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Comment by msteffen | Hacker News Reader

In Seattle, local residential streets are often designated as "stay healthy" streets, where bikes and pedestrians have right-of-way. You can drive a car there, but it will be slow (intersections are narrowed to discourage fast driving). Cars take parallel streets if they're going more than a block or two.

I haven't checked the statistics but it seems to work. There's one near me that's packed with bikes during coomute hours, and I think the cost to the city was negligible.

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I wouldn't paint Seattle as a picture of success when it comes to bikes. We've spent untold millions on bike lanes, reduced vehicle capacity with road diets, reduced parking and access to small businesses and made life more difficult for delivery drivers and ADA access.

After all that, the mode share of biking has actually gone down in Seattle over the last decade, to under 3%. It turns out if your city has hills, rain and darkness much of the year, there is no amount of money that will convince people to ride a bike. We've effectively subsidized a recreational interest for a very small population, a group so small that the top profession of the ~12k who do cycle is "college professor". And as a pedestrian who has to share with cyclists almost every day, it's been a net negative. In my own neighborhood they've made sidewalks unusable for pedestrians in the quest to encourage more cyclists.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-bike-...

Your stats are nearly a decade old. Cycling popularity has increased, not decreased, even surpassing the pre-pandemoc levels: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2026/08/17/july-bike-counts-...

That's one bridge downtown, and as noted in the article, the summer peak coincides with the nearby I5 closure and the World Cup in Seattle.

The 2024 Community Survey shows bike usage has barely budged compared to the amount invested.

https://www.communitiescount.org/commuting-to-work

This was in another post but I'm likewise skeptical that "commuting to work" gives a holistic picture of bike usage these days. I live in North Beacon hill, and what I've observed:

- Limes going up and down Beacon Ave constantly. I think a lot of it is young people, I doubt most of them are going to work.

- Healthy amount of bike traffic on 18th Ave S in the morning and afternoon (a stay healthy street. This is my commute)

- The bike garage at Judkins Park station is packed by ~9:30am every day. People lock their bikes/scooters to whatever they can (mostly e-bikes, interestingly).

The Fremont bridge isn't downtown.

True, poor choice of words. But it's one of three bridges between the downtown core and several suburbs, and it's hardly a broad indicator of cycle traffic in the region.

It doesn't change the fact that the survey data shows a smaller percentage of people are cycling than in 2015 in Seattle, King County and WA.

"After all that, the mode share of biking has actually gone down in Seattle over the last decade, to under 3%" <-- your article is from 2018 and that is like 8 years old, an eternity ago.

There is significantly more bike infrastructure now then in 2018. Plus the lime scooters and bikes have radically shifted the balance of bikes vs cars to the point where I'd say that bikes now rule the street in most of the dense parts of Seattle.

I would imagine there are at least 10x more people using those lanes than there was before affordable e-bikes and "bike shares" showed up. You've got people who would never, ever ride in a million years be caught dead on a bike using those bike lanes to run errands, go to visit people, commute to work, etc. Just sit down anywhere in the dense parts of the city and you'l see them go by constantly!

I doubt the people who put those bike lanes in back in 2018 and before ever could have imagined how popular they are now thanks to lime bikes, electric scooters and such. Its honestly pretty remarkable and thank god somebody had the thought to build up that stuff back then!

You might imagine that there are 10x the amount of people riding bikes, but the numbers just don't support it.

Stockholm is colder, further north, (though admittedly less hilly).

I can't argue that the bike infra improvements in Seattle haven't made a huge difference, but I'm not at all convinced this is because it is intrinsically unlikeable.

For what it's worth, the environmentally incredibly bikeable SD/LA has such bad infra that they have both fewer bikers and far more deaths.

> We've effectively subsidized a recreational interest for a very small population

Many such cases

This is more in the direction of what I'm talking about. I think it's a pretty good model and affirms not contradticts what I'm saying because you do have to sacrifice drivability (unless you can just add streets like this - but I assume not).

Well, I was basically agreeing with the idea that bikes and cars should ideally be separated. I don't know if the laws are even formally different on these streets, but it kind of communicates to everyone what they should expect and helps cars and bikes stay out of each others' way, which they both want.

I also think that residential streets are often under-utilized, though (mostly existing to connect houses to thoroughfares), and I'm skeptical that drivability is being sacrificed all that much—I still don't have statistics but IMO there are plenty of places to drive and I don't find my neighborhood hard to navigate by car. Just one person's experience, but I think it's a nice, cost-effective solution that I hadn't seen before I moved here.

(I have a bike and commute with it most days, but I also have kids, so weekends are all driving, and I sometimes need to drive to work too, for one reason or another).

Bikes already have right of way. You are allowed to take the lane and bike in the road and pretend you are a car.

I don't know if the laws are even formally different on these streets, but it kind of communicates to everyone what they should expect and how they should plan their trips (though they do have these concrete bollard-looking things in the intersections that narrow them to one lane, presumably to slow down car traffic).

IME it just makes it easier for cars and bikes to stay out of each others' way, which I think they both basically want.

Nobody pretended they're a car. But yes, people on/in vehicles use the road that's dedicated to vehicle traffic instead of narrow sidewalks where they harass pedestrians and little kids.

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