Bike/walk bridge over SR 520 in Montlake will open Dec 14

| Posted

November 21, 2024

Event flier with an aerial photo of a new biking and walking path over SR 520 and text: Bike the Bridge (or walk/roll). Come celebrate the opening of the Montlake Project's new bike and pedestrian bridge across SR 520! 11 AM Saturday December 14.

The very long-awaited biking and walking bridge over SR 520 in Montlake will finally open with a community celebration 11 a.m. December 14.

For the better part of a decade, folks trying to bike through Montlake have been dealing with a variety of different detours, and they’ve been stuck mixing with people on the sidewalk of Montlake Boulevard for years as crews work on a new biking and walking bridge to the east of the boulevard. The new bridge largely replaces the role of the old 24th Ave E bridge, though with much more style. Rather than leaving people to wind their way through alleys to reach the Lake Washington Loop bike route, the new trail will connect to a crosswalk at E Roanoke Street. It will also feed into the still largely unplanned future park at the north end of the Arboretum, located where construction staging equipment has been. I am not yet certain exactly how the south terminus of the new trail will work or how well it will connect to the Arboretum Trail, and none of the documents available online seem to show those details. I will update when I learn more.

People heading from the north will follow the same route as usual along the east sidewalk of the Montlake Bridge, then turning on Hamlin toward the 520 Trail. At the end of the block, there will be a new trail nexus with options to go across Lake Washington, across SR 520 toward the Arboretum, or back under Montlake Blvd and under SR 520 toward Montlake Playfield.

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Top-down design diagram of the final Montlake area design. — Final design for the Montlake area, from the project’s State Environmental Protection Act documents.

The new tunnel and trail connection (AKA the Bill Dawson Trail) to Montlake Playfield is already open, and I ran into a very confused guy there the other day who thought he could go that way to get to the 520 Trail. That will be possible soon. But for now the most important thing to note is that you access all of these trail connections from the east sidewalk of the Montlake Bridge. The old trail connection on the west side of the street is gone and is not coming back.

Selfie of the author biking through a tunnel. — New bike tunnel just dropped. Passing under Montlake Boulevard toward Montlake Playfield.

There will still be some work left to finish for the project after the grand opening, but it should be reliably operational. It has seemed at times that this project would never end, and maybe it still feels that way. But this is a huge step for folks sick of navigating detours through this area. In fact, this is the first post I’ve had about the Montlake area in a long time that isn’t about a new detour or weekend trail closure. Progress!

About the author:

Tom Fucoloro is the Founder and Editor of Seattle Bike Blog. He is also the author of Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars.

Tags:

520 trail, montlake, sr 520, wsdot

10 responses to “Bike/walk bridge over SR 520 in Montlake will open Dec 14”

dave

November 21, 2024

This will be cool. But for folks biking from Capitol Hill/Montlake to points north (Husky Stadium, Burke Gilman Trail, UW Hospitals etc), the most direct route will still be, unfortunately, biking on the sidewalk. Sucks that with all of that pavement at the interchange they couldn’t find a way to fit in bike lanes in the roadway. I’m certainly not going to bike all the way over to the landbridge just to cross SR 520.

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1. DB
  
  November 22, 2024
  
  The new bridge is beautiful but I agree it’s wild that for people riding straight through this project still requires pedestrians and cyclists to share a small sidewalk. Meanwhile, nine lines for cars https://public.earthcam.net/tJ90CoLmq7TzrY396Yd88B9B2qPMb6E316d3h59C-OM!/sr_520__-_montlake_project/camera_3/view_1
  
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Anne

November 22, 2024

Can’t wait for this to open.

Next step: finishing the “missing link” between the bridge and the trail through the arboretum. It is in the plans. I don’t know if it is funded or timeline

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Al Dimond

November 22, 2024

The “winding through alleys” route to the old 24th Ave bridge, from the Lake Washington Loop, was a little weird, but it was pretty direct. The new route is…
– Indirect. You go east on Roanoke, cross LWB, curve back west on the “Land Bridge” (*eyeroll*), then pull a sharp left U to cross back under where you came from.
– Questionable for safety. You cross LWB at a marked crosswalk right next to a big curve in the road. You can’t see drivers coming from the north/west and they can’t see you. And thanks to WSDOT/SDOT sneaking the LWB entrance/exit to 520 in (after it was omitted in early designs used to gain community support), LWB will remain a favored through route between 520 and points south that bypasses traffic and signals on Montlake Boulevard.

