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.”
Continue reading “Don’t Open Pike Place to Pedestrians, Council Member Urges”