We Tagged the Emerald City

There’s nothing like the smell of misty Pacific Northwest rains and freshly-painted motorcycle parking lines. You heard right, we’re live in Seattle with over 300 spaces at 140 locations across the city’s lush landscape. From Olympic Hills to Queen Anne, Downtown to Georgetown we’ve got the city on the sound covered.

Of our six operating cities, Seattle by far has created the most secure parking spaces for motorbikes. Unlike San Francisco or San Diego, Seattle has positioned street spaces not a 90-degree angle to the curb, but rather a near 45-degree angle with only a few spaces at each location. Sure this may not be most efficient  by only allowing 2 spaces where 3 might fit if it were at 90-degrees, but this format allowed the city to create a buffer zone around the spaces to protect motorbikes. The spot location laid-out as a simple box that marries the curb and allows the spaces to be buffered by irregular wedges with painted lines. These zones provide room for motorists to park without disturbing the motorbikes, thus keeping them safer. The city further denotes the spots with a “Motor Cycles Only” sign posted on the curb and tickets motorists that infringe.

Despite Seattle’s A+ job on creating safe motorcycle zones, they did miss the mark literally on about 30% of their spot locations across the city where they simply didn’t pain’t lines at all. Some of these ‘spots’ are marked by the same sign that reads “Motor Cycles Only,” however there are no painted lines to denote where or how many motorbikes can park. Even the city’s official database of parking varies on sating how many bikes can park by these signs. Often times, cars will be parked in theses areas completely blocking the motorcycle parking area – something to watch out for.

Like San Francisco, the vast majority of Seattle’s motorbike parking is metered. However, unlike San Francisco, Seattle’s meter rates are much higher, matching rates of automobile parking on the same block. Meters range from $1 to $4 per hour in the most congested areas. After speaking with the city, we did learn that there are plans to lower rates for motorbikes in the future, but for now be prepared to pay $16 to park for four hours downtown. We did get the ball rolling and tagged quite a few city-designated free parking spots and over 30 motorbiker friendly businesses.

Here’s a great article from a while back that offers details on recent parking regulations and you can get the official details on the city’s website at seattle.gov/transportation/parking/motorcycleparking.