By Erica C. Barnett

In a 2,100-word, emoji-filled email blast (that’s about three times the length of this post!) announcing a compromise that will keep a traffic safety divider in place while allowing cars to park in the bus lane on Delridge Way SW, City Councilmember Rob Saka blamed a “radical proxy ‘war on cars'” for demonizing his efforts to remove the divider. The barrier, a standard-issue hardened centerline identical to hundreds installed around the city, was installed as part of Metro’s RapidRide H project.

As PubliCola reported exclusively in 2023, Saka wanted to remove a standard eight-inch divider that prevents drivers from making illegal left turns across two lanes of car traffic, a bus lane, and a sidewalk into the parking lot of the daycare his kids attended, the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center. Saka, who was a corporate attorney for Meta when he sent a series of increasingly heated emails Seattle Department of Transportation employees in 2021 and 2022, complained that the hardened centerline was “triggering” and “severely traumatizing” to immigrants who “have faced significant trauma during their perilous journeys, including by navigating divisive structures and barriers designed to exclude lives in the US.”

Saka has consistently portrayed the lack of left-turn car access into the small preschool as an issue of racial and social justice, and his newsletter doubles down on that canard, accusing people who oppose eliminating the divider of “targeting the very immigrant families they claim to support” by denying cars from turning left into the parking lot.

In Saka’s version of reality, “radical” “anti-car ideologues” from other parts of the city are the only ones who opposed his proposal to remove the traffic-safety divider. These extremists, Saka wrote, would “rather villainize and punish drivers than support real multimodal safety. Local anti-car, anti-mode choice activists have attempted to make this project a rallying cry for direct action against transportation options that involve cars. I reject the false choice. This project has always been about safety for everyone — bikes, buses, pedestrians, and yes, cars. That’s the Seattle I believe in — coexistence over culture wars.”

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Saka did not identify who, precisely, is against “mode choice” or how preventing left turns into one preschool parking lot prevents people from driving cars.

On a roll, Saka accused the “activists” who opposed his $2 million folly of supporting Trump’s anti- immigrant policies and being connected to the “Defund the Police” movement, accusing these unidentified adversaries of “White Saviorism” and saying that he sees through their “insulting and revealing” opposition to the barrier’s removal “[a]s a Black man, son of immigrants, and survivor of poverty and foster care.”

It’s a striking escalation in Saka’s rhetorical battle against supporters of a project that was, again, built by the Seattle Department of Transportation to support safety for residents of West Seattle who use the new bus lane and improved sidewalk, along with a new bike lane across the street.

“Seattle loves to call itself pro-immigrant, yet some of the loudest ‘progressives’ opposing this project are targeting the very immigrant families they claim to support,” Saka wrote. “Why the outrage and sudden personal vendettas here? Why do some seem paralyzingly focused, even hellbent, on strictly policing and enforcing the desired traffic patterns and left turns by immigrants in a narrow 140-foot stretch in Delridge—but nowhere else in our 84-square-mile city?”

At the risk of repetition, the city of Seattle has installed hundreds of these hardened centerlines around the city, including in wealthy neighborhoods; to my knowledge, the one on Delridge is the only one that has been the subject of a high-profile campaign to remove it, which is why the opposition emerged. In Ballard, the city recently upgraded an identical (but much longer) hardened centerline on 15th Ave. NW to a broad median with street plantings, preventing people from driving over the curbs to turn left into oncoming traffic.

Saka continued, accusing safety advocates of actively “harassing” immigrants, effectively allying with Trump and his deportation agenda.

“Amid a resurgent Trump agenda threatening immigrant rights, we should be uniting to protect—not harass—these communities. As the son of a Nigerian immigrant, I see through the hypocrisy — and so do the families and workers affected. Real immigrant justice means backing up words with action.”

Saka even went so far as to connect support for the fully vetted, constructed safety project to the so-called “Defund movement,” saying that while “local immigrant families, other working families, small businesses, workers, and nonprofits in the area” support tearing out the divider, the opposition has come “[m]ostly from activists outside Delridge, and many outside West Seattle — many of whom pushed failed “defund” policies — now trying to block a safety project that helps communities they claim to support but don’t actually live in. The hypocrisy speaks volumes.”

Saka does not include any evidence that opponents of removing the safety barrier are from outside his district; that they oppose immigrants; or that they supported defunding the police.

The compromise the city reached with Saka will create a new detour around the curb, making it more convenient for drivers to access the preschool parking lot. It will also include new signs letting drivers know they can park in the dedicated bus lane during off-peak hours—restricting the lane’s intended use as public transit for people who live in Saka’s district but don’t own cars or choose not to drive.