Labor Day weekend was supposed to be the penultimate Bicycle Weekend on Lake Washington Boulevard for the year, a chance to experience the storied lakeside street without cars. Bicycle Weekend is an expansion of Seattle Parks’ Bicycle Sunday program, which has been opening this street for people outside of cars since 1968.
But when people arrived, they found the streets still filled with cars because none of the road closure signs were in place.
After realizing that none of the signs were in place more than 12 hours after the scheduled Friday evening start time, people stopped waiting and moved the signs themselves. After a lot of confused and frustrated social media posts, SDOT and Seattle Parks finally sent staff out Saturday afternoon to check on the signage. Many people assume SDOT is in charge, but Lake Washington Boulevard is one of the city’s classic Olmsted boulevards. SDOT and Parks typically partner on matters related to the street, but the event falls under the purview of the Parks Department.
Luckily, there have not been any reports of injuries during the failed car-free event. But considering that this is a kid-friendly event that attracts people of all ages and abilities, including people who do not feel comfortable biking in mixed traffic, this was a significant mistake. Seattle Parks acknowledged the mistake Tuesday.
“We are trying to figure out why the barriers went up late,” the department wrote in a reply to Seattle Bike Blog. “We apologize for the inconvenience. We’re working to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Showing up to a car-free event to find the streets still filled with cars is a demoralizing experience. It also highlights once again why the city needs to come up with a permanent solution for the street. People need to be safe while biking on Lake Washington Boulevard every hour of every day, not just on select days or weekends. It would be less confusing for everyone, and it would provide a much-needed safe bikeway in southeast Seattle. The city is supposed to be conducting a “visioning process” for the future of the street following public outreach in 2021 that overwhelmingly supported making the street car-free permanently.
The decision to restrict wheel use on the often-busy path was initially part of the department’s scattered reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, such as closing the playgrounds, drinking fountains and bathrooms. The idea back then was to limit crowding on the path back when we didn’t know much about how the virus spread. Outdoor activity like walking or biking around a lake has since been largely considered a low-risk for transmission, but we didn’t know that at the time.
However, instead of reverting the path rules back to how they were before, the department decided to keep the ban in place on a “long-term temporary” basis, whatever that means. They even changed all the permanent-looking signage to reflect the rule change. And as noted in a October 21, 2021, memo to the Board of Park Commissioners (PDF) that Ryan Packer uncovered through a public disclosure request, the department had “not conducted any community engagement specific to this issue” before making their recommendation.
After some significant backlash, Parks is now hosting a series of “listening sessions” September 7–9 that are separated by mode of use. These sessions “will provide a way for the public in different user groups to share feedback on what works well and what could be improved to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience on the Green Lake Park Inner Loop,” according to the project webpage. The dates:
Biking to light rail is often the fastest way to get around Seattle. For riders who live beyond a short walk to the station, biking is a great way to skip the slower local bus connection (if there even is one) and head straight to the train or express bus. If your destination is near a station down the line, then it’s much easier to lock your bike before boarding rather than trying to bring it on board.
However, leaving a bike locked up all day outside a station makes it an appealing target for theft. One classic option people have used is to have a crappy (or crappy-looking) light rail bike with a very good lock. The idea is to make your bike appear to have little value in the hope that any thieves will find a more appealing and easier to steal bike nearby. This is fairly effective, though it merely deflects the problem onto someone else.
A more sustainable and fair solution is for Sound Transit and King County Metro to build secure bike parking at major transit stations and hubs. Both agencies have been experimenting with different options for years, and Sound Transit’s newest stations include a mix of regular bike racks, bike lockers and bike cages. There are currently cages at Beacon Hill, Angle Lake, Tukwila Sounder, South Bellevue, Roosevelt, U-District, and Northgate Stations. Three more are planned along East Link, including Judkins Park, Bellevue, and Mercer Island.
But until very recently, getting access to each could be a bit complicated and inconsistent. Now most of the secure bike storage options are accessible through one service: BikeLink.
The bike lockers are quite spacious and can even fit many cargo bikes. They also double as child care in a pinch!
BikeLink is a California-based company that makes on-demand bike storage solutions. Bike lockers installed at Sound Transit stations since 2020 have been BikeLink lockers, but now the agency’s bike cages also use the same BikeLink cards. Both the lockers and the cages cost 5¢ per hour. It’s great that the paid secure bike parking options are finally unified under one service, but users will need to jump through some significant extra hoops to get access.
The biggest impediment to using the lockers is that you need to order a BikeLink card online and load it with at least $20 just to get started. Once it arrives in the mail, you can start using it to access the bike lockers. But if you want to use the bike cage, you’ll be greeted with this message:
It definitely feels weird to text a photo of you and your ID to a random phone number to access a piece of public infrastructure. But I did it, and it took about an hour or so before I received a message that I was verified and could use the cage.
I have been using the U District cage for a while now through the previous system managed by Sound Transit staff, which was also somewhat laborious to set up. I have never seen another bike inside. I am hopeful that the BikeLink system helps more people get access to the cage so that it gets better use because it is pretty great once you get inside. There is a lot of space for bikes, giving these stations room to grow as more people bike to transit and learn how to use the cage. I even really like the upper-level bike racks, which are spring-loaded to make them surprisingly easy to lift into place. I do wish there were spaces for cargo bikes, though I’ve made it work. My suggestion would be to replace one of the hanging spots with a few standard staple racks. And maybe an outlet for charging an e-bike?
The problem, though, is that BikeLink simply is not convenient as implemented here. It’s an extra card you have to carry around and another online payment account to manage, and you lose the value on it if you lose the card. Especially since ORCA just launched the long-awaited second generation of its unified transit payment service, it’s frustrating that accessing bike parking was not just integrated in some way into ORCA. You also cannot load money onto your BikeLink card using the brand new ORCA vending machines. BikeLink does integrate with the Clipper Card in the Bay Area, so integration is possible.