Maybe one day there will be a good connection between this and the path through the Arboretum. But when we ride that path we’re accused of befouling the park. People say the Arboretum isn’t for through-travel when it’s bikes, but the truth is cars, and cars exclusively, get the only path through that’s officially open through the night when the Arboretum is closed, and the only path with lighting.

When this is all done, WSDOT will have sold a freeway and interchange expansion project to a public nominally skeptical of freeways and, locally, truly opposed to the impacts of bigger interchanges. They did it in multiple stages, wearing down opposition or even winning enthusiasm from different groups at different times. Back when the 520 rebuild was starting I traveled over 520 pretty often and I admit I had some enthusiasm for the prospect of a bike path on the bridge that was more direct and higher-quality than the I-90 path. But it’s hard to look at the total of what’s been built here and assess that it’s been worthwhile. Especially when the expanded interchange is creating a big arrow of traffic pressure pointed right at the Montlake Bridge. That’s the next bottleneck, with no choice but for eventual expansion, even more lanes, even more concrete. Maybe a higher bridge, to avoid frequent openings for sailboats. It’ll be sold as providing better transit reliability for buses connecting to UW Station and a wider path for bikes. Those things might even be true. But the biggest thing it will provide in the end will be the same as 520. More lanes. More cars. More carbon emissions. More noise and particulate pollution. WSDOT is surely due some kind of award for this — from concrete and fossil-fuel lobbying interests, from automakers. They’re due an award they’d be publicly embarrassed to receive.

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AJ

November 25, 2024

> The old trail connection on the west side of the street is gone and is not coming back.

That trail connection is already coming back in the form of dirt paths carved into the planted grass exactly where the trail was, by users who still need the trail. WSDOT makes questionable choices. Coming from Capitol Hill going to the Burke Gilman, the west side of the Montlake is the direct route. The east side, even with the tunnel and later the bridge at the station, is so out of the way.

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1. Firelight
  
  November 25, 2024
  
  As far as I understand, the reason the old Bill Dawson trail connection was omitted was that the old paved trail connection was happening over NOAA property, and NOAA adopted a hardline position with WSDOT that no project improvements infringe on any part of their property. The old trail would have had to be realigned and regraded to accommodate the new tunnel and remain ADA accessible. As you might expect in dealing with a federal agency, there was no middle ground of “let’s find a way of leaving the existing trail in place.”
  
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Al Dimond

November 26, 2024

Something tells me WSDOT could have found space for a west-side connection if they weren’t hell-bent on increasing the interchange size as much as physically possible. Never let ’em off the hook for that.

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Eric P Salathé Jr

November 29, 2024

The new bridge design is objectively worse for bicyclists and I’m disappointed at this article being so uncritical. Accessing Capitol Hill and the CD from Montlake has always been difficult since there are no easy ways to cross 24/23rd Ave.

East Side: Previously, heading south from the east side of the bridge, one could access 24th from Hamlin and a very safe crossing of Lake Washington Blv to the lake Washington loop bicycle route and southward. Now the Lake Washington crossing is a highway interchange. The design appears to give bicycle access to 24th is be via a narrow telephone pole constrained sidewalk. Basically a “well, you can just get off and walk” design.

West Side (to and from the BG Trail): Previously one could access Montlake Playfield via Bill Dawson along NOAA. Now you need to ride across a mud pit. Or you can cross Montlake to access the new tunnel from the east side. The tunnel is nice for eventual access to 520, but it does not enhance access to the Montlake bridge.

Alternatively one could previously continue on the sidewalk across the two freeway entrances and use the street by Hop In Market to assess either 22nd or Roanoke and on to Capitol Hill. The freeway ramps have been reconfigured so the crosswalks are around the large radius curves. Traffic is now faster as cars accelerate to the freeway and cyclists are not in the line of sight. There is no dedicated bike/ped signal. And the designed access to 22nd is now via the sidewalk, designed for pedestrians not bicycles and obstructed by a utility pole in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s better to just merge with traffic on Montlake and make the right onto Roanoke.

The whole thing is a mess of outright errors and bike hostile design.

Eric Salathe

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Electric Cars For Everyone

December 9, 2024

If Madison’s RapidRide G project wasn’t enough of a wake up call, maybe this mess will open a few more eyes.

Seattle’s commitment to biking is just lip service; in the last decade it has become harder, and more dangerous, to commute by bike.

DOT might as well put the plan for the second bridge in fast forward, making more lanes of traffic for cars traveling to the UW has been their plan from get-go.

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1. Eric P Salathé Jr
  
  December 10, 2024
  
  We can’t be calling climate change an existential threat and build this atrocity. And I assert I’ve earned the right to say that.
  
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