If a city is like a body, then streets could well be described as its arter­ies, cap­il­lar­ies, and veins… ves­sels that are essen­tial for cir­cu­la­tion, but a haz­ard to good health when prob­lems like clots, plaque, or faulty valves materialize.

Like metrop­o­lis­es all around the globe, Seat­tle is con­sid­er­ing what kind of city it wants to be dur­ing the next few decades, which will be an era of cli­mate reck­on­ing like none oth­er in mod­ern his­to­ry. Deci­sions about land use, growth, and street design in Seat­tle have been made on an car-cen­tric basis for decades, with grave impli­ca­tions for free­dom of mobil­i­ty, safe­ty, and sustainability.

But we do not have to con­tin­ue on that trajectory.

Indeed, in recent years, there has been a wel­come and grow­ing move­ment to rethink how we design and move around in our built envi­ron­ment, chal­leng­ing and even dis­card­ing old assump­tions. At the heart of this move­ment is the idea that our cities — and the streets that con­nect homes, busi­ness­es, and civic gath­er­ing places to each oth­er — are and ought to be for peo­ple, not cars.

When streets become peo­ple-cen­tric as opposed to car-cen­tric, amaz­ing things can hap­pen, as oth­er cities’ expe­ri­ence has demonstrated.

Seat­tle has an oppor­tu­ni­ty both to make cli­mate progress and to strength­en peo­ple’s health and well-being by improv­ing its streets.

To find out what vot­ers think about that oppor­tu­ni­ty, we teamed up with our friends at Seat­tle Neigh­bor­hood Green­ways (SNG) to ask respon­dents of our most recent city­wide research sur­vey in Seat­tle what val­ues they think should guide the fund­ing and allo­ca­tion of space on our streets — and what ideas they are inter­est­ed in imple­ment­ing to speed our recov­ery from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and get us clos­er to our equi­ty, liv­abil­i­ty, cli­mate action, and safe­ty goals.

Today, we’re very hap­py to be able to share our find­ings with the public.

Let’s dive in to the ques­tions we asked and the respons­es. Our first ques­tion was a val­ues-ques­tion that asked Seat­tleites to respond to a series of state­ments espous­ing prin­ci­ples for how the city funds and allo­cates space on its streets.

QUESTION: Seat­tle has impor­tant deci­sions to make about its trans­porta­tion future over the next few years. Think­ing about how Seat­tle could fund and allo­cate space on our streets, please indi­cate how impor­tant each of the fol­low­ing val­ues are to you.

VALUES & ANSWERS:

Safe­ty: Every­one should be safe no mat­ter how they get around on our streets.

Impor­tant: 96%		Not Impor­tant: 4%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	1%
81%	14%	3%	1%	———

Acces­si­bil­i­ty: Seniors, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and oth­ers who are unable to dri­ve should be able to get around com­fort­ably and with dignity.

Impor­tant: 94%		Not Impor­tant: 4%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	2%
73%	21%	3%	1%	———

Afford­abil­i­ty: Peo­ple should have afford­able trans­porta­tion options to get around.

Impor­tant: 92%		Not Impor­tant: 6%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	1%
72%	20%	4%	2%	———

Con­ve­nience: Peo­ple should have con­ve­nient trans­porta­tion options that get them out of traf­fic and save time.

Impor­tant: 91%		Not Impor­tant: 7%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	2%
63%	28%	4%	3%	———

Kid-friend­ly streets: Kids who are old enough should be able to safe­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly walk or bike to school, parks, and friends’ houses.

Impor­tant: 89%		Not Impor­tant: 9%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	2%
61%	28%	6%	3%	———

Racial equi­ty: Com­mu­ni­ties of col­or deserve safe streets.

Impor­tant: 88%		Not Impor­tant: 9%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	3%
75%	13%	3%	6%	———

Clean envi­ron­ment: We must reduce cli­mate-dam­ag­ing emis­sions and air pollution.

Impor­tant: 88%		Not Impor­tant: 10%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	2%
74%	14%	6%	4%	———

Health: It should be easy for peo­ple to build exer­cise into their dai­ly rou­tine and lead health­i­er lives.

