Over the July 4th holiday, I visited Seattle to see some family, but I also took my travel bike with me to get in some riding and test the new Versa Shifters for internal hub (review coming later this week.) Now that I have been back in Austin for a few weeks, I’ve reflected on what we can learn from Seattle as we try to build a world class cycling city.

Seattle is a lot like Austin in many ways. Both cities have natural beauty and a strong environmental movement to defend this asset. Both also give a lot of lip service to this movement but fall way short of actually implementing these ideals. We seem to like the idea of being green but don’t want to make the changes and sacrifices to truly make our cities sustainable. Similarly, in the cycling community there is a conflict between the mainstream, more recreational focused Cascade Bicycle Club and those wanting more radical change. I have seen a similar dynamic with the Austin Cycling Association here as well.

When it comes to making biking a form of transportation equal to others, Seattle is leaps ahead of us though. While no Portland bike nirvana, bike lanes and sharrows abound everywhere creating space on the road for cyclists. I did about 100 miles of riding throughout the city and found only a handful of problem intersections for cyclists. The driving culture is quite different in Seattle with drivers going out of their way to yield to cyclists and pedestrians. In fact, you have to be careful if you are just standing on a street corner as you can bring traffic to a screeching halt when drivers think you are trying to cross. That is something I wish we could export to our car-is-king state. It certainly makes riding on the street very pleasant and much more welcoming to the novice.

Not that you need to do much riding on the street. The best thing Seattle has done for cycling is create hundreds of miles of bike paths throughout the city. By creating car-free connections to major points in the city, Seattle has lowered the perceived safety barrier for cyclists. This allows those less comfortable in traffic including children to still get places by bike and also provides a place for people in the neighborhood stroll, walk the dog, or jog as well. I think these paths are key to creating the kind of volume of cyclist I saw during rush hour.

As we look at possible additional bike paths, I think here are some key points to learn from this. First of all, the bike paths go somewhere, not just in a circle. This helps serve both recreational and transportation needs for the path making it an asset for more of the community. Also since bike paths use relatively little space, we can use strips of land or right of way in many cases. Seattle’s trails sometimes cuts through unused spots of industrial land to connect to neighborhood. Not every inch of a bike path has to be scenic to be useful. Finally, all of their paths are paved. We have used packed granite paths for the most part, probably as a cost savings, but having paved paths makes a real difference in creating thoroughfares for all types of bikes, not just mountain bikes and hybrids. Again, this puts the focus on transportation over recreation but still maintains the dual use.

As you see the hundreds of cyclists on the trails and streets, you can see that Seattlites take their cycling for transportation seriously. The road bike is king with lots of touring bikes and European style city bikes as well. Despite the natural setting, I saw very few mountain bikes or their spawn, the hybrid. Without having read my Transportation Bike Picker, the cycling masses have gravitated towards bikes that are practical for transportation.

In fairness, Seattle has been seriously plugging away a at this stuff longer than we have and are working to improve all the time. In my family’s neighborhood, there were new sharrows in the main street since my last visit. We have a great Bicycle/Pedestrian department that are working feverishly to improve our infrastructure. I think we should take what works there, especially the bike paths, into consideration as we implement our improvements.