More Than Just Greenways: Lake City Greenways Leads The Way

Lake City Crosswalk action Lake City Greenways Crosswalk Action With SDOT May 1, 2015 Lake City Greenways exemplifies the civic-mindedness and good transportation decisions local Seattle Neighborhood Greenways groups all over Seattle are becoming known for. In the past two years, Lake City Greenways has added a pocket park in the street right-of-way, worked with several UW classes on urban development ideas, helped Seattle Department of Transportation on road safety awareness on Lake City Way, worked closely on a new Safe Routes to School project to Olympic Hills Elementary, and of course advocated for the newly opened Lake City Greenway! Now they've even taken on the placement of Metro bus stops when they put people in danger when they cross the street. And they've won!
Here's the story directly from Lake City Greenways leader, Janine Blaeloch:

Thanks to a couple of observant neighbors, I was alerted to the fact that people are running across LCW at 140th to access the Little Brook neighborhood and especially the new Array apartments on the west side. Many of them are people getting off northbound buses. The bus stop north of 137th is too far north, and to cross safely at the 137 crosswalk, people have to walk many yards south, cross the awful Erickson crossing and then wait a very long time to cross 137 crosswalk. That all evidently takes too much time for people to resist risking their lives to sprint across LCW instead.

I contacted Metro to ask whether they could move the bus stop south of the 137th crosswalk. Colin Drake of Metro and Dongho Chang and Jim Curtin of SDOT  met with me at the site a little while back and we had a good discussion about the problem. The immediate solution is to indeed move the bus stop. I just received this message from Colin today:

Hi Janine,Just wanted to let you know that SDOT has approved Metro's request to relocate the stop to nearside 137th. Next Friday May 8, Metro will close the existing stop and place a temporary delineator at the new stop. SDOT will install permanent signage at the new stop as their work crew schedule allows.Thank you for your advocacy on this important issue. Thanks, Colin
During our meeting we also discussed the possibilities of (1) putting another crosswalk on the north side and having a no-right-turn-on-red from Erickson (this is controversial because it could cause more cut-through behavior in north Cedar Park) and (2) changing the signal phase for southbound LCW traffic at least in off-peak hours so crossers don't have to wait so infernally long at the 137th crosswalk.
The newly placed Metro stop opens May 8, 2015. Thank you Lake City Greenways for your dedication and we wish you much success for safer streets in your neighborhood in the future!