Best Side Cycling filmed the rainy Montlake bike/walk bridge opening + Temporary Arboretum connection needed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbasAdObT0I

I was out of town when WSDOT cut the ribbon on the walk/bike bridge over SR 520 in Montlake earlier this month. Luckily, Best Side Cycling was there to capture it all.

It’s always cool to see how many people show up even when it is pouring rain. But it stopped long enough to get some cool drone shots.

The new trail bridge connects to a new bike route nexus where the 520 Bridge Trail and the Bill Dawson Trail to Montlake Playfield meet up with the Shelby/Hamlin connection to the Montlake Bridge. The parts that are connected work great, and the new bridge makes navigating the area much easier for many trips after years of ever-changing construction detours.

Enjoy the Bill Dawson Trail connection while you can, however, because it is due to close in the spring as crews begin work on the next major phase of the 520 project across Portage Bay.

However, there are two major complaints I have been seeing consistently:

No more Bill Dawson Trail on the west side of Montlake Boulevard

For NOAA workers and anyone else with easy access to the west sidewalk of Montlake Boulevard, the removal of the old connection to the Bill Dawson Trail forces them to now cross the widened boulevard only to then pass under the Boulevard again using the new trail tunnel. The east-side access point is a huge upgrade for most users, but it is a clear downgrade for some. I was a bit surprised myself that there was no connection from the west side of the street. The boulevard is not only very wide, but there are also several missing crosswalks that leave a gap from Hamlin Street to Lake Washington Boulevard where people cannot cross.

The south terminus is not good enough

The new bridge is glorious for crossing the freeway, but it doesn’t actually connect to the Arboretum. Instead, it ends at a flashing beacon crosswalk across Lake Washington Boulevard at E Roanoke Street. From there, people on bikes can catch the popular Lake Washington Loop bike route at 25th Ave E and then lake the old stone bridge at E Lynn Street to get to the Arboretum Trail (the west sidewalk on Lake Washington Boulevard also connects to paths leading to the stone bridge). This is fine though out-of-the-way route for those who know it, but there are going to be a lot of people who assume they will be able to take the new trail directly to the Arboretum since it gets so close. It is disappointing that with as long as this freeway project has taken, there is still very little movement on the project to develop the old construction staging site into a park as is the plan. The 22-acre North Entrance Project remains unfunded, so it’s going to be a long time before it is constructed. A trail was shown in the environmental review documents for the Montlake part of the SR 520 Bridge project, so this is a known issue.

Perhaps the city/state can at least build out a temporary trail in the meantime since planning for the full site has not even begun, and that process will likely take some time since there will be a lot of public interest in what will feel like an expansion (or reclaiming) of the beloved Arboretum. The park is not something that should be rushed because quality is more important than speed, but the trail connection is needed now.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Washington adds another ring to its bike-friendly state rankings dynasty

We don’t use the term “dynasty,” lightly, but the 1960s Boston Celtics have nothing on Washington State’s utter dominance of the bike-friendly state rankings by the League of American Bicyclists. The League announced the 2024 rankings today, and the trophy is coming home to the Evergreen State once again.

Since the League started publishing their rankings in 2008, Washington has only failed to hold the top spot once: A devastating fall to 3rd place in 2022. But that 3rd place finish behind the Celtics Massachusetts and Oregon did not account for Washington’s ace up it’s sleeve: The Move Ahead Washington transportation investment package the legislature has just passed. Move Ahead Washington included $1.29 billion of safety focused programs and other active transportation investments such as an e-bike subsidy that has yet to roll out to the public. Those investments were enough to take back the top spot. Eat your heart out, Massachusetts.

