In honor of World Bicycle Day today, Seattle car drivers graciously offered a one-day ceasefire with bicyclists crossing the Ballard Bridge.
“Wow, while I wish it could be this way every day I ride my bike to work either on this one-foot-wide sidewalk we share pedestrians or one of the lanes I take up, I will cherish this magnanimous one day of peace,” said local bike commuter Andrew Hahn, who’s managed to survive the war for years during daily commutes to Downtown and weekend rides to the Waterfront. “Every other day is a horror though – is it too much to hope this is the first step towards a peaceful two-lane solution?”
In the ceasefire brokered between the Cascadia Bicycle Club and SDOT, drivers agreed to move their speeding half-ton masses over nearly half a lane when passing cyclists.
“I’m happy to throw them a bone, I guess,” said driver Susan Louis, who we spoke to at an auto body in Interbay. “I’m getting the F-350 lifted today anyway, so I’ll just catch up on terrorizing them all over the city tomorrow.”
Next year, cyclists say they hope that an additional World Bicycle Day ceasefire can be issued with pedestrians who walk like slow drunks all over the Burke-Gilman Trail.
