also about encouraging “transit-oriented development,” which is urban planner speak for “we messed up by spreading everything too far apart.” They’re now trying to fix it by building closer to transit hubs, a move that might finally give some residents the option to not drive everywhere—because clearly, parking lots as the centerpiece of community life didn’t turn out so well.
The Grim Reality: A Half-Hearted Attempt to Undo the Car-Centric Damage
These projects, despite their promises, can’t quite hide the fact that they’re desperately trying to undo decades of car-centric planning. The efforts to add pedestrian paths, bike lanes, and transit-oriented development feel a bit like putting a band-aid on a gaping gunshot wound, but hey, it’s better than nothing.
If you’re in the area, why not check out these efforts to bring some life back into the auto-dependent wasteland that we’ve built? Take a walk down 152nd Avenue, if you dare, or brave the cycle track. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see the day when Redmond and Bellevue aren’t defined by their endless stretches of road, but by the vibrant, connected communities they’re trying so hard to become—one sidewalk and active transport corridor at a time!
Here are the key links to the projects mentioned in the blog post:
Riding the bus into Seattle for a day of coding via coffee shop. As always, via the 545 the seats that face inward give the stability needed to be able to type and code. However it’s still wretchedly difficult and the light rail can’t open soon enough.
On one of the turns leaving downtown Redmond, someone had used the overhead baggage areas on the bus, and a piece of luggage was about to plummet to the ground. I moved swiftly (which to others on the bus seemd like I was aggressively going after something) and pushed it back onto the luggage rack an densured it was placed correctly. It managed to wiggle around and almost fall again a few moments later because of the jarring movements of the bus, but this time someone else nearby saved it, having noticed after my rapid movements to stop it falling, was keeping an eye on it.
Meanwhile the person who put it up there hadn’t even noticed. People’s situational awareness for the loss. People are far too often a walking catastrophe and I’m amazed as many of us make it through each day that do.
As we pull into the Microsoft stop at 40th another odd occurrence. A guy with a face tattoo, which is always an immediate threat risk just walks on disregarding the driver. I’m all for people tattooing whatever the hell they want to but seriously, face tattoos point to some serious trauma and issues at this point in time. It’s not a mere “art piece” or some such, it’s an advertisement of being broken by something and trying to spite others around you.
Then we get rolling and the driver rolls up to a solid 75+ mph with the bus. A speed that is somewhat reckless on 520 and I’m not real sure how its possible with these buses. They’re not exactly setup for 75mph travel. After having already nearly thrown some passengers to the ground with his hard breaking and related driving behaviors this was concerning. It also made it even more difficult to get any work done or stay focused.
We’ve got the driver going speed crazy, tattoo threat guy skulking in the back seat, elderly folks holding their pain points from the hard braking and bumpiness, and I just want to be able to type up the rest of this post and make it to my destination. As we approach the mid-highway stops I’m fully expecting burning brakes as we go barreling into the stops.
This is, to say the least, disconcerting.
We make it into the first stop, and sure enough, one can smell the heated brake dust. IYKYK
We pull out, throttle planted in the floor with the bus – I’ll just call it twerking – from the throttle being planted. So between the two highway stops the driver manages to get up to speed again very rapidly, clearing around 65mph+. A little less shaky and sketch than 75mph but bothersome none the less. Around 50-55mph is about the top speed these bendy buses can take without becoming and utter shaky annoyance.
Anyway, as we have survived so far barreling across the 520 bridge I started to wrap this post up with a simple, “light rail can’t start soon enough, this bus ride quality sucks in comparison by a significant order of magnitude.”
But then… we blazed into the turn, we had a skip on the ramp that goes 520 to I-5 south and almost had a failure to maintain control incident. We made it though, and the driver did a superb job getting through traffic and to the first stop in downtown Seattle.
All went well and a few stops in we pulled under the Monorail as the 545 always does. I stepped off the bus and got a wiff. It was a wiff of delight and flavor I’d not smelled among the streets in a long time. You see, Seattle never really has food smells, usually other human smells which are not delightful in any way. On the better days you get the fragrance of the sea, which is nice for some folks. But today, this was different. It was seasonings and spice and everything nice. It couldn’t be though I presumed I must be dreaming or delusional or the fentanyl from some dying soul had affected me.
But no, no I was correct, after getting my chain back on I mounted my pannier on my bike and looked toward Westlake Square. Sure enough, NOLA dogs before me, I marched on immediately for some food! I strolled right up and ordered. Immediately I had to comment about NOLA and smelling andouille the moment I got of the bus being one of the most delightful entrances to Seattle in years! The proprietor and I chuckled at this fact and commenced to talk about crawfish boils, the horrors of Seattle’s food, and mitigating such things with our own home grown home cooked deliciousness.
First diversion of topic pondering!
Ok, so have you noticed Seattle has “squares” and all but they’re rarely squares? For example, Pioneer Square, but it’s a triangle within the intersection and confluence of several streets. Westlake Square, but it’s also a partial rectangle + triangle shaped park that is effectively a giant concrete and stone surfaced space in the middle of the city. Nothing real park like or square about it. There are numerous spaces like this throughout Seattle and I do get it, but we should just change the names to be more fitting.
