By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle City Councilmember Bob Kettle wants to take plans to turn car-choked Pike Place into an “event street” off the table by amending Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed Seattle Transportation Plan. Kettle’s amendment, which the council’s transportation committee discussed on Tuesday, would express the council’s opposition to using funds from the upcoming Move Seattle Levy to partially pedestrianize the street immediately in front of Pike Place Market.
Advocates have been making the case for years that removing vehicles from Pike Place would improve pedestrian safety and make the market a more welcoming place for shoppers, who are now forced to dart between moving vehicles, taking evasive maneuvers that Maggie Haines, the treasurer for Friends of the Market, described fondly as “a slow dance” in her testimony against pedestrianization.
What the transportation plan proposes is far more modest than true pedestrianization. Under the plan, Pike Place would become an “event street” that could be closed down to vehicular traffic for events, much as Ballard Avenue or South Edmunds Street shut down for weekly farmers’ markets.
“Event streets,” according to the draft plan, are “shared streets” where “events may close movement of all vehicles, except emergency access, on a frequent or intermittent basis.” The goal of the new designation, according to the plan, is to “prioritize people walking and rolling around Pike Place while enabling efficient and reliable delivery of goods and access to Pike Place Market.”
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Vendors and Pike Place Market representatives decried even this modest proposal during the committee’s public comment period, suggesting that allowing even occasional street closures would kill businesses and harm low-income people and seniors.
“Pike Place is not an event street by any stretch of the word—it is the lifeline street in the market historical district,” Friends of the Market president Heather Pihl said. “Pike Place Market is a working market, and it’s also a community including low income residents, a senior center, a food bank, a child care, and a medical clinic. It’s not a place to hang out.”
Kettle agreed that making the market pedestrian-only would harm businesses, by making them harder to access by car and limiting access for trucks to load in and out. Calling the proposal a “cookie cutter approach” that does not acknowledge the market’s “unique” character, location, and relative lack of access points, Kettle said, “This is not William Penn’s Philadelphia, where we have nice squares going everywhere. [Pike Place Market] is on the cusp of falling into the sea. … There [are] no streets on the other side. There’s no First Avenue further west or Second Avenue further west. Basically, we have Elliott Bay.”
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (which is encouraging supporters of pedestrianization to contact the council) polled market vendors last year and last year found that most were open to pedestrianizing Pike Place, and community members who participated in the development of the plan overwhelmingly identified opening Pike Place to pedestrians as their top transportation priority for the downtown area.
Mayor Bruce Harrell released a draft of the plan, which incorporates and subsumes all of the city’s the “modal” plans (e.g. the Pedestrian Master Plan) into a single document, in February.
“Lots of the PPM merchants move more far more stuff than the combined 120 or so pound weight of a Marshall amp, ”
LOL Hey Bubbleator, and you know what would enable PPM merchants to do that faster and easier with fewer hassles? Getting all the vehicles driven by rando tourists out of the Market and allowing only permitted vehicles operated by PPM merchants.
Just shut it down. There’s no need to use Move Seattle funds. And pedestrianizing a street is making it more accessible to the mobility challenged, not less. It gives the mobility challenge space to get to a venue. Which is why the Healthy Streets Program is a joke. Filling the streets with restaurant seating does nothing for the pedestrian or mobility challenged. This would though.
“(or are hauling a couple of 40 lb cases of produce or frozen fish)”
Wheeled hand pulled carts exist (my wife has one she brings to the farmer’s market).
I played the Showbox at the Market last month, and even with quality casters/wheels I guran-fucking-tee you that your wife wouldn’t want to move a Marshall half stack more than fifty feet on our city’s fine sidewalks (and I move stuff at work all of the time on hand trucks – I wouldn’t want to haul ANYTHING four whole city blocks. Stacked items fall off constantly, it’s rough on your back, etc etc etc).
Get real.
Sure, because that’s what most people do at the market. Move Marshall half stacks.
“I wouldn’t want to haul ANYTHING four whole city blocks. ”
Yet my wife does haul things four blocks (or more)…every Saturday at the Farmers’ Market…
Au contraire, mon frere – that is very much a relevant example of the realities of moving stuff – in this case, basically on the same block as the entrance to Pike Place. It’s a segment that isn’t particularly hilly – but it is still busy and old and broken and all of that gets MUCH worse as you go north all the way up to Lenora (as one clueless commenter suggested everyone who now uses the street should be forced to move). Lots of the PPM merchants move more far more stuff than the combined 120 or so pound weight of a Marshall amp, and the fact that a bunch of entitled New Urbanist busybodies have a bug up their ass because cars offend their delicate sensibilities means WAY less than nothing to me and even more importantly to those folks who make their living at PPM.
