-while car thieves run rampant.
MYNorthwest—Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wants to ensure there is money secured for expanding a bike-share program in the 2016 budget.
Murray’s proposed 2016 budget would help the Pronto bike program grow.
If all goes according to plan, revenue from construction projects would help increase the number of bike-share stations in the city from 50 to 250, along with adding electric bikes. The mayor’s plan is to get a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The city would spend an additional $5 million to see the bike-share dreams come true.
Now all those people looking for a way to cruise down from Queen Anne don’t have to worry about the city running out of bikes.
“Seriously, that’s what the program is,” KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said.
Here’s how the bike-share system is used, according to Dori: People rent bikes at the top of Queen Anne, they ride them downhill and drop them off at another station. After that, employees, called “bike rebalancers,” take the bikes back up the hill.
That system doesn’t seem to be too environmentally friendly, Dori’s producer, Jake, points out.
If the bike-share program is expanded, it will mean more people will have to be hired to drive the bikes around, Dori says.
But what’s more important, bike-share programs or crime? Someone informed Dori that they witnessed a car break-in recently and called 9-1-1. Unfortunately for the owner of the car, the police department didn’t have enough officers available to respond. Outside the city, police would respond within minutes. In the city, they don’t bother.
“Why?” Dori asked rhetorically. “Because we’re too busy spending $15 million on bikes for people to ride down a hill.”
Don’t worry, though, Murray wants to spend money on a lot more than bicycles. There would be money pumped into the police and planning departments, for example. The proposed budget would provide $1.8 million for cameras. The police department would grow by about 30 officers.
The budget — similar to past proposals, The Seattle Times points out — would total $5.1 billion in spending. It could help improve a city coming to terms with its growing size, while giving people more opportunities to use all the bike lanes that are being built for the less than 5 percent of people who use them.
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Yeah, I am going to ride a bike in the rain, up and down Seattle’s hills, with my groceries, luggage, sick parent,child or pet…fill in the blank. So very practical. Idiots.
Meanwhile, they are tolling I-405. Taking a 4+ lane highway down to two free lanes-otherwise you can choose to pay to drive in the faster and emptier toll lanes. However, if you don’t have someone to car pool with, you’re screwed, and you have to drive in the congested free lanes with the other schmucks. Anything to do with transportation in this freakin’ area is absolutely bass ackwards.
Demented Liberal Progressives..anyone else spouting their crazy notions would be put away in rubber rooms for life…
Instead of UBER they have FUBAR
A taxpayer-bilked bike program. Another one to add to the list of progressive scams that makes some politically connected person rich, while liberal idiots can feel good about themselves.
We have this nonsense in The People’s Republic of New York. The bike lanes cause congestion by hogging space formerly used by vehicles. A lot of the bikers just don’t understand traffic laws. And a man may have died from a heart attack because there was a bike docking station in front of his building, and the EMTs had a hard time loading him into the ambulance.
Someone should point out to the dainty, sweetheart of Seattle that this is not the first time this has been tried. The bikes will be stolen, canabalized and trashed within a year. They tried this in Denmark and the Netherlands in the 80s, before they were over-run with koranimals, and it was a disaster. History shows that it is a guaranteed waste of hard earned, over taxed-payer money, the only thing defecRats are any good at!
They tried this in my city. The majority of bikes ended up in the river, tossed off any bridge available.
Who is responsible when one of these “free bike” mutton heads hits you from behind when you are walking on the side walk?
It’s okay. They bring the bikes back up the hill, one by one, with 747s.
All the bikes will probably have dildotron seats.
Who the hell is Queen Anne – – some transvestite hooker?
Fubar- forked-up bicycles and riders.
Queen Anne is a big hill and a large residential neighborhood near downtown Seattle. 🙂