Impor­tant: 82%		Not Impor­tant: 15%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	3%
54%	29%	11%	4%	———

Hap­pi­ness: Peo­ple should have options to get around town that bring them joy.

Impor­tant: 73%		Not Impor­tant: 23%		Not sure:
Very	Some­what	Not Too	Not At All	4%
44%	28%	16%	7%	———

As we can see, all these val­ues were char­ac­ter­ized by more than sev­en out of ten respon­dents as impor­tant. Safe­ty and and acces­si­bil­i­ty topped the list, but afford­abil­i­ty, con­ve­nience, kid-friend­ly streets, racial equi­ty, clean envi­ron­ment, health, and hap­pi­ness were also deemed impor­tant by most respondents.

Next, we asked about a set of ideas for cre­at­ing more space on our streets for peo­ple as we recov­er from the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

QUESTION: Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, many cities across the coun­try, includ­ing Seat­tle, made changes to their streets to cre­ate more space for walk­ing, bik­ing, and out­door din­ing. Please indi­cate whether you would sup­port or oppose mak­ing each of the fol­low­ing changes in your neigh­bor­hood as the state recov­ers from COVID-19, even if it means remov­ing a lane of traf­fic or park­ing spaces.

IDEAS & ANSWERS:

Safe walk­ing and bik­ing routes for kids, par­ents, and teach­ers to get to schools

Sup­port: 84%		Oppose: 14%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	2%
56%	28%	9%	4%	———

More space for out­door din­ing and retail to sup­port small businesses

Sup­port: 84%		Oppose: 14%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	2%
55%	29%	7%	7%	———

Wider side­walks and plant­i­ng strips to give peo­ple more room to walk and plant more street trees

Sup­port: 78%		Oppose: 19%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	3%
47%	31%	10%	9%	———

Giv­ing bus­es their own lanes to speed up bus trips

Sup­port: 74%		Oppose: 23%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	3%
41%	33%	15%	8%	———

Bike lanes that are phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from cars to make every­body safer

Sup­port: 71%		Oppose: 26%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	3%
46%	24%	13%	13%	———

Safe routes to school got the biggest response, fol­lowed by more space for out­door din­ing and retail. Wider side­walks and plant­i­ng strips were also extreme­ly pop­u­lar, as were cre­at­ing more ded­i­cat­ed bus lanes and bike lanes pro­tect­ed from auto traf­fic. As we can see, no idea polled under 70%.

In our third ques­tion, we gave respon­dents even more ideas to respond to.

QUESTION: Seat­tle has ambi­tious cli­mate, health, equi­ty, liv­abil­i­ty, eco­nom­ic, and safe­ty goals. Do you sup­port or oppose mak­ing the fol­low­ing changes to get us clos­er to these goals?

IDEAS & ANSWERS:

Pro­vid­ing for more homes, retail, and neigh­bor­hood ameni­ties in order to cre­ate a city where peo­ple can walk to all their dai­ly needs in fif­teen min­utes or less.

Sup­port: 81%		Oppose: 14%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	5%
49%	32%	6%	8%	———

Allow­ing shop­ping streets such as the street next to Pike Place Mar­ket to lim­it vehi­cle traf­fic to load­ing and unload­ing so that peo­ple can walk com­fort­ably and safely.

Sup­port: 81%		Oppose: 15%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	4%
53%	28%	7%	8%	———

Shift­ing the enforce­ment of traf­fic laws from the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment to the Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to allow police to focus on oth­er priorities.

Sup­port: 73%		Oppose: 17%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	10%
51%	22%	7%	10%	———

Cre­at­ing low-traf­fic, low-speed neigh­bor­hood streets where peo­ple can safe­ly walk, bike, run, and play in the street — and car traf­fic is lim­it­ed to deliv­er­ies and local access only.

Sup­port: 67%		Oppose: 28%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	5%
37%	30%	15%	13%	———

Allow­ing schools to close their adja­cent streets dur­ing the school year to cre­ate a safer envi­ron­ment for kids to get to and from school.

