Even the dramatically watered-down and insufficient traffic calming improvements planned for Lake Washington Boulevard are now apparently at risk after pushback from “people who enjoy driving as fast as they want along the boulevard,” as Seattle Neighborhood Greenways put it. Neighbors have campaigned for years about the need for safer walking and biking space on the storied lakeside boulevard, one of the only reasonably flat north-south routes in southeast Seattle. Extensive public outreach showed very strong support for ambitious changes, but SDOT and Seattle Parks decided to ignore their own outreach and instead give a baffling amount of authority to a failed and resentment-consumed community task force effort in 2022–23 that was unable to agree on much of anything beyond a short list of low-cost, unoffensive and insufficient traffic calming improvements that finally made it to construction in 2024 and 2025. We’re talking about a handful of crosswalk improvements, some speed humps, and some boulders in places where people keep driving off the road and into the park and lake. The final list falls far short of than the permanent on-street walking and biking path and expanded Bicycle Weekend hours advocates were initially hoping for. Safety opponents won, and now at least some of them are fighting even the scraps that made it through by pressuring the city to cancel the second half of the planned improvements.
You can help by using their handy online form to send letters to city leaders supporting completion of the traffic calming work. You can also join supporters at a community meeting 6:30 p.m. December 12 at the Mount Baker Rowing and Sailing Center (3800 Lake Washington Blvd S) in person or online.
I honestly have no idea why the winners of this joke of a public process would want to reopen debate on this matter, but fine. Let’s do it. Let’s reopen this project debate. If they don’t know how to take a W, then let’s turn it into an L.
Every time the city surveys people about the idea of a permanent safe space for walking and biking on Lake Washington Blvd., the result is resounding and enthusiastic support. A 2022 public outreach effort got survey responses from 3,048 people, 73% of whom lived in a Seattle zip code that includes Lake Washington Boulevard. The survey asked respondents to pick up to three of their preferred improvements they you like to see on the boulevard. Respondents overwhelmingly supported adding dedicated space for biking (2,319 or 76%), increasing the number of Bicycle Weekends days (1,754 or 58%), and adding traffic calming like speed humps (1,664 or 55%), the top three of eight options. Even though 31% of respondents said they drive on the boulevard as their main commute route, only 14% chose “do nothing” as one of their three preferred changes to the street, a dismal 5% of total responses to the question. Even when they did in-person intercept surveys at nearby grocery stores and community events, they got similar support for better walking and biking conditions on the boulevard even from people who said they usually drive there. Yet we find ourselves once again having to fill out action alerts and pressure city leaders not to listen to this demonstrably unpopular opinion even after these decisions were already made and work is already underway.
From Jan 2015 to April 2022, there were 101 collisions on this park boulevard, including 36 that injured at least one person and 6 that resulted in serious potentially life-long injuries. This is unacceptable and must change. Speed humps, stop signs and raised crosswalks should help, which is why Rainier Valley Greenways has been supporting the watered-down plans despite their frustrations with the process and result. But even once the traffic calming elements are completed, the work will not be finished. Hopefully the rate of serious crashes will be reduced, but there will still be no dedicated space for people of all ages and abilities to bike on the street.
Lake Washington Boulevard is a park. It falls under the purview of the Department of Recreation and was originally designed by the Olmsted Brothers in the early 1900s as a park boulevard, though the Parks Department has since deferred much of the process to SDOT as the city’s experts on roads and traffic. Lake Washington Boulevard is not and has never been a highway, and fast car travel should not be a priority on this street at all. The goal should be to maintain vehicle access to homes and destinations including parking lots, loading zones and boat launches, but that is where a park’s duty to vehicle access ends. The primary goal needs to be providing safe access to everyone regardless of how they traveled there, and the secondary goal should be fostering an extraordinary park experience along our waterfront.
The issue of how to make Lake Washington Boulevard safe for everyone is not over. I am still angry at the city for the way they handled the task force in 2022, which had no logical reason to be given decision-making power. Ideas that got 73% support from a survey of thousands of neighbors got shut down because on the day of task force voting only 10 people could make it and 5 of them voted no. This is not how public outreach or community task forces are supposed to work. Community task forces are supposed to exist so a subset of community members can discuss an issue in a more in-depth manor. You can gather a lot of qualitative feedback, and the task force members can take what they learn back to their larger communities, etc. They are not supposed to be used as democratic decision-making bodies because they were not selected by a population. In a best scenario, task force members could come together and attempt to find some common ground, learn from each other and then maybe some people would change their minds. If you purposefully create a task force so that it contains half people in favor and half against as the city did in this case, you cannot treat a resulting 5–5 split vote as a sign of anything other than that your task force process did not change anyone’s mind. By saying that they would follow whatever the task force recommends, the city essentially told a few safe streets supporters that if they wanted the city to make it safe to ride a bike on this park boulevard, they would need to change the minds of a couple of their outspoken opponents within 10 meetings. They couldn’t, and so the city didn’t. What a ridiculous hoop to force advocates to jump through, and what a mockery of real public outreach.
Let’s get the rest of these speed humps and crosswalks done so we can get to work on the next phase: Safe access for all park users.
More details on the latest action from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways:
Thanks to past community advocacy for a safer and more accessible Lake Washington Boulevard, construction began this November, dramatically reducing dangerous speeding on the boulevard! 🎉🎉🎉 The project is now half completed, with another round of construction expected in spring/summer 2025.
📣But now, completion of the these basic safety improvements for Lake Washington Boulevard are at immediate risk. People who enjoy driving as fast as they want along the boulevard are opposed to basic traffic calming improvements like speed humps are pushing to axe the second phase of traffic calming improvements slated for next summer.
We need your help:
- Show up: Community Meeting on Thursday, Dec 12, 6:30 – 8:00 pm. In person at the Mount Baker Rowing and Sailing Center (3800 Lake Washington Blvd S)
- Write an email in support of a safer and more accessible Lake Washington Blvd. Use the easy form letter to the right or write your own and send to: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].
- Share this page with 3 neighbors or friends. Word of mouth is the best form of advocacy.
Thank you for your ongoing advocacy!
BACKGROUND:
Lake Washington Boulevard is one of Seattle’s greatest parks. Year round, Seattle families enjoy walking, biking, rolling, swimming, pleasure drives, and more along the 3-mile shoreline between Mt Baker Beach and Seward Park.
As our city has grown, car traffic on Lake Washington Blvd has grown dramatically. More and more drivers use the blvd as a highway, rather than as a scenic drive, bike ride, or stroll it was originally designed for, threatening the safety of other park users.
The proposed renovations are a set of low-cost “short term improvements” that are the result of an extensive three-year process, with vocal and ongoing community support for slowing dangerous speeding and rollover crashes along this peaceful park boulevard. The goal is to reduce vehicle speeds to the posted speed limit, reduce street racing, improve pedestrian access when crossing the blvd to access the waterfront, and improve safety for people walking, rolling, and biking along the blvd.
The curb bulbs, stop signs, and speed humps installed in November are incredibly helpful in slowing dangerous speeding, but not adequate to address safety for the full 3-mile corridor.
We are asking elected officials and city staff to complete the remaining portion of the project without delay or watering down the designs from Mt. Baker Beach to Seward Park.
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