The Seattle Times ran an interesting story earlier this week about the lack of sidewalks in many neighborhoods in Seattle. Some facts from the story:

• Forty percent of Seattle streets lack full sidewalks on both sides of the road totaling 650 miles
• Installing new sidewalks is crazy expensive - about $2 million per mile. (mainly because of the accompanying drainage work that is needed from adding new curbs to a street)

Most of the neighborhoods north of 85th Street lack sidewalks because the city of Seattle annexed these areas in the late 50's / early 60's from King County which had not required developers to build sidewalks. This is why the northern half of Wedgwood (which sits between 75th and 95th) for the most part doesn't have sidewalks.

So why do some areas north of 85th have sidewalks? It seems that in some developments homeowners were willing to foot the bill for sidewalk construction themselves. For example the streets that are part of the Balch's Addition just north of Wedgwood Elem. have sidewalks. According to my neighbor (a 40+ year Wedgwood resident) this is because back then all the residents on the streets agreed to pay for them. This includes my street - so thank you homeowners from 1960!

No sidewalks or gaps in sidewalks makes walk-ability an ongoing issue for the neighborhood. Seattle has only has a budget of 1 million dollars for sidewalk improvements for the whole city so it will be some time before there is a significant change to our part of town. If you are interested in helping Wedgwood get a piece of those dollars on September 11th there is a Neighborhood Transportation Projects Open House
being held at Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center. More information here.