In all seriousness, it’s great that Washington finally has competition on this list and that it now requires safety investments like those included in Move Ahead Washington to stay on the top. Even as recently as 2019, we ran the headline: Other 49 states still seemingly uninterested in being more bike friendly than WA. Well, now Washington will need to keep pushing hard if it wants to keep its spot, especially considering it’s middling score in the safety category. Depressingly, even though Washington’s bicycle fatality rate increased since 2022 (reported as 4.9 per 10,000 bike commuters according to Federal data, up from 4 in the 2022 report), it’s ranking compared to other states improved (8th safest down from 11th). We have so much work to do to get ahead of our nation’s growing traffic safety crisis. The increase in deaths across the nation are unacceptable.

Below are some suggestions for improvement from the League’s Washington State report card (PDF):

Washington State, like the US as a whole, is experiencing a traffic safety crisis, with people walking and biking impacted at higher rates than other road users. Recent legislative initiatives, including reducing the legal blood alcohol content level for drivers, banning turning right on red lights, and increasing fees for heavier vehicles, can address this crisis. Robust action is needed.

In 2022, Washington made one of the nation’s largest ever investments in in-school, on-bicycle education. The League proudly featured those efforts in a webinar earlier this year so that other states can model this new program which, by 2037, will teach bike education skills to 90% of public school youth, and provide a bike, helmet and lock to program participants that need them.

WSDOT is a leader in slow roads that save lives. Its injury minimization work for speed management is informing its Design and Traffic Manuals and its state laws clearly provide authority for reducing speed limits in population centers. Furthermore, the WSDOT Complete Streets policy means that highway maintenance projects also include upgrades so that state routes serve all users.

New legislative investment has enabled WSDOT to provide grantmaking and technical capacity-building assistance for local agencies and tribes, thus increasing competitiveness of smaller and less-resourced jurisdictions. Ongoing funding for this initiative is critical to providing connected and safe bicycle networks throughout the state.

More state and federal funding is available than ever to build better bike infrastructure, but red tape delays critical projects from being built quickly. Legislative action is needed to streamline project review, environmental analysis, and other administrative steps so that the state and local agencies can build bike projects faster and complete gaps in the network making active transportation networks intuitive and comfortable for users of all types.

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WSDOT: Promised e-bike rebate program still far from launching

If you were waiting for Washington State’s rebate program to kick in before buying an e-bike, the state still has a lot of work to do before it is available. When it finally does launch at some undetermined point in the future, the state expects all 8,500 of them to be gobbled up quickly and doled out via a randomization system with most of the funding going to households making less than 80% of the area median income.

Of course, none of this means anything if Washington voters approve I-2117 in November, a terrible decision that would defund a laundry list of good investments such as clean air, transit, roads, wildfire prevention, ferries and, yes, e-bike rebates.

The state legislature funded an e-bike rebate program in 2023 using funds from the Climate Commitment Act. But more than a year later, the program has yet to select a vendor to build out the custom software infrastructure needed to handle income verification and voucher distribution. WSDOT’s Active Transportation Division noted in a recent blog post that they plan to select a vendor in November to start that work. Though they don’t say it in the post, this timing would allow them to see if I-2117 passes before committing to building out the software. So whether I-2117 passes or not, the campaign itself seems to have already delayed work on this program, harming local bike shops as people wait to see if they can get a cheaper e-bike later.

If I-2117 fails and the program can move forward, WSDOT does not yet have a timeline for when they expect the program to get up and running, noting only that they are “confident we’ll have plenty to report in our next legislative update due July 2025,” according to a WSDOT blog post. If you make more than 80% of area median income (find out here), then rebates would be limited to $300 at most and you would need to win a lottery of sorts to get chosen. $300 is not nothing, but it might not be worth it to you to wait. E-bike prices are much lower now than they were even a couple years ago, and they may very well increase $300 by the time this program gets going depending how the industry and consumer demand evolves. It’s impossible to know, but e-bike prices have been volatile since the pandemic began.

Despite the program delays, the team has been working to develop their plan and hire staff, according to WSDOT. They have learned from the logistical struggles in other places and worked with a University of Washington research team to publish a lengthy policy document (PDF) on how best to structure the whole thing based on best practices and the specifics of how the legislature wrote the law.