I’ll also bet you dollars to donuts the soft-handed pseudo-intellectual dillettantes who write for the Urbanist are also in favor of the 1st Ave Streetcar that will eliminate pretty much ALL of the loading zones on 1st Ave, which will put the Showbox and a whole lot of other folks out of business (and then they’ll piss and moan about the fact that Amazon trucks and other delivery folks are forced to block their ill-conceived and under-utilized bike lanes because, well, reality.)
Bully for your wife for being able to move her stuff, but I’ll defer to the needs of the businesses who have relied on that enormously successful commercial street for well over a hundred years.
New Urbanists have this bizarre expectation that their hobby horse ideas will be treated with deference and respect when hostility is a much more appropriate response, and then get really butthurt when folks push back. Deal with it.
I don’t live in Kettle’s district, but I might have to throw him some bucks and/or Democracy Vouchers in the next election cycle (unless he supports the pure idiocy that is the 1st Ave Streetcar, at least).
Tim Burgess still finds the truth hurts don’t it Mr “bubbleater”?
When I get a bad musical earworm the same way you apparently have Tim Burgess stuck living rent-free in your head I generally put on the “Sanford and Son” theme and that usually solves it.
The problem is that a carless Pike Place strips the Down Under merchants of potential customers. It’s an unintended consequences but true. Tourists and convention goers think that the Pike Place Market experience is only on Pike Place. About a decade ago Pike Place was made car less and business in the multiple floors below street level died. The same has happened during large events at Victor Steinbrueck Park; merchant business, especially produce vendors, might as well close and go home. I know it seems counterintuitive, but that is the reality. Keep the cars, avoid “events” during business hours.
If you can’t handle having your business on one of the most busiest locations in Seattle that everybody comes from all around the world to see, but don’t have your damn business down there, Trust me, we don’t want you there anyways if you wanna run people over or try to keep us off the street so that we can enjoy this wonderful place that we have grown to love whether we live here or we visit here or we know about it and we dream to visit someday. I say fire the councilman. I’m guessing he has a business down there and he’s getting pretty crabby about not being able to get in and out. Because nobody drives that area unless they have to, or they don’t have any better ideas because they end up going down the hill on accident and they’re brand new to Seattle and they don’t have a way out. It’s not like people are literally speed racing through that alleyway and if they are, they have no freaking business driving through there in the first place.
Wow why is this still a debate? Driving a car through a pedestrian walkway is a lose-lose for everyone, and makes Seattle look pretty podunk in the eyes of out of towners. Like driving your truck right up on the beach at sunset.
It’s not a pedestrian walkway – it’s a commercial street (albeit a small one).
They could just close the street to all cars at 9am except a “market shuttle” that is funded by the city to specifically get people who need the services or are mobility challenged around the market area. Dealing with road raging tourists who thought it was a good idea to turn their cars onto that street has always been a frustrating feature of the market.
That’s actually a great idea…that would actually make close to door to door service possible for those folks, rather than a million to one crapshoot they could park near where they want to go.
To lock up the street for some, but not for others, is a logistical nightmare. It will impact the businesses in the Market. Adding “events” to a space that frequently exceeds its carrying capacity. Proponents are asking for something that sounds simple but is quite complicated. Pike Place Market PDA is fully aware of the challenges and in the best place to determine how the street is managed. This street is fully within the Pike Place Market Historic District and is already being managed to accommodate special events by the entity closest to it and able to understand the interwoven, sometimes conflicting needs of all stakeholders. Let’s be reasonable.
I live on a street that is for “local access and deliveries”. I wouldn’t call it a “logistical nightmare”. There are also private parking lots that allow some cars in and others are not allowed in. There are also automatic bollard that many cities use for this exact reason. Keeping some cars in and some cars out is definitely possible. It’s not like Seattle has the only active market that needs both deliveries and people in a crowded city. These are solvable problems, why hasn’t the PDA solved them yet? What’s taking so long?
“Tell me you have never been to Pike Place Market without telling me you have never been to Pike Place Market.” I have, many times, never once in a car. Never once seen a delivery being made, so the need for trucks to get in there has always been spurious.
