Spending $1.35 million on bike paths not worth it

Published 1:30 am Sunday, March 13, 2022

The Everett City Council is considering a bike lane project of less than a half-mile costing $1.35 million, much of which is “free money” funded by federal taxpayers (“Everett eyeing $1.35 million to expand bike paths east of Broadway,” The Herald, March 7). The purported purpose of the project is the noble cause of safety for cyclists and protection for pedestrians. The city engineer is excited, and the advisory council chair is too. Who wouldn’t want to live in a city with happy cyclists and carefree pedestrians?

Before the council decides to take the required $350,000 from its road improvement fund to pay for the project, they would do well to consider that in the real world, many people have stopped using public transportation, which has gone from being insufficient and inconvenient to being insufficient, inconvenient and unsafe. I have to assume that apart from the stalwart true believers, like Everett’s own city engineer, the same applies to cyclists, too.

Mark Anderson

Snohomish