Sup­port: 55%		Oppose: 38%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	8%
27%	28%	22%	15%	———

Requir­ing prop­er­ty own­ers to repair side­walks when they sell their prop­er­ty to make the side­walks safer and more acces­si­ble for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and the elderly.

Sup­port: 45%		Oppose: 47%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	8%
23%	22%	19%	28%	———

As with the pre­vi­ous ques­tion, we saw lot of enthusiasm.

Pro­vid­ing for more ameni­ties topped the list in response to this ques­tion, fol­lowed by allow­ing shop­ping streets such as Pike Place to lim­it vehi­cle traf­fic and shift­ing the enforce­ment of traf­fic laws to SDOT from SPD.

There was less inter­est in allow­ing schools to close adja­cent streets dur­ing the school year, but a major­i­ty still expressed support.

The only idea that was not pop­u­lar out of all the ideas we test­ed was requir­ing prop­er­ty own­ers to repair side­walks when they sell their property.

Seat­tle Neigh­bor­hood Green­ways’ Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Gor­don Padelford not­ed that these find­ings demon­strate that there is already a strong con­sen­sus among vot­ers that Seat­tle should be mak­ing deci­sions about its streets that put peo­ple first.

“Despite the emerg­ing nar­ra­tive that Seat­tle is deeply frac­tured, at least when it comes to trans­porta­tion issues Seat­tlites are sur­pris­ing­ly unit­ed,” he said.

“Even when it comes to seem­ing­ly con­tentious trans­porta­tion projects that require con­vert­ing a lane or traf­fic or park­ing spaces, Seat­tle vot­ers were over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ive,” he added, point­ing to the high per­cent­ages. “They are will­ing to con­vert trav­el lanes and park­ing lanes into more space for kids to get to school, out­door din­ing, wider side­walks, safe bike lanes, and bus lanes. This sci­en­tif­ic polling finds that Seat­tle vot­ers are in fact more unit­ed around an inclu­sive trans­porta­tion vision than parts of the pub­lic dis­course would lead us to believe.”

While change can be hard, change is also nec­es­sary. We have cho­sen for years here in Cas­ca­dia to build what are essen­tial­ly traf­fic sew­ers instead of prop­er streets in our urban cen­ters and sub­urbs alike. When streets only serve cars, more peo­ple dri­ve, because dri­ving is the encour­aged and sanc­tioned default.

Not long after NPI was found­ed near­ly two decades ago, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to a talk by one of the lead­ers of the Project for Pub­lic Spaces, which has cham­pi­oned ideas like place­mak­ing for almost fifty years. The high­light of that talk was a pre­sen­ta­tion that depict­ed amaz­ing spaces like Pike Place Mar­ket and described the char­ac­ter­is­tics of what makes them great.

Our streets can be more than just con­vey­er belts for cars. They can be attrac­tive places them­selves: places where peo­ple can walk in safe­ty, bike in com­fort, or sit down at a cafe to read a book or watch the world go by.

Seat­tle has tak­en steps towards embrac­ing this future in the last few years. Now the city must accel­er­ate its trans­for­ma­tion to a peo­ple-cen­tric metrop­o­lis. Our data demon­strates that vot­ers are ready and enthu­si­as­tic to move forward.

We thank our friends at Seat­tle Neigh­bor­hood Green­ways for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to team up on explor­ing vot­ers’ sup­port for ideas that can improve our streets and raise our qual­i­ty of life. These were fun ques­tions to ask!

The poll these ques­tions were a part of, which was con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute by Change Research, has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.1% at the 95% con­fi­dence inter­val. All 617 respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was in the field from Tues­day, Octo­ber 12th, 2021 through Fri­day, Octo­ber 15th, 2021. Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll. 

We urge Seat­tle’s incom­ing elect­ed lead­er­ship, includ­ing May­or-elect Har­rell, Coun­cilmem­ber Tere­sa Mosque­da, and Coun­cilmem­ber-elect Sara Nel­son to study these find­ings and join with their col­leagues in act­ing on them.