The research team concluded that the state should launch the program in phases focused on a few communities before launching statewide and that interested Washington residents should apply in advance through an online system that then selects recipients at random. They could then use the rebate only through a bike shop with a physical store in Washington that also offers on-site repairs and that will fully assemble and size-adjust the bike for the buyer. They must also offer a warranty of at least a year. Mountain bikes should be excluded from the program, but all three recognized classes of e-bikes should be included. Adaptive e-bikes designed for accessibility should also be included, which is great news because they can be really expensive and typically are not covered by health insurance. There should be no more than rebate per household. Rebates should be applied at the register, so buyers would not need to float the rebate amount while waiting for a reimbursement check from the state. This is especially important for low-income buyers who can qualify for up to $1,200 in rebates, an amount of money that qualified buyers may not have available. However, it does add layers of complexity to the system.

One wrinkle in their plan is that the program must, by law, dedicate 40% of the investments “to vulnerable populations within the boundaries of overburdened communities” as defined by the Washington Department of Ecology as well as some of the “highly impacted communities” identified by the Department of Health. However, they may find that one disparity in such communities is often a lack of access to bike shops. So it will be interesting to see how the program mitigates this problem. I don’t know if there’s enough funding here to incentivize new shops within our state’s bike shop deserts, but that would be a wonderful side-effect if it happened. A bicycle is an incredible source of very low-cost transportation, but only if the bike is working. In the Puget Sound region, Everett, North Seattle/Shoreline, South Seattle, South King County, Northeast Puyallup and South and East Tacoma are identified as overburdened by the Department of Ecology, while census tracts that at least partially contain tribal lands are also noted as “highly impacted communities” under state statute. The legal definitions here are overlapping and a bit difficult for me to follow, and it’s very possible that my descriptions in this paragraph are not inclusive of them all. Focused outreach and early rollouts of the program should begin in these areas of the state.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

You did it! WSDOT will not cut the Harvard Connection path to planned Roanoke Lid

The efforts by advocates at Central Seattle Greenways as well as readers like you have paid off. WSDOT announced that they are no longer planning to cut the Harvard Connection path to the planned Roanoke Lid as part of the SR-520 Portage Bay Bridge and Roanoke Lid Project.

“Following conversations with legislators, our contractor, project partners and community advocates, we have decided to maintain the Harvard Connection,” wrote WSDOT Program Administrator Omar Jepperson. “It is clear the community feels strongly about keeping this bicycle and pedestrian connection. We look forward to delivering these multimodal improvements to the city and region.”

We wrote about the community effort to save the trail connection Wednesday while also arguing that the path would recreate one of Seattle’s very first bicycle paths from the 1890s. There’s some really interesting potential for public art or historical markers of some kind to connect people with the history of white colonial settlement and development of this place, which began with a bike path that grew into a freeway.

There are still budget gaps to figure out before this final segment of the 520 freeway megaproject project begins its long construction phase. But the cutting the trail connection would barely scratch the surface of the project budget, which includes a full replacement of the entire Portage Bay Bridge between Montlake and I-5. Community advocates previously fought to keep a biking and walking trail on the new bridge, which will shorten several major regional bike routes between the city center and UW, the Burke-Gilman Trail, and Eastside communities along the 520 Trail.

Below is the full text of the letter from WSDOT:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us about maintaining the Harvard Shared-Use Path (Harvard Connection) on the SR 520 Portage Bay Bridge and Roanoke Lid Project. We appreciate your advocacy and patience while we conducted additional analysis.

As we’ve shared before, this project faced an approximate $700 million budget gap. The Legislature directed us to move forward with awarding the Portage Bay project but to “seek consequential cost reduction opportunities through value engineering and prioritizing functionality and usability of the Portage Bay Bridge and Roanoke Lid.” Removing the proposed Harvard Connection was one of several cost reduction opportunities we analyzed to meet this legislative requirement.

