Seattle leadership across three mayors have supported building bike lanes on Eastlake Ave as part of the RapidRide J project, but you just never know what might happen before the shovels hit the dirt.

Well, the shovels are officially in the dirt now, and at the groundbreaking celebration today (October 8) Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell touted “3.7 miles of protected bike lanes” among the project’s benefits. “It embodies our administration’s commitment to transportation safety and sustainable transportation options.”

In addition to protected bike lanes on Eastlake Ave, one of the most sought-after bike network improvements in the city, the project also includes a protected bike lane up 11th Avenue NE to connect to the under-construction bike lanes as part of the 11th/12th Ave NE paving project.

Once the RapidRide J bike lanes are complete, There will be a connected all ages and abilities bike route from the downtown bike network to Roosevelt Station via Eastlake and the U District. It will also complete a new Lake Union Loop bike route, which will surely become popular. More importantly, it will cut about a mile (or 10 minutes) out of the bike journey between the city center and the University of Washington compared to routing over to the Fremont Bridge as many people do today.

But the most important project goal is to prevent injuries and deaths by addressing some persistent danger spots for people who bike on this much shorter and faster route despite its lack of a bike lane. An extensive study into bike route options in the area (PDF) found that from 2012 through 2017, there were 39 collision reports involving people biking, and 95% of those resulted in injuries to the person biking. 8% of the collisions resulted in serious injuries. Though there were no deaths during the study period, there was a fatality on this route a few years prior (RIP Bryce Lewis).

The clear need for a safer route here seemed to be a guiding principle for this project from the very start of planning back in 2015. Though the city did respond to backlash by conducting a ridiculously extensive study of the options, the data confirmed that Eastlake bike lanes were the best way to improve safety and create a usable and connected bike route. At no point did SDOT or any of the mayors signal that they were leaning against these bike lanes. They deserve credit for standing behind SDOT staff and our safe streets goals despite sometimes heated opposition (though perhaps it helped that some opponents made such fools of themselves at times). You can follow the full history of this project through the Seattle Bike Blog archives.

It took a lot of advocacy to get this point, with Cascade Bicycle Club leading calls for Eastlake bike lanes for well more than a decade and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways organizing on the ground in recent years (Editor’s Note: I updated the post to recognize SNG’s work). It also took countless cumulative hours from hundreds or maybe thousands of people like you all who attended so many public meetings and filled out so many online surveys. Some folks in Eastlake even volunteered for their Community Council in hopes of working within that structure to support these bike lanes and transit improvements. Congratulations to all of you, even those of you who feel like your efforts didn’t work. Because look, they did.