For four glorious blocks between 2nd and 6th Avenues, Seattle’s new bike lane on Pike Street is a strong demonstration of how a connected network of bike lanes would dramatically increase the comfort and appeal of biking downtown. You can now bike from Pioneer Square to Westlake Park and major retail destinations along 5th Ave entirely within bike lanes separated from car traffic. The left-side bike lane, where it exists, is comfortable and intuitive to use, and major bus routes still maintain priority on the right side of the street.
And as the Urbanist points out, the biggest winner from the project might be people on foot, who are put in fewer situations where they are trying to cross busy streets while someone driving is trying to turn.
And SDOT designed and constructed it quickly using low-cost materials. It went from idea to reality in less than a year, which is light speed for city transportation projects.
The four good blocks of the new Pike Street show off a vision of downtown streets that prioritizes biking, walking and transit — modes that need space to grow in order to absorb the city and region’s steady growth — while still maintaining access for people driving and making deliveries. This is what it looks like when the city redesigns our existing streets to be safer and more efficient.
The problem is that the redesign ends before making a useful bike connection. So until it is extended to at least 8th Ave (preferably all the way to Broadway), it will remain only a demonstration of the future potential of a bike network. Until then, people are dumped out into mixed traffic halfway between 6th and 7th Avenues, and left to find their way through downtown traffic like before. (more…)
