Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed Seattle Transportation Plan (“STP”) is now in the hands of the City Council, who can make some final changes before adopting it as official city policy. The STP will supersede the 2014 Bicycle Master Plan, so it’s important to take a close look at its vision for the next 10–20 years of bike improvements across the city. To do so, Seattle Bike Blog will post a series of six stories focusing on different areas of the city. You find other areas as well as other STP-related stories through the 2024 Seattle Transportation Plan tag.

Downtown was one of the stronger areas in the 2014 Bicycle Master Plan. You have to remember that this plan was created before the 2nd Ave bike lane opened in fall 2014, and the idea that Seattle would build a network of protected bike lanes downtown was almost laughable. Even bike advocates were surprised when then-Mayor Ed Murray announced the 2nd Ave project during the Cascade Bicycle Club Bike Month Breakfast that spring, just a couple months after the City Council approved the Bicycle Master Plan. But seeing the 2nd Ave bike lane in action changed everything. It worked so well that much of the resistance to more downtown bike lanes vanished overnight. Before 2nd Ave, everyone assumed that downtown would be the hardest place to build bike lanes. But in reality, it may have been the easiest (not that it was easy).

All this is to say that there are not a ton of changes from the 2014 plan to the mayor’s proposed Seattle Transportation Plan bike map. Perhaps the biggest change is that it doesn’t look as impossibly ambitious as it did in 2014. But there are some really good additions as well as an interesting wishy-washy gray box on Stewart Street. Let’s start with the gray box.

Stewart Street is a diagonal street that makes a connection from Eastlake Ave to the downtown core in a way that no other street does. It is a massive opportunity to decrease travel times for downtown-bound bike trips. Today, biking on Stewart is a very scary experience, but it is so much faster than the alternatives that a lot of people do it anyway. Making Stewart safe for biking would be huge. The gray box is there because the STP includes a capital project to redesign Virginia and Stewart Streets, perhaps making Virginia a two-way transit route. But the details of this are all up in the air still, thus the gray box. But there’s another variable here that is worth noting in the plan: The Center City Connector Streetcar. Despite our arguments against it, the 2014 bike plan cut the proposed Stewart Street bike lanes short to avoid the section of Stewart that the streetcar would use. I argued strongly then that bike lanes were even more important near streetcar tracks. I stand by that today. But that streetcar may never be built, and if it isn’t, then there is no reason not to connect the Stewart Street bike lane all the way to 2nd or even 1st. Imagine a direct bike lane from the REI on Eastlake Ave to Pike Place Market. (Oh, and speaking of Pike Place, tell the City Council not to block funding for efforts to rethink the current state in which streams of confused tourists are allowed to drive their rental SUVs through the middle of our city’s most popular attraction).