We identified the Harvard Connection as a potential cost reduction measure because there are alternative walking/biking connections in the area that provide a similar function. We saw this as an opportunity to align resources with the city of Seattle to improve the alternative connections, reduce maintenance costs and concerns, and preserve approximately 50 mature trees.

However, following conversations with legislators, our contractor, project partners and community advocates, we have decided to maintain the Harvard Connection. It is clear the community feels strongly about keeping this bicycle and pedestrian connection. We look forward to delivering these multimodal improvements to the city and region. 

Thank you again for your feedback.

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Trail connection to planned Roanoke Lid would restore a historic Seattle bike path + Tell WSDOT not to cut it

Not only would the Harvard Ave path connect the Roanoke Lid and 520 Trail along a safer and less steep route, it would also restore a small piece of Seattle’s first ever bike paths.

You can support a Central Seattle Greenways effort to protect the proposed path from budget cuts on the freeway megaproject.

The 1895 Lake Union Bike Path cannot be accurately restored because, well, it’s now the path of I-5 between downtown and SR-520. But photos from the turn of the 20th century show the crossroads where the Lake Union path connected to the 1896 Lake Washington Bike Path that lead folks east through the forest now known as Interlaken Park. That old crossroads would most likely be located somewhere within the I-5/520 interchange on land that was excavated for freeway construction, and the Lake Washington path hugged the hillside as it curved to the east. The closest existing land to this historic path would be the proposed Harvard Connection path that has been planned as part of the Roanoke Lid of the SR-520 replacement project.

Like the old path, the Harvard Connection would hug the hillside to follow the least-steep route as it turns east toward the lid and Interlaken Blvd. The only surviving engineering plot of the old Lake Washington path (that I was able to find, anyway) ends on top of the proposed Roanoke Lid on the northeast corner of what is now 10th Ave E and E Roanoke Street, and the early design for the lid already includes a path that follows a similar path. The proposed Harvard Connection would meet up nicely with the historic route, creating opportunities for heritage markers or public art connecting the past to the present. With the freeway interchange roaring in the background, it could be an opportunity for folks to reflect on the marks we leave on this land, how an innocent-looking bike path through the forest was a harbinger of white colonial land theft and settlement that in just a few short decades grew into a freeway.

Here’s the text of the action alert you can sign from Central Seattle Greenways:

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is planning to delete a key bike and pedestrian connection from the future Roanoke Lid over SR 520 between Capitol Hill and Eastlake. Tell WSDOT that removing this community-supported connection to the SR 520 Trail is unacceptable.

The Harvard Connection, the dashed yellow path pictured in the image above, would offer a vital lower-incline and safer connection towards Capitol Hill for users of all ages and abilities via a tunnel under 10th Ave E and a gently sloping path from the Roanoke Lid up to E Miller St.

Cutting the Harvard Connection would only save about 1% ($10-15 million) of the car-centric megaproject’s $1.4 billion budget. WSDOT has justified their shortsighted decision by asserting that the path wouldn’t provide a meaningful connection. This is not accurate: it would provide a valuable alternative for southbound trips from the Roanoke Lid with gentler (6%) grades and lower traffic stress than navigating the busy intersection of 10th Ave E and E Roanoke St and the block south of it, which has a 10% slope.

With the future Roanoke Lid likely to become a community destination for events and other activities, the Harvard Connection would offer accessibility not only for bicyclists but also pedestrians using wheelchairs and other mobility devices. Removing it would leave parkgoers without an alternative to the prohibitively steep slopes on 10th Ave E, Federal Ave E, and 11th Ave E

TELL STATE AND CITY TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS AND ELECTED LEADERS: Please restore the Harvard Connection and keep your promise to people bicycling, rolling, and walking on the future Roanoke Lid over SR 520.

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