By Erica C. Barnett

The Pioneer Square Preservation Board and local businesses have raised objections to a Seattle Department of Transportation proposal to install bike and scooter parking spaces in 21 curbside locations in Pioneer Square, calling the proposal too much, too fast and claiming white lines and flex posts are out of keeping with the historic character of Pioneer Square. The Urbanist wrote about an initial briefing on the plan, which raise “a litany of objections” from the board, last month.

The proposed “bike corrals” would serve a dual safety purpose, according to bike and micromobility advocates. First, they would provide more places for people using shared bikes and scooters (primarily from Lime) to park the vehicles on the street instead of on sidewalks, making sidewalks more passable for pedestrians and people with sight and mobility limitations. Second, by blocking off illegal parking spaces, such as those directly in front of stop signs, the “corrals” will improve sightlines for drivers and other road and sidewalk users, “daylighting” intersections and reducing collisions.

“We are supportive of bike corrals at street interections in general, full stop, because they daylight intersections so it makes ti safer for all cyclists,” said Lee Lambert, executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club. “We also recognize that poorly parked micromobilty devices are a hazard for sidewalk users, and corrals are a solution to that problem. … I would put corrals on every corner if I could.”

But opponents of the SDOT proposal, including the Alliance for Pioneer Square, say the markings and flex posts will be visually disruptive and may be unnecessary, at least in the numbers SDOT is proposing. Alliance director Lisa Howard says her organization prefers a “pilot” of three or four corrals initially to see if people are using them.

“We have been fully supportive of the daylighting and the safety measures. Our feedback has been that the corrals themselves are not a one-size-fits-all response,” Howard said. “Even though it’s white lines and flex posts, if you put 40 of those up and down First Avenue, it’s going to have a major impact.”

Howard said it’s unclear if Pioneer Square proper is even the right location for a large number of new scooter and bike parking areas. “If you’re using a scooter to go to a Sounders game” at the stadiums south of downtown, “you’re not necessarily going to park at First and Yesler and walk the whole remaining quarter mile.”

Lambert said a pilot that small wouldn’t produce good data on how much people use the new corrals, since “the more places you have people to place scooters and bikes, the more likely people are to use them.”

Gordon Padelford, head of Seattle Streets Alliance (formerly Seattle Neighborhood Greenways), said the objections the preservation board and neighborhood advocates have raised so far have largely amounted to a “classic” case of “parking loss weaponized as neighborhood preservation.” (Pioneer Square already has its own neighborhood-specific iron bike racks, a costly if attractive addition won by preservationists in a previous battle over sidewalk space.)

The objections to the loss of these illegal parking spaces are ironic, Padelford pointed out, since the law that created the Pioneer Square Preservation District specifically cites “avoid[ing a proliferation of vehicular parking and vehicular-oriented uses” among the reasons for creating the district in the first place.

Local transportation advocacy groups, including Cascade, Seattle Streets Alliance, Transportation Choice Coalition and Futurewise, plus Lime, sent a letter to the preservation board this week urging them to approve the new corrals. The board is expected to take up the proposal again at its meeting on April 1.