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A vibrant Seattle through transportation excellence Grace Crunican, Director

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Seattle Department of Transportation Media Corner

The Seattle Department of Transportation believes in transparency and open government. To make sure the public understands our work, we are putting media interview requests, our answers to the media, public disclosure requests and other supporting documents online.

Transcripts of media interviews may also appear on this page, to give everybody an open look at what the department is doing, and how we interact with the press.

We hope you find it helpful.

NEW INFORMATION ABOUT SDOT REWORK:

8/4/09 The Seattle Times submitted a number of reader questions about transportation related work around the city. None of these cases involved rework by SDOT. Click here to read our answers on the SDOT Blog.

We delivered to The Seattle Times an industry survey on construction re-work. Click here.

We delivered to The Seattle Times a spread sheet on re-work. Click here.

SDOT compiled a list of all projects in Street Maintenance Division. This gives context to the rework, which is about 1 percent of all work. Click here.

Seattle Councilmember Tim Burgess understands the importance of context, and offers his perspective: http://www.timburgess.com/

Letter to Council sent 7/9/2009

SDOT projects for 2009 including major capital improvements

SDOT just transmitted this information to the Seattle Times, which shows that reader-generated questions about road work involved only private contractors or utility repair. 7/16/09

Street Repair Rework Fact Sheet

Transportation Committee Questions 07/21/09


GREEN BIKE LANES

A green bicycle lane is the portion of the bicycle lane that is colored green to indicate that motorists should expect to see bicyclists when they cross a bike lane to make a left or right turn. They are intended to reinforce good behavior for all road users.

The Seattle Times ran a blog post 7/14/09 that we would like to provide more information about.

The material SDOT uses for green bike lanes all over the city is a green-colored, manmade aggregate that is applied over an epoxy-like resin. Once the material is applied and cured (which takes minutes), it is inert. Further, the paint that we use for bike lanes and other lane markings is a water-bourne product. The old style oil-based paint has not been used in the city since the early 2000s.

SDOT has a stringent safety process to ensure that our employees and contractors are safe while applying this material.

Seattle is on the leading edge of using innovative treatments that make our streets more friendly for bicycles.

Material Selection

Prior to installing green bike lanes, we completed a thorough review of products offered through various vendors. We were looking for a product that provided a good surface for bicyclists (i.e. safe), was durable and non-toxic. After reviewing the literature and examining samples, we tested two of the commercially available products by installing them in the Traffic Maintenance yard on Airport Way S.

After six months, we selected the product that was subsequently used to install green bike lanes at 16 locations in 2008. It has a rough surface that has been well received by bicyclists, it is durable and it uses a green, non-toxic aggregate.

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