Second diversion of topic pondering!
The violent shaking of the 545 inbound was so bad, for the first time ever, a bus had done – technically at least – damage to my bike! It had knocked the chain off of the bike because of the violent shaking! I was impressed, and would have been highly pissed, except that I could re-rail it back onto the derailer and crank easily. But it could have easily snagged or caught on something and been ripped from or damaged beyond repair. There is zero need for this type of driving, but in spite of any need, it does seem that more and more the express buses do get driven like someone is going to a fire. The recent brakes giving out (or whatever happened) on the 545 that caused it to crash into a building in downtown Seattle is a prime example of this. It’s not a good look for Sound Transit, and it’s not a good look for the drivers. It’s also not a good look for the passengers who are being thrown around like rag dolls.
But I digress, ponderings over and my NOLA Dog was ready! Absolutely delicious, if ya see those available in downtown under the tent, get ya one, they’re great!
After trading details and an invite to a proper crawfish boil, I made my way down to Zeitgeist for my first bout of coding and email reading for the day. I arrived and sat outside while the line quelled itself and pondered a bit more.
After the stint at Zeitgeist I embarked on a ride from there to Starbucks Reserve shop at their HQ. I realized two things:
The HQ is parallel, perfectly parallel, heading south via the Link Light Rail. Win!
The HQ also has a kind of, almost, not sure if it is designated as such – greenway that runs perfectly in front of the HQ.
The ride from Zeitgeist by the arenas (stadiums?) and down 1st was mostly pleasant even with the industrial feel. 1st avenue, unlike the trail that runs parallel to the light rail, has no tents or heroin ODs occurring. Mostly it’s just folks going to and from the HQ plus general business. I’m sure the city has focused on this specifically to some degree, because up on 2nd or 3rd or whatever the busway is called, is just kind of nasty at points. Not dangerous, just a bit nasty. But I digress, onwards.
After the visit to Starbucks Research @ the HQ I headed down to the waterfront to check out progress on all of that. I found one things extremely hilarious, auto traffic is so bad you can just walk among or bike among the cars and beat them from point to point. If you’re driving, just avoid – entirely – the waterfront. There is zero reason to go there unless you’re driving to the ferry. But if you’re trying to go anywhere in the city, the waterfront isn’t going to speed you up by any measure.
After riding a big pseudo loop through all of that I head back toward Pioneer Square area to board a 550 bus out of the city and back toward the east side. My plan was to take the 550 and transfer at south station to the Link on the east side. That way, I could minimize bus usage.
It paid off. The bus ride on the 550 was quick, albeit kind of insane but not as ridiculous as the 545 earlier in the morning. Transferred as planned and boarded the light rail.
The Horrors of the “Motorcycle E-Bike Things”
Ok, so these beasts are popping up all over the place now. Basically mini-bikes but people think, because they’re electric vs. gas powered they can just magically use them wherever and on whatever trails. These go like ~40 mph (or faster in some cases) and happen to have pedals but are anything *but* a bike or e-assist e-bike. It’s kind of insane, and the disregard, negligence, and recklessness of riding these in pedestrianized areas is tantamount to blazing down the same with a motorbike or worse, a car. The dissonance that some folks find in their mind that this ok to do is beyond me, and when the police all of a sudden find the requests for policing these increasing to unavoidable levels, they’re gonna be cracking down left and right.
But in the meantime, they’re a risk factor in most places they’re meandering about, especially where they’re specifically detailed to NOT meander about. I hate saying that, because I’m a fan of pretty much anything that gets folks out of cars, but the behavior surrounding these is the problem.
I am all for alt travel and massively reducing car dependency. But holy burnt hot dog on a stick these are going to just cause a massive diversion of effort from that when they start killing some folks with em’. Just one giant utter face palm of disgrace.
Ok, but so far on goes life. None of these shits with the dissonance of reason and logic have run into me yet. I made it all the way back to Redmond and after some very light editing, have no posted this glorious log of my trip to Seattle today.
Cheers! May your cycling be rewarding, awesome, and your transit riding and elimination of auto-dependency be as rewarding – or more so – than it has for me! 🤘🏻
After hanging out at SEAFAB I jumped on my steed and road via the Burke Gilman over to Zoka Coffee. This is a coffee shop I’ve been to a zillion times, albeit before the pandemic broke things. I headed over to the coffee shop and the first thing I noticed was the times on the door are very different than they were when I’d previously hung out at Zoka. The hours now are 8 to 5pm, where as they place didn’t close up until about 9pm previous to the pandemic. Hopefully those hours can come back one day!
Negatives
There aren’t many negatives to this location. There is of course, a street that isn’t busy, but always a bunch of parked cars and kind of – by world standard – a shit street out front. But out back of the place the Burke Gilman trail passes by, which is most excellent for connectivity. The front also has a good width sidewalk too however and there are some staple racks out front for at least ~4 bikes if not more. They’re the funny overly long old school Seattle staple racks, so always a little odd to rack up to compared to a standard length one. Overall a decent store front and good access, but more on that under the positives.
