By Erica C. Barnett
Last week, the Seattle Times ran an editorial denouncing the city for giving the Cascade Bicycle Club a street use permit for its annual fundraising ride, which will shut down the westbound lanes of the West Seattle Bridge for two hours on the first Sunday in May. After emailing someone at the city, the board reports, they discovered that there isn’t even any other maintenance going on during the bike ride; “In other words, traffic will be shut out purely to host the fundraising ride.”
This, of course, is how street permits work: A group gets a permit for an event, and cars aren’t allowed to drive through the event while it’s happening—think: Capitol Hill Block Party, West Seattle Summer Fest, or any number of weekly farmers’ markets.
So why is the Times so bothered that the city granted a standard street permit for this event? Because, according to the editorial board, this isn’t just any ride: It’s a ride by group that lobbies the city—and even met with someone from the mayor’s office to discuss the upcoming Move Seattle Levy at some point last fall. This level of access, according to the Times, should be more than enough enough to land Cascade on a no-fly list for permits.
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“City Hall should have thought twice about renting out a vital piece of public infrastructure to a special interest at a time when residents will be asked to debate transportation priorities and vote on a massive property tax proposal,” the paper wrote.
Asked about the Times’ characterization of the group’s agenda, Cascade executive director Lee Lambert said, “I reject that biking safety is a controversial topic,” and noted that Cascade isn’t just an advocacy group. “We do education, we provide low-cost helmets for folks, and we provide bike safety classes. We do rides every day of the year.”
The Times’ outrage that the city would allow an advocacy group to rent a city-owned bridge is baffling, but seems to boil down to a kind of faux concern about misuse of city resources. So it’s notable that they’ve never expressed concern that political consultant Tim Ceis received nearly half a million dollars from the city’s transportation department last year (much of that spent lobbying Sound Transit in favor of controversial changes to its light-rail route), or that political consultant Christian Sinderman works inside City Hall as a paid political advisor to the mayor. Given their silence, it seems safe to assume that the Times editorial board considers these contracts a prudent use of public funds.
Unlike taxpayer-funded contracts with political consultants, Cascade’s annual ride actually brings money in to the city. According to Cascade, the group spent around $15,000 paying police to do traffic control for this event, plus about $2,000 for street-use permits.
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