On Monday, April 22, a small handful of Crown Hill residents gathered in a room with Colin Dietrich from Ballard Greenways to discuss the possibility of bringing greenways to Crown Hill.

The Ballard Greenway will modify residential roads along NW 58th St this summer to be safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. You can read our full report here from the latest open house on the subject.

One idea that has been floated around by the Ballard Greenways group and the Seattle Department of Transportation is the "Ballard Box," which would connect the greenway in Ballard to Crown Hill via North/South routes on either side.

“I would love to see greenways connect to other areas of the city. That’s one of my big things is the networks," said Crown Hill resident Dennis Galvin. "If you were to ride your bike, or if you were to walk, you could feel really safe doing so."

While much of the focus on the Ballard Greenway has been on the positives for bicyclists, and while residents have expressed concern over a constant "stream of bicylists" flowing through their neighborhood, Crown Hill residents see other benefits. For a neighborhood with few sidewalks, it could be an opportunity to lobby for pedestrian improvements.

"There's basically no sidewalks. Everything's shared space. Cars and bikes and pedestrians are on the same piece of asphalt," said Galvin, who mostly walks everywhere. "... If you have a narrow street, the traffic is slowed down automatically. Right now we basically have 60-foot right of ways that cars zoom up and down."

Crown Hill Neighborhood Association Vice President, Selina Carsiotis, who has attended Ballard Greenways meetings for the past year or so, said she falls under the category of people who would never bicycle (32 percent according to a survey that Dietrich showed). But, she said, she thought bringing greenways to Crown Hill was another chance to create safer streets for children and families.

"I think we really need to be able to walk on our streets safely, we need to bike, we need routes for our families’ safety," she said.

She said that sidewalks, or lack thereof, were a huge problem.

“It’s dangerous," she said. "It’s even more dangerous now there’s more people walking and biking."

Crown Hill resident Amy Klosterman, who bicycles sometimes, said she would probably bicycle more if a greenway were in place. Her concern was more for students though.

"We see a lot of middle school students on bikes, it's not that safe," she said. "It would just be nice to have more visibility for a bikeway."

Still, she had reservations about getting enough community support.

“Getting momentum for a project like this is going to be the hardest thing," she said.

Dietrich explained a little bit of the planning that the Ballard Greenways group went through, saying they spent quite a bit of time riding routes, taking notes, trading opinions and mapping out possible routes.

"Honestly it makes you interact with your neighborhood when you go route-finding. You put on your old lady hat or your little baby hat and interact with the streets in a different way," he said. "I'm walking a large amount of Ballard tripping over bumps and curbs. When you ride a bike you can see what a lot of streets and intersections look like, but you better walk them, too.”

He said it was important to think of destinations along the greenway. Having safe routes to health, transit, schools and even bars could all be important. In Crown Hill, residents expressed safe routes to school has been one of the main concerns.

At the same time, the greenway should avoid poor arterial crossings, bus routes, EMS routes, freight routes and hills when possible.

Zachariah Bryan can be reached at zachb@robinsonnews.com

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