By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Katie Wilson signed an expansive, substantive executive order last week directing the Seattle Department of Transportation to implement and expedite a list of, Vision Zero projects designed to improve public safety by building new protected bike lanes, improving pedestrian visibility at intersections, prioritizing projects on “high-injury” streets like Aurora Ave. N and Rainier Ave. S., and installing more automated speed enforcement cameras, along with at least a dozen other executive actions.
The legislation also directs the city’s lobbyists to support a grab bag of potential state legislation that includes granting legal immunity to cities that make street improvements after a fatal crash (as Seattle Bike Blog noted in their coverage, the potential for liability can prevent cities from making safety improvements, which could be seen as an admission of guilt) as well as lower drunk-driving limits and local authority to prohibit right turns on red.
Speaking on Friday outside Cleveland High School, not far from a recently “daylighted” intersection where SDOT removed parking to make crosswalks more visible, Wilson called it “especially meaningful to be here near Cleveland High School, where the safety of young people traveling to and from school is top of mind.”
One question Wilson politely deflected—although it appeared to be top of mind for many of the reporters at the press conference—was why city council transportation committee chair Rob Saka wasn’t at the event. (“I look forward to working with the transportation committee chair,” Wilson said.) Committee vice-chair Alexis Mercedes Rinck, along with District 2 Councilmember Eddie Lin, was there, but the putative transportation leader for the executive department was nowhere to be found.
In fact, Saka declined to participate in the press conference. He even rolled out his own traffic safety legislation, in the form of two draft proposals introduced as informational items because they were still unfinished, one day before Wilson’s announcement. It sure looked like an attempt to upstage the mayor’s executive orders, and Saka’s pointed absence from Wilson’s event only highlighted his rushed attempt to shine the spotlight on himself.
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Saka said the draft bills will look different when he actually introduces the bills in September, and a commitment to introduce a third bill mandating safety guards on city contractors’ trucks to protect pedestrians and cyclists from potentially deadly side-impact crashes.
Saka’s legislation, which got coverage on KOMO, Seattle Bike Blog, and KIRO’s John Curley Show, among others, is mostly nonsubstantive. It “authorizes” the SDOT director to do things like “incorporate, as appropriate, traffic safety best practices consistent with Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach” and gives SDOT’s chief engineer the “authority” to make various safety improvements to city infrastructure.
It also codifies a change Bruce Harrell’s transportation director, Greg Spotts, made in 2023, designating SDOT’s chief engineer as the person in charge of traffic safety, and would put 19 statements about transportation in the Seattle Municipal Code, including a statement about the value of human life and one affirming that the city values partnerships with other transportation agencies.
During a meeting about Saka’s proposals last week, Rinck and Councilmember Dionne Foster both questioned Saka about what his legislation would actually do, and why he proposed adding what amount to statements of principles, like a commitment to Vision Zero and the Safe Systems approach, to the municipal code. (Ordinarily, these kinds of statements are included in recitals—”whereas” clauses—or nonbinding resolutions.) Saka responded that “the intent here is to codify the current existing policy as the new baseline, as the new baseline that SDOT is fully free to… iterate, improve, make better.”
Asked if she considered her proposal more substantive than Saka’s, Wilson smiled and said she thought the two were compatible. “I look forward to working the transportation committee chair, looked forward to working with him to improve road safety.