But the Clipper Card does not with with the Bay Area’s bike cages yet, highlighting an additional complication: Identity verification. A bike cage is only secure if access is somehow limited to the bike owners using it. If anyone can go inside, then it would probably be safer to just lock your bike outside the cage where more people can see it since it is easier to steal a bike where nobody is looking. So how do you make it easy for people to get access while also making it difficult for thieves to get in? That’s why BikeLink requires the ID verification process, allowing them to know who accessed the cage in case of theft. It’s an imperfect solution to a problem without an obvious solution.
There’s no question that requiring a third party service will limit use of the BikeLink services. A lot of people will continue locking their bikes to outdoor racks because they are free and don’t require a card. But the lockers and cages are great once you jump through all the hoops to get access. I worry that low use may send the wrong message about the demand for secure bike parking at transit stations. Lots of people are biking to light rail stations, and they don’t want their bikes to get stolen. Widespread use of any service requires as little friction for potential users as possible, and especially for the cages the BikeLink system has too much friction as it is implemented in the Seattle region today.
The Eastlake bike lane plans are still moving forward with the RapidRide J bus improvements project, but bike advocates in town are not taking their eye off the project until those bike lanes are on the ground.
City Councilmember and Transportation Committee Chair Alex Pedersen (D4) made comments during an Eastlake Community Council meeting that spooked the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board enough that they penned a letter (PDF) this week strongly supporting the project and the planned bike lanes.
“SBAB requests that SDOT, council, and the Harrell Administration complete the RapidRide J project as shown over the last several years including the fully protected bike lane,” the Board wrote in the letter addressed to Mayor Bruce Harrell, the Seattle City Council and SDOT. “We, along with numerous individuals and organizations in the city have supported the project with the understanding that it would include protected bike lanes. To remove them at this point would be a betrayal of trust as well as counter to our city’s council adopted Bicycle Master Plan, Climate Action Plan, and Vision Zero commitments.”
The comments were actually from an April meeting about the project, but many people didn’t see them until Ryan Packer noticed a recap of the meeting in the summer edition of the Eastlake Community Council’s newsletter Eastlake News (PDF). During the meeting, Pedersen reportedly said that he wished SDOT would consider “a creative sharing of the road” and that he anticipated an uproar similar to people opposed to the 35th Ave NE bike lanes a few years ago.
“It was very disheartening to read in the summer 2022 edition of the Eastlake News that the head of the Seattle City Council Transportation Committee appears to be seeking to water down this vital project,” wrote the Bike Board. “35th Ave NE represents a failure of the city to follow through on its adopted climate and Vision Zero policies. To hear 35th Ave Northeast referenced as a template for the future trajectory of the Rapid Ride J project is incredibly disappointing, and frankly unacceptable.” (more…)
The official project map is actually a little out of date because there are now bike lanes on 15th Ave NE, too.
SDOT released the 90% design plans for the Green Lake Outer Loop, and they show that the bikeway is still on track to finally complete a biking and walking route 112 years in the making.
1910 Olmsted Brothers plan for Green Lake Boulevard.
The advanced design document shows a bikeway very much like the one SDOT showed the community back in a February open house. The city’s plan is to repurpose an abandoned transit-only lane on Aurora to build a two-way biking and walking path along the west side of Green Lake Park. (CLARIFICATION: As pointed out in the comments, this section was not a transit lane, but the sections immediately before and after are. Because of this, the lane serves little to no car traffic purpose because anyone who merges into it will just need to merge back a few blocks later.) This section was originally supposed to be part of the city’s park boulevard system, but the construction of SR-99 took over the space after cutting through Woodland Park. This project will not completely heal the wound created by the park-splitting highway project, but it will at least give people a space to walk and bike.
The project got an extra kick in the pants in the spring when the Parks Department inexplicably banned bikes from the Green Lake Path even though there was no alternative along the west side of the lake. The lake path was never a great transportation option because it can get so busy and was technically one-way for wheels, but since March people have been forced to either break the rules or find some kind of detour on their own. Riding around the lake is an obviously desirable route. Once this bikeway is complete, people won’t be able to imagine our city without it.
Cascade Bicycle Club recently posted their top 5 Seattle bike improvement priorities, though it’s really more like like 4 projects and a citywide plan.
They go into more detail about each in their blog post, so go check it out. Here’s the list:
Georgetown to Downtown Bike Connection
West Marginal Way Bike Connection
Seattle Waterfront Bike Connection
Burke-Gilman Missing Link
Seattle Transportation Plan
Two of the spots are in industrial districts, which have seen far more than their share of bicycle injuries and deaths. Until now, safe streets improvements in Seattle have largely ignored the industrial areas, but that was a terrible mistake. People like in and bike through SoDo and the Duwamish Valley, and they need to have a safe place to do so. We can’t change the past, but we can make safe industrial areas a priority now. (Note: I updated this section 8/25 to clarify location names as noted in the comments.)
It’s sad that the waterfront bike connection needs to be on this list, but it does. I cannot believe the city is going make advocates fight for a safe and direct bike lane to connect the existing Elliott Bay Trail with the under-construction waterfront bikeway. It is so obviously in everyone’s best interest for this bike route to be connected in a safe and direct manor that it really shouldn’t have to be said. Yet here we are.
No more words need to be said about the Missing Link, but they gotta stay on it until it is finally completed.
The Seattle Transportation Plan is not exactly a project, but it’s very important that the final plan reflects the people’s vision of a safer, more equitable and more sustainable Seattle.
