Crews have finished work on a project that makes it much easier and safer to walk or bike between the I-90 Trail and Mount Baker light rail station. Perhaps most importantly, the project made some significant crosswalk upgrades at the complicated and dangerous intersection of Rainier, MLK and Mount Baker Blvd near Franklin High School. The team extended the curbs and added two missing crosswalks on the south half of the intersection.

This is a huge win for the neighborhood and the Franklin High School community. Students have been put in a dangerous situation here for decades, and they will finally have proper crosswalks to help them get safely across these busy streets. The out-of-the-way pedestrian overpass is still there for those who prefer it, but now the more direct option will have a proper crosswalk, too.

The project includes bike lanes from S Judkins Street to MLK, which are separated from general traffic by either a painted buffer with plastic posts or a concrete curb. But perhaps the most unique element of the project is how they created a relatively low-cost walkway to bridge a section of missing sidewalk on the east side of the street between S McClellan Street and S Bayview Street. Now people don’t need to cross the street twice or walk in traffic in order to access Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Park from the south. To make the connection, the team created an on-street walkway adjacent to the northbound bike lane. The biking and walking spaces are separated by a textured strip, and both are protected from general traffic by a concrete curb. It’s effective and could be built much more quickly and at a fraction of the cost of trying to cut into the hillside to build a typical sidewalk lined by an extensive (and ugly) retaining wall. When the road is fully rebuilt some day in the future, perhaps they can add a regular sidewalk at that time. But for a safety retrofit project, this is a brilliant solution.

As for the bike lanes, they are comfortable to use and continue through the intersection with Rainier. When the project budget started to get stressed, it would have been easy to cut the expensive intersection work from the project boundary as has been SDOT’s strategy far to often in the past. But this time, they kept their commitment to making that major intersection safer and sought out additional funding to make it happen. Their effort has paid off.

Best Side Cycling created a video ridethrough of the whole project. Check it out:

This only problem with this project is that it highlights even more the lack of bike lanes to the north and especially south of the project boundaries. To the north, the wonderful new protected bike lanes dump you into bike lanes that only exist on maps:

Then to the south, the bike lane leads you to Mount Baker Station just fine, and you can also access the lovely Cheasty Blvd S to head up Beacon Hill. But if you’re trying to continue south along the MLK Way corridor, you’re SOL. There are no bike routes for you. Good luck.

The Seattle Transportation Plan calls for protected bike lanes on MLK Jr Way S from this point to the city limit, but there is no current project in development. To have any hope of this happening any time soon, voters will need to approve the Seattle Transportation Levy in November, which will fund work from the Seattle Transportation Plan. It will also require a significant public push, perhaps as part of a project to reduce traffic collisions with light rail trains. For example, perhaps building the bike lanes on the inside/left side like on Ravenna Blvd would create more space for safer turns with better visibility of trains coming from both directions. They could also create safe pedestrian spaces between the street and the train tracks so nobody feels rushed by car traffic before checking for trains.

All this is to say, this project is great, and we still have so much work to do in south Seattle. So let’s do it.