I love biking in the dark and the rain, as I wrote last year. Given that we are on a Fremont Bridge bike counter record-breaking streak five months long (and counting), Seattle is on track to have more people biking through the dark and rainy months ahead than ever before. As of Monday morning, we are only 64,640 bike trips away from breaking the all-time record for the Fremont Bridge, which will be a fun thing to watch. Depending on the weather and how many of you decide to join the proudly-soaked ranks of rain-or-shine riders, we could hit that mark by Cranksgiving (November 21 this year, details coming soon!).

Hey Republicans, these kids you're bullying will be old enough to vote not so long from now. Cascade Bicycle Club is urging people to vote NO on I-001 and I-638 "because they are in direct opposition to the core values we represent" and "will have direct negative impacts on our work," according to a statement from the organization. Seattle Bike Blog has also endorsed a NO vote on these statewide initiatives. Cascade runs many big youth education and empowerment programs including the statewide Let's Go program in grades 3 to 8 as well as out of school programs like the Major Taylor Project.

From a Federal Highway Administration publication written a few years after passage of Boston's 2014 truck side guard ordinance. The Seattle City Council unanimously approved two of the three bills in Councilmember Rob Saka's SAFER Streets Act, officially adding the job description of a Chief Safety Officer to the section of city code defining the role of City Traffic Engineer and tasking city departments with developing rules that would require city contractors to install side guards on trucks. Action on a third bill containing many changes including an expansion of SDOT authority over street safety in historic districts has been delayed until at least the Council's November 10 meeting.

Christian (center) from a GoFundMe fundraiser for his family. The person driving the garbage truck did not signal or slow down before turning across the 12th Ave bike lane where Christian Salyer was riding June 1, a lawsuit (PDF) filed this week in King County Superior Court alleges. The truck "ran over" Salyer and killed him, the suit states. He was 30. Salyer's estate, led by his parents and sisters, are seeking unspecified damages from Recology and its subsidiary as well as the driver Theodore Malloy. The suit includes claims of wrongful death against Recology and Malloy as well as a claim of "Negligent Hiring, Retention, Supervision, Training, and Entrustment" against Recology.

From the North Mercer Island/Enatai Sewer Upgrade Project email list. The I-90 Trail has reopened in Bellevue, and sewer construction crews will staff the trail with flaggers to help trail users through the area safely without the need for a detour. Users are advised to anticipate delays up to ten minutes long if crews are using the trail to move construction vehicles. The change went into effect Tuesday, less than a week after an SUV driver struck and killed a person biking on Bellevue Way SE at SE 30th Street October 15, which is adjacent to the trail detour route that was put in place October 12.

Image of the suspect's vehicle, a silver 2012-14 Toyota Camry, from Seattle Police. The driver of a silver Toyota Camry who hit a man bicycling southbound on Aurora Ave N near N 97th Street shortly after midnight September 29 is now a killer. Luis Maykoll Medero Sagarra died from his injuries October 17, 18 days after the collision, according to the King County Medical Examiner. He was 30 years old. Our condolences to his friends and family. Seattle Police released a still image of the suspect's vehicle, a silver or gray 2012-14 Toyota Camry, last seen speeding away and running red lights to flee the scene without stopping to render aid to the victim.

These pins are sold out, but they are extremely pertinent to this moment. You can get a sticker version from Microcosm. You absolute monsters, these are children we're talking about. Washington's statewide Initiative 638, if approved, could require all girls (but not boys) to have their genitals examined before they are are allowed to play youth sports. Children! All so some twisted MAGA adults can abuse the apparatus of the state to bully trans kids. Children! This initiative will presumably include girls who want to participate in cycling sports (it's written poorly so the extent of what counts as "interscholastic" competition is not clear), all just so they can bully the small number of kids who are trans and exclude them from the sport.

My spouse Kelli and child Fiona voting by bike in 2021. It's an oldie but so cute. Whenever I vote, I vote for Fiona's future. "The Nov. 3 general election is pivotal for the future of bicycling due to current hostility toward bike infrastructure funding at the federal level and gloomy budget forecasts at the state level," writes Washington Bikes on their election endorsements page. So we need to make sure that our senators and representatives understand that safe streets are needs, not nice-to-haves. There are also several transit-funding measures on the ballot, including in Seattle.

A person driving an SUV on Bellevue Way SE struck and killed a person on a bike at the intersection with SE 30th Street/113th Ave SE at 6:35 a.m. Thursday (October 15), according to Bellevue Police. First responders attempted life saving measures, but the person died at the scene. Our condolences to their friends and family. Details are scarce on exactly how the fatal collision occurred. KIRO 7 camera crews show a mangled bicycle in the northbound lanes and an SUV with a smashed passenger-side windshield facing north and at rest in the southbound left turn lanes.

From SDOT via Bluesky. The 2nd Ave bike lane will be closed through downtown today (October 15) for "maintenance work," according to SDOT. Riders passing through downtown can take 4th Ave or the waterfront instead. Pike/Pine and Yesler have quality protected bike lane connections to 4th Ave. Be aware that for many blocks downtown, the hill between these two streets is extremely steep. It's pretty cool that the downtown bike network has been built to the point that people have protected bike detour options when work like this happens. For several years, 2nd Ave was the only reasonably comfortable bike route through downtown, and a disruption like this would have been much worse.