This is nothing to do with hating cars, but cities are for people, not cars. Pike Place Market is a bellwether for how Seattle wants to develop: if it can’t prioritize those couple of blocks for people, we can assume the rest of Seattle will remain a cluster of car-dependent suburbs.
I’ve been to Pike Place Market many times in the car, throughout my entire life, and you can never get parking in the proposed area anyway. Closing it to car traffic would make it easier to get in an out of the market, seems a no brainer, except to those like Bob Kettle who like to cater to the minority of angry complainers.
One easy way to know you are hopelessly out of touch? When the small merchants and vendors you claim to support are telling you the plan sucks but your hatred of cars causes you to ignore every word out of their mouths.
“Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (which is encouraging supporters of pedestrianization to contact the council) polled market vendors last year and last year found that most were open to pedestrianizing Pike Place, and community members who participated in the development of the plan overwhelmingly identified opening Pike Place to pedestrians as their top transportation priority for the downtown area.”
study linked in article: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/10/12/most-vendors-dont-oppose-pedestrianizing-pike-place-market-survey-shows/
sounds like the majority of vendors are ok with pedestrianization
This is a classic bullshit New Urbanist solution in search of a problem.
“This is a classic bullshit New Urbanist solution in search of a problem.” Bubblator can’t even read a comment of a few dozen words and do anything but miss the point. Some people are just slow and dumb. Doesn’t make a a bad person, I’m sure.
I could give a flying fuck about what the Urbanist says – I have walked through there countless times, driven through there dozens of times (albeit not recently, because driving that way is REALLY dumb unless you need to), and don’t need to be lectured by you.
“I could give a flying fuck about what the Urbanist says”
Good for you. Any why anyone should give “a flying fuck” about what you say is…?
The small merchants and vendors who think the pedestrianization plan sucks are just like the bar and restaurant owners who thought going smoke-free would kill their businesses: they have a knee-jerk fear of change.
“One easy way to know you are hopelessly out of touch?” By going under the moniker “newspeaker” and opening your mouth? No, you hate everywhere you can park your car and have to walk more then ten feet to a shop front. Get a life, listen to the majority of the market vendors, and quit whining about “car haters” like some kind of ignorant clown.
It’s a bit rich to say that pedestrians need to dart between vehicles on Pike Place. The fact is that Pike Place Market is a designated pedestrian zone where jaywalking laws are not enforced. Has been for a long time. People walk in the streets, cars and trucks slow down to a crawl, and there are VERY few accidents. If Pike Place Market is to remain a working market, there needs to be vehicle access. Proponents of a “pedestrian” street like to imagine Pike Place full of nice cafe tables. That is incompatible with fire equipment access, load and unload activity, and a working market.
Mobility-challenged shoppers would be stripped of their shopping rights if it goes pedestrian only, and they need to designate many more of those parking spots to alter-abled placard holders.
In pedestrian markets across the world, accommodations are made for mobility challenged shoppers/visitors and for loading/unloading. In fact, by removing non-essential vehicles, it makes it easier for these users.
Also, note that mobility challenged shoppers are less likely to drive so this provides further benefits.
Majority of traffic are confused cruise passengers and clueless tourists. Majority of mobility challenged people can’t drive, so in fact you’re depriving them of safe access.
“shopping rights” is the most insane american phrase i’ve ever heard, jesus christ
What in the universe are you talking about. If you drive to Pike Place noone in their right mind drives *through* Pike Place, not even for accessibility purposes. You park in the garage on Lenora and there are elevators and bam you’re right there. There is zero sense in having cars drive through the middle of Pike Place
100%
“The mobility challenged shoppers who drive into the market taking a 1 in 47 billion chance they can park directly in front of where they want to go rather than not… and approximately always needing to travel some distance on foot or in mobility assistive device anyway”
I fully agree that most people would be nuts to drive down Pike Place unless they had a good reason to (though I do think enough folks do that it would be stupid to foreclose that option), but Lenora is almost 4 blocks north of where the photo that accompanies this screed was taken. If you have a mobility impairment (or are hauling a couple of 40 lb cases of produce or frozen fish) that’s an awful long way indeed.
You seem to think that the mobility challenged are not financially-challenged as well? Who can afford a garage, I hav a placard so I don’t pay for parking as well as have the ability to park close to my destination.