Seattle is a ghost town for ghost bikes?
There's a new and growing effort to memorialize cyclists hit by motor vehicles — and in the process, raise awareness for bicycle safety and sharing the road. The first "ghost bike" reportedly appeared in St. Louis, Mo., when Patrick Van Der Tuin witnessed someone on a bike getting hit by a car.
By Lisa Albers
Posted on May 2, 2008. Printed on July 19, 2008.
http://www.crosscut.com/transportation/13872/
There's a new and growing effort to memorialize cyclists hit by motor vehicles — and in the process, raise awareness for bicycle safety and sharing the road. The first "ghost bike" reportedly appeared in St. Louis, Mo., when Patrick Van Der Tuin witnessed someone on a bike getting hit by a car. In response, he and his friends painted bicycles with white paint and displayed them at motorist-cyclist accident sites. While ghost bikes seem to have proliferated as a meme rather than by deliberate means, someone has created a Web site for the phenomenon. However, the e-mail link doesn't work. You'll find instructions for beginning your own ghost bike project in the same "organic" way that many of the projects currently listed have been conducted. Check out the list of ghost bike locations, which includes Portland, but not Seattle.
May is National Bike to Work Month. May your journeys be safe.
Update: Today I received this message:
Hi Lisa,
I came across your blog post about ghost bikes, and noticed that you have had bad luck with a couple of existing ghost bike web sites. I am one of the maintainers of ghostbikes.org. We do have some information on Seattle which can be found here;
http://www.ghostbikes.org/seattle
We also actively answer questions, update pages based on reader submissions, and even open up a city's section to local cyclists if they wish to maintain good information on their local project. Please click around our site for information on who we are and what we do.
Cheers,~~Nat
NYC Street Memorials Project
Lisa Albers is deputy editor of Crosscut and a Seattle freelance writer. She can be reached at lisa.albers@crosscut.com.