Brief Rundown

The two bills currently active in the WA legislature are almost identical to each other. The provisions are very open-ended, with filtering and splitting legalized under 30MPH. Unlike in other states such as AZ, UT, and MT, there are currently no amendments for work zone restrictions, school zone restrictions, number of lanes, freeways, or side-streets.

HB 1063 in the WA House was introduced by Rep. Corry (R) early last week: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=1063&year=2023

SB 5401 in the WA Senate was re-introduced by Sen. Randall (D) on Friday: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5401&Year=2023

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Path to victory

Last Year's SB5622

As of now, it does not look like HB1063 in the house will be the bill to focus on. There are no co-sponsors to the bill, and house Democrats have seemingly balked at supporting this Republican-written bill.

However, things are going to be much different in the senate. Sen. Emily Randall is a very well-established and well-respected senator who led least year's SB 5622, an almost identical copy of this year's bill. Despite the fact that last year was a shortened legislative session, she managed to convince head of the Senate Transportation Committee, Sen. Marko Ilias, to request a Health Impact Review and ultimately to put the bill up for a hearing.

Because the session was shortened, the hearing was scheduled on the due date to vote on bills in the committee, and therefore the bill was already "dead in the water". However, the point of holding a hearing was to allow large motorcycle advocacy groups such as ABATE to mobilize their members and come out in overwhelming numbers in public support of the bill. We heard a huge amount of pro-lane-sharing testimonies and saw 600 or so e-signatures in support of the bill.

Even though SB5622 never stood a chance at making it out of the committee on time, it was instrumental in showing both Sen. Randall, Sen. Ilias, and other members of the Senate transportation committee that this was a very popular bill that should be attempted again during the next lengthened legislative session.

This year's session

That lengthened legislative session has arrived and is now upon us. The tentative deadline to get bills voted out of the transportation committee will be around February 27th, meaning that the bill has a month and a half (as opposed to three weeks) to have amendments added, to be heard in the committee, and to be scheduled for a vote.

Since Sen. Randall has shown herself to be able to gather a large amount of bipartisan support (SB 5622 had dozens of co-signing senators from both the Republican and Democratic party), it's conceivable that the frenzy of last year's bill will only add fuel to the fire for this year's SB 5401. More than likely, all the senators co-signing SB 5622 (plus some more) will jump on the SB 5401 bandwagon. Due to this, Transportation Committee head Sen. Ilias will almost certainly allow this year's bill to go up for a hearing. Since the session is extended, it is likely that a vote can be heard in time, and it is also likely that Sen. Emily can convince most of the members of the transportation committee to vote in favor of the bill.

Getting out of the committee is more than half the battle. If SB 5401 reaches this point, there's actually a really good chance that it will clear both houses due to the overwhelming amount of bipartisan support. A veto from the governor is also unlikely, as what happened with Kate Brown in Oregon was an anomaly.

Advocacy game plan

We continue to organize and effectively collaborate our advocacy in the #lane-filtering-advocacy channel of the PNW Discord server: https://discord.gg/tGp4AnsUnV

We are working with the biggest motorcycle lobbyists in WA state to march in tandem and mobilize correctly in support of these bills.

What to do

Use the WA District Finder page to locate your district's representative(s) and senator(s). Contact these politicians (even better if they're on the house or senate transportation committee) both by email and by phone (you can leave a voice message when calling their listed number).

When you leave your e-mails or voice messages, make sure you mention that you are a resident of their legislative districts. Voice your support for the respective bills, explain how they can help increase rider safety, and leave your contact information. You don't need to talk/write a huge amount, but a clear safety-centered message is important.

What not to do (yet)

Don't mass-email committee heads (Jake Fey/Marko Ilias) or members of the committee not in your legislative district! According to professional motorcycle lobbyists, this can be considered a hostile act, and spamming the voice box/inbox of the committee heads (especially with calls from people not in their district) will be interpreted as an "act of war" from the motorcycle organizations and can destroy the hopes of these bills being held for a vote in the committee.

We certainly don't want to piss off the relevant politicans, and we want to let rep. Corry and sen. Randall do their thing and have these bills pass through the process as easily as possible. The time and place for mass, coordinated action will be during the eventual committee hearings - both to e-sign on the bills and also to testify in support of them.

For now, Encourage everyone you know to call their legislative district representatives and leave voice messages and emails in support of these two bills! Representatives take calls from their constituents (those in their district) to heart, and it will definitely influence their votes on these bills.