The Spokane City Council unanimously passed a resolution in early November that formally endorses the creation of 27 new miles of low-stress walking and cycling routes by 2027. Spencer Gardner, Spokane’s Planning Director, presented the mobility plan to the Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee in October. The plan is not yet fully designed and no funding source has been decided on, so city council was not voting to spend exact dollars, but rather to show formal support for Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration to continue planning the network.
The “27 by 2027 Urban Mobility Network” would fortify a few of Spokane’s many existing neighborhood streets to make them comfortable for users of all ages and abilities to walk, ride a bike or use a mobility device. There are a handful of strategies the city is considering using to accomplish this:
- narrowing the streets with curb extensions to make them uncomfortable to speed on in a vehicle
- adding medians which force drivers to turn off the calmed segments so they cannot be used as through-streets
- adding crosswalks at arterials that include flashing lights to stop traffic
A good example of the changes needed to make a mobility network is in Vancouver, Canada, which has many quiet neighborhood streets designated as bikeways, where each arterial has an enhanced crossing with a button accessible from the seat of a bike.
