Hi I'm Jeff James, I'm with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. We're part
of the United States Department of Transportation. We're here today in the South of downtown
Seattle neighborhood collecting video footage from a couple of different perspectives. We
want to capture video footage from the perspective of a bicyclist as well as a large truck operator
on the same route. And we can use this as part of our bike large truck safety assessment
that is part of a national effort to conduct bicycle - pedestrian safety assessments throughout
the country. We're going to be heading north on Marginal way and south on First avenue.
Both of the routes will show us a variety of different bicycle infrastructures where
bicyclists and large trucks share the road together. Also here with us today is a member
of the West Seattle Bicycle Connections community group and I'll let Bob Anderton tell us a
little bit more about that.
I used to live in this area so I'm familiar with the area and part of West Seattle Bike
Connections. I'm also a bike lawyer so I'm very interested in making sure that our roads
are safe for everybody.
Can you tell us about your experience with this route and any known hot spots where conflict
with large trucks can occur?
Sure, where we are now is not an area where most bicyclists would ride with reason. Vehicles
are going much too quickly to share the road safely, there's not enough space in the road
and the pavement conditions are pretty bad. But there are other parts where people do
ride all the time. It's the main connection for West Seattle coming in and out of downtown.
It's something I ride twice a day. And were going to I think past at least one spot where
someone was recently killed and that was due to a truck interaction. So it's definitely
worth checking out and seeing how we can make it safer.
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