In honor of surpassing 1M Lime Hero trips and donations exceeding $525K, we are thrilled to introduce a new monthly series called “Hero of the Month!”

This month, we are spotlighting Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is a grassroots people-powered movement working to make all of Seattle a great place to walk, bike, and roll. We spoke with Gordon Padelford from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways for a fireside Q&A.

Can you give us a brief overview on what you do?

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways (SNG) organizes and mobilizes people to make every neighborhood a great place to walk, bike, roll, and live.

We work to promote policies and infrastructure projects that prioritize safety, equity, and sustainability. Specifically, we advocate to create more sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, trails, safe street redesigns, pedestrian plazas, and so much more.

We are a grassroots organization, with community volunteers at the heart. If you’re interested in getting involved we’d love to have you join us — no experience necessary!

How does Seattle Neighborhood Greenways measure its impact on the community?
SNG measures its impact on the community in several ways, focusing on tangible improvements to safety, mobility, and equity in Seattle’s streets and neighborhoods. Here are some key ways we assess our impact:

1. Advocacy Wins and Infrastructure Changes: SNG tracks the successful implementation of infrastructure projects we’ve advocated for, such as new crosswalks, protected bike lanes, and pedestrian-friendly street redesigns. These projects are a direct result of our efforts to influence city policies and transportation planning.
   
   

2. Community Engagement and Participation: We measure the level of community involvement in campaigns, events, and neighborhood groups, as well as the breadth of input we’re able to generate for public meetings and forms.
   
   

3. Successful Partnerships: Our ability to collaborate with elected officials, government agencies, and other advocacy organizations to push for systemic changes is an important metric of our success. These partnerships are a critical component to creating safer streets and equitable transportation.
   
   

4. Safety Data and Traffic Calming: Reducing traffic crashes and improving safety for vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists, children, and the elderly. SNG tracks city data on collision rates, injuries, and fatalities in areas where we have worked on traffic calming measures or new street designs.
   
   

5. Equity Initiatives: We prioritize advocating for marginalized communities, ensuring that projects address inequities in access to safe, healthy, and affordable transportation. We measure impact by evaluating how their efforts benefit BIPOC, low-income, and historically underserved neighborhoods in Seattle.

By combining these metrics, we evaluate the effectiveness in creating safer, more inclusive streets and transportation systems for all.

What is your favorite part about your job?

Getting out into the community and talking to other Seattlities about how much they love their neighborhood and what they envision as the future. People are deeply passionate about making their streets reflect their values and needs. And SNG is all about helping them reenvision their streets — and even though change takes time, it’s deeply satisfying to see the improvements that we’ve been able to make together.

It’s also a joy to see the city from a pedestrian perspective. You get to slow down to enjoy the shops, people, art, community, and nature around you.

What is the biggest obstacle your organization faces?

Inaction from local government. Each year about 30 people die and 180 are seriously injured in Seattle due to car crashes. These aren’t statistics — they are people and the loss of every single one impacts their family, friends, colleagues, and communities in ways we can never get back. The good news is that these deaths are preventable if we invest in making our streets safe for all road users.

And while public polling finds safety is a top priority for people when asked about our transportation system, important safety upgrades are occurring too slowly and too meekly.

We must boldly, and urgently, implement safety redesigns of our most dangerous streets (like Aurora, Lake City Way, Rainier Ave, MLK Way, and 4th Ave S) so that everyone has a safe place to walk, bike, roll, take transit, and drive.

How did you get involved in this work?

SNG got started in advocacy in 2011 as a grassroots movement sparked by a group of concerned neighbors who wanted to make Seattle’s streets safer for walking and biking. Our origins are closely tied to community-driven advocacy for safer streets and improved public spaces.

We began by organizing neighborhood walking and biking tours to identify streets and intersections that were dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. We wanted to create safe, accessible routes through the city’s neighborhoods—often referred to as "greenways"—which prioritize people over cars.

Inspired by the concept of neighborhood greenways in cities like Portland, we started working to build momentum in Seattle to get them created here. The movement quickly grew as more neighborhoods recognized the need for safer streets. Local residents across Seattle began forming their own neighborhood greenways groups, joining forces to advocate for infrastructure changes, like traffic-calming measures, crosswalks, and protected bike lanes.

With a focus on equity, SNG started working alongside underserved communities, ensuring that all neighborhoods—particularly those historically overlooked in transportation planning—benefited from safer streets.

Over time, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways has evolved into a citywide network of volunteers and advocates collaborating with local government, agencies, and other organizations to drive transformative change. Today, SNG plays a leading role in shaping Seattle’s transportation landscape through advocacy, community engagement, and partnerships, staying true to its grassroots beginnings while expanding its scope and influence.

What is the biggest project you worked on in 2024? What was the impact?

The biggest project we’ve worked on this year has been the Seattle Transportation Levy. Through ongoing advocacy efforts, we raised awareness about the need to increase funding for sidewalks and focus the levy on making our streets safer. This involved months of letter-writing campaigns, meetings with city officials, and polling Seattle voters to make the case for a larger levy.

This summer, Seattle Council voted to approve a $1.5 billion levy that is headed to voters this November as Seattle Proposition 1: Transportation Levy. We’re now actively working with the Keep Seattle Moving campaign to encourage voters to pass this levy. It provides crucial funding that will help transform how Seattle residents get around in the next few years; it will improve the conditions of our roads and give people options to get around safer without driving.

What's ahead for the organization?

If the Seattle Transportation Levy passes this fall, we’ll be actively working towards making sure those levy dollars represent the communities' desires to have complete streets in their neighborhoods. This means when we rebuild streets that we take into consideration walking and biking as viable modes of transportation in our neighborhoods.

We’re also continuing to fight to redesign our most dangerous streets - Aurora Ave N, MLK Jr Way S, Lake City Way, and 4th Ave S. Many of these roadways continue to have some of the highest deaths in our city and state. We need to fix these corridors to make them safer for everyone.

Finally, we also want to UnGap our map when it comes to making it easier to get across Seattle when not driving. While there are a handful of bike lanes and trails in the city, there are also places where there is no infrastructure, forcing riders to brave unsafe conditions when getting around on a bicycle.

Rapid Fire Questions

E-bike or E-Scooter?

E-bike. The Lime electric bikes inspired me to get my own e-bike because it was useful and fun.

Favorite place to take a Lime in Seattle?

The new Green Lake bike lanes — they are a joy!

Favorite part about partnering with Lime?

I love that Lime is deeply invested in Seattle and in continuing to innovate.

Three words that describe the organization.

Community. Fun. Dedicated.

If your organization had a superhero mascot, who would it be and why?

Peatónito the Pedestrian Superhero from Mexico City who fights for pedestrians to have clear crosswalks.