Today's front page in Toronto. Read the story online. Hundreds of people stood with their bikes to prevent work crews from dismantling the protected bike lanes on Bloor Street Tuesday evening. Work crews showed up, but after speaking with protestors who were lining both sides of the work zone decided to leave. “To destroy Toronto’s complete streets, and to make it illegal to build them anywhere in the province is to guarantee violent, preventable deaths,” said Jess Spieker of Friends and Families for Safe Streets to the Toronto Star…

Map from King County Parks. No detour is provided. A short section of the Sammamish River Trail will be closed tomorrow (October 13) for what is hopefully only a few hours between NE 143th and 145th Streets across the river from Chateau Ste. Michelle. However, the notice from King County Parks says the closure could continue over multiple days. King County is once again not providing a detour for trail users. I cannot determine the current status of Village Road/147th Pl NE, which has been under construction (let us know in the comments if you are familiar with the current status of these streets).

Photo from Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance. After more than a decade of planning and work, Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance is ready to celebrate the opening of the new Raging River trails near Snoqualmie and North Bend. Join them and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday (October 10) for a day of music, food and, of course, mountain biking. The trails are on land that the DNR purchased in 2009. Part of the Issaquah Alps, it's across SR-18 from Tiger Mountain and its long-popular mountain bike trails.

Opening Day September 30, 2026. The new Pinehurst Station has a horrible walkshed with very few destinations or homes within a 5-minute walk of the station entrance. This point has been made well, and there are efforts to allow more housing near the station, including in the golf course. Rather than rehash those points, it's worth looking at how the area go to be the way that it is and what the city is doing to help heal old transportation wounds by reconnecting neighborhoods with better walking and biking options.

Data through September 29. Sometime Monday evening (September 28), somebody rolled across the Fremont Bridge and registered the one millionth bike or scooter trip so far this year. The old bike counter display had both a daily count and a thermometer-style counter that filled up over the course of the year. That thermometer maxed out at one million. When the city first installed the counter with sponsorship from Cascade Bicycle Club, one million was seen as an aspirational number. Seattle just hit that figure before October. Last year, the bridge didn't reach the 1 million mark until mid-December.

From the Week Without Driving website. Week Without Driving 2026 runs October 1–8, challenging people to do exactly what it says on the tin: Go an entire week without driving a car. It's an enlightening experience for individuals, but it is especially powerful when decision makers participate. Too many people in charge of transportation and even transit decisions do not know firsthand what it is like to rely on biking, walking and/or transit to get through the normal tasks of daily life. About one third of people in the U.S.

From the project webpage. Like many streets in the north and south ends of Seattle, 1st Ave NE does not have continuous sidewalks. Though it won't be ready before the opening of Pinehurst Station in two days (September 30), SDOT has finished design on a new 12-foot-wide biking and walking trail between NE 130th Street and James Baldwin Elementary School at NE 120th Street. City Light will be moving utility poles soon, then construction on the trail will begin in early 2027. The path should be open in late summer or fall 2027.

At Lime's Georgetown operations center. Their collection is missing the 8-speed pedal bike. Yes, I pointed this out to them. No, I did not sound cool doing it. SDOT's bike and scooter share survey closes tomorrow (September 25), so if you have ridden Lime then definitely share your thoughts. Take the survey (afterwards you can enter for a chance to win a $100 gift card of some kind). It shouldn't take much longer than 10 minutes and mostly involves checking boxes about how you use bike/scooter share and what you like or dislike about it.

2024 photo from SDOT showing workers trying to fix the damaged gate arm after a collision. People will be able to walk and bike across the Spokane Street Swing Bridge over the Duwamish River this weekend. Signs have been warning about an upcoming bridge closure, but that only affects the general vehicle lanes because crews are working to repair a gate that was damaged in a 2024 collision. The trail next to the roadway will not be affected. It's nice to be able to post a bike alert about the swing bridge that is actually good news for people walking and biking.

I was on KUOW talking with Owen Henderson about this year's exploding bike count numbers. Give it a read/listen. Folks who have already read my previous story on the matter probably won't encounter anything super new, but it is always fun to be able to talk about good bike news to a wider audience. Building out the city's bike network is working. I mostly focus on the Fremont bike counter as a thermometer of sorts for the city's bike trends for a number of reasons, one big one being that its dataset is the most consistent.

The City Council's Transportation Committee advanced a package of three bills (121296, 121297, 121298) that would codify traffic safety work into the city code in a number of ways, but perhaps the most eye-catching change (121296 Amendement 16) would give the city Traffic Engineer authority to make traffic safety decisions without seeking a certificate of approval from historic and landmark districts. Transportation Chair Rob Saka has been pushing to expedite the SAFER (“Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Equitable, Responsive”) Streets Act bills to get them on the books before the budget process begins and pushes other Council work to the side.

Each bar represents the percent change compared to the same month the previous year. The Westlake Bikeway opened September 2016, and except for the COVID pandemic shutdown and a few outlier months (usually severe weather related), biking across the Fremont Bridge has been growing steadily ever since. There has not been a month lower than the previous year since February 2025. When looking at the Fremont Bridge bike counter data one month ago, wildfire smoke degrading Seattle's air quality had diminished bike trips enough that I wrote that the 2026 counts could still fall behind the previous record set in 2019 since at the time the August counts were lagging behind 2019.