Community Greenways and Trails Project
Photo Credit: BetterBlock.org
Photo Credit: Steve Shay
Urban Sparks’ Community Greenways and Trails Project is an education and funding project to help educate the public and powers-that-be about greenways, trails and active transportation as well as help fund physical projects. Physical projects may include associated public amenities like bike racks and covered seating.
Using funding methods available only to a 501(c)(3), we’ll facilitate the excellent work being done by the various Greenways project leaders around the city. If you or your foundation would like to make large tax-deductible or employer-matched gifts to support a particular Greenway or Trail project, please contact us. If you’d like to support the broader education movement, we’re doing that too.
Here are a few links to plug you into the Seattle Greenways Movement: Read more 
Kirkland Greenways
The first Greenways group on the Eastside!
Kirkland Greenways is a steadily growing group of Eastside residents and business owners who want safe comfortable streets for all road users; whether you walk, run, jog, roll, drive or ride. Kirkland Greenways brings together people from multiple neighborhoods, who are working together to identify and create a network of safe streets for people of all ages and abilities.
You can learn more on their webpage: www.kirklandgreenways.org
University Greenways
Make the dream of safe U-District bicycling into a reality!
University Greenways believes in the vision of a vibrant, thriving University District where everyone can walk and bike safely and comfortably within our community and to adjoining neighborhoods.
You can learn more on their webpage: http://www.ugreenways.org/
Beacon BIKES (Better Infrastructure Keeping Everyone Safe)
Formerly Beacon Hill Family Bike and Pedestrian Plan Committee (BHFBPPC),
this group morphed to become Beacon BIKES (Better Infrastructure Keeping Everyone Safe)
with a simple mission: “We crave safe, family-friendly walking and cycling paths that link our neighborhood hotspots. For more information, please visit our Mission page.”
This was a wonderful project where a neighborhood refused to wait to see what a might trickle from a city-wide plan down to them. Instead they brought their neighbors together to think about what they actually needed, while using professional planners to write it up. They also thought about how to get parts of the plan as soon as possible and to prioritize what bear waiting.
Alta Planning + Design produced their beautiful plan. This is an excellent example of how a neighborhood can begin the process of establishing Greenways.
For current info, visit Beacon Hill Safe Streets’ Facebook page. They changed their name again!
* We were their fiscal sponsor for their D.O.N. Matching Fund Grant.
For more on Greenways, see our Community Greenways and Trails Project.
Staircases as Transportation
Staircases are great connectors.
Image from King County Parks
Seattle is full of staircases. They go places that cars cannot go which makes them important to the web of active transportation – lower traffic routes that people can walk and bike – Greenways. Besides providing healthy transportation, they can be fun.
Does a staircase near you need a bicycle runnel? Contact us.
See how our stair climbing friends are celebrating staircases and places to walk. Links below: Read more
Urban Sparks 