Another appeal filed over the ‘Missing Link’

This is going to be good. Ready! Fight!

This fight bores me. Give it up already, chamber and “friends”. You lost, pedal people have won every time, so get over yourselves. If a bike trail ruins any business, it clearly wasn’t too stable to begin with. Or keep wasting your money… your loss. Maybe you need to get some fresh air on a nice new bike path.

The businesses along Shilshole Avenue think that iti their private driveway. It’s a public street that allows for many uses.

I don’t understand the Chamber of Commerce’s involvement in the appeals. Don’t they WANT people going through their areas; wouldn’t a complete trail have the potential to increase traffic to businesses?

I must be missing something since I haven’t educated myself much on this whole debate.

We all agree, or should, with Mr. Brower that it’s about safety. Bikes are already on Shilshole Ave. and they aren’t going away. The trail will get them off the street and onto a safer surface. Cyclists have to cross the driveways of the industrial businesses either way. The question is how to do it safely. Simple signage will not slow many cyclists, as anyone who rides the trail between Ballard and Fremont can attest. The Stop signs seem to mean “put your hand on the brake just in case but don’t squeeze it unless your life is endangered.” (I’ve been guilty of that too.)Both drivers and cyclists have to take responsibility. I want to see the trail completed ASAP, but with due care.

How does the plan address this? Will the trail have anything to make the riders slow near the driveways? Speed bumps? I fear signs alone won’t be effective and someone will get hurt, or worse.

They’re not really retail businesses that are fighting the trail. The Chamber signed on originally at the request of Ballard Oil and Salmon Bay Sand and Gravel.
The businesses that are fighting it are the old industrial businesses who fear that the trail completion is the next step in gentrifying the neighborhood. It definitely seems like SBSG is fighting because they don’t want to lose the public land that they’ve been using as their own rent free for years. Beyond that I think the reasons for them to fight it are arglebargle spandex grumble grumble hippies arglebargle I remember when arrrrrrrgggg…

This is such BS. First and foremost if MyBallard is really a member of the Chamber (as I read below) its owners should drop out of the group if it insists on continuing to cost us all money by delaying this very needed and beneficial project. Are you a member of the Chamber MyBallard? Let us know so I can take my web traffic elsewhere if the Chamber keeps fighting this needed and beneficial project. Second, if this were really about safety this coalition of businesses would be supporting the trail so they could add ideas to the plan to make sure safe crossings are installed at all driveways. They’d also be working with the owner of those train tracks to make him pony up the money to repair them and make them safer for all users. This effort to delay the trail completion is nothing but a temper tantrum being thrown by businesses who realize that they have not kept up with the times and are stuck in the past. I have nothing against industrial businesses and nothing against them being in Ballard, but one has to grown and change with the times to accomodate new people and uses… Read more »

Oh, it’s about SAFETY now.

Thanks Josh. I don’t know why I thought it was about the parking. Or the “environment.” Or that the business owners wanted a cycletrack on Leary/Market instead. It has been hard to keep up with the objections of a minority group of adjacent businesses that are a few free parking spots away from going out of business yet seem to a bottomless legal budget.

And I agree wholeheartedly that this should be studied. How about several decades of extensive public process and review, with a previous appeal and revised SEPA analysis? Oh wait, we already did that.

The current situation is proven unsafe. So in the name of SAFETY, let’s delay completion of the Missing Link yet again, wasting public and private money in the process.

So … who’s got a link to the latest appeal, and a list of members for this new group of “Ballard Business Appellants”? What will it take for them to realize they lost?

As for the fight … this continued costly obstructionism is getting so pathetic that even the Seattle Times comments so far are supportive of the Missing Link.

Do pedestrians need to stop for traffic coming out of driveways? I will wait if I don’t think that I am seen, but usually when a driver is pulling out of a driveway it is their responsibility to make sure nothing is in their way and not assume they have the right of way.

This is different than other sections of the Burke where trail users are crossing streets and should follow posted signs.

So defining what type of trails crossings there will be near these businesses will be important.

I’m not sure why the businesses are so hesitant! Our family rides to ballard and we shop just like people who drive do! Plus having a bike commuting option makes Ballard a more desirable place to live bringing in more people to shop!!! Glad to hear the Chamber is sitting this one out – even if only by not adding their name.

To their credit the neighborhood is gentrifying but they should try to work with the changes rather than creating a battle of turf. I sympathize with their position but they aren’t the only ones in the community any longer.

Come on Ballard… lets not make this a microcosm of the whole monorail/ viaduct/ tunnel fiasco and take ten years to agree on what solution should be implemented only to spend more money, go with a crappy alternative and end up putting bikers underground.

ITS JUST A BIKE TRAIL!!

Like I said, it’s mostly fear based. The irony is that when the real battle to preserve those businesses happens with an eventual rezone of the industrial area they’ll have way fewer friends to call on. Before this I would have most likely sided with the industries, but I doubt I’d give them any support whatsoever now. If they’re going to be lousy neighbors then good riddance!

It’s been more than ten years already.

We should take a page from the biz playbook and start a campaign and lawsuit to stop the train. Who’s with me? Stop the train! Stop the train! Stop the train!
Any lawyers feel like filing a few lawsuits against the Ballard RR? Anyone want to tip the IRS off to investigate how much of a tax scam this thing might be? Anyone hurt on those tracks want to get the RR to pay for your medical bills and pain and suffering?
If they want to use the process as a weapon to get what they want, maybe we should too.

It’s not a Bike Trail!!!!!

Are you kidding?! A bike tunnel would be so awesome. If money wasn’t an object, how cool would it be to ride your bike through a tunnel? Preferably with Eye of the Tiger piped in! Everyone wins.

Already exists!

[Oh, right. Disqus doesn’t allow links. Just Google “Mount Baker bicycle tunnel” and click on “videos.”]

How many appeals are they entitled to? This is where power politics comes in handy. Mayor McGinn needs to tell these bozos “if you ever need a permit for anything, I will spend every ounce of my political energy to make sure you don’t get it…ever….forever”. If not McGinn, then other city council members need to put the screws to them.