5/6/2023 0 Comments The missing link portlandDuring a visit to the site earlier this year, Levin pointed out how the design doesn’t take into account how people on bikes would actually use the facility, and leaves little margin for error. Those improvements may have been enough to prevent some of the crashes, but Levin and other advocates argue they still aren’t adequate. In late 2020, the City made further adjustments to the area, refreshing the paint and adding additional plastic posts and signage to direct riders. At least nine of the people involved in those crashes are being represented by Levin. The continued frequency of those crashes pushed the city to take additional action, but it was slow to act: between 20 the Seattle Fire Department responded to at least 39 incidents of people on bikes crashing on the tracks. Before that time, people on bikes were expected to follow arrows to cross the tracks at a right angle. In 2014, a two-way bikeway was installed intended to give people on bikes a safe path over the railroad tracks. That doesn’t mean the City of Seattle has left the area completely alone. Upon receiving a claim for damages, the city forwarded it to the Ballard Terminal Railroad. Just last July, someone on a bike crashed on the tracks, suffering a severe concussion and fractures to their face and wrist. “It feels as though that agreement may have removed the financial incentive that tort claims typically provide to take action to prevent future serious injuries or deaths,” he said. Levin argues that the 1997 agreement has removed the sense of urgency that might otherwise exist at this location if the danger was the city’s responsibility to fix. Ballard Terminal Railroad was created to provide rail service to businesses in the area, and a franchise ordinance signed that year notes that Ballard Terminal Railroad “shall defend,…and shall fully indemnify and hold the City and its officers, employees, and agents harmless from any and all losses, claims, actions, judgments, property damages, death, personal injuries, or damages suffered by any person or entity” in the railroad right of way, even if the City or city employees were found partially responsible. In 1997, BSNF, which had operated in Ballard, ceased operations on Shilshole. Something unusual about these particular railroad tracks is that the City is indemnified against lawsuits regarding the operation of the railway. “We acknowledge that multiple and ongoing legal challenges by industrial opponents have prevented the City from completing the Burke-Gilman Trail in this portion of the Missing Link,” Rob Levin, an attorney with the firm Washington Bike Law, told me. “But the City still has a duty to make this street reasonably safe for travel by bicycle.” Levin’s firm is preparing a lawsuit to push the city and the Ballard Terminal Railroad to take action before anyone else is hurt, regardless of the timeline for the permanent trail’s completion. The most dangerous segment of the Missing Link is underneath the Ballard Bridge, where the two-way bike lane crosses the railroad tracks, operated by the Ballard Terminal Railroad. In the meantime, though, the path that people biking use today underneath the Ballard Bridge, where a two-way bike lane crosses a portion of railway maintained by the Ballard Terminal Railroad, is still incredibly dangerous. If that’s true, it will be the culmination of a project that officially started in 2008 with the environmental review of a trail along Shilshole and Market Street, but which in reality goes back decades. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) now says they hope to complete the approximately one mile of trail by 2024, just as the nine-year Levy to Move Seattle is expiring. It was recently made into a Valentine by The Seattle Times, even. The failure of the City of Seattle to achieve its long-envisioned goal of creating a trail along Shilshole Avenue in Ballard to complete the “Missing Link” in the Burke-Gilman Trail has been going on for so long it has become a running joke. Rob Levin, a lawyer with Washington Bike Law, is pushing the city to fix dangerous conditions there. Shilshole Ave has largely sat unchanged as Burke Gilman trail opponents fight in court.
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