Bellevue Cycle

To start out though, this is an advocacy ride that was hosted by Arman and members of the Eastside Urbanist community and it's really cool as it was just a really short route but we even had sort of some government officials and such joining on the ride. And the whole purpose of the ride was just to show off some different pieces of infrastructure as well as the one sort of lacking along some of these bike Bellevue corridors. But I really wanted to get into sort of what that project is, where it is now and how you can help. So bike Bellevue was a project started last year that basically I was going to add 15 miles of bike lane in the Eastside Urban core including downtown Wilburton and Belle Red. The goal of the project was basically to have some rapid build bike lanes fill in a lot of these key network gaps. So in terms of how far it's gone, it did get out to some initial outreach and a lot of discussion from both ends to the very point where even an ethics complaint was filed and the project was basically put on hold until this coming Monday where it's going to go back to city council for another study session where they're going to determine what happens to the project corridor by corridor. So what does that really mean? It just means that the project really needs your support right now and we need to let the entire city know that this is something that we want. So I'm just going to give some really concrete steps here in terms of order of involvement that you can help out with. But first is I've linked a letter that you can sign on to that is going to be sent to city council in support of bike Bellevue. You can read it down below. And second is probably just the contact city council by email with your own personal sort of anecdotes and just experiences. I think those that are really highly personal have a lot of value especially if you are living or working or whatever interacting with Bellevue all the time. And the last option especially if you're a Bellevue resident With our current budget I really So that was me giving public comment this past week. I don'think I've ever been so nervous speaking in public but yes March 25th 6 p. m. at City Hall come out and there definitely is going to be a large showing just for bike Bellevue. And as many of And yeah it'super exciting but that also means that time is of the essence in terms of getting safer infrastructure here in Bellevue. Really these places that they're thinking of putting these bike lanes are the ones that will connect these different rail stations and give people options in terms of where to ride once they get into the city. So from here we're on some of the new bike lanes near Spring Boulevard in the Spring District heading over the Mercury Cafe. And the last thing I'll mention is that I never expected to be so involved with this process but really it takes a lot less than you think in terms of being involved with sort of your municipal government. So wherever you are even if you're not in Bellevue really find ways to get connected just sending an email or phone call or just showing up from time to time goes a super long way to advocate for cycling infrastructure. Hi I'm Arman. I've been living in Bellevue for seven years without a car and I use bike and transit everywhere and recently I got a cargo bike which I'm very excited about. Right So we've been involved with advocating for Bike Bellevue which is this project to add 15 miles of bike lane all over Bellevue and were talking about And so the idea of this ride was to show Alright thanks so much hopefully we get some better infrastructure here soon.