For now, the enumerated few negatives.
I don’t really like the raod, but it’s America and it’s not that bad. By USA standards it’s really low traffic and nice so hard to make this a negative, but I aim for a balanced review of all the places I’m going.
that’s it really… I can’t really conjure up any negatives.
Positives
The top thing I love about this Zoka location is that it is pretty open and has multiple rooms or areas in which you can sit.
The next best thing is they’ve got pretty decent coffee. They’ve also got a number of tea and related options, simple bites to eat, and other items to mix and match as you’d like.
There are numerous wall sockets.
The wifi is more reliable than not, making it a good choice to catch an internet call, just get some work done, or anything that might require a little connectivity.
This coffee shop rates up there with the few I’d rate as having good hygge vibe.
The rest rooms are some of the better rest rooms.
Ratings & Features
Electrical Sockets: Readily available with numerous around the entire cafe. Many literally on the top of the counter that rims the windows.
Wifi & Internet: I didn’t get the internet working, so I ended up tethering. This did make me depart a little earlier than I would have otherwise. I’ll be back again to check this out.
Seats: The where 3 comfy chairs and everything else was modern standard metal and wood. Impressive considering most cafes and coffee shops these days are just hard uncomfortable chairs everywhere!
Prices: The prices seemed pretty average, not expensive but nothing cheap.
Lighting: Good lighting and good places to shield your laptop from errant sun when needed.
I took the Sound Transit 542 over to University District today to check out some coffee shops, get some work done, and generally just hang out like I do. The first stop on my galavanting about Seattle today is at SEAFAB Cafe. I’ll start off, first with the negatives and then delve into the positives of this place. Wrap it all up with a rating and features of the shop.
Negatives
The first thing to note, is that the vast bulk of these negatives are just stupid car culture carbrain shit, bad infrastructure, and completely unrelated to the cafe itself. I’ll enumerate:
The sidewalk is parked on. Yeah, that carbrain shit is in full force down here. The really stupid thing is, there is parking down here that is availbe right out front still, since people just park in what appears to be the side of the road that converges into a gravel lot.
The bike infrastructure out on the main road here is decent, albeit dated PBL (Protected Bike Lane) that merges/egresses from the Burke Gilman Trail. This is a positive, but then it dumps you into this heavily parked road which is hellsihly confusing exactly where you should or shouldn’t really be with atrocious street and sidewalk amenities.
Speaking of that, the parking situation for bikes is less than desirable. Which is oddly out of touch considering that Recycled Cycles is right next door, you’d think there would be better bike parking and sidewalk amenities considering, even if they were just kind of non-city standard stuff. But it’s instead this oddball rack and a few sign posts here and there. Of course, Recycled Cycles has some staple racks and such out front but the cafe doesn’t. So no biggie really, just something that ought to be improved.
Ok, this is the only cafe related negative. Their stock of items in the fridge and their ice cream machine were just empty. It’s possibly the newness of things and they’re working on it, but it’s always a little unsettling when the counter space, equipped to hold items, is empty. Kind of gives you the “are they in business?” feeling.
The wifi didn’t have internet access. It seemed a bunch of folks were working away on their laptops, so I suppose someone had internet access or they were just making due.
Positives
The positives outweight the negatives significantly.
The music was chill. Albeit dated 70s-90s stuff, but if that’s in your wheel house, then good stuff.
The coffee, very importantly, was good. I ordered a capaccino and a dirty chai, but where a good solid 8 out of 10. Good job SEAFAB!
The vibe in cafe was super chill. Good spacing, seats, and the like, which just makes it easy if you’re going to do some laptop work or if you’re going to chill with some friends and talk, or even have a quick coffee or lunch meeting.
I ordered some salmon avacado toast to spite out of touch right wing financiers spouting clout since I’m a home owner and it was really good! The food seems to be consistent, clean kitchen, and all that good jazz!
Location is great, with lots of connected transit, easy to bike too (albeit the previously stated concerns) and the clientale seemed super chill too.
Ratings & Features
Electrical Sockets: Readily available with numerous around the entire cafe. Many literally on the top of the counter that rims the windows.
Wifi & Internet: I didn’t get the internet working, so I ended up tethering. This did make me depart a little earlier than I would have otherwise. I’ll be back again to check this out.
Seats: The where 3 comfy chairs and everything else was modern standard metal and wood. Impressive considering most cafes and coffee shops these days are just hard uncomfortable chairs everywhere!
Prices: The prices seemed pretty average, not expensive but nothing cheap.
Lighting: Good lighting and good places to shield your laptop from errant sun when needed.
In this VLOG episode I give you a straight up brass tacks review of where I am with my Riese & Müller Load 75, the fun the trials and tribulations and my recommendation on purchase.
0:21 Start of monologue on my Riese & Müller Load75.
1:33 The basic run down of what I bought, back when I bought the bike. Key parts plus additional recent additions, including the trailer and all.
Transit Sleuth 