Proposed Burien levy would pave way to bike-friendly future

The small city of Burien is a few strides in front of its neighbors, by proposing to build sidewalks and bike lanes using a $25 car-tab fee.

The proposed two-year levy, on Tuesday's ballot, could be renewed every couple of years to build follow-up routes, until as many as 20 bike and pedestrian routes crisscross the whole city, Mayor Joan McGilton said.

This marks the first time a Washington city has voted on taxing cars to pay for walking and biking.

"This is a community where a lot of people walk. It's because of our strong neighborhoods. Kids walk from one neighborhood to the other, people are out walking their dogs." she said. "I've noticed more bicycles out, the forty-somethings are biking a lot."

Burien's two-year levy would fund:

• A paved trail on Eighth Avenue South from South 136th Street to South 128th Street, where families now walk on thin grass shoulders to Cedarhurst Elementary School.

• In-road bicycle lanes, and sidewalks where needed, along 136th from busy Ambaum Boulevard Southwest to the city limit at Des Moines Memorial Drive South.

Burien is using recent changes in state law that help cities set up a "transportation benefit district." Cities and counties may impose a car-tab fee of up to $20 without going to the ballot, or up to $100 with a ballot measure.

McGilton says City Council members went beyond $20 to ask for $25, because they want political buy-in from voters.

"We need to know what our community wants to do," she said. "We think it's a good test case."

The car-tab fee would raise nearly $600,000 a year, the city estimates.

Four weeks ago, a spot count done for the state by the Cascade Bicycle Club showed 110 pedestrians and 13 cyclists at 136th and Ambaum, and 31 pedestrians and 5 cyclists at 136th and Eighth, between 4 and 6 p.m.

The recession has reduced state grants for city projects, prompting the south-Seattle suburb of 31,840 to hunt for other money.

A property tax wasn't considered, McGilton said, out of respect for Burien's relatively conservative voters, less affluent than in levy-happy Seattle.

An opponent, Chestine Edgar, says Proposition 1 delivers sidewalks to a few property owners, at the expense of all.

"None of the proposed projects is critical; this is the city's wish list at the expense of the resident vehicle owners," she wrote in the voter's pamphlet.

Tuesday morning, pedestrian Khadra Mohamud tugged her hijab and kept glancing back at cars on Eighth Avenue South, as she walked along the narrow gravel roadside. "That would be good," she said of the trail plan. "This street's so awful."

Usually she drives her children the few blocks to Cedarhurst, for their safety. Down the street, deputies were still investigating an earlier collision, in which a van struck a 72-year-old man.

Six city councils have enacted the $20 car-tab fee, but those were mainly for road maintenance. Seattle voters in 2006 approved a nine-year, $365 million property-tax levy for transportation, which next year includes $3.9 million for pedestrians and $2.9 million for cycling.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com